Dancing Ears

Dancing Ears

Attempting to convey the senses through words poses the biggest challenge for me as a writer. I can describe in minute detail the wild iris I photographed yesterday over at the coast, its purple hues meshing and flowing together in an iridescent stream of undulating loveliness, but I can never bring to the mind anything remotely paralleling the actual photo.

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I can reflect back to the aromas wafting through the air, as Annie roasts a tray of fresh, organic vegetables, just harvested from the farm and drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar in preparation for a gluten-free  pizza. The fragrance of the just-sauteed onions and garlic mingles with that of the thickened tomato sauce, gently bubbling on the stove.

The scent of oregano from the brilliant red sauce is readily apparent, battling for control of your nostrils with that of the basil, picked at the last minute from the bed right outside the back door. I take one last bodacious sniff of the cork from the bottle of merlot we selected to accompany our feast. Its bouquet brings memories to my mind, of other bottles of merlot and the happy circumstances surrounding its consumption.

All of this I can do but it will never live up to one tantalizing bite from the pizza pie that is so hot, you must be cautious not to burn the roof of your mouth. The tangy mozzarella cheese transports me right back to Pompeii Pizza in La Puente, with Augie buying the crew from Sunrise Market lunch.

And please, don't get me started on the Holidays, with all of the pent-up emotion that steaming pumpkin pie, fresh out of the wood-stove, drums up.

Pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving...with
whipped cream

So if I can’t come close when it comes to vision and taste, how am I ever going to accomplish any semblance of what I’d like, when it comes to music? 

Music evokes emotion and passion in me. I never looked at an exquisite flower, and broke down crying, nor have I ever savored something fresh from the oven, and felt tears streaming down my face in thanks. It does not work that way for me.

No, what activates the tears spigot full blast for me is music. I wrote last summer about being at Reggae on the River and experiencing that overwhelming welling up of emotion, when Stick Figure broke into “Rocky Road,” or later in weekend when Stephen Marley played, “No Cigarette Smoking in My Room.” Anyone who may have noticed my tears, kept it to himself.

What’s ironic to me about my ears being my most intense sense, is that in day-to-day functioning, they provide my greatest challenge, in that I do not process information well when it comes to me verbally. It is a symptom of bipolarism that resonates with me.

It explains why I struggled all the way through high school with math and science, because so much of the direction, is given orally. I was always trying to catch up with everyone else, because in order to access information, I had to see it on paper or on the chalkboard. 

It was only when I started to teach that I discovered this connection between the learning modalities and my own limitations, but it also helped me to provide a more balanced learning environment.

I made sure that all students could hear what was being discussed and that they could see it either on the overhead projector, or by some other means. I also ensured that they could do something with their hands to help bind the knowledge together more efficiently with that of sight and sound, to be velcroed to the inside of their craniums, metaphorically speaking.

You may have noticed that others respond to music with emotion also. How about when “Auld Lang Syne” comes on and you start thinking of those who are no longer here to sing along with it?

How about when that love song comes on that ties you to a broken relationship, and it doesn’t matter who is in the room when you bust out? Or when that special song comes on that used to make your mom start dancing with anyone who happened to be present?

I was present in Windsor, two Marches ago, when Laura and Isabel came over from Redding to perform live Celtic music for everyone who dwelt in the same group-home as Pauline, on St. Patrick's Day. Doug faithfully and efficiently wrestled the equipment into place, and the music began, transforming the room filled to capacity with revelers, into a venue fit for queens and kings. 

The list is endless; what invades the psyche through the ears is most likely to bring emotion with it. The cry of a newborn, when its mother is within earshot? Her breasts will start to leak milk as if they have minds of their own.

God Bless America, favorite childhood Christmas hymns sung around the piano with immediate family, or even something silly like the theme song from “Sesame Street,” long after your kids have moved on to hip-hop, will elicit emotion.

Sound can also grate on my ears and irritate me to distraction. The hens creating a cacophony of racket, is made worse when the rooster is leading the charge. The repetitive, discordant notes would be unbearable, if it weren’t for the fact that I invested two hundred dollars in a set of quality headphones.

For two hundred bones you can buy a lot of insulation from the peanut gallery.

Music provides a motivation for me to go to work, especially if it is outside, and I am doing physical labor. It is as though I have a mental pitch fork, gently prodding me to greater heights. I respond accordingly, preferring the prod to come via my ears, rather than my rear.

My current rage(s) is techno, or maybe reggae, contemporary adult,  indie, pop, hip-hop, folk, or whatever music is blowing air up my skirt at any given time.

Prior to meeting and being swooped away by Pandora, the most seductive of all music sources, I was a lost soul. I tried buying an old-fashioned CD player, but it was so fragile that I found it impractical to both farm, and listen to the jumpy quality that was produced.

I practically wrecked Terra Jean, my old computer, by perching her up on a stepladder so as to access I-Tunes. Watching in horror, I also remember seeing her tumble in slo-mo, head over sandaled heels, mousepad-first down on a basketball-sized chunk of rock, never to be the same again.

Weird, I know.

In this case it was not music that brought on the flood of tears.

In prepping the terraces for HappyDay Farms these past two months, I have relied predominantly on my music to motivate me. I need it especially when I first get out there in the early morning hours, and the temperature is hovering around thirty-six with a twenty-seven-mile-per-hour, Arctic wind.  

The music does not warm my feet, so much as the cockles of my heart. I bob, I weave, I zig and I zag and as long as I remain focused on the need for the pitchfork and my left foot to continue avoiding a clandestine tryst, there just beneath the surface of the rich soil, I am good to dance.

So far, so good.

Music belongs in the schools because like the food of life, it is fuel for the soul. A soul without music would be like the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, without flowers. Music lends passion to an ordinary day, for no other reason than the ears like to dance too. And if your ears decide to dance, you’d better go along with the program. 

After all, you’d look pretty goofy if your ears danced off without you.

The URL to Rocky Road:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJsp9I4q7oE 

Share a Little Love

Share a Little Love

I will begin by saying I have no clue where this post is going. Unlike the vast majority of my pieces, I have not prewritten this one in my head because the subject just came up on social media. I know because I introduced it.

People post on face/book for the most diverse reasons imaginable because it is an open forum, and I respect that. The golden rule is that anything goes, so if you don’t like what you see, just move along. 

My goal is single-minded in purpose: I keep it upbeat and positive, even when I am on the brink of despair.

A good case in point would be the recent trials and tribulations I encountered while transitioning over from Terra Jean to Suzy Puente, my old computer to my new one. As some of you may have gleaned by now, I struggle with technology.

Instead of a bi/Polar rant, I think I will/Share a little love.

I know. I know. It’s hard to believe but the cat done escaped the bag. That being said, while at the height of my despair and feeling a rant hovering, I combatted it by posting a mural of a heart, and spewing out something generic about love. 

Think of it as going on automatic pilot.

I won’t say I am in the minority when it comes to keeping it upbeat, because there are others who feel the same as I do, and their posts mirror mine when it comes to beauty and positivism. I feel there are more of these individuals on face/book than there were five years ago, when I got on board. 

On the other hand, there are those who use face/book because they need the security and support of their friends to make it through their day. I get that and I respect it. There was a time when an at-home mom-or dad-was trapped in an existence which by definition, excluded the outer world. 

It was just Mom and the kid(s). 

Now when the baby goes down for a nap, there is some recourse other than reminiscing back to when you were not bound-and gagged-and trapped in your own isolated existence. Even if it only to bemoan your child’s diaper rash, at least you have escaped your repetitive jail for long enough to touch base with the outside world, and blow off a little steam.

So as I am scrolling along, and I see this plaintive attempt to free oneself from a temporary insanity, I can gallop past (“…better her than me” or just as likely, “…been there-done that.”), I can click like or I can comment. No fuss-no muss. 

The reality is that the individual in question isn’t posting for my benefit, but has instead a small circle of friends in similar circumstances, and they commiserate. All good in the ’hood. 

I have also found to be accurate, the old saying about avoiding religion and politics if you want to remain friends with others. Just remember that if you want to spray gasoline on an open fire, you’d best have an aloe vera plant available.

I once read a post where someone complained that all she saw were pics of babies, dogs and plates of food, and someone else asked, "What's wrong with that?" That's where I'm coming from. The more babies, dogs and plates of food there are, the happier these folks are, so what could be bad about that?

Early on in my social media career, it took a bit of getting used to seeing people post pictures of say, religious figures, or of their personal spiritual beliefs. Like I cared? No, actually, not because I cared-or didn’t-because this person’s post was not about me. Just move along, partner, nothing to see here. The post was there for others who did care.

It’s the same as me posting constantly about the Giants. If you are not a sports person, I may as well be posting about the health benefits of eating banana slugs, for all the relevance it has to you. No harm-no foul, to sneak one quick cliche in here.  

Speaking for myself/Small minds, small
 pleasures make the/World spin 'round
and 'round..

And let’s not even get into politics, especially these days. The only thing I will say is that it’s possible to be like Judy and me. We met as blogging buddies, way back in the beginning of Mark’s Work, probably just as much because neither one of us was necessarily political on our blogs.

We found that though we had little in common, we still grew to be friends. So much so that when the election of 2012 rolled around, we found ourselves in opposite camps. I was pretty amazed that she would even consider voting for the Republican candidate, but recognized that from the vantage point of our on-line friendship, it did not makes a bit of difference. 

We had not become friends in the first place because of our political affiliations, so why care all of the sudden?

Now on face/book there is a dear friend who is a Hilary supporter, and my take is, great success! More power to you. I happen to feel the Bern. However, she is so militant about her support, that she takes any criticism of Hilary to great heights.

What could be greater heights on social media than to unfriend someone? Oh, the ignominy of it all! Yet it happens… Not to me, of course, because I have learned how to tip-toe on the key boards of Terra Jean, and will continue to do so on Ms. Puente.

Or how about the guy you have met casually in person and seems like the most even-keeled individual, until it comes to our President, when he transforms a racist jerk? It’s not enough to criticize our nation’s leader for not attending the funerals of every officer ever gunned down in the line of duty, he is also an avid supporter of gun laws that protect his Second Amendment rights. Sigh.

But that is his prerogative and I respect that.

Folks seek comfort on face/book and there’s nothing wrong with that. Kindness is cheap-spread that stuff around.

Here is-yet-another pic of a rose...

I suspect that some people find my affinity for haiku, to be a little eccentric, and you know what? It is. I just find it more interesting to write in haiku form because it beats intoning, each time I post, “And this is picture of a rose I took yesterday…And this is a pic of a bird that I took yesterday…And this is a pic…you get the drift.

“So like it or lump it-take it to City Hall, and dump it,” as my father used to say.

Face/book exists for everyone-you just have to recognize that everyone is not the same, and we can all be grateful for that. After all, what if we were all the same and wanted to vote for the Donald?

Oops, I just offended a whole bunch of you and for that I am abjectly sorry.

Not.

Greed Bleeds [All Over the Poor]

Greed Bleeds [All Over the Poor]

If you are  not voting for Donald Trump, then your overwhelming reaction is undoubtedly, “Why would anyone vote for this epitome of American greed and ugliness?” 

The answer is simple because it is deeply ingrained in our nation’s history: Millions of good, honest, law-abiding citizens will line up at the polling booths to cast their vote for this reality TV star, because they believe with all their hearts, the Horatio Alger myth.

This is the belief that only in America, the land of capitalism, could a person raise himself up by his bootstraps and become anything he (and eventually, she) wanted. 

Alger advocated that hard work, determination, courage and honesty, were all that was needed for a person to get rich. His novels were popular after the Civil War, painting a rosy picture of individuals striving to achieve middle class security, and making heroes out of those who were the best at it.

No one envisioned that greed would win out over lofty principles like freedom and equality and take over control of the soul of this country. 

45 million Americans now live below the poverty level despite dwelling in the richest country in the world. How many people, both kids and adults, go to sleep either hungry, or with stomachs filled with substance that solves their hunger but creates serious health issues down the line?

Believe me, to these people, greed bleeds.

I love my country but I have grown to hate my country’s government. The principles of those who fought to free the Thirteen Colonies from British tyranny, never envisioned a time when 1% of the population, would control 90% of the nation’s wealth.

This country's government has abandoned the precept that the existing government is “of the people, for the people and by the people.” No, that was the original idea and conceptually, it served as a beacon for the rest of the world for close to two hundred years.

Conflicting with this ray of hope, however, after the Industrial Revolution hit the New World, was another notion that reared its ugly head, that wealth was the new freedom and granted even more equality.

Names like John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and Joe Pierpont Morgan became common in American household. These were men who were admired because they were able to achieve the “American Dream,” and they became heroes in our culture.

So much so, that instead of admiring the idea that if everyone had some loot we would all be good, Americans began to admire those who acquired enough loot to ratchet their lifestyle up another notch or two. 

After all, this is America.

But hoarding is a compulsive and ugly characteristic, invariably portrayed by old women with seventy-something cats living inside their homes, or old men with newspapers and plastic cartons piled up to the [non-existent] wainscot. 

Hoarding has been linked with mental afflictions such as bipolar disorder, social anxiety and depression, so why is it that people who hoard money are looked up to? Why does Forbes Magazine exist? 

I would ask, since when is it acceptable to worship greed, but I have already provided the answer: since that time in the nineteenth century, when excess wealth became a virtue, not a vice.

And, of course, the natural extension of individual wealth, to corporate wealth, is to have been expected. Nameless, faceless corporations still have CEO’s receiving exorbitant wages and bonuses. Exorbitant?

Perverted is more like it.

Do you realize how little of each billionaire’s pocketbook it would require, to remove the concept of poverty from our culture?

Try one percent. One percent of the $76 billion that Bill Gates earns annually is (simply remove two zeroes: 76,000,000,000 divided by .01 =  760,000,000) seven hundred and sixty million clams. You can feed a lot of hungry people if you infuse seven hundred and seventy million dollars into the economy.

And that is only one: one man and one percent of someone so wealthy that he could single-handedly put a dent in the hunger problem in this country. But no, Bill needs that money. All of it. Besides, don’t you think his tax lawyers insist that a certain amount be donated to “charity,” whatever that looks like?

It’s disgusting; my country’s government is disgusting and greed is the reason. I hate talking about politics because people get so angry and take it personally.

That being said, the chances are that if you are voting for Donald Trump, it is because you envision him as a modern-day Horatio Alger. I understand it but it still makes me sick.

Perversion has a tendency to create that reaction in me.

Ready or Not

Ready or Not

HappyDay Farms will have a booth at the Spring Market Day taking place this Saturday at Healing Harvest farms at Area 101. The booth will feature fresh salad greens, herbs, preserved goods and, oh yeah, I almost forgot, cannabis.

The venue is one of celebration and joy and I revel within this ambience. In order to gain entry into the market, attendees must present a valid 215 card, so there is never a question that anyone other than legitimate medical cannabis users will be approaching the booth.

We have a new shipment of HappyDay T-shirts.

Never has there been such a mutually beneficial arrangement in place, in the entire history of the universe. Patrons are inevitably stoked to see what HappyDay Farms has to offer, and we are similarly buoyed by the appreciation that is heaped upon us by satisfied patients.

This is in direct contrast to times past, when we who dared defy the manmade, unconscionable laws governing this gentle giant of a panacea for human pain and misery, were persecuted-not to mention prosecuted-unmercifully. 

The reason? Back in the 1930’s, under a political regime based on racism and prejudice, policy was adapted that placed cannabis in an unfavorable light, shunning hemp for the synthetic fabrics that were suddenly becoming the fashion style of choice in our culture.

Thus it was that the most benign and beneficial of all of the earth’s plants, was placed on a nationwide hit-list, despite the fact that up until this point in history, cannabis had been universally recommended by medical personnel since the beginning of time.

Some things never change and the medical value of cannabis is one of them.

At market our flowers are situated symmetrically on the table, strategically arranged so that the heavy hitters, in terms of THC content, are on one end of the spectrum, the CBD and less potent flowers on the opposite end.

The reason I say it is such a mutually beneficial venue, is that many of our patrons are so pleased with what we have to offer, that they are always-without exception-willing to make a contribution to our medical cannabis collective, in order to help us continue to produce that which serves humanity so well.

Lito and Casey = Great success!

What can we do, but offer said patrons some of our flowers, as a token of appreciation for their patronage? It is a marriage made in heaven, and it has been a long time coming.

My hat will remain forever tipped in the direction of those who have devoted so much of their time and passion, to establishing guidelines for the regulation and management of cannabis. This is not a process that could be delayed even one minute, because of Big Ag being perched to pounce on the cannabis market, the instant the gate opens up.

To have watched Casey, in conjunction with Hezekiah Allen, classmates up at Pacific University in Oregon back in the day, take on state government in Sacramento and the local Board of Supervisors, in Mendocino County, has been epic.

The entire process is so complex, so overwhelming, and so fraught with examples of ineptness on the part existing infrastructure, that it boggles my little pea-brain. What it also requires is vast amounts of time, a commodity highly sought after when one lives on a farm.

I see Casey’s posts on face/book, of him planting brassicas and salad greens by either moonlight or headlamp, whichever works more effectively, work being done long after I have retired for the night. I have a great deal of respect for someone who is so driven by what he does, that he goes to the utmost extremes to continue making it happen. 

The lineup

He will direct the spotlight away from him every time, but that does not diminish what he is accomplishing. There are some in our immediate community who chastise Casey for his actions, folks who are petrified of the proposed changes, and who take out their frustration on those most handy.

These may be people who have been siphoning water illegally, or who are not practicing environmentally-aware farming techniques, and who recognize that to follow the new regulations-legitimately-is impossible for them. 

It’s what might be referred to as being caught between a rock and a hard place, and when it involves the financial security of one’s family, it is a crushing blow.

But Casey did not create the situation-he inherited it-and there is no time to lie around and debate which is the best course of action. Those who sit around and simply talk about these matters are destined to do so forever. Or as my father Robert used to say, “He who hesitates is lost.”

Meanwhile, our collective continues to sign up new patients as venues such as the Spring Market Day at Area 101 thrive, celebrating the return of cannabis to its rightful place.

Maybe “return” is not so much the right word as “re-emergence.” Return would imply it was gone somewhere; re-emergence just means we have come out of the closet.

And we’re not going back.

Chicken in the Car: The Car, She Go

Chicken in the Car: The Car, She Go

As improbable as it sounds, I have become a regular guest on a sports-talk-radio show in-of all places-Chicago. This post is not a piece of writing about baseball, so much as an exploration into my own complex personality, one which shuns the unexpected and is generally content to function from the background.

Face/book works superbly for me for the obvious reason that I can view all of the action from behind the scenes, and I always have time to think things out before I start pontificating. I can post or I can scroll, all from the safety and security of my kitchen table.

Now that my blog has been miraculously returned to me, I have resumed my writing on the matters of the farm, of the wonders of technology and anything else that blows air up my skirt, all once again from behind my safety zone of cyber space. 

So having established that my comfort zone rarely extends beyond the friendly confines of the ‘Ville, how did I end up answering questions about the minutia that governs Giants baseball, on a radio show in Chicago? I might have thought the Mid-West was as unlikely a place to talk Giants baseball, as ever there were.

That would certainly be a narrow vision of the sports world, as though the only place in the country that Giants fans live was the Bay Area. Because Chicago is the third most populated city in the United States, with more than 2.7 million people, it is logical to assume that there might be a Giants fan or two among them.

So in the fall of 2014, just after the San Francisco Giants won their third world series title in five years, I wrote a piece about the premature use of the word “dynasty,” as it applied to the Orange and Black. By definition a sports dynasty encompasses a ten-year period; the Giants were halfway there.

I posted the piece on that Giants blog for which I used to write, the one that liked to feature articles on March Madness, "Game of Thrones" and the Kardashians. OK, the last maybe not, but who knows? I don’t work there anymore.

One day I received an email from Dan the Man, a radio personality from the Chicago area, telling me that he had read the piece on the Giants Dynasty, or lack thereof. Intrigued, he had contacted my editor about my coming on his radio talk-show, and was I interested in doing an interview and talking some Giants baseball?

Had I been on the telephone, I most certainly would have declined, the fight or flight principle clearly dominated by my inclination to run and hide. I don’t live on a mountaintop, up a five-mile dirt road, off the grid, for nothing. 

Annie, however, had an opinion on the subject. She thought it would be good for me because it didn’t matter where I lived when it came to simply talking about a subject that I knew more about, than was probably healthy.

As my sister JT asked me the other day, “How do you remember all that stuff about Buster Posey? And all those numbers? There isn’t anything in my life that I feel I am as knowledgable about as you are when it comes to the Giants…”

“Well, you know what they say,” I responded, giving her the company line. “Small minds, small pleasures. Whatcha gonna do?”

As for how all that stuff does stick in my little pea-brain, all I can say is that I glance at a boxscore, and it’s just there: how many hits, who had them, who had extra base hits, who knocked in the runs, how long the starting pitcher went, his stats, et al. 

I never really thought about it before. It's been that way all my life. Of course, there is a limited shelf- life to the knowledge, but it hangs out long enough for me to write a recap, or even long enough for me to talk some Giants baseball on the radio-in Chicago.

So even though the date and time for the impending show weighs heavily on my mind, once the questions start, I find it is absolutely no different than it ever was talking baseball with Davy Therens for eight hours non-stop, while we worked in construction together.

There was that rush, however, of knowing that I was being asked questions about the Giants, the answers to which many people in Chicago were genuinely interested. That rush was enough to counter the anxiety I naturally felt. What would I do if I were asked something, about which I knew nothing?

I eliminated “What if?” questions from my repertoire six years ago when I eliminated negative self-talk from my consciousness. It has been a great relief. What-if questions and catastrophizing. I gave them the boot.

Dan the Man is actually going to be in San Francisco this weekend and is going to take in the Giants/Colorado Rockies game this Saturday. I have not yet informed Dan that I do not actually attend games. A well-meaning friend once told me that I would lose credibility with my readers if I let that cat out of the bag.

But if I am going to adhere to the no-catastrophising principle, I’m certainly not going to worry about credibility. My sanity, maybe, but not my credibility.

Besides, watching the Giants from the stands affords a far more limited view of the action, than I get on CSN-BA. 

Plus, I get Kruk and Kuip.

Here is the link to Tuesday, May 3rd's radio show: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sportstime-radio/2016/05/03/today-is-tuesday-may-3rd-2016

I'm a Farmer

I'm a Farmer

I’m a farmer.

I used to be a teacher when I was younger and had a lot more get-up-and-go, but I got fed up with the strings that were attached to my hands and feet-but not my brain-to better “guide” me in the direction the state felt was best, which was standardized testing.

Thanks, but gosh, no thanks. 

So I cut the strings and repaired to the farm. Two years ago almost to the day, I began a series of blog posts on HappyDay Farms, and in the inaugural piece, I wrote the following:

“What we also get plenty of around here is harmony and humor to go with the hard work and long hours. I say “we” in the general sense of the word. I leave the farm work to the younger set, while I do those tasks that are more age-appropriate for a gray-beard. I did move and stack those three cords of oak/madrone, and I have been carving steps into the newly-terraced back yard, or west-40, to make it easier to move compost and nutrients around the site. I have also begun the spring weed-eating process, but most of the time I am more likely to be found cleaning up after meals, sweeping and mopping the floors of the inevitable mud, or otherwise keeping things flowing on the domestic front.”

That was then-this is now.

When I alluded to the “younger set” in the passage above, I was talking primarily about twenty-something guys and gals, many of whom have taken up residence on-farm. With better than two acres of terraced rows, all more or less south-facing, there is a volume of manual labor that can only be imagined.

And therein lies the problem: By employing farmhands the work got done, but there was nothing left in the coffers after all was said and done, except for the food we ate. That’s no lightweight accomplishment, but it still does not pay the bills that extend beyond food.

We employ no machinery in the farming process. The farm does have a couple of rototillers that have been utilized in the past, but we got over that. My limited experience with the ‘tiller led me to conclude that it was a clear case of the law of diminishing returns: I spent more time extracting rocks from the blades than I did turning the soil.

If rocks were a farmer’s best friend, I’d never have to buy another round in Boomer’s as long as I lived. As it is, the pitchfork remains my implement of destruction and I am pleased to announce I have not impaled either of my sandaled feet-yet. 

But I’m not here to prattle on about my feet-the subject today is the therapeutic value of hard work, and the hidden benefits from what can only be described as back-breaking labor.

Back in 2003 I injured my right shoulder by simply overdoing it one weekend. I spent ten hours a day for a long three-day weekend, hauling out a madrone tree from a creek-bed, after it had been rounded out by the chain-sawing crew.

Annie was at a conference and the boys were all off at school so I had the homestead to myself. I decided to leave the house on hold and just gravitate to the work site, where I had water, music and job security. 

I was so intent on the job at hand that I failed to heed the warning signs that I was straining my right shoulder with all of the unaccustomed effort of hauling fat rounds of madrone up a sixty-foot trail out of the creek-bed.

My left shoulder remained fine because it is my dominant shoulder, but what happened was that by going on for too long, I stretched the muscles holding my right arm into the shoulder socket, out to the point where they no longer were doing their job, which is to hold the arm securely in place within the socket.

As a result my labrum, another name for the socket, became chipped and frayed, allowing my arm to ride the rim of the labrum, in danger of popping out and dislocating the shoulder. I generally prefer to describe pain as discomfort, but there was no getting around the fact that I was experiencing a much greater level of pain with this shoulder than I ever did when I blew out the anterior cruciate ligament of my left knee.

Ever since then I have had limited use of my right arm, particularly when it comes to raising it any higher than waist level. As long as my right arm remains in a downward position, with my elbow as close to my side as possible, I’m good to go. Think of Tyrannosaurus Rex, if that helps.

Here is where the plot thickens. Combine the decision to eliminate the vast majority of outside farm labor, with the springtime’s sense of urgency to prepare the soil for summer’s bounty, and I found myself volunteering to try and get the terraces in my immediate back yard, prepped for spring planting.

I felt it was the least I could do, even though I genuinely thought I would only get to a certain point before I was forced to abandon ship. Last August when I was doing the hardy-board on the outside of Lito’s workshop, I aggravated that right shoulder to the point that I had to cinch my right arm to my side so as to immobilize it. 

But what was I doing? I was working off a ladder with my arms functioning way above the safe level, reaching up to hold the boards in place with right arm, while drilling in screws with my left. My shoulder ached all the way to Christmas.

What am I doing now? I am working with my arms straight down, my right arm on the lowest point of the pitchfork that I can manage. My back picks up the slack, but I am fortunate at 63 years of age, to be able to still bend over far enough while in the shower, that I can keep my legs straight and scrub the backs of my heels with a brush, to try and wash off the accumulated soil. 

So because I am still so limber, I can thrust the fork all the way to the hilt,  bend over and twist the forkful of soil up out of the ground, and over so as to break up the clay and get rid of rocks. That’s the first time through in March. 

The second time through in April is to mix the compost, rice hulls, worm castings and amendments into the soil, so as to prep it for planting. I am prepping soil in three sites: my backyard, the terraces below Casey’s house and the new parcel that Lito and Casey bought a couple of years ago. 

Altogether that means there are eighteen terraces, each averaging seventy-five feet long by eight feet wide. That’s 10,800 square feet of soil. Oh, and I got to do it twice.

Seriously, when I began, I was only focused on my own spot, but it went so well, I kept going, much to everyone on the farm’s utter shock. The first week I overdid it twice, stretching my work day out to almost six hours, and both times I had to hit the cannabis tincture to contend with discomfort.

But I found that by not working more than four hours turning soil per day, that I did not experience shoulder discomfort. I didn’t dare say anything to anyone, for fear of breaking the spell. I kept plugging on and my shoulder got stronger and stronger, and gave me less grief than I had experienced in more than thirteen years.

What was happening here? How could I be putting all this pressure on the shoulder without it giving out? The answer is that by doing the repetitive motion, at a safe functioning level below my waist, I was building up those very muscles that I had stretched out of shape back in the day, when I was still a schoolteacher.

In doing rehab immediately after the surgery, I concentrated on simply getting the shoulder mobile again, but did not approach the level of conditioning that I was attaining now. The more I worked that pitchfork, the more I built up the muscles in those arms, specifically the right one.

I get a lot of satisfaction out of expanding my role on the farm. I may be a graybeard, but that doesn’t mean squat.

I’m a farmer and I’m damned proud of it.

Tech for Tots or Lost in [Cyber] Space-Episode 6

Stick a fork in me-I'm done...

This is the sixth and, mercifully, the final in a series of episodes chronicling the shocking disappearance of the blog, "Mark's Work," thought at first to be simply overcome by cannabis, and certain to be found at the nearest pizza parlor. How wrong we all were and there's nothing more that needs to be said, except for maybe a generic statement of a techie nature. No more than twenty volumes. Hopefully. 

Tech for Tots

or 

Lost in [Cyber] Space-Episode 6

My ineptitude at technology belies the fact that you have been reading this whole sordid account on my new and improved blog, one of life’s signposts indicating that something right has occurred.

We left our battered protagonist vainly trying to hide from the world under his blankets in the last installment, so I need to fill in a couple of relevant details in order to get him sprung.

Prior to taking up residence in bed, a spot not known for granting me much sleep, I had posted two terse emails to Joe. One simply stated, “I cannot access face/book because it will not accept my password. Sigh.” The second one said,” I wish I had not let go of my old computer. I may come down in the AM and get it. Security blanket, you know.”

I had known the transition would be challenging, but I had expected the challenge to center on the blog, and not what I had already in place. In my world the unexpected has come to represent my greatest challenge.

I never understood why the blog disappeared in the first place so I would not have been shocked if it were irretrievable. Through no fault of my own, I messed with the bull and got the horns. But to not be able to resolve the password issue also was just too much.

I was hoping I could buy my way out of my tech difficulties through the acquisition of a new machine but it was looking as though such would not be the case. What I was not expecting was to suddenly find that what I had going for me would also be removed.

I now had no access to my blog, no access to social media and no access to my photos on my new computer. Strike one. Strike two. Strike three, you are out of here.

Joe was not even home from my house when I sent off those two messages, so I had already crashed and burned by the time he sent out a lifeline in the form of an email message. In it he said he could get my f/b account back if I would just turn on my sleeping computer and activate Teamviewer so that he could access the hard-drive of the new computer.

Unfortunately, I had left the building.

This is where I start to appreciate how hard of a position Joe had assumed. He had been warned in advance that Marky was “special” by Casey and Amber, so it may not have surprised him, but he was still caught up in my net of frustration.

He had the antidote to my black mood, but could not get me to reach out and take it from his outstretched hand, leaving him dangling. I feel bad for that now.

In a followup message the next day, Joe outlined the three steps he had taken to get the train back on the track: He had moved the contents of my blog onto a disc, he had built an external hard-drive for data storage and he had informed me that I could use I-Photo on my new computer by simply hooking up the camera to the computer in the same way I had with  my original computer.

I had discovered when I surfaced, that Annie and Lito had recovered my f/b account by using the original password from the old days, well-known to Annie because of my trials and tribulations.

So suddenly I had access to everything but the ability to post on my old blog, “Mark’s Work.” Joe had also sent me information about his progress with the blog. 

“I know it sounds dumb,” he apologized, “but they need to see proof that you are who you say you are. I am going to send off a couple of emails and see if I can get it resolved.”

I didn’t want to worsen the situation by sniveling about how stupid it was that I had to prove I had written the more-than-one hundred posts on my mood spectrum disorder, but I did anyway. “I couldn’t make that shit up,” I whined, and all Joe could do was agree.

“It’s just the way tech works. These systems are set up by guys who are always looking for shortcuts,” he explained, “and if you don’t know them, you get stuck taking the long way around…or not going at all.”

Talk about a quagmire equal to that of Jarndyce and Jarndyce from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. I got nervous as Joe was relating this information to me, so I hastened to inform him that I had no more loot and that he should cease and desist his efforts.

“Don’t worry about that for now. What you gave me already is enough. What I am doing takes little time to initiate but a lot of time to complete, time during which I am busy doing my own thing.”

We agreed to meet the following Monday, thirteen days after our first get-together, at which time he would give an accounting of his stewardship and hopefully turn over the newly-created keys to my original blog.

How DID Joe get the blog back? The answer came when Joe actually opened up and read the blog. Not only did he find out more than he ever cared to know about bipolarism, he discovered the name of my first email account. And because we already knew the password, he was able to identify these elements for the powers-that-be at Google.

And the rest is history as they say. There are still issues that we have to sit down and work out, but between the two computers, the worn and frail Terra Jean, and the minty-fresh Suzy Puente, we are going to eventually combine and condense until everything fits on Suzy.

Joe is a hero in all this, not because he knows technology, but because he knows human nature, and was able to work me through the intricacies of something I could never have done by myself.

I’m not even sore at the clerk in the computer shop in Santa Rosa, because the issues Joe and I encountered with Terra Jean are not the run-of-the-mill variety.

When I tried to pin Joe down as to what really caused my blog to disappear, the best he say was that it could have simply been a systems failure or a faulty component of a chip. It was impossible to say.

I am grateful that I have my magic carpet back, the one that allows me to leave my space here and travel to all parts, known and unknown.

I might prefer to avoid those future unknown destinations, but as long as I am not reduced to having to rely on my own devices, and can call a guy like Joe Cool, I expect I will survive.