At Home In The Garden

While I continue to unspool my pictures of our recent road trip to Alabama life in the Keys goes on. For some of us it involves more work, for others more observation. In my own yard I am under constant surveillance. I had wanted to build a small patch of grass for my last Labrador who had enjoyed our California lawn, but I procrastinated so long that Emma Goldman died before I built her a patch of lawn. Cheyenne is benefiting from my guilty conscience. A week after I got her I went to the garden store on Rockland Key and bought four pieces of $2 turf (Augustine grass for those that care) and laid them in a surplus vegetable bed I built two years ago. Now she has a cool spot to stretch out on and observe my comings and goings. Yesterday I was working to fill some surplus trash cans with yard waste as the pick up is on Friday mornings. I was raking the huge dead dinner plates we call sea grape leaves. It's been very windy, typical for the spring around here, and these huge acidic leaves blow everywhere. It's a dog's life watching the Old Man rake and lift, as he doesn't much care for leaf blowers and the like. The crop of fallen palm fronds is much reduced as prudent pruning has cleared the dead and dying fronds from around the house.I am not one to desire the impossible so I didn't look to create a perfectly organized space around my house. I just hope to keep things more or less under control. My wife is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz and she wears a UCSC Slugs license plate holder on the back of her Sebring Convertible. When she was in Santa Cruz a couple of years ago she went by the campus bookstore and brought back a few souvenirs of her under graduate days including this:
Banana slugs are prolific under the redwood trees of Santa Cruz County and when the campus Chancellor wanted to create a school mascot (the campus only participates in swimming and has no ball teams) his suggestion of the Sea lion as a mascot was voted down and to his chagrin he was forced to swallow hard and accept the Banana Slug as the campus mascot. Chancellor Robert Sinsheimer was a decent man, and very involved in the promotion of science on campus that led eventually to the mapping of the human genome in large part at UCSC, but he didn't understand the hippie rebels my wife grew up amongst. Sinsheimer left soon after and the mascot remains. As far as I know this is the only banana slug in the Florida Keys but I am ready to stand corrected. Herewith a picture from Wikipedia of the brute in question:How we got there from sea grapes remains a mystery to me.

Johnny and Karl in Birmingham

For many of the early years of my married life Johnny Coley was a myth. My wife had happy memories of her youth spent in the city of Birmingham, Alabama with a tight group of friends learning to be young independent adults. They lived in the kudzu mansion and they planned to save the world, as one did back then. Johnny Coley still lives there.My wife loved Birmingham but she became a lawyer in California near her parents who lived in Santa Clara in what is now known as Silicon Valley. She thought the California she had grown up in was a cold and harried place compared to Birmingham. Johnny Coley hung on there but Karl also moved to California in move that took him far from his family in Birmingham. He still lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains and would live nowhere else.That he was back visiting his mother in Birmingham to visit his mother was just a coincidence, but that coincidence was one of the driving forces that...forced us to drive to Birmingham despite the Nissan's reluctance. This was what my wife was afraid of missing out on, had we abandoned the journey, wine on Johnny's terrace overlooking Birmingham.I had done a lot of driving and was sucking up the plonk like a dried sponge. Cheyenne did the honors for me.Karl the artist was busy taking pictures of animals faces very close up for a project. He was sitting in the doorway to the terrace because of his fear of heights. He figured if the cantilevered terrace were to fall he would have time to roll back into the apartment. He is quite athletic so it occurred to me he probably could have saved himself in any event with a graceful leap because he runs his own dance company:

http://www.schafferstern.org/
Karl still remembers the story I did about his company which aired on Morning Edition decades ago when I was a stringer for NPR. We have known each other for a while.

I wanted Karl to perch on an empty water bottle for me, and he was game but we lacked the equipment so I used this picture from his flier. Dance is his passion and math is his profession as he teaches at a Community College in California. His dance company combines math with movement in a particular way. A conversation with Karl is always an exploration from a different angle.

A conversation with Johnny is on a whole different plane because Johnny sees the world from his very own perspective.Johnny sees the world as it is and questions everything, more so than even I do, and to be around someone who can force me to see things from a different angle is refreshing. He lives on the margins of life, working in the library, keeping an eye on his mother who lives in another apartment in the building and in his words "being lazy." His laziness involves activities that would exhausting to most. he reads voraciously and is always on the lookout for things that might catch his eye. He thought of me when came across (where did he come across this?) this card revealing Italian anarchists' subversive goals:
Johnny's laziness is actually an acknowledgment that his interests, and there are many of them, are of the kind that don't generate money. "I feel embarrassed by the economic downturn," Johnny told me with his self deprecating smile and his thick southern drawl. "My neighbors worked hard for everything they had and lost it all. I had nothing to start with and now we are in a Depression and I still don't have anything even though I lost nothing." He does have an apartment with great views of the Magic City.

A pleasant afternoon of conversation as the sun headed to the horizon. Then I had to nap because the day wasn't yet done.Napping in progress.

If you have a dog you have to take her for a walk and Cheyenne luckily loves elevators, as we were on the ninth floor.

And happily Highland Avenue has three parks open to dogs about which more later when I take Cheyenne for neighborhood walks. One reason we didn't go to California form Spring Break because of the expense and the cold, after a winter of being cold we wanted to be warm on vacation. Birmingham came through after the cold front blew itself out and temperatures rose steadily the longer we stayed, even though trees never did get properly leafy.

After our walk I gave Cheyenne her dinner and put her in the car for the evening, her familiar safe place while we went out to dinner.

Dinner was at Karl's mother's place with Karl's siblings and his mother presiding. These kinds of events cause me high anxiety but my wife is there to steer me and I follow her lead. I rarely have dinner with people who practice tap dancing before the meal. We got a lesson from Karl:The household got busy producing an impromptu meal that Karl's mom pulled out of her head at the last minute, baked fish in mustard sauce, roast potatoes, grilled asparagus, and lots of hard work.

Then Johnny Coley arrived to be greeted by the dogs, the ones that meant it was better for Cheyenne to stay in the car in town for the evening.

Karl's brother lives in new York City, actually in Brooklyn a place he loves and sparked my interest in the place. Usually one hears about Brooklyn in the movies as a place where people go when they are banished from Manhattan but he loves the community and neighborhood where people work together. It sounds very unlike New York, the frenzied.

Karl's mom presided over a dinner table filled with conversation and plate passing......under the chandelier.After dinner we checked out a school project from Karl's brother who hands out six inch squares of paper with ink outlines. Each piece of paper gets colored at will and at the end of the year the pieces are restored as one and a mural is the result.

This year's theme is apparently the First Family:

It will be a hell of an achievement, and it was quite apparent in it's early form laid out on the dining room floor. Karl's family is talented.

The proud artist. His t-shirt reads "Develop, don't destroy."I took pleasure in being the passenger in the back of Johnny's car as went back to the city and woke Cheyenne up for her evening walk.

The old friends had lots to talk about.

Census Count

According to St Luke "In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world." And everybody obediently went to their ancestral home to get counted. Nowadays submitting to Caesar's ten year count is an act of submission to an overly intrusive government. Unless, like me, you figure it's a not unreasonable thing for the government to know how many people actually live in the country we call home. Mind you we live in weird times when a good proportion of the population seems to think the world will end in a couple of years thanks to the Mayan calendar nonsense some illiterates are putting about. I welcomed the census taker into my home where she planted a chip under my skin so the government can trace my every move. Actually she just asked a few questions, I got most of them right and she handed me a piece of paper listing my options.
I am actually "White, Non Hispanic" but I want to be "Some Other Race." I haven't exactly decided what. Had my wife been home she might have been pissed that there wasn't a box for "Jew." But with the coming Fascist era, promised this November, that may be no bad thing. The census lady was charming and commiserated with me that Cheyenne should count, but doesn't.
Five minutes later I was all done and now the government had my secret information, all that stuff that is already on my driver license and credit reports. And passport application. Job applications. Shopping bar codes at Publix and Winn Dixie. My motorcycle tag. My blog. Anyway all that secret information that the government can only wrench out of me by sending a suspicious person to my house to ask me. Onward and upward then. Perhaps I should have Netflix send my discs inconveniently to a PO Box where the government can't spy on my movie choices? Ad i ca't forget how my details are listed on my library card...my Google browser...my bank account...my health insurance card. Damn these intrusive census takers! What would Jesus have done? Given unto Caesar? I think not; he would have run, not walked from the Government census taker.

Reaching Alabama

I left off yesterday as we turned around and started to head back north towards Alabama, though I did just want to throw a few pictures of White Springs into the mix. This funky little village is close enough to the Georgia State Line to qualify as one of those ambiguous Florida communities that many people argue should put the northern part of the sunshine State squarely in Georgia.Florida was handed over wholesale to the United States by Spain and the shape of the state was set in stone, as it were, at that time. Besides, in the 18th century, peninsula Florida was pretty much uninhabitable except by people who were escaping the law, Native Americans, runaway slaves and eccentric hunters who preferred to share their lives with mosquitoes than with people. So the state capital was put in Tallahassee, a city on the periphery of the state as a whole, and only 50 miles from the date line that separates Eastern Time from Central Time.Northern Florida is a world apart from the palms and development and carpet baggers (like me) who prefer the southern sun to the northern Spanish Moss. It's that cold up here that temperatures around freezing are quite common even of a normal winter. Stephen Foster made a good living writing southern songs though he never actually saw the Suwannee River he made famous. There is a state park dedicated to him hereabouts and fame is a cause of tourism, if you have time to stop and look around. We didn't unfortunately as the Florida Panhandle is unconscionably long and we hadn't yet covered enough of the 900 miles (1500kms) separating Key West from Birmingham, home of Johnny Coley. Northern Florida is very picturesque. We drove and drove and drove, along the dark dips and hills of I-10 westbound. This is desolate country and exits are few and far between. You drive miles and miles of dark forests cut open by four lanes of traffic and not much else. There are no gas stations, no towns, nothing much to see. It was a relief when we turned north on the Federal highway toward Dothan, Alabama, at last. We stopped for dinner before we crossed into Georgia and found a rather peculiar chain restaurant, elderly, run down and quiet. We played silly games waiting for our food.We shared a dinner and spent $6 including a large (sweet) tea.Clockwise we see: Black eyed peas, grits, mac and cheese, sweet rolls, a chop and fried chicken. Very filling.And then it was onwards and up wards driving through the night. We were two days behind and we didn't want to waste a minute before we had to be back in Key West on Friday. Ah, dog-friendly La Quinta!

When you travel with a dog you get to see all sorts of things you never bother to look for when you are dog-less. Dothan by night, a string of neon surrounding the old historic district lost in the middle of the highway ring that streams traffic north and south as expeditiously as possible.

We don't have TV reception at home so television is a weird and wonderful change for us. We are invariably disappointed by the offerings...

...but the advertising is inevitably an education for me. I never realized how much money is spent advertising our high cost drugs in the US. Every ad offered relief from myriad pains I never knew I had. All offer side effects for free.

Thank you President Clinton for allowing this filth on the air. I turned in grumbling about the state of the world and the cost of medicines. In the morning I had something real to grumble about (note my Nissan Maxima comes equipped with a tach as standard equipment). These were winter temperatures I was seeing.

And soon enough I was grumbling about mainland traffic patterns.Oh for the open road!By the time Montgomery was coming into sight Cheyenne's head shaking was becoming unbearable. We looked for a vet and found one roadside. Dr Drake's ancestors came from England but he has never left his hometown and doesn't want to. He diagnosed Cheyenne who sat quietly on the examining table and took an injection of antibiotics up the butt with not even a whimper. My girl!

A hundred dollars later we left with good cheer on all sides and piles of medicine. An excellent deal all round and the head shaking stopped a few hours later as her ear infection subsided.

At last we took one more sloping hill and found the Magic City below, two days late but better Tuesday than never.

Spring had sprung and it was better than 70 degrees when we arrived. We were in for a warming spell and Birmingham was it's best, all full of blossoms and students at UAB.

University of Alabama, Birmingham is a big deal in the Magic City now that iron and steel production has tapered off. The city is overseen by a statue of Vulcan, the God of the Iron Forge, who represents the wealth that came to this instant city, created in the 19th century to exploit coal and ore reserves.Of course I had to forgo a trip to see Vulcan as our schedule was horribly compressed by our mechanical delays. I did get to see the Barber Museum though and all those lovely motorcycles...Lots to see apparently if you have a big camera.Birmingham is built of brick, new and old:

And up there on the left on Highland Avenue is Johnny Coley's apartment.

A hell of a character that Johnny Coley.