I'm hiding out! Ensconced in my mom's old comfy chair. Bag of pretzels and glass of water on the drum table to my side. Stereo playing a collection of familiar old jazz or at least that was the intention as I've managed to start the group off with THE BEST OF Sessions at west 54th. The 'Sessions' is a compilation from the PBS show of the same name. The artists are all class A the songs and the music as good as you could ask for. Like many compilations it's a bit uneven jumping from Sheryl Crow and Natalie Merchant to the Mavericks and Elvis Costello but that is not the fundamental problem. I want to hide out. Getz, Coltrane, Chet Baker deep jazz to get lost in, comfortable, old, smooth.
Too many good artist on the 'Sessions' to bump the stack to the next CD. I'll fluff the pillow behind my back, add ice to the water, and get rid of the damned pretzels. (Lord I can grind through them mindlessly!) In short I'll adjust and try to find the peace in the moment.
There is in moving to a new place a honeymoon period. Hot, humid, and happy happy happy is how I think I described our new home. The Honeymoon was interrupted the last few days. I came up for air and payed some attention to the world. Interrupted with stories on the internet and in the local barber's chair. Interrupted from that blissful state of safe and protected from the frailties of my fellow humans. It's said that Osage Chief "Wah-Tian-Kah chose the area because he knew it wasn't land that settlers would want. It was rocky and infertile". He just wanted to hide out and live peacefully.
Man do I get that. I don't want to consider the merits of the indictments of a former President, or the sexual habits of another former President. I just want to watch cat videos. I don't want to consider the merits of a local retailer receiving local taxpayers money or Maui multi-millionaires soliciting donations for their burned out neighbors. I just want a shave and a haircut. I didn't want to parse my old tax and spend Colorado Governor calling himself libertarian nor the internecine politics of the Libertarian party itself. My friend Bert Wiener before he died shared the reality that there is no escaping politics. "You get three monkeys in a tree - you've got politics". But Bert, - I just wanted to hide out!
Well, kindly Chet Baker has now taken over the stereo and is blowing a nice gentle jazz tune. The water has cooled and it turned out 'pretty good' for the Osage people once they drilled that rocky ground and found oil. Perhaps the monkeys don't always have to chatter and a fellow can get a little peace and just hide out. We'll see!
The local library has offered up an uncomplicated but deeply important book I'm halfway through. THE Enchanted Hour tells it's message on the cover with it's subtitle The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction. The author Meghan Cox Gurdon does an excellent job of dancing between studies showing the power of reading aloud to your children and relating as a mother. I'll offer up one study she mentions from Britain showing being read to one hour a night was a better predictor of success later in life than attending an elite school. I would bend that a little and offer - given the choice between an expensive and time consuming visit to Disneyland and reading nightly to your child go for the 'little' thing.
So too it seems to be with gardens. A quick visit back to Denver gave me the chance to drive past my old garden. It was quite overgrown. Taking over a large garden built over time must be quite overwhelming. The best solution I know is the same to tame that overgrown one as to build a new one here, do a little as often as you can. If you do too much at once it's overwhelming.
Thus in a mix of listening and not to my own advice I planted two small pear trees out front this last week. With the summer temperatures still in full bloom I kept the site prep to little bursts of morning activity. Toughest part was finding a site where the local limestone was over a foot deep. I managed to find two spots close to where I wanted the trees, one 14" and the other 18". Adding a rock terracing gave me a couple of inches more depth and soil. The trees arrived with 10" potted roots. It will remain to be seen if the trees find the conditions good enough but I think they have a fair chance. The first pears are at least 3 years away. A truly tree ripened pear is worth the risk, time and effort!
The final day of getting the trees in the ground was not something that could easily be spread out to another day. It was long and very hot as life sometimes just is. Thus yesterday and today I'd rather hide out. Yesterday entailed way too much of the 'real' world, zoning out to YouTube videos. Today a desire to sit write and decompress from all that 'realness' of yesterday. Next week will be another quick trip back to visit friends, a 98 year old mother and a brand new grand niece. With all that tapestry of life I'll end up back here. Building two raised beds and maybe picking a few tomatoes off my little potted Early Girl plant. Bit by bit preparing for spring.
I'll finish with politics. Our country could have once, long ago, benefited from the idea of small repeated efforts to reduce it's overgrown budget and debt. We have just under 33 trillion in debt. Interest rates are being raised to be able to roll over that debt. Banks are failing due to rising interest rates. Interest rates are reaching a rate that the cost of that rolled over debt will swallow the entire Federal budget. Thus requiring either hyperinflation or the elimination of all Federal programs and spending beyond paying interest. (I've heard various time frames on this but 2 years may be the most likely) I don't believe 'small' is now possible. I recall less than a decade ago Senator Rand Paul proposing reducing every dollar spent by the Federal government by one penny each year. I didn't think that was enough but admired the approach of small consistent effort. No partisan bickering over priorities just the compounding of small effort over time. Today Vivek Ramaswamy is about the only Presidential candidate putting out a plan to reduce government spending. He is proposing a 75% reduction in the Federal Bureaucracy. I admire the boldness of his plan but I don't think it will be soon enough. I worry that before our next election, and any chance for him to implement his plan, we will be in a full blown currency crisis. Like many of you I don't have a garden to eat from if the world goes wonky. So I'll try to find peace in how things work out, push to get my garden going, and try not to hide out too much. Doug A.
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