Snow Job: Early Season Games

MLB Early Season

Tomorrow, May 1,  is Opening Day. I am perfectly aware that Major League Baseball now begins its season in March, while it's still snowing, but that is their problem. I have begged the Commissioner's Office without success to begin the season in Florida and Arizona, where all the teams gather and it is warm and sunny. One always has to approach the Commissioner's Office; the actual "C" is like an ancient Chinese Emperor and must be protected from individual fans without an Inc. after their names.

What MLB calls early season games become spring training for me; their "spring"training occurred mostly in winter. Are you still with me? This is the kind of issue that caused me to create a whole new league a few years ago, the Universal Baseball League, with myself as very accessible Commissioner and to become a co-owner owner of the New York Pearls with my friend Mulligan, who needs the carry-forward losses. But that is a good story for another day or the "Mulligan" novel my agent, Goldberg, continues to bug me about.

World Champions

As some of you know, this is a special season for me, because it's the kind of season that only happens every 56 years. The Giants are defending World Champions for the first time since 1955, when I saw my first game in the Polo Grounds ( vs. the new Milwaukee, nee Boston, Braves). Many pundits have chosen the Giants to repeat, but true Giants' fans may know better; they are off to a middling start.

The New York Yankees, Inc. are off to a fast start, winning at a near .600 clip, which will win them a division title if they keep it up. They won't. They have too many pitching holes and Burnett and Joba's shrinks do not travel with the team. The slow-starting Red Sox will eventually light up Fenway like a pin- ball machine against what, in another era, would be AA pitching.

The first miracle of the season (No, not Barry Bonds' acquittal on the serious charges) is the Mets, who have recently won 6 in a row after a fittingly dismal start. They are still below .500, but are respectable on the field, which is the most that Mets fans have hoped for since their beginning in, of all places, the same Polo Grounds. The Times, which has always considered the Yankees to be the only team in town, even when NYC had 3 MLB teams (and when  they owned a piece of the BoSox), has been battering the Mets owners like a Joba fastball straight down the middle.

Now, I must disclose that I am a lapsed Mets fan. Very lapsed, indeed for excellent reasons. One Opening Day, Mets management decided to card everybody buying beer. Everybody. I was over 50, but they still carded me. This created long lines and many missed the first pitch and inning of the season. At another game that same season, it became apparent to fans that the Mets players ran the bases and fielded with an utter disregard for how many outs there were. Also, my former friend, Goldberg, not the agent another one, stopped sending me his free Inc. tickets.

Ebbetts Redux

The final straw was the new "Citi" Field, which pays open homage to the Brooklyn Dodgers' old Ebbets Field and Jackie Robinson, since the owner-Wilpons hail from Brooklyn. Any self-respecting Giants fan would be deeply offended by this grave transgression. This, of course, makes our recent Series victory that much more satisfying (to add insult....this season the "C" has taken over the Dodgers who are a mess at the moment. Golly, that's too bad).

When the Times starts pummeling even hapless owners, when Bernie's People come looking for dough, when you have to borrow from the "C" just to make payroll (as the Mets have done), when you have to let your son run things (see also Knicks/ Dolan, James), and when you field mostly AA-AAA talent everyday, well sir, I start to get interested, because I love the underdog. Plus, you have to love a team that builds a new "field" and makes it so big even The Babe could not reach the fences, but forgets that it doesn't have any pitching to go with it. Oops. Bring the fences back in.

One can only wonder how Casey would explain it all. He would know, because he played for The Dodgers (Ebbetts Field) and the Giants (Polo Grounds), and managed the Yankees (Old Stadium) and the Mets (Polos again and Shea).

But, then again, we wouldn't understand what he was saying anyway. This, in its way, might make him the perfect spokesperson for MLB today or any pro sport for that matter.

The Sunrise Monologue

Nina, middle

My family has a term they use to describe my ability to speak at length about certain subjects (okay, all subjects). They call it  "doing a Columbus." This is a reference to a somewhat one-sided "conversation" between my then middle school-aged daughter and myself, which took place in Sunrise Pizza some years ago. The Sunrise Monolog.

She was working on a Christopher Columbus project and had obviously only been receiving the PC version of this former hero in which he was merely an imperialist, racist, gold-monger. She asked, "Dad, can you tell me more about Columbus?" Perfectly innocent question: ....over an hour later I was just summing it all up, when my dazed daughter said thanks, but she had something really important to do like pore hot wax on her legs.

Thereafter, family members prefaced their rare questions to me by saying,"without doing a Columbus....." 

But, without doing a Columbus, you might say, why do I bring this up?

I bring it up because I have been thinking about old Chris lately, because I have been thinking a lot about destiny and journeys of discovery for reasons I won't go into here.  I have also been thinking that we seem to be lost at sea at the moment. By "we," I mean the collective we, and by collective we, I mean more specifically the American We. US.

GPS

Critics or grouches among us might point out that Columbus was famously lost; however, I would answer that at least he had a direction and destination: West to The Indies. It was neither his fault nor failure that he happened to bump into The Bahamas (thank you), Hispaniola (whoa), Cuba (caramba) and, by extension, this little nation called America. This was his destiny. Destiny, in CC's day, was thought to be decided by a higher mysterious power, not by Oprah or W.

We, on the other hand, seem to be obsessed with controlling our own destiny, without paying attention to our direction. We are terrified to take a risk on sailing into unchartered waters in search of something meaningful. Yet, we seem overly eager, as a nation,  to jump into any convenient conflagration, calamity, or compost heap. It is as if we had a national case of A.D.D.

On the other hand, we want to carry a GPS at all times, so we will know exactly where we are or a cell phone so that someone else (our boss, partner, google) will know exactly where we are. If we think that this means that we are not lost, we better stop and ask for directions. We actually believe that, if we could just get our taxes right, or our healthcare right, or schools right, or someone else's democracy right, that we would be alright.

Let's be very clear about this: if we really believe that our individual and collective destiny could or should be decided in Washington, on Wall Street, in the Principal's Office, or in Tripoli....we are hopelessly lost.

Too Grande Too Fail

We don't get to decide our own destinies; they play out in mysterious, some might say sacred ways. We can't make our own destinies, even if we (or our children) get perfect SAT's,  an 8-figure bonus, and drive a vehicle bigger than the Pinta and Santa Maria combined.


If the Frank Sinatras of this world want to claim "I Did It My Way," fine, but the gods have a song too and it is called, "Fool On The Hill."

Like Columbus, we do get to choose direction, based on certain calculated risks, but we seem to be stuck at the mooring or, at best, drifting without a rudder.

So why have we seemingly turned into a whining, scattered, conniving scrum of a people? Maybe it's just me (as I'm sure you would tell me). Maybe I need a vacation. Can't be: just had two!

Columbus was not perfect, but he had the courage to lead and take a calculated risk. His banker-backers, First National Bank of Ferdinand & Isabella, took very little risk for a potential great reward (why does this sound familiar?). Plus, they were using other people's money anyway and could always get some more. They probably gave little thought to CC during his voyage of several years in a 65' ship, although they may have given great thought to how to spend some of the gold upon his return.

Our contemporary heroes would seem to be Ferdinand & Isabella, rather than the tattered Columbus. F & I had great credentials, a house to die for (many did while building it), and tons of dough. All the things we now covet.

Ridiculous tax codes, blatantly unmanageable debt, entitlements galore for all, and leaders who couldn't clean CC's bilge pump are only inconvenient details. If we do not have a serious national conversation about who we really are now, where we want to go, and the best course to set in order to fulfill our as yet unknown destiny, none of those boring debates will matter.

Every age thinks that it is more enlightened than the ones before it. As stupid as our age has become, even we believe that we are smarter, faster, better than previous ages. Here's a newsflash: we are not as smart as we think we are, and, even if we were, it would not matter, since destiny has little to do with smarts, income, or relationship status. It has to do with being true to deep spiritual and cultural values, just for a start.

And, what are our shared spiritual and cultural values worth taking along on our journey? Hard to say....

....without doing a Columbus.

Ed Note: Sunrise Pizza is located in Rye, NY and is the finest pizza emporium in the area despite what others with less knowledge about these things might think. They serve a classic slice, whose origins are clear: Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan, and Queens. Not Chicago, Greece, or, please, New Jersey or California. Sunrise pizza is as close to the pizza of my youth at Pizza Prince on Austin St. in Forest Hills as pizza can get. With each slice, I recall the jukebox at the Prince: from Frankie Avalon's Venus to The Rolling Stones' Not Fade Away. 

You May Find Your Easter Bunny...

The Easter Bunny is everywhere, if you let him or her be. You might find your Easter Bunny....

....At the pump, after paying $97.52 for a full tank....of regular, and you will smile at the wonder of that.

....On line at the bank, which is your old bank with a new name and logo, which is an unattractive red and gold, and there is a huge expensive flat screen TV behind the counter telling you how many good things are available to you from this bank which was once not only one but two banks just....Too Big To Fail....and you think, "Liar, liar, pants on fire," and dance a little jig with him....

....or maybe when you realize that your property taxes are exactly equal to your child's private college tuition, ....and that both amounts are about what your parents paid for their house in 1966, and you will think about them, your parents, with even greater admiration and gratitude...

....or, you might find your Easter Bunny....

....when you read that GE, a company you once admired and held shares in, did not owe any federal income tax for 2010, and, in fact, will receive a seven-figure refund or credit, and you may marvel at the size of the American flag flying in front of their HQ in beautiful Bridgeport, CT....and you will think that boys will be boys, oh well....

....or while listening to a commercial on your TV which continues to blast at a much higher volume than the regular programming so that you can still hear it in case you try to leave the immediate vicinity of the TV area during said commercial, and you might recall that Congress was going to legislate about that, but have not yet and you imagine the TV lobbyist at lunch over perche du lac at a restaurant in Washington and his voice is so loud it can be heard over the collective voices of the lunch crowd as he explains to your Congresswoman, in her 10th Congress, how much his clients need that volume to sell more and create more jobs and you can almost see her smiling at the thought of profiteroles for dessert....

....or you might find her....

....when you realize just how much you truly love your dog, who does not ask for much beyond an occasional walk in the sun, a nap on your lap, a period of scratching her belly, and those fabulous "pet pocket" things in which you hide her pill, but which to her taste like the boudin noir you once ate for lunch at 33 Rue Jacob in the Sixth, and you think Ah, Easter in Paris in April....

....in the centerpiece of the dining room table all set for family Easter dinner as you did when you were a child,  and he is yellow on the outside and marshmallow inside and you bite off his ears which taste even better than you imagined a sugar-coated marshmallow Easter Bunny's ears could possibly taste....so you bite off all the rest of the ears too....

....or you might find him while on your knees trying to fit the contents of your old very large clothes-closet into you new quite small one, when you also remember just how fortunate you are to pay more than your fair share of taxes, fly an appropriate-sized flag and have something in that TBTF bank; and so you pray a decent length prayer, while accepting  the gifts you've received regardless of their size and promise not to lose sleep over other things you have not yet received and may never, which is perfectly okay....

Happy Hunting.

The King's Teeth

If at Firth...

Our media reporter reviews some of the newest film and TV offerings:


The King's Teeth: Following up on the success of The King's Speech, the same team returns to the oral theme which produced gold. This time, having somewhat overcome a stammer, King George VI (Colin Firth) finds that even a king is not immune to having terrible teeth in England. We follow the difficult, yet hilarious, search that his loving Queen makes to find just the right dentist, who can teach the King to keep his new false teeth in his mouth and to overcome a debilitating habit of losing them.

30 Rocky: The new guys at Comcast, who have replaced GE as owners of NBC, home to the former hit show 30 Rock, have a problem on their hands. So many of the funniest plots had revolved about the inherent arrogance and stupidity of GE's corporate ways that even Tina Fey has had a hard time coming up with new ideas. Also, and this has proved embarrassing, Comcast bean counters forced NBC to vacate its ancestral home in Rock Center for a studio in Hoboken. Sylvester Stallone joins the cast of the show-within-a-show injecting new excitement, not to mention great music. Sponsored by Stairmaster.

Ravi-shing!

Dancing With The Sitars: This Bollywood TV import has surprised more than a few critics who did not think that Ravi Shankar, the show's producer (and father of Nora Jones), could pull this off. American audiences took a while to warm up to this "new" ancient sound. But, the Boomer set loves this piece of musical nostalgia (who can forget George and his sitar), and the skimpy saris on the female partners also help. And, Oh, that tabla beat!

Get Shorter: A chuckler of a new comedy about a eponymous height-challenged mayor, Sidney Shorter. This multi-billionaire mayor finds that the whiny, scolding,  condescending, sarcastic methods which made him a great business success (and the subject of many lawsuits) do not work as well in politics. Deborah Messing stars as "the towering girlfriend," who manages to put the little guy in his place in a million funny ways. Plus, she's a babe and smarter than he is. She does not succeed in making us love him, but we do kind of feel sorry for him. Well, almost. Sponsored by Cole-Haan Elevated Shoes.

Bay Witch: An ingenious fusing of John Updike's Witches of Eastwick and Bay Watch. Three wealthy, young, scantily-clad witches wander the cold, windy beaches of Duxbury, MA in skimpy bikinis and see-through cover-ups thinking up some funny-evil pranks to play on hapless locals. The thin plots are balanced by the buxom baddies. Just pull up a lounger and tune-in to the hocus-pocus. Kinda like a "Charlie's Witches" with  less clothing. Starring The Kardashians.

Desperate Bradys: We never seem to tire of this TV-family, no mater how inane the plots, how vapid the characters, or how many actors in the original cast suffer bankruptcy or cocaine addiction, get loads of parking tickets, and become pole-dancers in West Hollywood. This time around, it's a reality show, in which the producers completely dispense with any semblance of fictional "Bradys" and focus on those crazy original cast members instead. Dreadful. But, wasn't it always? Why do we love this?

What's Green, Wears A Crown And And Gets Comped In Vegas?

"Only her hairdresser..."

Today is April 15 and our thoughts naturally turn to thinking about our government. Some of us can remember a time when we only thought about government a couple of times a year at most. No, really, I'm not making it up.

Back then, we still had this dreaded tax day for the minority of citizens and corporations who actually paid taxes; then, once in a while, we had to visit the DMV, which, in comparison, made paying taxes seem like fun; and, we occasionally had to go to the Post Office (we will not discuss the Draft Board). That's about it, and the DMV wasn't even the Feds! In my home state of New York, the DMV was the only reason we even had a state capital.

But, I am not thinking about taxes today; yesterday I dealt with the fact that Uncle Sam is the only one in the universe besides my daughter's co-ed private college (Cartier Institute for men, Tiffany College for women), who believes that I am wealthy. I am mad at my government today for infringing on my territory as a writer: the government is getting into the metaphor game.

By now, you all know about the Post Office gaff, in which they printed millions of Lady Liberty "Forever" stamps with a Wrong Lady photo. Using a fake Lady from a casino in Las Vegas on the official stamp seems like a perfect metaphor for what's false, cheap and shallow in our culture vs. what's truly valuable, honest, and hopeful. Caught with their pants down, did the PO apologize? Please. Their spokesman said that they would have chosen the same photo anyway even if they had know it was the wrong one....and then said they were reviewing their process. Oy.

We hear that Republicans have seized upon this gaff as a brilliant way for the PO to raise advertising revenue by actually selling "stamp-ads." I can't wait for my Wells Fargo mail to come with B of A stamps. You can make up your own bad combinations.

Dear Postals, please leave the metaphors and satire to writers and we will leave counterfeiting to you.

Not to be outdone by their postal cousins, the Air Traffic Controllers weighed in today as well. They must have been reading Steve Jobs biography to come up with this paradigm change: they are going to add a second controller to the airport tower night shifts to make up for the fact that current single-duty controllers take naps.

We are disrobing, being pawed and made to feel like uncommon criminals by the TSA (too long a story to tell here) in the security line so that we can climb to 38,000 feet and have the pilots all landing without guidance?

Dear Controllers, please stop making metaphors for government sleeping on our dimes and leave the comedy to Tina Fay, SNL and Rupert Murdoch's hair colorist!

We are about to launch into a protracted mind-numbing national discussion ad nauseam, not to mention really funny,  about whether or not we should spend $3.3 Trillion a year or $3.2 Trillion a year for these fine services noted above. This is basically about how many T-Bills the Chinese will buy before their fortune cookie says, "Man who tinkle into wind get wet and smelly."

As a road sign I recently read said so succinctly, "Buckle up, next million miles."

....and try to get Steve Jobs's private number. We need a good creative egomaniac billionaire perfectionist ( who isn't a whiny mayor) to tear it all down with one or two sensible, beautiful and totally outrageous ideas.

How It All Played In Peoria

Peorians rise up

Peorians are up in arms and taking to the town squares and the streets. They are taking out their anger and frustration on the political, corporate and social elite. No, we are not talking about that Middle West Peoria, Hollywood's favorite movie thermometer. We are talking about the fictional country called Peoria, deep in the heart of the Middle East.

Several decades ago, Peoria took a look around the world for a model on which it could build itself for the future generations of Peorians. They looked at the USSR (now Russia et al), England (now UK), France (still France, are you kidding?) and other countries. Finally, they hitched their wagons (real ones, not just metaphorical) to the American Star. Peoria became the cultural equivalent of a Fund Of Funds, tracking American business, politics, and society and reflecting those trends in its own way of life.

It must have seemed like such a good idea at the time.

It was "Morning In America" then and the Evil Empire was crumbling, stunned by the sledgehammer of Capitalism. The hostages had returned from Iran. The Gipper faced down the Traffic Controllers' Union. Suddenly, many Americans began to read the Business section instead of the comics and students flocked from the ashram to "business school."

Peorian Bowery Hotel

Hollywood went corporate. Harvard went corporate, The NBA, NFL, and MLBaseball went corporate (the NHL went nowhere, of course). New York City, including Soho, the Bowery, Tribeca, the Village, even the Upper West Side (gasp!) went corporate; even NYC mayors went corporate before they went ga-ga.

Slowly at first, but then very quickly, when you said "China," you were not just talking about the relatives coming over for dinner. Even Mao's China went corporate! With a vengeance (real vengeance, not just metaphorical).

So, you can understand why Peoria became infatuated. They too figured out that the only way they could pay for their families healthcare was to work for large corporations. They too traded something called "profit sharing, " AKA money, for stock options. They began investing in 401K's tax free, and watched in amazement and with gratitude as their monthly statements came etched in gold. Finally, even middle class Peorians, which is as middle as middle can get, were able to do exactly as the truly wealthy Peorians and Americans could do, use other people's money to make even more. They could borrow.

Looking back, some thoughtful Peorians (a dying breed, as in you know where) began to wonder if it was a good thing that plumbers, electricians, doctors, salespersons, CEO's were spending an enormous amount of time day-trading instead of working. And, it turned out that many of them were trading in stocks of "internet" or "tech" companies that did not yet actually have products or customers, which turned out to be not as good as bank analysts and stock raters had preten....ah, hoped

Great Peorian Bubbles I and II

Meanwhile, Peoria had adopted the two-year long Presidential campaign, another capitalist miracle in that it earned millions for Peorian media companies and the political consulting industry, although the candidates sometimes looked like those to-good-to-be-true internet products. In short, Peorians too got the leaders they deserved, watching it all on huge TV's in their huge homes, in banks, at airports, and at the deli waiting for a Peorian's favorite meal, a 1,000 calorie sandwich and a 2,000 calorie drink (love really is blind, and fat too).

Since Peoria is in the Middle East, it has lots of enemies, real and imagined: Families, tribes, religions, sects. And these are just inside Peoria. So, when its idol was forced to borrow trillions of dollars from those very same Chinese to find Weapons of Mass Destruction that were amazingly like those pretty much non-existent internet products, political leadership qualities and stock options, Peoria too began to borrow and fight, borrow and fight.

Federal Reserve Of Beijing

This went along pretty well as long as Peorians tuned into Foxoria (oh, yes they copied this too), until they began to hear rumors that some Peorian banks may have over-extended themselves in real estate. Well, okay, every Peorian bank, its Treasury, Federal Reserve, its Fredoria & Fannoria Macs, Peoria Internationl Group Insurance, even Peorian Sachs, Holy of Holies, was going bust overnight, all of them AAA rated by their own raters!

You know how this story goes, having lived it yourselves. The smartest, bravest and richest in the Peorian land saved the Whole Shebang. Soon, all the bad stuff had gone up in a puff of smoke (Acapulco Gold?) and bank profits and bonuses returned. Naturally, Peorians celebrated their deliverance by reforming healthcare, promising (with a wink) to improve education, and once again buying SUV's, made in Peoria by Peorian hands, on Peorian machines. Peorian banks were forced to  buy the really ugly banks for pennies and to change their logos so that executives could avoid any jail time.

Mandarin Lesson

And, just like us, Peorians have just dodged a fiscal bullet and avoided having to shut down their magnificent government. They have, yet once again, saved Planned Parenthood, although to some it might appear that the most truest of true things one might say about both Americans and Peorians is that they wish that the parents of the num-sculls left in charge of everything had done more parent planning and saved all of us a great deal of discomfort, not to mention hypocrisy.

Reportedly, the Peorian rioters chief demand is that every Peorian begin mandatory lessons in Mandarin.

To them we say: be careful, sometimes you get what you pray for.

Take This Job And Spend More Time With Your Family

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newt

Earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear accidents, widespread political revolts, our third war, another earthquake. You'd think that Republican kingpins trying to make Uncle Sam into the Biggest Loser overnight could have picked a better time to get noticed.

Newt Gingrich knew how to get attention. We're talking about the real Newt back in '94, not the current Okay For Prime Time Newt with the presidential haircut and the jowl-job. He had a hissy-fit back then over being relegated to the back of Air Force One and played chicken with Clinton The First, when absolutely nothing else was happening. Bill put Newt into the deep fryer and only the Pope could get him out of it.

This is the most boring Federal Shutdown ever, being put on by the most boring set of numbskulls this side of the Mac twins, Fannie and Freddie. Ho-hum. Fellows, next time you do this, don't try it a week before Tax Day, because everybody, we mean everybody absolutely does not give a little nit about shutting down the Whole Shebang on April 8. Talk about Biggest Losers!

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I Think I Can Can Someone

Now here's a guy who knows how to get attention, Mayor Billionaire. He has publicly admitted to making a mistake. Good grief; will he have to go to bed without his Teddy?

Cathleen P. (for Phew!) Black, whom the mayor insisted on hiring as school chancellor, despite not being able to find a single other human being who thought it was a good idea, "resigned" by "mutual agreement" yesterday.

Let's be very clear about this. She was fired, royally fired by His High Royal-ness.

Why is it do you think that most of us get fired, canned, eliminated, dusted, smoked, summarily dismissed, shown the door, when CEO's, Chancellors and their chums get "to spend more time with their families (who are probably horrified)," " to seek new opportunities?" Or, how about Warren Buffet's recently departed lieutenant who got to do both: "to spend more time investing for his family." Except that he was fired for investing for his family in the companies Buffet was about to buy every day. That guy got canned too.

Poor Cathy. She got fired twice in one year! Over at Hearst, when they brought in a new guy from Conde Nast to replace her, she was "elevated" to make room for him. Yeah, except that it was a one way elevator to the lobby. Could it be that The Little Mike That Could was the only person in the universe who  thought that she had actually gotten promoted?

Yes. The only question we have now is: how big will her city pension be?

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"For The Double-Dip Hypothesis"

Speaking of which, here is a scoop. the Nobel Prize Committee has added a prize for Pension Mathematics. Apparently, there are only about 100 or so people in the world who can do this specialized form of calculating. Good news: 98 of them reside right here  in New York State.


copyright2011twmcdermott

Dutch Treats

Chiquita

Many of you have written: what have you been doing, where have you been, what did you read? Well, actually, we may have imagined that you asked those questions. Whatever. We have been traveling and then re-entering.

While we were away, all hell broke loose: earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear accidents, and Africa & the Middle East erupting in popular revolts.  We are once again at war, this time in Libya, although we are calling it every other name in the book in ways that would make Orwell give a little "told you so" nod.

One morning, it happened to be March 19, the 8th Anniversary of Shock And Awe, we sat on the porch, watched Chiquita move about, and read Kay Ryan, American Poet Laureate 2008-2010. We found one poem that seemed more than apt for our world at the moment, or perhaps, at any moment: Here it is:

Dutch 

Much of life
is Dutch
one-digit
operations

in which
legions of
big robust
people crouch

behind
badly cracked
dike systems

attached

by the thumbs
their wide
ballooned-pantsed rumps    
up-ended to the
northern sun

while, back
in town, little
black-suspendered
tulip magnates
stride around.

Can this be said any better? We do not think so.

On another morning, shortly before we left, our friend Dunmore Townes III stopped by to rock and chat on the porch. Mr. Townes is the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Saint James, and upon leaving he gave us this as yet unpublished poem:

The Island Men Are Walking


The island men
are walking
in the morning,

"Flat-bed" Island Work Truck

north and
south
along Bay Street.

each stride,
a stanza
written on stone.

The island men
    are walking,

high tide
    and low.

I want to walk
like these island men,

slow, or near to slow,
arms pulling
in their own arcs
to their own time.

I want a walk
to put the capital "D"
in Dignity.

I'll get
where my feet
are going

when they
want to
take me.

The island men
are walking
in the morning,

not with a purpose,
but purposefully.




Ed Note: Dutch is from Say Uncle, 2000 Grove Press, New York. Copyright 2000 by Kay Ryan
The Island Men Are Walking is Copyright 2011 Dunmore Townes III.

My Life In The Gardens, Sort Of

Laguna Beach & Hills

Contributing to a special House & Garden issue might seem like a reasonable thing to do, except that a year in the real estate market has left me numb about houses, any houses. And, there is the fact that I do not know compost about gardening.

We live in a town where one could hurl a handful of seed and hit an award-winning gardener or even two. The Garden Club has even met at our house a few times to discuss all kinds of green and flowery things. For all I know, the Little Garden Club may have spent some time here as well and I did not even see the members, because they’re so, well, little.

The plain truth is that I do not know anything about gardening. I do recall that once, in high school, a teacher or maybe it was a coach, called me a "blooming idiot," but he didn’t even mean that I was a bad gardener.

FHG, Station Square

I actually did make a kind of living for a while as a "Weedy-Man," while living in Laguna Beach, a perhaps the most beautiful California beach town. Laguna was a place where a human or a squirrel lucky enough to live there could drop any seed to the ground and it would grow rapidly. Anyone could have done it, even me, if I had tried.

By spring, all of Laguna:  canyons, avocado groves, hillsides, and even valuable empty lots would be vibrating with every conceivable plant and flower. But, of course, I do not remember their names, except for the nasturtiums, which grew in my neighbor’s garden.

The wild weeds, which thrived in the hills above the town and on those empty lots became fire hazards when the Santa Anna winds blew in from the desert and when the dry summer heat settled in.

I borrowed my landscaper roommate's blue VW Bug with a small open-bed trailer hitched to it. This machine never started properly, although, luckily, Bluebird Canyon,where we lived was all hill, so that I could coast down, jam it into second gear, and pop the clutch to start it up. 

FHG, Solum Crescent

We used scythes to cut the tall, thick grasses and those gas-powered spinning weed cutters for shorter stuff. These machines were remarkable only for their extremely annoying whirring sound and the spinning filament line’s habit of wearing out faster than George Foreman might say "Weed O-Matic."

This was an incredibly labor-intensive business, not so much for me; it soon became obvious to me that I was suited to management, not labor. It was hard work for my roommate's surfer-brothers and their friends, who became the weed-chopping crew. Like many another grand enterprise, it soon fizzled. Or, maybe the surf was up too often for the crew.

Later, I was able to turn this experience into a real “gardening” job working on a municipal crew.  We went into the hills above the town to do some serious weed-clearing to make fire-breaks. We started at 7am and quit around 2pm, or just in time to get in some good beach time. 

FHG, Deepdene *

Most of the crew had recently spent some time as guests of the state in various houses of detention, where they had gained experience working on other types of outdoor crews, although they referred to those as “gangs” for some reason. That prior work was important, because it meant that they knew how to deal with rattlesnakes, who can be quite annoying when you disturb them from slumber.

It may occur to you that most of my experience with things that grow are related to chopping them down, which, honestly, isn’t exactly the perfect background for writing about gardening.

I did happened to grow up in a place called Forest Hills Gardens, one of the country's most successful attempts at a planned community (see photos), one with many large and small open parks, greenways, closes and even, yes, gardens. The idea was to create an English hamlet, where Miss Marple might feel right at home.

WSTC

"The Gardens," as residents have always referred to it is in Queens, about 20 minutes from midtown Manhattan on the IND subway line at Continental Avenue. Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. designed the community for the Russell Sage Foundation beginning in 1908 aand Grosvenor Atterbury, the famed architect designed several homes there.

The West Side Tennis Club emigrated to Forest Hills Gardens from Manhattan, and built a famed tennis stadium in 1923. I grew up across the street from the club’s entrance on Tennis Place and later, as a member, romped on its soft grass courts, which you might say became my garden.

There were probably many fine private gardens in Forest Hills, hidden behind hedges and walls, but I did not spend much time in them. After all, the whole place was a garden. Why try to improve on Frederick Law Olmstead even if he was Jr.!

 Ed Note: We will be writing more about Forest Hills Gardens in the future. Meanwhile, here is some official info and a short slide show made by the author.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Hills_Gardens,_Queens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSVbqroIL2w

* Another rphoto of this home recently appeared in The Times. It was Geraldine Ferraro's home on Deepdene Road in FHG. the author's uncle lived in it until the late Fifties and his family sometimess gathered there on holidays.

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