Dispatch #10: March Madness

GUNS & ROSES  TOMATOES & JONQUILS

This month, as the plants begin to bud and bloom again, I’ve been thinking about my great-grandmother’s mother’s garden. The family had a tiny home and a tidy garden. 

My great-grandmother, her younger siblings, and their parents were pickers and sharecroppers. They picked vegetables and cotton. The aunts and uncles on that side of my family were also pickers. One of the aunts – Aunt Ruby Boyd – was blinded while she was picking vegetables. She went to rub sweat from her eyes, but wasn’t thinking about all of the farm chemicals on her hands – perhaps because she didn’t realize, perhaps because she was too tired, perhaps because they didn’t have regular breaks for resting up or washing their hands. They only had time to pick – through the heat of the day, through the humid late-summer days. Even back then, the western Kentucky climate made the air feel too thick, and made the low-lying fields feel like marshes.

Occasionally, my great-great-grandmother needed to tend to the younger kids, and they would have to step out of the field to take breaks. They would pause momentarily, and my great-grandmother – a classically beautiful woman, a woman who lived well into her nineties, but who was then just a preteen girl covered in soil and sweat – would step in and take over the work of two women. She would stoop and bend and pick for two, covering both sides of the row.

Farm work was demanding, but one of my great-great-grandmother’s passions was her garden. My own grandmother said that she, her sister, her mother, and the grandparents were already so poor that, during the Depression, the kids didn’t even realize that they needed to be worried. They’d never lived extravagantly. But, she’d said, we also never worried about starving – because of the garden.

My great-great-grandmother maintained a lush garden, where she grew massive tomatoes. I’ve never been able to grow tomatoes without black spots and bruises, but her tomatoes were healthy and bright-red, filled with nectar and glowing with trapped sunlight. Neighbors would come and ask to buy the always-black soil from her garden, and she would let them have it for free – but it was her who made the tomatoes grow so beautifully, with her skills and her careful attention.

She kept the family fed up  through the 1930s. As she grew older, my great-grandmother and her brother took over. (Their sister, Alma, died the day before her thirteenth birthday, after contracting tetanus.) The siblings kept the family fed through the 1940s and 1950s by working in factories – the coat factory, the lamp factory, the munitions factory, and the Anheuser-Busch plant, over in Missouri. 

Within a few years, my great-uncle was murdered – and all of the work inside and outside of the home fell to my great-grandmother and her daughters. Raising children and grandchildren (and cousins), juggling eldercare with factory work, cooking delicious meals and keeping the family fed – all of that interfered with gardening.

Years later, after everyone had moved out of the country and into town, we started growing small gardens. I picked grape tomatoes and cucumbers at my grandmother’s house, and I used zucchini grown in our family’s garden to make desserts – sweet little cakes filled with shredded zucchini and sugar and vanilla. (Shredded zucchini has the consistency and crunch of a shredded apple. I’ve used apples in place of zucchini, when I’m baking, but it doesn’t have quite the same taste.)

In the fall, I’ve picked late-growing peppers and tiny cucumbers. The little cukes cling to half-dead vines, but the plants usually produce straight through the warm days of mid-autumn. When other planters are beginning to pick their pumpkins, I scour our garden for the last handful of produce – some radishes, some bell peppers, and a tiny grape tomato.

I’ll never be able to grow a perfect beefsteak tomato. But I feel like Dorothy and Juanita and Inous and Rachael Ellen would tell me to be proud of my tiny grape tomatoes.

BEING CHASED … OR DOING THE CHASING

Over the past couple of years, I haven’t spent much time travelling. I realized that – short of visiting mountains and caves and rock bridges, which aren’t too far away – I haven’t been much of an adventurer. I’ve mostly waited for things to come to me. 

I’d waited for the Northern Lights to come to Kentucky – which seemed like a happy accident. All I had to do was step outside and remember to look skyward. I’d also waited for two solar eclipses to come to me. (I’ve learned that traveling to see eclipses is an incredibly expensive hobby, so this was probably a wise decision.)

I can’t move the stars, but they move on their own. I can’t move mountains, though. And I can’t sit around waiting for mountains – or people – to come to me.

I haven’t really chased anything since I earned my master’s. I’ve been feeling like I need to find something to pursue.

I’ve been thinking about going back to school. I’ve been thinking about taking the LSAT. I’ve been thinking about trying to dip my toe back in the (non-pH-balanced?) dating pool.

The truth is, there’s a local man who I have a slight interest in – but whom I never talk to. I can’t say I’ve never spoken to him, but I haven’t said anything to him in over a year. I don’t have any real reason to cold-call him, or to approach him. Likewise, he has no reason to approach me.

I started thinking of excuses to talk to him, and I couldn’t come up with any. I decided I would try to write a letter to him, just as an exercise, but I couldn’t get past the first line. 

(Sidenote: I’ve discovered that, for those of us who have trouble keeping a journal, there are great alternatives. Writing letters to pen pals and writing a blog are good ways to process your thoughts without feeling pressured to maintain a daily record. I hate feeling like I have a deadline to meet … which is why I post a newsletter at the end of every month.)

I started thinking about what I would share with him – thoughts, jokes, questions, observations, funny things I’ve seen IRL or on the Internet – and then I realized that I didn’t have anything to say to him. 

Nothing new, I mean. I would say the same stuff to him that I share with you all. But I didn’t have any original thoughts or original secrets to share. I had nothing.

That’s when it hit me – I only had an interest in him because I’ve been projecting certain thoughts onto him, based on appearances, impressions, and prior knowledge. 

Past conversations have made me think he’s a “good” or “safe” person – but I don’t know much about him, and I doubt he knows much of anything about me.

I’ve realized that I’ve also been too much of a blank slate, whenever I’m interacting with people. I sometimes feel like the only time people take an interest in me is when I’m holding up a mirror to them (reflecting what they want to see), or holding up a chalkboard for them to draw on (giving them the opportunity to fill in my blanks). I’m a Living Mad Libs Sheet.

Regarding the aforementioned gentleman, there are so many things he doesn’t know about me, and so many that I don’t know about him. I don’t know his birthday, for instance – the date, the season, or even the year.

From an astrological perspective, I’m not that bothered. It would be interesting to know, but it’s not something I’d lose sleep over.

But what if he’s an Aquarius? Some Aquarius dudes stubbornly try to steer the ship, and – y’all know that I’d have a hard time with that. And what if he’s a big-hearted Pisces? What if I accidentally hurt his tender feelings? How could I handle it?!

I’m not too fixated on astrology, though, so … It’s all gravy. But I’d still like to establish a birthdate, or a birth year, for my own peace of mind. I’ve decided my “cutoff year” is 1988, and I’m almost certain he’s of the 1990+ vintage.

(That’s fine by me. I’m cool with preemptively establishing this rule: you have to be born between 1988 and 1997 to drive this ol’ clunker.)

CHASING, PART TWO

I’m willing to admit that I have been interested in a man for superficial reasons – because I liked his car, because I liked his truck, because I liked his looks, because I liked something about the way that I could just tell he had more access than I did. I could tell he was more mainstream than I was – or than I am – and it made me want to reach the same level of acceptance, of prominence.

I could tell that there were young men who grew up with more culture in their homes, with parents who bought them instruments or took them on trips overseas. Without being jealous or resentful, I wanted a taste of this. I had a curiosity about all of this – this other world, where people knew about all the other, bigger worlds.

But I can almost always keep myself in check – without getting too bitter about my life circumstances. I grew up in the lower middle class. I was aware that our family never went hungry – and I lived in a school district where more than half of the kids were on free-and-reduced lunch plans, where many people did without. I was also aware that some of my closest friends lived in trailers and in HUD housing, and I didn’t.

But I lived in an old house – a house that didn’t have modern amenities, like a doorbell or a kitchen island. We never owned a Playstation, an XBox, or a Tivo. I never played Guitar Hero. I never wore clothes from Abercrombie or Banana Republic. And I got my first iPhone when I was 19. My family lived in relative comfort, but we didn’t follow trends.

I remember going to a wealthier acquaintance’s house – a hang-out that had been arranged because we’d gone to two of the same elementary schools and the same middle school – and I was shocked to see all the things their family owned. They had an intercom, a huge aquarium, and a bead curtain. (To this day, the bead curtain was the most fascinating of the three possessions – perhaps because it seemed more accessible to me. It was something that glittered, but it was within my reach.)

Selfishly, I’ve remembered all of the things I didn’t have. My parents still provided me with plenty of neat things. As a kid, I had a Quantum LeapPad, an American Girl doll, and at least one Furby – current whereabouts unknown, thankfully!

We had things, but we didn't have everything. I didn’t miss “everything,” either, because we found suitable alternatives. We had an above-ground pool for one summer, and never again. Instead of “investing” in another pool, my parents bought a bright-pink Crazy Daisy – a sprinkler for me and the neighborhood kids to run through.

Our refrigerator was an old tan thing, and it didn’t have an icemaker or neat shelves with cute compartments. But it had a freezer, and it ran properly. It kept ice cream cool – and we always had ice cream or tubed freezer pops.

None of this felt like deprivation to me – because it wasn’t. But when I saw the way other people lived – solidly middle class people who had matching stools in their kitchens, people on Trading Spaces who had walk-in closets, people who bought their makeup at Sephora instead of Walmart – I felt a bit like I would be forever behind the people who grew up expecting more than a save-first-spend-later existence.

I’ve never been a social climber, but I often took an anthropological interest in the way more privileged people lived. And I still haven’t caught up to these folks … but I don’t know that I want to catch up. 

I don’t want a lot. I’ve just wanted to be safe and comfortable. 

GENERAL DEGREE

I’m the daughter of two business majors, who – between the two of them – have three business degrees. So I can’t believe my parents let me get a degree in journalism. What were they thinking? Why didn’t they make me study pharmacology? 

I seem to remember only a little pushback, when I said I wanted to study English or journalism, and then – then they handed me the reins. I just can’t believe they let me get away with it, especially when I said I didn’t know what kind of career to envisage. I had no idea what to hope for, back when I was 18. 

At 23, my prospects didn’t seem much better. I had a graduate degree, but I still felt like I wasn’t chasing any specific career goals. I wanted security and stability more than I wanted awards or titles, and I felt like …

Foolishly, I felt like the right career would find me.

I was looking at the Occupational Outlook Handbook, and I saw that most of my peers who graduated with communications and media degrees either go into HR or marketing. Some go into law, and I suspect that my parents thought I might go that route.

As it stands, I used my degree for one thing: to become a degree-holder and to jump straight to graduate school. I had to have a bachelors in order to get my masters. I rushed through that degree in a year and a half, but I did a fair-to-middling job of studying public policy, and I’ve used that degree a grand total of …

Well, lately, I use it every day. I use that degree every single day. I had the misfortune of graduating with an MPA during the current president’s first term, and even though I had (very, very low-level) opportunities to apply for an internship or go to work in Washington, I realized I would rather brush a feral cat’s teeth than to deal with any of that.

That being said, I still use my degree to understand current policies and procedures. I’ve used my degree when I file Hatch Act complaints, and when I contact my representatives, and when I analyze the news.

I’m 30 now, and I still might go to law school. I’ve read that in Virginia and California – and in a couple of other states – there are programs for “law readers,” where paralegals can study on-the-job and then take the bar exam. It requires quite a bit of discipline. Law readers have to spend a ton of time reading and doing self-study. It also requires many hours of work experience – but it’s enough to give folks the requisite training for the bar.

To me, as a non-lawyer, it sounds like a great program. If I lived in a state that had a program like this, I’d definitely be looking into it.

I have no idea where I’ll be when I’m 50. The OOH says that they’ll need tens of thousands of people to install solar panels over the next 10 years, and perhaps when I’m 45 or 50, I’ll be installing solar panels, or roofing, or practicing law and doing what I’m currently doing.

Instead of being afraid of the unknown, I’m going to embrace it. I don’t know where I’ll be going – but if I live long enough, I’ll have no choice but to find it out eventually. 

ENTR'ACTE

This section is a bit like an ad break. It’s simply a list of great 1990s films:

I’ll readily admit that one of these films is not like the others. But you will never make me apologize for loving the gazebo-rain scene in KKHH. That film is a masterpiece! Hallmark could never!

“90S FINE”

Speaking of the 1990s – if you’ll refer back to last month’s update, I mentioned that there aren’t many 90s Fine celebrities anymore. I named four athletes, and I knew the list was paltry. So I dove back in, and I eagerly conducted more research.

I thought of a few other men who fit into that category: Trevante Rhodes. Benito Martinez Ocasio. Dev Patel.

I decided to do even more investigative research, and I’ve come to the conclusion that Son Suk-ku is also in the 90s Fine category. He’s finer than frog hair, and he has that keep-the-gold-chain-on energy.

He’s earned his place on the list. With honors! With distinction! 

(This is where I pause to mention that I’ve watched a variety of international dramas on Netflix, and I’m not quick to latch on to celebrity crushes. But … Son Suk-ku and Go Kyung-pyo are men, honey! Mr. Gu and Mr. Go? Whew!)

COOKING CUTTING THE BOOKS

When I was a freshman in high school, I made a visit to the local public library. I didn’t often go to the library – until I started working there, sometime around my sophomore year. (I worked there from 2009 to 2013, and again from 2018 to 2019. Whew – time has flown!)

I’d volunteered there during the summer months, but the rest of the time – because I didn’t have a car yet – I didn’t make casual trips to the library. I remember that I’d asked one of my parents to take me to the library, so that I could look for a book of Sylvia Plath’s poems. (Yeah.) 

I found Ariel right where it was supposed to be – but when I pulled the book off the shelf, I saw that it was only the binding. Someone had taken a knife and, with surgical precision, removed the entire block of text. They didn’t leave a single page. Just a shell, just a husk.

I showed the folks at the desk what I’d found. I don’t know if they/we ever ordered a replacement. What I do know is that, roughly once every two or three years, I think about this person – and I try to imagine who they were, this person who stole Ariel. 

Was this person a teenager? An adult? An aspiring poet – someone looking for inspiration? Or was it someone who was offended by Plath’s poetry, someone who wanted to remove “offensive ideas” from the library’s collection?

I’ll never know what possesses people to destroy a book, or to comment something hateful instead of scrolling, or … to do any of those kinds of things.

May I never be so better. May I always find something more joyful to occupy my time.

TV TALK

I can’t believe that my family has been missing out on watching The Righteous Gemstones. It’s like a raunchier King of the Hill, in that it’s a show with perfect (big and small) touches that people who’ve lived within that geographical region/culture can appreciate.

I love a show where the little jokes are more hilarious than the [insert implausible main plot line here] – something where the true humor is funnier than the “flashier” jokes. The story that Judy told about seeing the college professor’s wife “in the Grand Cherokee at Harris-Teeter” and the incident with the Nissan Cube at the Piggly-Wiggly? Those little moments made me holler!

BEING BORING

My dad is a terribly interesting person. He’s been a dump-truck driver, a frat boy, a Pershing Rifles guardsman, a water-skier, a summertime farmhand, and an electronics factory worker. (He’s also been an office worker, so he’s done a little bit of everything.) He grew up in Kentucky and Florida, down in the Keys. He would listen to Cuban radio stations and catch puffer-fish.

I’ve often wondered what it’s like to be an interesting person, but to have a boring child. I’m sure it’s a good thing my siblings are (likely) more interesting than I am – because I have the hobbies of a grandmother. Genealogy. Reading old novels. Watching old movies. Watching international movies.

I’ve done a few adventurous things, even though I’m pretty clumsy. I’ve gone bodyboarding. I’ve gone stargazing by myself. I once rode an elephant, although I really regret it. 

I often wish I were more interesting, but I … I’m too lazy to change all at once. I might change gradually, over time, but I don’t feel like I’m quite ready to reinvent myself. 

A RING FOR SPRING

It’s not really a secret that I don’t plan on getting married. I wrote about this last month — about how I’m comfortable being a SINK. It is what it is.

But there are young folks named Ainsley and Braedyn getting married, according to the local wedding announcements. 

I can’t believe it. Time is marching on. Soon, Tiffany and Brittany will be having retirement parties. Oh, man! 

TIME HAS ALWAYS FLOWN

It’s 1481. My Irish ancestors are living in southwestern Ireland. Farther along the Atlantic Coast, my Bakongo ancestors live in the Kingdom of Kongo. My Scottish ancestors are up in the gray Highlands. My Morisco ancestors haven’t left southern Spain, and are likely still practicing Muslims. My Karelian ancestors have moved to the Savonian region, along the eastern boundary of Finland.

In about eleven years’ time, everything changed. Upheaval. By 1494, their lives were (mostly) in flux – with the influence of the Portuguese, Spanish, British, Russian, and Swedish empires. In the centuries that followed, the French, Belgian, and U.S. empires would also shape these peoples, these homelands.

Five hundred years later, when I was born, the world was largely different – but everything around us is still shaped by empire.

If my ancestors were alive today, they would possibly be shocked to know that much of the world existed. But I wouldn’t know their thoughts, because I wouldn’t be able to understand any of them. I don’t speak any of my ancestral languages fluently. (I suppose Mozarabic would be similar to Spanish, my strongest second language, but I’m not fluent in Spanish, either.)

The only words that come to me instantly in Finnish and Irish are sininen and gorm, although I can occasionally be bothered to remember short greetings and other phrases. (I also remembered the word kaarme, but I had to use Google to figure out that it means snake.)

My ancestors would think that I’m a massive fool, although I feel like they’d be impressed that I’ve managed to learn the word for blue across five languages. Should I ever need to tell someone that something is azul, I might have a chance at bridging linguistic gaps. 

Heaven help me if I ever need to describe anything other than a blue wizard.

READING FOR FILTH

When I was 13, I wanted to read Gone With The Wind. I really, really wanted to earn a ton of Accelerated Reader points, and I latched onto the first long book I could find. 

At first, it was a challenge to slog through the descriptions of crumbling plantations and selfish women. But I finished the book, and then watched the film. It’s obvious that aesthetics carried that enterprise.

But I have to admit that I took a slight interest in the terrible people in Mitchell’s book, because they made for an interesting psychological study. The only two “kind” characters in the book are on the opposite sides of the Madonna-whore complex, and everyone else is either a total caricature or a terrible person.

If Scarlett O’Hara were alive today, she’d be a villain on Love Island. 

ILLINOIS(E)

I recently visited the twin cities of Marion, Illinois and Carbondale, Illinois. Although the malls in both of these towns have withered away, the restaurants are busy.

As a country mouse, I’m fascinated by variety. Imagine my surprise to find out that both of these towns have Panda Expresses, Smoothie Kings, and Freddy’s Frozen Custards. They’ve even got a Raising Cane’s in Marion. (They also have a minor league baseball team and a federal prison there, so they have other things we lack.) 

As far as non-chain restaurants go, southern Illinois has fantastic options. Pita Alley in Carbondale and 17th Street Barbecue in Murphysboro are two personal favorites.

… but when it comes to fast food, I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised to see more “upmarket” options. It’s a bit like going to Texas and being impressed by Whataburger, but when you’re only used to McDonald’s and Burger King, it feels like winning a (greasy) lottery.

Now, I love going to southern Illinois in the summer, but I hate being there in the winter. The winter months are harsh, weather-wise. That said, they have sturdier snowplows, and their roads are always clear. They know how to handle winter’s challenges.

Kentucky winters can be harsh, too, so … I’m getting used to freezing. But I’ll never get over being deprived of good smoothies. Before long, they’ll have a Jollibee, too, and we’ll still be suffering through lunches at Chicken Salad Chick.

I guess what I’m trying to say is … I would willingly follow a trail of crumbs through the Shawnee National Forest to Carbondale. I can’t really see myself as an Illinoisan – an Illini? But I could see myself as a “displaced Kentuckian living in Illinois.”

THE CALL OF THE ALTAR

“How long does a priest stay at a parish?”

I had to consult with the Internet about this, because I truly didn’t know.

I grew up Catholic, but I often describe myself as a lapsed Catholic. 

“They’re going to let him stay,” a woman said, conspiratorially, but not complementarity. She was working at a restaurant, and she recognized me and my mother from seeing us at the church. She wanted to talk about the parish’s new priest, and I could tell she didn’t like him. “You’ll see. They’ll never get rid of him.”

She seemed to be convinced that we had a Ted Krilly situation on our hands, even though she didn’t say that. She’d probably never seen Father Ted.

This conversation happened around fifteen or sixteen years ago. The restaurant has been closed for a few years now, and the priest is still in that parish.

… well, I guess she was right.

CAR SHOW

I decided to channel my inner Boomer, and I bought a raffle ticket for the annual Corvette drawing. 

For those who haven’t heard me ramble and ramble about the love of my life – my Mustang – I would like to introduce you to my Mustang:

Now that you’ve met her, I’d like to tell you about why I have her.

My dad’s first car was a Ford Mustang. Fifty years later, he wanted to buy another one – same color, same look.

After having it for a few years, he told me he was going to sell it.

“I’d like to buy it,” I said, without thinking. But I meant it. And I did. (Buy it, I should say.)

We live in Kentucky, the state where Corvettes are manufactured. Like many Kentuckians, I’ve been on road trips and made quick pit-stops at the Corvette Museum. It’s an interesting place, with a cool collection.

Now, my dad is the rare older man who owned a Corvette while he was young, and hasn’t owned one in his old age.

I will likely never be able to own a Corvette – unless I win this raffle. (Wish me luck!)

FAMILY LORE

My family often thinks I talk too much about genealogy – and I can understand how they wouldn’t be interested in the older stuff, the stuff from four hundred years ago, the stories from two continents that most of my relatives have never visited.

Occasionally, though, I’ll find a story local to us – something that involves our “closer” ancestors, with familiar names and occupations. If I’m talking about strip miners or mandolin players, people tend to have more interest. I can even draw stories out of them – if they remember the family in question – and that’s one of my real goals: to learn about our family history, and to document as much as possible, while people still remember it.

I found this interesting pottery. The “John W. C. Pittman” who crafted it is definitely a relative. I know this because my great-grandmother’s dad was John K. H. Pittman. The family lore was that all of the Pittmans had two middle names because “that was the custom in Virginia.” 

I found out later that our Pittmans are actually from Robeson County, which is in the southern part of North Carolina – a bit of a journey from Virginia. 

I think it’s cool to see that this Pittman pottery has survived, and that someone deemed it worthy of preservation. 

LOOKING GOOD, LOOKING ODD

I’ve found that, if you're conventionally-attractive, you’re allowed to be a little eccentric. 

For me, the goal is to aim at looking more attractive – because I certainly don’t want to be better behaved. 

CONSCIOUS COUPLING

I have a question about reporting:

What distinguishes a local couple from a local pair, when the media reports on arrests?

It seems like “local pair” is reserved for two people who have different last names, even if they’re married. You advance to local couple territory if you get married and share the same surname.

Hmmm. I guess Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt wouldn’t have struggled with that situation.

BARNYARD BLUES

Last month, I found out that a barn lost in the big 2021 tornado was one that my grandfather built with his brothers. I’ve known that the barn was gone for years now — but I didn’t know my grandfather was the one who built it. 

After my widowed grandmother left the country, she moved into town. Her house in town is the only house I’ve known her to have — but my mom understandably attached more significance to the house she grew up in, the home of her childhood memories.

It, too, is gone — destroyed by the storm that’s never really let go of us.

BIRD FLEW

Between the end of January and now, I’ve seen three bald eagles — one in the Pennyrile Forest, one on the outskirts of Cadiz, and one in a tall oak tree in Graves County.

I used to do bird-watching, but I was fairly casual about it. I remember being excited when I saw the same cardinals several times in a row, nesting along a guardrail. I remember being excited the first time I saw a red-winged blackbird, and about the time I heard a woodpecker while I was walking in the woods near the lake.

I had a particular fondness for seeing the three baby geese at the pond in front of the electric company.

“What do you reckon happened to those ducklings?” I said, because I almost always call goslings ducklings, even though I know better.

“Are there turtles in that pond?” the person I asked said.

“… yes,” I said.

“There’s your answer.”

WASHED OUT

After the snow storm at the end of February, the roads were covered — with snow, then ice, then with runny trails of salt. There was enough extra salt on the road that the Clabber Girl would blush.

Driving through the salt flats wasn’t doing my car’s paint any good, so I knew I really needed to wash my car. But I was apoplectic when I realized I’d have to wait 30 minutes at the car wash, because even the manual wash bays were full.

I backed my ears, drove around, and finally found a car wash without a long line. My car’s cleanliness was short-lived. A dust storm in Texas blew straight across Oklahoma and, somewhere over Missouri, the dust merged with storm clouds.

The rain that fell that day was thick and muddy — like a swamp slowly trickling back down to Earth. One of my relatives mentioned that it was worrisome that it had blown in from Texas, speculating that measles may’ve also hitched a ride on the dust clouds.

Between the mud and the mere thought of the measles, I was grossed out. Each car I saw was covered in it, a sluice-y mixture of brown and red and gray. So I decided to run back to the car wash.

Three days in a row, the lines were wild. I decided to hose the car down at home, but it didn’t help much. I eventually caved and treated myself to a twelve-dollar car wash. 

I had to do it. I had to take care of my baby.

PLAYERS PLAY

My great-grandfather was good at buck dancing, and my dad’s mother’s brothers were both accomplished folk musicians. The fiddle and the mandolin are fascinating. But the only mandolin I’ve been playing with is the one that slices onions.

I need to get back into playing the banjo, which I started playing in 2023, only to gradually abadon. I was never very competent, but I could pick rhythmically, and I wish I’d stuck with it.

I feel like I could fall back into practicing fairly easily, as the weather gets nicer and as I have more opportunities to sit outside and play. 

I feel like I have it in me to pick, to fumble my way through the motions of playing something fun. Not because I want to be a performer — but because I want to play for the fun of it.

SHARING MY SECRETS

I have lots of outside thoughts, but I also have lots of inside thoughts that are difficult to articulate. I have to keep some of my secrets by necessity, because I can’t do a good job of explaining, or because I don’t want to over explain and fail miserably at being interesting. It’s just so hard to imagine sharing everything with someone else.

I also don’t want my future partner to see my feet — my dancer’s feet. I quit dancing more than twenty years ago, but because I did dance, and because I have big feet, I have the toes of a ballerina. I’m terrified of showing them off.

No feet pics for free, sir!

SPEAKING UP OR OUT

It’s wild how — when people don’t speak a language — native speakers will take it upon themselves to speak louder. Not slower, but louder.

And I see some people — family vloggers, like Ruby Franke — lean in closer to the camera, as if that will make it easier for you to understand what they really want to say.

It’s rarely endearing. It hardly puts the listener/audience at ease. I find myself wanting to never do that sort of thing to another person — ever.

FUNLAND

I wish I could turn the old skating rink in the nearby college town into something more fun. I’d like to make it a place like Gilley’s, with bull riding and line dancing.

If I ever win the lottery, that’s one of my pipe dreams: a place to ride and dance and let loose on the weekends.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

I’m writing a poem called Reverse Sugar Daddy where I rhyme “Splenda papí” with “yenta mamí.” 

A MORE RESPONSIBLE TYPE OF ACTIVISM 

I’ve seen people posting about buying one of those “Rogue National Parks” t-shirts. But wouldn’t it be better to donate that money to a food bank or to a refugee family? Wouldn’t that be far more impactful?

Similarly, I have a message specifically addressed to all of the non-Black and non-Indigenous women who claim that rest is a radical activity:

I think that, under certain circumstances, it’s understandable for (even privileged!) women to claim that rest as an act of resistance. However — if you are a middle-class, abled woman — let that be Item #99 or Item #100 on your list of 100 Radical Actions. There are tons of other things you could/should also do — even from the comfort of your sofa or bed! — if you want to engage in purposeful activism. 

I think we need to cover as many bases as possible. We don’t need to stretch ourselves thin if we’re cruising toward burnout, but we can’t do only one thing and just call it a day. Over the next few months and years, we’ll be called upon to do more for our communities — and we need to be willing to step up, to do more than just performative things.

By all means, feel free to put on a show — but only after you’ve made sure to do something direct, necessary, impactful.

KISS ME, I’M IRISH-AMERICAN

I’m 6,000 words in, and I’ve only used the word “Ireland” once. I was determined to beat the “Plastic Paddy” allegations, but I feel that I need to end this month’s update by saying something relevant — in Gaeilge.

“Is deas an béal tostach a chloisteáil.”

With that, I’ll be quiet and wrap things up … until next time!