Happy Birthday, Dad

Today is my dad's birthday, and in his honor, I thought I should re-publish the essay that was really the impetus to begin blogging again, which I wrote in his honor:  You Can Always Fry Eggs in Missoula, Montana (or, as Bob Hammarberg insists, You Can Always Sling Hash in Missoula, Montana -- but I'm pretty sure he's wrong!)

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Gratitude

In his tour de force The Noonday Demon, Andrew Solomon reflects that while he can never love depression, he does love the things that depression has given him, including an exquisite gratitude for life outside of depression that people who have never known depression might just take for granted.  I have never experienced a depression of the magnitude that Solomon describes, but I have certainly suffered on and off, especially in the last several years.  Like Solomon, these days I am living in a heightened sense of gratitude thrown into joyful relief by fairly recent days of melancholy. 

Among the things I am grateful for is a rich full life, even if it means I have little time to write these days (I really do mean to get back to my marriage series, in which there are at least two more essays).  That does seem to be my life these days, though: too rich and full to find much time to write about it.  Still, I think gratitude of the sort I am experiencing these days is too much not to lift up.  

Maybe these bullet points will become essays this winter (and maybe writing them will help keep the winter blues at bay).  Here’s what I’m grateful for these days, in no particular order:

• My neighborhood.  Sometimes my neighborhood overwhelms me with its urban grittiness; with the tensions that stem from class and race and culture, with the noise and the trash and the sheer density of row house living.  But these days it’s like someone turned the kaleidoscope just a fraction, and suddenly the image is all new.  The other day Micah and I walked around the corner to drop in on old friends from Cooperative Nursery School days who just moved into the neighborhood, and Claire and I sat at her kitchen table and chatted while the boys played Lego's downstairs.  Then I took them on a tour of the garden, and sent them home with an arm-full of veggies, while I headed home with a basket of green-beans and a riot of cut sunflowers and zinnias, which I dropped off to Miss Kathy.  We chatted about her upcoming trip to Jamaica, how quickly the school year is approaching, and how much she loves her church.  As I climbed the steps to my front porch, I watched Micah two doors down, sitting on the steps with Miss Jayne, the matriarch of the neighborhood, his bike temporarily abandoned, while they had an animated conversation.  These sorts of moments keep piling up:  several friends pop in unannounced, and suddenly we’re scheming a pot-luck bar-b-que for dinner; Micah wants waffles for breakfast but we’re out of eggs, so he just starts knocking on doors; my lovely friend Jen and I can peaches all day to her fun and funky “peaches” playlist, chatting about everything from theology to pregnancy nausea to sex to Dansko clogs, and when we’re about to drop, Julie and Tim arrive for the second shift.  Yeah, I’m loving my neighborhood these days.

• My church.  My relationship with my church feels almost like a marriage:  sacred, covenantal, and a whole lotta hard work.  I’ve never even come close to thinking about leaving my marriage to Julie, but last year at church I began to understand how even loving marriages end in divorce sometimes.  But there’s a new wind blowing, like we’ve fallen in love with being the Body of Christ together, all over again.  It’s still a whole lotta hard work – church, like marriage, always will be I suppose – but it feels again like the bread of life in my mouth, a joyful cup shared with people I just adore. 

• My marriage.  I would write at length about my ever-growing adoration for Julie, but it would embarrass her.  Let’s just say that I never stopped being crazy about her, and it just keeps getting better and better.  Leaving behind the all-consuming years of early parenting, so intensely physical and spiritually rich, is bittersweet; but among the sweetness is the lovely and subtle sense that our marriage continues to be a dynamic and creative partnership.  (Also, she's just so damn cute, but pretend I didn't say that, 'cause really, it will embarrass her.)

• Old friends and new.  My dear ones Kate and Pete and their daughter Ada left two years ago for an adventure in San Francisco; they’ve just returned to our block (no doubt one of the reasons I’m in love again with my neighborhood), with their daughter, AND their son Josiah, AND another babe on the way.  They may have left their hearts in San Francisco (and I’m sure they feel they left at least a part of them there; it’s a beautiful place), but their return sure has plugged up a hole in my heart.  In the meantime, while they were gone, Jen and Tim moved in across the street, also with a babe on the way (a babe with several hours of Marta-care already in the bank in exchange for yoga); it will definitely require a whole essay to express the all the ways they are making our lives richer.  And one of my oldest and richest friendships in Philadelphia is always renewed in the summer-time: Donna and I did a lot better last school year finding time, but summers by the pool are like a little sanctuary in our friendship, for which I am ever grateful ... And, and, and ... in the category of old friends, there really are just too many.  My life is richly blessed.

• Men.  Suddenly I have all these wonderful men in my life, and while I could put them in the bullet point above, I think they deserve a category all their own.  My world has always been an intensely female one, though not through any conscious design.  Indeed, I’ve often rued the lack of real male friendships in my life, but somehow being friends with women just feels like breathing air, you know, and breathing air is GOOD.   But now I have a son, a son who is pretty intensely male and who wears his maleness with incredible beauty and grace, like a skin that he is so comfortable in.  I not only love it, his maleness, this beautiful skin he is in, but I find myself fascinated by it, and intensely drawn to maleness these days, wanting men in my life not just for Micah, but for me too.  And how lucky am I that suddenly there are all these beautiful men in my life?  There are the aforementioned Pete and Tim, old friend and new; there are my dear ones, Woody and Joey, who share their whole selves with us so lovingly; there is Patrick, whose generosity and wit are like grace, so unexpected and undeserved (and whose ethereal self WILL become embodied sooner than later, at least that is my fervent hope!); there is Gordon, who is mostly words in my computer, but words that shine such a lovely light in my world; there is Michael, my new friend AND my new pastor (two for the price of one!), who is bringing such a breath of fresh air to us all … well, let’s just say, I’m feeling like a lucky girl these days to have so many wonderful boyfriends.

• The Jersey shore: sun, sand, surf, Mac N Manco’s pizza, Johnson’s carmel corn, the aforementioned Woody and Joey … I'm off!

What are YOU grateful for? Leave me a comment why don’t you? It’ll make my day, and then I’ll add you to my list of things I’m grateful for!

Dispatches from a Recovering Bleeding Heart: More City Bureaucracy

Because I know you are following this saga with bated breath, I'm sure you'll remember that on June 24, I sent a letter to my friends at L&I (Licenses and Inspections), along with an application for a license to own two vacant lots, on which I grow vegetables for my family.  I also sent a check for $100.00 ($50 per lot; I'm not sure if this is a one-time or an annual fee).  I noticed last week when doing bills and balancing the checkbook that the check had not been cashed, and gave some thought to calling L&I, but knew that completing such a call was likely to be unsuccessful, and that even if I did finally reach a real, live human being, it could take hours of waiting on hold.  So, I hadn't gotten around to it yet.  

Then on Friday, I received an envelope from L&I, and assumed that my licenses had arrived. Silly me, when will I ever learn?  Instead, this is what was inside the envelope:  my cover letter, my application, and my check, all stapled together, and a self-addressed (but not stamped, of course) envelope, with "ATTN: Mildred Brooks" hand-written at the bottom.  The rest of the address? THE SAME FREAKIN' ADDRESS I ORIGINALLY SENT IT TO.  You know, the address that was on the application? The one that I was directed to mail or return the application to when completed?  And to top it off, no note, not even a sticky, with an explanation.

What the hell am I supposed to do with this?  Did someone really send the entire application back to me, just so I could send it back to them, but this time directed specifically to Mildred? Don't they have inter-office mail at L&I? Someone actually took the time to put this in the freakin mail to me, but couldn't just freakin drop it off on Mildred's desk?  (In real life, by the way, I am not faux-swearing.  In real life, I'm mad as hell and swearing like a sailor about this. But my father-in-law reads my blog [I used to worry about my pastor too, but the new guy? I don't think he'd care] so I'm trying to keep this as family-friendly as possible.  You, however, may use your imagination and fill in with more colorful language.)

So this morning, as I was getting out ingredients for bread (I'm making stout bread and Straun; you should come over this afternoon because it's going to be non-stop carbo-goodness around here), I steeled myself for a long wait, and called the number on the vacant lot license application, the one that says "for further information, call."  I was automatically transferred to 311, which, I now know, because Mike Nutter told me himself, over and over and over again, "is your connection to City Hall!"  He also very helpfully reminded me (over and over and over) that I should "remember, 911 is still the number to call for emergencies, but now I have a number to report non-emergencies -- and get results!"

While I waited, chatting with Mike (we're tight now, let me tell you), I started wondering if maybe this was an emergency, and that perhaps I should give 911 a try.  But finally a 311 operator answered, after assuring me that the call may be recorded for quality control and training  purposes ... only to transfer me to, you guessed it, L&I.  Except she transferred me before I could get a direct number from her, so as I listened to the phone at L&I ring and ring and ring and ring (no kidding, like probably 40 or 50 times; they don't have voice mail or even muzak over there poor kids), I resigned myself to going through this whole loop all over again. But finally someone answered; not, however, someone at L&I.  It was Steve, a 311 supervisor who, you guessed it, put me on hold.  

BUT!  To Steve's credit, he did pick up again in a reasonable amount of time, and apologized for putting me on hold, and listened to the whole story, took notes, and said he would research the situation and get back to me.

And you know what?  I hate city bureaucracy, but I LOVE Steve, because he really did call me back!  Like half an hour later.  And he did not have any answers, but he really had looked into it, and he's making a report, and sending it to L&I to research further, and gave me a tracking number.  And he agreed with me that the whole situation is absurd, even suggesting that I should think about bringing a criminal complaint against the Meadowlands, because it is, after all, my PRIVATE FREAKIN' PROPERTY and they should stop freakin' harassing me.  Steve didn't put it in exactly those words -- he was very professional -- but that was the gist of it, and a whole lotta good it will do me to have Steve on my side, but still, it was gratifying, if nothing else.

(And to my friends at Old First:  Yes, I am thinking of Michael's sermon, and that nice cop who tried to help him, but really:  this is a whole lot of freakin' falling down, you know?  I'm just not sure what God's point could possibly be in this seemingly endless, surreal tumble.  I love Steve -- he's my new BFF -- but even Steve is not helping me make any sense of all this.  Sigh.)

Anyway, I'll keep you posted.

And if you are a new kid on this block, and wonder what the hell this is all about, here are some links to some related posts that should fill in the gaps:

Diary of a Mad Housewife: A Gardener's Take Worthy of Jane Austen 

Diary of a Mad Housewife: Gratitude in the Garden

Dispatches from a Recovering Bleeding Heart: City Bureaucracy 

A Midwestern Marriage, Part Two: Why Marriage?

This is Part Two in a three-maybe-more part series on our recent Iowa wedding. This is especially for Jeffrey, because he asked, and deserved an answer much sooner than this, but even more deserved an answer as thoughtful as his question.

********************

So, when last we spoke, I was twenty-one, head over heels in love with Julie (o.m.g. she was so much fun, and I was really ready to stop being so deadly freakin’ serious all the time). I was also totally riding high on being a lesbian, and not so much thinking about farming and food.

The beginning of my relationship with Julie was just a teensy bit complicated, the details of which I will not bore you with, but suffice it to say that when we graduated a few months after falling in love, I jetted off to the West Coast for a previously-made appointment to spend time with a not-quite-but-very-soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend; and Julie headed back to Philadelphia with her already-but-only-just-ex-girlfriend to run the summer day camp program at what is now our church, Old First Reformed. (Go ahead: shake your head and mutter something about “only lesbians….” You know you want to!)

Except, as it turns out, we still had Midwestern dreams. When Julie and I returned from our respective coasts to Bloomington, Indiana half a year after we graduated, it was partly because neither of us could agree to pick up and move to the opposite coast. But even more than that, we had idealistic and starry-eyed notions of moving back to the heartland to be English teachers, and to make a difference. Sure, we’d need to lead a mostly closeted life, but we were ready. We were going to make the pilgrimage home, because we loved the Midwest, and we really believed that you can go home again, as Gene Logsdon has written. Except, as it turns out, it’s really hard if you’re a lesbian. Call me naïve, call me what you will, but I was so completely unprepared for how damn hard it was going to be to put myself in the closet.

After getting our teaching certification at Indiana University, Julie and I both got teaching gigs at rural Indiana high schools, and we found a lovely apartment back in Richmond, from where we commuted. Her first year of teaching, Julie taught six classes, including the senior vocational English classes – five girls in the secretarial track, and twenty-eight boys who were already auto-diesel mechanics, all of whom were only a few years younger than Julie, and most of whom (the boys at least) had gun racks in the back of their trucks and spit chewing tobacco on her back wall. That first semester, Julie felt like she was going to throw up every morning on our commute, during which I would drop her off twenty miles west of Richmond, and then drive another thirty miles west to my school. But after that trial by fire, Julie really found her vocation, which continues to this day: she is still a high school English teacher – and I am decidedly not.

My first year I had seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh graders, each in a different room, to which I pushed my classroom library around on a cart. I was probably a more thoughtful and certainly a more well-planned teacher than Julie, but she had all the skill and most of the success, whereas I had mostly a lot of anxiety. We taught many of the same classes with the same textbooks, and each morning on the way to work, she would quiz me about the lessons I had planned. Each evening on the way home, she would tell me all about how fabulously well my lessons had gone, always far better than they had for me.

But it wasn’t just my lack of vocation that made those three years so difficult. In addition there was a war that I thought was a very poor idea, an opinion I quickly, but not quickly enough, learned to keep to myself. More significantly, my mother died suddenly at the end of my first year of teaching, so really, I could have been the most natural teacher in the world, in the most accepting environment ever, and nothing much was going to make that an easy time. Still, when I look back on those three years, it is not just grief that looms, but how soul-crushing and toxic being in the closet was.

And I imagine that people knew, or suspected, or speculated and gossiped. But there was a very clear if unspoken understanding that under no circumstances could I come out and keep my job. Julie has always been better at letting stuff roll off her back, but even she found herself dodging around Richmond, anxious that a student might be lurking about, outside our house even, and the truth is that she was pretty wildly popular – not popular enough, of course, to come out and keep her job, but certainly popular enough to have students find her address and drive by the house for a glimpse.

Those were pretty queer days, in every sense of the word -- but mostly in the it’s-awful-to-have-queerness-imposed-on-you sense of the word.

Which is not to say that I did not name and claim my queerness – quite on the contrary. I was still very high on being a lesbian. I loved being queer. And, not surprisingly, we found plenty of queer culture in Richmond (because, after all, “We Are Everywhere, We Will Be Free!” And also: “George Bush, Read My Labia: U.S. Out of Saudi Arabia!” They may have won all the battles, but we had all the good songs!) Every Thursday night we would walk from our apartment about a hundred yards across a parking lot to the back door of Richmond’s gay bar, The Coachman (a.k.a. “The Coachthang”) and share a pitcher of really bad beer and watch well-groomed young men and flannel-shirted women play pool, and we would promise not to talk about our students (“well, okay, just one thing I need to tell you, and then I promise not to talk shop any more tonight.”) I served on the Board of the AIDS Task Force, Richmond (ATFR), back in the days when AIDS had only recently stopped being called GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency) and “Fight AIDS, Not People With AIDS” was still a controversial button to wear on your jean jacket in rural Indiana. But best of all were the “salons” hosted by an elderly gay couple who had lived together in Richmond for forty years in a beautiful, old Victorian house downtown, near our apartment. This was the hot ticket in the Richmond gay scene, and we got VIP treatment because of our ATFR connections. I honestly can’t even remember what happened at these “salons” that warranted such a name; I certainly don’t recall much conversation of great literary or even political merit. What I do recall most clearly was that the gay men were much more our speed than the lesbians, who mostly drank cheap beer in the kitchen and traded tips for beating DUI raps.

So they were queer days, in the best sense of the word too, in the I-love-being-queer-and-would-choose-it-even-if-I-had-a-choice sense of the word. I actively choose being queer, although, ironically, I didn’t mind at all putting that part of me in the closet in order to be an English teacher. It was the young-and-in-love part of me, the Julie-as-my-home-and-my-refuge part of me – in short, though I would NEVER have named it that then, it was my marriage – that was so devastating to put in the closet.

I would never have named that tender, blooming love a marriage, though, because I chose queerness and rejected marriage. In my mind, marriage was the antithesis of queerness, which seemed patently self-obvious to me, and almost beyond needing explanation. In my exuberance, I not only rejected marriage, but I felt certain that anyone with any sense would also reject it, in particular my many dearly beloved straight friends, who, after all, actually had a choice of whether to marry or not. I, of course, knew that I did not have such a choice, and certainly never expected to in my lifetime, but I was equally sure that if I had the choice, I would not choose it, such a flawed institution as marriage was.

Right before we left Richmond for Philadelphia, we had what Julie came to call a “Hooptie” because we could not settle on any other term for it. What it was, in fact, was a wedding, but I was adamant that we not call it a wedding. First of all, I most certainly wouldn’t get married, even if we could, and second of all, we couldn’t, so why pretend and call it a wedding when it wasn’t really? But “commitment ceremony” seemed just plain wrong, silly even, since obviously we had already made a commitment – I mean really, hadn’t we just come through a crucible and survived? Three years of being in the closet, looking over our shoulders, not to mention the almost unbearable grief of my mother’s death? Our commitment had already been forged through years of hard work, damn it! (Yes, I do tend to over-think things, so shut up already, okay?) Julie is a very patient woman (we’re a little yin and yang when it comes to thinking hard about things), but I think I may have worn even her patience a bit thin; she just gave up and started calling it “The Hooptie,” and it stuck.

But for all my bravado about rejecting marriage, and for all my careful parsing of the issue, it is difficult for me to express how painful was my sense of stigmatization and exclusion as one by one (and quite reasonably, I realize in retrospect) all of my straight friends got married. Some of their weddings it was simply too painful to attend. Others I attended, but at great personal cost. Finally I just decided to put all that pain in a neat little box and bury it very deep, because really, isn’t it easier and more fun to embrace your friends’ weddings than to feel all that ugliness? And I was really clear at some point that not a single one of them was going to choose queerness in the end, not because they valued it, not even in solidarity with those of us who had no choice.

I will admit that while my intellect sometimes feels cold and hard and sharp (way more so than I would like, actually), I nonetheless have a very tender heart. I feel things deeply, and dwell on what all that deep feeling means, probably more so than your average girl. I know that not all gay men and lesbians felt quite so acutely the pain of being excluded from the institution of marriage; or maybe they were just sooner and better able to put that pain in a box and bury it. Maybe they really were queer, and really didn’t care, and I was just playing at being queer to hide how much I cared; that is certainly possible. But even while I am willing to concede that some of that deep feeling was unique to my particular sensitive soul, I think most gay folk will admit that it is just no fun to be categorically excluded from an institution as central to having a grown-up relationship, and to having a family, and to participating as a couple in a particular community, as marriage is. Even if you think that institution is deeply flawed, and even if your cold, sharp intellect believes the world would be better off with a very different institution for organizing relationships and families, still, your tender soul just feels really, really sad.

In Brown vs. the Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court held that separate cannot be equal, precisely because of the psychological pain being excluded exacts on a minority. The only reason to categorically exclude one type of relationship from the institution of marriage is because as a society, we believe one type of relationship is inferior to another. Even if we create another institution called, say, “civil union,” and attach to it exactly the same bundle of rights as marriage, as long as we segregate same-sex relationships into that new and separate institution, we are still in a very real way insisting on the inferiority of those relationships. We are still imposing queerness on gay and lesbian folks who do not necessarily want to be queer. Some may argue that this is mere symbolism, mere semantics, but I’m here to tell you: language and imagery and symbolism matter.

When I was young and proud and queer, it was almost impossible for me to admit, even to myself, that when I met young, straight, married couples, many of them my friends, many of them with newer relationships than my own – that they seemed so much more real somehow. Like they were the real deal, and we were just playing house, pretending to be, but not quite grown-up. It was both a painful and embarrassing sensation that would wash over me, but mostly it was just confusing, this extraordinarily ridiculous notion that a legal contract recognized by the state and called “marriage” made these couples somehow more … Real. Grounded. Substantial. This feeling left me eventually, and honestly, I’m almost glad that I didn’t have “marriage” to fix it; many, many good things came of having to chart our marriage on our own, without a ready roadmap, outside of the institution called “marriage.” And there’s nothing like a few decades and home ownership and a couple of kids (and a 1989 VW camper van) to make you feel married, even if you want to be queer. And by this time in my life, I don’t actually want to be queer, not in my marriage anyway. I’m queer enough in so many other ways, I find that my quite traditional marriage feels like home, like a refuge I would not trade for the world.

At our Hooptie, just before we high-tailed it out of Indiana to find safety in the big city, I spoke about a Spanish term, querencia, which roughly means a place where one feels safe, a place from which one's strength of character is drawn, a place where one feels at home. It comes from the verb querer, which means to desire, to want. I taught Advanced Placement English, and one of the practice essays my students took gave an extended definition of “querencia,” and then asked them to write an essay describing such a place. One of my many dilemmas as a closeted English teacher was that I believed passionately that I should write with my students, that I should write personally with them, just as I asked them to write with me. I often tried, but would inevitably stumble on the lies my closet required of me: almost anything I wanted to share with them, it seemed, required at least a casual reference to Julie, or our home, or our life together, and I just wasn’t willing – just couldn’t – call her my “roommate” or even simply leave her out. So most of the time I left my page blank. At the Hooptie, I shared all this, and then read the essay I had not been able to share with my students: that Julie – and, I now would say, our marriage -- is my “querencia.”

(Julie’s notes here: “que the soundtrack to the very special Lifetime movie.” Isn’t she sweet?)

Book Review: In The Woods by Tana French

In The Woods, Tana French (2007)(***1/2). When I picked up this mystery/thriller for Julie's birthday, I had never heard of it and knew nothing about it, but apparently everyone is reading it these days because suddenly it's everywhere. The story is told by the possibly unreliable narrator Adam "Rob" Ryan, a Dublin murder detective who, along with his partner and best friend Cassie, is assigned to investigate the murder of 12-year-old Katy in the same Dublin suburb where Rob grew up. Rob has not returned to his home town since he left for boarding school at about Katy's age, after a horrifying experience in the woods near his home that left him bloody and with amnesia, and his two best friends vanished and presumed dead. The unsolved mystery of his friends' disappearance and Katy's murder become intertwined, at least in Rob's rapidly deteriorating mind. Part psychological thriller, part police procedural, this mystery is cast with several compelling and rich characters, though not all of them, including the narrator, are entirely likable. For the first third or so, I thought I had hit the jackpot with In The Woods, maybe even The Best Mystery Ever. However, for reasons that would mostly spoil the book if you intend to read it (and it seems to be the thing to do this summer!), I was pretty darn disappointed by the end. In a nutshell, there were some significant issues left unresolved, and while I don't always have to have every loose end tied up, even in a summer-fling-of-a-mystery, it seemed to me that the promise of resolution had been dangled pretty blatantly, and that not actually following through served no good purpose. Also, there were parts of the story that got unnecessarily long. But still and all, if you like mysteries, I think this one is worth reading, and Julie says the sequel, narrated by Rob's partner Cassie, is even more compelling and definitely more satisfying.

Book Review: The Calling by Inger Ash Wolfe

The Calling, Inger Ash Wolfe (2008)(****). My partner Julie's birthday is at the beginning of June, which neatly corresponds with the beginning of summer (although this year the semester dragged almost to the end of June, poor dear), so as a gift, I bought Julie a whole stack of mysteries at our favorite local bookseller. Of course, the lag between her birthday and the end of the semester gave me plenty of time to get a head start. The Calling is set in a small town in Canada, where Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef -- near retirement, divorced, living with her spirited mother, overweight, suffering from back pain, and despairing of ever receiving a promotion to CO -- is faced with a once-in-a-career sort of murder. The victim is the terminally ill woman whom her father had an affair with years ago, and she has been killed in a bizarre and ritualistic manner by someone she appears to have known. It soon becomes clear that hers is one in a string of similar deaths all across Canada, and suddenly Hazel and her band of nicely characterized colleagues find themselves with a serial killer on their hands. In the manner of "Law and Order: Criminal Intent" (see how shallow I am?), the question in this mystery is not who the murderer is; in fact, the narration switches back and forth between the investigation, and the killings themselves, committed by a man named Simon, whom we learn more and more about as the mystery unfolds. This is not so much a "whodunit" as a "why'dhedoit?" and "a how'retheygonnachatch'im?" This is not probably the most brilliant mystery I've ever read, but it was certainly engaging, and as mysteries go, pretty satisfying. I really enjoyed Hazel Micaleff, and hope she might be a recurring character in future mysteries.

Dispatches from a Recovering Bleeding Heart: City Bureaucracy

24 June 2009

Inspector S. Durant
Code Enforcement
Housing Division
990 Spring Garden Street
3rd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19123

Dear Inspector Durant:

Thank you for taking time today to speak with me about the Violation Notice dated June 3, 2009 regarding my property at 422 [Naomi] Street. In the Notice, you cited two violations: 1) failure to obtain a permit for use as a community garden on a vacant lot; and 2) failure to obtain a vacant lot license. You explained that a neighbor had reported a community garden on the lot, and that you verified this by visiting the lot, which you said “looks like a community garden.” As I assured you over the phone today, and as I would have been more than happy to explain to you before the Violation Notice was issued had you asked, the garden at 422 [Naomi] (as well as the garden at 420 [Naomi], which I also own) is NOT a community garden. It is my private garden, on which I grow vegetables for my family. Thank you for clearing my case of that violation.

As we also discussed on the phone today, I will send my application for a Vacant Lot License immediately. As soon as I receive the license, I will notify you of that fact, and then I will appreciate your sending me written verification that all Violations, including the community garden permit violation, have been resolved, and that my case is closed.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further questions. I can be reached at home at 215 [123-4567].


Sincerely,



Marta [last name deleted]

cc: Mr. and Mrs. Barnett Meadowland

**********************************

24 June 2009

Department of Licenses and Inspections
License Issuance Unit
Public Service Concourse
1401 John F. Kennedy Boulevard
Philadelphia, PA 19102

To Whom It May Concern:

It has been brought to my attention by Inspector Durant of the Code Enforcement, Housing Division, that I require a license in order to own a vacant lot. I received a Violation Notice regarding 422 [Naomi] Street, Case No. 201770. I also have recently purchased the adjoining vacant lot at 424 [Naomi] Street. Enclosed is my application for Vacant Lot Licenses for both of these properties.

Please note that I am a private individual, and I do not operate a business in the City of Philadelphia, or anywhere else. I own these two vacant lots in order to grow vegetables for my family’s private use. Therefore, I do not have a Business Tax # (see question #4 on the application). I also have answered question #16, but I am not sure it actually applies to me; please note that I do not own a corporation or partnership. I am merely a private owner of two vacant lots.

Finally, I have not received the booklet Partners for Good Housing, and I suspect that it does not apply to me, but if I need to receive it in order to be issued a Vacant Lot License, please send it to me immediately. If I do not need it, please save the paper and the postage.

I look forward to these licenses being issued at your earliest possible convenience, as I am eager to clear up any violations. If you have any questions, or if I have failed to provide you with all the information you require, please do not hesitate to contact me at 215 [123 2467].

Sincerely,


Marta [last name deleted]

cc: Inspector S. Durant, Code Enforcement, Housing Division

Diary of a Mad Housewife: Nuts and Bolts

This is "blogging lite," for Jeffrey.

I have tried all sorts of organizational strategies in my life, most of which have been utter failures.  I'm good at setting them up, but not so great at following through consistently.  I find the more technological they are -- for example, anything requiring a computer -- the less likely I am actually to use them.  My calendar on my MacBook still flags on-going meetings that haven't been going on for years, and to-do lists from 2007.  Finally, this year, I hit on a very low-tech strategy that seems to work for me.  Right before the New Year, I bought a pretty, red Moleskine notebook with blank pages.  At the outer top corner of each page, I have written the date, beginning with "Th Jan 1."  Today is "June 15 M."  On the inside front cover are a few recurring checklists for housekeeping and self-care, which I try to check occasionally, but mostly now can check mentally.  On the blank pages for each day, I write appointments, of course, but there is still room on each page for my daily to-do list, which is the sum total of my organizational strategy: pencil and paper and a list.  What doesn't get done one day can be put on the next day's list.  Sometimes I work off the same list for a couple of days, but I find it's better, and more satisfying, if I write a new list each morning.  

Here's today's list (pretend I have hand-written a small square in front of each item, for checking off when complete):

• morning chores (this is one of my lists from the front inside cover, and includes breakfast dishes, making beds, a load of laundry, putting away clothes and shoes from the day before, and cleaning the bathroom sink)
• send email to school board re: revision of bylaws for tomorrow's retreat
• take car to shop
• take a walk (home from car shop)
• call re: garden permit (did you know you need a permit to plant a garden on your own property if it is not adjacent to your house? I just got a letter in the mail Saturday informing me of this fact.... and Marta leans just a little bit more libertarian...)
• laundry
• vacuum/mop
• dust
• clean bathrooms
• hang dining room curtain cat recently pulled down
• meal planning/make grocery list
• shell peas
• freeze strawberries
• grocery shop
• put this list on blog (check)
• Melissa arrives @4:00!!

Holding the Laceys in the Light

I recently received heartbreaking news from my friend Patrick Lacey, whom I blogged with awhile back about homemaking, that his brother James was killed in a car accident.  Patrick was headed to Philadelphia this weekend for a visit, but instead is making his way back to Indiana to be with his family.  Patrick's father, Paul, was one of my and Julie's English professors at Earlham College (now retired), and is currently the Clerk of the American Friends Service Committee.  I don't know Patrick's mother, who is a writer and homemaker as I understand it, or his sister, who is also an English professor at Earlham, but I am holding them in the light, along with Patrick and Paul, and of course James.  I hope you will too.  

Patrick has written a beautiful tribute to James on his blog, Loose Ends.  I didn't know James, but feel like I do at least a little bit after reading Patrick's blog.  He sounds like he was a very special guy.  

Dispatches from a Recovering Bleeding Heart: Abortion

I have lots of thoughts about the awful murder of Dr. Tiller in Wichita, Kansas this past Sunday morning, and about abortion in general, but unfortunately no time or energy to get them out of my head and onto my blog.  But I have been so very moved by a series of testimonials at The Daily Dish over the past week called "It's So Personal."  These are emails Sullivan has received, mostly from women, a few from men, describing the excruciating and heartbreaking circumstances that led them to consider, and in many cases choose, a late-term abortion.  You can read them here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Updated:  Sullivan has published one post with a compilation of links to all the posts here, which will make it easier to read them all if you want.

Before he read all those testimonials, Sully was firmly opposed to all late-term abortions. Hearing all those women's stories has him rethinking his position. I am just so moved by all this, and it gives me hope, even in the midst of this terrible moment in the abortion debate.

I never stop being amazed at what happens when people stop lobbing bombs at one another (both literal and metaphorical bombs) and actually start talking and listening to one another.  I don't mean to be naive:  I know that really talking, and really listening, is not enough to change the world, but it seems to me that it is necessary, if not sufficient.  And I don't mean just talking and listening when it's easy; I mean talking and listening when it's really really hard -- being willing to tell your story even when it makes you terribly vulnerable, and having a mind and heart open to being changed by what you hear in turn.  I'm enormously frustrated by how infrequently we let ourselves do that in this polarized culture.  I know for me, sentimentality and ideology are a lethal combination that shuts down dialogue.  That's why I'm a recovering bleeding heart:  I'm pretty sure there's no cure for my tender heart and my passionate sense of justice, and truth be told, I'm not looking for a cure.   But I sure am willing to talk and open to persuasion.