Compostable Matter

The First Part of Coven is...

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:12:00 +0000

Apparently March 1st was the start of spring. Who knew? Clearly not the actual weather, which I at least believe should have some say in the matter.

I had thought that winter ended on the vernal equinox (around March 20th here in the northeastern United States.) There is however more than one way to define the seasons. My rule of thumb was based on an astronomical definition. But it is not the only result that you can get when you use the stars to determine the seasons.
The vernal equinox is determined by the angle of the sun and the amount of solar radiation reaching a given area (a.k.a. insolation). But daytime temperatures lag behind insolation by several weeks because the earth and sea, like most of us on a cold winter morning, have what is called thermal latency, and just take a long time to warm up.

Signs of spring -- crocuses popping out of the earth, woodpeckers drumming on the neighborhood trees, clamorous goose migrations, Major League Baseball training camps, "Important Tax Information" in the mail - normally show up before 3/20. This is probably why users of the Celtic and East Asian calendars (all of whom are huge baseball fans) consider the vernal equinox to be the midpoint of spring, not the beginning.

Half of my lineage is Celtic. There is probably even a dyad or two of druids in my family tree. But I had no idea that a Celtic calendar even existed - other than the Boston one of course. It does.

Or did anyway. Lots of them.
It is a solar/lunar almanac that begins each of its twelve months on the same phase of the moon, and is used by some Neo-pagan Wiccan cults to schedule their rites -- some of which relate to the coming of spring.

But now my wife Mars tells me that the TV weather prognosticators no longer will have nothing to do with this stargazing stuff. Raised to believe in Doppler radar rather than the heavenly theories of Nicholas Copernicus, they want hard data -- or at least computer models expressed in bright, day-glo colors. So they base their view of the four seasons on the average monthly temperatures.

Just like in the astronomical world there are four meteorological seasons, each one three months in length. The three warmest continuous ones are summer. The coldest trio is winter. Spring and fall fill in the gaps.

As a result, the seasons can start on different dates in different places. In the northeast it has been decided that meteorological spring starts on the first of March and concludes at the end of May.

Personally I find this all pretty confusing. And being a gardener I want to be able to accurately plan winter's end and the onset of my favorite season. Otherwise how do I know when to get my false hopes up?

Fortunately I live in Wethersfield, Connecticut on the banks of our state's eponymous river and home to our town's eponymous cove. And it is the condition of that small, sheltered bay that I use as my official arbiter of the seasons.
The cove is a popular launching and mooring spot for small recreational boats. In the summer scores of fishing boats, bowriders, and runabouts bob placidly on the barely perceptible waves, while dinghies and kayaks paddle among them.

In winter the water freezes deeply enough to have supported an ice harvesting industry earlier in the town's history. Today the cold, hard surface holds up small bands of ice fisherman, whose hunched bodies sit on upturned milk crates waiting for some unseen underwater action.

Around this time of the year the cove becomes part water and part thin ice. The percentages of each vary from day to day as the nighttime and daylight temperatures bob below and above freezing. Ultimately the remaining ice melts, the water wins, and the cove rises.

More water from more thawing up north runs downstream and overflows the banks of the cove. It wanders across the boat launch, up onto the entry road, and sometimes beyond -- shutting down several neighborhoods. On rare occasions some of the waterfront house are partially submerged.

Eventually the flooding subsides and access to the cove is restored.

Then it is time for The High Priestess Mars-ita to garb herself in her diaphanous, ceremonial Ostara dress and lead her adoring acolyte to Cove Park, where we will surreptitiously start a bonfire, sing the Pentagram Chant, light some sage to remove the negative energy, and officially declare that the real spring is really here.

And if the stars are aligned we should be back home in time to catch the Celtics on ESPN.

Romeo and Evel

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:30:00 +0000

Adjacent animal corpses on a nearby suburban street got me wondering.

Romeo and Evel

Two road-kill squirrels --
"Last one there is a dead rat!",
or "star crossed lovers"?

And here's a story about a more successful daredevil squirrel.

Hey guys, over here!

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:16:00 +0000

I couldn't hear him clearly because the doors were closed - but I could tell by his body language that the solitary crow was saying "CAAAWWW CAAAWWW CAAAWWW CAAAWWW" or (in more understandable human terms) "Hey guys, over here, something's up!" I also knew without looking that the exact same scene was being repeated simultaneously in several other yards in our neighborhood.

Later that day I heard pretty much the same thing on my television set at the beginning of the local news.

My late friend Peter used to say that the weather forecast was the only reason that anyone watched such programming. The job of the news director is to come up with things to keep the viewer paying attention until then. Hence the "if it bleeds, it leads!" format.

So for them it is even better when the "breaking news" is a "Weather Alert!" and the anchors can immediately toss the ball to the shirtsleeved meteorologist who tells us excitedly that he is going to tell us something exciting later on in the broadcast.

"CAAAWWW CAAAWWW CAAAWWW CAAAWWW"

Sometimes the calling-crow is successful in garnering the interest of its fellow travelers. The additional visitors arrive en masse, strutting and bobbing across the lawn, looking for something to entertain their little bird brains. Their attention span is pretty short -- a few minutes at the most. They begin to look bored. One or two of them fly off to the top of some distant tree. Then some unseen something sets off one of these new higher-ups.

"CAW-CAW-CAW". ("Danger! Danger!" Danger!)

Everyone's interest perks up. Crows come from far-and-wide just to be a part of the great panicky group flyaway. "CAW-CAW-CAW" is now everywhere. The black blanket that briefly covered my yard now momentarily conceals the sky -- and then, just as rapidly, splinters apart to search for the next "CAAAWWW CAAAWWW CAAAWWW CAAAWWW" happening.

When the weather segment finally arrives the television screen fills with rapidly swirling clouds of bright colors. Those closest to pink are the scariest. Phrases like "at the worst possible time -- right during the morning commute", and "as much as six inches in places", hurl themselves across the room.

The "weather event" is at least two days away but a "crawl" on the bottom of the picture already announces the future closing of institutions you never heard of, in towns that you didn't know existed. Several school systems simply shut down for the duration of winter and cancel all summer vacations for teachers and students.

The program ends with the admonition to "stay tuned to this station for further updates" as well as a "final forecast at eleven."

Meanwhile my front yard has become quietly populated with various pintsized birds (finches, juncos, chickadees, tufted titmice, squirrels, and an occasional cardinal) -- more visitors but less noise. Our family room is also more subdued now with classical music from the radio providing background for reading.

At the beginning of Barbara Kingsolver's new novel "The Lacuna" a thirteen year-old boy who has just discovered the sounds of the underwater world asks, "What is the difference between talking and making a noise?"

"[It depends] On intention. Whether he wants another fish to understand his meaning.... If a fish only wants to show that it is there, it's a noise."

The problem is that it is not always easy to discern intention in the midst of clamor.

You can learn about these and other crow calls at http://www.crowbusters.com/begtechn_dc.htm

A Persian Flaw

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:39:00 +0000

A Persian Flaw

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer may have been many things - a writer of rhyme, perhaps a silly person - but he clearly was not a gardener. Had he been, he might have added one more enjambment to his opus.

Yet though He may hath breathed it life

Gard'ners improve it with their knife.

If you ask people why they garden you will probably get reasons such as, to be creative, to learn new things, to meet people, or to get outdoor exercise. But it seems to me that all of these answers just dance around the edges of why horticulturalists really horticult. They do it in order to create their own private floral Utopia - that idyllic kind of place that they personally want to live in - a world in their own image and likeness. In other words, they do it to put the final finishing touches on nature.
Makers of Navajo blankets, on the other hand, purposely weave a mistake into each of their creations. Other artists and craftsmen apparently create similar deliberate defects in their icons, paintings, statues, etc.

It is called a "Persian Flaw".

Legend says that Persian rug makers, being deeply religious, believed that only God could make something perfect. To demonstrate humility before their deity, these carpet crafters deliberately incorporated a small error into each rug. This "Persian Flaw" revealed the craftsman's devotion to the Supreme Being.

Doesn't this act of faked fallibility seem a bit disingenuous? I mean it's like "Sorry. My bad! Didn't mean to be perfect."

I'm a gardener and I belong to a garden club with men of a similar persuasion. Trust me on this one. No disrespect, but there are definitely no "Persian Flaws" in our flowerbeds.

I asked the Internet site Google "should gardens be perfect?" The great Answerer of Queries told me to be more specific. Did I mean "perfect herb garden; perfect vegetable garden; picture perfect gardens; simply perfect gardens; perfect garden tool; perfect home garden; [or] perfect garden party"

Clearly the answer was yes.

Clicking on any one of these suggested shortlists of flawlessness brought up a long list of self-confident websites averring: "The Perfect...", "Creating the Perfect...", "5 Tips for a Perfect..."

In the real world, if a non-gardener were to check out the backyard of any one of us plantsmen they would see (depending on their mood and biases) either: (a) an out of control herd of plants tripping over each other in a packed-solid, overflowing, tapestry of color and texture, or (b) the Garden of Eden.

Meanwhile what we tenders of the land observe are: the perennial plant that could be moved three inches to the left to provide a more perfect contrast; and that errant weed worming its way through the otherwise pristine splendor; and the branch that needs a partial pruning in order to excise its dead portion or to eliminate its intrusion onto its neighbor; and the underperforming shrub that needs replacement. And we always notice that there is "room for at least one more" - even though we don't know where that room is until we return home with that plant we didn't know we needed until we saw it.

Psychiatrists might suggest that this compulsive quest for horticultural perfection is no more than plain-old delusions of grandeur. Others of a different intellectual bent might consider it a legitimate philosophical pursuit of Platonic Ideals. Our spouses tend to believe that it is just a sneaky way of avoiding real work, and playing in the dirt instead.

Here is what I think. Everybody has his or her own personal strengths and weaknesses. And in many instances the same trait that is someone's greatest asset can also be their greatest shortcoming. And thus it is with "green thumbs" - the outer sign of an inner obsession - the pursuit of perfection that makes all gardeners imperfect.

Will, Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Anni-Frid and Henry

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:08:00 +0000

It is said that Shakespeare has an observation on any and everything that could possibly happen in life, for example. "He hath eaten me out of house and home." (Henry IV).
And it's true. For years several generations of squirrels have been doing just that -- ingesting sunflower seeds, ears of corn and barbeque grill tires.

(A quick note on the middle item from eBirdseed.com: "Ear corn or whole corn on the cob is fun to feed the furry creatures in your yard. As you might imagine, squirrels love to eat this entertaining treat...

Consider this, if you have a problem with squirrels dominating your bird feeders, buy some whole corn on the cob and establish a squirrel feeding station away from your bird feeders. Given the choice, squirells [sic] would rather munch on these cobs than hang from your feeders.")

That may be true of the "squirells" -- whom I actually believe were an American "Girl Group" of the early 1960's ("Dedicated to the One I Love"). But "squirrels" (at least at our house) still go for the forbidden seeds first, and then dine selectively on the yellow kernels, frequently letting them sit for several days in their special "Squirrel Corn Holder" (a wooden platform with a long screw onto which the cob is forced).
Maybe our mistake was placing that device on the oak trunk that serves as the main passageway from the tree-rats' penthouse drays to our centralized bird-feeding area located immediately across the front lawn. The rapacious rodents, with their little minds and big eyes fixated exclusively on the harder-to-get, and therefore more interesting sunflower seeds, rush right by the more phallic feeder station. It is only on their way back home that, now completely full but never totally satiated, they even notice the vulnerably placed kernels - a selection of amuse-bouches, which they linger to dine on at a more leisurely pace.

Squirrels, which tip the scales at around one and one half pounds per, eat about their weight in food each week. I would have thought "per day" but that is just based on my non-scientific, informal observations - and ever-escalating critter food expenses.

Now they are devouring the tires on my barbeque grill. The wheels are six-inch all-weather, crack-proof plastic. They clearly are not indigestible.

I have not actually seen them gnawing on the treads. And I have never, ever come across any polyethylene leftovers. I only really noticed the damage when I rolled the kettle cooker from the now dark backyard to our spot-lit driveway for some mid-winter, outdoor cooking. "Ka-thump." Stop. "Ka-thump." Stop. "Ka-thump. Crash" (as the metal ash catcher disk came loose.) Stop and curse.

This has happened before. Replacement parts are readily available online for a not unreasonable price. But that's not the point. I am feeling unappreciated and exploited by these ungrateful bushy-tailed little rats.

So, what to do? Are there thoughts of encouragement (or discouragement) specific to selfish squirrels anywhere in the 884,429 total words of Shakespeare's 43 works?

No. (At least according to Google.com)

But I did come across "The Shakespeare Quote Generator" which will substitute terms of your choice into Shakespearean quotations selected by the website. Here is what it generated for me.

"Thou canst not say I did it: never shake Thy gory squirrel at me." (Macbeth)

or

"Banish plump Squirrel, and banish all the world." (Henry IV)

or

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless squirrel!" (King Lear).

Cute, but not really helpful.

But wait. ABBA, the Swedish pop music quartet similarly boasts a lyric for every major human event. Back to Google.com. Alas, there are no squirrel-centric ABBA lyrics -- even though their 139 opuses outstrip the output of the Bard of Avon by almost four to one. Not could I find an online algorithm machine to create any random ABBAisms.

However Henry David Thoreau, who had basically zero "Top 40" hits, did have this to offer. "The squirrel that you kill in jest dies in earnest."
I am not totally sure what it means. But my initial (and perhaps self-serving) interpretation is that a humorous turn-of-phrase can slay even the fiercest foe -- without getting any blood on my hands.

So here is my best, personally generated, shot. "The first thing we do, let's kill all the squirrels."

Actually that seems funnier in its original form.

1

The Secret Life of Trees

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:37:00 +0000

Right now there is at least one good-sized broken branch lying on my front lawn. Guaranteed. I don't even have to look. It's been like that every single day for the past three decades.

Fifty-two weeks a year, thirty-two years, each tree has lost four to five branches -- all at least one foot, and often, four or more feet long -- and between a forefinger and a forearm in circumference. I have three oaks, a maple and an elm. They all should be getting smaller and smaller - but they are not. It is really quite spooky.

It's as if a bigger version of each tree is growing inside itself. Then, when it needs more room, it pushes through the bark and throws off the older, smaller limbs that are no longer adding any value. Sort of a business corporation definition of deadwood

Mathematically it makes no sense at all. Over the years the total amount of fallen lumber by any measure -- weight, area -- is (by far) much, much larger than the total amount of healthy wood that ever stood in my yard.

And I've had to get rid of every single piece. But that's been a good thing, because every week, just like the Monty Python comedy routine, I got to say "I didn't want to be an [Insurance Information Technology geek]. I wanted to be...a lumberjack!" Then the British troupe of humorists would sing "The Lumberjack Song".

"He's a lumberjack
And he's O.K.
He sleeps all night
And he works all day."

When I first got into the deadwood disposal biz you either drove them to the town transfer station. Or bundled them up. I had no vehicle to support the former so I did the latter. But the rules were a tad restrictive for someone attempting to use weekend yard maintenance as a Lumberman Fantasy Camp.

Each stick was to be no longer than three feet. Every bundle had to be small enough to be easily held in two open hands. Brown sisal two-ply twine secured with a bale sling hitch knot was required to hold the package together. (All right, I made that last one up, but you get the point.)

Lumberjacking is supposed to be manly, large-muscle work. This was more like a Christmas job in the gift-wrapping department at Nordstrom. Frequently the lumber rebelled during the wrapping operation and thwacked me in the face. The lengths of twine that I eyeball-measured proved too short. My tolerance for the work was good for at most three bundles per week. This was not enough to keep up with demand.

I was about to look for a new make-believe identity when the town modified its collection rules.

Now the wooden debris could be jammed into barrels and dragged to the curb. The only restrictions were those imposed by the size of the container and the strength of the trash-handler. I bought several large pails and proudly measured the degree of my lumberjack-ness by the number of them I put out each week. When the trees did not naturally provide enough deadwood I rampaged through the yard with my pruning saw looking for candidates to add to the pile.

Then I bought a wood chipper.

That was really fun -- a guaranteed easy Saturday morning transition from my weekday identity to my imaginary existence as the "Deadwood Destroyer".

"He's a lumberjack
And he's O.K.
He cuts down trees
He eats his lunch."

Now I'm retired. I have as much time as I want to play pretend logger -- and a lot less reasons to need to. The town has switched to big green bins that hold much more wood and are way easier to cram than my own pails. I have two of them.

I can easily pack half of one every week with the branches that spontaneously splay themselves across my lawn. Then with part of my additional leisure hours I can take my pruning saw and further explore my inner lumberjack -- and still have extra time to sit back and contemplate what my branch-dropping trees are really up to.

"He's a lumberjack
And he's O.K.
He sleeps all night
And he works all day.
He cuts down trees
He skips and jumps
He likes to press wild flowers
He puts on women's clothing
And hangs around in bars."

Or maybe not. I probably should just forget this whole woodland fantasy thing and find something more conventional to worry about. The secret lives of trees may turn out to be as bizarre as the private habits of lumberjacks.

(See Monty Python perform the "The Lumberjack Song" on YouTube )

New Bill of Fare - Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:35:00 +0000

In a previous posting I talked about the new anti-squirrel changes that we implemented at our al fresco animal auberge over the past holidays. You can stop worrying now -- the squirrels are doing just fine thank you. In fact there are more of them than before. And they are healthier, slimmer and livelier than ever.

Mars and I installed two new types of feeders (both Christmas gifts) - a "Squirrel-Be-Gone" squirrel proof one and three "Seed Ball Bird Feeders". And we took down our sunflower seed "Two Liter Feeder". The latter consists of a zinc metal perch that screws on to the top of a 2-liter soda bottle.We have had several editions of this device since our son Bram gave us our first kit in the late 1980's. It was an immediate hit with the sparrows and purple finches in our area. It was an even bigger draw to the neighborhood squirrels who quickly discovered that their hanging-upside-down body length was equal to that of a similarly orientated soda bottle. And that, positioned thusly, they could stuff their cheeks with enough hard-shelled sunflower pips to (a) to outweigh the ability of their legs to hold them up and (b) keep them nourished until their next turn at the "Food ATM".

Over these years Mars and I have become F.O.S. -- Friends of Squirrels -- a meaning for F.O.S. surprisingly absent from the list at "thefreedictionary.com". So, even though we were deploying apparently anti-Sciurus devices, we weren't that serious about it.

To our total surprise the "Squirrel-Be-Gone" feeder with its Rube Goldberg, spring-loaded, weight-activated, rapidly dropping perch -- actually worked. It's been several weeks now and we have not seen even one tree-rat on that feeder. In fact none have even tried it. Now I am even more impressed with these agile, tree dwelling, furry tailed rodents who seem to know, without even trying, which safes can be cracked and which ones should just be left alone.
For several days our gray yard pets were content to gather at the base of the bird-feeder-tree and dine on food that I had spread on the ground, and/or had fallen from the suspended food stations -- especially the "Seed Ball Bird Feeders".

As I mentioned in my earlier posting I ended up filling the metal cages with a mix of milo, millet and safflower due to the fact that the sunflower seeds that were recommended were bigger than the holes from which they were to be taken.

The mixture is however easily extricated. So easily in fact that the slightest movement of the sphere (whether caused by a visitor or a slight breeze) induces an avalanche of yellow kernels onto the earth below. That windfall plus the inefficient and wasteful pecking techniques of the diners at the "Squirrel-Be-Gone" cafe seemed to provide enough sustenance for not only the three squirrels who pre-resided the new feeders, but four additional ones as well.

And, perhaps because these normally gluttonous gourmands were now taking smaller portions more often, their overall vigor and svelte-ness seemed to improve.

This terrestrial feeding pattern lasted however but a few days as the squirrels quickly realized that, compared to the "Two Liter Feeder", the feeders were truly high-hanging, low-hanging fruit. Soon the Sciurus were scurrying to be the next one to sup through the metal cage and, at the same time, spread the wealth to friends and family below.

Unlike the plastic soda bottles used for the "Two Liter Feeder", the "high quality metal" in the birdseed balls seems impervious to the tree-rat's incessantly gnawing incisors. And for whatever reason the squirrels linger for but a short time at the feeding orbs thereby allowing some of our feathered yard-pets to partake in the milo, millet and safflower bounty.

Bottom line: we've got more birds, and squirrels, than ever and they all are looking pretty happy and healthy. The "Two Liter Feeder", along with several replacement bottles, is however handily on deck in the garage.

F.O.S. do not leave the fate of squirrels to chance.

New Bill of Fare

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:45:00 +0000

Bill of Fare

* All Natural Black Oil Sunflower seeds
* Handpicked Thistle Pips
* Organic Songbird Mix (milo, millet, safflower) (*)
* Hi-Fat, Hi-Energy Suet
* Free Range Pigeon (**)

(*) Exciting new item
(**) Crowd favorite returning after too long an absence

As a result of some Christmas presents, and the resurgence of the laws of nature, we are now offering a full menu at our front yard bird cafeteria. In addition we have added a new selection of serving utensils to heighten the dining experience for even the most discriminating avian palate.

First, the hardware.

Our personal trainer at the health club gave us three "Seed Ball Bird Feeders". The six-inch round orbs are made of "high-quality metal" and feature a "patented mesh feeding system". They come in colors - ours are red, blue and yellow - and hang from a short link chain. I thought at first they might have been medieval exercise equipment, perhaps from the Inquisition.
Fortunately they were not.

According to the Internet the feeder holds seven cups of black oil sunflower seeds. That seemed wrong to me - not the volume, something for which my estimating skills are basically zero - but the content. You could probably load three and one half pints of the oversized Helianthus kernels into the round feeder. But there was no way in hell that your even the most voracious bird could get them out through the undersized apertures - even if it grasped the food firmly in its tiny little beak and pushed its skinny little legs with all its might.

I filled one feeder with sunflower seeds and two of them with a mix of milo, millet and safflower that our brother-in-law had given us. The one is still hopelessly filled, while the contents of the others are dwindling slowly - although I have only seen one small finch dining thereon.

My b-in-l also gave us a new "Squirrel-Be-Gone" squirrel-proof feeder . Now I know you are thinking that "squirrel-proof feeder" is a true oxymoron - like Army Intelligence, government worker, or creation science - but wait.
Outwardly this device looks like any other plastic-tube-with-perches-and-seed-windows one. Inwardly it has a spring-activated, seed-lockdown mechanism.

"Puussez sur le perchoir pour voir comment - Squirrel-Be-Gone - utilize le poids de l'ecureuil pour bloquer l'acces aux graines"

Sorry, those were the French instructions. What I meant to say was,

"Push down on the perch to see how Squirrel-Be-Gone uses the squirrel's own weight to block access to the seed."

J'ai fait, [I did] and it worked [cela a fonctionne].

This feeder accommodates the large sunflower seeds. I filled it, hung it up, and the contents quickly went down by fifty percent. Mars and I have seen sparrows and finches eating at it - but no squirrels. Someday soon I expect to look out and see either (a) one of the tree rodents desperately thrashing to remove its nearly severed head from within the dropdown windows, or (b) the entire apparatus lying in pieces on the ground while the squirrels dance triumphantly among the ruins.

Speaking of decapitation brings me to the last item on our list of entrees.

The other day, as we were returning from our morning workout, Mars noticed a flash of movement and what looked to be - and turned out to be - a bloody, beheaded pigeon lying on our front yard paver path.

The "flash of movement" quickly reappeared in the form of a crow-sized, white-breasted hawk that landed atop the corpse and commenced to rip and devour it while the two of us nibbled uncomfortably at our own luncheon plates.

Several crows gathered around but the raptor with the red dripping beak tended to its chores with the single-minded dedication of a football fan during the NFL playoffs.

When we checked back later all of the evidence other than a few stray feathers was gone. We were surprised and pleased. The next day when we returned home again the carcass was back in the same spot - but this time in the form of leftovers for a crow.

The body stayed there overnight and the next morning I threw it into the trash. Based upon the final remains it looks as if hawks and crows are definitely "breast guys", in case you are interested.

Mars and I feel certain that our new bill of fare offers something to satisfy any appetite, from the most pacifistic Vegan to the bloodthirstiest carnivore. And the possibilities of sparrows getting hernias from the feeding balls, and squirrels losing their heads over the new spring-loaded feeder promise hours of inexpensive home-entertainment for the two of us - as well as for that flock of falcons now continuously circling over our house.

Marketing 101

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:39:00 +0000

The other day I overheard something at my haircutter's that once again reminded me of one of the most important things I ever learned in my thirty-eight year professional career.

I worked in Information Technology -- or Data Processing as it was called in the late sixties when I started. One of my jobs was to select, purchase and install a vendor-written payroll system to replace the out of date, homegrown one that existed at the time. I was a manger on a project team composed of technical and business people.

The software supplier whom we ultimately selected was represented by two women -- a Marketing Representative, whose name I no longer remember, and Belinda, the Tech Rep. Both of them were attractive, early-thirty year olds, and smart.

"Nameless: spent most of her time with the business people explaining what the new system would do, how easy it was to use, and how little (in reality) it would cost. Us geeks would see maybe once a month when she would drop by unannounced and hang out with us for an hour or so. She also pointedly paid the bills at the restaurants at which we were feted during our trip to the vendor's User Conference.

"Nameless" was a Harvard graduate -- something she managed to mention at least once in every conversation. She also had a habit of unhooking at least two additional buttons on her blouse before every meeting with the male portion of our project team. This was pointed out to me, with some sense of bemusement, by one of the three female programmers in my group. To a woman they hated "Nameless".

Belinda, on the other hand was all business. You asked a question, she got the answer. Something didn't work, she got it fixed. And she stayed buttoned down. Techies of both genders loved her.

We signed the contract and became unalterably committed to the new system. As we tested it the business people began to discover that certain parts of the software did not perform in the manner that "Nameless" had told them it would.

"Nameless" had not been in town since the ink dried. So Belinda (who was still hanging around doing her job) was dragged before the tribunal to explain.

The business folks listed item after item of impropriety -- after each of which Belinda would gently explain that "No, the system doesn't really do that."

"What's the answer?" management demanded to know.

"Marketing people say marketing things." Belinda calmly told them.

So years later there I was in our hair stylist's shop waiting for Mars. The television, which I had positioned myself not to see, was tuned to some cable television reality show about people buying a house.

The potential purchasers in this episode were an about-to-be-married couple and her preteen daughter who were looking in Staten Island, New York. They, and the female real estate agent, spoke with stereotypical Noo Yawk accents -- "WHADSA madda wid da way Noo Yawkers tawk? Nuttin', brudda, 'cept dat dey wud be da foist to tell you dat dey tawk wid a unique accent."

I was trying to read a book so I had pretty much tuned out the TV noise. But somehow I heard the heard the agent saying, "Shoor you hafta share da bathroom. But just look at dat CHANDELIER!"

No matter how you say it, Belinda was still right.

No One Told Me It Was Like This!

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:06:00 +0000

Mars and I first came to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1992 to celebrate our twenty-fifth of marriage. We have returned just about every year since.
That spring the two of us had seen a retrospective of Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. We were blown away by the non-representative earth toned shapes, the idealized azure backgrounds, and the fictitiously flushed flora and firmament with which she conveyed her otherworldly impressions of the desert southwest.

It seemed to exemplify the dictionary definition of abstract art: "art that does not attempt to represent external, recognizable reality but seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, forms, colors, and textures."
Shortly thereafter we were trying to decide on a special spot in which to celebrate our upcoming silver anniversary. Simultaneously we both said "New Mexico" -- so we could see what gave O'Keeffe her wildly unrealistic ideas.

Months later, outside the plane window as we approached Albuquerque Airport, we saw not the gremlin from "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" but something equally implausible -- a near-perfect replica of O'Keeffe's "The Sky Above the Clouds".
"Nothing is less real than realism...Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things."
We learned two things very quickly when we got there (in addition to the fact that hydration is doubly important at high altitudes yet, unfairly, alcohol is twice as potent):

1) The non-pictorial forms and figures are really there -- really! --in the configuration of the high desert land, and the architecture of the adobe buildings. It’s just a matter of how you look at them.

2) The colors are equally as true. While watching sunrise at the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge we saw the sky slowly fill with the same impossible combination of hues we had seen in O'Keeffe and, the day before, on other canvases at the Taos Arts Festival
"Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something."

We began taking photos as soon as our feet hit the ground. The 1990's being the pre-digital age, Mars and I were more abstemious in our photo snapping -- and took much more care in choosing our subject matter and setting up the shot. Nowadays, with our point-shoot-browse-delete cameras, no film developing costs to care about, and home computer photo editing we each can easily blow off a couple of hundred images in a week. Nonetheless, even with a smaller set to choose from, we noticed several snapshots that seemed to meet O'Keeffe's criteria for "abstract objectivity" -- or at least our interpretation thereof.

Over time it became easier to visualize these "lines and colors" in the midst of the real thing -- and eventually, for me anyway, more difficult not to.
Maybe it was the newness of a place so geographically and architecturally opposite from what was familiar that caused us to see things in a new way. Perhaps it was a result of the thinness of the high-altitude air and the resultant shortage of oxygen to our brains. Or the aforementioned increased potency of wine and beer at these greater heights.

Or it just could be that "The City Different" (as Santa Fe is known) and northern New Mexico in general is exactly what it says it is -- not the same as another; unlike in nature, form, and quality; distinct; separate.

It is easier to see differently when what there is to see is so different.
"Well! Well! Well!... This is wonderful. No one told me it was like this!"

(All quotations by Georgia O'Keeffe)

Walk In Beauty

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:32:00 +0000

"Santa Fe Style represents a state of mind held by those who live in Santa Fe either as full-time or part-time residents. Santa Fe style influenced fashion and design worldwide. It is not just jewelry and clothing but a feeling inside, a sense of place and that total belief in the Navajo saying, 'Walk in beauty.'

"[it is], is the exuberant self expression of the individual. Perhaps other people of the world can bring this look into being, but I doubt that any city on earth does it as distinctively as do the residents of Santa Fe, New Mexico. We Santa Feans not only fill our homes and gardens with art, but we make ourselves a moving canvas, blending artist-driven clothing, jewelry and accessories to make a statement of who we are." (Native Couture: A History of Santa Fe Style)

(Please click on the photos to enlarge them)

When the cold winter freeze

Drives squash blossoms and conchos under cover --

Style saunters on

In the footwear of fashionistas.

Finding Faith The Best That We Are Able

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:13:00 +0000

Not being what former neighbors call "churchy people" it is not that easy for Mars and me to tap in to the spiritual side of the Christmas holiday. That plus a lack of any definitive idea of what it is we are actually looking for.

My early-life experience of the spu-RIT-ual (as Sister Agnes Louise pronounced it) was limited to those few hours of blissful peace between Saturday 4:00 p.m. confession and Sunday 9 a.m. communion when I wasn't frighteningly worried that I was going to die and go directly to hell.

Somewhere along the way I (largely) lost that fear -- and its concomitant pleasurable release. I've also experienced many things -- while, for example, doing yoga to music, or making pottery, or gardening -- that effected my inner being, but nothing with that same intensity such that I really would call it Spiritual (with a capitol S).

However, as I get older, I think that my threshold test is becoming less stringent.

Mars and I spent Christmas in Santa Fe, New Mexico visiting with our son, daughter-in-law, and rescued greyhound grand-dog (Bram, Monica and Cheyenne), and partaking in some of the December activities in that part of northern New Mexico.

On our second afternoon there we went to listen the chanting of the monks at The Monks' Corner Gift Shop. The store supports the work of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert; a Benedictine community of more than thirty members located in Abiquiu, New Mexico -- about one hour away. Among its merchandise are religious themed items such as: a pictorial calendar of Russian church icon and fruitcake baked in Trappist abbeys; useful theological objects like rosary beads and liturgical stoles; and plain old secular jewelry.

(Mars said that its goods aren't that different from other gift shops in Santa Fe that also feature Virgin of Guadalupe and other saintly images. To which Bram responded, "But here they aren't ironic.")

There were three singers -- all from the Abiquiu abbey. The apparent leader was about six feet tall with short graying hair and a full beard. The others were younger (early twenties) -- about five and one-half feet tall and very slight. They all wore black robes with black, thick leather, lug-soled shoes instead of the sandals I had expected. One of them also sported a blue waist length jacket with the words Tommy Hilfiger written in yellow on the back.

In high school I myself had pondered, although probably not as seriously as I thought at the time, the possibility of life as a monastic. I read Thomas Merton. Now I suspect that I was just looking for a safe way to extend those confession-to-communion hours. In any event nothing became of it -- although I still can understand the appeal.

When Mars and I arrived the trio was mingling with some customers. The shop is small -- maybe thirty by thirty --with not much open space. We found a chair and footstool in a corner, sat, and waited. Our view was blocked by a display case, but after about five minutes we heard the sound of a pitch pipe followed shortly by the sound of closely pitched male voices singing church music in Latin.

A week earlier Mars and I had been to a holiday concert with several friends at a large Congregational Church in Connecticut. These choristers -- a coed vocal ensemble of twenty -- sang similar music. "There is something about Christian sacred music that goes right to your heart", said one member of our party. His face showed the strain of genuine emotion.

On that day, and today at The Monks Corner, I had some of the same feelings -- although not as intensely. We did however buy a compact disk of music performed by all of the Monks at the abbey so we could give it another try.

The next day Mars and I walked the labyrinth.

It was not my first time strolling on one of those irregular paths. I had tried it several years ago while taking a writing class at the Omega Institute in upstate New York. And in Santa Fe both Mars and I sampled one on the property of J and J for whom we were dog/house sitting earlier this annum.

Those were informal, unsupervised ambles along trails delineated by similarly sized stones placed by hand in the dirt. This time it was an official perambulation under the watchful eye of the Labyrinth Resource Group -- "a non-profit organization dedicated to encouraging the creation and use of labyrinths as a path of healing, inspiration, peace, and community." It was held on Museum Hill in a professionally laid, brick walkway with a complicated route spelled out in muted red pavers against a subdued teal background.
We checked in with one of the members at a set of folding tables along the entryway to the maze and carefully read the information that was fluttering gently under the rock paperweights.

"The labyrinth is not a maze with mental challenges and blind alleys. You walk a single path from the entrance to the center and back again. There is no 'right' way to walk the labyrinth; there are no 'right' thoughts to have. Let your experience be your own.

"The path of the labyrinth is like the path of life -- with twists and turns, feelings of being lost, encounters with others in your path, a thrill of pleasure as you approach the center and sometimes a flash of insight before you leave."

And maybe even spiritual.

We were then directed to report to the official starter. She pointed out the beginning of the route and told Mars to go ahead. After a short while I too was allowed on to the course. It was a sunny day in mid afternoon, so the long shadows kept me constantly aware of my fellow travelers. In a labyrinth the way in is also the way out, therefore voyagers need to accommodate each other's passing on the barely wide enough for two feet passageway.

I reached the center just as Mars was leaving it, paused for several seconds, and continued on. During the journey my mind was very earthbound, as I needed to be constantly aware of where I was walking and of those around me. Still it was relaxing in the way that things requiring your full attention can sometimes be.

The next day was the Winter Solstice and the five of us went for a hike up to the appropriately named Sun Mountain near the St. John's College campus. In two hours we passed two other people and one dog on the trail -- one of whom wished us a "Happy Winter".
Cheyenne is a dogged, trail-bound hike leader, a result of her racetrack upbringing. But after a year with Monica and Bram she has learned to periodically cast aside responsibility and frolic in the snow.

However, in spite of her efforts, our group never made it to the top of Sun Mountain -- the trail was snow packed slippery and Mars and I had not yet acclimated to the high altitude. If we had summited at the precise moment when the earth's axial tilt was farthest away from the sun, who knows what would have happened.

Still, because of whom we were with and where we were, it was pretty special.

We spent Christmas morning at Monica and Bram's house exchanging presents and snacking on pastries from a local French bakery. It was low key and relaxed in spite of a few frenetic reactions from Cheyenne to her squeaky "stuffy" gifts. In mid afternoon we all walked over to and then along the banks of the nearby, and basically waterless, Santa Fe River.
That evening the five of us had dinner at S and J's -- along with two of their friends, and S's mother B. At one point B talked about how they "used to be Jewish". S, a caterer and radio host, prepared her first home-meal ham ever.

The food was great, the conversation fun. And, like the Christians and the Pagans in the Dar Williams song, we

"sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
...learning new ways from the old, and
Making sense of history and drawing warmth out of the cold."

On previous Christmases we had gone with to the Native American dances at Cochiti Pueblo. They go on all day long an outdoor dirt plaza with rudimentary wooden seating on a small hillside at one end. There is no explanation provided, but based upon what we've seen and "Googled", it seems to be a Buffalo Dance.

The persistent drumming resonates off the surrounding houses and reverberates through the earth. J, of the above-mentioned J and J, is normally there -- wrapped in blankets with her back against the hillside, and her legs outstretched on the ground absorbing the rhythm. We sit in the bleachers and feel the beat through the soles of our feet.

But previous Christmases were sun-drenched with temperatures in the forties and fifties. This year the air was chilled to about twenty degrees -- in the warm, sunny locations. We opted out of the dances. For us spirituality requires warmer conditions.

One of Bram's gifts to Monica was a book of photos of and essays about Greyhounds, within which we discovered the story of Saint Guinefort -- a 13th Century member of that breed.
The dog had been left at home to guard an apparently otherwise unattended infant. When the father returned he found the room covered in blood, most notably surrounding the crib. Guinefort was sitting next to the child's bed with more blood on his mouth.

The father immediately shot and killed the hound with an arrow and then discovered the recently dead body of a snake -- could it be Satan? -- beneath the cradle. Guinefort had saved the infant's life, and perhaps immortal soul.

Overcome by guilt the father interred the dog and planted a grove of trees around the grave to honor it. Local villagers soon began making pilgrimages to the gravesite, miraculous events happened, and "Saint Guinefort" became an object of worship among the townspeople.

But the Catholic Church never formally canonized the Greyhound. Etienne de Bourbon, an Inquisitor, had the dog "disinterred and the sacred wood cut down and burnt, along with the remains of the dog." Guinefort was declared a heretic.

It didn't work. Up until the 1940's pilgrims continued to visit the site, praying for the protection of their children and nourishing their spirits.

Maybe next Christmas Mars and I should just forget about the monks and mazes, and spend more time getting to know the grand-dog.

(Photos by Mars - click on photo to enlarge)

Real Life Haiku

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:57:00 +0000

(Haiku is a poetic form and a type of poetry from the Japanese culture. Themes include nature, feelings, or experiences. The most common form for Haiku is three short lines. The first line usually contains five (5) syllables, the second line seven (7) syllables, and the third line contains five (5) syllables. Haiku does not rhyme.
(http://volweb.utk.edu/school/bedford/harrisms/haiku.htm))

Mars and I were at our dentist yesterday for our semiannual tooth-cleaning and I was feeling a little annoyed at wasting part of an afternoon on such a mundane activity. I scanned the covers of the magazines lined up on the low waiting room table hoping against hope to find something to give meaning to this otherwise wasted time.

In front of the neatly arranged "Sport Illustrated", "Car & Driver", and other glossy periodicals was an askew and dog-eared "People" magazine.

"Tiger in Trouble,
Meredith Baxter 'I'm Gay'"
Just another day.

Sole Survivor

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:50:00 +0000

It is nearing wintertime in hardiness zone 6.

The leaves have fallen from the oak, maple and elm trees on our property. Our perennial plants have pretty much all packed it in for the year. But one lingering sunflower is still standing tall -- so to speak.

The remaining Helianthus is actually quite short (eight or so inches), with a gravity-defying anorexic stem, and a seedless head comprised entirely of small yellow outer florets. It lives in a moss pot hung from a wrought iron pole-hanger -- a home it shares with some still--green vinca that Mars planted, along with pink petunias, at the first sign of spring. I took care not to disturb the fragile looking plant when I removed the pale red dead nightshades at the beginning of autumn. I did not figure it would still be here at the end of the season.

It is a volunteer -- a plant that neither Mars nor I deliberately planted. Or if we did, not in its current location. Some squirrel, or bird, probably deposited the seed there after looting it from an adjacent bird feeder. Over time some of our best greenery have been similarly unplanned freebies -- for example.

A couple of late summers ago a pumpkin plant mysteriously appeared in the midst of our vegetable garden. We had never planted this gourd, or actually any other, anywhere on our property. Earlier in the year we had however sown some yellow squash seeds with some success. Due to a quality control error one of more of those could have been future jack-o-lanterns.

It is more likely though that they were the unplanned offspring of some pumpkins we had purchased last Halloween for our front steps. Our resident squirrels promptly decimated them. They also may have stowed away a few of the pips in our vegetable bed for future use. If so, they got their wish when the two resulting orange gourds, like their forebears, were put on display and quickly destroyed.

We've also had cherry tomatoes in that veggie plot and, at least as I remember it, we only put plants in for the first couple of years -- didn't have to after that, they just kept showing up. All that I had to do was to carefully hand-weed the area so as not to inadvertently rip up that year's crop of "Sweet 100s". Last growing season we surrendered to the lure of locally grown vegetable stands and converted our food garden into a perennial bed for rescued plants (a long story) and emigre flowers from New Mexico (yet another tale). The tiny tomatoes, if there were any, got lost in the shuffle.

For several summers we had a red tulip that grew in the middle of our front lawn in a location that neither Mars nor I would possible have selected -- even on a really, really bad gardening day. Amaranths have also grown in our yard every year since my in-laws gifted us with some over thirty years ago. They are" self-seeding" annuals, but the distances traveled from year-to-year cannot possibly be accomplished without outside help.

This year the scarlet Dutchman was gone and the Amaranths were not as far ranging as usual, but several sunflowers appeared around the base of our flowering crab/bird feeder tree. And five or six more sprouted up in our new perennial bed alongside the garage.

They are not the strongest plants. I had to prop up most of them with plastic tomato poles. But the heads were relatively large and colorful in the classic sunflower manner, and the disc floret in the center ultimately provided enough food for several finches for several days. I never saw a squirrel nibbling them, even though I suspect that they are the sowers of record.

After the seeds had been ravaged I ripped up the plants and tossed them. That happened a few weeks ago. The chrysanthemums that Mars planted at the cusp of autumn are also gone. So basically it is the remaining Helianthus and its accompanying vinca that are keeping the gardening season going.

On Sunday Mars put up our Christmas yard ornaments, including a string of silver balls that normally displace the hanging moss pot containing the solitary sunflower. However I lobbied successfully for the planter and the plant to remain -- along with the holiday trimmings -- for an undetermined period of time.

Mars and I both do volunteer work. So we know that these workers toil day-after-day, in the background, doing stuff that you couldn't possibly pay people enough to do. Decorating our hardy Helianthus for all of its labors just seemed like the right thing to do.

Fungible Shallop

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:43:00 +0000

I learned two new words this past week and until a few minutes ago I didn't know what to do with them.

The first one came while Mars and I were lying in bed listening to "The Marketplace Morning Report" on our local public radio station. It was during that period of time when we've woken up but are not yet willing to admit it, so we lie there with our eyes closed and our minds and ears half open.

A female reporter with an English accent was speaking. I was aware enough to remember that -- but not what she was talking about. Then, very clearly, I heard the phrase "fungible assets".

I mumbled something like "there's a word you'll only hear on NPR" and Mars responded equally unclearly that it always made her think unpleasant thoughts of mushrooms and their fungal kin.

"What does it mean anyway?" she asked.

"I'm not really sure." Then I put the thought to sleep and awoke completely.

A few days later we visited the Wadsworth Atheneum to see an exhibition of portraits by Rembrandt and to have lunch at the museum cafe. On our way out we wandered through another gallery and were confronted by J.M.W. Turner's very large nautical painting "Van Tromp's Shallop, at the Entrance of the Scheldt."

In spite of the size and placement of the artwork all that I saw was the totally unfamiliar term on the adjacent object label.

I immediately thought of the other new word I had been given, and began to wonder what I could do with the two them together.

"Fungible shallop. Fungible shallop. Fungible shallop." I repeated to myself -- in the manner of Zippy the Pinhead, who routinely manufactures meaningless mantras out of phrases like "Quilted Crystal Jelly Jars" or "Diflucan Fluconazole". But, even though I am a daily -- albeit frequently puzzled -- reader of the comic strip, I figured there had to be more.

When we got home I looked in my online dictionary:

fungible (adjective) (of goods contracted for without an individual specimen being specified) able to replace or be replaced by another identical item; mutually interchangeable : money is fungible -- money that is raised for one purpose can easily be used for another.

shallop (noun) chiefly historical: a light sailboat used mainly for coastal fishing or as a tender; a large heavy boat with one or more masts and carrying fore-and-aft or lug sails and sometimes equipped with guns.

Two words with nothing in common other than their persistent presence in my thoughts -- where I feared they would stay, like an earworm, until I found a better use for them.

The number of syllables is right -- perhaps a haiku was possible.

Fungible shallop --
Olden words but new to me,
Senseless consonance.

Or not.

Lately I have become critical of television programs that seem to be nothing more than a twenty-minute story dragged out for an hour. Sometimes you just cannot force things to be more than what they are.

It's really kind of scary when having a "Zippy Moment" turns out to be the most sensible thing to do.

A Really Tough Nut To Crack

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:45:00 +0000

It was a sixty-degree morning in an abnormally warm autumn. As I walked towards her house I noticed that my up-the-street neighbor was intently pushing something around with her red plastic snow shovel. I spoke softly in advance of my arrival so as not to startle her.

"Hi B***. Practicing for the winter?"

By then I could see that the targets of her seemingly non-seasonal labor were actually acorns -- initially on her driveway and now, as I stood next to her in conversation, along the front apron of her yard."They took all of the leaves", she said, referring to our municipality's removal earlier that week of the neighborhood's piles of dead tree foliage. "But they left all of these."

B*** pointed my attention to her blue recycling bin, the bottom of which was covered with at least two layers of the fruits of her oak trees.

"The worst it's been in forty years.

"And yet there's only one squirrel. He sits on my deck in the morning just looking up at me. I usually have whole bunch of them."

"We do too." I replied. I was talking about squirrels. In the past month our population has also dwindled from its normal level of eight down to a single tree rodent -- with occasional second and third ones. But, unlike B***, the acorn output in our yard has been decidedly sub-par this annum.

Mars and I have however experienced the overabundance of these oval nuts at our local golf course. A couple of tee boxes are located under some pretty substantial oak trees. And the ground there is littered with their fruit. Cascades of them have rained down upon me as I stood poised to hit my shot.

Except for our yard, it seems that acorns are pretty much overrunning everything.

But in many parts of the region this time of year, particularly this year, the sky is falling -- or at least it feels that way. Hard-shelled orbs are cracking windshields, thwacking gardeners, and tripping up joggers on their daily slog. (boston.com)

Meanwhile at home, Mars and I are buried in pinecones.

In fact, until I picked them up, the area around our lone evergreen was so overrun that you literally could not put your foot down without touching one of more pieces of the dry coniferous fruit -- not just my size thirteens but even Mars' more miniscule ones.

We filled one of those barge-shaped, cardboard, "pick-your-own berries" trays with some, and gave the collection to A***, our next-door neighbor. She had been unable to find any for her holiday decoration plans and had just returned from looking for them at Walmart. Mars then filled a bushel basket with more cones as the basis for our own winter yard ornament. And there are still scores on the ground.

Acorn feasts and acorn famines within a quarter mile of each other. Pinecone population explosions, and a depleting squirrel census -- sounds like apocalyptic auguries to me.

Not to go too "Charlie Eppes" (who explains them in the "Sabotage" episode of the TV crime drama "NUMB3RS") -- but I think the ultimate answer lies in Fibonacci Numbers. And their connection to the Mayan Calendar, which ends on December 31, 2012 when the world as we know it will purportedly be totally destroyed.

"Fibonacci numbers and the Fibonacci sequence are prime examples of how mathematics is connected to seemingly unrelated things."

Fibonacci was a 13th century mathematician who developed his eponymous sequence of numbers in order to solve a problem about the birth rate of rabbits. The sequence begins: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144...

"Each term in the Fibonacci sequence is called a Fibonacci number... each Fibonacci number is obtained by adding the two previous Fibonacci numbers together. For example, the next Fibonacci number can be obtained by adding 144 and 89. Thus, the next Fibonacci number is 233.

"One of the most fascinating things about the Fibonacci numbers is their connection to nature. Some items in nature that are connected to the Fibonacci numbers are: the growth of buds on trees, the pinecone's rows, the sandollar, the starfish, the petals on various flowers such as the cosmo, iris, buttercup, daisy, and the sunflower, the appendages and chambers on many fruits and vegetables such as the lemon, apple, chile, and the artichoke." (Fibonacci numbers)

And perhaps acorns?

But wait -- there is more.

"Solar systems are designed by nature in Fibonacci spirals...

"Spectacular patterns are found by applying the Fibonacci spiral to key numbers of the Mayan calendar: 20, 13 and 18. The sacred calendar (Tzolkin) uses 20 and 13 The civil calendar (Haab) uses 20 and 18. The common denominator of both is 20. If you apply the Fibonacci sequence to the number 20 and carry the sequence out to 26 places, then multiply each number of the sequence by 13, then divided it by 18 you will discover that the results of these factors shifts and starts new internal sequencing at the 13th place in each sequence. The 12th place [completes] a sequence and the 13th starts a new sequence internally." (lost-civilizations.net)

Could it be any clearer?

Everyplace in the universe is awash in acorns except for our estate. And no one is reporting a surfeit of pinecones save for us. Plus we are faithful viewers of "NUMB3RS", and I think we may have learned something about the Mayans in an Anthropology class back in the sixties.

Clearly Mars and I are special people in a special place.

Our street number is 284.

The Fibonacci numbers surrounding that arithmetic value are 233 and 377.
284 minus 233 = 51.
377 minus 284 = 93.
51 plus 93 = 144
144 is the Fibonacci number immediately preceding 233!!!
2 times 144 = 288
288 minus 284 = 4!!!
The aforementioned Mayan calendar comes to an end in 3 years.
4 is greater than 3!!!

Ergo: a Fibonacci loophole -- our property will survive the apocalypse.

Good thing that the acorn conundrum didn't happen last year.

So my plan for the final day of 2012 is to stay at home admiring our pinecone collection, eating apples and artichokes, and watching DVD episodes 1, 2, 5, 8 and 13 of "NUMB3RS". We'll probably invite B*** and A*** over to thank them for their role in helping me crack this nut.

(click to enlarge)

Avant Gardening

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:43:00 +0000

This year I've decided to do nothing to prepare our perennial gardens for the upcoming winter -- not a thing, zilch, zip, nada, diddly-squat, squat -- or something pretty close to that anyway. And once again my seeming act of lassitude can be rationalized as being out ahead of the gardening curve.

For example:

Thirty years ago when I first began my horticultural hobby we bought some blueberry bushes. My only previous experience in the planting biz was two months earlier when, under the guidance of my father-in-law (an inveterate plantsman), I put in my first-ever vegetable garden. So I simply repeated what I did then -- what else could I possibly need to know? I turned the earth, separated out the dirt from the sod, mixed in a bunch of peat moss (to which I had already become addicted), stuck the shrubbery in the ground, and occasionally watered.

The next year there were sweet, edible fruits some of which I converted into a Blueberry Teacake for a celebration at my workplace. I proffered a piece to my colleague Kwame who declined it saying he was unwilling to eat any of the fresh fruits of our area because of the pesticides, etc. that came with them.

"I don't use any of those things," I said, in a tone that implied moral superiority rather than apathy, laziness and a total ignorance of proper plant care.

"Oh", Kwame replied, sounding impressed as he gobbled down the pastry, "I didn't know that you were an ORGANIC GARDENER."

Neither did I. But I definitely went along with it.

Exemplar 2:

For years I have ground up the vast majority of my yard's autumn leaves and spread them back onto the lawn with a mulching lawn mower. It was, I quickly found out, way easier than raking hundreds of thousands of crispy pieces of dried vegetation into temporary piles and then herding the resultant wind-blown mounds into non-compliant, wind-blown plastic bags.

This, it turns out, is also actually good for the grass. Not that I knew that at the time.

But my newfound lack of attention to my winter garden doesn't stem from unwillingness to do the work. It's just a matter of when.

In years previous I would have by now chopped down just about any perennial that had turned even the slightest bit brownish, and consigned its remains to either the winter compost pile or the big green trash bin. The decimation would occur on the first warm sunny day after the initial rush of plant-deadening cold weather.

I gloried in the feeling of sunlight heating the back of my red flannel shirt, and cool air brushing my cheeks. And I deluded myself into thinking that this act of destruction in some way prolonged the gardening season -- when in fact it ended it prematurely and on a negative note.

The next day I would survey the barren wasteland I had created and complain to myself that the fun part of the year had ended -- only perking up when I espied some hidden hostas or undercover rudbeckia whose stalks and leaves I had missed, and whose eradication I could use as an lame excuse to prolong my time in the garden.

Then, several months later, with the advent of the growing season I would desperately search the landscape looking for any chore that would get my hands back into contact with the living things of the earth. Finally it occurred to me to defer all of that lopping and chopping until spring.

So this year I decided to convert the symbols of termination into emblems of emergence.
So far it's going great. I am seeing a lot of orange and yellow garden foliage in what would have previously been barren areas. And I'm looking forward to the winter snow and enjoying the three-dimensional patterns and shadow designs that will be created by my still-standing stalks.

And sure enough, that part of the garden writing community that actually knows what it is talking about is espousing the values of hands off autumn landscaping.

Tracy DiSabato-Aust, in her book "The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting & Pruning Techniques", says that many plants benefit from the layer of protection provided by their dead tops during the winter. And any leftover seeds provide food for the birds.

Stephen Orr writes "Think of yourself as the curator of your own winter sculpture garden." (New York Times: "Time to Tidy Up the Garden, or Is It?")

Who knew it was this easy to be an avant gardener?

She Who Bats Last...

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:12:00 +0000

Even the most dedicated gardener can grow weary of all those colors and fragrances that constantly surround him and of the omnipresent green aura that encircles his world. Especially when he is constantly working his buns off to make it that way.

Sometimes you just need to get away from it all, and go to the desert.

Marsha and I have been going to New Mexico for more than fifteen years. We love to immerse ourselves in the infertile, dry, tan-colored dirt and sands. It's the all-natural opposite of our manmade quest for horticultural perfection.
This was our first early September visit. And this time the dry, unfruitful land was virtually overrun with a large variety of totally unplanned, fully blooming, floral vegetation. Nature had arranged its flowerbeds more sparsely than an over-eager eastern gardener with equally over-eager plants might have done. But the lack of green competition such as grass and deciduous trees allowed these widely dispersed floral pockets to stand up and shout more loudly than even the most overstuffed New England perennial garden ever could.

Who knew?
Some plants looked vaguely familiar, like attempted wild replicas of favorite domestic standards -- which is of course the exact opposite of the real story. Cleomies were spindlier, with smaller flowers, than their cultivated cousins. Asters were singular rather than bushy. Sunflowers appeared as delicate sun drops on anorexic stems.

But mostly there was chamisa.
This desert-loving, narrow-leaved, four foot tall, deciduous shrub with pungent, yellow flowers totally dominated the landscape. It grew unabated -- on undeveloped land, in private yards, and up against the roads with its branches drooping down onto the traffic. Homeowners posted "DO NOT MOW!" signs on their mailboxes in an organized effort to thwart the municipality's gas powered grim reapers from eradicating it. The updrafts caused by passing cars dispersed flaxen pollen onto the nearby ground -- a twenty-first century improvement on wind dispersal plant propagation. And visiting New England gardeners restrained their basic pruning instincts in deference to the "if it grows at all, let it be" ethos of the Santa Fe horticultural community.

Meanwhile back home in Wethersfield our own flora-culture had already begun its annual end of the season dance of death.

In order to survive from year to year the perennial plants in our neck of the woods "harden off" by either (a) dropping their foliage, halting photosynthesis, and reducing moisture loss, or (b) dying down to ground level and sheltering new buds in the earth until spring arrives.

The results, while momentarily colorful and flashy, ultimately leave the New England topography looking as ugly as sin and as ashen as death -- stripped of its flowers and its emerald ambience.

And what can we plantsmen extraordinaire, who have poured our blood, sweat, time, and tears (plus more than a few dollars) into the creation and maintenance of this Eden-like landscape do, to prevent this wanton usurpation of our agricultural authority?

Not a thing, not anything, nil, zero, naught, zilch, zip, nada, diddly-squat, squat.

Environmentalist Rob Watson says, "Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats a thousand."

If you don't believe it, go to the desert. Or just wait a few weeks and look out your window.

(Photos by Mars)

A Theory of Mind

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:30:00 +0000

It is my favorite New Yorker magazine cartoon. Peter Steiner's drawing portrays two canines. The talking one is a black hound sitting in front of a computer with one paw resting on the keyboard. The listener is a black-spotted white pooch seated on the floor, staring up.

"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

Now I don't think that dogs can really think -- not like that anyway. But sometimes they do things that make you stop and rethink what actually might be going on in their little -- brain to body weight 1/125 versus 1/40 in humans -- minds.

"Theory-of-Mind" is the belief that other humans and animals think in the exact same, conscious, self-aware way that we ourselves do

"There's no convincing evidence...that suggests dogs can replicate human thought processes: use language, think in narrative and sequential terms, understand human minds, or share humans' range of emotions.

"Yet that remains a powerful, pervasive view of dogs...It's almost impossible not to lapse into theory-of-mind reasoning when it comes to our dogs. After all, most of us have no other way in which to grasp another creature's behavior. How can one even begin to imagine what's going on inside a dog's head?" (Jon Katz in Slate.com)

"'I take the view that dogs have their own unique way of thinking,' Dr. Wynne [associate professor of psychology at the University of Florida] said. 'It's a happy accident that doggie thinking and human thinking overlap enough that we can have these relationships with dogs, but we shouldn't kid ourselves that dogs are viewing the world the way we do.'" (Good Dog, Smart Dog By SARAH KERSHAW)

Then there's what happened the other day between Mars and Emma.

For those unfamiliar -- Mars is my wife, and Emma is the Pit Bull /Dalmatian cross that lives two houses down the street.

Several times each day J takes Emma for a walk. The route never varies. It is a small loop that passes in front of our residence, crosses the street, goes back down the other side, and then home.

Emma has two stops along that trip that she earnestly attempts to make each time. One is at our domicile to visit with Mars, and the other is across the street to visit with B, the female resident of that abode.

As she passes each property Emma strains her neck to search for Mars or B. If no one is outside at our place she looks into our family room. When she spots Mars she lowers her center of gravity and hauls J up the driveway until she makes contact. If I am available she will give me a perfunctory sniff, but clearly my only significance to Emma is an indicator that Mars is probably around.

Periodically Mars gives Emma a squeaky dog toy. Emma immediately drags J back home where she sequesters her present and, over time, meticulously rips it apart. Mars gifted Emma several days ago but because of conflicting schedules had not seen her since.

A night ago I was in the yard barbecuing when I looked up and saw Emma towing J up the driveway towards me. In her mouth Emma had the remnants of her latest present. I called for Mars.

"She just grabbed it and brought with her." J said.

Emma swiveled her body up to Mars and proudly held up the torn-apart bunny rabbit for her to see. As soon as Mars acknowledged the dilapidated plaything Emma turned and dragged J back down the car path and home.

I suppose that she could have sent an ECard "thank you" instead -- but it probably wouldn't have been as impressive.

Where The Air Is Sweet

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:25:00 +0000

Last week Snuffleupagus made the first of his two annual appearances at our house. As usual he moved slowly down the street alongside the curb accompanied by his attendants, stopping for no one, and leaving nothing in his wake.

His general schedule is published on our town's website -- the Monday through Friday during which he will visit -- but the exact day and time is never pre-announced. As a result, frenzied preparations for his arrival usually begin on the weekend immediately before the ordained workweek.

Landscape crews brandishing high-powered leaf blowers with a wind-force and decibel count reminiscent of our village's mid-summer tornado descend on the neighborhood. Maelstroms of reds, yellows, oranges, and browns are swirled up in the air, and then arrange themselves into Quonset shaped piles along the outer edges of the snow-shelves.

On other properties, residents (us included) manually operate wooden poles with affixed plastic tines in a repetitive effort to coax their own dead foliage into similar configurations on their own lawn aprons.

By Sunday evening the neighborhood is a picture of pristine lawns bordered by neatly arranged, autumnal colored mounds of oak, maple and elm droppings.

Snuffleupagus does not appear on Monday. Instead the intermittent rains begin. And the swirling winds, which have been mysteriously absent when nobody cared where the leaves were, suddenly come alive. By Monday afternoon over fifty percent of the previously assembled foliage has been redistributed back onto the lawn areas from whence it came; twenty-five percent additional leaves have received their golden parachutes; and the entire mess has become too sodden to do a damn thing about it.

Tuesday: more precipitation, heavier breezes, and dead leafage from unknown trees in nearby towns all appear on the scene. Snuffleupagus does not.

On Wednesday the sun is out and the winds are calm. No sign of "The Big S". Mars and I decide to give it one more day to dry out.

Thursday we return from our mid-morning health club trip to the sight of our neighbor up the street, home from work, hurriedly blower wrangling her modest collection of maple leaves onto her snow shelf. Further up the street, heading in her direction, we hear, and then actually see, Snuffleupagus.

Figuring that we have enough time before he goes up that side of street and then comes back down our own, we decide to have lunch in order to fuel our upcoming efforts. We wolf down our sandwiches and then get right to work.

Mars and I live at at a three-way intersection. While raking the leaves onto our east-west apron we hear, and then actually see, a second Snuffleupagus at the far end of our north-south road -- slogging slowly towards our shambolic snow shelf.

Under pressure it is possible for two relatively robust, rake-wielding people -- even people whose introduction to the "real" Snuffleupagus occurred well into adulthood -- to arrange their leaves faster and neater than any monetarily-motivated posse of hired leaf-blower guns ever could. This is known in folklore as the "John Henry Effect". We finish the job just as the last leaf is sucked from our next door neighbor's collection.

On Friday, one day after "The Snuffster's" visit, landscapers for the house immediately across from ours blow hundreds of thousands of oak leaves from their lawn out onto their side of the road. At least fifty thousand of these leaves are now on our property -- with more arriving by the minute. Snuffleupagus is not scheduled again for several weeks.

Just call me Oscar the Grouch.

Why Do I Have To think of Everything?

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:59:00 +0000

It's so obvious.
To catch drug peddlers, arrest
Cars with "Dealer" plates.

First You Lose Grammatical Control

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:23:00 +0000

Real-life Haiku from our neighborhood grocery store.

Harried store clerk to
Dithered cereal shopper:
"Look, all oats is good!"

Nevermore, Or Not.

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:39:00 +0000

I am surprised that I didn't have symbolism on my mind. A couple of nights previous Mars and I had attended an evening with an Edgar Allan Poe recreator at our local library. Along with telling tales of the author's life, the actor recited "The Telltale Heart" and "The Raven".
"What does the raven symbolize?" asked one of the many high school students in attendance.

Poe dissembled but princetonol.com says, "Birds are usually used to represent prophetic knowledge, bloodshed, and skill."

So perhaps I should have been more disquieted by the flesh-gorging hawk in the left rough along the first fairway on the North Golf Course at Goodwin Park. After all, had Julius Caesar paid more attention to the portent of "the bird of night [that] did sit even at noon-day upon the market-place, hooting and shrieking" he might still be alive today. Well probably not actually.

But birds, being birds, do not think of themselves as meaningfully metaphorical. It was, after all, just doing what predators do -- predating. Most likely it was hungry and just needed a quiet spot to stop and have a quick bite to eat -- taking advantage of the same surprisingly warm October weather that inspired Mars and I to recant our previous decision to halt our 2009 golf season and return to the sunny, warm New England links for a few more swings. (Never say nevermore.) And, immersed in the rapidly warming nine a.m. sun, golden tall grasses, red sumac bushes, and orange-turning maple trees, I wasn't in a mindset to be spooked by the frightening foreshadowing of a ferociously feeding gray and white falcon.

We couldn't see exactly what he was dining on -- even as close as twenty yards all entrails look pretty much alike -- but given the plethora of potential prey on the golf links and its surrounding park there are certainly enough easy-to-acquire entrees. One might even suspect that this particular raptor never had a reason to eat away from home or even to do take-out.

We normally see one or two of these large birds of prey sitting atop the course's taller trees every time we play there. They are Red Tailed Hawks -- the scarlet hind feathers are plainly obvious -- and very likely a couple.
"Red-tailed hawk pairs remain together for years in the same territory. These birds are very territorial, and defend territories that range in size from 0.85 to 3.9 square kilometers, depending on the amount of food, perches, and nest sites in the territory."
(animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu)

That converts to about 2.4 miles square, which easily covers the entire park including the golf course.

The hawk finished its snack and flew away just as Mars was hitting her second shot from a spot immediately to its right. It didn't seem to be carrying anything, and I did not go over to see what it might have left behind -- the grass in the rough can be unpleasant enough by itself. It landed in a nearby brightly foliated maple tree and appeared to be settling in for a post-prandial siesta.

We moved on.

The course was empty enough to allow Mars and I to double back and replay several holes. And with no one right behind us we frequently played two and even three balls at a time.

The sun became stronger and warmer. We walked through piles of acorns under oak trees with leaves colored half green and half rust. Fleece sweaters were removed. Pockets of Canada goose feathers and droppings surrounded our golf balls on several fairways. A chocolate Labrador puppy stumbled alongside its "mom" next to the fourth green. By noontime, when we decided to stop playing, the course was beginning to fill with scores of spontaneous half-day vacationers.

At home later that afternoon the pure white finch that we had seen on the prior Sunday reappeared at our bird feeders.

A good omen no doubt -- but on this day unnecessary.

...How Can That Be?

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:40:00 +0000

"It was a misty moisty morning, when cloudy was the weather." The first nor'easter of the year was (so to speak) heating up. Outdoor activities were just not to be. Mars and I were nestled in the family room reading more of Sunday paper than we usually would "when out on the lawn there arose such a clatter."

"Jim, there's a hawk in the tree!"

"The tree" is our floriculturally faltering flowering crab that we maintain in our front yard as the repository of our bird feeding stations. It is located ten feet in front of our window, and the branch on which our visitor sat is around seven feet off the ground.

The bird of prey sat perfectly still with its gray and white speckled back to us, turning its head around slowly -- more like an athlete gently working out the kinks than a raptor searching for second breakfast.

Later I looked in our bird identifying book and determined that, based on the illustrations therein, it could be a juvenile member of any number of hawk clans -- including several that have no right being in our part of the country. Still later the folks across the street identified it as a Cooper's hawk. So, because they know what they are talking about and since there is a neighbor with that name for whom it could have been looking, I will go with that.

Because of the dismal weather the feeders had been unusually inactive all morning. I was hypothesizing that the same unpleasant conditions might have driven this raptor to the more sheltered lower elevations when I noticed two of our three resident squirrels climbing up the tree towards the large, frighteningly obvious predator.

These tree-rodents, whom Mars has taken to calling "The Heathers", are hardly what you would call "streetwise". Born and home-schooled on our property their only experience with animals larger than themselves is basically us -- sources of food for them rather than vice-versa.

The first Heather to notice the hawk stopped in her tracks about three feet from the large bird. Her eyes got almost cartoonishly large and she crouched low with every muscle in her body tensed. Then she began to hop back and forth on the tree branch while staying totally in that taut, scrunched down position -- neither bending any body part nor lifting her feet in the process. She looked like a hand operated toy that might appear on the Antiques Roadshow. The hawk never acknowledged her presence.

Then Heather(2) approached on an adjacent tree limb. Where H(1) appeared nonplussed, H(2) was antagonistic and pugnacious -- the courage of ignorance. She assumed an about-to-spring, attack position and began to talk smack to the still oblivious hawk.

I figured it was just a matter of time before our visiting predator snapped out of its Zen state and turned our unassuming crab tree into a nature documentary crime scene. I decided to intervene.

I stepped out the front door into the gently falling rain. The hawk, which had now turned partially in my direction, appeared not to notice my arrival. Heather(1) stopped spinning, turned tail, and left the tree. With my eyes focused on Cooper, I saw her running across the yard in my peripheral vision. Heather(2) continued her rant.

Meanwhile Mars ran upstairs to get her camera and I stood motionless just outside the door hoping against hope that I didn't end up throwing myself bodily between onrushing predator and cowering predatee.

I needn't have worried. As soon as Mars handed me the camera and I began to compose my first photo of the two tree occupants, Cooper flew away and Heather(2) also left the scene.

Two hours later Mars was bemoaning our lack of photographic evidence when she once again spotted Cooper landing back on the same branch. ("How d' you do and how d' you do and how d' you do again.")

This time there were no squirrels in sight and the camera was at the ready. I stepped out again into the precipitation and was able to take this tree photo before the hawk flew out of our yard onto a nearby street sign.

(Please click photo to enlarge.)

Camera in hand I followed him.

(Please click photo to enlarge.)

Within an hour Mars was calling again for me to "look out the window, quick."

No hawk this time, but eating sunflower seeds on the ground beneath the tree, along with other several other small birds, was a pure white, similarly sized bird.

"Could it be an escaped parakeet?"

It flew up on to our quince bush where we were able to get a better look. We saw that the bird did not have the pink-colored eyes of an albino but did have a thin black stripe at the spot where each wing joined its torso. The size, head/body shape, and tail configuration were identical to those of the gold finches and purple finches that surrounded this severely bleached bird atop the thorny shrub. Then the whole flock left the scene before we could digitally document our sighting.

A thorough check of the bird book once again turned up nothing -- no Cooper's finch, no ivory hued juveniles. Several years ago Mars and I saw a white grackle in our yard. Later an Audubon person told me that such lack-of-pigment aberrations do happen occasionally in the avian world -- sometimes the colors just don't take. Unlike the Cooper's Hawk the white finch did not return for its photo shoot.

Earlier in the day I was going to ask Mars if she wanted to see "Where The Wild Things Are" that afternoon. Obviously we didn't have to.

If I Were A Carpenter

noreply@blogger.com (Jim) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:05:00 +0000

If I had known that the ninth hole of the Goodwin Park North Course was going to be our last one of the year I would have stopped at the eighth. Whatever it is you are doing, you always want to end on a good note.

I scored par on that second to last green -- unusual for me, an above average golfer in the bad sense of the term. But it wasn't the number of strokes that made that hole worth stopping for. It was my second shot -- a one hundred and thirty yarder from a downhill lie in the short rough.

It stunned me. In fact it's been over a week since it happened and I am still trying to figure it out.

Here is what I have concluded. This year I've been working hard to make sure that all of my golf shots actually have a target. This may seem obvious but frequently in the past I would sort-of visually pick out a desired endpoint, then sort-of align my body to that goal, then hit the ball.

One reason was my impatience to just swing the club. But the principal cause was a feeling that, at my level of golfing ability, the target was a general area rather than a specific spot.

This whole approach also affected the way that I watched my golf shots. Normally I picked up the flight of the ball by briefly glancing at the mid-air spot at which I was trying to aim. Apparently I didn't expect to find it there because I immediately began scanning the surrounding ether in ever-increasing sweeps. Then I asked Mars where it went

This time I picked an actual target -- a maple tree behind the eighth hole. This time I envisioned the path to that tree. And this time, when I looked up, the ball was actually there, en route to the tree -- just the way I had planned it. And it continued on that aerial path until it landed on the green in exactly the spot I had hoped it would. This whole thing was a first for me.

As a twelve year old I watched my Uncle Al, a carpenter by trade, install a door that he had built into my parent's home.

I recall little if anything of the actual woodworking process. But I do clearly remember my uncle, cigarette in hand -- for a good thirty minutes -- simply sitting, smoking, and admiring his finished product. I have ever seen anyone happier or more proud.

But I didn't have either a chair, or a pack of Lucky Strikes in my golf bag. And Mars was now on the green, so it was my turn to putt.

We finished the hole and, following the protocol of the sport, I walked quickly to the ninth tee. Without thinking I picked out a very general target area and drove the ball to a spot within it -- barely

Maybe I should take up carpentry.