Deer

The deer are getting quite bold around my neighborhood.  If I or my neighbors stop to look at one, the deer stares back.  The deer may also snort and stomp it's hoof which in deer language probably means, "What are YOU looking at?"  They come to my yard for dessert - Haralson apples. Now that all my vegetables are gone (thanks to them), all they have to eat is apples.  I wish we had fewer deer around here.  When we first moved here, I thought seeing deer was cool but now I look at them as a menace to my safety in a vehicle and my health because deer ticks carry Lymes Disease.  It doesn't matter how I feel about the deer, the fox, the chipmunks, the field mice, the hawks or the cedar waxwings.  We are all just fellow travelers on this planet trying to get through the day.  A deer is a vegetarian mammal, just like me.

Merriam-Webster Method of Swimming

To combat the mind numbing boredom of swimming, I use the Merriam-Webster method.  You can only stare at that stripe of  three blue 2-inch tiles for so long without loosing your mind.  If you want to know, the Merriam-Webster method involves the alphabet.  At the beginning of each lap I go through the alphabet.  I start with A.  Across the pool, I come up with two words starting with A in a certain category.  On the way back across the pool, I define each of the two words in my head.  Today the category was adjectives.  First half of the lap I'm thinking awesome, admirable, asinine, acrimonious, ancient, applicable, aromatic, acid, appropriate, and amenable.  Back and forth across the pool, I go through all 26 letters of the alphabet.  Some letters are easy.  The letter X is about impossible so either I focus on dirty words or let my mind wander at will.  Besides adjectives, I've focused on animals, birds, verbs, places, foods, colors, areas of study, and names of people.  Clock watching has totally disappeared since I started using the Merriam-Webster method of swimming.

Please Look After Mom

I read Please Look After Mom, a novel by Korean writer Kyung-Sook Shin translated into English.  It was really good.  The Mom in this story is a sacrificing, successful woman who's hard work and dedication go undetected by her family until she is lost.  Mom got lost at the train station in Seoul.  Her family, husband and 4 now grown children, look high and low for her while remembering all she has done for them.  The story is told by her eldest son, her eldest daughter, her husband, her youngest daughter and by her.  Mom raised her family in the country by cultivating rice, vegetables, raising poultry and pigs, and picking fruits from the trees in the yard.  She was an excellent gardener and a great cook.  She keeps the house clean and holds the family together.  She gets more done every day than seems humanly possible.  I enjoyed reading about the food and the gardening and the culture. 



Pearl Jam 20

Last night I spent the evening in Uptown.  We took in dinner and a show.  The show was "Pearl Jam 20," a retrospective look at a grunge rock band over the past 20 years.  I am not a Pearl Jam fan but I went with someone who is a HUGE FAN.  Pearl Jam is her passion.  So she made it a fun evening.  The movie showed the band from before it's beginnings when most of the members were in a Seattle bands called Green River, Mother Love Bone and Mookie Blaylock.  Eddie Vedder (see photo) has always been the lead singer and most noticed member of Pearl Jam. Aside from the drummer, the group has stayed very consistent.  This group of long-haired young men are very talented.  When young, they would swing their heads back and forth making their long hair slap forward in front of them and slap back on their backs.  Just try it once.  I tried it once this morning and got a killer headache for about 4 minutes. How did they do that?  Rocking your brain inside the skull like that can't be healthy.  Maybe if you take enough drugs and alcohol, you can't feel the pain as much.  Eddie Vedder used to climb high on the stage, jump off and crowd surf.  If I saw the lead singer jump off and fly toward me I would duck and run, not reach up to support him.  Once, in Europe, the crowd surged forward recklessly during a Pearl Jam concert and 9 people were killed.  What I liked about Pearl Jam is that their lyrics were not misogynistic like other bands in the 90's.  They supported causes like environmentalism, reproductive choice, research for Crohn's disease, and a free Tibet. Pearl Jam - a very interesting band. 



Pulling Carrots

I pulled carrots today.  This month has been very dry so even though it rained on and off today the ground was very hard.  There is a technique to pulling carrots.  If you're not careful you end up with a handful of greens and no carrot.  Only the carrots with shoulders above the sand level can be pulled out easily.  I grasp the green stalks and wiggle in a circular motion.  If the carrot won't budge, stop pulling.  Dig it out with a shovel.  I had to use a shovel on 80% of the carrots today.  They were in there tight.  And the ground was hard too.  Even when I stepped on the shovel with both feet at the same time, it wouldn't penetrate the hard soil.  Eventually I got all my carrots out.  I dug up potatoes and garlic as well.  I found lots of cutworms as I dug in the dirt.  I don't like cutworms.  They cut off my transplants in the spring.  If you try to cut them with a shovel, they generally just sink into the ground and survive.  So I threw them.  Every cut worm I found, and I found at least 20, was thrown as far as I could throw - maybe 10 feet away from the garden at most.  Was that far enough?  I know voles travel a quarter of an acre but I don't know about cutworms.  I hope I threw them far enough.   The entire job took almost two hours and would have been a lot easier if it wasn't for the swarms of gnats.  The gnats were flying around my face when I stood up. When I knelt closer to the earth, the gnats were even thicker and flew into my eyes and nose. One of the gnats bit me in the eyelid.  I look like I have very thick dramatic makeup on one eye but not the other. 

A Little Tour

Yesterday we went on a little tour of the caves on Wabasha Street.  I like caves.  When I was in high school a group of us would explore the caves at Battle Creek Park on the east side of St. Paul.  On this tour we learned how dangerous that could be.  A bonfire in a cave can dry out and weaken the ceiling.  The fire can also burn all the oxygen leaving only carbon monoxide to breath.  The caves on Wabasha are safe. No bonfires and plenty of air circulating through there.  Some of the rooms are heated.  The caves can be used for events.  A wedding was going to take place this evening.  I think you could fit a couple hundred people in there.  Some of the rooms have stucco walls and ceilings.  In the past the caves has been used for mining silica sand, growing mushrooms, a nightclub, a diner, a discotheque, and cold storage of produce and heavy machinery.  It was fun to go in the caves, look around, and get a little history lesson.

A Virtuous Woman

My book club read A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons.  We've been on a southern women writers theme lately.  This book is set in the south east.  The author, we were told, wrote some of the story while simultaneously breastfeeding twins.  That is multi-tasking if I've ever heard it.  The main characters are Jack and Ruby.  Others include Tiny Fran, Burr and June.  Jack and Ruby don't have much but they share a love that other people envy.  Ruby's love for Jack is demonstrated by cooking meals ahead of time so that Jack doesn't run out of frozen dinners until 4 months after her death.  Jack's love for Ruby is demonstrated by his moving her hands out of the traditional "crossing over the chest" position in her coffin because he knows she wouldn't want the nicotine stains on her fingers showing. Someone in the book club said the novel could easily be called "A Virtuous Man" because of Jack.  Jack is something.  He is at least as if not more virtuous than Ruby.  This is a good story if you want a quick book about true love that includes some memorable characters.