Luminous springtime
Swing time of the wood
Purple and pink magnolia
Blossoms in the neighborhood
Why don’t we take a walk (x2)
Still a bit cool out there
So lovely we don’t care
Pink magnolia
Peaches are popping
Cherries showstopping
Pink magnolia
Why don’t we take a walk (x2)
Oh
Oh baby
Let’s go outside
Drizzle is sweetening
Tweetening the trees
Pink magnolia
Crocus and daffodils
Say howdy hills
Pink magnolia
Why don’t we take a walk (x2)
Oh
Oh baby
Let’s go outside
Here’s an old song by Ken Hicks that I recently discovered and had my way with. May your blessings be many and troubles few in 2024!
This is a song about our future. This is a song about our past. This is a song about you and me holding fast….
Oh, my family, my colleagues and friends
My neighbors here in Athens
And my oh, so distant kin
Oh, how I’m watching and
I’m rooting for you
We will all be together
On the other side
On the other side
We will toast your health and mine
We will gather round our tables
Have some laughs down at the bar
We will play our music to the wee hours
Of the night
Oh, Oh, Oh
On the other side
Oh, Oh, yeah baby
On the other side
Show me your wild hairdo
I will show you mine
Show me how you rock those pj’s
Morning, noon, and night
Just to hear your voice and
Know that you’re alright
I can’t wait to hold you in the coming light
Chorus
We’ll be strong enough to make amends
We’ll be long enough to reach around the bend
We’ll be wise enough to rise above
We will raise our capacity to love
Oh, Oh, Oh
On the other side
Oh, Oh, yeah baby
On the other side
Chorus
We’re heart-broken over the loss of John Prine. I had the pleasure of seeing him at the Nelsonville Music Festival some years ago. He closed the fest on a lovely Sunday evening with an intimate, warm, funny, and soulful concert. We all felt like kids gathering around grandpa on the living room floor, all eager to hear his stories. In Spite of Ourselves was one of my favorites. It speaks to John’s observation of life’s small details, the flaws and quirks, the things that no one else knows that endear you to your sweetie. My heart goes out to John’s family and many, many friends. He brought a warm light to this world and we’re all a bit happier for it.
Caution: The following song is entirely a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental and anyone who says otherwise should just keep that to themselves. (Is that ok, sweetie?)
“Be the change you hope to see in the world.” In 2008, I recorded Promise. The title track was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s call to action. I’m not really a professional musician and I had no business putting out an album. But it was something I’d always wanted to do, so what the hell!
That was twelve years ago (I can hardly believe it’s been that long). Shortly after we finished the album, the United States had a meltdown. It felt like another Great Depression knocking on our door. Many many people lost a great deal. Prospects were bleak. And yet, one day at a time, we moved forward. Markets recovered. People went back to work. Little by little things got better.
Today we face a much more profound crisis, one that will likely challenge us for years to come. Coronavirus doesn’t care about your race, nationality, gender, religion, party, bank account or sexual preference. It demands that we reconsider how we treat all of our neighbors on this planet—local and distant. That’s a tall order. I mean, come on, who knew that toilet paper was going to turn out to be our achilles heel? I have relatives driving all over New Jersey looking for a roll. This crisis feels even more serious because it comes after years of ugly politics and a looming global environmental disaster.
By now most of us (if we’re lucky) are homebound, sheltering with loved ones. We’ve been reaching out to family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors with phone calls, texts, FaceTime, Zoom and whatever social media platforms are our cup of tea. All that reaching out feels like a silver lining, reminding us of what’s important. We’ve been masking and gloving ourselves for needed trips to the grocery store. We’ve been taking our temperatures, watching the daily briefings, checking the global tallies, and plowing through all the junk food. It all feels like a bad sci-fi movie.
And now I find myself revisiting Promise, a song about the love that two people share when they commit themselves to each other, a song about the obligations we share as members of a community—to stick by one another through thick and thin, and to treat each fairly with honesty, generosity, kindness and, maybe once in a while, a little humor.
We will come out on the other side of this coronavirus crisis. I’d like to believe that the experience will inspire our better natures, maybe not forever but at least for a time. Maybe the human race that comes out on the other side will be a little more thoughtful, a little more egalitarian, a little more tolerant, a little more compassionate, and yes, still occasionally hilarious. Why not? Be the change that you hope to see in the world … and wash your hands!
All through the trials and tribulations
All through the hours of despair
All through the fires and confabulations
All through all the pondering
I’ll be there for you.
She saw him standing on the corner
He was waiting for the light to change
He saw her waiting on a train
Standing on a elevated platform in the shade
She heard him wince in fear and pain
He watched her trying to make him believe again.
All through the years getting by just to pay the bills
All through the worries what if one of us gets sick
All through the years nurturing our kids, hoping they’ll have a better life
All through all the pondering
I’ll be there for you.
He’s the one who lost his job and can’t remember who he always hoped he’d be.
She’s the one who lost her son and can’t remember what the hell this war was supposed to be.
When we get out in the night, don’t you worry if the way seems dim and cold.
If we step out of the light, don’t you worry if we stumble from the road.
We can change the world.
If we stick together, hand in hand, we can change the world.
All through the trials and tribulations
All through the hours of despair
All through the fires…
All through all the bullshit baby
I’ll be there for you, and you’ll be there for me too.
All through all the bullshit baby
I’ll be there for you, and you’ll be there for me too.
Oh, what you got my baby
Where’d you go my friend
What you got that’s making you so blue
Oh, what you got my darling
Why you slumping low
Spill the beans
Tell me straight and true
Well, I’m in trouble with the long arm of the law
Failed to pay my taxes
Left a smoking gun in the drawer
My fingerprints were everywhere
And they got me on the call
Don’t worry honey
Sounds like you were framed
I didn’t go to Sunday school
I bought cigarettes instead
Smoked ‘em in the alley by the bar
Got into a bit of a scuffle
Had to beat a hasty shuffle
We went surfing through the bardo near and far
The car we were in was stolen
It belonged to her uncle whose face was swollen
‘Cause he said some things and didn’t make parole
We headed south for the sand and sun
Just a few days on the beach was fun
‘Til his X walked in
And brought that wrath of hell
‘Cause she wasn’t really his X quite yet
She was somewhere sooner in the alphabet
She could drink like a sailor and sing like a troubadour
She could dance
She could howl
She could scream
She could brawl
She could laugh with a certain kind of look
I could tell that the getting good was well behind the bend
Chorus
Well, she went at him with a curling iron
While I slipped out the back
Found his keys and wallet by the door
This car ain’t bad on grass and beer
With a little bit of mad and a little bit of fear
I scored some groceries further up the coast
Well, I don’t mean the things I do
I’m just drawn to a certain moral point of view
Where the line between
What’s right and wrong’s a mess
You could say that it’s just that the times are bad
That the sun was in your eyes
And your head’s up your ass
Allow for the absurd
I must confess
Chorus
Before too long all the weed was lit
And the car it wouldn’t go
I started thinking
What you said that night
Did you really mean that you would love to the end of time?
Could you really take me back again?
Don’t worry darling
Don’t worry sweetie pie
I kept the light on for you
You’re the apple of my eye
Don’t worry ‘bout the mortgage
Or that rotting stack of bills
Anyway,
It sounds like you were framed.
Anyway,
It sounds like you were framed.
So, pink has been giving me some trouble (nothing to read into there!). I thought about writing some sort of tribute for the ladies, but no inspiring thoughts came forth from that particular spout, or at least none that felt original. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been a fan, and I’ve always been perplexed by men who somehow believe the ladies aren’t every bit as capable, strong, intelligent, courageous, imaginative, reliable…. It just seems utterly foolish to believe otherwise and how do you argue with the utterly foolish?
So I went fishing …
Diane’s pink shower cap and her little leather change purse. The pink plaid robe that I gave her for our first Christmas together in Wisconsin that she still has hanging on the back of our bathroom door. It’s feels like a kind of emblem of our marriage.
The color of Pepto-Bismol (how’s that for a segue?). What a perfect name for a medicine designed to treat an upset stomach. “What’s wrong? Don’t know. Must have been something I ate. I’m feeling all Pepto-Bismolly.” I wonder what the other choices were? Hurl-be-gone? Oh-god? Never again?
Pink shrimp and pink flamingos. Where do they get that bright pink plumage? You are what you eat, I guess. Good thing that doesn’t work with guacamole. Imagine having to stick your head underwater to eat. That would certainly cut down on the snacking. “No, really, I’m good. I couldn’t eat another bite.” No wonder they’re so skinny. I just read that freeze-dried shrimp were one of the favorites of the astronauts. Apparently, when you add water those pinkos plump right up.
In the pink. Where does that come from? Does it refer to babies who start out blue and then pink up after taking their first breaths? That sounds right, but I’m not looking it up. Do doctors still give newborns a little slap on the fanny? Did they ever outside of movies and television? What a rude welcome to the world! “Just to let you know, the world’s going to kick you in the….”
Why pink for girls and blue for boys? In 1918 the Ladies’ Home Journal said pink should be for boys and blue for girls because pink was the stronger color. The Ladies’ Home Journal. Ladies! There’s that word again. I like that word. It feels playful and respectful at the same time. Ladies feels friendly, endearing and maybe slightly flirtatious, and yet it’s also part of “Ladies and Gentlemen,” and the respectful formality of occasions with dress-up clothes and people wearing hats. And I’m not talking baseball hats. I’m talking real hat hats … with bands and brims, the kind you could frisbee onto a tall hat rack in the corner. The Ladies’ Home Journal standard stuck until the 1940s when some French fashionadas decided that pink should be for les femmes. “Let them wear pink!”
Pink tongues and lipstick. Pinkies and pinky toes. Mauve, the 70s pink of interior decorators, the brown of pink. Pink’s drab cousin who bores everyone to death at parties. “Have you seen this knew Tupperware?” The opposite of cool, hot, fun Cyndi Lauper Pink, the one who lights up the room and is always out in front of the latest crazes.
Pink ribbons to support the ladies, pink wristbands, pink Nikes, pink hats. Is that meaningful? To wear some pink accessory to say I’m with them? I suppose it is. But is it enough? Not by a long shot.
Pinkos? Why are communists pink? True communists were red. Pinkos were just leaning in that direction, I guess. Communists in training. Inclined toward those menacing Russkis. “Better dead than red.” Really? That’s what you’re going with? Who talks like that?
The pink slip. There’s another one I don’t understand. Why a pink slip? Is it a filing thing? My mother told me her father had worked for a men’s club in downtown Philadelphia for twenty-some years, and then one day, he got a pink slip in with his paycheck. “Your services are no longer required.” That’s capitalism. Makes you want to take another look at those Pinkos, doesn’t it?
Pink peeps. Pink icing. Pink cotton candy and caramel corn. Ugh! Talk about wanting to be dead. Pass the Pepto!
Pretty in Pink. I hated that movie. Reminds me of high school, riotous pink acne, and awkward, self-conscious social skills. Purgatory, basically. Pink purgatory.
Pink Cadillac. Good song. “Well, my love is bigger than a Honda. Yeah, it’s bigger than a Subaru….” My son and his friend Joey chose that for their karaoke song during a summer session at the Rec Center. Both were pre-pubescent. What did they know about cars?
I don’t know the reason why they do the things they do
I don’t know why the money’s not filling up the till
I don’t know why you’re strumming them blues
Seems like something everyday is going down the tubes
Only one thing I can say
Get thee to the porch
Get thee to the porch
Get thee to the porch
Get thee to the porch
Get thee to the porch
Don’t let that sun sink all the way down
Without you keeping cool as the underground
Only one thing I can say
Get thee to the porch
Oh baby, I know you probably had a long, long day
Oh baby, I know you were nodding in and out all the way home
Kick your shoes off and roll down them silks
There’s a bottle of red wine in the kitchen by the window sill
Come on out here honey
Get thee to the porch
Chorus
Don’t let that sun sink all the way down
Without you kicking back watching the world spinning ‘round
Only one thing I can say
Get thee to the porch
Climb aboard the welcome chimes
We’ve got lots to do
Climb aboard the weather’s fine
Welcome in the view
Woh! Play that wild song!
Woh! Make us laugh and dance and
Woh! Play that woeful melody.
There’s a singer on the porch stage
She can take you far
There’s a poet on the main stage
He can fill your heart
Woh!
Play the one we know
Woh!
We will sing along
Woh!
Let us travel there with you
Clouded in the sunshine
Rowdy in the rain
Songs about the Southland
Songs about the pain
Woh!
Play the one we know and
Woh!
Play it loud and long
Woh!
Let us travel there with you
Woh!
Play me just one more tune
Woh!
Play it loud and long and
Woh!
We will dance beneath the stars
Going for the gold! Thar’s gold in them thar hills! Silver and gold. Puts me in mind of Yukon Cornelius and Neil Young, two characters singing the same words with nearly the opposite sentiment. One craves the raw material itself, placing the highest value on shiny buried treasure. The other likens love—lasting, comforting, generous, forgiving, supportive, sweet, nurturing love—to those oft’ sought after precious metals. “Our kind of love never seems to get old….”
When I picked gold out of the hat for this month, the first thought that came to mind was Midas and his golden touch. So often we use the Midas Touch to describe someone that has a gift for improving a product or situation, for transforming what is worthless into something valuable. But that misses the whole point of the story of Midas. It was only after he was given the ability to turn any object into gold that he realized that the gift was really a curse, for he couldn’t eat or drink, play music, or embrace his family. The things he truly valued were now beyond his reach.
I sometimes wonder if human civilization will ever evolve to the point where we get past the endless quest for gold, where we stop using gold as a calculus for worth or as a gatekeeper for access. Currently, we have in our society a handful of people who collectively own as much as the rest of us combined. We also have people—lots of people—who have way more than they could ever begin to spend, juxtaposed against millions who have virtually nothing. I wonder if other species experience that same phenomenon. Are there squirrels out there who have way more nuts than they could possibly eat next to squirrels with no nuts at all? Do some whales hog all the plankton and krill and leave others to go fish? Plants certainly seem to have a capitalist bent. When a tree falls in the forest, there’s an immediate race to capture the sunlight and nutrients vacated by the fallen. They’re literally climbing over one another to capture those resources. But we’ve also recently come to understand that trees send nutrients to their neighbors via underground networks. They warn each other when insect pests and other threats are in the forest. Some plants also cooperate with neighboring species by sharing water and soil nutrients seasonally, when one or another is better equipped to harvest them. That doesn’t sound like capitalism.
Of course, there are many, many examples of capitalist tendencies in the wild. They don’t call it “dog eat dog” for nothing. Many species will fight to the death over territory and resources. Chimpanzees will do battle over access to the best fig trees. Lions and hyenas are constantly nipping each other over prime hunting territories. Bald eagles along a salmon spawning stream will dive bomb and claw one another over access to the best fishing spots.
So, it’s not unnatural for humans to exhibit the same tendencies. And yet, somehow it feels like maybe we could do better. What would be so bad about a society deciding that no person should be homeless, that everyone should have at least a basic level of comfort—food, clothing, shelter, medicine? No matter what you do or who you are, just for having a human ticket you get these minimum benefits. And what would be the harm in placing an upper limit on how much you can horde? We could make it quite high, high enough that it would still be worth the effort to climb, high enough that people could still aspire to dream and work hard, just not so high that the efforts results in the utter impoverishment of many, many others.
Of course, that kind of talk sends you down the rat hole of trickle-down economics, the argument being that those who accumulate more will share that wealth by creating opportunities for those downstream. But history hasn’t really borne that theory out. Quite the opposite in fact! The trickle that comes from the elite class toward the impoverished class is usually a different kind of golden shower. Let them eat cake! Those who have the gold tend to manipulate the system, changing the rules and referees to advance their interests all the while spinning their success as somehow in the public interest. It’s the golden rule. Never mind the fine print about the side-effects of such and such medication. What’s a little anal leakage among friends?
History is choc-full of examples of the corrupting influence of gold. People will seemingly do anything for it. They will sell anything. They will say anything. They will do anything for … for what exactly. For nourishment? Usually, those in the selling business are selling far beyond their recommended daily nutritional requirements. For shelter? Is it really necessary to have multiple multi-million-dollar residences—the country estate, the urban townhouse, the beach house, the island retreat, the mountain lodge? What goes on in those places when they’re not occupied? Or is the clamor for wealth really about prestige? Now we’re getting to the root. Most of our hunger for gold has little to do with ensuring our physical well-being, rather it’s used to elevate our greedy but eternally insecure egos. We use wealth to measure whether we’ve made it, whether we’ve succeeded, whether we’ve achieved, as if tall stacks of coins add up to a life well spent. It never has. Ask Mr. Scrooge!
Certainly, there have been exceptions. There have been noteworthy examples of stellar individuals who sought to share their good fortune in ways that benefitted countless others. Paul Newman springs immediately to mind. But their numbers are too few to tip the teeter totter away from the bloated fat cats. Usually what has happened in human history when a society becomes so dysfunctional, so grossly out of balance and unfair that it no longer works for the great majority of its citizens, is that those citizens decide to revolt. They rise up! Throw the bums out! Off with their heads! Vive la guillotine! No one wants that kind of bloody, viciously random violence. That kind of chaos only creates a vacuum for some equally despicable despot to fill, and before you know it we’re back where we started. It’s not a long-term solution.
Gold and silver. Silver and gold. What is it that we truly treasure? Love is the only thing that has ever seemed to fit the bill for me. It exists beyond time and circumstance. It can be found in the most unlikely places. It has no color, no religion, no socio-economic status, no party affiliation, no nationality, no bounds. It is the light in the darkness. It is comfort. It is forgiveness. It is reassurance. It is hope. In so many of our songs and stories, we celebrate love. Love will see you through. Love conquers all. Love is all you need. “Faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.” What if love were the yardstick for human endeavor, for human achievement? How much love has your life engendered? Have you added to the font of love or taken from it? We could and would certainly argue over what those statements might mean, but think of it, a society built on the love standard. “It’s better than silver and gold!”
Too many people
Driving down a narrow road
Too many choices
Nobody’s fault
Too many voices
Not so many listening
Too many crosses
Lining the walk
And it’s…
1 for the money
2 for the show
3 for the pleasure
Tell me what do you treasure?
Is it love?
If I had all the answers
And I knew all the clues
As I gazed toward the future
What would I do?
Would it be…
1 for the money
2 for the show
3 for the pleasure
Tell me what do you treasure?
Is it love?
How appropriate that purple would turn up for April! Purple, the color of tulips, myrtle blossoms, and lilacs, the color of Easter eggs and Easter basket ribbons, the color that certain old ladies wear who no longer care what anyone thinks. In Appalachia, oddly, purple is the color of redbud. I wonder why redbud instead of purple bud? They’re clearly not red; anyone can see that. They’re not even close to red.
When I was a kid, purple was always one of the primary colors in the little travel-size crayon box, but it never seemed like a staple color. Never an entrée, purple always felt more like a dessert treat. You didn’t start with purple. You used it to dress up the greens and browns and blues and blacks. Purple felt like it had more of an attitude than the other colors in the box. Like orange, purple was the innovative thinker, the class clown, the show-off, the attention seeker. Why did I think that, I wonder? Probably because I was stranded in Catholic school among the sea of Navy blue pants and clip-on ties, drilled to be obedient, follow the rules, quietly lower the kneelers, color inside the lines. Nothing large in my life was purple. The church was white. The school was gray. The book mobile, parked across the street, was blue. Our house was green. Even red seemed somehow more acceptable. Red was on stop signs and stop lights and the good old red, white and blue. Superman wore red, not purple.
In Minnesota, the Vikings sported purple, and for a time when their defense was particularly nasty, they called themselves the Purple People Eaters. Good name! What little boy wouldn’t want to root for the Purple People Eaters? Of course, they never won the Super Bowl. They came close a bunch of times—a distressingly large bunch of times—but never claimed the prize. I think it had something to do with their uniforms. Purple just doesn’t want to go there. The Olympics don’t hand out purple with their golds, silvers and bronzes. Oh, but what about the Lakers, you say. The Lakers have purple uniforms and they’ve won a bunch of championships. But the Laker uniforms are primarily yellow with purple as an accent. Besides, they’re from California and purple doesn’t even register out there among all those outside-the-line colorers. And why are they even still the Lakers? What lakes are in Los Angeles? Their moniker is a holdover from when they were the Minneapolis Lakers long, long ago. Of course, back to Minnesota and the Purple People Eaters. What’s up with Minnesota and purple? It is the cold? Is it the long, long, long winters that last from Labor Day to well past Easter? You can’t make it through that kind of cold without a little purple medicine.
In our family, purple medicine is the children’s liquid cold medicine we take to dry up our sinuses during the flu and cold season. If I were to go down to our basement and root through the toddler clothes my wife still has socked away, I’d find footie pajamas with little purple stains around the neck line. We still use the purple medicine, even though the kids have long since left our residence. It does the job without making you feel all loopy. By this point, I don’t even remember what it’s actually called. If I had to ask at the pharmacy, all I’d have to work with is “purple medicine?” At home, my wife doesn’t even flinch when I ask if we have any purple medicine. She knows what I’m talking about. And there again, nothing else in the drawer among the first aid salves, band aids, and ointments is purple. They’re all blue and white and red and maybe this sort of pinky tan color if you have poison ivy. But no purple, save the purple medicine.
When I started this, immediately upon typing the word purple my mind went to Prince and Purple Rain. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I’ve never really understood what he meant by that and have never been curious enough to look it up. My kids were little when Prince burst onto the scene. The only Purply Rainish music we were listening to in the house back then came from certain Sesame Street muppets and the dreaded Barney. Talk about needing some purple medicine! Does this come in pints? And there again, Prince was a Minnesota boy. He would have been just a toddler when the Purple People Eaters were ravaging the countryside. Somehow that purple and the pain of all those Viking Super Bowl losses leached into his subconscious, and by the time he came online as a young adult, “I never meant to cause you … any sorrow.”
We figured it out along the way
I guess that’s what all lovers do
You sleuthed out my peccadillos
While I wormed my way deep into you
That sounds like the end of the story
Like maybe I should have waited to spring those lines
But I’m not done investigating
Your secret heart and your glittering chimes
All along the way we rambled
All along the way we rhymed
All along the way we gambled
All along the way
I’m not sure where the song should go now
So many piles inside my head
Whether back to Glacier’s mountaintops
Or down the hill to Casa instead
So many nights of wild delirium
So many quiet tender sighs
So many laughs we laughed together
So much love inside
All along the way we held to
All along the way we cried
All along the way you came through
All along the way I tried
All along the way we rambled
All along the way we danced
All along the way we scrambled
All along the way we chanced
All along the way we sang out
All along the way we touched
All along the way you gave me what I needed
All along the way
All along the way
There’s something particularly unwelcome about snow in March. We’ve had some warm days, some sunny days. I’ve started to think about the garden again. And not the late August garden of gnarly weeds, overgrown bushes, distended, brittle wildflowers and nipping at your ankles fleas. This is the tidy, enthusiastic, optimistic spring garden of little arugula. spinach, and kale plants, reaching up and turning into something that I could pluck and eat at my convenience. This is the fresh, salad-producing, colon-cleansing garden garnished with juicy strawberries, blueberries, and/or raspberries. Yes, we’ll have raspberries this year people! From Grandma’s garden! In prodigious amounts! In amounts that will invite grazing. Don’t even bother with a bowl.
I’m ready for that garden, not the cold, hard, barren, ice-bearded Dr. Zhivago garden that’s currently being featured out my frosted windows. What are we in the Urals? I’ve already put away the BIG coat, with the BIG hood and the fluffy insulation and the puffy sleeves. I’ve emptied its deep pockets of stiff, wadded tissues and random receipts, and sent that baby to the cleaner. I’ve been walking around in this sweatshirty, hoody sort of thing because I thought the cold weather was done. Over! Fini! Kaput!
And then March comes roarin’ in like a lion. Or maybe roarin’ like an ungrateful sonofabitch, giving us all the big fat frosty middle finger while singsonging, “Nah nah nah boo boo! Keep yer shovels handy bitches! Scrape that windshield. Tote that salt.” It’s a cruel and childish gesture. It’s selfish really, this Polar Vortexian wintry mix that insists on staying around long after everyone has run out of things to say, and we’re all looking at our watches, not making eye contact, inching closer to the door.
We were up for snow in November. We looked forward to it with childlike anticipation. Once autumn’s watercolor forest had turned to brown, we were grateful for the winter fairy dust to come powder the land. Illuminate the sinuous contours of our endless hills and hollows. Dust the worn rust-colored bricks and the cold gray gutters. Cover the grease and grime with shiny, clean white frosting. Remind us of the profound magical mystery of school-less snow days that had no agendas, guidelines, or particular destination. Remind us of sledding on the hill by the cemetery. Give us the taste of skating ponds and hot chocolate warming houses. Put us in the mood for Christmas and “Oh, wouldn’t it be great if it snowed while the kids were home.” Even well into January, I was ok with snow. It softens our footsteps and breaks up the doldrums, distracting us from the long days of darkness.
That was then. This is now. Now, I loathe the look of that snow shovel and broom on the front porch, tucked into the corner with their backs to me because we have nothing to say to each other. I’m tired of fumbling with my scarf every time I want to go outside, or not fumbling with it and then wishing I had fumbled with it because it’s still fr&@#ng cold!!! I don’t know where I put my gloves and I’m not looking for them anymore. Wahhhhhhhh!
Snow, oh snow, it’s time for you to go. Head south with the penguins. Antarctica is calling. And as it swells and thickens, we’ll shed our winter weight, that extra layer of comfort food that no amount of treadmilling or yoga will take off. With the greening of the white, let there be warmth, let there be light, let there be hope, let there be Peeps. Bring forth the horny spotted salamanders and the nesting songbirds. Let there be daffodils and multicolored tulips. Let there be riotous yellow forsythia cascading down the hillside like a wildflower waterfall. Let there be legions of redbud and dogwood. Let there be bicycles on bike paths adorned by delicate Japanese cherry blossoms, and even the occasional Bike ‘n Brew. Let there be music fests with bands I’ve never heard of and even a few mud puddles to negotiate. Let the deck-napping commence. Out with the lion, in with the lamb. Baaahhh!
I love blueberries. Love. Love Love. Not like. Not prefer. Not fancy. Love!!!
I love foods that have blueberries in them. Blueberry pancakes, blueberry muffins, blueberry scones. When I make oatmeal, I put the blueberries in right at the end, so they get warm but not cooked. Then you get a little juice with every spoonful. When I make French toast, I do something similar, pan frying two batter-soaked slices of bread and then, just before they’re done, stacking them with a healthy handful of blueberries in between. I love the juicy pop of blueberries in salads and the feel of them rolling on my tongue. Recently, I’ve taken to replacing the raisins in our breakfast cookies with blueberries. Gives ‘em a little more moisture, a little more zipadeedoodah!
I grew up in South Jersey, a stone’s throw from Hammonton, the blueberry capital of the world (according to the Hammonton Chamber of Commerce). Driving east on the Atlantic City Expressway bound for the Shore Points, you pass field after glorious field. Most of South Jersey is basically a big sand wash leftover from the last Ice Age—loose, acidic glacial till, perfect for growing blueberries. Years ago, I worked with Hmong refugees, US allies who came to America from Laos after the Vietnam War. I interviewed a family who first settled in the Philadelphia area before resettling with relatives in Wisconsin. They described finding temporary work picking blueberries in those Hammonton fields. That sounds like a long day. I think work like that might cut into the love pretty quickly. I mean, we only have five small blueberry bushes in our garden and, even though I greedily grab each and every ripe berry, I sometimes find myself being grateful we don’t have more.
In Alaska’s Denali Park, I once came across fields and fields of ripe berries in mid-August growing wild on the tundra. The midnight sun made them big and fat. You could pick and pick and pick, as many as you could eat, as many as you could carry. But the whole time I was picking, I had one eye watching out for grizzly bears. They like blueberries too. And on the tundra, there aren’t many trees tall enough to get you out of reach of a grizzly who might also enjoy two slices of you with a blueberry garnish.
Of course, blueberries are also a superfood. Not that I know what that means … exactly. I know that it’s in the book of superfoods that we keep in the kitchen with the cookbooks. I’ve never actually read the book, but I’ve thumbed through the super pictures of the superfoods and read a few of the captions. I think it has something to do with antioxidants, those magical little buggers that fortify cells, lower bad cholesterol, help your blood pressure, inhibit the growth of some cancers, spellcheck your documents, vacuum your dust bunnies, balance your checkbook, weed your garden, and fish the hair balls out of the shower drain.
I wonder if Superman ate a lot of super blueberries. He’s got the blue leotard. But it’s not really blueberry blue, more like sky blue, probably for camouflage for when he’s flying after bad guys. They don’t see him coming. Blueberry blue is more like Penn State blue, not to be confused with Navy blue or Carolina blue. Don’t make that mistake! Some people are fanatical about their Pantone colors.
Blueberries are among the sparsely populated blue foods. The first on that short list that springs readily to mind is bleu cheese, which, if I’m honest, doesn’t really feel like it belongs. First of all, it’s not “blue” cheese, it’s “bleu” as in ”Woof! Who let the stink in?” And I don’t think the blue part is even cheese, it’s some sort of blue bacteria growing on the cheese, and I’m sorry, but I didn’t see any bacteria pictures in the Superfood book that I’ve never read. So bleu cheese is out!
Spoon University (I’m not making that up!) lists blue carrots (they look more purple to me), concord blue grapes, Lingcod (more turquoise), blue pansy flowers (maybe if I was desperate), and blue sweet potatoes (they just look like dirty purple). Why so few blue foods? It has something to do with light energy and which zones of the visible spectrum are easier to absorb and use, and which get reflected. Nothing is truly any color, it turns out. Color is just a fabrication of our perception (something to ponder in these tumultuous times).
A quick Google search reveals that we perceive one in every two million lobsters to be blue. Really? And who exactly is counting these lobsters? We also list among the blue foods Indigo milk caps (a kind of mushroom), starflowers (an edible herb), Adirondack blue potatoes (they’re probably just cold), Hopi blue corn, and the eastern Australian blue marble tree. The same article rounds out the group with blue peeps. Blue peeps? Really? Are they even food? Aren’t they closer to packing peanuts, cotton balls, or fiberglass insulation? After the nuclear holocaust, the only thing left be will Twinkies and blue peeps, hanging around Hammonton wondering what happened to all the blueberries. Could you stuff blueberries inside Twinkies, I wonder? Or inside Peeps? You’d have to be careful where you stuffed ‘em. That could get weird!
Diane & I made a trip to Boca Raton, Florida, this past weekend, a good place to escape the dreaded Polar Vortex scolding us all for our misdeeds. It was a birthday present, a trip down memory lane for me. I hadn’t been back in more than thirty years. Jazus! It feels weird to say that! My parents moved us all down there when I was seven, and then again when I was in high school. I liked it more when I was little—that house had a pool. In high school and college, I was only there for the summers and never quite got over feeling like a visitor, never completely unpacked.
We spent a fair amount of time at the beach—drinking coffee in anticipation of the sunrise, watching the seagulls and pelicans, walking the beach and cautiously side-stepping the Portuguese man-of-war that have lately begun washing ashore with the seaweed. Apparently, even deceased they remain dangerous.
Boca is largely a retirement community. New York snowbirds easily outnumber native Floridians. Dinner at a New York style pizzeria feels more like an episode of the Sopranos. On the beach, that demographic is manifested by receding hairlines and bulbous bellies hugely outnumbering bikinis. It can be hard to watch. You don’t see that on Trip Advisor.
I had a blast taking Diane on a walking tour of my old neighborhood, trying to determine whether this or that was the beloved pool house. I found myself admiring the tropical landscaping, something I never would have done as a youngster. Diane, as always, was fascinated by the birds. We stumbled upon a small flock of white ibis and a trio of Muscovy ducks. Of course, you can’t walk ten feet without spotting curly-tailed lizards, the squirrels of Boca, darting in and out of the hedges. Slow progress!
There are any number of invasive species, other than New Yorkers, residing in Boca these days. Burmese pythons have famously soared to the top of the food chain in the nearby Everglades. Muscovy ducks have been driving everyone crazy by spreading disease in their droppings. Even the ubiquitous curly-tailed lizards have only been coming since the 1940s. But of the relative newcomers, my favorite were the green iguanas. We counted eight warming themselves on the branches of a Florida pine one one morning.
It’s always strange to go back to a place and see how it has changed in your absence. Was it always that way or was I just focused on other things? Boca has grown and grown and grown. There’s more of everything—hotels, condos, mansions, restaurants, shops, cars, yachts, and people, always more and more people. It seems a bit more chic. I’ve never seen so many Porches. But sadly, it still seems pretty segregated. Money still talks along Royal Palm Way.
Amidst all that changes, the beach remains the beach. The ocean still casts its spell, calling the faithful home. The sea turtles still come ashore to lay their eggs, and the locals have taken to turning off the streetlights along A1A during certain times of the year to ensure that the anxious hatchlings get started in the right direction. The ocean was a bit warmer than I remember for early February, another troubling sign of our misdeeds. But the bellies and the bikinis spend their days lounging, trading war stories, reading trashy novels (not mine) and walking up and down the beach shopping for shells. And, like me, everyone’s got their phone—texting shivering relatives back up north, snapping photos of the sunrise, searching for dinner options. and looking up the names of all that we’ve forgotten.
