consolationland

It’s a bright sunny afternoon. High school is letting out, and teenagers are everywhere. Outside our building the local bus stops to swap some students off and on. Then in a flash, something goes haywire — and not with the teens. One woman is screaming at another outside the bus. They’re on the ground grappling so hard that one falls right under the bus while the other screams Get the !@#$%^ back up. I sprint toward the bus to tell the driver not to pull out, and so does every adult within a block around along with some of the teens. But the driver isn’t going anywhere. He’s already on his phone relaying information, and in a couple of minutes the bus company inspector drives up and speaks to the women, or tries to over the screaming. I’m not a witness to what happened, and qualified help has arrived. So I cross the street on my way to the grocery store, up a steep driveway making a natural lookout point at the top. The sheriff arrives and tries to intervene. Then a police car shows up with two officers. But a woman’s voice goes right on roaring obscenities. At last in the milling crowd we see a young woman sitting in the very middle of the sidewalk wrapped in her arms, slumped over quiet with a police office on either side of her. Up in the parking lot lookout with me, there’s a family gathered and still watching. They’re a mom with an infant and a flock of small children all about kindergarten age or younger. Their family is often out walking on our block single file, all modest signature clothing and earnest manners, but they’ve always respectfully kept to themselves. Today though the mom speaks to me for the first time. “What do they do in a case like this? Will they arrest her?” My vote is that it depends on what the police find out as they patiently sort through what on earth is going on. The small children take an interest in me, and several ask questions about the various law enforcement cars, the role of the driver and the officials. I make the point to the kids that it is impressive to see a family like theirs, such young people who can use such good situational awareness, keep a level head, stay gathered together, tune in to Mom for cues, and ask insightful questions. “This is why emotional self-regulation is so important,” I tell them, indicating the altercation. “Knowing how to calm ourselves down.” Mom makes a good-humored joke. “I’m not feeling very self-regulated at the moment.” I counter with the possibility that at the moment she is regulating the balance of not only the family, but the woman across the street. We all say goodbye; she gathers the troops and heads on home.

At my clinic I was down at heart and discouraged, waiting to discuss the low bone mineral density results in my DEXA scan, and didn’t notice a button-cute little girl chatting eagerly with her Dad. After a while her Mom came out and the parents switched places, Dad heading in to the doctor’s office while Mom sat in the waiting room with their little girl. In an effortless way the little girl switched from English with Dad to Spanish with Mom, eagerly whispering something with a cupped hand to Mom’s ear and pointing at me. As I glanced up at them, Mom apologized. “She was just saying that you look like a Grandmother.” The little girl gave me a shy friendly look. “Es verdad,” I told her. “Yo soy la abuela de todo el mundo.” She sprang up with a look of joy, and rushed to bring me a little rock from a decorative planter, and drop it in my hand. In English and Spanish I admired the rock, pointing out its good points. She took the rock back, then rushed to bring me another. I pointed out the excellent qualities of that rock too, so she hurried to exchange it for another to see my reaction. What is more fun than to cue the behavior of an adult, and to test the same reaction dozens of times? When Dad came out and the family prepared to leave, the parents got a smile out of watching their daughter, a busy bee still choosing and swapping rocks with everybody’s grandma.

Across the street at the grocery store, Jordan in Produce always has something new to tell me about vegetables, how to grow and cook them. So when my horseradish plant put out its last leaves of summer, I wrapped them up to carry over to Jordan. Along the way there’s a house with raised bed boxes right on the curb, planted with good dirt and double-sized thriving vegetables and flowers. I stopped to admire the dahlias. The neighbor opened the front door and called to me. “Take some cucumbers! We have too many.” As she stepped outside to pick me some I said “Would you like some horseradish leaves? They’re a tender salad green with a bit of a wasabi bite.” She took the packet with a curious look, and said “Just now? I was in the kitchen blending our tomatoes. They all ripened at once, so I was making a Bloody Mary mix. The recipe called for horseradish. I thought ‘What is that? Where do I even get any?’ and there you were.”

The Wing Family took a “vacation.” This is their name for a cross-planetary trip with kiddoes to spend an intensive month or two working hard and caring for older relatives in rural areas. It’s tiring just to type all that, let alone imagine it. But then they came back. They brought me a package of beautiful historic church postcards, and they brought me fresh green kû guā, or Bitter Melons. Somewhere along the way, with all their packing, toting, caring, and travel, they remembered those are Things That Mary Likes. I don’t know how they do that.

Tonight at the food coop I paid for my oats, quinoa, and emmer faro, and headed for the door. There a young teenager flagged me down, bouncing on her toes in eagerness to talk to me. She was an instantly appealing little soul with her expansive hands and excited voice and studious eyeglasses. “Are those YOUR three dogs in the parking lot?” I said “Well, I have no dogs. Are they in trouble?” But no, she only wanted to show me three splendid white husky dogs seated in a row in the pouring rain, watching the door with laser focused attention. “You LOOK like their owner! You look like a person with three dogs! They should be yours!” Well, that made sense. “Sure, I’m dressed like a dog walker, in all this raingear and fluorescent vest.” She said “No no, I mean you look like a Witch. In a good way.” I thanked her for the compliment, and confided that yes, I would love to have three dogs. “You NEED them! Three dogs!” she cried. “Some day. Maybe four,” I called back, as we waved goodbye.

Grocery manager Morrison often has a philosophical question about the meaning of life. While I was buying collard greens he asked “When you were in your twenties, what was the most trouble you ever got into?” I said “Being pulled over by the Moscow police for writing a postcard with my left instead of right hand. That wasn’t done in those days.” He threw his hands up. “Never mind. Can’t top that.”

Today Maizie my old office mate from 1989-1993 rang me up to ask “Where can I find a weasel for my summer house? Not for a pet, but to go after the chipmunks and mice. They’re in the basement. My friend has a weasel who like weaseled his way into her farm cellar, and she leaves him alone and he clears out all the varmints.” I said “That would be Joseph Carter the Mink Man. He has trained minks, and he makes house calls. Here, let me look him up… Oh. No sorry, he’s in Utah. Maybe there’s a franchise near you?” She said “You just pulled ‘Call Joseph Carter’ at random right out of a hat. That’s impressive, in an unsettling way.” I said “I’m just the random person that you thought to call.”

So much of everybody else’s business to mind, so little time.

Chop up this stuff and drop it in the Cuisinart, in proportions to taste.

   “Why would you say a crazy thing like that to me?” My host flashed his lovely sweet smile.

   “I’m sorry!” I apologized. “Nat King Cole –“

   “I have no idea who that is.”

   “Oh. Right.” My mistake. How could I expect him to know Nat King Cole??    

He put down his cigarette and picked up the wine bottle, still smiling. “What an insane thing to say.”

I smiled back. Truce! “I just thought –“

   “Well don’t.” He poured our wine. “I made that dish just for you!”

   “Yes, it’s very good.” I got back to work with my steak knife, and finally resorted to my fingernails. With my ham-handed cutlery skills, dinner might as well have been a plate of bite-sized Rubik’s cubes.

   “Look at you. Acting like a child.” He couldn’t help laughing.

I laughed at myself too. Laughter seemed like a good sign for a first dinner date. Right?

My host was not to blame, that when anyone watched and pointed out my dining manners, I always wanted to shrink under the table. Even now, restaurants don’t feel like a happy place. For companionable eating I just want to buy my own hand-held food at a counter. Then we can find a quiet place to listen and talk and stroll side by side, and watch seagulls or squirrels instead of one another.

He filled my wine glass. “So you don’t like my cooking. Here I really looked forward to your visit tonight. I wanted it to be a nice evening. To make you feel welcome.”

   “Yes yes, I appreciate that.” I wrestled a bite and started chewing.

   “So I served your own food from YOUR tradition, not mine. But that comment you made to me just now? Don’t tell that to anyone. Everybody in the world will think you’re nuts.”

I crunched and chewed some more, and managed to swallow. Everybody in the world? Well, he knew better than I did. He’d seen a lot of that world, speaking five languages including mine, and I spoke not a word of his. He’d sampled fine food and wine all over the planet. And in most cultures, including his, refusing to eat a home-prepared meal was a hurtful insult.

He looked hurt now, but tried to laugh it off. “Look, never mind. Let’s forget the whole thing. What you don’t finish tonight, you can finish next time you come over.”

   “Oh, good,” I agreed. He was inviting me back for another date. “That will be very nice, thank you.” Next time I was going to figure this out and do a better job.

He put after-dinner mints on the table, took my plate to the kitchen, and drove me home.

Here is what I didn’t get to tell him. Instead I’ll say it here to you.

Nat King Cole sang “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.” His song was on the radio and in shops and on record players all over the neighborhood between Thanksgiving and Christmas when I was small. All of us knew it (well, we knew the first 12 words). The song was always right where it belonged, as the winter backdrop for festivities to share and remember.

We even heard the song right on the streets in The City, when Dad took the whole carful of us for the big holiday trip each year. There we could walk through FAO Schwarz and look at plush stuffed animals, a whole Noah’s Ark, lifesize and lifelike enough to breathe. We could go to the Museum of Natural History to stare up at the great blue whale soaring along under the roof. We could go to Hayden Planetarium and hear a talk and watch a little green arrow trace out animal pictures out of twinkling lights on the ceiling, and tell us all about the Star of Bethlehem. We could go to the Christmas floor show at Radio City Music Hall. We could peek in at the German decorations and violinists at Lüchow’s. We could look in at the jewelry window at Tiffany’s. We could see skaters at Lincoln Center. We could see Central Park, and the carriage horses with bells on, and they let me reach up and pet their noses.

The weather was cold for those hours of walking on short solstice days, all wind tunnel around buildings so tall they cut out the sun. We could get warm standing on the street grates when the subway went rushing underfoot. We could stand near the warm pushcarts in the street too, with their hot charcoal fires baking up great big soft pretzels with kosher salt, and honey-roasted peanuts, and buttery popcorn tumbling inside a window.

But the best warmth was the little bags of chestnuts. Dad was a hero for being our tour guide and for buying a bag for us before the car ride home. In the bag there was heat and smoke and scorched shells to warm our hands. The shells cracked right off along with the fuzzy inside skin. The wrinkly pale little nut brain inside had a creamy soft mouth feel, and a heavenly taste between the best cashews and the best baked sweet potato ever.

At home for the couple of weeks when chestnuts were in the market, it was something special when Mom & Dad brought home a bagful for the kitchen. They looked pretty on the table as a centerpiece, in a pewter bowl with gourds and autumn leaves and chrysanthemum flowers.

A raw chestnut has a hard tough leather hull. If you hack and wrestle off the hull and try to eat a raw one it’s just fuzzy and astringent and bitter skin, and crunchy starch. If you put them in the oven as is, the steam will burst the kernels. Then you’ll just get an oven with shell bits and fluff.

So Mom taught me how to cut a deep cross in the dome-shaped side. That was my girl homemaker job. I loved blessing the chestnuts by carving the sign of the cross in every one. Then when they came hot from the gas stove we had a platter of chewy sugary comfort. We ate our chestnuts with buttered popcorn and hot apple cider and homemade Toll House cookies and Mom’s blended cream & egg & sugar & vanilla & nutmeg nog, and all of us piled in on the sofa watching Nat King Cole.

Then I went off to college, and had an invitation to a real dinner date, and got all dressed up, and found myself facing off with a whole plate of chestnuts served raw. I just figured this was the cosmopolitan sophisticated way to eat them, like sushi-grade raw tuna instead of tuna from a can. Maybe it hurt his feelings and his pride when I apologized for my table manners by confessing that I was only familiar with chestnuts in roasted form. Now, what if I were clever and brave? What if I said “Say, let’s try something fun. I can roast some of these for you right now, and we can have a taste test, and you can see what you think.” But instead, during that short relationship, every time I came to visit, that same plateful was served with no sign of the cross in any of them. I chipped away at several more nuts each time.

In my new town the mature chestnut trees were killed off long ago by The Great Blight. But in older neighborhoods and back alleys maybe there are ancient stumps underground, because you still find little saplings springing up to make a brave fresh start for a short doomed life. Their green burrs are falling on the ground this very week. Sometimes the burrs are crushed open by cars, and then in gingerly fashion (those spines are sharp) I ease them apart to get the nuts inside. So far the nuts are just empty shells. But I always stop and admire them anyway as an American treasure, and think about winters long ago, back when gaslight was a noun and a power that stayed in the oven making itself useful, when Mom & Dad were alive and just wanted the family to be happy.

That night my host put out his cigarette and poured himself a second glass, still laughing. “You’re positively mad. Chestnuts roasted? Who does that? Nobody.” He headed down the hall to get our coats and his car keys.

I helped myself to a couple of dinner mints, eased open his door, poured my wine out under some shrubs, and to cheer up hummed to myself a catchy little holiday song from years ago.

That was a sleepless night, wondering how another date with another suitor went off the rails. Maybe I got it all wrong about Nat King Cole after all? Maybe that song was a deeper allegory about something else entirely that went right over my head? Only years later, typing these words, did a dawning realization make me smile: The Host didn’t have to be attend to my words, not when a whole battalion could have backed me up and set him straight: the no-nonsense pushcart vendors who rule the holiday streets of a city that does not mistake its recipes or mince its words.

It’s National Night Out!

On the first Tuesday in August, Americans have permission to turn off the telly and go step outside and see who lives on their street and wave at them. It’s a chance too, to stop and be very thankful for a street where one can step outside for a stroll even at night.

In school neighborhoods, or for families with kiddos, people take it serious. They register their street in July with the local police, and the city puts that street on a map of goings-on, and then those neighbors can block off their street and put up sawhorse tables and signs and food and music and games and amusements.

Here at our apartment complex, we villagers figure any summer evening is a good reason for a night out. But things here were uncommonly peaceful tonight, so I headed out to the main street to see what-all the action was.

Action was only three blocks away. A circle of people were out in lawn chairs, looking cultured and wholesome. They sure have a nice garden too.

I crossed the street and strolled closer, tuning in to the energetic bubble around them. Fortunately there was a conversation piece right on the sidewalk — a stepladder, dressed in a frilly folk-dancey skirt. “Giant chrysanthemum?” I called over to them. “And does all this constitute a Night Out?”

For an under-imaginative intrusion like that, a default unmarked response could be a flick of handwave, if that. But not this bunch. No, they hollered at me to come right on over and get some refreshments, calling out the various menu options. Then we settled in and got all acquainted. They were quite a crack team at sociability, in both sharing and eliciting interesting questions and answers. In no time we worked out who lived where, who belonged with whom. We swapped household shopping tips about my fluorescent getup (state surplus warehouse $1 on clearance), and our hostess’s party lamp (a luminAID solar lantern. There is supposed to be a tiny superscript R in a circle after the brand name, but I couldn’t get the symbol to transfer in to WordPress).

Here’s a picture of another uninvited guest who came crashing in. “He’s clearly heading straight over to my garden to eat flowers, though he is moving real slow,” one neighbor observed. “Actually for a snail, he’s in a vast hurry,” I had to tell her. “Word is out, you’re growing tasty stuff.”

Pictured here for Angelina’s son Jaeger, who is all about nature denizens of this sort and might have taken the little guy home.

We settled in to a good talk about neighborhoods and community. I marveled at everyone’s very thoughtful planning and shopping for their social; they’d even printed up invitations and delivered them to houses all up and down our main road!

Then it was time to start packing up goodies for everyone to take home.

Wee sampler from a groaning board of tasties. I didn’t have the audacity to accept more.

Not pictured: ice chest of refreshments, hummus, a watermelon cubed in big tempting chunks, and more luscious vittles that people offered to hand over.

These are good neighbors to keep in touch with. They gave me thanks and hugs, just for being there! I promised to not write any personal details about them “except for the snail,” I called as they waved goodbye.

This beautifully tended local flower strip is nothing like the bushwhacking terrain described below. No berries are pictured in this story, lest some reader feel encouraged to go nibble on unfamiliar flora.

After early Mass today I took the long way home, through back alleys and hedgerows and office parking lots and other overlooked shrubbery. In the drought-dried foliage there was a fine harvest of the healthiest fruit — wild berries, five different kinds.

Before a-berrying it’s good to tidy the kitchen and clear some space. (One hour of forage adventure means three or four hours of schlepping around the kitchen later. Will those purple anthocyanin pigments ever scrub out of the surface of my tiny countertop? Maybe; maybe not.) At this time of year, here’s what I bring for the trip.

Safety goggles! Put them on before messing with those bushes.

Two one-quart containers with lids that fit tightly. That way any earwigs or spiderlings won’t pop out of the berries and run around one’s duffle bag.

Well-wrapped feet, as padding from underbrush (and maybe ticks). Every day I wear trousers and two pairs of socks and thick felt wraparound lymphedema bandages anyway, so that’s all to the good.

Stick or rod, preferably hooked, to hold thorny canes safely in place. Tongs could work.

Long sleeves and cuffs. Fingerless gloves could be nice.

Small scissors to cut stems when needed. (One of the berry types will slip its skin if pulled, so one has to twist and roll the berry. That didn’t loosen the fruit for me, so I snipped each berry at the stem base.)

Double folded paper grocery bag, for any unexpected bonanza of wild apples. When they rain, they pour.

Finally, a water jar and paper towels, to rinse dried juice off one’s hands.

Then each separate berry type at a time goes right in a punchbowl of salt water, gently agitated to shake debris loose. (Berries are filthy. We’re not back to Eden.) Then they’re lifted out gently with a spoon and laid on a white tray for inspection. Then back in another fresh salt bath. Then lifted out for a fresh bath with white vinegar. Then a thorough rinsing, and into a glass saucepan to stew in their own juices to a boil. Then one can eat them as is, or strain and crush to make juice. It’s a lot of fuss and mess, but next winter there will be berries ready in the freezer.

The city fruit around here goes to waste, drying on the vine or falling on the pavement. No wonder. Who has idle time to spend, to mess up the kitchen or to stand in the sun sticking their hands into thorny canes, or prickle-edged leaves? Pretty much nobody. It takes a while to stand with a soft gaze and wait for one ripe berry to materialize, pick that one, then watch and wait for the next berry to show up in plain sight. One variety ripens in a counter-intuitive manner: the really ripe delicious ones are not at the top closest to the sun, but at the very bottom. That discovery called to mind St. John of the Cross, who wrote that by stooping low one can aspire high to reach the goal.

It’s a very slow martial art, edging around and peering and stooping and crouching and bending. It’s also a good way to meditate; today, it was thoughts about heavy-value milestones.

“Value-heavy milestone” is a made-up term (made up just now, in fact). These are not the rites of passage intended to forge resilient character and conform an individual to society. Instead, these are occasions crafted over generations, to not only support and welcome people through their life experiences, but meant to feel enjoyable in the moment. These milestones come wrapped in stories assuring us that other people found happiness or pleasure in these moments, and therefore (if we play our roles right) we can make them happy times too.

There’s a small complexity here. The same milestone could be all glowing nostalgia and joy and mirth for a majority, and a miserable let-down for someone else, who is then left wondering “What’s wrong with me?” Some folks reminisce with elation all their life long on their own value-heavy triumphs, while the same experiences make other folks want to go rest up behind bales in the hay barn to recover. It would be interesting and potentially beneficial to gather some deeply safe friends to exchange impressions and sympathy around “summer camp,” “birthday party,” “dance recital,” “altar call,” “Christmas,” “graduation day,” and “first kiss.” (The show-stopper is “wedding night”; laden with expectations and demands, it’s a mother-lode of poignant confidential stories from cherished women acquaintances.)

Thoughts of positive occasions that capsized, and their accompanying sad baffled memories, led to a downcast day or two. A very wise friend advised, “Not every occasion needs to be a peak experience. Sometimes pretty good is pretty good.” I said “Sure, but inherently joyful events should not be a vehicle for causing intentional or gratuitous psychic harm.”

Then, the perspective brightened up with a whole new idea. Sure, we’ve all had anticipated occasions that people insisted would be happy, yet turned out all a-glay. But even if we are poor in value-heavy goodness, what if we go seek out and create our own value-light incidents that promise nothing, and then we alchemize them into something good? For instance, a sudden all-night stay in the emergency room two years ago, walking in circles for 12 hours reading the Psalms, attracting all sorts of patients and their stories, turned out to be a beautiful experience of kindness and warmth. So were two cataract surgeries with delightful surgical staff and the care of Captain Wing and Angelina. So was half a day’s layover homeward bound at Dallas-Fort Worth airport in 2014, coughing and feverish and chilled and disoriented and cared for by kindly church ladies and security guards and men in cowboy hats and the Somali cashier at the gift shop.

Some of us have missed out on, or were bowled over by, the normal range of positive milestones. But even for us, life offers a limitless array of new rituals that we can craft for ourselves. They’re waiting in alleys and hedgerows and office parking lots and other overlooked shrubbery, with cane thorns and sharp-prickled leaves, with earwigs and spiderlings. That’s where the healthiest fruit is, if one looks long and stoops low enough.

There’s an apple tree by the interstate highway near several small parks and bridges and abandoned houses where people are trying to eke out shelter and rest. On one side is a community urban garden, not one of the lush neighborhood patches with heirloom produce but one with like zucchini growing up salvaged car fenders. Outside that patch there is a small green-apple tree. Every year it carpets the street with hard green apples piled up gathering wasps. No wonder: the apples are pure cringe-sour instead of sweet. So those apples carpeting the ground are generally missing one human bite apiece from disappointed fruit seekers.

This year instead of tiptoeing around the mess I decided to pre-empt the issue, and started snipping apples from the heaviest branches, the ones bowed down fit to break. In 5 minutes I gathered 14 pounds. (“I guess it’s like petty theft?” I said to my neighbor. She said “Why? What’s the ‘petty’ part?”) I washed and quartered them up and stewed them soft, peel & all; these are hard instead of juicy, so they needed a little water added for cooking. But first, in a small pot I cut the cores and discarded the seeds (the seeds contain some amount of cyanide), then simmered the cores in water and strained them out to make a very sour clear fruit stock. To blend the apples into sauce I used the fruit stock as blender liquid. The purée has a nice smooth texture, but is truly sour even with some coconut sugar added. It’s still valuable in salad dressings or to flavor other stewed fruits. They’re labeled and in the freezer now.

Yesterday evening I was strolling home and nearly slipped and fell on some slick uneven pavement. Fruit! Overripe fruit was trampled and slopped around all over the street, sidewalk, and the grass strip in between. At 5:30 this morning I took two quart containers and went back for a good look. A real prune plum tree! A couple dozen plums were still sound, but so ripe they were swollen with juice and splitting open. I gathered those from the grass, gave them a bath of salt water and another bath with vinegar, and stewed them right away.

Today after work I felt like visiting Mother N.’s old church and garden. There was no sensible reason and nothing to see; it’s doubtful that her soul is still lingering around there. Still, I felt like paying a visit to a place that was once hers. Nothing was blooming but some valiant lavender-colored phlox, now fading out. I stood there sending up some prayers for her, and then turned to go. Crossing the side alley to the building I glanced to the far end of the parking lot. The fence was buried in shrubbery. What kind? Sometimes weeds are the most interesting thing around, so I took that walk to the far end. And there was a whole thicket of the largest ripest Himalayan blackberries I’ve ever seen, jet black and brimming with juice. These rascally spiny-caned invasives invite themselves into fencerows and lots all over the city; virtually no one even notices or bothers to pick the berries. But these fell right off the canes into my spare jar. After careful washing and drying I spread them apart on little baking trays; they’re in the freezer now, and when they’re frozen they can go into sealed labeled bags. It was a marvel to find such large sweet berries. What accounted for that? Maybe that patch was nourished by Mother N. Maybe she stepped out the church kitchen door after suppers in the parish hall, and threw out coffee grounds or leftover borscht. We can eat them in good health to her memory.

Thank you, Mother!

The neighbors just sent a group text that we’re meeting outside in the garden this evening. Nice! But what to bring? Well, there was a double-size pot of pinto beans hot on the stove, just cooked. Hm…

So while they cooled off, I put a can of no-salt stewed tomatoes in the Cuisinart, and spun then around with some red onions pickled in balsamic vinegar, raw walnuts, dried garlic granules, teaspoon of coconut sugar, lemon oil, paprika, and a bit o’ cumin. There was also a little handful of Trader Joe vegan mozzarella shredded cheese, so that went in too. The beans pureed nicely, half and half with the tomato mixture.

We’ll just have to keep it away from the dogs; garlic and onions are poisonous to them. But I can serve it in a jar with a lid, instead of putting it in a bowl.

A dish of black olives can go as a side dish, and a plate of celery sticks for dipping.

Oh, that plant is a horseradish. The greens are good raw as a bite or two of spicy cruciferous vegetable. Weeks ago I put the cut root top in a dish of water and kept it fresh for a few weeks while the sprouts got started. One cut root grows a lot of leaves.

Now to pack up everything and take it to the garden.

(Jerusalem Sage. Not a missed signal; just something nice to look at.)

Here from the past week are examples of small near-misses in messaging. If only our human communications were a little more fine-tuned, it would be a safer and warmer world.

Incident 1.

This week before wakeup time, group texts were pinging to my phone. The phone number of the sender and group member numbers were all unfamiliar; so were the area codes. In the distant past I might have reached out in friendly fashion to let everyone know that I’m me, and not someone else. But I’m more cautious now, and simply deleted them. There’s a history of incorrect group emails from mysterious social clubs, and from online retail advertisers. What’s more, for the 18 years that I’ve had this phone, the former subscriber to this number (we’ll call him Morris) has received texts in Spanish, urging him to vote or fill in a survey or enter a contest or open a link promising alluring photos of ladies wanting to meet & greet.

To this soundly sleeping person, the group texts (probably meant for Morris) bypassed the thin veneer of good nature, and seemed like a nuisance. The texts had an official now-hear-this tone, commanding us all to await orders on where to go, and when. The texts kept coming in, this time in Spanish, insisting that we all had to be patient and wait to be escorted out. It sounded like instructions for people picked for jury duty, but they named landmarks that were nowhere near here.

What?

In no cheerful mood, and wondering why people can’t proofread the phone numbers in their subscriber lists, I hauled out of my blanket roll and logged in to the computer to look up the phone numbers. There was no online information on any of them. But some of the area codes were in Dade County, Florida. That called to mind news of the week, reporting heavy rains in the Southeast. Huh. Sure enough, a quick check of weather alerts showed a flash flood warning at “Catastrophic Threat” level, with many Florida area people stranded and waiting for orders and the safest route to evacuate.

Oh Goodness! That put-upon feeling can vanish instantly, once one knows the back story. Perhaps some sheriff or county agent was trying to contact as many residents as possible? I considered texting back to let them know the error, but decided that emergency services had enough to worry about without being corrected by some former grammar teacher.

Instead I prayed about it, hoping that Morris and all of them got out okay.

Incident 2.

On the back of the bus I sat enjoying my book and the evening commute. Idly I glanced out the opposite window up front, and noticed a man resting on a street bench who looked to be no older than in his forties. He was very pale and thin, stooping over with his back bent at an angle of over 45 degrees. As passengers filed on to the bus, the man stood up in an unsteady manner. It took a moment for it to dawn on me, that he was trying to walk to the bus stop. It took another moment to realize with concern that he wanted this bus, and actually thought he might make it. I couldn’t fathom why he was out without a walker or even a cane. It was alarming to watch him shamble off balance, trying to pick up speed.

“HEY!” I called to the driver. “Somebody here is trying to –” But the driver had already closed the door and pulled out. At that point drivers are not allowed to stop the bus and swerve back to the curb, because injuries occur when passengers fall off the curb or run into traffic after the bus.

Another bus was due in 15 minutes. But it was sad to see this man left behind. The college students all around him looked up from their phones, registering the problem as we drove away. Hopefully they were able to step up and intervene to flag the next driver, and perhaps lend the man an arm.

Incident 3.

One of our neighbors has never spoken to or looked at me. That’s fine; everybody has the perfect right to privacy and to be left in peace. I still give him a nod and a smile in case he looks up, but so far he hasn’t. The other day I smiled again, and he passed by looking distant and unaware. I dropped off my recycling, and passed his door on the way back.

Behind the door there was the sound of a man sobbing bitterly.

I stood there frozen, wondering what to do. If this were any other neighbor I would have knocked to call through the door, asking whether they were all right. At least I’d have slipped a note under the door. They would do the same for me. In this case, a strong inner intuition ordered me to back off, leave him alone, and walk away. I did, but it troubles me. What if he just needed somebody to talk to?

He passed by me yesterday. I said hello.

Incident 4.

About twenty steps from the bus stop, on a recent warm sunny morning, a young man stood swaying and stumbling about on the sidewalk. Despite the unseasonably high temperature, he stood in the sun overdressed in a ski hat and puffy coat. Judging by his gestures and speech he was unaware of his surroundings and was in a labile emotional state.

That’s normal. Every day on our streets there are people who seem unaware of their surroundings, and/or in a labile emotional state, and/or saying things which seem unconnected to situational awareness. They have every right to stand on the street and talk to themselves as they wish. Still, to watch for the bus I preferred to step out of sight around a corner to the front door of a restaurant. It felt more comfortable to be in sight and sound of the restaurant staff and other shopkeepers right nearby.

A little girl came along, no more than 10 or 11, with long fair hair and skinny jeans and a cute little summer top. To me she seemed a bit young for traveling by herself. She was dragging an awkwardly made and inadequate child’s luggage cart in bright colors. The cart kept tipping over and dragging on the pavement, hampering her progress. Every few steps she had to turn around and bend over to right the cart. That made it impossible for her to stand straight, to walk at a normal pace, to keep balanced, to keep her hands free, to watch where she was going, or to take in the scene on the street. My first impression was annoyance that her responsible adults didn’t give her a usable cart or better still a knapsack.

She dragged the cart around my corner, spotted me, and instantly shied away to go wait at the bus stop.

Reluctantly I left my hiding place to keep an eye on the girl. The man nearby seemed unaware of us, and went on talking and waving his arms. But soon his speech grew louder; there were general random threats with profanity.

At that, I spoke to the girl. The goal was to get us both out of view in a respectful discreet manner without provoking attention. “Let’s stand behind this corner,” I said to her quietly. “We will see the bus from there.”

Now mind you, I was not inviting her into my car, into a phone booth, or behind a shrub. I was inviting her to an open populated parking lot with shops and pedestrians and drivers. But she gave me only a blank look, clearly uncomfortable with I had approached her. Perhaps she had been trained to never speak to strangers under any circumstances. “Huh?”

The man turned and noticed us.

“We. Can. Wait. Over here.” Shifting into mom bear mode I beckoned, and pointed. Let’s GO!

That gesture works quite well even on dogs; dogs are good with hand signals, they understand pointing, and they know real fast when you mean business and want them to move. But apparently to the girl, given a choice between two strangers the suspicious one was me. (In his books, my hero Gavin de Becker teaches parents how to teach their children to assess strangers on the street, and to pick out likely people (= women) who are likely to help when needed. Any kid of mine would get a bazillion hours of field work on checking out people around them.) But this girl turned her back to the man, and ignored me. She stood gripping her little cart, aiming for an air of sophisticated nonchalance while the man stood looking at her. I stayed nearby, but felt it unwise to speak again to an underage girl who wanted no contact with me.

A neighbor from our building spotted this drama from the supermarket far across the street. He charged right through the traffic to stand and watch over both of us. He kept up an outspoken friendly assertive presence until the bus finally arrived.

The girl got on, and sat in a side-facing seat. I got on, and beelined to the back. The bus was nearly empty, but the man with the puffy coat sat down right next to her. In response, she shrank down in her seat, pulled up her cute summer top, and used it to cover her nose and mouth. What a startling sight in this day and age, to see a modern child strive for safety by looking smaller and covering her ability to breathe and use her voice!

At last she did get up and move to the back near me. I wanted very much to seize that chance to talk to her, to say that we women on the street need to watch out for one another. But she was back there only to ring the bell. She hopped off, yanking her cart as it caught on the door.

But here’s a happy ending: I got to tell it all to Angelina and the women tonight, as they sat outside with their dogs; it was very satisfactory to hear them all talk at once, about how outrageous it was and how we-all as a culture need to empower our girls.

And, Mrs. Wing gave me red and gold raspberries, just picked from her bushes, along with a glass of some kind of delectable health-giving transfusion of juice, made from a blend of berries and other fruits.

Here’s to good neighbors, and people everywhere who look out for one another!

(There were lots more berries, but I wolfed them down on the way upstairs.)

Every day, walking down the street or waiting at the bus stop or passing a weedy lot that at first glance seems unattractive and dull, I feel so fortunate that they all feature some kind of plant right nearby. Whenever there is a moment or a bit of ground, it’s good to look at plants and to learn them one face and name at a time, and to marvel at them all.

A special interest is, how do people recognize or decide which plants are welcome? Which ones belong where they bloom?

Nature and plant devotees have a social image of being peaceable folks. One might think that fondness for plants would always draw people together. It came as a surprise, to read and hear that plant people can differ about which plants belong in our local habitat, and which ones do not. There are good collegial and neighborly relationships which have frayed apart over this issue. One native plant advocacy group were called “purist Nazis” because they wanted to preserve a restoration site for only those plants which flourished before the city was founded. Another example of the complexity of these debates came from a bulletin courtesy of our dedicated and sincere local extension service. They advised that from now on, the Syrian Bean Caper Zygophyllum fabago should be called just Bean Caper; it reasoned that former names like that one had a nationalist and exclusionary origin, and could stoke xenophobia. But it gave me a chuckle to see that the same extension service cautions about the invasive nature of Russian thistle, Canada thistle, and those pesky English holly and English ivy.

Our food coop, an upscale place with very conscientious product sourcing and social awareness, has a lovely display of Chameleon plant for shoppers to take home for their gardens. They probably don’t know that the dear little thing happens to be classified as an “extreme invasive”:

Chameleon plant is a variegated cultivar of plain green fish mint (Houttuynia cordata), which has cheerfully spread all through our little vegetable patch. (Our fish mint makes a sturdy ground cover, and Mrs. Wing will harvest the roots in the fall for traditional Chinese medicine remedies, so for us it’s all good.) But both have a habit of taking up all the space they can.

That’s a complication in deciding which plants belong here: our nurseries can make a good profit stocking plants which easily jump the garden wall and take over whole landscapes, because many are attractive and reasonably priced and easy to grow.

It’s surprising to discover that some plants which strike delight and awe should be grubbed out and dumped in a garbage can. A neighbor’s yard holds this treasure, with its hooded flowers and showy stalks. Until today I thought it was some rare woodland Jack-in-the-Pulpit. But yikes! no, it’s poisonous toxic Italian Arum (Arum italicum) or orange candleflower, classified as a noxious weed. Don’t even touch without gloves! Keep the kids and dog away!

Adding to more confusion, some other invasives were introduced deliberately as food plants which then got out of hand. There is one local that I’d like to find but will not name or picture here; apparently it’s a healthy cruciferous with good flavor. It would be nice if we could just harvest it into extinction. But I won’t forage any until I can go with an expert. It’s not safe to pick stuff and taste it without solid knowledge.

This morning for the last day of spring, I took an early walk at a favorite small pond. It used to be a weekly year-round destination to a neat clean little body of water. But today I didn’t recognize the place. It was so choked with brown algae and green scum that the herons and usual water birds were nowhere; a few Mallards hung around, but instead of swimming they were huddled on a bit of mud flat. Along much of the walkway, the water wasn’t even visible; there was a massive amount of invasive thorny Himalayan Blackberry about fifteen feet high, along with invasive hedge bindweed, spotted jewelweed, butterfly bush, knotweed, and unfamiliar new plants like the ones below.

The hardwood forest side of the pond is muffled up with masses of this white-flowered overgrowth. Silver lace vine? Goat beard? Old man’s beard (wild clematis)? Some kind of knotweed? None of the on-line images quite fit. There certainly is a lot of it.

Update: This might be Ocean Spray (Holodiscus discolor), a native shrub. The wood has been put to many uses, carved into utensils and tools.

Scruffy little yellow-flowering trees have taken over one bank. It looks like a member of the legume family, some of which are poisonous, so I didn’t touch it.

My guess on this is Hardhack or Spiraea douglasii, in its fluffy cotton candy season. It’s crowding around on the shore. The county extension calls it “aggressive” when grown under moist conditions.

What could have happened? At our local pond, there was an army of retired folks who really knew their animals and plants. Their houses adjoined the pond, and one of them even donated the land. They were out there every day at all hours with their cameras and dogs, checking on the system; I once saw a group of them with butterfly nets, patiently scooping up algae and bagging it up for the trash. But those neighbors were in their eighties and nineties; perhaps they don’t have opportunities to cut down these out-of-balance plants any more? Now I’d like to find out whether anybody is still keeping an eye on the property, and whether there are cleanout days planned.

A lot of nature seems off kilter at the moment: cropland coping with feral hogs, songbirds coping with pet cats, the Everglades coping with pythons dumped out of aquariums, on and on. One python hunter made an excellent point: “The pythons didn’t ask to be here.” And when it comes to invasives, a compassionate co-worker reasoned that when a plant is thriving in its very own habitat, then it co-exists peacefully with a whole range of other plant types, and the necessary insects and animal predators that keep the whole ecosystem in check. When the plant is part of a supportive network, everyone can thrive. But when a plant is torn up and dragged in to unfamiliar turf, it has lost its original connections. Then its survival is more precarious; to grow at all, it has to grab up all the space it can.

Her view is very compassionate. I don’t feel that compassion yet for the Poison Hemlock taking over our main walking trail, but she has a good point. It also makes me wish for some picture of what our lovely landscape looked like in former times, in all its lush variety and balance, before just a small handful of species were dumped here and started rampaging around.

Here is the delicate social balancing act: in order to honor and protect our unique indigenous native plants, perhaps we really do have to make some firm decisions about which plants belong in one defined area, and which do not? After all, we know that for good health our inner microbiome needs a rich assortment of bacteria so that disease-causing strains don’t take over. I used to be delighted at the sight of a uniform carpet of Yellow Archangel or Herb Robert or Shiny Geranium blooming in a whole colorful patch. But now I know: that kind of uniform thriving prettiness probably means that some other plants got crowded out.

That pond walk was food for thought. It inspires me to learn more about our changing ecosystem. Hopefully I can help with good plant stewardship to cultivate balance, for the sake of the plants themselves and the creatures around us.