The Wheel

For most of the time life seems to be a linear journey. Today is George Washington's birthday and it reminds me that most of life is a circular cycle. The wheel of the seasons has always seemed to me to start today. The seed catalogues are all here and the annual planning for a stupendous harvest has begun.
I have always dreamt of having a farm, with orchards and flowers and berry bushes and cows and chickens and cats (lots of cats) and one or two trusty dogs to chase the chickens and the cats. Tomatoes and basil stretching as far as the eye can see and artichokes and cardoons and fennel and hay and oats and french tarragon and lingonberries and strawberries and blueberries and raspberries and so many other things that I could spend an hour typing their names. I even composed a song about that dream once.
The first lines were:
Darling come away with me, way with me now
I've a farm in the mountains
And fields I would plow.
The song goes on and on as I added lines each time I would walk through the farm I worked on. It was a small dairy farm in New Hampshire with the barn across the road from the house owned by a tired old farmer with a twinkly eye and a need for help to bring in the hay. Who knew that hay required so many steps of harvest only learned by years of effort? When to cut it, how long to let it lay, how to crinkle the stems, why to bale it, why there is a cupola on the barn, all things that the tired old farmer was more than happy to explain. Wear a shirt when dealing with hay or spend the evening scratching. Then the end of the day comes. The Sun is setting and the farmer opens up the milk cooler. Inside is a large collection of Piel's beer in the wide mouth jar. Now I understand why the barn is across the road.
Dinner is on the long table in the kitchen and the farmers wife casts occasional disapproving glances at the diners who think that she is not aware of the milk cooler. She comments during dinner that they have no need to keep up their slavery to the cows. They have put enough aside over the years to move to town and take up an easier lifestyle.
Later while smoking on the porch, there is no smoking in the house or anywhere near the barn, the farmer explains "No dairy farmer will ever give up the cows. Their sweet breath and their gentle ways are never to be found in a town.". The lingering fragrance of New England boiled dinner, with beets, the quiet of a rural evening, and the smell of new hay all spoke of the richness of this man's life. He was wise to put things aside. Early in his life he put aside working for wages, put aside commuting, put aside office politics. He put aside worrying about the weather. There is no use in fretting about the weather. The weather will be the weather and there is nothing you can do about it. He did confess to worrying about the weather when the hay was mown and not brought in yet. He did not even concern himself with the organic farmer next to him or as he said "Mr. Whiskers and Weeds.".
It is too late in life to realize such a dream. It would have been nice. As he said "Farm work ain't hard, it's just that the work never stops.". How is that different from commuting to and from work, mowing the grass, painting the house, fixing the leaks, and lying down at eleven o'clock in the evening hoping to get to sleep quickly so you can rise again at five in the morning to begin the commute again? It would have been nice.

Tintern Abbey

I feel as if someone from three hundred years ago has been staring into my mind. These are feelings that I have always had. Feelings that were much stronger when I was young and should still be there somewhere. It is only necessary to close your eyes for some time to understand the tyranny of vision. My sister didn't live long enough to become a friend of that magnitude but la petite anglais came close.

News

Not watching television is going well. The reward has been that I am unaware of many of the tragedies and omens of doom that are celebrated by the national and local news. Life seems a little lighter. I have had more time to read. I have been reading the work of someone whose work I was supposed to read in high school and never did. He was a poet and fits nicely into my pattern of reading history and poetry. History, poetry, and cookbooks, not a very well rounded mind but it suits me. The poet is Wordsworth. What a cool, cleansing breeze has begun to blow through the dark and dusty channels of my mind. I have spent too much time wallowing in the poetry of Cassandra wannabees. I wandered lost through Coleridge and even dipped my soul into the cesspit of Ginsburg. Wordsworth, the words of cleansing and hope and joy and looking and actually seeing the glory around me.
There is still one dismal finger of news that I still allow to intrude. Each time I sign on to the Internet, there it is. Today's finger was that a British and a French nuclear submarine collided. Tendrils of doubt and doom soon wafted through the channels. The people in charge of these submarines are responsible for the care and maintenance and AIMING of nuclear missles. Each of them was unable to avoid a metal object the size of a football field in the middle of the ocean. Then the question came. Why do the British and the French even still have nuclear submarines?
The British I can somewhat understand. After breakfast they don't have much to look forward to and they might as well put to sea and sail around. Drake knew it, Cook knew it, and Nelson had a hand in it. The French having nuclear weapons doesn't make any sense at all unless there is a danger that space aliens could come after the asparagas crop. The French have two traditional foes, the English and the Germans. They don't need missles. They could Fedex their warheads to their enemies much quicker and cheaper.
There has been a bright spot. I recently read of a woman that nursed a baby that was not her own. She is a big time movie star and didn't have to schedule an international news conference to announce her largesse. She simply picked up a hungry baby and fed it. If there is ever an election for President of the world, she has my vote.
Worldwide nuclear destruction or feeding a hungry baby, which would Wordsworth have taken the time to describe? Both Coleridge and Wordsworth are easy to predict. It is hard to understand that they were friends and neighbors. Pooh and the donkey were also.

Stimulating

Getting up at five o'clock in the morning can cause a person to worry about their sanity. Thoughts creep through your mind that do not occur in the sunlight.

787 billion dollars to bail out banks and brokerage houses and humongous businesses. Where will that money come from? It won't come from rich people and international conglomerates for they long ago learned to find ways to avoid taxes. The only big business that I know of that succeeded without a large government handout was Edwin Land's Polaroid. So where will the money come from? Hang on to your hat average American for there is a cold wind coming.

787 billion dollars. That is $2600.00 for every resident of America. How about giving every resident $2600.00? So a family of four gets over ten thousand dollars. They pay back ten dollars a week for six years and the government makes a tidy profit. Very few average Americans will squirrel away the money in a dark, dusty bank vault or an off-shore tax shelter. Imagine an immigrant family, yes they are here and unlikely to leave so they are Americans, with seven children. They are unlikely to buy a Mercedes or a condominium in Tahiti or a lot of caviar and champagne. They might buy a small Chevy, food for their families, medical care, a decent place to live, or education for their children. All things that are produced locally. The bleeding of America's assets to other lands might decrease. Would this be fair? Not many residents of beach houses in the Hamptons have seven children so the money would go to the residents that are going to have to pay it back. What about the residents who try to avoid paying the money back by dying?

Global warming is on everyone's mind now. Even a bird, with its tiny little bird brain, does not foul its own nest. We live in a wonderful space ship, hurtling through space. It is the only ship we have and some people are smoking cigars. How about a big fat tax on anything or anybody that produces green house gases? $10.00 a barrel on imported oil. The money would start rolling in, other countries would see that America had discovered a golden goose and jump on the band wagon. Negotiation and diplomacy haven't got a chance in hell of ending this global problem. Greed on the other hand is a universal human motivator.

It could be Eden all over. Butter for everyone! The problem would be that once the money started rolling into the treasury, some genius in the legislature would ponder "Hmmm, we really are under-gunned." and the whole insane process would start all over.

The average sane American doesn't want world domination. We would be happy if at the end of a day of hard work, we could sit in the yard, grill some hamburgers, have a cold beer, and watch our healthy happy well clothed children laugh and play. It would also be nice to have the company of our wife instead of having her work till 11:oo P.M. in a convenience store. Simple things for simple people and that is the point of this 787 billion dollars. Simple things for simple people and big grandiose things for big grandiose people. Simple people, hang on to your hats. Never mind your wallets because they are going to become useless accessories.

So much for being the early bird. We are going to get the worm alright but be careful, the worm is sneaking up behind you. Out of the frying pan and into the fire is also CHANGE.

Finally

Finally baked ziti that is palatable. The secret is cottage cheese instead of ricotta, mozzarella cubed instead of shredded, about twice as much sauce as is usually called for, and cooking the ziti just short of al dente before adding to the sauce and putting in the oven.
Now the problem is baked ziti will be on the menu for three days as the recipe serves eight to ten.
Today is Friday the thirteenth. It is the day we celebrate the Templars. The Templars were the uber-rich of medieval society. They had accumulated vast resources through donations and contributions and renting out money. They had to rent it out as it was considered wrong to charge interest.

The King of France was in an economic bind. He had huge debts and a stagnant economy. He was in a quandry. Where could he get some quick money and how could he get rid of his crushing debt? The Kings of other countries were in a similar bind. The King of France looked around and saw that those supposedly poor Templars were actually the richest bankers in Europe, had huge land holdings, and most of his debt was owed to the Templars. On Friday the thirteenth he and the other kings rounded up all of the Templars, took their money and their land, and burned some of them at the stake. At the time debts could not be collected by dead people or heretics and the Templars were all charged with heresy and convicted in religious courts, leaving them no recourse to secular courts. The kings found this policy to be stimulating.

I wonder if the King of Washington D.C. knows about this option. Of course it would create a shortage of bankers and who knows what problems that would create? Who is the bigger thief, the man that robs a bank or the man that opens a bank? There is a very old book that talks about the charging of interest and mentions a thing called a jubilee, maybe we need a jubilee.

A banner day

Yesterday was a banner day. Today is my brother's birthday so yesterday I had him and his wife come for dinner. I got up at three a.m. and started cooking. By the time that they arrived I had Swedish meatballs and Swedish pickles and a chocolate birthday cake made.
It was a joy to spend the day with my brother. He is probably the only person in the world that I feel comfortable with. What is it about brothers? He is the person I slept in the same bed with when we were small. He is my Father standing before me with my Fathers eyes looking at me. He knew my Father and he knew my Mother and he knew me. There is something there that defies description. It is tenuous at times, it is as strong as steel in times of trouble. No matter what happens or how badly I mess up, he is there. I hope that I can be also.

I told me so

One tax form complete. I filed the state tax return over the Internet. I had already filled out the paper form to get the relevant figures. I was surprised to see that it took longer to complete the forms on the Internet than it did to do it by hand. I am sure that there will be a complication as I think that the state made a mistake in constucting their form and one deduction occurs in two places and is counted twice.

This morning there was another very pleasant surprise. When I got up there was a sunbeam shining through a small gap in the cloud layer. The gap was between the horizon and the clouds. The Sun was as orange as the orangiest crayon in the Crayola box. The beam shone through the glass on the storm door, down the hall, and was shining on the living room wall, which is the West wall. It is remarkable how such a small thing can stop one in one's tracks and initiate contemplation of the wonder and power that the small things in life give to us. There is a fire in the sky. Without that fire L.L. Bean would replace Exxon as our most valuable resource. It reminds me of a movie I once saw where a traditional Navajo grandfather was talking to his grandson about the things that the grandson was learning in the mission school. The grandson eplained to the grandfather about the christian god. That god was more powerful than the sun that the grandfather worshiped and the sun was not a god. The grandfather asked "Have you seen this christian god?". The grandson answered "No.". The grandfather said "Have you seen the Sun?".

Persia and New Mexico, who would have ever thought that there could be a connection? War and peace, have you ever seen peace? Maybe it lived in the 1930s but that was long ago, in the time of the grandfathers. Washington warned of the dangers of involving the nation in the turmoils of other nations but what did he know? He wasn't a great military strategist, he was simply a man that had seen the horrors of war and knew that the constant bickering of the old world could draw us into the deluge. Washington, the man who would not be king. If not for his precedent, we might have had William Jefferson Clinton for eight more years and be wondering what to do with a ponderous surplus in the federal budget. Washington, a general who had seen war, warning of the dangers of war. Eisenhower, a general who had seen war, warning of the dangers of the military industrial complex. General Motors and Daimler looking for a handout from the government as they are too important to America to be allowed to fail. The only thing that they have in common is that they both made tanks in the Second World War, tanks for opposing sides. Ford, they are not looking for a handout. They are just an industrial complex that brought us the Model T and farm tractors and charcoal briquets for grilling in a peaceful backyard. In the military industrial complex, Ford is simply a four letter word.

This is what happens when you get up at sunrise and have too many cups of coffee. Today I will walk and see the snow and the ice on the river and the geese flying North for their tanning appointments. I will do my part for energy conservation by watching a low numbered channel on the television. I will do my part for reason amplification by watching channel 2.

So Responsible

I have reached a watershed event in life. I decided to file income tax returns this year. I am going to attempt to e-file. It will not work. I am sure of that. There will be a question such as "Are you a left-handed Estonian with brown eyes? If the answer is no, you are not eligible to E-File!". I love the forms and their little stop signs.
The last few days have been really pleasant. There was a balmy day, a snowy day, and today which was cold enough and the snowflakes that were trapped in the bushes were being gently dislodged by the breeze. I got a gentle facefull while walking and was pleased that it was so refreshing. I have shoveled the steps twice and still retain my fondness for shoveling snow. There is pleasure in a task that has a beginning and a foreseeable end and allows one to proceed at one's own pace. It is not like working in a cubicle and having an endless eluge of papers accumulate while you are working on yesterday's unfinished piles. When you get to the end of the path, you can sit in the snow and watch the small birds feed on the cedar berries that have fallen to the surface of the snow. Getting old is a very good thing. There is time for reflection and observation. Gone are the days of Provide, Provide! There is time for reading and learning and making turkey stock and naps. I never used to take naps. There was always some urgency that needed attention, some dripping faucet that needed fixing, some lawn that needed mowing. Then I met la petite anglais and she showed me the pleasure of naps. To lie in a slowly moving hammock with a breeze the same temperature as me blowing over me. To fall asleep savoring the scent of jasmine wafting from the vine. To sip cold lemonade and eat tomato sandwiches made of one giant slice still warm from the sun of the garden. To be refreshed in the evening and still have the energy to dance to a Strauss waltz on the deck in the moonlight. There has always been time for these things, I just never noticed it. My world proceeds at a slow pace and I revel in the pace and the world. There is nothing beyond the horizon except more horizon. There is turkey stock in the refrigerator, there are Juncos feeding at my feet, and there is the bracing rush of a facefull of snow. Why chase after happiness over the horizon, it is all around me. It is time to notice it.