Herban Sprawl

We are a small denomination, so when Sunday’s shooting occurred, word spread throughout our community of religious liberals. Some may arch an eyebrow over the fact that the Rev. William Sinkford, the president of our denomination, showed up PDQ to offer solace and comfort. Perhaps he understood that the minister of our church in Knoxville needed to be ministered to just as much as the congregation he serves. Whatever his reasons, he got there quickly because we are a small denomination and this is what happens when everyone knows everyone else.

It amazes some that we bandy about the first names of the leaders as though we are bosom buddies, but the truth is, we do form relationships with them. Our immediate past president, the Rev. Dr. John Buerhens visited SUUSI several years in succession, as he got to know congregants from our neck of the woods. We had great dinnertime and walking-to-dinner conversations with him about our own church. Each year he remembered our names and picked up the news as though we’d last seen each other a few weeks ago.

The Rev. Liz McMaster once observed, “We don’t name-drop; we really do know everyone!” And it’s true. Her mentor was the president of the denomination years ago. When I first attended the Roanoke church, the Rev. Dr. Timothy Ashton introduced himself and asked my name. When I told him, he declared, “Oh! You’re Neil Gerdes’ friend!” (The Rev. Dr. Neil Gerdes is a buddy of mine from my time at University of Chicago.)

Each year at SUUSI, we are treated to worship services led by ministers and lay-people whose provenance dots the map like a case of the chicken pox. We get to know them as they lead workshops, or as they hang out at meals. In some cases, such as that of the Rev. Michael Tino of New York, SUUSI serves as the fertile womb for hatching the call to the ministry. Because there are usually about a thousand of us at SUUSI, we get to know a lot of people. Hence, when having lunch in the courtyard at the Valentine Museum in Richmond several years ago, it wasn’t unusual to see someone I knew, prompting my then-young nephew to exclaim, “She knows people here, too?!” Yeah, I guess I do, and well enough that if he’d like to use Unity Temple for his upcoming wedding, I know who to call.

When I learned the news about the Knoxville church, I wept. We still don’t know the names of those who were injured, but it wouldn’t be odd if we knew them from a workshop at SUUSI, or from our annual meeting of congregations, General Assembly.

When any church is attacked, it is pause for thought. Other denominations who number their members in the big digits feel a great deal of sorrow, as do those of us who read about it in the paper. But when it hits your own religious community –and especially one as small as ours – it’s particularly frightful. We religious liberals squabble among ourselves in a very lively fashion, but when it comes to defending rights, our denomination has a rich history.

Where would our country be without John Adams, Thomas Jefferson or Paul Revere? How about P.T. Barnum, Ray Bradbury, e.e. cummings, Buckminster Fuller or Fannie Farmer? Don’t forget Paul Newman, Pete Seeger, N.C. Wyeth, or Christopher Reeve. Oh, yikes, we can’t leave out the Peabody sisters, Julia Ward Howe, Maria Mitchell, Beatrix Potter or Jane Addams. A list without Clarence Darrow, John Marshall and Albert Schweitzer is no list at all, and it’s unthinkable to forget Josiah Wedgwood or Alexander Graham Bell. See? These were all good people, so we hang onto this heritage and we try to live up to the example they set for us. We don’t need to worry about sin or hell. Trying to live a life that would make Luther Burbank or John Dewey proud is hard enough!

When we lose a fellow religious seeker to a violent crime, as happened on Sunday or a few years back at a Florida abortion clinic, all UUs feel violated and vulnerable. When we recall the life of Michael Servetus, perhaps that, too, is one of our traditions. It won’t stop us, though. Religious liberals have the uncanny ability to rise from the ashes and keep making history.

We are on the beautiful campus of Radford University this week, participating in the annual Southeast Unitarian Universalist Summer Institute. The theme for this year’s gathering of UUs is Pilgrimage. The morning and evening worship services have focused on that theme and the variety of perspectives on the word is interesting. We heard of one woman’s trip to the obscure sites of beginning Christendom and the idea of how the religion changed as the focus shifted from a religion of love and community to one of crucifixion and empire. The metaphor for Jesus on the cross became that of the crusaders sacrificing themselves in his name. Yet another minister used the Grateful Dead as a way to stress personal responsibility and the ethics of a live and let live philosophy. Deadheads made serious pilgrimages to concerts, always chasing that moment of clarity.

Coming to Radford this year was indeed a pilgrimage for us. BK brought me to Radford U. for SUUSI 24 years ago and I have attended 20 SUUSIs. In the interim we have held our conference at the land grant university up the road, which never felt right to me. Thus, this year, returning to the Radford campus was indeed a homecoming. The campus is beautiful. There are many new buildings and the campus has been beautified with extensive landscaping.

The spiritual connection wrought by the proximity of other religious liberals is extremely important as we seek to broaden our religious experiences and as we seek comfort with others of like mind. SUUSI is a safe haven in a country that is over-saturated by religious fanatics. Here we can be fanatics of a different stripe and not live in fear of having our children shunned from playgroups or promotions denied because we do not conform to mainstream denominations. Our kids frolic with other kids who know what OWL stands for, our teens dye their hair and stay up all night, and as for the adults, well, we run the gamut from really young adults to really elderly adults. The most rickety of our elders can be seen on the dance floor, which just goes to show you that age has nothing to do with having a good time!

Last night I participated in a religious service that had us looking within. I had just had some news that could have been interpreted as good, as well as bad. My initial reaction wasn’t particularly gracious, but as I allowed myself to become immersed in the spirituality of the religious ritual, I began to see the problem from a different perspective. As I examined the face that looked back at me, I knew that I would do what I had been doing – for free – until the job was done.

It’s like art. I don’t really expect to make a buck at it, but I do it because it’s what is within me. And I really let my spirit be nourished by the act of creating. You try not to overthink these things. You try to let the moment produce whatever comes out. Hopefully it has artistic value.

In one of my workshops, I have been helped immeasurably with a picture I have been trying to make for Jimmy Gaudreau. Jimmy is one of the most overlooked and underrated mandolin players imaginable. Last summer, he and his lovely Gloria tied the knot and I wanted to make a picture that was both fun and decently executed to give to them. My deadline is the weekend of August 9^th, when we will see him at the Oak Grove Music Festival.

SUUSI workshops are affirming places to be. The participants help and cheer each other along. The leaders create a safe environment in which the individual can grow and experiment with new ideas or activities.

It was in such an environment on this campus that I discovered one of the nature trip leaders visited a national herb conference before she got to Radford. Her van usually held a couple of flats of unusual plants. I was drawn to her scented geraniums (pelargoniums for you purists) and we finally started to get to know one another. She became another herb guru for me.

Tonight, we will leave Radford for the evening, drive back to the Star City and Miss Pat will be the speaker for the Southwestern Virginia Herb Society’s monthly meeting. For the first time, she will meet, Alice, my number one herb guru and the two can have a lovely laugh over all the trouble they’ve gotten me into! This lends an interesting twist to the idea of a pilgrimage, but no odder than that of the Deadheads!

It was here, in this place, that I learned to open my heart and trust my inner voice. It was here that I formed friendships with people I see only once a year, but people whose presence has significantly enriched my life. There’s Miles, who looks like Rep. Rick Boucher. There is Mary Ann, whose spiritual guidance has helped me find grounding. There is Cousin Jimmy, who is always looking for love and Julie, who tends to pick the same workshops that I do. There’s a lot of love around this campus during this week, not to mention creativity and silliness. On a diet? Fuggedaboudit. We have three massively huge squares, and to be honest, I’ve taken to just making coffee in our room and skipping the eggs and stuff.

We are seekers and we are investigators. We read a lot and we think – maybe too much. We are the religious left, and our pedigree is rather blue-blooded. Emerson, the Alcotts, Jefferson, Clara Barton, John Adams, Frank Lloyd Wright, Joseph Priestly, William Ellery Channing, Charlie Byrd, Kurt Vonnegut… It’s good to make this annual pilgrimage. It’s good to reconnect with religious liberals and to deepen our sense of spirituality in an increasingly angry world.

Tomorrow morning we will close our last worship service by putting our arms about the persons to either side as we sing a very special song by the late Rev. Ric Mastin, Let It Be a Dance. He ceded the right to this song to Alexis Jones because it had become the SUUSI anthem. Long lines of UUs will sway together – the love in the room will be palpable. The pilgrimage will have come full circle when we take our tired carcasses and renewed spirits back to the real world.

While at the state AAUW conference hosted here in the Star City, I saw an unusual use for one’s old charm bracelet. A lady had moved her extensive collection to a necklace. It was pretty nifty and didn’t get in the way like the bracelets can. That got me thinking about mine. It was stolen back in ’79 when my Chicago apartment was robbed.

Those exercises where one tries to remember all the parts of a sequence – naming all seven of the dwarves – remind me of myself, trying to remember my charms. Each was meaningful, of course, because that’s what a charm bracelet is supposed to be.

A year ago, I found myself in the position of having three girls in my extended family graduating from high school. I got each of them a charm bracelet with one charm. The charm was unique to the girl. Diana, for example, got a flamingo to remind her of us as she went off to Beloit College. I suppose that since charm bracelets aren’t really in style, that was what contributed to the difficulty of finding cute charms.

Then, one night while I was waiting to see if I had won an item on eBay, I started browsing. The first charm that popped up was one I’d had and forgotten about. It was an enameled angel – a Christmas charm from my mother. I never liked it that much, but as I stared at the picture, I wondered if there were others I could remember. I began a list.

What is missing these days is the craftsmanship. So many things are no longer manufactured in our own country that we forget how many jobs there used to be that required skilled labor. Casting sterling silver charms was probably tricky because they were so tiny. That so many of them had moveable parts, or details on them like a little viewer that showed a tiny Golden Gate Bridge, is nothing short of amazing when you really think about it. I would imagine the jewelers who made those charms cursed the designers, but I would also imagine, they knew what absolutely marvelous little works of art they were making.

Among my charms, I know my absolute favorite was the tiny Benjamin Franklin, holding a loaf of bread in either hand. I hadn’t worn my bracelet in years, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t upset about its theft. I knew then that Ben was lost to me forever. Ben and I share a birthday and many common attitudes and traits that run the gamut from ideas about religion to a fondness for earthy humor. The charm was significant in marking that.

As I looked at the eBay offerings, I was struck by how many complete charm bracelets were for sale. It’s fun to look at them and see what kinds of things they had in common with mine. Sweet 16 was a biggie, as were graduation diplomas. There were also charms in remembrance of having been in a wedding, charms marking milestones like a first child or first job. The travel charms were nifty. It’s too bad this isn’t a jewelry trend anymore. What a wonderfully inexpensive way it was to bring delight to the recipient.

I had a steamboat with a working paddle wheel, a San Francisco trolley with the afore-mentioned viewer, a Cellini Capricorn that was exquisite, and a couple of notable cat charms. My artist’s palette was grand, and I even had a little frying pan with an egg in it, which was very special from Mom. A Danecraft mouse went back to a nickname from Uncle Joe-Joe, and then there were the ones I brought back from Europe, like the eidelweiss cowbell.

This could be considered a massive amount of geezing, but then a life well-lived should have plenty of details about which to reminisce. There aren’t any new charms worth bothering with, but if I had my pick of the vintage ones I saw, there would be ones I could add that would mark the further adventures of Auntie since 1979. And there are ones that mark the adventures yet to come. What fun!

We’re getting ready to spend a week about forty-five minutes from here at a Unitarian Universalist summer conference. All thousand or so of us will descend upon a university campus where we will spend our week in workshops, taking nature trips, eating together, entertaining one another, being entertained by those who make a living at it, and worshiping together. The children will have a ball in their own niche, and even the teens will have a great time. (Everyone knows teens hate everything, but our teens wouldn’t miss this event for anything.)

This, of course, means Clarice will descend upon our household on a daily basis, sweeping in to feed the three fat cats and Sal the fish, and water the things he deems in need of water.

Right before we headed to Illinois, he reminded me of the need to whack the petunias, and I must say, they are looking right fluffy after his hatchet job. Now, however, I have caught it for not keeping up with the deadheading. And, he declared most vehemently, BK had to empty the container that holds the pee balls before we leave.

If you don’t use scoopable litter, you don’t know from pee balls. The idea behind the scoopable stuff is that when the cat(s) take a whiz, the litter melts itself into a clump. One then can scoop that clump out of the litter box and toss it out. In our case, BK has a trash can system. He puts in a lined and lidded trashcan, and when the liner is full, he ties it up on Wednesday night and dumps it into the trash bin for pick-up in the morning. It’s bad news if it lives in Big Blue for longer than overnight.

So Clarice has taken on the job of scooping the nephews’ boxes when we are gone, and from my perspective, he has earned a place in heaven. He could rob a bank or hold up a Brink’s truck and run off to Tahiti with the payola. In my book he would have earned every nickel! Scooping the cat boxes is not my idea of a good time. In fact, there are times when I announce, with no small amount of exasperation in my tone, that I’d send BK to live with his mother, but who’d clean the box?

Fortified with his cocktail of choice, Clarice tells me where to get off the bus. I’ve been told about my herby potato salad and herby slaw. I’ve been yapped at about being a negligent gardener, and I’ve been taken to task about a few other tasks I’ve slipped up on that I’d prefer not to mention. It’s never really been undeserved, except in the case of my herby recipes. He just doesn’t like things that have a lot of seasoning, so I should know better than to put anything on the table like something made with fresh herbs and herb vinegar. As soon as he has had a chance to mull it over, he’ll mix himself a vodka and Mountain Dew, ring me up and ring my chimes.

When you think about it, isn’t it great to have someone who will lay it on the line and make you shape up? How many of us are that lucky? Be honest with yourself. You’re in Talbot’s trying on a dress. You look in the three-way mirror. You love this dress. The color is great, the design is beautiful, the fabric is perfect, but it makes your behind look like the trunk of a 1957 Buick. The saleswoman says, “Oh, I love that color on you.” The other ladies are smiling with that pinched kind of fake smile my grandniece uses when she is in front of the camera. The one where she grits her teeth and shows uppers and lowers… Wouldn’t you feel more confident if you had a Clarice standing there saying, “No-oo-oo-oo-o-o-o. Your hind end looks like Father Mike’s big ole Buick. Put that back, Girl.” You, my friend, have been saved. You will leave that store confident that you made the right choice. And why? Because you have a Clarice that will keep you from making a fool of yourself.

Well, Clarice read my piece about The Gin & Tonic Gardener, and I caught heck for neglecting my hayracks. He’s right. I plant them with good intentions, but then I get lazy about lugging the watering can every few days, and I fail to deadhead, trim or otherwise keep fluffy. Unlike his balcony, which is planted with care, and blooms all summer long like a botanic garden, my racks get to looking kind of bedraggled by July. He is a smoker, and while he sits outside having a smoke, he pinches and he prods. He fluffs and he fusses. His flowers are gorgeous. I drove by a week ago, and looked up.

There, in this apartment complex that looks like Dresden after the blitz, is his balcony – awash with color and just as beautiful as can be. This year he is using a slightly subdued color scheme that is out of this world. I would never have thought of such a great combination. It’s grand, and that’s from across the street, clipping along at 35 or more mph.

By contrast, this year I planted my hayracks grudgingly. I’m kind of tired of dealing with them. If they didn’t make our house look so nice, I would let them go for a year. I didn’t spend a lot and I didn’t get a lot of plants. The colors are so-so, but the things are filled and that’s about all I can say about them. Clarice is clucking about that. I dunno. I know he’s right, but I’m also facing the mower, the trimmer and the weeds. Then there is the matter of the weeds that are encroaching from the neighbor’s big rat’s nest and the city’s right of way behind us. I’m tired of it. My knee is utterly hostile about it.

So, I need to water the hayracks, and if I’m a nice person, I give them a shot of Bosom Booster to insure more fluffy blooms. Then, I have to start getting ready for the House Goddess’s visit. Oy! The pressure!

In the course of researching some information, I came across a blog where in 2006, people were expressing their views on flag burning. I thought it was interesting. This is one of those areas where people seem to have very strong opinions. I think, as symbols go, there might be other things I would find much more important to worry about than the flag. However, this is a blog site that is praised by Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Need I say more?

Nevertheless, I read on and I have to say, the variety of ideas and reasons given for people believing as they did was rather diverse. It also seemed to illustrate for me the idea that there are many shades of grey and many edges that need sharpening, as well as many edges that need to stay sheathed.

One writer said his son was coming home from the service and he was glad, not for the young man’s safety, but because he didn’t think it was worth it for his son to give his life for people who don’t love their country. He then went on to say that there was too much hate.

Okay, kiddo, I do have an opinion about that, and it won’t be the first time we have disagreed on a topic. (Much to my surprise, the respondent had signed his name and I used to know him!)

First of all, I am not in favor of this war because it was all about profiteering. Your son would not be giving his life for our freedom. He would be giving it for the Shrubites who are making millions and millions of dollars on this “event’ while everyday Americans can barely make ends meet.

If people want to burn the flag, they’re going to do it. If teenagers want to make out in the back seat, they’re going to do it. If I want to eat that Heath bar in the cabinet, I’m going to do it. We do what we do.

Your child’s service to this country was actually service to a group of profiteers who used an awful event to launch a war that was not necessary. Meanwhile, they abandoned any efforts to pursue the actual perpetrators of that attack on our people. They used our patriotism for their own ends, and in this case it was to make themselves wealthy beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. In that regard, the people who have shown the most disrespect for what your son has done, are the very politicians you seem to be defending, not those of us who oppose the war.

People like me – liberals - didn’t ask you son to do this for us. We would have preferred he hadn’t. Your son responded to the drumbeat because thought he was doing something worthwhile. No one would have thought less of him had he chosen not to serve - especially not in this particular war. But he did, and now he deserves to be treated with respect, just as anyone who serves in the military does. He did what he thought was right, which shows his own strength of character.

The sad part of this is that it is now, when he returns to his country, that he will be given the short end of the stick. The Veterans’ Administration hospitals are understaffed and cannot handle the influx of vets returning stateside. He will doubtless suffer the torment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and afraid of losing benefits may balk at going to the VA for the help he deserves. There will be other indignities added to that, for this country has not been kind to those who serve. If you doubt me, I know a couple of Gulf War vets you should talk to. And there are a number of Vietnam vets who inhabit the homeless shelters around here who were abandoned by the government just as surely as I am typing this.

This is what I object to. The flag is small potatoes compared to the way our government has tried to weasel out of paying for the medical problems faced by Gulf War vets. The Vietnam vets in particular paid a huge price when they came home from an unpopular war.

You, yourself, were worrying about your own draft number because you didn’t want to go. And none of us would ever have blamed you for that. Consider yourself lucky. Too many of the guys who see Charlie in their dreams every night sleep under the highway overpass bridges because our VA system didn’t know how to serve them, and there were no mentors to help them because the VFW and the American Legion shunned them as losers.

Luckily, your son and his fellow service members have another good liberal on their side - my senator, Jim Webb of Virginia, who is hot on the trail of another G.I. bill to extend education benefits to these people who have given their all to the cause. Senator Webb’s son is serving, as well. It doesn’t mean he’s in favor of this profiteering free-for-all, but he’s certainly going to come down on the side of those who served. And we’re not talking about those arrogant Blackwater people, either. Let Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld foot their college bills.

The responsibility of the citizens of this country is to monitor the actions of the government and hold it accountable. That’s not hate. That’s making sure Washington knows we know the score. Making a stand against the war is not hate. It’s our way of telling the politicians they can go to work at WalMart like everyone else. They do not deserve to make themselves wealthy on the backs of well-intentioned young people such as your son and the men and women with whom he served.

I’d rather see a flag burned than used to cover yet another coffin bearing the remains of the promise of our country’s future.

Oh, now, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I have blackened the name of Steinway, but I’ve also blackened the name of Mason & Hamlin.

The paternal unit of my spouse’s family is the son of a piano tuner. Nowadays we’d call him a piano technician, I’m sure, but in this burg, he was a piano tuner. After leaving the keyboards to his elder brothers, he went into another business, but later married a pianist. He was right back to Middle C, as it were.

Typically, he got bored with retirement, so began putting his knowledge of the instrument to work by buying, restoring and then reselling high quality Steinways and Mason & Hamlins. He was going along, having a lot of fun with this when it became more difficult for him to do a little bit of detail work, and that’s where I entered the picture. I get to be a part of the enterprise when I wield a little Royal Langnickel #250 easy-grip paintbrush.

The innards of a grand piano are rather interesting, and I keep learning all sorts of details. The big hunk of steel you see inside one of those big boys is actually made of cast iron. After casting several hundred pieces, the foundry then leaves the large pieces outside to cure. When it’s time to assemble a piano, they pull the proper sized piece of iron and go to work.

In his workshop, my father-in-law disassembles the entire piano – no small feat, I can assure you. In fact, it used to involve a chainsaw! This family of guys is very clever – he decided there had to be a better way and proceeded to invent a tool that forces the pieces to part ways. He even got it patented.  Anyway, along in there, the big hunk of cast iron gets painted gold and once he has it back into the refinished case, the strings reinstalled and so forth, he calls me.

My job is to paint the raised letters with a tiny brush and a little bitty can of Rust-o-leum gloss black. It’s not as easy as it sounds. The castings are sometimes quite messy around the tinier letters, and the stylized ampersand in the monogram is a bugger. Therefore, a lot of what I do is fudging.

What helps is an intimate knowledge of the structure of serifed letters, as well as a pretty steady hand. The first piano I did made me very nervous. The second piano was easier – I had new glasses! Nevertheless, sometimes the pieces are very smooth, which means the paint slides around. Sometime the casting is so jagged that I paint what amounts to a corrective letter, which doesn’t always look right, because the strokes wave up and down on the metal.

I get grumpy when I have to wipe off a letter because it didn’t come out right, and I get nervous when I can’t find a steady place to set the paint can. He keeps old towels on the case, so even though I am always careful to wear something soft and no buttons, I can lean against the towel and prop my hand alongside. Because I’m not painting with the same mindset as I would be if I were writing a word, I can be behind them, thus painting them upside down, or even sideways, which is my favorite place to work. They have a string of letters that run along the edge that you’d see if the top was propped open. I start at the left, if you are facing it, but the top from where I stand, and work my way down. It’s accessible and the casting is large, so I can move fairly rapidly.

Today I remarked that if I was doing this as piece work, I’d be screwed. That’s when I learned they painted the cast parts black first. They then painted it with the gilding, and while it was still wet, buffed the gilding off the raised letters.

The baby grand isn’t called that because it’s small. It’s called that because it was the brainchild of one of the Misters Steinway. The factory thought it was a dumb idea and they dubbed it his “baby grand,” as a form of derision. Well, he was on to something – homes weren’t always large enough for a full-sized grand, but many could accommodate the baby grand.

The work Pere V. does is painstaking and he does it with the same kind of care his son lavishes on his own projects. Meticulous and well thought through. My part of the puzzle works because I’m just obsessive compulsive enough!

He keeps trying to pay me, which is pretty silly. He sent along a gift certificate to an Indian restaurant, which was marvelous, but the fact is, I’m only doing what anyone from my side of the tribe would do. Somebody starts a project and the driveway fills up – If someone has a skill that’s needed, then that’s what they do. They were into collaborative projects long before it hit the business world! And they had fun doing it. This little job helps him out, gives me a chance to play with a paintbrush, and quite frankly, a sense of satisfaction at having a skill that comes in handy.

Today’s piano is American walnut, with a gorgeous hand-rubbed finish. And, yes, it will be for sale once it’s finished. It’s a beaut! Original ivory keys! Beautiful tone! Write to herbansprawl@yahoo.com and I’ll put you in touch with the master piano rebuilder.

I think BGF has to feel like the dad who has just left his daughter at kindergarten on her first day of school.

It’s Shannon’s first day at her new job. She’s a full-fledged lawyer now. Wow. I know she’s feeling a ton of emotions, not the least of which is that she’s no longer anyone’s shadow. Soon she will be in the position of mentoring another bright young thing.

But she didn’t escape without one last performance of the Old Fart and Old Tart Show. We had her doubled over, as usual. And then, BGF (aka Old Fart) tried to pass along some easy cookbooks to her, which she tried, unsuccessfully, to leave behind. What do you say to a woman who hotly shouts, “I can’t cook!”? What do you say when she offers to clean up if you’ll do the cooking? If you are a guy who likes to putter in the kitchen, you drop to one knee and ask her to marry you!

Meanwhile, Stephanie is still trying to raise the last of the cash needed to take the G.R.O.W. girls on their well-deserved trip to our nation’s capital. Another $600 should do it.

My friends here in the Star City:

We are working on making G.R.O.W. an official non-profit, so write a check, made out to G.R.O.W. and either pop it in the mail or call me to come pick it up. I’m serious. No check is too small for this. Hopefully the paperwork will be completed and we’ll have the legal junk settled by year’s end, in which case your check will be a bona fide deduction. I’m the second chaperone for this gig, and I’d appreciate any help you can give her.

Remember: three girls who were headed down the wrong road, made a right hand turn, got their lives under control and passed all their SOLs. That’s what G.R.O.W. is all about. Helping girls become relevant in a society that doesn’t often hand them any breaks. I can’t wait to see who will be joining their group this fall!

Speaking of nieces - and I seem to be collecting them like I collect dishes - the Niece-to-Be is busy packing her apartment, putting things in storage and getting ready to move into Neph’s digs. They are in the count-down, with the added complication of finding a home for Max & Penny, the cats left over from a previous dalliance. Meanwhile, I want her recipe for tomato watermelon salad. She explained it to me, but I need to have the specifics - It was stellar and y’oughta see how BGF has my mater plants growing! Favoloso!

Number One Niece has her matched set of kiddies all organized, which is not unusual. #1 doesn’t get flapped too often. She just manages extremely efficiently. She didn’t get that from me! Number One Grandniece starts kindergarten this fall. And so we come full circle. The first day… it’s full of promise, like the buds on the stalks of lavender in my garden.

I was in The Fresh Market, procuring provisions for supper. Not having gotten beyond “I think I’ll put a couple of pieces of salmon on the grill,” I began meandering around the produce section. It’s easily my favorite part of the store. After some delectables, like locally grown peaches, it was time to get down to business.

There was some sweet corn in packages. Normally, I walk right by that, but next to it were ears in the husks. Yeah! I was all set to pick out half a dozen ears when it hit me where I was. This is white corn territory. This is where people don’t know from corn. This is where Silver Queen corn rules with an iron cob. I pulled aside enough husk to verify that my worst fears had been realized. I settled for four trimmed ears in a package. Yellow. The way it’s supposed to be.

We’d just had corn in Chicago, and it was okay, but my body clock for corn says it’s too early. August is corn month. Big Kitty was assigned the task of cleaning the ears in #1 Niece’s fancy new kitchen and I started to help. It was an abysmal situation. I couldn’t dehair the ears worth spit. It drove me crazy because I’m really good at this sort of thing.

This afternoon, while I removed the last of the shucks from the skimpy trimmed corn, I began to reflect on why I can put hairless corn into the pot when I’m at home. Here are the secrets.

First, no water. You can clean an ear of corn much better if it and your hands are dry. Second, always make sure you’ve grown a good thumbnail on your dominant hand. It’s an indispensible tool for gently teasing tiny fragments of cornsilk out from between two snug kernels. Third, do this over a bag that you can take straight to the trash bin. Finally, take your time. The ears must be treated with care, and you can’t just manhandle the things. If the kernels are out of alignment, the silk is especially difficult to remove, so you have to be patient and gently slide your thumbnail between the kernels to invite the silk to stick out enough to nab.

If you persist in eating that tasteless white stuff, I don’t happen to care how you treat your corn. However, a fat, juicy ear of sugar sweet yellow corn is manna from the goddesses. Believe me. I grew up near the DelMonte corn processing plant. The nearby farmers grew corn just for them, and it was the best corn in the world. Large ears with tiny cobs, huge kernels and tender as a first kiss – oh, baby. Size does count!

I just read an interesting little book called The Gin & Tonic Gardener – Confessions of a Reformed Compulsive Gardener by Janice Wells. I saw the title online when I was hunting for something neat to report on last month for the Herb Society book sharing session. My local independent bookseller kindly ordered me a copy and yesterday, when I retrieved it, I decided to be lazy, hang out on the porch with Barney and a cup of green tea, and look it over. Yuh. I read it. Cover to cover.

For starters, Ms. Wells, a “re-singled” woman with two daughters just out of college, was renovating a yard, and she wrote of her ideas, experiments and the wisdom she’s acquired from all her gardening family. After some vacillating, she decided to move, rented her house and bought another. Then that yard needed some massive fixing up.

I think what I appreciated the most was the fact that she is not the picture-perfect Southern Living sort of gardener. She’s strictly do-it-yourself. She doesn’t hire a design team and she doesn’t spend a fortune. She puts in plants that please her and ones that will thrive with very little interference. To be sure, she’s careful about watering, but she also falls down on that job! I love her.

My own garden sounds a lot like hers, but mine needs her creative eye for hardscaping. That’s the part she describes as liking best and that’s the part where I completely lack any imagination. You’d think, being an architecture nut, and one who goes weak in the knees over wrought iron (Aha! Maybe that’s why my knees are going…too much wrought iron action?), that I’d have all kinds of cute things going on back there. But it’s hard to build on that hill. So I’m excused. Or not. Ms. Wells would have dreamed up some kind of way of adding interest to an otherwise daunting hill.

At any rate, she is a woman after my own heart. Unlike Anna who grew the most fabulous hybrid tea roses, I am way too sorry for that. My roses are the old-fashioned ones known in the vernacular as Apothecary’s Roses. They go where they like. I whacked mine back mercilessly this spring, and it has been to their benefit. Ms. Wells likes to prune. I don’t. When I do it, I’m so scared I’m going to kill the plant. I left it to Clarice to whack back my dying petunias before we went to Illinois. They are looking quite buff, but beginning to get their second wind in the bosomy and showy department. He wielded the scissors with the kind of determination I reserve for polishing silver.

But the thing we have in common is the mutual dislike of grass. Our lawn is a joke. We’ve been here over 20 years and have yet to “weed and feed” it. It gets mowed. Any water it gets is because I am running a sprinkler for the plants in the beds under the dogwoods. I will admit to spending a small fortune on a Neuton mower a couple of years ago, but it isn’t like I love my lawn.

The Neuton is the best answer to my biggest summertime headache since living in a freestanding house. Big Kitty doesn’t like to mow, therefore the grass at a rented house we had got up to his knees. He had to go buy a hay whacker! Every summer we had the same fights. “The grass needs to be mowed.” I just went out there, it isn’t high enough.” “It is, too.” “It’s only up to my ankles.” “Yeah, well you have long legs and it’s up to my knees, dammit!”

And then the Goddess sent me Mr. Johnson. He came faithfully, even when we were away, and he was the kindest man I’ve ever met. He taught me a lot about gardening, but more important, he encouraged me. After his passing, Lawn Lady presided for a couple of years, but when she got unreliable, I knew I had to do something. I didn’t want to fool with a lawn mower because I hate little engines. They are noisy and they are hard to start, etc. etc. I’d seen the ads for the Neuton in Fine Gardening, so I investigated. I read the reviews and then I ordered one with all the toys.

For three years I have been mowing. No longer dependent on Big Kitty and a capricious Briggs & Stratton, I can pop out there and mow whenever I want because the mower isn’t loud and disruptive. But I didn’t like the trimmer attachment, and I needed a trimmer.

The Goddess loves me. I spied a Black and Decker battery powered trimmer at Lowe’s. Ever mindful of keeping the Lowe’s stock at a healthy height, I forked over $100 for one. It came with two batteries and the deal that week was a third battery free. The first spool of fish line wouldn’t cut itself, but the new one is doing well. The on/off button sticks, but I’m patient. I fiddle with it until it undoes itself. I am hell on wheels with that thing! It’s light and I can trim up a storm. It helps that my niece-to-be works for Black and Decker, so I felt doubly noble in buying yet another power tool that does not require gasoline.

I’d happily do away with all the grass, but this isn’t the yard of my dreams, so I’m holding back. I have visions of paths that meander through beds that are all crammed with all manner of tree, shrub, and perennial. But I’m also thinking real hard about Janice Wells’ theory that you need to be able to live in and enjoy your garden.

You need to be able to climb into your hammock with a gin and tonic and the latest Dave Robicheaux or V.I. Warchawski. And when it comes to hammocks, she saved me a ton of research. The freestanding ones can be moved so you keep the sun behind you, which makes it easier to read and nap! Plus, a regulation bocce court has no grass. You just have to have little benches and places to set the jelly glass of Dago red! I think I’m really a gin & tonic gardener, after all!

Last year when Anna and I made our historic Last Trip to Illinois, we honored a tradition and stopped at an outlet mall in Edinburgh, Indiana. As we were leaving, I spied a concrete David statue at a concrete place across the road. Anna had some fun teasing me about my yen for such a tacky thing, but there are just some bits of capriciousness that I cannot suppress.

Needless to say, the thing preyed on my mind off and on throughout the year, so when Big Kitty and I were on the way home from the boat christening, we stopped. It turns out the concrete place is known as White River Truck Repair and Yard Art. That was enough to get my attention.

Big Kitty was having some misgivings about this, but he gamely parked Red Rocket and I set off in search of David. He came in two sizes. My requirements were simple: he had to be intact – no fig leaves – and his face had to at least resemble Michelangelo’s masterpiece.

However, nothing would have made me part with the C-note required to take him home because, to be perfectly honest, he was very poorly made. The seams of the mold were messy and squooshed out and there were air bubbles in the concrete. You know what happens to air bubbles, don’t you? Moisture collects, expansion and contraction create havoc with the concrete’s integrity and before you know it, David’s head is gone – kind of like the Winged Victory of Samothrace. I looked around and all the other concrete “yard art” was likewise sloppily made. We left and I remarked that I might have to visit the Design Toscano website and spring for a $300 David –not! We had a good laugh about it, though, speculating about the neighbors’ reaction to David in the front yard.

When we got home, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to see if David was manufactured by anyone else and at a reasonable price. That’s when I happened upon a really great blog called Lowering the Bar. It turns out that in March of 2005 the owner of White River Truck Repair and Yard Art was told by the county officials that she had to move David and Venus de Milo out of direct view. Apparently these copies of great art are considered obscene under Indiana law. Since, according to these officials, the concrete pieces lack “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value” that makes them unsuitable for children’s eyes. (Gee, have any of them monitored the soaps that are on t.v. when kids get home in the afternoon?)

I about fell out of my chair laughing. Only in Indiana. The object of the exercise was to attract attention and sell some concrete, so recognizable pieces were aimed at the road. In my case, it was now 2007 and only their backsides caught the breeze of passing traffic, but Anna and I know from David’s hind end, so it was still a good advertising strategy.

The truth is, the David is a remarkable piece of sculpture. When I saw him in Firenze, I was awestruck by him, and not just the sheer size of “it” either! It is an utterly magnificent work of art, situated at the end of a long hall of unfinished sculptures that were intended for a tomb. There is a skylight above him and there, bathed in natural light, you can see the marble with its veins and flecks of sparkle. I got chills. And this was after I had fallen in love with the unfinished works that looked as though they were trying to burst free of the stone.

Even so, you have to have a sense of humor about these things, so that’s why the concrete David appealed to me. I have a friend who kept a magnet of David on his fridge. He had clothes, so while he poured the wine and we chatted about our day, I would dress David. I never put pants on him…

Once I gave a David switchplate to a single girl who wasn’t amused. The hole for the toggle was situated right over “it,” which made flicking on the lights an entirely amusing experience. Well, I thought so. I doubt she ever installed it. I think it had something to do with the fact that her hometown honey only had one gonad. I should have saved it for my friend with the magnet. He would have loved it!

What would have happened to me if I were living in Indiana, had erected David in my flowerbed, screwed David to my light switch, or banged him onto my fridge? What if a child had entered my house?

I can see the headline now: Senior Citizen Led to County Lock-up for Obscene Display in the Hosta Bed.

Luckily Indiana isn’t on my list of places to live -