consolationland

The Usual Disclaimer: This is NOT to minimize medical conditions such as oxalosis or hyperoxaluria, or disparage their treatment and care. It is not medical or menu advice. It is not a knowledgeable book review or criticism of an author or her health journey discovery which has inspired the author and many readers. This is only a monologue by some random person who just spent the past 24 hours fretting because she has no one else to take care of. Here we go.

Library had a book the other day, a lot of books really but this one caught my eye. The cover alerted us that people who ruminate over eating healthy are barking up (or chewing on) the wrong tree. Because the stuff we think is good for us may be full of oxalates that are causing a health crisis of many different symptoms all across America. That sounded like a relaxing bedtime read, so I took it right home.

So sure, I’d read that some plants contain enough oxalates to even be fatal (rhubarb leaves), or to cause agonizing pain to tissues of the entire digestive tract (skunk “cabbage”), or just enough to make me extravagantly sick for an entire morning. (That was a friend’s proud gift of fresh-picked New Zealand spinach from her garden, which tasted wholesome and stayed down for about 15 minutes.) It’s pretty common knowledge that rhubarb stems, chard, spinach, and beet greens are all edible but do have a lot of oxalic acid. The concern there is that oxalic acid can be a factor in conditions such as kidney stones and gout.

But the book added two armaments of data to my talent for worrying. One, its many troubling accounts of oxalate-attributed medical symptoms affecting every part of the human body. Two, the tables and charts naming the oxalate content of the foods I eat every day just in trying to do the right thing.

The word “irony,” I think, refers to the gap between Justice as conceived and executed by God, and the justice that we humans grope for with duct tape and string. The irony here is that it took me years of constant book reading and experimentation to arrive at the whole-food plant-based diet which seems to checkmark all the right boxes. To wit, the largest meal of the day being breakfast…

1. large heap of boiled mustard or dandelion or other greens plus stewed salt-free tomatoes plus healthful toppings — horseradish, ginger, balsamic vinegar, mustard (to increase sulforaphane content of the greens)

2. black bean or other bean soup with garlic and miso and almonds (raw, unsalted, powdered in the blender as a salt substitute) plus Ethiopian Berbere powder, containing 15 or so spices

3. hot water with matcha green tea plus a heaping teaspoon of turmeric and black pepper, with a dash of unsweetened soymilk and a tablespoon of blackstrap molasses.

4. a couple of bites of dark 72% chocolate chips to balance out the taste of everything else.

This is makes for half an hour of munching on penitential flavors trying to do the right thing. (If a nice bowl of Life cereal could have the same effect I’d go for that instead.) This way the whole gamut of adversarial tastes can be over with and done early in the day.

After that breakfast hurdle, the rest of the day is easier. It’s just picking an item or two from a consistent menu of options. That would be sliced raw vegetables like beets or celery or this past week a bag of raw spinach. Or whole grains (barley, rye, oat groats, buckwheat, spelt, emmer faro, pearl millet, brown rice…). Or tofu, or sweet potatoes, or lavash bread, or stewed prunes or other fruit, or berries, or plain air-pop popcorn, and some more dark chocolate and nuts. That’s the story.

Again, not dietary advice. Just an amateur cobbling things together in the ongoing effort to be a little less sad.

Now here’s the justice punchline:

…the book says that a safe maximum daily consumption of oxalates is about 200 mg per day, and that the foods above are, hold on to your hat, sky-high in oxalates.

The prospect of good intentions being so far wrong had my mind racing through a night of sleep, dreaming of imaginary nutrient charts and trying to put together a better plan. Now to be fair, the book has plenty of ideas for a low-oxalate diet of substitutions, including animal products and kale and lettuce.

But for one day the whole health quest seemed so daunting that for lunch I just gave up and had a turkey sandwich from Trader Joe. It was good. Then I came home and read online reviews of the book by two different nephrologists, and looked up posts by Dr. Michael Greger (How Not to Die), who put a broader perspective on the issue.

What is the lesson in all this? The lesson is that compared to other world problems, fretting all about this is a massive privilege. Back to the library with this book. Time for the nightly walk to the store, to refill my water jug at the filtration machine and observe some birds.

Update 7/7/26: A very kind reader comment gave me the idea of looking up the song again just now, and giving it a listen. Wow. Even after 54 years, at that first guitar line some fine thread of perception woke right up and recognized it. I’d forgotten the fancy syncopated drum drive, that hammering honky tonk keyboard, and of course the closing whoop. Those lads had a fine day at the studio. No wonder it got attention on our street. Thank you, Reader!

Down at the Rice Family home, son Barry bought a new long-playing (LP) phonograph record.

Back then, that always meant that the buyer’s family was going to get really used to that record. So was the whole street. A young fan enjoying an album for the 12,000th time was open season for any relative or friend or passerby to toss in their opinion and even make fun of the song, or its lyrics, or the picture of the band on the cover. Did the public communal nature of music have any improving influence over record purchases or listening habits? Could be.

The ruckus on our street (cars, push lawn mowers, transistor radios, airplanes, sirens, dogs, ice cream truck bells) often muffled out the music coming from a house. But on Barry Rice’s new album, one song had a hook — a long high brassy tone that floated up and over all other interference. Every time, I used to stop and listen for that high note repeating now and then until the song was over.

Over the next few days, snatches of the rest of the song and album drifted out the windows. The song with the high note had driving percussion and mood shifts and singing with a low growling vocal fry. The short two-line refrain had one long bended note falling in pitch; but then that bugle touch kicked in with its sharp sustained high note, a contrasting tone of citrus brightness. It sounded like a pained faltering horse recovering its stride in a heroic galvanized leap. It also brought to mind the dawning of a whole new youthful question: how do musicians build up all the layers in a piece of music anyway, and get good at it? How do they just know to throw in the one unique unexpected salt shake that seasons a whole song?

So one June day around summer solstice time, when the windows were open and there was music all over the street, I knocked on the Rices’ door. That was normal manners back there and back then, with neighbors stopping by each other’s houses for every kind of reason. The unusual part was that this time I asked to speak to Barry. That was our first and last conversation, because once the boys got to be teenagers they really didn’t have a reason to talk to younger girls, or be seen around them. But with that music question in mind I knocked anyway.

   “Come in, Hon,” Dad Rice called through the screen door, looking up from the Sunday funny paper comics. “Barry? He’s in his room. As you can tell from all his din. BARRY. Company!”

There was the faintest swoop noise of a lifted music needle. Barry peered out of his bedroom.

   “I hear you talking when I’m on the street,” I said to Barry. “What is that?”

   “You what?” Barry blinked.

   “No no, it’s the first line of a song on that album. What’s the title?”

   “Name of the… song?” If he were playing it for just the other fellas, he might have answered without another thought. But with me and with Dad there reading the funnies, Barry shrugged. “Oh, who knows.”

   “Who knows?” Dad Rice looked over his glasses. “YOU should. You play it enough.”

   “Whatever. I don’t think it has a name, Pop,” his son shrugged.

   “Those jokers make the big bucks playing the guitar and trying to sing,” said Dad. “Didn’t bother to name their own songs?”

   “Oh never mind, it’s ok,” I told them. “I just like the bugle part.”

   “Bugle?” Barry furrowed his brow. “Record doesn’t have a bugle.”

   “Did you leave your manners in the barn?” Dad Rice asked him. “Mary took an interest. Just show her the album!”

Barry didn’t bring the album out to us. Instead he propped open his door, waved me in to his room, and handed it to me in there.

It was easy to see why he didn’t put it out on the coffee table with Mom Rice’s Infant of Prague statue on a crochet doily. The cover art looked depressed or distressing somehow, like pictures from an old circus side show. The words on the sleeve didn’t make much sense, and if they were any easier to hear and understand the adults would have shut that record down pretty fast. The titles didn’t make sense either (but the songs did all have one). I puzzled over it for a bit, and handed it back. “Thank you. Can I hear that trumpety part close up?”

Barry opened a box with a little currycomb, but instead of bristles it had a side of green velvet. He brushed the velvet in a circle around the record surface. He turned over the record on the turntable holding just the very edges with his palms. He lifted the arm lever, and lowered the needle.

I got on the floor next to the speaker box, and put my ear against the scratchy gold fabric. Wow. Now those brass-shaped vibrations were playing right inside my head! I said “Gee, that’s really interesting all right.” Then I got out of Barry’s way and gave him back his room. He was doing me a big favor letting me see his album, and even speaking to me at all. That honor made the June day feel important.

Another June, another solstice time last year, I was strolling in the park. Then through the trees there was a long faint distant rising cry. “AaaaaAAA!” I stopped short, on full alert. Somebody needs help! But where? In the trees, everything was quiet. But a minute or two later there it was again, loud and far away. “AaaaaAAA!” There as a pattern, over and over; first stillness, then that howling cry. I followed the sound out of the park, to the nearby neighborhood with pleasant gardens and stately homes.

Finally, way up the road, I figured out that the cries came from a man facing the other way. He was kneeling on the ground with incoherent yells and some ranting mumble in between. Couples with kids in strollers, dog owners with their pets, everyone enjoyed their solstice afternoon, giving him a brief look and then strolling right by. I couldn’t believe it. Will no one stop and help? What is this country coming to?

Gradually I deciphered the ranting too. “No more!” the man pleaded. “AaaaaAAA!” He seemed to be fumbling for something on the ground. “Pain! No more! AaaaaAAA!” And still the neighbors sauntered past with their ice cream cones and chat while this elderly man raved on. “Can’t even feel the pain no more! AaaaAAA!” At last I rushed to his side, catching my breath.

Wellsir. This is no elder who has fallen and he can’t get up. This Boomer looks strong as a rock pillar with his muscled shoulders and barrel chest. He’s in a grand mood, with a pleased grin, kneeling on a cushion and setting out flats of petunias — pink, white, red-striped, purple star-splotch; colors in rich soil, nurtured in strong deft hands. And with no sense of melody, at the top of his powerful siren lungs, he keeps belting out his jolly petunia planting song:

Kick me like you did before! I can’t even feel the pain no more. AaaaaAAA!

Wait, what? Those words! I’ve read them, I’ve held them in my hands. But where? When? My brain is spinning tumblers of a rusted padlock of memory. Then, the lock springs open. Eureka! This man in his tuneless blathering way is tossing off random lyrics from 50-plus years ago. He’s even imitating the horn section for the wee buglelets blooming at his feet.

All I can do is laugh. For a moment, it’s 1972 again. At the Rice home, Mom and Dad are still alive and well. Barry is a courteous teenager who saved his paper route money for a new record. He’s being thoughtful to a younger girl who shows admiring interest in his music. For her, he replays that one bright high metallic hook.

It’s the Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street. Placing the needle in just the right groove, he advises “There. Just forget about the words.”

In New Jersey, there is the most loyal reader in America for this website. My home page Stats function shows the countries and map regions where people have viewed these pages, and the map suggests that someone in your state keeps showing up. Or maybe it’s all of your neighbors, and y’all are taking turns? Thank you! As Dr. Jordan Peterson says, That’s not nothing.

And, not to worry: the state and map area is all I know about you, or any of you. This is a very small potato blog with a tiny readership. Being noticed in any way by anybody anywhere is something to cherish. After a day at work, it’s a source of wonder to come home and log in to the world map stats and think Oh look. Hello New Jersey!

By the way, The Garden State has a special place in childhood memory. Back on Long Island, Mom & Dad took car drives on Sundays. A very early recollection is going all the way out to some New York scenic overlook, maybe on the Hudson River, to a picnic place with mounted binoculars. You could drop in a dime and turn a crank and the binoculars would show you five minutes of the Jersey shore! While the little timer ticked we took turns with the viewfinder and exclaimed at how pretty it all was way over there.

New Jersey: a pay-per-view state! How special is that? I dreamed of going there one day with pockets full of dimes, enough to view all of the sights. Some day.

Dear New Jersey Reader: Thank you for keeping the light on out there. I’ll aspire to keep this light on here too.

Blessings, Mary

At a Little Free Library there was a really handsome mint-new book all about being a grandparent. There was a famous woman on the cover who we see on the television set. She works with other important people who are also all over the television too. Maybe this book could teach me how to respond in a grandparently manner toward the kiddos already running about in the world, and help them to be more happy and safe?

At home I hunker in for an hour or so of flipping around and reading vignettes. It’s puzzling to see that the book is not Here is how to be another adult in a tight-net web of connections who are there for kids. Instead, the point of the book is We’re all famous people at the top of our field, we’ve totally rocked the world in our professions, we have great spouses and successful children — and now we’re rocking it as grandparents too!

Gosh. Growing up I had four grandparents born in the 1890s. The two grandfathers never held a conversation or shared an activity with me because they were men and worked immensely hard at their jobs. The two grandmothers were happy to fix me meals and snacks but worked immensely hard in the kitchen cooking for stampedes of relatives or scrubbing windows with ammonia & crumpled newspaper or weeding the garden or tending the wringer washing machine with a top lid and a wood paddle to agitate the clothes before hanging them up on the clothesline and then ironing them with starch.

Anyway. The book narrates in lavish detail the pleasures of becoming a new grandparent: new grandchildren with their deep gaze, different from but profound like the gaze of a lover; that wonderful clean baby smell and soft skin; the oxytocin-fueled amazement that after all the rich enjoyments of other human intimacies and lifetime achievements, it’s wonderful to experience a grandchild as a completely new source of radiant euphoria that promotes our healthy aging and can postpone and even reverse chronic illness.

But… Isn’t the first item of business to tune in to what children need, and what we should bring them?

Maybe my issue is that all these anecdotes of personal closeness don’t match anything in my own life. The regrettable conclusion is that here is a whole new core human endeavor that I’ve missed and failed at as a human. My children are only in my dreams, where they run around the kitchen while I’m at the stove fixing breakfast, and then I wake up feeling tearful and not understanding that the kids were never there.

Well, this book needs to go back to the little free library as soon as possible, in its pristine condition, so a woman with more of a real woman life can enjoy its affirming resonance. Time to stop reading and close the pages. On the cover, the author looks absolutely radiant and beautiful, cradling her grandkids. Gazing at the dust jacket I watch my hands do something unusual. They rip the photograph to smithereens. Then the hands proceed through the pages tearing the stories to little shreds. Now it’s a recycle bin of confetti. That felt surprisingly helpful.

That night I tuck into bed with a Russian copy of Way of a Pilgrim. It opens at random to a narrative explaining the nature of spiritual attack. The Orthodox find it normal that Satan is a real presence, out to upset and make us miserable. If he’s trying a temptation on me (and what other bait is he gonna try — violent video games? spinning auto doughnuts at a street takeover? fixing the World Series? airplane glue?) he picked a good one.

Today at the grocery store there was a little boy. His mother held a full shopping cart, examining items on a shelf. Her son was seeing how long he could stand on one foot, then how long he could balance on the other. I said to the mom “Wow, look! Someone has nice balance there! I sure wish I could stand on one foot like that!” The mother avoided my eyes, yanked the boy to the other side of her, and took off with the cart. Later when they came around the next aisle the mother steered well away. But the boy looked back, and caught my eye for a show-offy trick: he could stand with one shoe right on top of the other without falling down. I watched carefully and gave him a very grave impressed nod, and like Robert Lansing through the cockpit window in “Twelve O’Clock High” added a thumb’s up. Good work, soldier.

He looked back to make sure I was still watching. As an encore he picked up one foot, and hopped away.

It’s not even summer yet, but the National Weather Service issued us three days of “Hazardous Weather” heat advisory. They warned that our temperature could climb to 90 F degrees.

Now to the rest of the planet, our “heat wave” is not impressive at all. But around here we’re not used to or prepared for it. (For example, our commercial architecture makes best use of every last beam of sunshine, with glass walls and highly reflective mirroring surfaces; sitting at a computer inside a box of sunbaked glass is not comfortable, and neither is walking past walls of street glare. Virtually no one I know has air conditioning in their home. And with large expanses of tall impenetrable timber forest, there’s always a risk of wildfire and smoke lockdown.) So even this mild heat is a concern for many people — certainly for folks who work outdoors, and also those who are senior citizens or pregnant or living on the streets. One of these categories can now claim me as a member. Direct sunlight makes me dizzy and slow-witted and uneasy anyway, so I have to make mental notes throughout the day to plan well and be careful and not cause extra uproar for the local emergency room.

So, Friday night I did the floors and kitchen and bathroom and hand laundry and ironing until 2:00 am. Then I should have gotten up early, and walked the 30 blocks to Fruit & Folks for the weekly shop. But due to weather I chose to wait until 5:00 pm and take the bus, looping past the campus stadium on the scenic route.

The bus was 40 minutes late at our bus stop in the sun. Huh. For our excellent bus system, that was unusual. But finally a bus came by, and I curled up in a seat with selected sermons by Father John Vianney, the Curé of Ars.

A mile from campus, the ride stopped. I looked up from a sermon on The Last Judgment to a complete crowd scene. Maybe I should have figured out that today was not only FIFA World Cup arrival weekend for 1.6 million fans, plus ongoing festivities for Pride month, but also campus graduation. Now granted, the campus website mentioned over 100 graduations and ceremonies for various departments and days, so all week it’s been a blur of happy people in robes skipping to and fro. But the real stadium grandstand ultimate ceremony was just breaking up, and we sat in traffic for over an hour. A 50 minute tree-shaded walk became a 90 minute sunny ride.

Finally I got off the bus and walked to the store. Along the way, Eureka — someone had left on their household trash two large sheets of white foam from a packing box. That foam looked just right as an insulation buffer and shade to place behind my window curtains. After checking its condition I picked it up and carried it as a weightless though unwieldy find.

At Fruit & Folks I parked my foam slabs out of the way under the onion case, and had the usual wonderful social visit with the staff. They are always bursting with enthusiasm and information about current music, world events, agriculture, social media, astronomical phenomena, and more. Thanks to the bin of super-ripe bargains I bought 15 pounds or so of watermelon, cantaloupe, corn, nectarines, Nappa cabbage, organic apples, and oranges — a packed knapsack and a full duffle bag, all for less than $10.

To avoid the campus scene I hopped on a different bus, and then remembered: Uh-oh, those foam slabs! They’re still under the onion case! I should have remembered to collect them, but was having too good a time talking to the staff. I would have hopped off the bus and taken a bus going the other way to go and get them and then catch another bus. But some instinct warned that it was better to just get right home and indoors. So I stayed on the bus until the transfer stop for the second bus home.  

The second bus never showed up. The bus company app had simply stopped working for this festive day; its predictions had no bearing on reality. Like, its sensors or drones or whatever could not tell the difference between “bus, headed toward you” and, say, “cottonwood fluff drifting along the street.” Any other time I would have set out walking right away, but — heat plus 15 pounds of melon. Might as well sit and wait.

After half an hour, a friendly pedestrian came along, and we shared the shelter bench. We exchanged hearty amiable greetings about the weather. He mentioned that he once owned a boat, and on a day like this would have been out on the water. I don’t understand putting in the time or money for recreational boat ownership, but felt sympathetic for a boating fan who for whatever reason is no longer boating, so I mustered up the energy to listen in. “You know,” he continued. “Up to Allenheim. Ever gone sailing there?” (No, alas — I’ve never been up north, and don’t have a boat. But it sounds very nice.) “It’s by Glenwatch. You know — the mooring over on the west bay?” (Ah, no sorry. I don’t have a car. I’m not from this state. I have not been up thataway.) “But it’s over by… well, if you list any of the nearby towns, then I’ll remember the name. What’s the military base near Allenheim?” (Uh, dunno. Not familiar with the military base or its surroundings.) “Well it’s the west side. You know — the bay opposite the east side coastline, right?” (Could be, could be. Couldn’t tell you for sure though.) “By the casino. Gold Dust Resort. Ever go there?” (No, I’ve never been to a casino or to that resort.) “When you’re driving up the interstate, it’s about 90 minutes. That’s the casino between Allenheim and Glenwatch mooring west. You know — when you drive it, it’s that turnoff where the highway bears north?” (Duh, can’t say I do. I don’t have a car. I haven’t been up north.)

This is starting to sound like the Bob & Ray comedy skit, “Komodo Dragon.” By now I don’t even know what we’re talking about. And when I use the sentence “I don’t know,” repeated six ways from Sunday, it does not mean “Ask me again! Keep pushing me harder!” When people urge me to access a memory or awareness that isn’t in me to begin with it makes me feel anxious, as if they suspect me of hiding information from them. Besides, people can end up shocked and offended at my ignorance of some discrete factoid. (Examples abound. At one Russian Orthodox church coffee hour, a member was outraged when I didn’t know that the painter of “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution” was the famous Vasily Surikov. To her, this meant that I was devoid of knowledge or appreciation for Russia and its culture. People do get jumpy when their pet facts are not appreciated by all.)

This sun is right in our faces. My eyes hurt. The buses are nowhere. I’m holding 15 pounds of melon. I would like to access my bathroom. The corns on my feet feel like someone is lighting a match inside my shoes. This simple errand has now taken four hours. My thinking is getting off kilter, and may need electrolytes and water.

“So Glenwatch mooring,” says my friendly fellow traveler, who really deserves a seat on the Allenheim Chamber of Commerce & Boating Fun Tourism. “That’s the one you see when you drive past those new loft condos. You know, where they refurbished the old fish cannery warehouse?”

And all of a sudden, for whatever reason, I am done. Here my strongest character virtue is being agreeable, striving to express helpful good nature, and mine is fading fast. It’s not a proud moment, to be a person who doesn’t even work outdoors and yet still feels so done in by the afternoon.

“You know,” I say to my companion, “It’s been lovely visiting with you. But who knows when that campus bus will get here. It’s only 15 blocks. I’m just gonna walk.” I wish him all the best on his bus ride.

I set out with my bags, downhill 7 blocks and uphill for 8 more, saying the Jesus Prayer and pretending I’m on a pilgrimage and sternly lecturing myself about what a blessing it is to even have all this perfectly good produce for $9.67, and to be able to pay for and carry it home, and to have a kitchen to cook it in. There’s a pretty picket fence with yellow loosestrife and white balloon flowers, so I stop and take a picture.

At home I drop the bags and kick off my shoes and undo my black felted leg wraps and two pairs of thick socks and black support hose and gauze and tape, and lie down with my feet up and a tall jar of matcha tea. Then after cooling off I fix some miso soup and granola and look at a good documentary on Mount Athos, and feel immensely better and grateful.

I called Fruit & Folks to apologize about the trash-find foam sheets under their onion bin. They offered to save them for me. Tomorrow the heat will really ramp up. It would be good to get to bed at sunset and be up to admire the dawn and get an early start on the chores.

PS – Early this morning I went right back to Fruit & Folks and bought vegetables for lunch this week. Those dear young people kept my trash find safe for me. They treated me to an erudite conversation about woodworking, forestry, and the health of our sea life. The foam slabs work perfectly in the window. Off to the kitchen to prep all that produce. It’s a lot to be thankful for.

The Big Disclaimer: In view of the last post and its upbeat account of successful overtures to total strangers, it is only fair to repeat that not everyone is alit with delight at these attempts. There are plenty of pratfall moments when the strangers are taken aback by me. Even long-term acquaintances and friends have found me baffling, annoying, or just a ghostable jerk. Mileage may vary widely.

That said, this week had a few more nice outcomes and reasons to be thankful.

A recent annual physical exam and its lab blood work showed that calcium is running low despite a daily dose of blackstrap molasses, nuts, and jumbo portions of leafy greens. This may explain an uncharacteristic craving all week for sardines. At the supermarket I picked up four cans, and headed to the cash register. The cashier, with some apprehension, let me know that there is a current supply-chain limit on sardines: only one sardine can per family. “Oh, okay. Sure thing: thank you for letting me know.” I handed over three cans. It was very touching to see this perfectly blameless young lady apologize further to me. “No, it’s totally understandable,” I told her. “We’ve overfished the oceans to oblivion. We’re screwed! Unless of course we start eating the jellyfish, which are taking over the world. Besides, I studied in the Soviet Union*** where every day they rationed anything worth eating. Those cashiers were always ready to holler at us. Like, ‘Where do you get off, asking for two packages of cottage cheese? You’ll get one package and like it.’ It’s a pleasant change that you didn’t yell at me. Besides, look around this store. It’s dazzling, how much incandescent tradeskill and thought and care it takes to import all this stuff and stock the shelves and keep this place going. Thousands of items! Really remarkable.” She blinked for a long moment and smiled. “That’s quite a perspective you’ve got there.”

*** I do endeavor not to mention the Soviet Union, because this level of distant history makes people glaze over. It makes me sound like Duffy from F Troop, going on and on about he fought at the Alamo shoulder to shoulder with Davy Crockett.

On the elevator at the gym, a group of young men from China came bursting in with high spirits and happy laughter and chat. Their Chinese had a strong clear Beijing accent, and I enjoyed listening to them and thinking back on Mandarin class from 2016. Finally at our floor as they jostled out of the car and headed toward the weight room, I called out a phrase from class, “Jiā yóu! Jiā yóu!” (Literally, “Add oil! Add oil!” It means “Step on the gas! You’re rocking this — go you!” On our basketball court, the Chinese players shout it to each other in encouragement all the time.) These young men stopped short, spun around, looked me over, and burst out laughing. “You said that really well!” they replied, and waved goodbye all smiles.

A sprightly little guy, four years old or so, was taking up the entire pavement with his zigzag swoops hither and yon. I stepped aside to make room for him and his parents and his stroller to pass by. His parents were self-conscious about this, and urged their son to stop blocking the way and let me by. Their son stopped and blinked up at me in a shy way. I threw out my hands and said “Look! The whole street is a hopscotch board!” Dad explained with a smile “We’re not stepping on any cracks today.” Of course like their kiddo I started hopping from square to square. He was delighted. We found it a much more satisfactory way to get down the street.

Back at our very large multi-floor gym, same elevator, someone made a nice overture to me. I hopped on and pressed an Up button. Because students at the gym are careful to avoid looking at or speaking to one another, it was a pleasant surprise when a young woman said “Oh! I’m sorry. You may be getting the scenic route. We were heading down first.” I said “Oh, it’s fine. In fact, I take the elevator at every opportunity because I’m looking for someone who works out here, but I have no idea what part of the gym he’s likely to be in.” She gave me my laugh for the week by telling me “Oh no — you’re LOOKING for someone? In THIS place?” She lowered her voice and with a look of wild caution said in a horror movie whisper “It’s a Corn Maze out there.”

Last Friday after supper I walked to the food coop with my gallon jug for the daily refill of filtered water. (At sunset it’s a beautiful walk. There is a line of tall fir trees, and the lights of planes from the airport line up right over them so that each tree gets its own slowly moving evening star.) On the way home I passed two distinguished-looking Hasidic men heading to the shul for the start of Shabbat. One never can tell whether these men might be uncomfortable with a street greeting from some female outsider (one wearing men’s trousers and a high-resolution vest, and carrying packages on the Sabbath). But I tried it anyway. “Shalóm! Gut shábbos!” These men stopped short, looking pleased. The elder one exclaimed “Shalóm! Are you Jewish??” I explained “No, but I used to belong to a Yiddish singing circle.” He said “Well, you said that really well!” They wished me a good night and headed off to prayers.

On the way home with my water refill jug I stopped to point my cell phone at a tree just as a woman came around the corner with her dog. “I’m not filming people!” I called out to her. “I’m only recording that bird.” She and the dog stopped, and the dog searched my duffle bag in hopes of something to eat. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “It’s only unpopped multi-color organic corn kernels from the coop.” His owner explained that her doglet hits up everyone for treats (and in this dog-loving town often gets them). She and I had a good chat about the local woodpeckers, warblers, and wrens.

A promising social movement nowadays is Tool Libraries. They are springing up in communities all over. People can donate and borrow tools and equipment. More important, they can gather and talk about their do-it-yourself projects, and share expertise and suggestions. My first visit to ours was a daunting experience. It was packed to the rafters with mysterious intimidating machines for people to borrow, or to use on site in classes under teacher supervision. The place was packed! The staff that day were college-age gals firing off banter and advice in incomprehensible tool jargon as borrowers flocked in and checked out gear.

I went back for a Fabric Fix-It night, where volunteers with sewing machines mended clothing. One of them repaired my best dress to look better than new with beautiful decorative reinforcement stitching. Hopeful clients left delighted with their repaired clothes, exchanging excited stories about how much these garments meant to them. This week for Gadget Repair night I brought my vintage little Cuisinart, and a volunteer diagnosed it on sight and gave me a replacement handle screw and good advice on care and upkeep.

The Library calendar shows all kinds of wonderful classes and events coming up. They have a giveaway book library, a giveaway garden of donated flowers and herbs, facilities for accepting non-recyclable trash, and handcraft groups.

What kind of contribution can a person like me make, someone with no three-dimensional skills at all?

Then I remembered something squirreled away in my closet. It’s an impulse bargain from years ago; at a “We’re Moving Today” sidewalk sale I snapped it up for just a couple of bucks. (It would be fun to add a photo of it here, but that might look like some kind of product endorsement.) This is brand new still with the tags attached. It’s a full-length rain parka with a moisture-wicking inner lining, in blazing high-visibility fluorescent yellow, men’s size XXL. It turned out to be way too big and rugged for me, the kind of rig that calls up visions of people on a ship deck catching king crab. Today I dug it out of the closet and packed it up. Then I wrote thank-you notes for the fix-it volunteers and staff, explaining just how helpful their help really was. I added a box of cookies, and dropped it all off at the Library today. One of the young men behind the counter found that the parka is just his size. We all had a good visit.

As I was leaving one of them called out “We’ll see you next time you need a gadget fixed!” I said “I’ll go home and find something to break!”

It’s interesting to try tuning in to one person at a time, throughout the day.

That doesn’t mean cottoning up to everybody. Many people really want and truly need to be left alone in their individual bubble of consciousness. Every day I navigate around folks who are clearly existing at the end of their rope. For some the greatest kindness is a good letting alone. Sometimes there are factors in the general setting, such as people being overcrowded or in a hurry. Last month I visited a large city. Strolling around town I started out giving everyone the usual nod-and-blink of basic good will. They responded with a brush-off rate of 100% until I learned the drill for that city: just hold a very soft awareness, and people will demonstrate whether they want to engage or not.

Of course, it can work the other way. There are people who are motivated to engage with me. If their approach is not quite in the zone, then my assignment might be to defuse and sidestep in a quiet way without riling them up. For example, at the stop for my bus home, with the bus approaching from a block away, there was a man in a highly elated state of agitation using aimless random aggressive utterances and gestures. He did not seem to mind when a speeding battery unicycle narrowly missed him. He was intent on staggering toward me, fiercely demanding that I tell him which was the best Disney cartoon. “‘The Little House,’ 1952,” I told him, adding in feigned panic “My God! What was THAT speeding past?” That ploy successfully redirected his attention from me to the speeding unicycle. “Why — don’t you know what that is?” he laughed. “Why that was all PHYSICS. All the world is physics — planet, sun, gravity, magnets, tides, all of it.” I hopped on the bus, saying “Eureka! THAT explains it all! Thank you.”

When people do have the initiative to reach out to me, and they are actually discerning about it, that is a pleasant surprise. This week on the bus I was deeply absorbed in a Russian book. In peripheral side awareness I also noted that a tall rugged bearded young man with a very rugged backpack passed by the empty seats and was standing right behind me. Finally when I rang the bell for my stop he swung an arm toward me with his phone face up on his palm. With some trepidation (He’s either showing me some undetermined image for an undetermined reason, or he is filming me) I glanced at his screen. It showed a literary entry with the English words “Silouan the Athonite.” What! My book was in fact Staréts Silouán, the biography of St. Silouan of Athos by Elder Sophrony. “Do you read Russian??” I asked him. He said “No, I can only sound out a few letters. But you do. How did you learn?” Before the bus reached my stop he and I had a very friendly heartfelt conversation.

Outreach seems worth a try, since we’re all obliged to share this daily life anyway. It’s good to pay attention first to the context and feel of the room, and to start with a very small low-risk step. Then when things don’t connect we can back right off if need be and reconsider strategies for next time.

At a block party a group of little kiddos, four years old or so, took turns making a running start and then with a happy shriek leaping on to the back of a smallish slender Golden Doodle. In dog culture this can mean “I am dominant! Watch me mount you!” The dog was tied to a refreshment table on a short leash, with no escape and no supervision. With each screaming rear tackle & grip from the children, the dog was wildly startled and stood there trembling and watching out in all directions at once. The adults did not intervene. They were busy enjoying cocktails and chatting with other grownups. Hoping to spare the dog some spine and nerve harm, and hoping to spare the kids from having a more assertive dog flip around and bite them some day, I gave the parents a reassuring smile and said to the children “Hi there! Would you like to hear a little tip about greeting a gentle dog like this one?” The parents gave me a freezing glare. Snatching up their children and dog they took their beverages and marched away.

During life in campus housing, with tiny individual rooms and a shared central kitchen, I overheard a new neighbor move in to the adjacent unit on the other side of my wall. I wrote a greeting card with a welcome to the building, and left it at the door. Soon I heard the sound of my card being torn up, and the new occupant storming off down the hall. According to building management, the young man complained to them saying “Who does this woman think she is? I paid for a summer’s rent. I did not pay for a RELATIONSHIP. Back in [elegant Northern European country] we don’t put up with invasions of privacy like this.” Management assured him that I was a harmless older lady, that I did things like this to people all the time, and if he ignored me I would just move on and find new targets to tamper with. At summer’s end the tenants had a building party, and Nordic Man was there downing drinks. We met and started talking, and he was surprised to discover that I was his mystery stalker. Soon he was laughing over the whole fracas as a vignette of eccentric cornball Americana: “Back home, we feel affronted even when a bus driver says ‘Good morning.’ It means he’s new at the job. We soon teach him how to behave and to leave us alone.” Another Northern European contact heard the story and laughed at me. “You left a card for a stranger? That’s insane. Over here that would be a solicitation of a salacious nature. You’re lucky that all he did was report you.” (When a new occupant moved in next door, I left another greeting card. This resident turned out to be a dignified grandfather from the Middle East, visiting the States for a short time to visit relatives. In no time, a far more elegant triptych greeting card with silver embossed Arabic calligraphy showed up at my door with a painstakingly printed message opening with “Our Dear Elder Sister, Peace and health to you! Greetings from all my family.”)

So, step by step. And things can turn out okay.

At a warehouse-turned-antique store, which sounds impressive but was in fact jammed with acres of random trivia that all needs dusting, the overhead music system started playing Aerosmith’s “Dream On” from 1973. Naturally I started humming along the base line, but our group was already about to leave the store before the over-the-top screechy wail right before the outro chorus. Meanwhile, several aisles over, a very solid looking fella about my age, in a baseball cap and shorts, started singing right along. “Every tiiiiiime I look in the mirror…” He called to mind the dads from my suburban childhood, mowing the lawn or washing the car with baseball on the transistor radio or barbecuing frankfurters for all to eat with lawn darts and beer. It was charming to see him checking out the fishing pole collection while singing right out happily off key to these plaintive lyrics about the evanescence of time. Before ambling to the exit I sidled up to him and whispered “We could totally flash mob this.” He gave me a startled look. “I know all the words,” I added, pointing to the ceiling. He cheered right up. “You BETTER know all the words. I’ll be judgin ya.”

During a conference I overheard a family checking in to the hotel reception of our building, and caught some linguistically unique signature consonants (zh, shch, and so on) in their hushed speech together. After they finished their check-in and were having a look around, I sidled up and asked what language they were speaking. The family snapped to attention on high alert. The father looked me over carefully and finally said “Russian.” I started chatting them up, they looked happy and relieved, and we had a nice visit.

One of our trucking companies sends delivery drivers in pairs, and over the years we’ve built up a good friendly rapport. When our office holds a conference there are always cold beverages and sometimes snacks left over. It turns out that drivers are very pleased when I bring them cold drinks and some extra cookies or chips. This week I greeted the truck with my favorite driver pair, young guys with a great sense of humor. This time only one of them got out of the truck. After the delivery I handed him snacks for them both, joking that I’d managed to save some of Jax’s favorite soda. “He likes his crackin’ cold, so I kept it in the fridge til the last minute.” His partner hesitated, and said “I’m on my own today because Jax died.” Jax was just finishing a shift on the road when another truck went out of control and hit his rig. For a long minute his wingman and I just stood there looking at the snacks and Jax’s soda with the planet being a fragile place. I gave him a hug, and he drove away. Next time I’ll go out and get him a turkey sandwich.

A white coffee mug showing the words Moscow / Москвá in English and Cyrillic, with a picture map of the city from centuries ago, has been in the cabinet for years. It’s a sturdy generous mug in mint new condition, but it seemed a shame to ruin the color with my daily turmeric tea. Today I packed it in my bag to donate at Goodwill. On the way I stopped at the open-air Fruit & Folks market for a produce run. The staff always lift my spirits; they are the finest hardworking young people, cheerfully lugging vegetables or Christmas trees in the hottest or coldest weather, full of hearty humor and kindness. Today they were happily listening to the sound track of some wildly popular full length classic animated film. While the cashier and I swapped stories about seasoning our cast iron pans, the young manager burst out with protests: No, we must not listen to the sound track of this followup sequel! Only the original film is superior — all else is a poor runner up! The staff protested right back. Spirited banter ensued with votes shouted in from all corners of the store. Finally the staff said “Oh fine, Boss — only YOU decide which animation is best? Thank you Comrade Stalin!” At that I whisked out the Moscow cup and awarded it to the manager. Since so much of humor is timing, complete hilarity ensued. Not only was everyone laughing away, but the manager was surprisingly pleased by his award.

At the floor of the lower parking garage, where car break-ins and bicycle theft and vandalism and even campfires have been a sad cause of everyday caution for us employees, the elevator doors opened. A very tall fit Black gentleman beelined on to the elevator, saw me, and froze. In these troubled times it was impossible for me to imagine how tense that moment must have been for him. “Howdy, Sir,” I said with a wave. “What floor would you like? And please don’t mind me: I’m just riding the elevator to test these access cards at all the levels.” Social context had given me all the advantage: in this encounter, the odd fish was me. Usually when someone on a bottom floor summons an elevator down by pushing the UP button, why in the world would there be a passenger already on it, and where did they come from — the sewer? From Hell? Second, unlike me he was not on the elevator just lurking around. Third, he had an especially good-natured look, in a uniform with company name and badge, clearly headed somewhere. Fourth, his chosen destination floor happened to be an executive suite filled with expensive plants, and his arms were full of gardening gear with potting soil amendments and a large watering can. “You, on the other hand,” I added, “are on an important mission to save some plants.” By then we were all smiles, lit up with shared enthusiasm of the beautiful window greenery upstairs. As he stepped off we said goodbye and I went on testing cards.

Before the doors closed he turned back and said something extraordinary. “You may not be saving plants. But you may be saving the planet.”

In January as always I bought the annual bags of organic raised-bed potting soil, and cultivated my patch for spring. Then on Valentine’s Day, the hardware store had a happy find: organic vegetable seeds marked for 2026. I bought two packets of sweet pea seeds, and planted one packet of 40 seeds on the last of February. Peas are an annual favorite because they grow so fast that it amuses the neighbors, especially the children, and their white flowers are so pretty. Even colder weather than ours doesn’t discourage peas, and in past years they always sprouted up happily after 10 days.

Well, this year the peas developed tiny sproutlets, but they did not grow at all. In March I started over and opened the second packet of peas, soaked them in several changes of fresh water for three days, then planted another 40 seeds. Not one came up. In April I bought two dozen pea plants six inches high each, and very carefully wound their little tendrils around the pea stakes prepared for them. Now pea tendrils will reach right out and catch hold of any close object, or will twine around the next pea plant. Every day I came out eagerly to check on them. But all 24 of these little guys did not grow one bit. Their little sprouts were not able to catch hold of their stakes at all. I kept visiting them morning and night, watering the patch, re-twining their sprouts every evening. But each morning they were all lying flat again.

Finally this week I decided that a garden is not meant to cause daily discouragement, so I tore up all the pea plants and placed them in the compost. After all the cultivation, soil amendment, and watering, here is one section of the patch today. The little white flower at bottom right is a volunteer from an oxalis shamrock bought at Trader Joe’s years ago. The little green plant at bottom left looks like a celery bunch tip that I buried a while back, and a few bits of oregano are just breaking ground. That’s the look of the whole 20 foot strip.

And now, on the same raised bed just a couple of feet away, is the Wing Family section. The Wings were very busy this spring, and had zero leisure to come outside with soil, cultivating, watering, or any other such fripparies. However, all winter Captain Wing has been carefully tending an industrial-sized drum of red wriggler worms, carefully feeding them delicious melon rinds and banana peels and other treats, then draining out the fertilizer fluid from a spigot at the bottom of the drum and pouring it on their garden patch. Did that make the difference, or is it just Wing Family good energy? Either way, everything in their patch returned from last year, poised to bloom: bluebells are in full glory, California Gold poppy plants are thick and green, Mrs. Wing’s medicinal herbs are doing their royal best, peonies and dahlias and lilies are showing early promise. Here below is a sample, with lush fennel, oregano, mint, and blooming calendula:

There is no point in feeling disheartened for long. Not only is it wise to bloom where we’re planted, but it’s also wise to align our dreams with reality as it is right now. This is our peak growing month right now. Perhaps at this stage some hot-weather or even xeriscaping plants would work with our dry summer? Maybe I can make a new beginning for a garden that is less of a public eyesore? Today there were marigold seeds in the garden section at the local Goodwill, so a packet came home with me. Hope springs eternal…

Along the edge of the woods, scrubby pines are showing these cute capsules. Passersby might not enjoy my releasing allergens in the park, so I only played with a couple of the capsules, but it was interesting to see how the lightest touch triggers them poof! to release a cloud of gold pollen.

These Martian-looking doodads have been on earth for oodles of years. According to one plant expert in town, Horsetail contains both silicon and gold, if only we could figure out how to get the gold out.

These are skunk plants below. Do not eat or drink skunk plant products! Their oxalate crystals are the same compound that cause severe pain for people suffering from gout. In winter the plant emerges as a “spathe,” a streaked oxblood-red beak. Then it blooms with showy yellow flowery thinglets (looked up the botanical parts; couldn’t make heads or tails of it) and then huge leaves. According to this website https://www.natlands.org/news/whats-so-cool-about-skunk-cabbage/ they generate their own heat, and flaunt a “skunk-like/decaying flesh smell.” These skunk plants are done flowering for the year.

Salal flowers in a shady cleft in rocks:

Salmonberry flowers!

And, in a nearby garden, some superfluous fancy tulips to end our stroll today.

In the park at the edge of the woods, blue flowers in light rain. (Update 4/25: a few more blue flowers bloomed and snuck in when we weren’t looking.)