hallowed eve

From Ghoulies, and Ghosties,
and Long-Leggety Beasties
and things that go bump in the night.
Lord, help us.

We gathered at a neighbor's driveway, put our candy bowls on a table, and sat and chatted while the children drifted by and got their pickings. A fire burned in the portable fireplace. A tractor and wagon pulled up with small kids. And then it rained, and everybody ran inside.

Late at church was a Halloween organ concert, complete with Tocata in D, silliness, and lots of Krispy Kreme donuts and candy for the gathering of children, parents and the rest of us.

e.m. forster

In the 20th Century, one of the criticisms of Forster's novels was their lack of tauntness and toughness. People died willy-nilly (Longest Journey). In the tradition of Jane Austin, he wrote domestic stories. His characters lived in a world where the slightest decision, made unfeelingly, could bring them much pain and sorrow (Where Angels Fear to Dwell, Room With a View, Howard's End, Passage to India). Or the oddest gift, also made on a whim, could change one's world (Howard's End, Maurice). Often his characters were presented at first unformed, undecided about life, certainly not connecting to anything. What life taught them was not always easily understood by themselves or by others. If his whimsy upset his critics, his desire to find truth in relationships, to consistently try to understand the hit and miss, the muddle-ness of life, endeared his novels to readers.

There were only five novels published in his lifetime, four coming in a burst in the Edwardian years early in the 20th century, set among the British middle class of the day, wealthy, educated, well-travelled. At the end of this period, around 1913, he wrote the secret novel Maurice, about a young man of this period who discovers his attraction to men. It's very existence could have caused criminal problems, and he only shared it with a few trusted friends. He returned to this novel in the early 1960s, towards the end of his life, re-writing the ending. In was published in the early 1970s, following his death. In the 1920s, he wrote his Indian novel, Passage to India. He left numerous stories, some fantasies, a few attempts at continuing fiction, many essays and reviews. But he never wrote another novel in his very long life.

He was a Victorian who shared parlours with other Victorians who were nursing modernism in literature. He was gay in an English world that sent Oscar Wilde to jail in the 1890s, and where Edward Carpenter, a correspondent of Walt Whitman, lived with his lover and wrote about the third sex, Uranians. A great music lover, he wrote the libretto of Britten's opera, Billy Budd. I met a musicologist once who was a student in the 1950s at Cambridge. He knew Forster, and described the writer's love for listening to music with students. Others who knew him at the time have remarked about his sensitivity and focus on selected folk, and his increased ability in old age to express hurt feelings and sometimes hard judgments on old friends.

Preceding the Jane Austin movie binge, Forster's books were set to movies in the 1980s and 1990s and probably helped to enlarge his reading audience.

Zadie Smith, the young English novelist (White Teeth), gave the 2003 Orange Wood lecture in London recently. Her topic was EM Forster's Ethical Style: Love, Failure and the Good in Fiction. It is reprinted in the Guardian under the title, Love, Actually. At first, Smith is confessional, admitting her delight at reading Forster at the age of eleven. By the time she had grown up and entered the academic world, she felt she had to stifle those early childish responses. As a novelist, though, she found herself returning to her earlier consideration of Forster. The lecture moves through this personal consideration of the value she found in Forster's writing.

His style, she now thinks, reflects his moral world. The unformed person/protaganist of his novels was, in her words, the bearer of

An "undeveloped heart" [that] makes its owner "march to their destiny by catchwords", living not by their own feelings but by the received ideas of others...There is no bigger crime, in the English comic novel, than thinking you are right. The lesson of the comic novel is that our moral enthusiasms make us inflexible, one-dimensional, flat. It is a lesson the comic novelists must internalise as well. They, too, require educated hearts to do their work and avoid caricature; they must understand not only what the brain knows, and what other people know, but also what love knows.

Love, in the modern age, if not in our even more cynical post-modern era, is tricky business, sort of like writing about pets as characters. It is sentimental, the passions we assign to earlier ages, an emotion that makes us uncomfortable in a novel.

Central to the Aristotelian inquiry into the Good life is the idea that the training and refinement of feeling plays an essential role in our moral understanding. Forster's fiction, following Austen's, does this in exemplary fashion, but it is Forster's fiction that goes further in showing us how very difficult an educated heart is to achieve. It is Forster who shows us how hard it is to will oneself into a meaningful relationship with the world; it is Forster who lends his empathy to those who fail to do so.

friday

It was 69 degrees (f) outside this morning. Unusually balmy and sunny after days of wet and cold weather. This is a gardening day. Let's celebrate.

I am off to the garden.

I did notice this book review of a new history on the reformation in Europe, from The Spectator. It was linked in Simon Sarmiento's blog at Thinking Anglicans. Simon also links a review from the Church Times on the same book, written by the Bishop of London.

It's helpful to remind ourselves that the church has changed and struggled over time, and doesn't come to us in this day like a can of tuna, off the shelf, all prepared and packaged.

english roses

The English have a lot of useful information about gardening, and while we Americans must translate based on the differences in our climate and soils (and language), we can learn a lot from this lovely place where gardening is taken so seriously.

For over a year I've been subscribing to the weekly garden email from the British newspaper, the Telegraph. It's the traditional Tory newspaper, if that makes a difference for you, but they provide excellent coverage of gardening. The weekly email is a thematic update on what gardeners in England should be doing for that week.

It often provides a profile on specific plants as well as suggestions about tending plants or propagating them.

I am not paid to push them, so I'll keep this from becoming an infomercial by saying that it is a free service, and unlike the Times of London, they don't charge you for reading the paper or looking through their archives. You only have to register to access the newspaper.

In this week's email, which was about planting roses -- it's the perfect time to do so -- was a link to this story about David Austin English roses. Again, please note that registration is required, but no funds.

what's a blog

I have been asked that question by lots of friends. I like to think that we don't know the answer, that it's many things, and that it is still being defined -- how Episcopalian of me.

But here's a survey from Perseus that gives a snapshot of the amount of blogs out there and what is happening with them.

And here's blog philosopher David Weinberger's take on the future of blogs and blogging. (thanks to a link at AKMA).

anglican news

The British blog Thinking Anglicans has in a short time become essential for learning about news related to the Anglican Communion. They have been on top of all the published news over the current controversies. Since Anglicans Online, which has an affiliation with them, only updates weekly, the daily news round-up on TA has taken the lead in keeping folk informed.

Today, Simon Kershaw, one of the three co-founders of TA, announced the site is including more comment.:

Beginning tomorrow, we will add a weekly feature called ‘Just Thinking’. Each week one of our writers will share their thoughts with us and remind us of the spiritual nature of our task. The title ‘just thinking’ indicates both the desire to think about our Christian faith, and also alludes to the justice to be found in the Christian message — we must think justly. We hope that these thoughts will help provide us with a more rounded picture, a glimpse of God’s kingdom which we are trying to work towards and proclaim in our different ways.

neighbors

Late we were, Franklin and I, for our walk this morning. But my tardiness gave me an opportunity to see a couple of neighbors. C. lives across the street. She used to be the Democratic precinct chair. Her husband is a retired scientist. The Colonel next door is the Republican p.c. And we all get along.

C. had heard about the auction on Saturday for the white Georgian house. It sold to a couple with small children. About thirty people showed up, and at least two neighbors showed an interest in bidding. This is the week that that the townlet newsletter was distributed (I think it comes out quarterly), and it already had some information about the new family.

C. participates in a memoir writing group at her church (Unitarian). They write stories about their past and share them with each other, giving feedback about what is written. Since she has started with this group, she sees it as a way to pass on to her grandchildren a collection of important stories about their parents as well as about C. and her husband.

I think they have been married for over 55 years. They are a wonderful couple, very caring and supportive. Each spring, she gives me pansies for my garden. And she has also shared hostas with me. One of the many nice folk in the townlet.

When we moved here, we were kidded that people's homes are named for the people who last lived in them. You have to live here a while before it becomes your home. But I think we are in a generational transition now, with lots of new families with children and adult couples. One absorbs information about previous residents over time, people I've never met. Little stories that get passed on at community events or at the floating impromptu cocktail parties in summer.

And I saw M. on her way to work. She just got back from England and we haven't had much of an opportunity to talk. She bought bulbs from our choir sale, and I will help her get them in the ground this weekend.

The sun was shining brightly this morning. It will be a good day, I think, to be outside. I cannot wait for tomorrow's gardening.

perfect weather

Weatherman says that the temps will go into the 70s tomorrow, and will continue through the weekend. I plan on gardening Friday.

I hope that I can finish mulching the last wave of leaves, but my giant sweet gum, the first to start dropping, still has a long way to go. I will get bulbs planted, do some weeding, and then start on the stone work.

evening prayer

On Wednesday evening, an hour before choir pratice, a few of us gather in the church for weekly evening prayer, sung or spoken, Rite I or Rite II. We sit in the choir, with its black enamel painted pews. Earlier in the year at this time, the western sun poured through the large window at the other end of the church, and the gray walls between it and where we are were striped with the contrast between shadows and light. That final burst of light gave emphasis to the words of the liturgy. But now the setting sun is faint, and the shadows cover more space than that filled with light.

Oh gracious light,
pure brightness of the everliving Father in heaven,
O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed!
Now as we come to the setting of the sun,
and our eyes behold the vesper light,
we sing your praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices,
O Son of God, O Giver of Life,
and to be glorified through all the worlds.

The Old Testament lesson is from Ezra, about the work at restoring the Temple in Jerusalem. The Daily Office passages are longer than the readings on Sunday, and unlike the Eucharist, where the gospel lesson lingers in my mind for a few days, at this service I hear the Ezra reading, but barely notice the gospel story.

We recite the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis, and think of past choral settings of these words, each one emphasizing a different phrase.

Silence. A hymn. Prayers. Thanksgiving.

For a moment, time remains outside. Cars drive past, busy, tired people leaving downtown for the northern suburbs. Inside, it is quiet and we move slowly before we realize it's time to get on to the next thing.

it's next door...this is the insult room

Being Episcopalian right now can make one a little jumpy. In all the discussion and prayer over Canon Robinson and same-sex unions, we find ourselves divided. Some of those divisions are heart-felt, real moments of conscience and faith. But some of the expressions also have the feel of being more a political campaign than a church fight.

I support the consecration of Canon Robinson as the new Bishop of New Hampshire. But I probably have re-thought and examined these issues much more than if it had been an unanimous decision at General Convention and there were no controversy within the Anglican Communion.

AKMA posted comments on his blog this week about a news story in Georgia (and he also links to the story and to the blog friend that alerted him to it) where an Episcopal priest/history teacher lost his job at a private prep school because he wrote an opinion piece about his support of Robinson. He had been asked to write his opinion, and it brought down upon him the wrath of some parents and his school's administration. It's a sad story for the man, but it also is a story about what most of us actually believe, that people shouldn't challenge or think differently than us. Call it one of the unwritten rules of human behavior. Particularly people associated with us or our institutions.

Of course, if we lived in a Monty Python world, I would be the fellow assigned to the Confrontation Room ("No you wouldn't. Yes I would...). I don't like confrontation. I really don't like confrontation.

But I must also say that I am fascinated by what makes us so angry at each other when we disagree.

During FDR's presidency, Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934. The bedrock philosophy behind that act was to protect the public's interest in broadcasting because we as a society believed in a marketplace of ideas.

But I often don't think we really do believe in this marketplace. There is something supportive about finding ourselves sitting around the table, agreeing. Yes. Amen. I agree. A marketplace of ideas is a nice liberal notion. How challenging. How thought-provoking. But it means coming across people who challenge us, our assumptions, and our cherished and sacred beliefs.

Do we distance ourselves from the whiplash of cognitive dissonance by hewing to our paradigm/world view, protecting ourselves from some chink in our rhetorical armor? I don't even think it is connected to the left-right continuum.

In his blog, AMKA wrote about the value and honesty of disagreement. I've mulled over those words and I am trying to take them to heart. He also listed some important questions to consider in dealing with disagreement.

Meanwhile, in another seminary related blog, Hoosier Musings on the Road to Emmaus, Jane describes her reactions to friends and colleagues who heard she had gone to a Baptist church to see a friend's ordination. She challenged her friends to let go of their stereotypes and knee-jerk reactions.

I know that I am often guilty of not tolerating the tension between what I believe and the presence of someone strongly disagreeing. This is not a confessional blog, but I admit it. I can easily make judgments about folk based on an opinion that they state, particularly if I have never met them before and have nothing else to go on.

On the other hand, I have wonderful friends with whom I can easily enjoy while totally disagreeing with them about something. I like people, and sometimes what makes them interesting is that they are passionate about something. While not agreeing with them, I learn something about them, about issues, and about myself.

The internet is a marketplace of ideas. I've been involved in three on-line communities and have lurked around in others. People gather, they confront, they teach. It is incredibly amazing the amount of freedom on the internet to express opinions.

But often the conversation can become either violent or hackneyed around issues of politics or religion. People can be extremely rude or they can continuously repeat themselves so that we could all swap identities and guess what pieties the newly-borrowed identity would say about most subjects. Whether I own up to it or not, I prefer people to agree with me, but I am also bored by being around people who agree with me (or each other) too much -- a good temperament for being Episcopalian. And I am tired of people who disagree all the time with harsh and sarcastic language.

Rodney King probably asked the wrong question (why can't we all get along). It's the human condition that we don't get along. But I bet there are a lot of mechanics going on inside us. I wish I knew more about what it is.

new tricks

I am the most non-techie person that you will ever meet. I have used computers most of my working adult life, but I am not that curious about what's under the hood, so to speak. I like learning new software, but probably go about it the most inefficient way possible, trying this and that, knowing more about what I want for the outcome than in how is the best way to get there.

Part of setting up a blog is learning how to tweak this site so it will look and do what I want it to do.

Of course, I am limited by what Blogger allows. Blogger is the company, owned now by Google, that provides free websites for bloggers along with the software to build a blog. If I wanted more bells and whistles on the site, I would have to pay a monthly fee for an upgrade.

Still, I am surprised by the bells and whistles that come, free, from Blogger and from other sources. Like comments from Blogspeak. There's another comment program from Halcon that looks cleaner. I am not a fan of smiley faces and dark blue background. But then I would have to back out Blogspeak code before adding the new code, and that maybe more than I am able to do.

When I decided to start the blog, I had to choose a template from Blogger. They offered six choices. I went for more white space. I am not a big fan of color, bars and frames. I like the elegance of text on white.

So I picked the template. And I ended up with body text that was sans serif. The text size was very large. And the linking area wasn't divided at all, and I am one of those people who usually sort their books by kind.

So I fiddled with the template code, using my little knowledge of HTML, the internet codes that tell the browser where to put text, what font to use, what colors, and what sizes. Most blogs use sans serif text (block letters like Arial). I find it easier to read serif fonts. I also practiced on links, creating ways to divide them, doing a lot of what happens if I change this percentage, or take away this particular bracketed command.

In doing this several times, I finally got the text smaller, got a serif font list in the template style sheet, and made the headlines over each blog entry smaller.

The headlines for each blog entry were quite large, and in lower-case, part of the original template style. I didn't mind using sans serif for headline text, or even keeping headlines in lower case. But at a larger size, they look like hip newspapers from the 1970s. Bringing the type size down works for me.

With any technology, there is a child-like desire to play all the effects to see how they work. It's good to get that out of the system and then settle down to what is necessary and what works.

I think I am through tinkering for a while. The archives are stuck in the style where I was a couple of days ago. I don't know if that is forever, or if eventually they will catch up with this permanent style.

Not to bore you about all this, but if you are interested in starting a blog, and I hope more people do, this is some of the things you have to go through.

And as old as I am, I like to learn new things.

mist

Franklin and I usually don't go for our morning walk this early. It was lightly misting, and the cloud cover must have kept the temperatures warmer than the previous couple of nights. The street lights in the townlet date back to the 30s or 40s and they don't really light up the street as much as provide a pool of light at certain spots, so that one can see that the road is curving. No unnatural orange glow, like that in DC, where public lighting is as much a safety measure as it is a driving aid.

In the townlet there are no curbs, and in many places there are small grassy culverts for rain run-off. With such a narrow road, it's important to be able to see it. These are not lanes for speeding. About three miles away is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and on racing days one hears the whine of the machines speeding down and around the oval track. But here, we are forced to go slower. And to those who don't, they often get yelled at by walkers with a "slow down."

No cars, speeding or otherwise, this morning. Up on a hill about ten or twelve feet above the road sits a white Georgian house that is empty. Sitting on the crest of the hill, there is a couple of acres of land. Tall trees and lawn. There was a real estate auction on Saturday, but I have not heard if it sold. The auctioneer's sign is gone. For 40 years, a couple lived in the house. They recently moved out to an assisted living apartment. Neighbors always like to chat about empty houses. How much is it worth. Is the price too high? What does it need? This house, built in the first wave of houses here, in the 1920s, only has one bathroom on the first floor. I must have heard that mentioned twenty times. But it is useful information for our informal games of fantasy house remodeling, that game in which we think about what we would do with the place, how much it would cost, what should happen to make it livable.

Houses are like theater stages. We move in and put up our sets, infused with our smells, and our books and pictures, furniture, and all the stuff we gather around us, some inherited, others gifts, and other acquired. This is our life. And we forget how temporary this all is. For forty years (or in probability a much shorter time) we produce our comedies and dramas. Our house. It's ours, and it could never look any other way than this, with our family written on its very walls. Our houses display our very essence, whether that is dreams for something else or contentment with what we have. Early in life we are taught that home ownership is the American dream, and for the most part, it is a good one.

Walking further past the Georgian, I see another house, built in the 1950s, also on a crest, but this time on the other side of the hill. Neighbors jokingly refer to it as the Frank Lloyd Wright house. He didn't design it but supposedly an architect who studied under him did. It is a modern house, partly low to the ground with a big glass and stone box living room that is two stories high. A couple lived there until the late 90s. Then somebody tried to repair it but ended up abandoning it. Now another neighbor who is very good at remodeling has bought it and is working on it. Even in a state of despair, with overgrown trees and plants, this house had such a warm and arresting look about it. It has a flat roof and that was the salient fact repeated over and over. The roof leaked, and everybody has an opinion on flat roofs and their leaking.

We get home and it is still dark. I feed animals, and start the day, fulfilling my part in the production at our house.

tick tock

At ten till five this morning, I realized that 1) I was awake and 2) I was plotting where and how I will plant daffodils in my garden. Then I thought about Katherine White sitting there, plotting out with her bulb chart in the cold of a fall day(see below). I want to plant drifts. They are mixed yellows and whites. The nicer ones get planted in clumps. I try never to plant less than 10 bulbs of anything, and ten is probably too little.

It's time. Actually it's a little late. I've got to get them planted, get more of the leaves mulched, and do something with the growing pile of dead branches. The stones are still sitting where I piled them. I need to plot out what I've been carrying around in my head, the outline of the hosta beds in the backyard that I started planting this summer and can now finish once the stone edging is in place, giving the beds a small rise above the maple tree roots. I need to buy cheap bags of composted manure from a big box store, and this is the month when they quit selling it.

Tick tock. I wish I had this interior clock for other things in my life. Do you ever realize how many little red and green lights are on from all the electronic equipment necessary for modern living? Now I was wide awake. So I got dressed in the dark, let Franklin out of his crate, and we went for a walk in the dark.

the old neighborhood back home

It looks like the federal government will close down the VA hospital campus in Waco. Here's a Waco Tribune-Herald story about the potential effect of that closing.

I grew up in a neighborhood east of Beverly Hills and I was baptized in the church there when I was a child. Sad to read about the neighborhood dying up.

At the turn of the century in 1900, Waco was the second largest city in Texas, a thriving center of cotton farming and production.

The 20th century was hard on Waco. In the early part of the century, the government started building locks on the Brazos River to make it navigable to the Gulf of Mexico. The river changed its course, leaving the construction effort abandoned in a field.

In 1953, the worst tornado in Texas history hit downtown right at 5:00 pm, collapsing buildings and killing several people.

In the 1960s, the government shut down its Air Force base, James Connally. That's where presidents fly in and out of the city. Or they used to. I haven't been there since President Bush bought his his ranch outside the city.

Then the General Tire and Rubber Company factory closed down in the 1980s. And there was the Koresh debacle in the 90s.

The working class neighborhoods described in the article, part of my growing up, are in decline. They were all black dirt cotton fields before the soldiers came home from the War and the GI bill allowed loans for them to build small wooden houses, with a little front yard and a back yard.

And the VA hospital, a large campus built out of red brick with red roof tiles, was always an imposing presence. At night, there was enough light on the front to make it look like daylight. It was a mental hospital, and if patients escaped, a siren would ring.

There was always a rumor that one of the members of the bombing missions over Japan that dropped the atomic bomb was kept in the hospital.

what this is

This is not strictly a garden blog. Nor is it strictly about my townlet or the Episcopal Church or my dog Franklin, all items that I have written about and will continue to do so.

It is the radio dial of my mind. And what you will read here are some of my favorite stations, which of course means some of this and some of that. Gardening will work its way into a lot of posts. So will the townlet -- it's an amazing place, both physically and in a neighborly way. The townlet is an accident of development in that within the United States, nobody builds neighborhoods like this. Nobody has neighbors like mine.

A word about links. Up to now, I've been linking blogs that I have read through. Today I just added some garden blogs that I have only skimmed. I want to read through them and it is easier to find them here.

So be forewarned. I cannot tell you what's out there. And if there is something that is offensive, particularly to family, friends or neighbors, let me know. I will probably juggle these around as I find new ones.

looking up plants

You paid for it, so you should use the United States Department of Agriculture plant database. I have permanently linked it on the right side garden links area. Tells you what works and how in your zone.

two out of three ain't bad

Janet Maslin has a couple of great lines in her review in today's New York Times about Cecil Beaton's last volume of his diary:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an acid-tongued, note-taking gay man in proximity to great fortunes and great beauties must be in want of a publisher.

The troubles with this book are that a) Beaton's acid-free observations are by no means as interesting as his snide ones, and that b) he spent an awful lot of time describing menu items and extolling the joys of gardening.

He liked to complain about imaginary illnesses, too.

If you are getting on a plane, would you mind sitting next to a person who is full of gossip, likes to garden and is a bit of a hypocondriac?

surprises

Did Jesus like surprises? Father Tom thinks so. Yesterday's gospel reading was about the blind man who kept calling until Jesus came over and healed him. According to Tom, Jesus often surprised people himself, and referred to earlier readings in this season where he confounded his followers with answers they had not expected.

We live our lives with default settings, assumptions based on personal experience, culture, emotions, desires and some ideals. If we really experience what Thomas Cranmer called a lively faith, we should be willing to experience surprise in ourselves and others. So much of the faith journey, we want the consolation of no surprises. This is what I believe. This is what I am comfortable believing.

Yesterday, Tom said that the difference between the disciples and the Rich Young Man, subject of an earlier lesson, was that they didn't leave. They continued on with Jesus, even if they didn't fully comprehend it.

plotting the resurrection

The only moment in the year when she actually got herself up for gardening was on the day in fall that she had selected, in advance, for the laying out of the spring bulb garden -- a crucial operation, carefully charted and full of witchcraft. ... There she would sit, hour after hour, in the wind and the weather, while Henry Allen produced dozens of brown paper packages of new bulbs and a basket full of old ones, ready for the intricate interment. As the years went by and age overtook her, there was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance on this awesome occasion -- the small, hunched over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in the dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection.

E.B. White, Introduction to Onward and Upward in the Garden, 1979, a published collection of his wife's New Yorker essays on gardening.

enchanted place

What is it about the words villa in Tuscanny that sounds so magical and wonderful? I can think of a few others, like summer in Maine.

We saw the movie. The story was not very strong, but the scenery was wonderful. Reminded me of Katharine Hepburn in that David Lean movie set in Venice, or even more, the sweet Enchanted April also set in a villa in Tuscanny.

Afterwards it was Greek food, and then we all dispersed into the raining night.

dark afternoon

Not raining now, but the sky is dark, and light appears to be leaving the planet. Leaves are falling, trickling down, from the large maple in the backyard.

A small group of us who are going to Italy next year are gathering this afternoon to see Under the Tuscan Sun. Forget the story, we just want to see the light and radiance of Tuscanny.

I have an old cat sleeping next to me, she makes little grunting noises. A big cat is on the other side, he snores, too. And Franklin alternates between sleeping and perking up. To paraphrase a description I read this year in the New York Times, Scotties aren't great watch dogs, but they will protect you from that falling leaf that just got them excited.

rainy saturday

Weatherman was right. After the walk this morning, I started to mow the yard. It was my one shot this weekend to mulch this week's crop of leaves. I only got about a third of the yard done before it started raining.

Because of the rain, we changed our plan to spend with E. a day at Conner Prairie, the outdoor living history museum in Fishers.

E. asked if there were any good pancake breakfast places. Indy isn't much of a weekend breakfast kind of town. Austin is. Our house in South Austin was two blocks from the Magnolia Cafe on South Congress. In the 80s and 90s, Austin had numerous dive restaurants, inexpensive, that encouraged long lingering breakfasts on the weekend with friends.

So we had to call the Colonel, a fellow Texan and neighbor, who is our advisor on so many things including good food places. He recommended Joe's Shelby Street Diner southeast of downtown. It is a very unfancy place, but the service was good and the food was what we were looking for.

Then we went to a couple of antique malls, The Michigan Street Antiques, which is owned by a couple of guys who live in the townlet (they specialize in dealers with 50s era offerings) and then next door to the larger Midland Antiques, a large warehouse antique place. There is an outsider's art exhibit going on there, with dealer's booths.

The highlights:

works of hand painted signs by an artist from Kentucky, including a two foot door with the sign, Door to Hell. Above the door were painted flames. Written all over the door was scribbled words like taking other people's stuff, boosing, playing cards and dancing;

a painter who soaked his paper canvas in walnut oil, some kind of wax, and used chalky paints, giving his painting a lovely mix of washed colors, often set against a crude charcoal outline of a face;

small tableaus of African Americans at church, or at the barber shop, or in the backyard barbecuing. These were made by an artist from Michigan. As crude as the figures were (in the folk tradition of art), with bright colors and asymmetrical details, the sense of emotion and movement was very good.

Then we wandered past the antique dealers booths. I am afraid I am developing an almost phobia about looking at cases of the millions of little items one finds displayed, sort of like some folk get nervous around clowns. I guess it is just too much detail, too much that disinterest me so that I cannot focus on one or two things that would be interesting. I did see a great concrete birdbath, marked down quite low.

As snobbish as I am about gardening, I like some concrete art. In Austin, I had a three feet concrete cowboy with hat and chaps and drawn gun in the middle of an eight bed parterre herb garden. Our house was a stone ranch. The cowboy was more appropriate than Venus Descending. When we sold the house, the owners asked for the cowboy to stay. Last I checked, he was still there.

morning walk

E. got here last night and we had a good time catching up on what's been going on in all our lives. She joined us for the evening walk with Franklin and we ended up next door with a small gathering of neighbors chatting around a moveable fire pit.

In the townlet, this is the time of year when we burn wood in portable fire pits, glad to be able to tell stories and be outside, free of bugs and heat or snow and ice. The chili-cookoff last weekend was next door, with fires, a band, lots of pots of chili, salads and desserts out on tables.

Coming up is the proggressive drink night, where different families provide a station of drinks and light food. Each segment is timed. If one is not careful, one might be tipsy by the last station.

Talk last night was about the sudden rash of car break-ins in our neighborhood. A group of people are coming in at night and rifling through cars. Often the cars are unlocked. One was unlocked and had an extra key in the console. It was stolen.

I think we will have to organize a volunteer watch between two and four am for a few days if we want to better protect the neighborhood.

Since partner and I used to live in DC, where all the houses in our neighborhood had bars on the window, I am used to dealing with this kind of crime. But not in this neighborhood. This appears to be a systematic, repeated effort. We should lock our cars. The Sheriff's department doesn't appear to be helping us.

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny Autumn day. But this morning was cloudy, and the weathermen predicted rain all day. During our walk this morning, we met a lady with a little mutt terrier. She lives in a gated condo complex a few blocks from the townlet. She recognized me first.

When I first got Franklin, I saw this woman walking down the street with a Scotty. Franklin was only about three months old by this time, maybe four. We started talking, and for several days, we walked together. Her dog was a female, about nine years old. I haven't seen her since that time.

This morning, she told me that she had to put down her dog recently. It was her third Scotty. Now she has this nice mixed breed dog from the pound. I thought at some point she was going to cry. When we came back around on the loop and passed her again, I could see that there was a moment that was hard for her.

We also met Emma, a beautiful Shelty that is about a year younger than Franklin. She is very bossy to him, and unlike other dogs that he is ready to take on in true terrier fashion, he let's her get away with it.

Dogs don't live long enough. When I had Franklin in for a check-up when he was a puppy, I noticed a young man in his thirties sitting in the waiting room, holding an old Dalmation. He told me that he had had this dog since he was a 8 weeks old. The vet came into the waiting room and sat down next to him. "You know," he said, "we've talked about this. It's the beginning of the end. At his age, things are starting to shut down."

Only a moment before, I had been sitting there, happy with my little puppy. Seeing this young man with this old dying dog reminded me one again that life has an end. Since that moment, I've tried to enjoy my dog and be appreciative of him in our lives. We don'[t have that much time together.

name that building

The beautiful old Federal Courthouse in downtown Indianapolis is being renamed in honor of former U.S. Senator Birch Bayh, who is also the father of the current junior Senator from Indiana.

Lucky him. The old courthouse is quite elegant and understated for that classical beax arts period. The other federal building downtown, a modern building, is perhaps one of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen in a downtown. It has no human scale to it. The color of it is all out of place with the site. It's first floor inset with giant round columns remind me of a house at a lake, up on stilts. But then, that's my reaction to it.

Both are close to the downtown Mall. That's an area that the city doesn't know what to do with. It could be a wonderful town center, but it is very underused.

presiding bishop's letter

Here's Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold's letter to the Primates, following up on their meeting in London last week.

An excerpt:

One of you once said in the context of our Bible study: "The Holy Spirit can be up to different things in different places." As hard as it might be for sisters and brothers in Christ in other contexts to understand and accept, please know that broadly across the Episcopal Church the New Hampshire election is thought to be the work of the Spirit. This does not mean everyone in our church is of that mind. There are also those who honor the decision of New Hampshire but are not sure it is of the Spirit. As well, I am keenly aware that there are faithful Episcopalians who are deeply unsettled and believe what we have done is contrary to God's will. However, for the greatest part, these persons are committed to remaining within the Episcopal Church and, in a spirit that is truly Anglican, believe that those with divergent points of view can live and pray together within the same household of faith.

before I forget

Last weekend, Andrew Sullivan wrote this column in the New York Times. He has been struggling about leaving the Catholic Church, or at least, taking a leave from it.

His subject, though, is the kicking out of two longtime male choir members from a Catholic parish choir because they went to Canada and celebrated their marriage to each other. Somebody told me this week that a Catholic parish in Illinois fired its organist of 8 years because he and his partner were in the process of adopting a child.

king james returns, new and improved

Partner and I laughed the other day when we heard some reference on television to the New King James Version of the Bible.

New Shakespeare, anybody?

The older I get, and here I sound like dear cradle Episcopalians who talk about the 1928 Prayer Book in reverent tones, the more I fondly I think of the KJV.

It's the Bible that is in my head. I grew up Southern Baptist in Waco. We memorized the Bible. We carried it to church for every service. I was quite good at the Sunday School game of Sword Drill where a scripture verse number is given and the first person who finds it in the Bible steps forward and wins.

Partner, who grew up in a wonderful Methodist household, knows the RSV. KJV is unreadable to him, and if I had not had the experiences I had, it probably would be to me, too.

Yet, when I think about scriptures, I almost always think of them in the language of the KJV. Toiling lilies. Suffering children. Naked, hungry and in prison.

One of the benefits of singing in English cathedrals is to hear CoE priests read the language we play down in our Rite II liturgies. They make it sing.

Governor Richards used to tell the apocryphal story of Ma Ferguson, the first woman governor of Texas, who said during a debate over whether foreign languages should be taught in Texas:

If English is good enough for Jesus Christ, it is good enough for the schoolchildren of Texas.

receding garden

I hate to see the plants fade away. There was a little frost out this morning, but it has not been icy cold yet. But nature is in the middle of winding down much of the living things in my garden, so the faithful hostas are half yellow, the purple coneflower are brown stems with half-eaten seed heads (the yellow finches love them). The catmint caught a second breath and will wait for the shock of a freeze before it dies down.

Even the anemones, a gift from Mother Ferriani out of her garden two years ago, are starting to loose blooms.

But when I look for vibrancy left in the garden, I see the viburnams, small plants when we moved here that have grown into maturity. I haven't identified the cultivar, but they are fragrant, putting out big white domed blossoms in spring that fill the air with their vanilla scent.

These shrubs are the first to put out leaves in spring, big leathery tough leaves. Hairy leaves. So far, the chill of Autumn has only made them look happier.

And all my English roses. I am careful not to prune going into fall. I'll prune in late Winter. No need to encourage new growth right before the freezing and cold of winter.

But now in these, by their standards, mild days, the roses are showing how much they like sunshine and chilled air. The leaves have that dark red and dark green look of a healthy rose plant. Good job, store up as much as you can before winter, I think.

After two years, the columbine have started sprouting small seedlings. I've been spreading foxglove, poppy and larkspur seed, as well as seed from my other perennials, in hopes that the scarring and thawing of winter will soften these hard to germinate seeds and get them to spring forth next year.

Winter is coming, and I am already daydreaming about next spring.

But I got work to do this fall. I resolve to focus.

Boast not thou self of tomorrow for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. Proverbs 27:1

houseguests

Partner and I have been preparing for that most wonderful gift, a houseguest. In Austin and in DC, houseguests were not that uncommon. And the further away one lives from friends and family, the more one looks forward to them.

I can think of only two times in DC when people we hardly knew invited themselves for a visit, and only one of those turned out to be, well, awkward. On the other hand, we got to see so many folk dear to us from the homeland.

What is it about Indianapolis that prevents friends and some family (not the one's who love us and have visited us faithfully -- if you're reading this) from coming to visit?

It's that Indy is not that exciting unless you are into sports or motor car racing (I swear, even the gay bars here are sports bars).

We offer something different. Quietness. Good neighbors who are generous in their hospitality and funny stories. Cheap living. The world's largest high school football stadium (otherwise known as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway). Places to walk.

E., a good friend when we lived in DC, now lives in Chicago. And she is coming to visit us for the weekend. Dear, sweet E. Bless your heart!

live free or die...

Those pesky folk from New Hampshire.

J. Collins Fisher has this interesting remark at Thinking Anglican:

In all the comments and pastoral statements reported, the one that mystifies the most is the one you don’t see: the Diocese of New Hampshire telling bishops, primates and national synods around the world how to run their churches.

a new pope?

Virginia Highchurchman has a blurb from the Times (of London) stating that the Archbishop of Canterbury is working on a secret document that will propose a sweeping change in Anglican Communion governance. According to the story, the AoC, who is now first among equals, would have stronger authority to discipline the provinces in the Anglican Communion.

Of course, the Churches within the AC would have to agree to this.

When did this broad church suddenly need a very tight definition of governance and doctrine for all of us?

Will we barter? We give up women bishops, keep women priests, but you guys have to resist multiple marriages and condemn Muslim stoning of women?

I wonder if this is what is called in politics, a trial balloon.

scripture wars

We moved out of Texas two days after Ann Richards left office. While I have been back many times to visit family, friends and old colleagues, over time I let go of my life-long interest in Texas politics. Part of that letting go came from leaving the intensity of working in the governor's office. As my dear friend and colleague, the late Billy Ramsey often said after we left, "we're all a lot happier now." By that he meant that we were outside the pressure of making decisions that affected a lot of folk, outside the pressure of insider politics and the media glare. And we could now speak our mind, representing what we as individuals think, not what the boss thinks, or the governor's office thinks. Out of office, we no longer represent anyone but ourselves.

For example, I believe that Bob Bullock is not a saint.

There, I said it. It feels good to say that. He was a very complicated man with a powerful ego and he hurt a lot of people. His good is mixed up with his bad. He was important, but he was no saint.

There's a new massive state museum in Austin with his name on it, but part of the reason that this shrine honors him is because it fit into the myth that George W. Bush in the late 90s was a uniter, not a divider, and Bullock, who was Lt. Governor (a powerful position in Texas government) got along with him fine. The uniter was going to do to DC politics what he did with Texas politics. Get along with the other party. The pay-off for Bush was when he addressed the Texas Legislature in the presence of the at-the-time Democratic House Speaker Pete Laney and the widow of Bullock on the night that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the Florida re-count. That was the last time we saw the uniter-not-a-divider.

This summer, my interest picked up when the Texas Democrats in the Legislature skipped town to keep their colleagues from passing a second re-districting map for congressional districts.

Lloyd Bentsen once said that in Texas, politics was a contact sport. Back in the 70s, some state senators did this to keep John Connally from manipulating the presidential primary. They were called Killer Bees.

Since the state has swung all Republican, we haven't heard much in ways of entertainment from the Legislature. This summer, the state got back into the game with the war over re-districting. Good and evil, proud and low-down, emotional and manipulative. The stuff that makes up the sport of Texas politics.

So I started reading Bill Bishop's Lasso, an entertaining blog about Texas politics. Yesterday, I noticed that Preston Smith had died. Smith was the governor in the late 60s who got caught up in a nasty scandal related to a Houston bank. The speaker of the House ended up in jail. The elective careers of Ben Barnes, somebody who LBJ thought would be president, and Waggoner Carr, the state's attorney general, got caught up in it, too.

But Smith was over 90, and when he died, a lot of people said nice things about him. Bishop thought that some of what they said didn't jive with Smith's record.

Which reminded me of the Bible in the Governor's office. Starting back in the 1940s, outgoing Texas governors underlined one scripture and signed their name in the margin, leaving the Bible opened for the new incoming governor.

Governor John Connally was supposedly not too impressed with Smith, who had been Lt. Governor under him. The scripture he left for Smith was from Proverbs 29:18 -- Where there is no vision, the people perish.

Later Connally denied that he meant anything negative in choosing that scripture. After Ann was sworn-in, I looked up the scripture and found Connally's underlined verse.

Which reminds me. My sweet father-in-love (not -in-law because the law refuses to recognize Partner and my relationship), who is a retired minister, recommended the scripture that Ann left for W.

UPDATE: That scripture was Amos, Chapter 5, Verse 15a:

Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate...

singing an old song

Despite the news coverage of division in the Episcopal Church, two of our Indianapolis parishes, St. Paul's and Trinity spend a considerable amount of time and some money to make beautiful music together. Several years ago, the two parishes started the Two Choir Festival where a guest conductor comes for a week to conduct the two choirs together in a Sunday morning eucharist service and Sunday evening choral evensong. This past year, the festival was put on hold, while the two choirs performed Brahm's Deutches Requiem with full orchestra at St. Paul's. The Brahms was conducted by St. Paul's organist and choirmaster, Frank Boles. Now we are working on Mozart, Mass in C Minor, K. 427 (417a). This is Mozart's other monumental unfinished work (besides the Requiem), and will be sung by more than 100 voices. The joint choir will also perform Benedictus sit Deus, Venite populi, and the popular Ave verum corpus. The concert will be November 9, Sunday, at 7:00 p.m in the St. Richards School gym next to Trinity. If I were a smarter blogger, I would figure out a way to put this up on this page until 11/9. If I don't figure it out, I may post again a couple of more times. We are currently rehearsing on Wednesdays at St. Paul's. It is a lot of work, but a great joy.

Michael Messina, the Trinity organist and choirmaster, is conducting the Mozart concert. One of the great joys of singing in the Trinity choir is working with him. He is a fine teacher, has an incredible understanding of the role of music in the Anglican tradition, and he is just fun to be around. He is also a friend. Churches ought to have communities of friendship and support as part of their mission work. I feel fortunate that mine is with the choir.

The Two Choir festival is especially important to me because it is what drew my partner and I to Trinity when we first moved here and we were looking for a parish to attend. Love is often not at first sight, but we chose Trinity fairly quickly -- it was the second parish that we had visited. It's been a good fit for us.

The Two Choirs Festival returns on Sunday, February 8, 2004.

what's left

I did a quick survey in the front garden this morning. The Japanese anemones are still faithfully blooming with their pale pink blossoms. I have them staked (they're over five feet tall). The Brazilian verbena, a prolific re-seeding annual, is still vibrant in its purple. The asters are now mostly gone, with only brown seedheads left. My David Austin English roses are enjoying the cool days. While blooming is over, they are still putting out leaves and looking much healthier than they did in July when blackspot was getting out of control.

I bought two of DA's Mayflower roses at the end of summer. He named them for North America, and supposedly in ten years of testing they've never gotten blackspot. They were a little dried out when I got them, and it took me a few days before I got them into the ground, so I was worried about whether the heat stress had affected them. They look quite healthy now.

My beautyberry, bought two falls ago, is thick with its tightly beaded purple berries.

tree branches....

This morning felt like the first real day of autumn. Green colors are now only backdrops, found among grass on the ground, and in the columns of evergreens. All else is turning to yellows, oranges, reds and browns. The leaves on the ground are the litter of fall. The temps were in the low 40s, and by the time we finished our walk, there was enough sunlight so that one could see the tall branches of trees where leaves have already fallen away.

Rilke wrote about such a day:

Autumn Day

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the
evening,
and wander the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell,
"The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke" (Random House)

interpreting scripture

Peter Owens, of Thinking Anglicans has pointed out this column in Saturday's The Guardian by Christopher Rowland. Rowland reflects on the flexibility of St. Paul and St. Peter in using scripture and tradition as the two dealt with situations among believers in the early church that they had not encountered previously.

walking franklin

Yesterday afternoon, as the sun was setting, I took Franklin the dog for his evening walk. On one side of our townlet, the road is divided by an esplanade with tall trees and grass. Each lane is only a little wider than a car. I like walking along here, between trees and houses. We are off the beaten path away from major automobile traffic -- with the exception of the person trying to find a short-cut through our winding roads or the teenage child of a neighbor who has not yet made the connection between speed and the discomfort that it causes folks with dogs walking along the road. With no curbs, a small lane, and a culvert alongside either side of most of the roads, the walker in our townlet has to share the road with the driver.

I work at getting us off the road when I see or hear a car coming. Because Franklin is a Scottish Terrier, and noises associated with rolling wheels push all his buttons, I have to be careful to hear the sneaking up of a bicycle or roller blade before it passes us. I work at keeping him quiet during these interruptions to our walk, but I am not always successful. Scotties are fearless, and have no sense of priority in being indignant or eager to hunt and attack. I got him at eight weeks, and socialized him with the neighbors, with children and with neighborhood dogs. I could never get him to not react to the wheels of the trash can, the vacuum cleaner or the local school bus.

But most of the time, morning and evening, we take our stroll around the townlet, just us two observing the light and its play through the trees, or absence of it now that the sun goes up later and down earlier. Morning and evening light is the most interesting in the landscape. I wish I had the talent of a painter to capture the brighter lights on the tops of trees facing the sun, the darker greens at the bottom, and of course, the leaves of multiple yellows, oranges and reds still clinging to the deciduous trees, or having made their final dive, now flowing across the street, across lawns, moved by the wind.

As we started our walk, down alongside the esplanade, I thought I saw a familiar sight. It was my old Snapper riding lawn mower. A neighbor got it from the dumpster, re-built the carburetor, fixed a wire broken by a mouse or some other little rodent, and now he was merrily mowing the yard. This year's dumpster swap (see below) was a real success. I could never fix that lawnmower. I have more room in my garden shed, and I have my new-found rocks. We are all happy about this transaction.

Franklin has a routine, and for the most part we walk in silence. I use an expandable leash, something I hated to encounter in DC, when I was walking along on the sidewalk and I had to wait for the dog owner to reel in their pet before I could pass. But here in my wooded townlet, we rarely pass crowds of people, and when we do, we often stop and chat. Better than a newspaper, these chats are very informative about the life and health of my neighbors.

My partner and I got Franklin right after we moved here. It was a few months before I got a job, so I literally took care of him day and night. The bonding stuck. I am his mother/daddy (in the words of a neighbor). Dogs are important in the townlet. Lots of people know Franklin by name who have never known mine. I am sure that he has been in more neighborhood homes than I. This happened when he started climbing up and over the chain link fence around the backyard. I thought I was prepared for all the characteristics of a Scotty, but I missed the one about how agile they are at climbing. Six inch legs, and he gets over that fence in about ten seconds. There was a period when he would get out a lot. Getting him back became a game, one that I could never enjoy because the whole time I was imagining him being hit by a car or getting picked up by somebody else. When he is running loose, he runs close to the ground, his eyebrows and beard pushed back by his speed, his dark black eyes in the midst of his dark black face looking with all the intensity of a receiver or runningback who sees open ground to the goal post. I think he is humming Born Free. I would love to see a place where Scotties run free, the way they must have back in the farms of Scotland, when they went off on their own to clean the place up of vermin. They love working on their own, and yet at any time, they like to be around their pack. It is an interesting tension.

I cannot let him out in the backyard anymore unsupervised. The dear airedales next door, Fred and Penny, and Murphy, another neighbor dog, join him in the backyard for improvised dog park. Murphy sometimes joins us in the morning for our walks. He is a noble mutt, with a serious pose and large brown eyes. Franklin teases Penny, the leader of this small pack, by trying to steal her toys. He loves owning things. Back when he spent days in the backyard, he would re-arrange his things in a circle. He often buries bones in the house, with a ritual scooping of his head as if here were covering them with dirt, an air guitar kind of move.

During his first year, I took him to our parish's blessing of the animals in celebration of St. Francis. I held him. The ratio of adults with pets to children with pets was almost equal. Everything was fine until the Rector began to make the circle for the blessing. Little girls started unzipping animal totes, pulling out hamsters and cats. I thought Franklin was going to brake my face as he lunged with his face back and forth. I held on, thinking that if he did get loose, it would be bloody.

His first spring as an adult dog, he killed on what was a beautiful Saturday a squirrel and a mourning dove. He almost caught a rabbit. I told him that I knew he was bred to hunt and kill, but that I was not prepared psychologically for the carnage. We have managed to keep him free from killing, although this past winter, out on drifts I wouldn't wade through to get him, he batted a baby mole around for about thirty minutes.

Franklin lives with us and our three cats. He loves to chase them. He'd like to play puppy games where they would chase him back. Only Jake, the big one, will tolerate much of this. Glenda is too old and cranky and full of disdain to ever let him too close to her. Scared Chloe, our torty, is too fast. She often finds herself on table watching him from above. We used to keep the cats off of the table and kitchen counters. Our standards have fallen. If a chair is left pulled out from the table, Franklin can jump up on it and then on the table. That is my standard now: no dogs on the dining room table.

Franklin will be four in January. He has a jaunty walk -- Scotties' gaits are different from other dogs, and his tags clang together lightly as we move through the neighborhood, stopping at rocks and mailboxes where he can make his mark. He didn't raise his back leg to pee until he was about a year and a half. I broke out laughing when I first saw him do it. He didn't appreciate this response. After the first couple of stops on a walk, he is shooting blanks, but he continues doing it as if were making a grand mark the way the bigger dogs do. I know way too much about his pooping and peeing, but we are both comfortable with this. Sometimes when I am in the bathroom, the door will fly open and he will walk into the door looking as if he is perplexed why I would be separated from him.

As a child, I always wanted a Scotty, but never got one. I drove one day to Decatur, Alabama, about 9 hours from Indy, spent the night, got up the next morning and picked him out after going through the behavior steps suggested like throwing keys to the side to see if they hear it, putting him on his back to see how long it takes for him to struggle to turn back right (too quickly and he might be too head strong, too slowly and he might be too cowed). Franklin had a brother who had a little gash on his nose. I now realize that Franklin probably gave the puppy that gash. They were in a child's portable play pen in the lady's living room. I picked Franklin, and then we drove together back to Indy. He was a little bigger than my hand. At some interstate rest stop south of Nashville, I let him out and we walked back and forth. Two old ladies walked up and asked about him. I told them that I had always wanted a dog like this. "You are never too old for your dreams to come true," said one of the ladies. In this case, she was exactly right.

Sometimes as we walk, Franklin gets lucky and sees a rabbit or a squirrel. One day recently, he perked up and tried to chase a cat that happened to be chasing a chipmunk. Twice we have seen a coyote. In Texas, he chased one of the many deer strolling along the lawns of his grandparents neighborhood on the bluffs of Canyon Lake. He is not a garden dog in the way that Glenda was a garden cat. In Austin and in DC, she would follow me into the garden and contentedly sit by while I planted or weeded. I have a tether and leash so that he can join me in the front garden, but I cannot get him too close to the earth. He is a born digger (terra/terrier). He doesn't go around digging up, but that little desire can be ignited easily. I don't encourage it. Hanging around on a tethered leash is not his idea of fun. He wants to bark and chase and smell. Movement is his favorite mode.

And yet at night, he goes into his crate on his own, calm and peaceful. If the alarm doesn't go off the next morning, he will bark until I wake up. It's not a big bark, just a little nudge. A very insistent nudge.

I need these neighborhood walks twice a day, and Franklin does too. When the time comes to go out for a walk, I try not to think too hard about who is calling the shots here. It is a mutual decision.

to write

E.M. Forster once said that he didn't know what he was thinking until he wrote. That is probably the best reason for doing a blog or a journal, a thoughtful email or even that ancient format, the letter sent through the mail.

The second reason for writing in formats like this is for the future. Humans need records of what it means to live. Time, or what we can understand of it, is illusive. All our methods of dealing with life tend to negate time. It's so slippery. We want our lives to be stories, with a narrative arc (beginning, middle, end). It's how we process.

But life isn't a story. It's a journey. And we, timid and brave, have an unknown bit of time to live, with ups and downs, hopes and failures. There is a blog I like to read by an Irishman who lives in Munich. At the end of each day's posts, he includes excerpts of an entry from some published diary for that day. I find it affirming and helpful to know that other people in other times wrestled with the day. Pepys diary is now on-line as a daily blog. It is fascinating and I encourage you to visit it. With a little help from the out-of-copyright Victorian edition being used, and the annotation of modern readers, one can easily start smelling the messiness of England in the 17th century.

Discourse is often pronounced dead. Hearing the letters and journals of 19th century Americans during the Civil War, we know that today we never have the time to let words percolate through a morning's respite, the sun coming through the window, or at night, in the silence of the darkness and the flickering of the candle or gas light.

And yet, in our lifetime is this new medium, the internet. And in all our muddles (another favorite Forster term), we can connect with what's around us in ways that are neither excessively sentimental or overtly commercial.

So I start this blog.

disengagement

Frothy emotions are usually not considered an Episcopalian characteristic. I heard a priest from Alabama once tell a story about a Baptist who went to his parish's adult education program one Sunday. After it was over, the man cornered the priest and started asking him pointed questions about what Episcopalian believe. Finally he asked, "Do you believe in the Second Coming." The priest needed to move on, but feeling impish, he said "Yes, but we have the good manners to not mention it."

We tend to disengage during confrontation. At my parish church today, there was no mention of the Primate's meeting in London, and only a brief reference during morning announcements where one could find copies of Bishop Cate's letter (PDF format) concerning the raucous Dallas meeting.

Despite all the tension between the ECUSA and the other provinces, I suppose it is telling that we continue to gather and sing and pray together, celebrating our community of faith. Storm clouds may be ahead, but stiff upper lip.

a mother's reaction

This essay in today's British newspaper, The Observer, is by a mother reacting to the news from her 15 year old son that he is gay. I remember walking in one of the first AIDS walks in Austin many years ago and overhearing two teenage boys ask each other if they were gay. One of the boys said he didn't know for sure but that he was trying to figure it out. Moms like this one, conversations like the one I recalled didn't happen when I was a teenager in Waco, Texas.

gifts

My little townlet, a woody corner of the city located along the White River, has a custom every fall to provide for one weekend, a large dumpster.

People take things to the dumpster that would not be taken by weekly garbage pick-ups.

Today, I rolled the old Snapper riding lawnmower that the previous owner of our house left us. For three years it provided good service, and had done so for her for many years. Now that I've cut my front yard up into a series of beds that have pierced the solid plane of a yard of grass, a riding lawnmower doesn't make much sense. I had trouble getting it started this spring, and if I knew more about gasoline engines and how to properly maintain and tune them up, I could have kept it going longer.

Instead we bought a new lawn mower, one that mulches leaves and grass. Hence my rolling the old mower to the dumpster located in a neighbor's drive.

It isn't unusual to see people peruse through what other neighbors discarded. Junk probably gets passed around over the year. I try to not pick up anything, because I don't need other people's trash. A snobbish attitude, I know.

But today I noticed blocks of rough limestone rock. For two years I've debated about buying rock for my garden. I want to raise several beds around my trees by about a foot or so for hostas and other semi-shady plants. These rocks were perfect.

One of my other neighbors had a 1930s outdoor fireplace/barbecue pit in their backyard. They tore it down and toted all these rocks to the dumpster.

I spent the afternoon, digging them out of the dumpster -- it is a large walk-in deal -- and piling them in stacks on the driveway. I must have gotten a pallet load of them.

It took me 5 trips in the car to get them to my yard around the corner from this site.

These rocks have taken a small journey today to the dumpster and then to my yard. Like Prometheus, we carried out a routine of moving them to one place and then another.

Free rocks. How sweet they looked and how happy I felt. It was a beautiful fall day. I had already mowed, and thus mulched, a lot of leaves that have already fallen since last Saturday. Free rocks. Who likes to pay a lot of money for stone? It makes sense if one is building a structure. But for flower beds? They're rocks, beautiful in their substance, but they are basic. This attitude of mine, of course, doesn't make sense. But it has kept me for two years from bellying up to the local stone shop counter and purchasing rocks that looked quite like these, rough hewn, battered.

So I was late for the chili-cook-off next door. Our chili was all eaten. It was Texas chili, with beef. No ginger or pasta were used in making it. Standards were upheld on behalf of Texas. But boy are my arms tired. Promethean work is hard.

tulips

The British told us to put our bulbs in the ground last month. Good advice. Daffodils always need a long time, and by planting them now until the ground freezes hard, they will be late in the spring. By year two, they will be back on track.

Buying bulbs early and getting them in the ground means that they didn't sit in the garage, overexposed to air, allowing them to dry out. But who does this? I like my earth to be a little wet and a little chilly when I am planting spring bulbs in November. And sometimes you can find good deals on bulbs later, if you don't mind that they are a little shriveled from getting too much exposure to air. These are trade-offs, and I think they are little life lessons in patience.

I grew up in Texas, in a period where bulbs were rare for most yards. How pretentious then to call anything a garden unless it was the extra lot where you planted without sentiment loads of vegetables. You did this because you lived back during the Great Depression and there was something comforting in the 1960s and 1970s to have tall okra, potatoes, green beans, squash and tomatoes in the garden outside your house. The world may be going to hell with hippies and urban riots and the war in Vietnam, but outside, on one's own land, was the garden. You will not starve. Tending the garden was not joy but work. Because starvation is something you touched thirty or forty years before, you took this very seriously. This was my grandparents philosophy about gardening. I rejected their idea of gardening as work, and took up with perennials, herbs and roses because I loved them. Outside of tomato plants, and herbs, I haven't been much of a vegetable gardener until recently.

But when I lived in Texas and gardened and decided to have tulips and daffodils, I put the bulbs in the refrigerator (in Texanese, that would be icebox ), for six weeks -- most bulbs like at least six weeks of cold dormancy -- and then I planted them into the mild winter ground. And they came out fabulously. But you should never put tomatoes or apples in the refrigerator along with spring bulbs. The gas from the ripening of these fruits will kill the bulbs. If you must share fridge space with fruits and bulbs, then put the fruit in a sealed plastic bag. But also remember that there are principles to follow, like accepting that cloth napkins are always preferable to paper, and an important principle is that one should never put tomatoes in the fridge. Same for peaches. They like to ripe in the same air and space as us. Or at least at temperatures similar to ours.

What do we do with tulips? Plant them in rows like soldiers, in one solid color or mass? Be asymmetrical and plant odd-numbers of them in clumps? -- another arbitrary principle: in nature, there are no even numbers of plants. To be natural to our eye, plantings must be in odd numbers. Or do we watch a smaller number return each year until one gets only a big old wide bit of foliage in the garden years later, and perhaps every third year a little color bloom pops out of it, a reminder of a dream to have a flourishing tulip bed, a dream now dashed?

Or do we plant them in rows and decide to be as ruthless as the National Park Service in Washinton, where they pull them out after blooming in the spring, effectively making the bulbs one-time annuals?

If you ever go to Colonial Williamsburg, you must visit the Rockefellers private estate on the edge of the CW historical district. John D., Jr. build Colonial Williamsburg about the same time he was building Rockefeller Center in New York . The exhibits about the family and their involvement in CW helps one make sense with this whole fantastic let's turn our town back into an 18th century Colonial village phenomenon from the 1920s and 1930s. The Rs came to CW twice a year, in the spring and in the fall, each time for two weeks. As common for the time when the rich had multiple houses and could afford gardeners, these Williamsburg beds at their estate were planted to bloom for these two week visits twice a year. I do not know the name of the gardener. But that man or woman deserve some recognition. That is artistry beyond the pale. It is ruthless and heartbreaking. Another human rendering of god-like behavior.

The bulbs in the mid-Atlantic region are lovely in spring. The first time I went to Williamsburg was in April back in the 80s. A friend was getting married. It was a time when I, a poor boy from Central Texas, first understood the beauty and power of a region where bullbs and flowering trees/shrubs begin a long triumphant production called spring. It is an unending rollout of gaudy brash colored (and tooth hurting) azaleas and forsythia -- the forsythia come first. Of dogwoods whose salmon pink blossoms always clash with the children's book illustrator color of pink ice cream found in the lovely American redbud (if they happen to bloom at the same time).

Texas has its spring beauty in its wildflowers, where entire fields of meadows and rolling prairie hills change hues from blue to red to white from week to week, but alas in Texas the time and length of fresh, cool green growing takes place in a much shorter time period than mid-Atlantic region, and once the Texas spring is over, the rollout begins of heat, deafening heat, purifying the bones heat. Oh Lord, thank you for the invention of air conditioning. You will need it in Texas, because the heat won't break until the late weeks of September or early October. And that is just too long. Of course the hottest I've ever been in my life was in Boston over the Fourth of July weekend in 1999 or 1998, when the temps hit 100 degrees (F), and nobody there has air conditioning. My partner and I spent a day in the Gardner and the Museum of Fine Art, seeing the Sargent exhibition for a second time after seeing it earlier in the year in DC at the National Gallery, because these spaces were air conditioned. Well, our motivation was increased because they were air conditioned spaces. God, it was hot.

I normally don't play the Texas everything-is-bigger here game, but there is one thing that is definitely better in Texas: air conditioning. I'm sure the same could be said of the other southern and southwestern states where it is essential for survival. It's not true of the midwest or the mid-Atlantic. And forget California. They sold their soul somewhere in the past and got coastal arid temps and a lovely gardening climate. This leads to Hollywood and people who work in the film industry, acting goofy and disconnected from life. And I guess it leads to electing actors as governor, something I would not recommend. But since I don't live there, I shouldn't judge.

Tulips. At the Bishop's Garden at the National Cathedral, they mix all kinds of tulip colors along the perennial border, giving the appearance of multi-colored lollipops in early spring. Never miss an opportunity to enjoy this incredible jewel of a garden, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr, son of you-know-who. It is just about perfect. Lovely, really.

I have a small well head in my front yard/garden. (The longer I live here, the less lawn, so less yard it will be. I always ending up getting rid of the grass, because God did not put me on this earth to be a sod farmer). This well head is surrounded by a raised bed of dirt and ringed by simple blocks of limestone. The previous owner planted tulips in them. The buds start out orangish red and end up being yellow. In my life, they are the only tulips I've had that grow and thrive and multiply. This is called naturalization, and it is a good thing for bulbs to do that. But that often requires knowing what are the best cultivars for one's own area, and the list is usually a short one. And local nurseries often don't carry them. So think of all the research and planning it can require to get decent tulips. I inherited mine by buying the house. Who knew?

My secret hunch is that because the soil is raised in the small circular bed, the tulips aren't as subject to the incredible wetness of Indiana soils in spring. Being raised, there is good drainage. Not a bad thing for lavender, too, or garden sage or rosemary, all plants that don't enjoy getting their feet wet for extended periods of time. And of course, if you live in Zone 5 now being re-named as 6, you don't plant rosemary, even the fairly hardy Arp cultivar (found in Arp, Texas by a southern herbalist). Or you plant it and realize that it will die. Maybe it will survive one winter. Or on the fat outside, maybe two. But no more than that.

I find it depressing that I cannot grow rosemary here because I've always had large bushes of it, even in Zone 7 of DC. Of course, it's a natural for Austin.

But back to my tulips. So the previous owner picked a good cultivar for this area. And the raised bed makes sense. If I were advising folk about what bulbs to plant, I'd go for daffodils. Or croci and muscari.

Why the rant on bulbs? My parish choir sold bulbs this fall as a fundraiser. In 2002, we sang for a week in residence at Winchester Cathedral and a week in residence at Chichester Cathedral. It's the time when the professional choirs of Cathedrals go on vacation, and in the words of Trevor Beeson, a former Dean of Winchester, those horrid American choirs come and take their place. I don't think ours is horrible. It was a wonderful experience, and we are returning in 2005 to a couple of other Cathedrals if we are all still alive, there is no new Great Depression, and the Church of England still recognizes the Episcopal Church USA. Not big ifs, I think, but nothing is ever certain.

So tonight was a packing night for the bulbs so that we can distribute them on Sunday. I came in on the tail end of this. It's always thrilling to see plants or bulbs in mass quantities. I want to buy and plant them all.

I read briefly online a description of Calvinist theology today. It is based on 5 points, and the first is the phrase of Calvin that I always forget but like to read: Total Depravity. Fine words. What power it must have felt to look out at a congregation and tell them that mankind is totally depraved. Did they flinch when he hurled those words? NPR does the same thing to me each morning when the alarm goes off and the top of the hour news starts to make my stomach hurt. Sometimes, as when, for example, they do five part series on nuclear warheads sitting in wooden sheds out in some corner of the former USSR, with rusty padlocks as the only protection, I cannot listen. Since I have no control over these nuclear weapons and their availability, I have to let go a bit, and pray for all our safety in these troubled times. Aren't all times troubled?

But after reading Calivinist five point theology, I was grateful to be an Anglican/Episcopalian. The acronym for the five points was T-U-L-I-P. Our ambiguity is more comforting than a 17th century agreement that says this is the box of God, for ever and ever. Thomas Cranmer, the author of the first Book of Common Prayer, called ours a "lively" faith, and I take comfort in that we must live in it now, particular now, as the folk who hate the idea of gay people serving in Christ's church raise their attacks.

But that's another post.

to garden

Fall is the best time to garden. The ground is soft, the mesquitoes are gone, the plants will go dormant shortly, building their root systems throughout the winter so they will be prepared for spring and then for the stress of summer.

This is important to remember.

Fall is the best time to do garden work. Good garden work starts with the soil. Think of mixing in flour with other ingredients. American soils are often heavy, dense clay (or at least as I experience it from my gardening in Central Texas, Washington, D.C., and Central Indiana -- the universe is what I experience, a failing I know). Heavy clay soils need compost. Best case, you provide the ingredients by either creating a good compost pile or by burying kitchen organic (stress uncooked) matter in the garden bed. Quickest and easiest way: you go to the big box hardware store and pay $1 to $2 for a bag of composted cow manure. How much compost should be used? First time bed, or bed that badly needs help? I recommend one bag (40 cu) per two square feet.

If you are rich, and didn't Jesus say that is was almost impossible to love to garden in a true and honorable way and still be loaded up with dough? No, oh, ok. But if you are rich, call up your local mulch dealer and ask for mushroom compost, which is probably composted chicken manure and stuff. Chicken manure, used hot, will burn out a plant. I mean burn it dead. An aside -- Anne Raver, the NY Times garden writer, once wrote a Sunday column about the heat of chicken poop, along with a few living chickens, keeping a moderate sized greenhouse heated in a wintery climate. There is actually a formula of how many chickens it takes to keep a greenhouse heated without a heater. Back to chicken manure. Once aged and composted, that chicken poop will give your plants a wallop. Your first year planted perennials will shout hallelujah in the next year's spring. Hot, hot chicken and horse manure will quickly break down organic stuff in the compost pile, too. Hot is good for raw materials, bad for living plants. Aged poop, in that case, is better. And aged compost containing aged poop, is excellent for living plants. Except for those plants who don't like rich soil (lavendar, rosemary, diantha, e.g.).

Dirt. Two different friends from different parts of the country have given me those little green machine embroderied pillows with the saying, Gardeners Have the Best Dirt. The oldest cat, Glendajean, likes to sleep between them. Franklin the dog chewed on the corner of one of them when he was a puppy. He doesn't do that anymore.

For those of you who live in sandy or loamy places, with arid climates, I envy you and feel sorry for you. You can grow roses without resorting to fungicides. But this is wrong. Gardening in North America, in the places where I've dipped my hands into the dirt, is a moral calling. Heat, cold and humidity, all work against the foolish human desire to edit creation and make one's own Garden Paradise. To be god-like in a way that humans think they would be like if they were in charge -- a terrible human failing. In my garden practice, I worry about using fungicide, hand pick the black spotted leaves off of the plant, carefully taking them to the trash can, try to keep all blighted leaves off the ground, and keep mulch between the plant and the soil (while being careful of not choking the plant stem with it). Of course, I find this is a losing battle and I buy Safer fungicide (supposedly less toxic) and in all this hesitation, I still get moments of raging black spot, although not as bad as when I do the totally organic hand-picking the blighted leaves technique). The defining moment was one spring visiting the rose garden at the New York Botanical Garden. The rosarians were spraying away. I meekly asked them about my organic attempts and they set me straight on the futility of keeping roses in a hot humid climate free this way of black spot.

Gardening is joy. It is bragging. It is learning humility. It is brashness. St. Augustine supposedly once uttered that if one chooses to sin, then sin boldly. This is an important commandment for the gardener. You only learn by making mistakes, by getting lucky, by doing dumb things. By getting advice from another gardener and trying it out. Once a lesson is learned, you tend not to repeat major mistakes. Gardening is hope. It is not about being afraid to work with living things.

Gardening is about dealing with the dirt. By mixing in organic matter, the soil becomes something else. Lighter and fluffier initially. But even as it settles down, it is still less dense. Roots can more easily move through it. Water drains better. Worms find things to chew on, making poop and giving the soil important nutrients for the plant.

Gardeners can be obsessive. We stop cocktail party cold with heated discussions about the value of chicken or horse manure over cow manure. (Ruminants, animals with two stomachs, bleach out a lot of important bacteria. )

It is not dewy-eyed, la-la sentimentality, like those clotted paintings of gardens and cottages one sees in the mall. People really buy that stuff?

Being a gardener leads to snobbery. That isn't a word, is it? Snobbishness? Snobbery sounds better. I don't do house plants. I don't do annuals. For years, I don't do annuals. I mellow about these things. I have red geraniums in the stone flower box along my porch. How cliched is that? I don't see the cliche when I look at them. My partner likes red flowers. I rarely plant red flowers, but for years, I try to do so around the front door area. He will see those and appreciate them.

To garden is to have an opinion, is to get beyond timidity ... my God, it requires the desire to stick your finger into the dirt on your way into a church right before a wedding to test the quality of the dirt, to smell its sweetness, to touch and feel a basic element, dirt. Gardening is dirt.

You learn to control this when you are about to go into the church right before a wedding and you realize that dirty finger nails in this God forsaken age we live in (this refers, dear reader, to our loss of connection with the cycles of the season and the daily order of sunrise and sunset, and for the innumerable ways we have to communicate, all smothering out our ability to think, to reflect, and perhaps to understand better how little we know)...where was I...yes, in this awful age, to have dirt under the finger nail is not a sign of one who has struggled with the devils, who has fought the good fight, who has lived honorably. No, dirt under the finger nails is so low down and low class, that folk will smirk. They don't understand the gift of dirt.