Herban Sprawl

Eek! It got chilly! After several days of summery temps, the bottom dropped out and it’s only 50 degrees out. It’s a good day to go out and start digging in the manure, but it’s also a good day to go sit in that big massage chair and get my toes done!

The work ethic is having a little conversation with the sybaritic side, and the bottom line is that is it also a supremely good day to give my studio a thorough cleaning - as in dust, vacuum and all that happy stuff. One of these days I’m going to figure out how to satisfy all sides of my life! (Not.)

Yesterday’s visit to Lowe’s was remarkable for having found a couple of new astilbe varieties to pop in with the hostas. The tags said they were from the Music Series. I saw white and I saw pink. I couldn’t see different names for them on the tags, but I thought, “Hey, Uncle Doc is a Lyric and a CSO subscriber - what better for the Uncle Doc garden?”

I pulled them to the tailgate of the truck while I unloaded eight 40 pound bags of composted manure/humus, and when I went back for them, saw they had stickers on their sides. One said Rhythm & Blues, the other said Rock & Roll. Okay, now, given Uncle Doc’s decidedly high brow music preferences, I had a pretty hearty laugh.

He had just sent me a whole fat envelope full of the news about the classical music scene in The Windy City. He is so excited because he gets to see Elizabeth Futral in The Merry Widow.  I am excited because he will also get to hear Stephen Costello in that production. I am jealous as hell, too! I want to see Elizabeth in the worst way! And that’s what makes our connection so important. We talk plants, music and whatever else comes up. The garden spot I am creating will honor that.

So much for decisions - as I was writing this, Lottie called to remind me that I am the leader for the Monday night book group, need to supply the snacks, and oh, by the way, did I want to take a quick trip to Walters’ Greenhouse for herbs today? Hah! Herb Mecca? The manure and my toes can wait… Yielding to herbal temptation is a no brainer!

You can see it at http://www.aauwofva.org. Stephanie, Virginia’s own Teacher of the Year, shaking hands with the President of the United States, in her fawn Talbots suit, looking totally blown away.

Okay, I am still over the moon about this. Tonight is the ball and she’ll be wearing the beautiful teal dress that her spouse, Joe, selected from the batch of probable contenders.

There are some things that still have the ability to move us to tears, cause us to roll on the floor laughing, or storm outside to the garden to yank out tree roots with our bare hands. Satchmo was right: What a Wonderful World.

Thanks for your interest. Here’s what: if you want to leave a comment, a few lines will be sufficient. I am not interested in posting doctoral dissertations. Keep it pithy, please.

As ever, I don’t edit, except for spelling and grammar. (Everybody makes typos - I fix ‘em free of charge.) I don’t edit for length. I also don’t post anything that gets beyond a paragraph or so. I will send you a message telling you that I’m not going to post anything that’s too long, which is more than some bloggers do. So please be mindful of this small request.

I’m interested in the free exchange of ideas, but if you have a whole lot to say, this is not the forum for it. Please don’t have hurt feelings. I just want to keep my blog light and get serious only once in a while.

Today was mow day. The thing about yard work is that one needs to keep an eye on the weather forecast in order to know when and how to fit in the things that need to be done. We’re lucky enough to have some rainy days coming up, so I wanted to get plenty of work done today.

I’ve been cleaning out one bed at a time, and today I got a jolt of inspiration for one that had been giving me a lot of trouble. Ivy. Periwinkle. Grrr. The mess had all resided under a dogwood that was serving as the shelter for my hosta collection. Since Big Kitty and decided to engage in watchful waiting regarding the real estate market, I decided to put things in the ground, rather than risk losing them.  And that’s how the inspiration part got started.

Most of this area is under a dogwood that provides wonderful dappled shade. Around the edges, I planted three dianthus varieties, and behind those, some lily bulbs that were in dire need of getting out of the pots. Their tags had been ecologically correct wooden ones, the names are now long gone, and I am no long planning to be e.c. for plant i.d. tags! Foeget dat noise. I also put in a couple of new bleeding heart varieties in a special place. The lilies of the valley did really well this year, and while they haven’t multiplied invasively (yet), they have their little spot near the trunk of the tree. It was while I was squatting under the tree, planting that the idea to make it into a special meditation garden came to me.

I need a little bench, and I’m willing to wait until the right one presents itself. The tree is going to get temple bells, and after I kill an area of icky, icky weeds, the soil is going to need some amending. That’s one reason nothing much has ever done well under this tree. The dirt is brick hard clay. I got so excited about this idea that I even sketched it out. Daylilies will rim the area to the west because they can take the sun. The tree hangs low, so between it and the daylilies, whatever gets planted in the space below will be shielded from hot summer sun.

I moved some junk wood around to give me a starting point for the bench, and that’s when I realized, this was going to be Uncle Doc’s Garden. Hostas, because he’s the one who got me into all this hosta trouble. Temple bells because he’s been traveling to southeast Asia and decided he likes the Dalai Lama’s ideas. And I’m sure I will come up with some other ideas for it.

This is what makes gardening so satisfying. It’s hard work, and a lot of the time the hardest work has to be done when one is not in the mood for it. But just get started, and before you know it, the hours have slipped away. We’re having some really brutally hot days this week, so I am looking forward to a good rain tomorrow. If it doesn’t materialize, that’s okay. I can go to Lowe’s for bags of composted manure, start cleaning out the herb bed and who knows what else.

It all started out innocently enough. Sal daBettafisha had shed some weird looking piece of skin that was settled on the bottom of his vase. When I cleaned it, I saved the hunk and went to the net to see what kind of thing had happened to him.

I wasn’t able to find anything about what it means when a betta fish molts, but I did learn that his wonderful vase wasn’t the healthiest environment. The more I read, the more concerned I became.

It has taken a long time for that stupid peace lily to amount to anything, and it was after I had decorated the vase for the holidays with glass scatters from the Lilian Vernon catalog that Sal’s predecessor, Bud, developed a tumor on his gill and bought the ranch. I have viewed the Chinese made scatters with suspicion ever since. Sal hasn’t had his apartment decorated. He just gets a holiday bow on the narrow part of the vase.

So the information I got led me to believe that if we were any kind of humane and decent people, we would provide our beautiful little guy with a better, healthier home. I began scouting the internet for possible aquariums. The one I loved was the biOrb, but it was mighty pricey. The reviews also said the lightbulbs cost a king’s ransom, and that they were a bit tough to clean. My hands are big, but not so much that I can’t get into tight places for sanitation purposes. I kept looking.

I was on the north end of town and needed a Best Buy run to return some crummy earbuds and decided to drop by their neighbor, PetSmart to see what they had in stock. I didn’t know I’d be walking into a sale on desktop aquariums, and that my handy little frequent shopper card would net a little more off, as well. I bit. I came home with a Baby biOrb and a package of small “easy plants.”

Thanks to my net reading, I ran pieces of panty hose over the greenery and knew it would tear the devil out of Sal’s fluffy fins. My first job was to pull out my tiny razor sharp scissors and to trim those puppies. I kept running the stocking over my cuts and kept checking to see if he could swim through the grass without getting snagged. When I was finally sure he wasn’t going to swim through or by them without turning into a ragbag, I started getting the thing ready for moving day.

Last night was the night. Big Kitty, a quick hand with the net, snagged Sal and slipped him into his new McMansion. He had already been fed supper, so he had only to swim around and check it out. Clearly he was stymied, but he is also a pretty curious guy, so he did a once-around-the-orb kind of thing and then hung out near the front, looking at us with fishy confusion. “What the hell is this place? Where are my slimy roots? And why did you do this to me?”

You know you’ve lost your mind when you start discussing the attributes of the aquarium to a fish.

We checked on him a lot. He didn’t seem to like the fake plants. I kept telling him I had trimmed them and they were snag free, but he was shunning them. I don’t blame him. They lack the appeal of live roots. When we came to the bowl, he would look out at us, never poufing and not showing any attitude. This was worrisome. A betta without attitude is reason for concern.

He seems to like it better when the light is on, so I pull the thing out to where it can catch more daylight, without any direct sun. (The bulbs are outrageous!) I also gave him a snack, which he ignored.

Tonight marks the 24 hour trial period I had in mind. He’s still not showing attitude, but perhaps it’s because he’s in the kitchen. His attitude spot is atop a barrister bookshelf that puts him at should height. We don’t have an outlet there, or that’s where his new digs would have gone. Nevertheless, I am still worried about him. All the net articles made it sound like he’d be in heaven to have 4 gallons of space, so I can only conclude he’s still trying to adjust.

Who knew this would turn into another source of obsessive worry?! All this for a fish? Yeah. All this for a fish. Sal’s family. He’s never been as feisty as Bud, but he’s had his moments, and he really is pretty - red with lavender shimmer. Now to figure out what to do with a hydroponic peace lily.

We are a family of readers. Some of us got around to reading for pleasure a little later than others, but we all love books. I have very clear memories of my grandmother reading paperbacks in her rocker and also with that little headboard light when she went to bed. My mother practically inhaled books and had a large set of bookshelves built in our living room. They were duly filled. Dad read in the early morning hours before he ambled off to his shop. Once I learned to read, I would read while he did, and until he sent me upstairs to “shag your sister out of the sack, willya?”

My in-law-in-laws were also voracious readers. One always got interesting books from them for Christmas - and it was fun to see the delight on their matriarch’s face as she piled up the books on the floor next to her on Christmas morning.

When my niece was little, she read under the covers with a flashlight. (I did, too, which was why I was so proud of her!) My brother-in-law was very practical about it. He made sure her flashlight had good batteries because he didn’t want her to go blind. These days, they are all in book groups.

A few years ago, Lori started obsessing about what Suzy would need to know before they could do the application process for the Chicago magnet schools. One of those things was beginning consonants. Oho. She came to the right person. From the famous Virginia Studies in Reading Research, we have lots of tricks in our magic shop! I made her a beginning consonant kit and Suzy was off and running. I even did a Language Experience Approach dictation with her. The spirits of the late Ed Henderson, patron saint of boys and girls who are learning to read, and the late Russell Stauffer, were with us, delighting in her first attempts to read her own work, and so help me Dick & Jane, she was getting the idea very easily!

Yesterday I got an email from Suzy’s proud mama about her progress. The little kindergartener is now reading Junie B. Jones, a chapter book! I am over the moon! All the late grandparents have to be kvelling like anything up there in grandparental heaven!

It’s spring. The pink dogwoods are showing their shades like flamingo feathers, the candytuft is bright, electric white dancing above rich greenery, the creeping phlox cascades in wafts of hot pink and lavender, and the hostas are sprouting up with their neon shades of green before the heat paints them with a little muting medium. But the big news is that Suzy is reading chapter books already!

It seems I stirred up some commentary in AAUW-land among those who are in favor of dropping the membership requirement. I was told I wasn’t being helpful. Well, here it is. Anyone who writes a blog will tell you this is purely the matter of a writer who has a need to write, it’s a form of self-gratification, and we get to spout opinions. If I happened to be in a face-to-face discussion about this issue, I wouldn’t dream of being critical without also having a solution ready to present. But on my blog, I have the luxury of pontificating, so I do!

Last night over dinner, my inimitable spouse, the Big Kitty, the two-legged feline love of my life, commented that women tend to be more egalitarian than men, so they will actively seek to be inclusive while men generally don’t give a rip. I invited him to guest write a piece and he said he’d think about it. He’s the president of the local procrastinator’s  association (Q is the vice-president, according to his sister), so I’ve gone ahead and swiped his thunder.

Now let’s be clear on one point. My spouse says I think like a man a lot of the time. My brother-in-law has said the thing he likes about my sister is that she thinks like a man. I am not sure where we get this. But if our spouses say it is true, it must be. Maybe that is why I’m not looking at the membership requirement as a BARRIER. To me, it’s a low wall, and easily scaled.

A lot of organizations are suffering from a lack of new members. Everyone from the masonic groups to the civic groups like Kiwanis is looking for new blood. We have had some forward momentum in terms of allowing women to join, such as the big shift when women could become Rotarians, and even some of the formerly exclusively male clubs began to admit women as full members. But let’s be honest and realistic. They all needed more members, and who better to tap into than those who were excluded?

The question AAUW should be addressing is whether those changes have affected those organizations’ membership levels in the long run. The answer is a definite no. And it isn’t because of anything more than a societal shift regarding memberships in general. Young people have very full lives. They all work, they are in time-consuming relationships, they marry and have children later, and they are very involved in their children’s activities. (Recall all the articles you’ve read about helicopter parents, overly-scheduled children, etc.)

Is an education requirement really a barrier? Not really. Is it bad to have any requirements for membership? No. To be sure, it can be awkward to have to find out if a woman has attended college in order to invite her to join AAUW, but there are so many ways around that problem that I find the argument to be fluff. All it takes is a little creativity - an educated woman oughta be able to manage that, dontcha think?

Then there is the complaint that it prevents some women who believe in our mission from joining. That’s not so bad, when you think about it. I believe in the missions of a lot of organizations, but I’m not eligible to join because I’m not a doctor, lawyer, caver, hiker… I can still support those missions by the way I choose to live and treat other people. You don’t have to be a Kiwanis member to buy tickets to their pancake breakfast fundraiser, but buying those tickets supports their mission, just as the people from our area support ours when they patronize our annual used book sale.

Sure it could be embarrassing to have to tell someone that s/he can’t join AAUW because s/he hasn’t the minimum degree, but it’s just as embarrassing to tell your boss her skirt is caught up in her pantyhose. An educated woman can handle a situation like that with grace.

Big Kitty says we women are tender-hearted and can’t bear it when we have to say no to people we like. I believe he’s on the right track with that idea. I have a hard time saying no to people I like. That’s why I wrote a check for my dues in the first place! The president of the chapter told my boss and me we were joining and we did as we were told - because we adore her! But if I wasn’t eligible, she would have had to tell me no. Oh, well. Those are the breaks. That doesn’t mean I should shun the annual used book sale. If I support the mission, then I can motor over and buy way too many books anyway, can’t I?

To me, the requirement of even a two year degree is not too much to ask. It really is not a barrier when you put it into perspective. A barrier is when an organization can pick and choose its members at will. For example, a girl may set her heart on becoming a Kappa. If the chapter doesn’t think she’ll fit in, they will not issue her a bid. And you don’t see the upper reaches of Kappa Kappa Gamma-dom suggesting that the chapters do otherwise. Now, that is a barrier.

I’m going to return to my original premise that I don’t believe removing the requirement will fix the problem. Instead, our branches have to decide for themselves, much the same as a church decides, that they do or do not wish to grow. They have to examine their existence in terms of the organization’s mission and decide if they need more members in order to carry out the mission. Along with that, they must come to grips with the idea that a branch could die out and need to be pruned from the organization when its membership dwindles to minimum number.

Growth is challenging. Just ask a church that is trying to grow in the face of dwindling church membership across the denominational board. As Americans retreat to their homes where they can be in touch with the whole world with the flick of a computer or television switch, they don’t need to come out. The one thing that will draw them out is the sense of community they may eventually crave. Now that is where AAUW can really shine. A branch of women who enjoy each other’s company, who will support one another, who will happily network and show up for triumphs and tragedies, now that is something we should be aiming for.

We can’t depend on our great book groups and the same old activities to draw in younger women. We have to change with them and we have to shift our focus to the kinds of things that create community for them. An AAUW mothers’ day out? Hey, we have grannies and aunties in spades among our ranks. Could we not run some kiddie activities so our young moms can get together and go out to a movie and later for cocktails? (Thanks, Lori - your night out inspired that!) An AAUW babysitting co-op? Proceeds benefit the scholarship program?

This is the kind of thinking that should be guiding us. There is no excuse why an organization of educated women should be lowering its standards instead of raising its expectations of creativity. If branches are too stuck in the mud to get with the times, then maybe they do need pruning. Oops. There I go, thinking like a man…

The raging discussion among AAUW members has to do with the proposed changes in the organization’s membership requirements. At the present time, in order to become a member of the American Association of University Women, you must have graduated from at least a two year degree program. So an A.A., R.N. or bachelor’s is all you need. You don’t even have to be a woman. Now they have decided that the key to declining membership is to eliminate the education requirement.

It’s a dumb idea.

The organization was founded about 125 years ago by educated women who sought other educated women with whom they could share time. The idea was to promote education among women and make it more acceptable in general society for women to attend college for something other than the M.R.S. degree. As time advanced, it became a good place for educated women to hobnob with other educated women outside of their home lives. As one of my older friends told me, it offered her the chance to have adult conversations - no kids and no P.T.A. talk, thus ending the kind of isolation many college grads felt as they lived through the 1950s when they were expected to be stay-at-home moms.

For some reason, the organization has become irrelevant to younger women. Perhaps it is because they have greater opportunities elsewhere. Perhaps it is because they are overscheduled with loading kids into SUVs and trucking them off to one activity after another. Or perhaps the problem is that some branches are set in their ways and aren’t as welcoming to new members or changes in their activities that meet the needs of a younger generation. Whatever it is, they decided upon opening up membership to anyone, regardless of age, and now we’ll be known only by the letters, not the words.

It’s a dumb idea.

My niece, who presides over an urban branch, notices the shifts and also, being the pragmatist, says we should defeat that motion at the convention and move on. It will not solve the problem of bringing in new members, and we need better solutions to expanding membership.

My spouse’s opinion is that if AAUW seeks to close the gap in economic parity for women and girls through education, then it cannot talk the talk without walking the walk. To eliminate the education requirement, he thinks, will gut the  core purpose of the organization. I think he’s on to something.

The Roanoke Valley Branch is thrilled when we gain younger members. We’re happy to include activities that appeal to them. A case in point is that we have some movement to provide support for the women returning to college through the Hollins University Horizon program. A younger woman is spearheading that, and she has our 100% support. The branch extended a gift membership to the Virginia Teacher of the Year, who finally got a chance to attend an event - our annual meeting where we awarded our six $1500 scholarships. She was blown away by that, and realized what I had been badgering her about - AAUW can be of assistance with her program for girls, G.R.O.W. As her duties as the T.O.Y. wind down, I look for her to become more active. A gift membership was also extended to a young lawyer, who has already been networking.

The point is, we’re going out of our way to identify young women, and to give them the extra incentive to join, we’re getting the ball rolling during the reduced membership fee period. It gets them in the door, and once we get them hooked into activities that are meaningful for them, our branch will be awash with fresh ideas and renewed enthusiasm. We love our young women! We want them to stick with us to work for the kinds of things that made Lilly Ledbetter a household term.

Eliminating the membership requirement of a degree isn’t going to get the branches who are stuck in the mud out of trouble. Their organizations have to undergo some deep soul-searching and face the question of what if. They have to decide if it’s worth it to stay mired in the same old. They have to adjust to change, but no one said the change had to challenge our belief in education as the way to equity for women.

I’m in the demographic that is between the young women and the elders. I haven’t been involved for as many years as I have been eligible, but for the few years I have been in the organization, I’ve seen the need for new blood. It is a point of pride that my niece leads the Chicago branch. It doesn’t seem that long ago when I was shopping for appliqued Florence Eisenman dresses for her! I have encouraged our T.O.Y. to get her friends to come along with us. We have a lot of work to put on our annual book sale, and we also need to be preparing for a day when that sale is no longer feasible. Younger women bring a different set of ideas and perspectives to such problems, and it is that which we value, and are actively seeking. If other branches aren’t seeing the light in that regard, then changing the membership requirement isn’t going to help.

So, it’s a dumb idea.

And with any luck, AAUW women who follow this blog will chime in - not just to me, but to the leadership of their branches and to the delegates who will attend the convention in June. Demand better answers from national AAUW leadership. This one is a cop-out, and they know it. They know what we know.

It’s a dumb idea.

We had a very heavy rain last night. No sun in the forecast for this morning, so things are in that odd never-never-land of bright colors heightened by the duskiness of grey clouds. Doesn’t make sense, but somehow all that rain rinsed off the pollen and cleared the air to the point where the vibrancy of spring is out there defying the storms. Go ahead, rain on me, I’m still bright grass green, deep muscari purple, saturated violet and sunshiny dandelion yellow.

I’m thinking I will go out with a paring knife and cut out the dandelions to force some new growth. Then I’m going to nab those tender new ones and make Big Kitty his first ever Grandma Kate dandelion salad. He’s only ever heard about it.

I have her kitchen table. It’s the one that we sat at in her apartment above Volk’s tavern. I was little and jammed into the chair next to the mangle. Grandma was on the wide side, and opposite me was Uncle Guido. Uncle Guido used to call dandelion salad “grass.”  “Eat your grass!” he’d say in his cheery way, oil and vinegar dribbling down his chin as he gobbled his! This, I might add, is my sainted gustatory uncle. He’s the one who, much to Grandma’s (and my mother’s) dismay, told me the heart of the artichoke was the best part, and proceeded to show me how to dehair and enjoy that last morsel.

How can anyone despise dandelions with memories like that?

There’s a little dance going on in Diamondhead, Mississippi tonight, as my guru of Cub Fandom is celebrating the season opener in the Cathedral at the corner of Clark and Addison. Yeah! Go Cubs, go! Go Cubs, go! Hey Chicago, whaddya say? The Cubs are gonna win today! (and we’ll dedicate that to our late diehard hero, Steve Goodman, who wrote that song)

They’ll break my heart again this year, but my guru has more years of misery in this department than I do. Doesn’t matter, though. In his first game as the Cubs’ catcher, George Mitterwald, who’d just just come from the Twins, hit three home runs. Jerry Morales caught flies in a scary basket catch fashion. Jose Cardenal couldn’t keep his cap on his fro when he ran down a grounder. Sweet Swingin’ Billy Williams had a glint in his eye that could make a rookie pitcher wet his pants. Don Kessinger could hang in the air like Barishnikov, and when Mark Grace took over at first base he was even cuter than Pete LaCock!

Lil Linda and I have some great memories of when $5 got us to the ballpark, into the ballpark, a hot dog, a beer and a frosty malt, not to mention a program and a pencil. We were there the day Kingman hit a homer in practice that hammered a little girl in the mouth - and she had braces! There was blood everywhere and the Bums were good about telling him which hospital they’d taken her to. The Bums loved to heckle Pete Rose when he got put in the outfield. He was a really good sport. He should be in the Hall of Fame.

Yep. It’s baseball season, all right, and the Cubs warmed the cockles of the home crowd’s hearts. Their feet may have been cold, but with enough Bud, who cares? Go Cubs, go….Go Cubs, go….