Climb Aboard the NMF 2019

Music Fest

tim pfaff

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

The Gold Standard

Is It Love? - 2:23:18, 9.17 AM

Tim Pfaff

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!”

Is it Love?

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?

Purple Medicine

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.”

All Along the Way

All Along the Way - 3:10:19, 11.10 AM

Tim Pfaff

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

The Colors of 2019: The March of Snow (White)

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!

The Colors of 2019: February - I Found My Thrill (Blue)

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!

Back to Boca, Baby!

Sailing in the Sun

Tim Pfaff

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.

The Promised Land of Sun

The Promised Land of Sun - 11:7:18, 8.06 AM

Tim Pfaff

We are frozen

Frozen in the hinterland

We are posing

Posing with scrapers in our hands

We are nosing

Ever so slowly toward the promised land

The promised land of sun

They are bending

Bending in their icy vines

They are sending their branches

Crashing on our power lines

They are fending

Off destruction by causing mine

I can only be mended by

The promised land of sun

I am bumping

Bumping off these four narrow walls

I am thumping

Up and down these narrow halls

I am slumping

And I can’t wait for this season’s end

I am jonesing for

The promised land of sun

I am seated

Seated in a frozen car

I’m defeated

Though I really wish that it would start

I am beaten

And I’ll have to go on back inside

And wait there for

The promised land of sun

It is pretty

Pretty fucking cold outside

It is slippery

Not what Paul Simon had in mind

It is nippy

Makes your bladder itty bitty sized

Alerting you to head for

The promised land of sun

The Colors of 2019: January - The Salad Days (Green)

I gave myself a writing task for the year 2019. I cut up twelve squares and on each wrote the name of a color. During each month of this year, I’ll randomly choose a square and see what thoughts each inspires. Which memories does it conjure? Which associations does it hold? Which paths does it want to lure me down? As we evolve, our cultures, our technologies compel us to be visual creatures. More and more we experience the world through our eyes—staring at screens, checking phones, watching TV, watching the road. No longer following our nose, we seek information from what we can see. So, with eyes wide open, here we go.

January 2019 – The Salad Days (Green)

My mother’s favorite color was green. We lived in a pine green house on Lois Drive in Williamstown, New Jersey, where I grew up. Mom’s name was Myrtle, like the low-growing leafy green ground cover that now fills my front yard and blossoms in the spring with small purple and white flowers. Her middle name was Rita. Myrtle Rita Boyle Pfaff. She never liked her name. If I’m honest, I didn’t care for it either (although I like it more it now that I’ve seen the flowers blooming). You don’t run into many Myrtles these days. Some names from her era have returned—Ruth, June, Helen, Iris—but no Myrtles. Not that anyone ever called her that. “Myrt!” was what Dad used. “Myrt, can you make me a sandwich?” Myrt or Sweetie or some other Dadly euphemism. Of course, we always just called her Mom. My nieces and nephews all called her Mom-Mom. I heard her first name so infrequently that it caused me to pause when a relative would visit or someone would call and ask for Myrtle. Who?

Our house on Lois Drive was in one of the first subdivisions built in Williamstown after World War II. I’m guessing that my parents used Dad’s GI benefits to get a home loan and move to South Jersey from the suburbs of Philly where they’d grown up. Back then, South Jersey was all pine barrens, vegetable farms, and fruit orchards. Basically, the sticks! I’m sure people from Philly still feel that way. I know the New Yorkers do. What’s that old joke? Why are New Yorkers always so cranky? Because the light at the end of the tunnel is New Jersey.

The lot where we lived had been a cabbage field until we moved in. Dad used to tell stories about how the developer hadn’t gotten the landscaping right when they graded the property. For the first few years, every time it rained, all the water from the neighboring houses would flow right into our cesspool. No wonder our grass was so green. By the time I came along (the eighth of nine children), that backyard grass had well-worn sandy base paths from countless games of kickball, baseball, stickball, wiffle ball… Do kids still play wiffle ball?

Our front yard had maple trees where Mom and our neighbor would sit in the shade. The backyard was for playing; the front yard was for sitting. It was like that inside the house too. The rec room was for lounging; the living room was for company. Our neighbor worked in the office at St. Mary’s where we went to school. Her son was in my class. After school, she’d kick off her shoes and sit in the green grass in her stocking feet and have a cigarette while he and I helped her search for four-leaf clovers.

We moved to Boca Raton at the end of my first year at St. Mary’s. In Florida, the green was less pine green and more aqua marine—the green of the ocean in the shallows, the green of my beloved Miami Dolphins, the green of patio furniture and beach umbrellas, the green of our built-in pool where I learned to swim (woohoo). For two years, we lived in a house with a screened-in, figure eight-shaped built-in swimming pool. It was like we died and went to Florida. You could swim about six or seven months of the year. We lived in that pool in the summer. We’d play a game we called “butt bumpers,” where one person would sit in the middle of a black inner tube in the deep end, and the others would jump from the sides and try to dislodge him. My mom hated that game. She forbad us from playing it. We played it all the time. Until she pulled out the “your father” card. “When your father gets home…” Of course, when Dad got home, it was everybody out anyway, so he could enjoy a leisurely post-work dip, usually with a Kent cigarette dangling from his lips and a cup of coffee within reach along the edge. Dad drank coffee the way people today strive to keep themselves hydrated with those big water bottles. I don’t know how he ever slept.

Alas, Boca was just a brief stopover for the Pfaff clan. Two years later, we were back in South Jersey, back to the pine and maple and oak and birch green of Forest Hills, another new development in Billsville. This time our house was white, so Mom chose green carpeting in the living room. It was the kind of carpeting that was a single color, but it had a patterned texture that made it seem more complicated. When you fell asleep on it, you woke up with part of the pattern inscribed on your face. And of course, we had another big green lawn. In Boca I learned to swim. In Forest Hills, I learned to push a lawn mower. I liked Boca better.

Forest Hills was filled with boys our age. Here, we continued the never-ending cycle of kickball, stickball, football, basketball, baseball, hockey… except now we played mostly in the street. That big green lawn had too many big green trees. Down the street, we had a park where I began my long love affair with basketball. During the Golden Age of Forest Hills basketball, some of the best players in town came to play there. If you lost you sat, so people played hard. I was too young to really be competitive, but I would bug my older brothers until they let me play (usually when they needed an extra body). The courts were atop a hill that sloped down to a small pond. If you threw a bad pass and the ball rolled down the hill, guess who was fishing it out?

I think of those early years as the “salad days,” before Watergate, the gas crisis, the recession, and worst of all, puberty. Those were the green days of growing up. Before everyone started getting married and moving out. Growing up with so many siblings, it was a pretty lively place. At Sunday dinner, we had the big table for the grown-ups and the pig’s table for the not-yet-grown-ups. Mom would make a roast with mash potatoes, peas and carrots, and green beans, green beans, green beans. And for dessert? She’d make lemon meringue pie, and if you were around when she was making it she’d let you spoon out the extra lemon filling still warm in the pot. Those were some good licks. Way to go Myrt!

Whale Song

Whale Song (based on Bone by Mary Oliver)

Tim Pfaff

Years ago I adapted a poem by Mary Oliver into a song. I’m not much of a poetry guy usually, although I’ve written my fair share. I have some earnestly horrific journals from college that … well … let’s just say no longer fill me with joy and should be shredded and composted. But Mary Oliver was one of Diane’s favorites, and from time to time she’d want to share one with me, looking at me with that hopeful face that I find hard to resist, and among those occasional readings, I was introduced to the poem Bone. 

Diane had brought it up the night before. We were having dinner with some visiting colleagues, and one of the architects shared his interest in the Pleistocene Epoch and the study of fossils. One of the perverse silver linings of climate change and the melting of the permafrost is that paleontologists are discovering and learning more and more about mastodons, mammoths, saber-tooths, sloths, and the rest of the cast of Ice Age. Diane noted that it reminded her of Mary Oliver’s poem Bone, in which the poet describes finding the ear bone of a pilot whale on the beach one early morning. For those who live along the coast, this is apparently not that rare, as this particular bone is very hard and often the last piece of the animal to disappear into the ether. The bone was from an animal that may have died hundreds of years before.  It was tiny. It would have been invisible, buried deep inside the whale “in a house of hearing.” And she used it as a segue to ponder the nature of the soul—“so hard, so necessary … yet almost nothing.” 

And I loved the imagery of a person strolling along the beach in the “pale, pink morning light,” inspired to think those thoughts we can sometimes be prone to think, about eternity, about our place in the enormity of time and space. Oceans can send you to that place. It’s so big and powerful and alive. Oceans, mountains, rivers, even the wide open prairie at dusk, the forest in a rainstorm, or the chaotic silence of a January snowstorm—they inspire us to think about the larger things, those that we find precious, those that we find magical. And then someone like Mary Oliver comes along to put that inclination into words. Thank you for that, Mary. Rest in peace.

Bone

by Mary Oliver 

(from Why I Wake Early, 2004)

1.

Understand, I am always trying to figure out

what the soul is,

and where hidden,

and what shape

and so, last week,

when I found on the beach

the ear bone

of a pilot whale that may have died

hundreds of years ago, I thought

maybe I was close

to discovering something

for the ear bone

2.

is the portion that lasts longest

in any of us, man or whale; shaped

like a squat spoon

with a pink scoop where

once, in the lively swimmer’s head,

it joined its two sisters

in the house of hearing,

it was only

two inches long

and thought: the soul

might be like this

so hard, so necessary

3.

yet almost nothing.

Beside me

the gray sea

was opening and shutting its wave-doors,

unfolding over and over

its time-ridiculing roar;

I looked but I couldn’t see anything

through its dark-knit glare;

yet don’t we all know, the golden sand

is there at the bottom,

though our eyes have never seen it,

nor can our hands ever catch it

4.

lest we would sift it down

into fractions, and facts

certainties

and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.

Though I play at the edges of knowing,

truly I know

our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,

which is the way I walked on,

softly,

through the pale-pink morning light.

A Dream of Imperfection

I woke up the other day with the last images of a dream loitering in my head. I was seated in a sun room with my brothers and sisters. We had just returned from a visit to the Constitution Center in Philadelphia and we were sharing our impressions. It was an unusual dream. I don’t know what prompted it. Growing up in a working-class family with eight brothers and sisters, museum trips were not on the agenda. I grew up with the mistaken stereotype that museums were for rich people. Ironically, I have spent most of my professional life not only visiting museums, but designing exhibits that make museums more welcoming and engaging for all visitors. And yet I still have not become rich myself. Hmmm?

My brothers and sisters expressed a general sense of approval for what they had seen, although I can’t recall any specifics. The Constitution Center interprets the historical experience of Americans grappling with the rights and freedoms articulated in our foundational documents. When my turn came, I surprised myself by launching into a kind of speech about the unlikely daring of our founding fathers. The phrase “band of bandits” lingered in my head as I lay there trying to replay the dream. It really was quite amazing. This geographically dispersed and culturally diverse group of colonists managed to assemble in secret to first declare their independence from the age’s reigning superpower, and then to organize themselves in such a manner that they intentionally divided the powers of governance among federal, state, and local bodies, with each further parsing their authority to executive, legislative, and judicial branches. “We the people” … WE, the collective, embody this government. WE choose individuals among us to temporarily exercise the duties of governance, but WE retain the power. And, even more profound, from that founding Declaration, “WE hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” It would take us a while for “all men” to mean “all people” (and some would argue we still have some distance to travel in that regard), but what an extra-ordinary statement and how eloquently written.

As I was laying there pondering the impetus and meaning of my dream, I thought about how we organize ourselves. We are social creatures. The first group that surrounds and nurtures us is our family. We are bonded to them whether or not we choose it to be so, whether we deserve them or they us. As we grow older, we expand our circle to include friends and neighbors, playmates, classmates, teammates, club members, colleagues, citizens, fantasy sports enthusiasts. And in widening concentric circles, we organize ourselves so that we can accomplish collectively what we cannot accomplish individually. Committees, unions, school boards, town councils, county boards, state legislatures, Congress, the UN, and (maybe one day) the United Federation of Planets—WE create bodies to organize and govern ourselves. Everyone is meant to benefit and everyone is expected to contribute. That is the goal. We strive for fairness, although we don’t always get there and we often disagree about what fair means. We don’t always get what we want. We are united but not of one mind, so we must use persuasion and compromise to move things forward, always striving toward a “more perfect union.”

That last phrase, “more perfect,” has always struck me as odd. Why more perfect? If a thing is perfect, it can’t be improved upon, so why “more perfect?” It reminds me of Darwin’s arrow of imperfection that over time propels the evolution of life. We are like our parents. We inherit traits from them. But we are not exact replicas. We are imperfect. But some of those imperfections turn out to be advantages. In a world that is constantly presenting us with new challenges and new opportunities, some of those imperfections turn out to be just what we need to make it over those hurdles, to embrace those moments. And as we join forces, the great diversity of our imperfections makes us ever more capable, ever more adaptable and inventive. WE become greater than the sum of our parts. And yet the “We” that we speak about still includes at its core that profound respect for each and every one of us. WE has to include all of us or it includes none of us. WE are in this together or it all falls apart.

We are living in a time of great, great change. The scope and pace of change has never been more sweeping or more rapid. It’s easy to become afraid, to want to step back and shield ourselves from that forward momentum. And yet our knowledge and technology have enabled humanity to be safer, healthier, and more prosperous than we’ve ever been. Still, that same technology informs us daily about the many, many areas in which we must improve … to become more perfect. We must continue to strive to make things fair. We must help those who are in distress. We must remember that we are stronger when we embrace our differences. And we must be wise caretakers of our home planet. We must leave the place better than we found it so that our children may thrive and pass it along to their children. We are a family, a community, a nation, fellow creatures sharing the same Earth. We owe that debt to ourselves and to each other. We all benefit. We all contribute. We all matter. That’s the dream.

Half-baked

Everybody's Doing the Best They Can - 1:10:18, 9.30 AM

Tim Pfaff

Winter solstice. Midnight. This instant! The middle of the day.

“Isn’t every second of the day the middle of the day? How is noon any more or less midday than 3:37?”

“Depends on what shift you’re working.”

 “There’s always a flip side. An AM and a PM.”

 “A bright side.”

“A dark side.”

“An upside and a downside.”

Hump day. Mid-season. Halfway through the year. Half-time. Mid-life … just turned 57 … maybe a little past.

“Hopefully! I don’t like the sound of 114.”

“That’s a whole lotta Seinfeld.”

We live in the middle of the block … in mid-town. Inside a county in a state in the Midwest. We’re in between the Appalachian Mountains and the Rockies, north of the gulf and south of the lakes, between Columbus and Marietta. In the forest at the bend halfway up the hill. Between a rock and a landslide.

We all come from somewhere. Hometowns frozen in our child’s eye. We’ve just come from somewhere and we’re on the way to somewhere else. We had a map. We asked for directions. We Googled it.

“When?”

“I don’t know … back when … you know.”

“I remember that! We were there with the big blue thing and the skinny people.”

“Remember that picture? We were in the second row, between what’s his face and so and so. You know who I mean. I have it on my phone.”

Tomorrow.

“Next week we’re going. I can’t wait.”

“Now?”

“Well, now is almost always then.”

“Before you know it, we’ll be history.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know what happens afterward.”

We always need something to look forward to.”

“Anticipation is making me wait.”

“I hate waiting.”

“The light was still yellow, officer.”

“Why are we stuck in this lane? This check-out line? This zone?”

“I need a faster modem.”

We’re never at the beginning and we never get the last word. We were birthed into a movie after the coming attractions already came and went? In the darkened theater we pause to let our eyes adjust, enacting the drama of Plato’s cave.

“Who’s that? What’s happening?”

We scramble to catch up, to figure it out. After we leave, the story keeps spinning on. We wonder about a sequel.

“What happens, you know, next?”

I was never the biggest guy on the team, but not the smallest either. There’s always someone faster and someone slower. Someone just a little craftier, keener, wiser, leaner. Someone smarter, someone slicker. Someone more popular. Someone who’s always just one step ahead and someone who never quite gets it. If I’m honest, I suppose I have to admit that I’ve sometimes been that someone. Not always, but sometimes. Makes me want to strive to be better. Makes me want to show a little more compassion.

Measurement draws with a subjective marker. Attach a value to that which is here and that which is there. It all depends on the context.

“Is this close enough?”

“What’s the goal?”

Set an intention One can be better, more precise, and one can be worse, more ambiguous. Depends on how you define those terms and why. Draw a line in the shifting sands. What’s up now may be down later? What’s funky? What’s cool? What’s permissible? What’s allowed? By whom? Who’s in? Who’s out? Who’s Who?

“Who’s Next?”

We like to think we’re at the top of the heap on that uppermost rung of that long evolutionary ladder that stretches way, way back.

“Long before time had anyone to tell it.”

“We’re the last coat of paint on the outermost railing of the pier.”

The arrow of time. The wind-aided arrow of imperfection.

“Evolution unfolds like I throw darts.”

“Are we really at the top?”

“Is there a top?”

“Are there many tops? How many?”

“Is there a difference between a top that is unattainable and no top at all?”

Remember your elementary number lines with your ruler and your No. 2 pencil? We’d draw lines with arrows on either end facing outward. Negatives and positives count into infinity, pacing off the duel. Dot. Dot. Dot! But there are also spaces in between the increments. Where do you decide to round off? Within a foot? Within an inch? Within a centimeter? Within a nanometer?

When I was a kid in school the atom was the smallest? What would it have been for Grandma? A single cell? DNA? Now … now I don’t even know what they call the things that are inside? The smaller than an atom things. Electrons and protons and neutrons are off the market. Old hack. Bring on the quarks and leptons. Here’s your fifteen minutes.

“What’s a lepton? How many leptons in a quark?”

Time and distance stretch into infinity in every direction. The universe is expanding.

“Really? Into where?”

“What’s on this side of the universe and what’s on the other side?“

“How would you recognize the boundary?”

“Is there a border wall with armed patrols and internment camps?”

“Or is it like going from first class to coach? Are we in the economy universe? Do they have more comfortable seats on the other side?”

“And what about the beginning? Was there a beginning?”

God said, “Let there be light.”

“Really? Who was God talking to? And if there was no one else to hear, why announce it?”

“Let there” (so there was someplace that required illumination – there was a there there; and) “be light” (implying that illumination was somehow better or different than darkness). And why “Let”?” Was light previously forbidden?

“Who put God in charge anyway? Who made god God? Where do a I find God at the end of my dueling arrows? Or is god somewhere in the increments?”

“God is everywhere.”

“So, I just have to look everywhere to find God? Even at WalMart? Shit. That’s not really helpful.”

“God is a state of mind. Not a being. Not a deity. Not a God god. Just a state of awareness. Of the grandeur. Of the complexity. Of the connectivity. Of the humility. Of the beauty and the wonder.”

“Yeah, that’s maybe not all that helpful either.”

As far as I can tell everyone’s seeking comfort. “We all want to go home, We all want to have our toys, We all want to have peace of mind, We all want to have joy.” That’s how the song goes. But wow, there’s a whole bunch of spaces on that number line. “Where do I put my dot?”

“How do I find my dot? Have you seen my dot? Do you remember what my dot looked like?”

“No, you’re not allowed to rip your dot into tiny pieces and put them everywhere. You’re mucking up the system. Everyone just gets one dot.”

Midway. It’s come to this. Writing about a place, a distance, a moment, a mood. Contemplating the proverbial, the existential, the eternal, the nonsensical … basically all the “als.” Looking back but with one eye forward.

“Cross-eyed at the crossroads.”

Every intersection is a crossroads. Some just seem more monumental than others. More pregnant with possibility. A bit brighter perhaps.

“Is the glass half full or half empty?”

“Is this my glass? Where did I put my glass?”

“Follow your nose. The air doesn’t seem quite so dank down there.”

“Just direct your feet … to the sunny side of the street.”

A Trip to the Islands

Years ago, I participated in the design of the Visitor Center at the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in the Mojave Desert just west of Las Vegas. A land of extremes, subtle variations in wind, heat, humidity, and soil mark the line between life and death at Red Rock. Aztec Sandstone towers above the desert floor, making the area a world-class rock-climbing destination. The cliffs are sheer and treacherous. In the higher elevations, naturalists find “sky islands”—isolated ecosystems where conditions diverge from those on the desert floor, enabling unique niches of plants and animals to survive, but also effectively fencing them in.

Some sky island inhabitants are immigrants, brought in by blowing winds, animal droppings, and the boots and pant legs of tourists. Others have been there for thousands of years, since the last Ice Age when the Southwest was much cooler and wetter than it is today. Back then, even lands barely above sea level could host woodland communities of spruce, fir, pinyon, juniper, and even Ponderosa pine. But when the climate warmed, the desert dried out the flats and steadily climbed into the hills until the mountain holdouts became marooned, surrounded by inhospitable lands that would quickly roast them if they dared to venture from their elevated retreats. Over time, each of these secluded niches followed their own evolutionary paths, driven by local topography and their haphazard makeup. Did you know that there are still jaguars and ocelots living in Arizona?

Sky islands exist in many places along the mountain ridges of the American Southwest, where deserts surround and confine them as effectively as the Pacific Ocean surrounds the many mountaintops that occasionally pierce its surface. Most Pacific islands were formed by the movement of tectonic plates, generating uplift and, occasionally, lava erupting from cone-shaped volcanoes. In 2014, NASA satellites were lucky enough to capture the birth of one such island, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (a name I love, by the way) in the Kingdom of Tonga, which sits in the middle of the South Pacific east of Australia.

It’ll be some time before the coconuts, iguanas and sea gulls move in. For a while, it’ll just be a steaming pile of rock. But they’re all coming, and I’m fascinated by how they get there. Some get blown in by cyclones. It’s a hazardous ride, but over thousands of storms, someone’s bound to win the lottery. Some fly in—think birds, bats, and lightweight spiders with fancy parachutes and the ability to withstand high altitudes without pressurization or pretzels. Others get floated in by debris. Palm fronds make magical life rafts for common geckos and any number of invertebrates and tree frog tadpoles. Some arrive in the slurry of plankton conveyed by oceanic currents. Somehow, these infant sea creatures know to head for land at just the right time. Pacific islands are often surrounded by coral reefs which, it turns out, make ideal nurseries.

Still others get flown or floated in as seeds. They arrive stuck to the feathers of migrating birds, swallowed and later expelled in feces, or they float all by themselves, in hardened shells that can withstand the long saltwater cruise until the tide rolls them up on some sandy beach, where the sun warms and dries and triggers them to sprout. They face long odds, each of these castaways. But given enough time and happenstance, they populate one island after another. And yet because each is miles and miles apart, and may be inhabited by a different set of flown, floated, and/or pooped out creatures, their neighborhoods evolve in their own random directions. One island has salt water crocodiles or drooling dragons at the top of its food chain. Another is heavily trod by flightless birds. One island has huge invertebrates but no land mammals. Another has no coconuts but huge tree ferns.

When I think of such islands, my mind wants to leap to modern cities, urban islands where local geography and historical circumstances conspire to allow them to host millions of diverse creatures, sharing various evolutionary traits with their distant cousins, and yet each very much a unique mega-organism. Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City—all feel to me like great, urban islands surrounded by the ocean of prairie. Who was flown, floated, or dumped there seems just as random as the future inhabitants of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai. Once they each achieved some mysterious threshold they became magnetic, self-sustaining ecosystems, drawing more and more species and resources into their orb, donning their own cultural doodads, and expelling those that couldn’t make the cut. What makes the naked city go? Who puts it on the map? Who crafts poetic stanzas about its grand avenues, bustling streets, and back-alley hangouts? Who can’t afford to live there? Who is put off by the weather, the traffic, the noise, the pollution, the crime, the schools? Such considerations are no less daunting than the searing Mojave sun or the pounding Pacific surf. That very process of natural selection suggests to me that these urban islanders can feel just as confined as the residents of Red Rock. At some point, you’ve commuted so far from the Loop that it no longer feels like you live in Chicago. I don’t know what that distance is, but when you start rooting for the Packers, Chiefs, Colts or Lions, you’re off the island!

All this island talk leads me to wonder about SETI (the Search for Extra-terrestrial yada yada) and whether the Earth isn’t just another kind of island, the ultimate sky island, surrounded by a vast desert/ocean of space that confines and separates us from our galactic cousins. Just like the Red Rock residents likely have no awareness of their cousins in Mexico or California, I wonder about our ignorance about potential life in far-off galaxies. Perhaps, long ago, we were among those who were dropped here aboard a rogue asteroid, flown in with some random stardust, or even excreted by some ancient space traveler making use of our blue planet as a convenient porta potty. Over eons of time, we’ve evolved in our own Earthling ways, so much so that we might not even recognize life elsewhere as life. Hmmm? “I am a rock, I am an island.” Kind of gives that old tune a different spin!

The Tangled Web

“Those who ignore history are condemned (or doomed) to repeat it.” Versions of this quote are attributed to 20th century philosopher George Santayana, who wrote it in Reason in Common Sense in 1905, and to Edmund Burke, considered the founder of modern political conservatism, who penned something similar more than a century earlier. I’ve never really liked the expression, especially when further shortened to “history repeats itself.” People used the phrase to try to justify the importance of knowing history, as if by studying the past, you’ll be able to predict when the wheel will come back around. I don’t think that’s really quite how history works.

I prefer to look at history as context. History helps us to understand causation, how one action or, usually, one series of actions, contributes to a cascade of later reactions. History doesn’t necessarily help us to understand where we are going, but it enables us to understand how we arrived, and since people tend to be governed by the same hopes, fears and desires irregardless of the time in which they live, it does offer us some useful lessons about the opportunities and obstacles that may lay ahead.

A few years ago this idea came home to me when I was attending a family funeral. I grew up in South Jersey and, as I still have relatives there, I occasionally return for family functions. The funeral was held not more than a mile from my childhood home in a funeral home on the site of the five and dime store that we used to walk to as kids to buy soda and penny candy. In attendance, I saw relatives and family friends, many that I had not encountered for decades. It struck me that my experience of them had become like a movie that I had skipped out of in the middle to go to the restroom. While I was gone, the film had continued to roll, and so when I returned, I was not completely certain where the story had gone. The setting had changed; the town didn’t look quite the same anymore. There were characters that I recognized from earlier, but they too seemed to have morphed into older versions of themselves. And there were all these new characters, people I either didn’t know at all or had only met once or twice when they were toddlers. Now they were much older, playing much more central roles in the ongoing plot, and I was the uncle who kept calling them by the wrong names.

When we’re born into the world, for us it is the beginning, but in fact, we’re entering in the middle of a vast and complex story that has been continuously unfolding longer than anyone can remember. Our DNA is shaped by ancestors who may have lived in another part of the world thousands of years ago. Our language and customs, how we view the world and organize our thoughts, are similarly inherited from those who came before. In Wisconsin, the 19th century Norwegian writer Waldemar Ager tried to keep the speaking of Norwegian alive among his fellow immigrants because, as he wrote, “language is the breadbasket of culture.” You will find the same sentiments expressed by Native American tribal leaders who lament how central their language is to the survival of their cultural identity. Among refugees, you see how language divides generations. Young people, more adept at learning the new host language, assimilate rapidly while their elders become saddled and isolated by the past.

So as we enter into the mix, into this great forest of humanity, we encounter numerous weedy vines that reach and branch and snarl across time. These vines are often technological innovations. Some branches persist for a generation or two and then wither. Others grow into thick, far-reaching tangles that define and redefine the global ecosystem in predictable and unpredictable ways. Tools that govern transportation and information, those that tend to bring communities together, turn out to be the meatiest vines. Gutenberg’s printing press fueled an age of enlightenment. No longer was reading confined to scribes and nobles. Information could be shared much more widely. Maritime innovations fueled an age of exploration. Global traders exchanged tea, cotton, corn, potatoes, rubber, sugar, tobacco, coffee, chocolate, and host of other items that redefined the planet. Tragically, they also exchanged slaves, diseases, and animal skins. The results of that exchange continue to reach forward in time.

Jump ahead to the 19th century, and a new weed, the iron railroad enters the mix. Now you no longer need to live near a navigable waterway. Now you can transport people and goods across great distances at speed. Now the world has to be divided into time zones in order to manage this new form of transportation. And along those railroad lines, telegraph and later telephone lines transport information. Jump ahead a little further. Now you can take that same trip in your own car or truck. Now you can live in the suburbs and commute. Jump ahead still further. Now you can fly to any city in the world in the span of a single day. Or you can telecommute, and share your blog instantaneously with a few clicks, while lounging at home in your pajamas.

In Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization, author Parag Khanna argues that connectivity will rule the future, much like it ruled the past. In a world in which global transportation and communications lines are criss-crossing the planet, those who are connected will flourish and those who are not will wither. Interesting, he also notes that looking around the world today, you’ll notice that those who are more isolated (e.g. North Korean, Iran, Russia, Niger, Yemen) also tend to be the most volatile. Turns out that erecting walls doesn’t do anyone any good, and in the end all such walls (the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall) are doomed to become tourist attractions, monuments to the folly of those who built them.

The Naturals

I love it when something you read or experience offers you insights that then cascade to other regions of your brain and trigger a “eureka” of understanding. I guess that’s how our brains work as we stair-step from one developmental stage to another. I recently read two books that each, in their own way, helped me better understand how complex ecosystems work. The first, Return of the Sea Otter by Todd McLeish, describes how the health of kelp forests along the Pacific Coast was due in large part to the actions of sea otters, who kept the sea urchins that eat kelp in check. The international fur trade once nearly wiped out sea otters. Apparently, their fur is about a million times more dense than the hair on human heads, even my daughter’s head on a humid day. Without the sea otters, the sea urchins were free to wreak havoc on the kelp, which in turn decimated the habitat that kelp forests created for numerous coastal sea creatures.

Sea otters are what wildlife biologists call a keystone species. Not to be confused with the residents of Pennsylvania, keystoners are like natural conservators. Without them, everything in their neck of the woods tends to go to hell. Google “keystone species” and you’ll be surprised by who’s on the list—prairie dogs, sea stars, termites, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, krill. It’s not just the big dudes, although jumbos like elephants are certainly represented. On the Great Plains, American Bison (aka. buffalo) were once keystoners. In OMG hard-to-fathom numbers, they once clipped and fertilized wide swaths of North America’s grasslands. They also wallowed their massive furry bulks in muddy depressions to cool themselves. Those wallows became ponds and ultimately wetland habitats.

In the Pacific Northwest, salmon are among the keystoners. Their epic current-defying spawning runs feed everyone from orcas and seals, to grizzly bears and wolves, to migratory bald eagles, to the towering cedars and redwoods that are ultimately fertilized by their rotting carcasses. Talk about a keystoner that keeps on giving. The same can be said for beavers in the Great Lakes and wolves in the mountain West. Beavers dam rivers, sorting sediment and regulating water flow for salmon and trout, and creating wetlands that nurture a rich diversity of plants, which in turn offer homes and food for countless birds, amphibians, reptiles, and rodents.

In the mountain West, it turns out that gray wolves labor like sea otters and once suffered a similar fate. They were hunted nearly to extinction because of their perceived threat to livestock. But in their absence, deer and elk multiplied and pigged out. Fewer saplings, shrubs, sedges, and wildflowers meant less habitat for small mammals, birds and even butterflies. Devoid of plant roots to hold stream banks, increased erosion filled in wetlands and choked streams. With their recent reintroduction at Yellowstone, much of this has reversed. Biologists weren’t surprised to see wolves rein in the elk population, but they didn’t expect them to change the land itself.

In Darwin Comes to Town, author Menno Schilthuizen, writes about ants as keystoners. Ants engineer their environment. Their highly organized societies build cities, grow crops, hunt and forage, and in so doing provide habitat for countless mites, flies, butterfly-caterpillars, woodlice, pseudoscorpions, millipedes, springtails and crickets. Collectively, these guys are called Myrmecophiles (literally, “ant-lovers). And, just as a side note, can I just say Myrmecophiles? Really? That’s what we’re going with? You couldn’t just say Ant Lovers, or Antus Loverus if you want it to sound more Latiny? It turns out that all those lovers of ants find ways to mimic the chemical signals that ants use to talk to one another, and thereby infiltrate their cities, where they feed on ant crops, ant pupae, ant dung and, well … ants! So in spraying a little Raid, you’re not just taking out a few ants but a whole colony of other tiny creatures.

Schilthuizen uses the story of the ants as an entree into describing humans as keystoners. We create cities that obviously destroy habitat for many, many plants and animals. But our cities also create new habitats which are then populated by those plants and animals that are best able to adapt to the many unique niches that urban architecture provides. Take deer, for example. In Athens you can’t swing a dead cat without … er … ok, so maybe I shouldn’t put it quite that way. How ‘bout songbirds! Yeah, let’s do songbirds. Cities tend to favor songbirds with higher pitched voices over those with lower pitched tones. Higher notes carry better in urban environments where human vehicles and machines tend to hum in those deeper registers. Since birds use their songs to communicate, those who can hear themselves and their kin do better. Schilthuizen offers a number of examples in a book that I highly recommend. Two of my favorites are about urban crows and catfish. Apparently, in some cities those smarty-pants crows have learned to use slow moving automobiles as giant nut crackers. They’ve taken to bringing especially hard acorns to urban intersections where, after waiting for the light to change, they place the shells in the path of soon to be moving cars. Once the cars go by, voilà—your nut monsieur! Similarly, catfish swimming in rivers that snake through urban areas have learned that pigeons, common city dwellers, also frequent urban waterways to bathe and drink and, well, pigeons aren’t bad tasting. In fact, they go down pretty easy with a little river water.

Such stories about urban ecology offer a timely reminder that humans are very much a part of the natural world. In the museum business, for years we have tended to segregate human history stories in one wing and natural history stories in another. Now, more and more we’re forced to face the stark reality that we’re all naturals. Separating the two removes an essential player from the mix. Humans have obviously had a tremendous impact on ecosystems around the world. Even in the polar regions, where very few humans actually live, our activities are today reshaping those landscapes. And on the flip side, the non-human life forms that inhabit this planet have obviously shaped where, when and how human societies thrive. Look at Idaho, a state who’s shape really doesn’t make any sense next to all those Great Plains rectangles. Three major ecological regions exist within its arbitrary boundaries—the high desert sage steppe South; the rocky, mountainous middle; and the green, lush forested North. Even though the state’s residents all call themselves Idahoans, the people that dwell in each region live very different lives, nudged in this direction or that by their plant and animal neighbors. And why not? People and the land shape each other. Any bonafide keystoner could tell you that.

Pablo & Vincent

Pablo & Vincent

Tim Pfaff

This song was born one Saturday morning, about twenty years ago when my son, Collin, was still in kindergarten. As I was walking through the living room, probably in the middle of weekend chores, I passed Collin and his friend Joey, huddled at our family computer. They were playing Power Pete, a game that came pre-loaded on the Mac. I think it was similar to Super Mario. Players had to navigate a kind of maze while gobbling various objects in order to accumulate points and advance to the next level. Our kids loved it! This was a pre-mouse Mac, so Lara (five years older than Collin) would operate the arrow keys to navigate while Collin's only job was to shoot ... over and over and over. Did I say they loved it? In a recent trip to Chicago, they both became filled with nostalgic glee when someone found a Power Pete video on YouTube.

On this particular Saturday, one of Collin's classmates had slept over and the two were intent on Power Pete in their pajamas. They had juice glasses at their sides and what looked like the remains of peanut butter toast or whatever Diane had fixed for them on kid-friendly plastic plates. It looked like a kinder-office. Today, I guess, you'd call them gamers. The only sounds in the room were the click, click, click of the keyboard, and the constant chatter between them. As I walked past, I happened to hear Joey say that his favorite artist was Vincent Van Gogh, while Collin offered that he preferred Pablo Picasso. It stopped me in my tracks. It was not the kind of chatter that I had grown used to hearing from these two. I would have expected something about Batman or Godzilla. No doubt their art teacher had been introducing them to various styles of art and, wonder of wonders, they liked it. And why wouldn't they? Van Gogh had that great explosion of colors leaping off the canvas. And Picasso, well, who can even say what was going on in his head? And what child wouldn't want to paint like someone who didn't seem to follow any rules at all. It would not be the first time that my son would surprise me.

Their conversation stuck with me for a long, long time, until some months later, I wrote this song, a kind of celebration of childhood and parenthood all rolled into one. We all wanted our children to meet the world head on with joy and wonder, even as we ran along beside them trying to be nurturing and supportive, but not too nurturing and supportive, just the right amount. It was at once exhilarating and exhausting. Remember the first time you took your toddler to the park, and she went back and forth between the swing, slide and teeter-totter, and after five minutes you felt like you'd been there for an hour? Remember the time you and your son were both home sick with the flu, and in your feverish state, grandma showed up with six hours of newly recorded Barney videos? Maybe that was just me.

Raising children was like time traveling. You immediately had a new appreciation for your parents. You saw them, maybe for the first time, as not simply parents, but people with hopes and dreams that maybe hadn't always involved carting your ass all over town. And then you looked at your kids, and you remembered some of the same reactions and feelings that you witnessed in them. Of course, you wanted them to benefit from your knowledge and experience. You didn't want them to suffer as you had suffered, even though, let's face it, some of that was out of your hands. Even when they were listening, they weren't really listening. But they were so joyous as toddlers, so filled with possibility, and so darned cute. We were forever grateful, but we really wanted to take a nap. 

Pablo & Vincent

Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh were playing

Power Pete in the den

Pablo did things no other painter could do

He made it to level 2 of the game

Batman and Robin painted windmills in fields

With swirling leaves and stars up above

But Mr. Freeze drew frozen pictures of ice

He wasn’t evil, just chilled to the bone

Action figures and magic markers

Concerts sung in the bath

Dried out paint sets and bedroom sword fights

Make us mad, make us laugh

Where do babies come from?

Where do dead people go?

What happens when you go outside without shoes?

You get a sliver inside your thumb toe

Sit up straight at the table

Brush your teeth before bed

Don’t leave your music on the living room floor

‘Cause you can’t keep all those notes in your head

Hats and mittens and soggy snow pants

Summer days at the pool

Can’t see how lucky we are to have them

Can’t wait ‘til they go to school

Babies don’t always smell good

Grown-ups don’t always know best

Naps are something you never outgrow

If you can have on then you’re truly blessed.

Emperors in Exile

So, I was watching March of the Penguins the other day on HBO—the one with all the shuffle stepping and belly sliding and egg passing and cute little penguin fluff balls that you just wanna squeeze to hear them chirp. Bring up the soulful strings. Cue Morgan Freeman. I think it’s a great film, but it makes me wonder: “Whatttt the hell is going on with evolution?” THESE are the ones that get to survive? Really? These are the gymnastics that some living organisms are required to perform in order to pass their genetic code along to the next generation? Really? There wasn’t a simpler way, a way in which maybe they wouldn’t have to brave minus-500 degree temperatures with gale force winds in six months of darkness while they’re trying to hatch BABIES? And these are the Emperor Penguins, not Prince and Princess Penguins, not Dukes, Duchesses, Madams, Sirs, or even Middle-Class on the Upper West Side Penguins. These are the god damn Emperors. What did they do to deserve that? They must have been horrible rulers.

I sometimes hear religious people, who claim to believe in such things, say, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” I gotta say … that feels like a massive understatement. Because – and I’m not even going to get into politics here—just the natural state of life on our precious blue planet seems so very, very very, very, very, very strange. Just watching those exiled Emperors, huddling in a circle against that cruel Antarctic wind—it’s either a shit-load of Hail Marys, or the longest, most complicated football play in history: “Ok, Jimmy you do a button hook around that bottle cap; Peewee, do a crisscross with Hermann and duck over the middle; Jake you fake right and do a curl behind Zeke; Jerry go long; I’ll fake the hand-off to Sudsy and pitch it to Benny coming around with Big Ed and Ugly Frank. He’ll fake the option, then lateral to Ozzie on the reverse. Wait for the sun to come up over the second iceberg, then toss it to Ike streaking down the coastline. Watch out for blitzing sea lions. Anybody drops an egg, we all fall on it or it’ll freeze solid in eight seconds. Break!”

What are they thinking about during that long, vicious, bitingly cold night? I mean, the Aurora Borealis is pretty cool, but I don’t think that’s gonna be enough. Maybe it’s a deep, repetitive reincarnation chant. “I’m coming back as a flamingo. I’m coming back as a flamingo. No way I’m doing this shit again. I’m coming back as a flamingo. Next time, I’m gonna be kicking it in the tropics. I’m coming back as a flamingo. Sandy beaches. All the shrimp you can eat. Nothing but palm trees and warmmmm water. I’m coming back as a flamingo. Hey!!! Watch it bub? Get your feathers out of my face? It’s my turn to be in the middle! I’ve been freezing my ass off out on the edge for over an hour. We gotta freekin’ line here, ya know! No cuts!... Next time …. Yeah, yeah, flamingo for sure. Pink and tall. I’m coming back as a flamingo.”

And Emperor Penguins are not even the only ones who have to endure such trials. Humpback whales mate and give birth in the warm, tropical waters around the Hawaiian Islands. That sounds pretty sweet. I mean, we lived in northern Wisconsin when our kids were born. Finally, an evolutionary adaptation I can get on board with. Woohoo!!! But there’s no food for them in those groovy Aloha waters. They don’t eat poi or pineapple. Their meals are served up off the balmy, storm-tossed coast of Alaska. So, the new mothers must swim there with their calves, who frequently need to rest atop mom’s back in order to have enough energy to make it to the surface regularly TO BREATHE. The journey takes them months, and, just to kick it up a notch, along the way they’re hounded by pods of Orcas, the smartest, most lethal hunters in the ocean. Thanks a lot Sherlock!

What would the evolutionary advantage there be? I suppose in most cases, it’s all about finding a place far from claws and teeth to bring babies into the world. Still, you would think they might catch a break and at least have a smoothie bar around the corner, just a little something to tide them over. A Krill Swim & Go? A Sardine Shack?

That breathing thing is another freaky evolutionary feature. “Ok so you’re going to be able to swim like a MOFO, I mean, you’ll be slicing through the water, darting here and there, graceful, quick, all day long, no problem, except every so often … and this is a glitch we just haven’t been able to work out of the software … every so often you’re gonna have to stick your snout out of the water, just for a second or two, to breathe. But you can go right back down again. Back to swimming, chilling, darting here and there … catch some fish … It’ll be beautiful.”

“And how long do I have to keep popping out of the water to breathe.”

“Oh, that’s permanent. That’s just something you do.”

“And if I don’t make it up. Maybe I get distracted, lose track of time, meeting runs late, stuck in traffic?”

“Oh, you’re gonna wanna make it back up to the air.”

“Well, let’s say I don’t, just once, for argument’s sake. Hypothetical.”

“You’ll die.”

“I’ll die?”

“Yeah. Sorry. That’s hard-wired in. DEAD as a doornail. Nothing we could do about it.”

What would it be like for humans if we had to do the opposite? Every so many seconds you have to dip your head in some water to catch a breath or you’ll suffocate. Every step, every action, every decision would be measured against how long it will take you to get back to water. Talk about a biological clock! You’d always have that “tick, tick, tick” counting down. “Can I make it to Kroger and back? Do I have time to stop at the bank? If I take the bike path along the river and stop at the pool….” Instead of tanks of air, we’d have to strap on big water-cooler sized jugs. I’ve never gone scuba diving, but I’m guessing they’d be quite a bit heavier.

I can’t imagine that would get very far in the design process. I mean, I know there are no bad ideas in brainstorming but.… “It’s time for the regular weekly Evolution design team meeting. We’ve done some good work with whales, dolphins, seals, sea otters. A whole host of mammals are spending most of their days swimming underwater and surface only periodically to inhale. Now, we have a suggestion from upstairs, wants to shake things up a bit, try something new, think outside the box. What if we had a mammal that lived primarily on land, but had to go underwater to breathe? What would that look like? We’ve written all the brainstorms for new creatures up here on these big sheets. Fire-breathing dragon. Unicorns. Mermaids. And now water-breathing homo sapiens? Put your blue dots next to the ones you’d like to see fleshed out in the next design phase. Don’t worry about the budget. We’re just blue-skying it for now.”

The more you think about it, there are all sorts of evolutionary twists and turns that seem totally preposterous, and yet there they are, going about their business, flying here, swimming there, species with crazy tongues, hardened shells, bioluminescent organs, clear the room odors, doing it year in and year out. In Home Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, historian Yuval Noah Harari suggests that storytelling turns out to be one of the most important evolutionary advantages developed by homo sapiens. He argues that by being able to tell stories, we have managed to cooperate, join forces, work together in great numbers across vast chasms of space and time to accomplish what was needed to pass along our genetic code to future generations. Storytelling. Spinning the proverbial yarn. Weaving a tale. Talking some serious shite! And that has made the difference. That has taken us from caves of Lascaux to the Sea of Tranquility. Images, words, phrases, and sentences forming ideas. Creating stories has established connections, reinforced bonds, repaired injuries, unified communities, built nations. It’s not who has the biggest horns, the brightest feathers, the loudest bellow, the best nest. It’s our stories that have enabled us to succeed, the ones we tell ourselves, the ones we tell others. We have evolved the ability to tell stories that say, “If we all join forces, work together, learn to trust each other, we can do this, that, and the other thing. We can make our lives better. We can make a place for our kids.”

Hmmm? That’s kind of an awesome evolutionary superpower. I won’t say that there isn’t still a fair amount of mystery embedded in that trait, and “awesome” can cut both ways, but … as long as I don’t have to balance an egg on my feet in the freezing cold or swim half way around the world to get a decent meal? And I can keep on breathing, in and out, like always? Ok. I’m in!

Dancing to the Light of the Rising Sun

The Rising Sun

Tim Pfaff

Taking in the West for the scenery

Want to leave the sadness of life behind

Walking in the shade of the greenery

Sitting in the glow of the campfire light

     And we go on and on

     Who knows how we found this song

     And we go on and on

     Dancing to the light of the rising sun

Living in the land of the creamery

Filling our apartment with peas and pies

Bringing home an angel of springtime

Smiling crinkled nose and two sweet blue eyes

     And we go on and on

     Who knows how we found this song

     And we go on and on

     Dancing to the light of the rising sun

Soon it came the season for moving

Little corner house near the old train yard

Sledding with our kids in the schoolyard

Walking to the park and going up and down that slide

And we go on and on

Who knows how we found this song

And we go on and on

Dancing to the light of the rising sun

Now we're in the hillsides of redbud

Appalachian hippies and stardust nights

Staring at the moon through our window

And swaying to the songs that we'll sing tonight

     And we go on and on

     Who knows how we found this song

And we go on and on

Dancing to the light of the rising sun

And we go on and on

Who knows how we found this song

And we go on and on

Dancing to the light of the rising sun...

As the Wind Blows

"I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul." Remember that song, an oldie from the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens? I always liked that song, but I guess I never really paid much attention to the lyric. "The wind of my soul?" Really? I mean, I know it's a metaphor, but ... really? That's what you're going with?

The lyric popped into my head as I was heading down the bike trail this morning. Coincidentally, it was windy, but then again, it's always windy on the bike trail, particularly as it hugs the Hocking River around the lower campus of Ohio University. You don't ever seem to get a break on the direction of the wind either. No matter which way you're headed, there is it, right in your face. Maybe it's just the way I'm prone to look at things. I think it has something to do with the bowl-shaped valley that we're tucked into. The winds come down from the hills and just sort of swirl around looking for an exit.

This time of year the wind is filled with vegetation, pollen mostly. The honeysuckle in particular is sweet in the air, but it sends me running for tissues and antihistamine. Later in the summer when the rains ease up and the land begins to dry out—about time for the county fair—you'll get clay dust blowing across town. It will be especially bad on State Street this year where the orange cones are out and road crews are hard at it. By the time they finish in September, the students will have blown back into town and so too the fall rains, wetting the leaves and carrying the spores of any number of molds and fungi. The smell of wet leaves puts me in mind of my high school cross-country days. Our home course meandered through the South Jersey pine barrens on trails that had a thousand curves.

As I understand it, our olfactory organs are close to the memory centers of our brains and that's why scent is such a powerful memory trigger. As a kid I lived near the ocean in South Florida. There the winds carry the salt air. It's an odor that's hard to describe but you know it when you smell it. It hits you as you exit the airport, as soon as those automatic doors open and you step through the threshold into a sun that is always a bit brighter than you remember, bouncing off all those flat roofs and white stucco houses. My days in South Florida were all pre-automobile ownership, so I spent a lot of time cursing the winds that never ceased blowing up and down the Atlantic coast. It felt like someone shouting at you.

As I was cycling this morning, I was thinking about whether you could do an exhibit about the wind. Sailing and aerodynamics came immediately to mind. For centuries, sailors have been adept at manipulating the wind, from whichever direction, to power their vessels forward. Being a landlubber, I've never really understood how they do that. Windmills have also been used for centuries, mostly to grind grain although in recent years more and more you see those great high-tech white spinning wheels that generate electricity. A few years ago, Diane and I visited the historic Adriaan windmill in Haarlem in the Netherlands. It was much larger inside than it looked, four levels each one with its own stated purpose. Traditionally, the master of the windmill had occupied a position of status in the community. Over the centuries, the mill had been used to grind stone, tobacco, and grain. Now it mostly grinds tourists.

The Wright Brothers conducted a ton of experiments in North Carolina when they were developing their glider. They studied the movements of birds and built their own wind tunnel to understand how air flowed over and under the wings. I attended a kite festival at Kitty Hawk where they did some of their experiments. I remember seeing historical photographs of them camping on a wide, sandy and obviously very windy beach. We were staying in a big house with a fully equipped kitchen and a jacuzzi. I like our way better.

At NASA they study global air currents and create animations that, not unlike oceanic currents, show how atmospheric winds constantly circulate around our planet. They pick up dust particles in the Sahara Desert and deposit them in South America, where the nitrogen therein fertilizes the rain forest. Similarly, warm water evaporating off the coast of West Africa feeds the fierce winds that we experience in the Caribbean. On the pancake lands of Kansas and Oklahoma, you get a variation on that theme in the form of tornados as dry winds blowing east meet warm humid air flowing north from the Gulf of Mexico. I spent some time in the Flint Hills of Kansas. You could see the line of storms coming from miles away. It was at once mesmerizing and frightening. Residents there told us the winds never stopped. They were a constant companion on the prairie. It put me in mind of the Dust Bowl, of Woody Guthrie and the Okies making that long trek westward across drought devastated fields. Kansas still exhibits the artifacts of ghost towns and "quiet towns"—communities that still have residents but not enough to support a school. 

In Montana, I ascended Swiftcurrent Pass in Glacier National Park and was struck by the lush green forest down below us to the west, in contrast to the dry, rocky slopes that flattened into the Great Plains to the east. Climatologists call it a "rain shadow." The mountains stall the storms blowing in from the Pacific. They back up behind those tall rocky peaks, dumping rain on the western slopes and leaving the east parched and, that summer, scorched by wildfires. We experience a similar effect in Athens as the moist air rising from the Gulf backs up when it reaches the Appalachian Mountains.

In Wisconsin, they feel the bite of Arctic winds swooping down into the Great Lakes region usually with Santa. The thermometer dips below zero, and the hair in your nostrils freezes on the inhale. We used to call it "nose hair weather." You'd have to plug your car in at night if you expected it to start in the morning. The seat cushion wouldn't even crunch down when you got in. It was like sitting on a block of cement. 

In the Southwest where it is mountainous but the desert soil doesn't hold onto the heat, you feel the constant movement of hot and cold air up and down the slopes. The air flows downward in the mornings as the cooler night air descends into the valleys. But as the sun raises the temperature, the air flow reverses and the winds flow back uphill. It's like a temperature-driven teeter totter. We experience the same phenomenon in Athens, although perhaps less dramatically. If you watch the turkey vultures that daily ride the late afternoon thermals along the ridges, you'll see them slowly, effortlessly circling as they get a free lift from the rising warm air. They flap their wings to reach their desired elevation, then slowly circle downward, around and around, until they reach some elevation that tells them it's time to flap again. Turkey vultures have a huge olfactory bulb, much larger than other raptors. Like flying bloodhounds, they are one of the only raptors that hunt by smell rather than sight, which makes sense since mostly what they eat reeks of decay. It seems odd that they would be one of the only birds to develop that evolutionary trait. Imagine drawing that lot. "Well, Mr. V. we have some good news and bad news. On the bright side, we've given you a great wingspan and the ability to soar almost effortlessly. The bad news? Well ... the menu ... ugh ... your meals will be confined to dead, rotting carcasses. Oh, and we'll help you out by making your head bald to keep down the bacteria ... and you can pee on your feet to keep them clean." It's a hard knock life, I guess.

I wonder if songbirds are bothered at all by the wind. Obviously, a hard gust shaking the trees that hold your house can't be a welcome feature, but to watch them fly, they so deftly dart and dash over, under and around whatever obstacles present themselves, I can't imagine that the average breeze gives them even the slightest trepidation. What would that feel like—to be able to navigate so freely, so swiftly, and so weightlessly through the air? In the time that it takes me to stand up from my chair they can be down the slope and blocks away.

Some years back, we experienced what's called a derecho, a line of fast moving, powerful winds that mowed down trees from Ohio to D.C. It came just a few months after the boulder fell on our house. Looking up at the trees on the ridge as they bent over the cliff, I couldn't help but wonder what god we had offended. Thankfully, no trees followed the boulder's path. But hiking through the forest afterward, you'd see dozens of mature trees that, forced to bend too far and too rapidly, simply snapped. There's a metaphor for you! For weeks after, the Athens County fairgrounds hosted caravans of power trucks moving out into the hills daily to repair electrical lines. Some friends suffered without power for weeks. Others benefitted from firewood that lasted years. I guess that's the way the wind blows.

Big Chimney Woe

Big Chimney Woe

Tim Pfaff

The other day I learned that Chef Matt is now cooking at the Inn at Cedar Falls. I'm glad that he's moved on from the fire that sadly claimed the Hocking Hills Dining Lodge a few years ago, but seeing his interview put me in mind of lazy summer days in Appalachia and my favorite but now long-gone Saturday morning haunt. In a former life, Matt had been the proprietor, baker, and permanently-in-a-good-mood greeter at the Big Chimney Baking Company.

Big Chimney was not very big … the bakery that is, not the chimney. The chimney was HUGE, standing sixteen stories tall, a leftover from the coal mining era of making dough. It sat twenty yards or more behind the bakery, a rust-colored tower among the hardwoods. The Big Chimney bakery was, in contrast, quite small. Inside, just three or four tables crowded a deli case and assorted bread racks. On Saturdays, the racks overflowed with round, hard-crusted loaves. The aroma hit you as soon as you cracked the door—cranberry walnut, feta spinach dill, potato rosemary, Greek olive with sweet roasted peppers, sourdough, multigrain, pain du levan. On rare occasions, you’d find a bronze apricot jalapeño loaf, but Matt didn't make it too often. I got hooked on it once. He made it on Wednesdays, the same day that my physical therapy sessions took me near the bakery on the way to town. I wouldn’t say that it sped my recovery, but I didn’t miss any sessions.

The patio outside was where the real action took place. On Saturday mornings we'd arrive in carloads, rambling up the narrow drive barely wide enough for two cars to pass without someone straying into the ditch. Big Chimney sat at the end of a dead-end road in the woods at the edge of town. No one just happened by. No through traffic. Everyone here meant to come. Car tires crunched gray stones as we rolled up into the overgrown parking lot. Early arrivals snagged shady spots under thick, gnarly oaks with a stern gargoyle standing watch. 

The brick patio had a grid of about a dozen octagonal, hunter green umbrellas mounted above square weathered wood tables. We'd sit in the shade and munch bread and cheese, scones, croissants, plate-size cinnamon rolls and oozing chocolate éclairs. The cheese was rich, creamy, and smelly, the summer sausage spicy, and the coffee roasted, dark, and steaming.

Athenians lined up to buy Matt’s creations on summer Saturday mornings, either before or after a trip to the farmers market. Like sparrows they'd flutter from one to the other. We'd take our culinary treasures out to the patio to eat and talk. Ohio University draws a diverse crowd to our hippy skippy Appalachian town. We're a small but affluent community in the middle of Ohio's poorest county. You'd run across a wide cross-section out on the patio. Visiting professors, medical school interns, foreign exchange students, and a healthy assortment of what I call the "hill country long hairs"—folks that went to OU in the '70s and never quite managed to leave Athens. They stuck around and became a random assortment of carpenters, roofers, potters, plumbers, social workers, teachers, one or two doctors and lawyers, some self-styled entrepreneurs, a few architects, and more than a fair number of part-time musicians,. Some had actually gone to school for the career they would pursue. Most just sort of fell into something and then felt their way along, faking it until they made it. By 11:00 their cars would line the grass along the drive. It was very much a family affair, geezers to toddlers, and even the occasional shaggy, hopeful dog, trailing behind whatever kid still had food in his or her hand. 

Newcomers eyed available tables as they waited in a line that often extended out the door. They begged unused chairs or improvised seating along the low stone wall bordering the patio. Patrons relaxed in sandals, shorts, and sunglasses. They meandered from table to table catching up, making chit chat and sampling goodies. The patio would swell and then several tables would depart and the pace would soften until the next flurry. From about eight until noon, Saturdays, all summer long, the sparrows fluttered from farmers market to Big Chimney. Even when it rained, which it does a lot here in the summer, you could still take refuge under the green octagons.

September was my favorite time to be out there. By then, I was pretty sick of whatever we still had growing in the garden. You could begin to see some space in the canopy as the woods gradually began to dry and thin. In a few weeks the trees would be glorious. Appalachian autumns rock! But in early September, it was still warm, too warm without shade. The kids would be back in school, so the weekdays were full, fuller, and fullest. But Saturday mornings were still semi-sacred (after soccer practice). Out at the patio, you'd hear snippets of conversation as people got reacquainted. Who had been away at what beach? Who went to China? Who did an artist-in-residence? Who just deposited their college freshman in some faraway school? Who had to get a colonoscopy or an MRI? Who just got married? Who had a baby?

These were pre-cell phone days. No one was talking into space with an earpiece. No one was texting. No one was listening to music on earbuds. No one was looking anything up. If someone couldn't think of the name of the actor who was in that movie with the guy and the thing, they'd just have to figure it out later. People came with books, magazines, and folded newspapers that they intended to read or ... maybe they were just using them for cover, as an excuse to linger a little longer.

I have this memory of one fine Saturday morning. We’d come a bit late, missing the farmers market crowd. Matt's wife was just returning in their VW van-converted bread mobile. She returned with mostly empty baskets, never any feta spinach dill—those loaves got snatched up minutes after they dinged the starting bell. Occasionally she'd have some ten-grain, but usually not even that.

As we entered Matt barked merrily from behind the counter, "You're late!" We were among the leftovers, but the patio was still half full. In the corner, a couple of young lovers huddled over their coffee mugs. They looked like they'd just managed to crawl out of bed after a late Friday night on Court Street, Next to them, a large African man with a deep voice sat talking with his adult son. On the other side, a pudgy, divorced dad served two middle schoolers. I recognized him from geezer basketball. The kids fretted over a bee buzzing the table.

We sat next to a large Indian family who'd pushed two tables together to accommodate their numbers. They'd ordered two servings of focaccia with fresh tomatoes, basil, black olives, roasted yellow peppers, garlic, and bittersweet Gorgonzola. The kids turned up their noses at the Gorgonzola and held out for a big honking cinnamon roll, its football-size swirl encasing what I always imagined was at least a stick of melted butter. One of the kids played on my son’s soccer team. He was still wearing his lime green jersey from their early morning practice.

My wife was reading her book of the week while I sat, sipped, and idly eyed a red and black Honda motorcycle parked at the top of the driveway with a FOR SALE sign leaning against the gargoyle. I think it was Matt's. She chided me but I didn't really have much interest. I had a book that I was then reading for work, but that particular volume didn't get cracked open that day. Instead, I just leaned back, put my feet up on an empty chair, eased my sunglasses into place, and reached for another section of the dark chocolate brownie Diane had just finished slicing. Our kids? I don't recall where they were on that particular Saturday, probably some birthday/sleepover hoohah with friends. We had the afternoon to ourselves. It was delicious and I don't remember feeling a bit guilty. We weren't mining coal, you know.

P.S. Best of luck to Matt at the Inn at Cedar Falls. Yet another reason to venture out into the Hocking Hills!