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Dad’s funeral arrangements
Hello Everyone. Just wanted to put out an update on my dad’s funeral arrangements. The funeral will be Saturday April 16th at Farnham’s Funeral Home. 1125 W Temperance Road Temperance, MI 48182 Phone Number: (734) 847-3811. Visitation will be from 12 to 3, with the funeral at 3. I will be delivering the message so it will not be your typical funeral though I am going to preach a bit, but the heart of it is Dad’s story which is compelling in and of itself. the rest of the family is involved in the ceremony as well and it is really a DIY affair. At 4:00 we will be sharing a meal and perhaps hoisting a few in Dad’s memory at the American Legion Hall620 W Temperance Rd Temperance, MI 48182. Afterwards we will be drifting back to Brenda’s. My computer is having trouble so i will not necessarily be able to be reached by facebook or email. I am leaving for the home country thursday morning and will be reachable by dad’s cel phone 734-777-0659. i cannot get messages because he took the password to the grave.
memorial hill
well what used to be called myrtle’s grave is taking on added significance as i prepare to sprinkle a small amount of my father’s cremated ashes there. he loved that little dog and spoke of her fondly with some of his last words. buzzed on the morphine he told me “i want to marry myrtle. so he’ll largely be buried with my mom in the erie cemetery (yes its true) but a little bit will stay here in columbia where he spent some pleasant years. Gabriel Garcia Marquez says a place doesn’t really become home until you bury your dead there. i want columbia to be home at least a little bit.
when myrtle died last year we buried her deep as you should a good and faithful companion, all things being equal. we planted greek myrtle (six of them on the grave) and they had pretty foliage and little white flowers. it died off over the winter and hadn’t really snapped back. last fall i had added 3 new and a bit more existent daylillies at the head and foot. later i put in some tulips and crocuses on the bird feeder side. nothing is blooming and while not bleak its not exactly much of a pick me up.
sarah and i had gone to menards to return tile and so i picked up everything that was flowering. i got a lobelia hanging basket for the front and moved the windchime to the backyard. i bought some larger perenials and a flat of annuals and really made the memorial area look sharp. annual wise i did violas, snap dragons, pansies, verbana, and a couple of others. I also did a good sized gerbera daisy. Perenials i did a lot of creeping phlox, some bellis, and a couple of candytuft (iberis-sempervirens). it looks sharp. i also have some other stuff in pots now, maybe i’ll get it in the ground in time in the beds along the neighbor’s privacy fence which will be the backdrop for the service. I’ve got some daffodils going on one side and some grape hyacinth on the other. the new stuff adds some flowering now to the beds which have at least greenery going.
overall its earlier then i would like, in a lot of ways but i am glad i decided to have a little bit going all the time rather than having stuff that all hits at once so i at least had something to build from. you don’t get to choose your time on these things.
nuclear power and me (part 2)
The police arrived on the scene rather quickly. Traffic was backed up and I and 5 or so others were handcuffed to the cement barrels. We were chanting: “One, two, three, four, don’t pollute our lake no more, five, six, seven, eight, shut down fermi smash the state”. The crowd of protesters strung all over the countryside realized where the action was and started to arrive. The police came with bolt cutters and we were clipped out relatively easily. (We couldn’t raise the $100 for stove pipe to complete the barrels according to design, otherwise they would have had to bust through all the concrete.) We got bailed out though because it took long enough for the cop cars batteries to die from running all the lights. the road was still blocked for better than an hour.
I hit jail with such an incredible since of relief. i was so tired and stressed from organizing this monster event jail was a blessing. I wondered about what my life had become. The police had taken to putting us in a separate holding cell where the phone was “broken”. This had been their policy since an activist, john i think, did a tv interview over the jail phone. I heard reports of the tripods, the police just pushed them over and maced people when they hit the street. john whose plan had been to handcuff himself to the first cop car filled with protesters had been preemptively maced and arrested just because and the cops were intrigued by the handcuffs.
The cops were pissed. taken off guard and outside their experience. They are not used to having people say “no”. They were not used to detroit anarchists pelting them first with doughnuts later with stones. They were not used to photographers catching them being rough. They arrested a couple, real professional journalists. My friend Roger yelled out “don’t mace her pig!” A cop came over and yelled in his face that if he stepped in the road he would be arrested. Roger yelled back “ok I won’t” and the cop pulled back and hit him. six cops beat him down with sticks while Roger lay on the ground yelling I am not resisting, I am not resisting. They squirt mace, lots of it in his eyes up his nose in his ears down his throat until he vomited. then they arrested him and charged him with felony assault. I kid you not. i saw the video. roger was convicted at trial for assault. crazy world. they say spittle left his lips when he yelled ok i won’t.
We all chanted bad cop no doughnut when they brought roger in. we chanted and sang all night. we did a hed hum that was transcedent. we slept in a big pile like puppies when they wouldn’t give us blankets. we all refused bail because it wasn’t offered to Roger and a photographer who was beaten and also charged with assault. if you didn’t know it if the cops beat you up they charge you with assault to justify your injuries. pricks.
there’s more to the story but little about nuclear power. i was disillusioned by the whole thing. mostly roger. i realized my policy of creating conflict situations to radicalize people was reckless and costly. i didn’t think i had it in me anymore. constant court support plus my own legal involvement long after the cameras went away made me think. the plant opened largely without incident. on christmas we got santa (Terry Carpenter) arrested with an elf (Marie Mason) and an indian (Jesse Deerinwater). my mom and both my brothers. that’s where you had to be if you wanted to see the trapps on christmas.
the following summer other activists picked up the torch for another big action and i felt i had to carry on though my passion was gone. spent the summer in detroit organizing and we brought together a similar coalition. we again did multiple arrest events. our big finale was a full on non-violent assault on the plant. we had two ladders hidden and planned on going over the fence. one was a cooling tower sculpture with a ladder and a long ladder swathed in paper with slogan written on it. both of these were feints to draw the security so two of us could throw blankets over the barbwire scale the fence and climb the power towers with handcuffs and a banner. Our cooling tower ladder was pegged right away and seized by the cops. the other fooled them and we got three over the fence but it didn’t draw off the security. rather than get pulled off the fence i went around to the camera crews and said there would be an action at the custer statue in 15 minutes. Me and a kid from kansas drove down there, climbed the custer statue and handcuffed ourselves to his stirrup. Oh and I forgot to mention the guy who showed up with scuba gear who was coming in from the beach to climb the reactor building and plant an earthfirst! banner on the roof. we were all scared when he never showed. violating a nuclear security zone is a federal felony. he was a strange guy with a crew cut, no activist credentials and a trunk full of high tech gear. everyone thought he was a plant so i palled up to him. i did with all the suspected infiltrators. put em to work, take em under my wing, embrace them watch them. when we got out of jail i called his emergency number in chicago and he answered. he said he was picked up by “federal authorities” and questioned. “don’t worry they’re not interested in you” he said. they’re after squatter and the greenpeace bigwigs. speaking of greenpeace it was hiroshima day and no greenpeace parallel action. but on nagasaki day they dropped giant banners down the cooling towers. hadn’t told us which was good on them because we had likely been seriously infiltrated.
It was sweet. more arrests, probation, lack of money and i ultimately drifted out of full time radical environmental activism. i saw where it was heading. i was getting tired. the chronic poverty and constant travel, the stress. mostly i was tired. tired of hitting my head against a brick wall.
I did some other stuff, small protests, conferences, teach ins and such. when davis besse in Oregon Ohio had their incidents 3/4″ of stainless steel all that was left in their corroded containment vessel. so close. all i did was put it in my chap book. i might have went to one protest.
When I had my manic breakdown I even questioned my antinuke stance. I had apocalyptic visions of the breakdown of transportation, the end of coal, and cried for those hospital people without electricity. my mom told me to snap out of it and remember who i was. she was right. its insane. japan proves this if ever there was a doubt. if the smoking hell hole of chernobyl hadn’t already told us what we need to know. shut em down. watch the waste forever. teach our children to do the same. everything else is an unspeakable crime that we all bear guilt from as the lights burn.
nuclear power and me (part 1)
The recent events in Japan have had me engaged in thinking about nuclear power in a way that I have not for many years. I have had an intimate connection with nuclear power for pretty much as long as I can remember growing up in fermi country on the eastern shores of lake erie. My earliest memories of nuclear power is the propaganda comics we would get once a year in science class when detroit edison covered the education.
the fermi 2 nuclear power plant went from planning to construction to trying to come online when i was in high school. having had it be a presence for as long as i could remember i never thought to ask why it was called fermi 2. i mostly remember the coloring book with mickey mouse riding in goofy’s jalopy and telling him to air up his tires to save energy. goofy preferred the smooth ride of under inflation. i also learned about background radiation and the unreasonable fear ignorant country people have of things that are new. nuclear power was the promise of the future. even my hot wheels went nuclear. tired of having to go to the imaginary gas station every so often the cars switched to nuclear fuel. a handful of powder and they’d run for life. aircraft carriers ran on it. silly scared people who don’t know nothing.
In 7th grade science class Mr Lowney organic asparagus farmer did his own bit on nuclear. He presented its dangers and promises (fermi 2 was running into billions over budget and years behind schedule at this point) and told us about fermi 1, the day we almost lost detroit. when we moved to debate i was the only proponent. fermi 1 was an experimental fast breeder reactor not the really cool GE Mark 2 reactor we were gonna get. sure there is risk from radioactivity but there is risks in not having electricity too. try running your hospital without it and see who loses more lives. sure waste is a problem but gosh darn it we’re just getting smarter every day. I already knew you couldn’t win debates with teachers but i felt i held my own. the voice of reason.
In 11th grade i had technical writing and we did a speech to persuade. I was eager to do nuclear power because i already knew the material and had already waded through a lot of science for an english class. the pro nuclear position was already taken so i was forced into taking anti-nuke or having to learn something. I prided myself for the easy way out and the little as possible model of formal education. I was crushing a novel a day in that era so i can see how school work was an obstruction. I was also hanging out with scott woodward at the macomb branch library and decided to do some research, bone up on what’s happening since 7th grade (fermi 2 is still over budget and still under construction).
I am horrified by the facts because i had not yet come to understand the sublime in the face of nuclear horror. I read the Monroe Evening News article from the day after the near meltdown of fermi 1 after perusing the day we almost lost detroit and learned about the china syndrome. It was one paragraph long from the second page and said plant operators handled an incident in an admirable fashion according to training. Kudos to them.
Mostly though it was the waste. I learned that spent fuel means that it has become so highly radiated that it can no longer be used. That with its half life it would be two hundred thousand years until it was safe and we have no idea how to safely store this shit for any where of even a fraction of that. I learned there was enough low level radiation waste to pave a coast to coast highway and that every nuclear waste storage facility radiation had migrated into the ground water. I was horrified and convinced. I was anti-nuclear. the first brick had popped out of the right wing wall i had built my political ideals.
Ultimately I would question a system that would devise such a monstrously fiendish boondoggle on us country folk with a taste for walleye. Why did we need a nuclear power plant when we already had the third biggest coal fired plant in the world? How were we selected to be the environmental sacrifice zone? jesus pushed me over the edge with his words “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”. bam, like a stroke of lightning i knew war was wrong and i was off to the races. from right wing republican to anarchist within days as i followed the obvious implications of being anti-war. I rejected anarchy as naive and ultimately evolved into a democratic socialist type until my ultimate embrace of decentralization and participatory democracy and that i was really back to being an anarchist. having been everything now i don’t see it changing.
Fermi 2 ultimately got close to opening. in my research i found out about nuclear protesters as not just historical relic but as happening now. Well sort of. I went to some 1o people protests mostly old nuns. I bought some buttons and told them i wanted to help. I waved a sign or two. Wow 12 people with signs or the finishing touches on your 6 billion dollar investment. the plant opened with fits and starts and the 10 people went away. I went to college.
The first gulf war changed my brother john and me. John wanted to hang a banner when i got home from the psych unit afternoon shift he had painted “wage peace” on a sheet and wanted to climb a power tower and hang it the night the bombing started. “high voltage message” and peace was on the front page along with the war. never doubt a small group of dedicated people could change the media message in a small town paper. we went to protests and were part of a million people saying no to war. it was life changing.
After the war we drove down to east liver pool ohio and protested a toxic waste incinerator coming on line with martin sheen and all. Discovered SEAC, the student environmental action coalition and started organizing anti-statist pro-planet radical environmental events. it was great. changed my life. we were all in.At Frankies, this club in east toledo a door man said he was gonna jump off the martin luther king bridge for the anniversary of steven biko’s death. He said he jumped all the time and just swam to the docks, once he did it 7 times in a row. I remembered i’d seen one of his early ones in the paper. We jumped that night and it was cool. my brother was there and thought since it hadn’t been in the paper for awhile we could probably put anything we wanted in the paper with a little planning.
We looked in the calendar and the anniversary of fermi 1 was coming up. we sent press releases and organized a march from international park to the center of the bridge. Joe Mold and I got up and held a banner gave a short speech and took off our shirts and jumped in. no tv, the trucks were late and we felt we risked arrest if we waited. We swam to a sail boat to avoid the cops and sailed away drinking grog and glad we didn’t die in the cold maumee in october.
After I got my masters i was aimless and ended up being a full time field organizer for SEAC, hitching around Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri teaching kids how to cause trouble for a good cause. Jousted with NAFTA, the wise use movement, made a lot of connections, and got my first death threats. the woods is a dangerous place to be antilogging and lead country does not want anti-lead activists cleaning up flood damage. they’ll shoot you for wanting to pick up garbage if you don’t agree with him.
Fermi 2 ran on until christmas day 1993 the turbine threw a blade (a big un) and it ripped around the containment building. shut it down and some water got contaminated. i was home for christmas and john was still in town. better coverage then fermi 1. we both thought they would dilute it and dump it in the lake. really, what else are you gonna do with that stuff??? John was on it. organized some protests and a public hearing and 700 people turned out. started blockading the plant with bodies, people getting arrested.
I was field organizing in the ozarks as things heated up that summer when they wanted to dump the water in the lake. I came home early and called in debts from all the kids whose backyards I had been busting my hump to save and finagled SEAC to sponsor an event The Grassroots National Action Festival, we got the local coalition (CRAFT -Citizens Resistance At Fermi Two, great acronymn), the radical version we had spun off when CRAFT wanted to say no to stupid stuff we wanted to do (Zebra Mussel Alliance), and Green Peace and Earthfirst! who never worked together. we had a lot of energy and we had ruled the local media for months. My mom never really respected our choice to be radical activists until people she watched on tv started to call the house to find out what’s going on. it was beautiful.
I had gotten arrested in a blockade get dragged off scenario. There were two gates and we could only force arrests by blocking both. It got routine. Fermi was getting ready to come back on line so we decided to throw everything we had at it. In the woods we cut down 6 30′ trees and made tripods. We made three barrels filled with cement with pipe through the center big enough for an arm intersecting a piece of rebar. We bought handcuffs, steve merrix got an employee discount at the adult bookstore. we used the tools we had, could borrow, or steal.
The event came. three big protests in three days. we hit detroit edison headquarters with a handful of high profile arrests. We covered the statue of general custer (unfortunate favorite son of monroe michigan) with yarn weaving a web of peace over the nuclear war machine. (fermi 1 was a fast breeder to make bomb stuff and was defended by the Nike nuclear missile base which became a park which we reserved to camp our protesters [it really is all connected]. We brought up as guest speaker a native activist who was opposing a consortium of power companies trying to site a dump on her land. (detroit edison dropped out shortly later). On day 3 we borrowed Mark and Mike’s anti-nuke bus (no we won’t use it for anything illegal, its cool). we loaded up our team, the tripods and the barrels. We had announced we would blockade the plant at 2:00 pm on a sunday afternoon. the police were out in force and lined up by the gates with the media ready for a nice but big typical thing like we’d been doing.
We stopped in the road leading up to the plant and threw up three tripods with activists chained to the top within two minutes while the police looked on in disbelief. We drove the bus up the road pulled on to the main one dixie highway and pulled the bus across both lanes and stopped traffic. We pulled out our barrels and started to block the road, “roads closed folks”. One lady said her son had a little league game so we waved her through. a dude in a truck said he was going to work. “sorry the roads closed”. “I’ve got a tire iron that says its open”. “Hey get a camera on that guy he says he’s gonna hit me” as i handcuffed up to the barrels. The road was closed, the plant was blockaded as promised over a month ago at 2:00 on a sunday afternoon.
to be continued….
“From Here I Go Crazy-Come Down On your…”
David A. Smith friend and poet wrote me a cool poem and sent me the only copy back on 11-21-10. Its been sitting on my coffee table but looks like personal correspondence so no one has been reading it. Thought I would share it here since I am home sick today and feeling restless. Head cold I think, with my scratchy throat turning into a cough and my sinuses starting to ache. I caught it early and have been aggressive with rest and fluids but i have been under a bit of strain for a time so i shouldn’t be surprised. We still largely reap what we sow in this world. I was starting to write i’m putting it in as a prose poem and ignoring the original line structure but looking at it looks significant so i will keep it. Enjoy and thanks Dave.
From Here I Go Crazy – Come Down Off your…
Found you on the floor in an empty apartment
dark it was in there – Could tell you were the
color blue barely in this dream. I asked you what was
wrong as I could tell you were drowning inside.
How you come to be here alone, empty I wondered
aloud, you told me a full apartment in the building turned
on you. Said they’d kill you. But here you were.
they there, closed door; open door here, thankfulness
in my heart. Did’nt question. care, ask how you
escaped; only what happened. The we were in the
mist of manic you state how Jesus has nothing on
you; better than Budda in your non-existent mind
your body of flesh immortal; Mohammad a neo-phyte
who need walk in your shoes, all this as espousing
philosophy
kumquat curry chicken
Its been frenetic for this blogger and haven’t had a chance to post in ages. I made a trip back to Michigan and Ohio, blew up my truck, brought Johnny Watson back with me for a house rehab (the house not johnny) and so have been occupied from rise to bed all day every day and for the foreseeable future. And yet faithful readers in my 20 minutes of downtime before work i want to tell you about kumquat curry chicken, a collaborative effort of two nights ago.
In a blender put in 3/4 pint of de-seeded kumquats, , 1/2 cup vidalia onion salad dressing, 1/2 cup water and pulp that shit up. Take 3 large chicken breasts clean and wash and remove excess fat. Pound with the hammer down to 1/2 inch and chunk up. Season 1/4 cup olive oil with 3/4 head of garlic and 3/4 cup sweet onions. Brown the chicken add most of the kumquat puree (save the rest for a salad dressing on another day) and simmer with a lid on to keep the temp up. Hope you knew to start the rice cooker after the blender and before browning the chicken with 1/2 white rice (for the kids and old people) and 1/2 sprouted organic brown rice. Put in a little extra water (plus butter and salt of course) so the brown rice gets good and done. Meanwhile slice an organic carrot into some frozen peas with some mrs dash and basil and set to cooking. when the rice switches to warm mix in some smooth peanut butter to thicken (you can use tahini if you haven’t made salad dressing out of all of it like i have). you want enough in to make it creamy but not so much that you get much peanut taste just a tiny little mystery hint. Citrussy goodness. I needed to add salt but it was so flavorful some didn’t notice. Good, largely good for you, and quick enough for a weeknight if you’ve got a little help and a lot of good company. Pairs well with Pepsi Cola. For best results pull up all your linoleum and underboard. Standing on springy mossy smelling plywood makes you think you’re cooking in the deep forest.
The Boxer
Had an interesting experience walking Fido yesterday. First off I am loving the longer days. I was able to get home from work close to on time, get caught up with Dad and Egypt, read the paper and still get out on our walk before dark. We went down Garth because of the still snow covered sidewalks (shame). Its a little uncomfortable pushed out on the road. Most cars were slowing and/or moving over but one couple seemed to take a wicked glee in buzzing by me inches from my right elbow and of course the cel phone people have to be watched closely. “They’ll run us down like dogs”, I told the dog. With more than a little relief we made it to the temporary haven of a block of shoveled sidewalk in front of Parqaid School. As we were walking through the snow tunnel a big brown boxer looking dog ran up on us. Fido was nervous I was wary. The boxer ran up ahead and peed. As we passed it did it again and again. I didn’t see a collar, just a blue bandanna. He must have been out because then he started to leave some steaming piles. I’m not sure what pheromones he was putting out but Fido was ready to go. I think he was looking to get Fido to run off with him and Fido was ready to go. Doesn’t know where his bread is buttered, I told him. When we got to the end of the sidewalk I was in a quandary. I climbed over a big snow hill hoping to lose him and we cut back to Garth and started walking. Then the boxer ran after us running right down Garth. After a close call we cut back into the neighborhood so big dumb dog didn’t get run down. He kept buzzing by us and Fido would want to run with him. We started towards home working through the neighborhood up Bear Creek towards home. We were planning on making it home and putting the boxer in the back yard until we could call animal control. As we walked home I noticed Parqaid Park and Fido and I checked it out and found some cool snow drifts to play on. The boxer kind of circled the edge. Finally a car pulled over and asked if the boxer was mine. They then called him into their car. By this time Fido and I were out on the street. We thanked them for helping, thinking they were a neighbor or friend of the dog and the woman said “that’s just what I do”. So turns out we were rescued by some random do-gooder. Nice to know there are folks out there looking to do right. We need more of that.
“I believe I am a Pattern”
With the blizzard outpatient treatment shut down and most of the staff couldn’t make it to work. Since I live a block away I still got to go in and mostly do groups for the inpatient guys. Doing six hours of group in a couple of days it really gave us a chance to bond and it allowed me to get a pretty good idea of people were at and for them to get on board with a lot of how I view the world. We have a great crew right now but with a heavy dose of agnosticism which can be a problematic belief system for folks struggling with recovery. Bill Wilson wrote a whole chapter on it. I have never been satisfied with the conventional approaches for this population. I think there can be a lot of power in doubt and I also think the Universe is big and wonderful and worthy of respect, as well as being widely believed in, and is often what I propose for those in search of a higher power to grant them serenity and keep them sober. So I descended into the dangerous world of metaphysics. I structured the presentation around a poem which has twice previously appeared in this blog, faithful readers may remember. But I noticed I had added another stanza. So here in its entirety is what I would consider the last really great poem I’ve written. With exposition people can hang with it. Ask questions if you don’t understand.
I believe I am a pattern, a pattern of information
Built from millions and millions of simplicities
Organized through emergence, I arise up from the bottom
I am many, but still I am me.
I believe I am a pattern, a consciousness construction
Will, sense, imagination, memory
And though I surely rise up from my body
I am much more a story
Told in the hearts of everyone who knows me.
I believe I am a pattern, a pattern set in motion
In oscilation with the tides
Not just the ocean, but the universe besides.
In every mind’s eye there is a cup
It’s not the one from which i drink, but its close enough
Occam’s Razor cuts, simplest is the best
Is my idea of cup unique from the rest
Or do we all drink from the same cup after all.
For I believe I am a pattern, a process not an object
Like pendulums swing together when they’re on the same wall
My heart beats to the rhythm of the One and the All
And I am subsumed in the One
For I believe there is a Pattern….
more thoughts on inclement weather
I love blizzards and all weather related events. Largely we have created a society where almost all of us are seriously estranged from not only each other but the natural world. We live in boxes and get in smaller motorized boxes to get to the boxes where we spend the day. The seasons have been defeated as all boxes are at 71 degrees. But the blizzard puts the lie to this actualized piece of false consciousness. Everything is realer today. I enjoyed pretty much having the road to myself. Saw some other walkers, all jubilant, the young couple seemingly needing to justify their appearance in the wild that “the inner child got the best of us”. When did enjoying the day outside require justification? Maybe it was justified for being in the street, when the big red pick up truck roared up the road, the rumble of its engine covered by the neighbor’s snow blower speeding down the hills with no way to stop for unseen pedestrians because he needs the momentum to get up the next hill to do it all again. That is alienation. He could have killed me but there was no human feeling or contact like i had with the other walkers, even the snow blower guy. I was just an obstacle. It could have been a video game, the whole beautiful world, which includes me cut out in a window box. the guys in group wanted to get out and experience the blizzard. they were envious of my windblown face and wicked grin from being out and about in the big world. just remembering it makes me tingle, a peak experience i can feel behind my eye lids. you can only be so real in a box. we are broken and have been broken for so long we don’t even remember what it feels like to be whole. but the blizzard teaches us to marvel. it puts our plans in proper perspective. it reminds us what is really important; living each day, staying warm, respecting the natural world. I said in a group that i liked to go walking in inclement weather because it thins out the crowd. i think i learned that at old man’s cave where you can only enjoy it in solitude when its raining. i feel like fido and i own the bear creek trail when for days its just our tracks. we own it like the squirrels own it, like the deer. we need to start breaking through the artificial barriers we create to keep from having real experiences. we need to do more to fix the stuff that’s broken. we need to get out of the box before the box gets more in us. peace. remember registering and commenting on the blog is forever/facebook is transitory and mark zukerburg or whoever owns your words.
January’s done
Hello faithful readers. Sorry I have not been posting. January was a challenging month and I continue to have some computer problems that I haven’t felt like dealing with. I also had my boss talk to me about a negative mood state I incidentally mentioned and that has had a chilling effect on what I want to post about. Now I see why more people don’t have an honest and revealing blog. Nonetheless this is a periodic blog and so regardless of the consequences I am going to periodically blog something. Today I am up early waiting for the snow to start. We are awaiting Columbia’s first blizzard warning. 18″ to 22″ by tomorrow noon. We have gotten a lot of snow this winter and I have been really enjoying it.
My New Year’s resolution was to work on getting in better shape this year. I started with weigh ins on most days and writing down everything I ate and all the exercise I did. A solid plan that started out nicely but as the month continued I started to get depressed and decided this was not the time for any volunteer upheaval in my life. I am stretched to meet the things I need to do. The only piece I kept was the exercise peace. If you know me at all I am not one for the gyms. I enjoy real physical activity that is purposeful and utilitarian, so mostly I walk. Almost every day. The weather really challenged that this year and I have risen to the occasion and gotten out there anyway. Its been really cool getting out on the bear creek trail and seeing no tracks but what fido and i laid down on our last walk.
Sidewalks have been my obsession. Most people don’t shovel here in Columbia, which offends my Michigan sensibilities where almost everyone does. It makes it a lot more challenging when you get pushed out into the road, especially with a small dog. The alternative is to push through deep snow on the sidewalks. Fido wears out pushing through chest deep snow on a steady pace the leash demands. He’s great off leash. He leaps and hops and catches his breath and continues the mad dash. He can run circles around me, literally, but can’t trudge. So when he is exhausted before the trail and we have to turn around and go home, probably walking down the road with car’s not slowing and some not even looking up from their texts it frankly pisses me off and has been a source of rancor all winter.
I want to approach McKnight plaza as a concerned neighbor. They have a lot of sidewalk and if they shoveled it would have a huge impact on the neighborhood. It would even be in their own interest and not just a community service. They are trying to lease a big chunk of it and if they shoveled it wouldn’t tip their hand that their isn’t a lot of foot traffic. If the sidewalks were cleared there might in fact be foot traffic. I would approach them as a faithful Itchy’s customer (awesome flea market) but I feel like a hypocrite with my work’s sidewalks unshoveled across the street. I almost shoveled them myself and looking back I wish i would have. Feeling a need to do something and not doing anything is not a good way to feel better about something. With the blizzard coming I don’t know when i’ll be able to get out with the little dog. After knocking out my driveway I might just walk down the street and knock it out at work. then i might give Mcknight a call.
Writing this I can see I’ve lost all perspective. little things can loom large in the narrowing of winter. Dad too has been down. Dennis’s birthday on the 15th has historically been a hard day. Less so over the years but this year seemed tough. With Mom’s b-day coming up on 1/31 i was a little concerned. Talking it over with a co-worker she suggested we do something special. So last night we went to Outback Steakhouse. On one of my folks’ few vacations they had gone to Branson and loved Outback. It made what could have been a tough day kind of festive and a time to celebrate. Not a bad recipe for most difficult things.
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