Tonight, for the first time in a while, I feel free from the pressure of deadlines, and it is a nice feeling. Well, I do have to put the finishing touches on a few articles for Retail Traffic, it’s true. But at least I don’t have the feeling of needing to write thousands of words hanging over me. Instead, I sit in the La-Z-Boy, drinking an Oskar Blues Ten Fidy, having just polished off dinner and a few episodes of Deadwood, listening to the distant sound of cars rolling by and trying to persuade the cat not to lie on my stomach. I suppose “persuade” is not really the most accurate word. And now he has prevailed and is purring loudly and lying on my wrists and making it very difficult to type.
What’s on the horizon? I have some posts to think about for Scanning the Dial, some work to do for the Amazon Conservation Association, posts to write for the Future of Music Coalition’s blog. And Wednesday I will be up very, very early to help out with my mom’s first farmers’ market under the Smart Markets banner, way out at the Fair Lakes Whole Foods. I’m working at that market for just a month, but for the whole season at the market at the Reston Town Center, as the so-called “market master.” Right on.
Meanwhile, I still have much digging to do in my own community garden plot, though with all this rain I’m not sure when I’ll get around to that.
I’ve gotten into playing Scrabulous on Facebook. At first I was just playing people I knew, but in my search for satisfying and multiple simultaneously games I started looking for opponents whom I don’t know. I’m sort of amazed at all the women who have to specify “no pervs” in their game requests. Amazed, I guess, but not surprised. But I really don’t understand how perviness and Scrabble go hand in hand. I mean, if I were a perv and seeking to inflict said perviness on other, and I also enjoyed Scrabble, I think I’d keep the two predilections separate, and indulge the perviness elsewhere. I can’t imagine how the two coexist all that well within the confines of a Scrabble game. But maybe I should broaden my horizons.
It’s official: I’m going to Bonnaroo. I am super excited.
Life is funny. Life is just funny. It amuses me.
Here I sit, enjoying a Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale and full of spaghetti. This week I’ve been working on two articles for Retail Traffic and one for Current, as well as the website for my mom’s farmers’ markets, Scanning the Dial, setting up my new MacBook (yum), my taxes and sundry other things. I tell you, it’s enough to keep a man from all the online Scrabble he really ought to be playing.
Today, I worked steadily from 9 to 4. I know you people with 9-to-5 jobs are scoffing right now, but I have been reading (and loving) Tom Hodgkinson’s The Freedom Manifesto (I really prefer the British title, How to Be Free), and it is putting me in the mindset that really, seven hours of solid “work” in a day is about four hours too many. Come 4 o’clock, my back and legs were aching and I felt terribly restless. I was ready to join the circus or craft a nutty mask or do something equally drastic. But I did not undertake these things. Instead, I visited my community garden plot.
Hodgkinson, incidentally, is a big fan of gardening. But he’s not the reason I’ve started gardening — I was inspired to start growing things last fall, after reading Barbara Kingsolver’s excellent Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I filled out a form and sent it to Richmond, Va. (odd, I thought, that I was lobbying the state government, rather than my county, for a plot). And lo and behold I was granted one, just a short walk from my condo. I head out the door, descend to and cross the creek, go up the hill and I’m there. They provide everything I need. What a deal! I’m so glad that after years of walking or biking by this community garden I finally did something about it, and now I’m a part of it.
I was commencing to double-dig, which I was advised is the best way to create a healthy and high-yield plot. Here’s what double-digging is all about. It was a lot of work, especially for a lazy sort like me. It took me a good three hours just to get one-fifth of my whole plot done. But I was just starting, which probably prolonged it, plus I paused often to talk with Colleen, a friendly fellow gardener. Note that the wikiHow article advises the following: “Begin at one end of the bed and dig a spade-head depth (approx. 12” deep) trench across the bed’s width, placing the excavated dirt in a wheelbarrow.” And then: “Fill the LAST trench with the soil excavated from the first. (The soil in the wheelbarrow)” Sound advice. I didn’t do this and it created some extra work, plus I got the first trench worth’s of soil on a neighbor’s plot, and I really hope I didn’t smother any budding plants. I’m pretty sure I didn’t.
Colleen, my fellow gardener, discovered that she had several stick-skinny asparagus shoots growing out of her plot (like me, this is her first year in the garden). We picked and ate them — they were pretty good.
Like I said, it was hard work, but I loved it — being outdoors and in the sun, hearing the birds chirp, and watching people go by. My thoughts receded and I was absorbed in the process of driving the shovel into the soil, breaking it up, tossing away rocks and weeds. One biker yelled out encouragingly, “You got it man!” A woman seemed incredulous that I was actually digging the entire plot rather than using a tiller. (I’m now a little incredulous too. But I’d much rather use my own power than gas or whatever tillers use.) Some dudes hung out in the cul-de-sac nearby and, I think, lit up some weed.
WikiHow also advises: “An area of 20-30 square metres or 200-300 square feet is enough to tackle on any single day. If you do too much on your first day, your back will not thank you and you may not finish the plot. Be sensible and don’t overdo it.” I must have done, like, an eighth of that. Geez.
Also: I’m going to explore whether my condo development could put up some solar power panels. But I don’t know anything about how this is done. Let me know if you can suggest any resources to check out.
Earlier I dashed off something quite like the following after reading this article in the New York Times, wherein the author makes a somewhat pathetic case that, for at least half a dozen people who were accessible by deadline, blogging for a living makes for an unhealthy lifestyle.
Ugh, let’s talk about bad grammar (or listen to me talk about it): “Some sites, like those owned by Gawker Media, give bloggers retainers and then bonuses for hitting benchmarks, like if the pages they write are viewed 100,000 times a month.” “Like if the pages”? What? How about “…such as whether the pages…” Geez. And do you “write” a web page? No, you write a post. This is like when people say “He posted a blog.”
And this is in the New York Times. Or maybe I’m just picky. I’ll write an article about “In World of 24/7 Stress Over Grammar, Mike Nitpicks Until He Drops.”
I do think it’s silly — it’s making a mountain out of a molehill, for one. Two deaths does not a trend make. Trend stories are a blight in themselves, but come on, you should have more than two examples. I guess they admit it’s not even a trend, but that makes it even more disingenuous. Also, these people are choosing these lifestyles for themselves. Blogging doesn’t make them this way. They make themselves this way. If they weren’t blogging they’d probably have some other high-stress jobs that don’t get written about because they don’t make for catchy headlines.
Postscript: I’m blogging as a career move, for free these days, in case I haven’t mentioned that here before. Haven’t gained a pound so far.
I use too many adverbs.
The Walkmen are right when they say that the Coen Bros.’ No Country for Old Men is better the second time. I saw it last week, in a theater, specifically the Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse, which I’d never visited. It was nice to be able to drink a beer and watch a movie in a theater. And I didn’t find the screen overweeningly small, but then, I rarely have that problem. I don’t care much about screen sizes. I have a small TV.
No Country is the rare movie that makes me want to read the book on which it’s based. The movie succeeds on all levels, but it stands out in its art and pacing, matters that I imagine are unique to the movie, less so to the book. Besides, I do like McCarthy, though I found Blood Meridian rather a slog, which I guess is to be expected. I want to read more just to see whether he can top All the Pretty Horses, which was enchanting.
Tonight, for the first night all year, I can hear the spring peepers. I think I noted this last year on this blog, so I feel it’s important to note it this year. It marks a real turning point.
And, in that way, this time of year marks a turning point for me — though I’m hard pressed to say exactly what it is. I am, I admit, being coy. But maybe life is like that. When are we not at a turning point? What would happen if we chose to acknowledge every moment that comes to us as a turning point? Well, well, well.
That is what R.L. Burnside said to the crowd at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, N.C., when I saw him years ago. After each song: “Well, well, well.” I had gone to see the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. And was confronted with an old dude sitting down, with a guitarist with the most amazing hair-metal hairdo, and the old dude saying “Well, well, well.” It was something. I love opening acts. Opening acts are there to dissuade you from the notion that you are actually in control of your concert-going experience — unless, in fact, you went expressly to see the opening act, in which case you’re in a different boat.
