Rhubarb Pie

I'm working on a new plan.

Hey shug. How was your New Year's? Did you have a good evening? I usually find New Years to be a letdown, not 'cause I have a bad time, but just because it feels like welcoming in a new year should be more fun than it is. Then, there's sortof the pressure of setting the tone for the new year and then it all seems very fraught. This year, I was pretty mellow. Perhaps I have set my expectations at the right level, because I didn't do anything amazing and I wasn't disappointed either. Actually, I was pretty entertained.

We went to the first ever Sacramento ball drop.  It was so fitting and Sacramentan. It wasn't an actual ball, it was a cluster of LED lights. It wasn't on a tall building, it was on a second story. It didn't drop or anything, it just turned off after midnight. For some reason, this delights me. I love Sacramento very much, but there is no denying that it is a second-tier city with some potential. And this was just such a cheesy second-tier ball drop. So, you know. We went to go see the first ever Sacramento New Years Turning Off the LED Lights.

What surprised me a fair amount was mingling with the crowd. I live in the older, hipster part of town, so I forget. Sacramento is pretty ghetto. Lots of different types of people who aspire to be thugs, se Asian-Am, black, latino, and in a special callback to our Central Valley heritage, methed-out white trash. Lot of short skirts and big puffy jackets and harsh blond hair. Oh yeah. Now I remember. Just because I hang out with doe-eyed Millennials who ride bikes everywhere doesn't mean that's most of who lives in my city.

I was oddly reassured as I surveyed the crowd. Yes, it isn't just me. I am not crazy and I am not making up this effect. There were no other little pockets of people like us, with the same Stuff White People Like sensibilities. When I wonder why I'm not meeting men, my question is answered by looking at that crowd. Yes it is half men, but they are Not Like Us and I am not remotely like the women they are looking for. I suppose that should worry me and send me back to Oakland, where men wear homeknit scarves on BART, but I no longer have the heart or energy to hope I'll meet a guy. Instead, I am just relieved. People give advice about eye contact and chatting up men and being out in public and always ready to meet a good man, and this makes me think I've gone crazy. What men (of my age and social class)? It isn’t that I'm shy or unwilling. I'd hit on someone if I liked the looks of him. But I literally never see likely men in bars or cafes. The crowd at New Years reassured me that I am right. I don't meet men because lots of the men around here are thugged out ethnic types, some are suburban conspicuous consumption types, and I already played Ultimate with the rest of them.

Appropriately, the excitement of the evening was not when the LED lights up on the second story turned off. The excitement was the fight between two groups of women right next to us. Four or five white women fighting with three or four black women, and I have no idea what started it. I found out that I do not have an instinctive urge to action, like my friend Roxie does. But I can move if I remind myself that I do not need a grant of authority. There is only doing. So after the big guy separated the two standing raging women, I pried two white women off the black woman on the ground and helped her stand. Her face was pouring blood. I didn’t do anything effective or anything and after we stood there for a few seconds she asked, low and collected and exasperated, "Did I just get jumped?" Dunno, lady, but looking at you, I'd say so. The awful part was that the black family had a little girl with them, ten or eleven and sobbing in terror. That part was bad. They grabbed hands and left fast, missing the first annual Sacramento ball drop. Well, LED Lights Turning Off. I bet that's not the part of the evening they regret.

Coming up next! Chicken coop!

On the one hand, my mind is all swirly and I think in lots of different directions and get caught up in abstractions.  On the other hand, I really do consistently and constantly look at plants.  If you had to guess what I was noticing at any moment, your money should be on some close by plant.

Winter garden is coming up strong, on this side.  The other side has lots of bare patches that I will not show you.  This is the season where one struggles to eat enough arugula.  We try to face our burdens stoically.

I've never grown broccoli before!  I am disproportionately proud. 

In my old blog, I figured that no one was really interested in my plants.  I figured people were interested in the posts where I synthesize and add information.  That may still be true!  But you say you want to see what I see in my daily life.  And in my daily life, I look at plants again and again. 

The trees are nice right now, too.

People are all, wah wah wah East Coast trees and fall color.  I'm sure you are right and I don't know what I'm missing. But I'm pretty impressed with the colors we get in Sacramento.

Chinese pistachios.  They don't fruit.  But they are pretty.

A ginko next to a liquid amber.  I don't love the liquid ambers, because they drop seed balls that I roll my ankles on.  But I forgive them in the fall.

A ginko.  You wouldn't think the monochrome would give you the fall effect, but I like that they know what they stand for.  They stand for yellow.

Also, the people at the cafe make me pretty lattes.  I am spoiled.

OIL ON THE FIRE, BABY!

You thought I might use a soothing voice?  Me, the one who writes off whole classes of people based on three bad encounters?  You do see only the best in me.

Back when I wrote those posts, I'd always get comments (and emails) telling me that broad generalizations about whole classes of people make the baby Jesus cry and there is always a counterexample and besides their feelings are hurt.  I never understood those comments.  Dude, I don't come to these generalizations easily and I work pretty hard to mean what I write.  If you don't agree, don't go trying to change my mind.  Revise your opinion of me down and MOVE ALONG.  Move along without a Big Drama Announcement.  My blog will be fine without you, TV reporter.  So I don't object on those grounds of tarring the good and bad alike.  Whatever.  I write in the qualifications I mean and I believe in judicious application of condemnation. I also believe that you're accurately reporting what you've seen and that you give people some initial benefit of the doubt.  So I don't doubt that you're describing real professor behavior.

On my own, I don't think I'd have picked a fight with professors, who are some substantial subsection of our readers and write interesting popular blogs and are some of my good friends and, um, my mom*.  But if you're in a fight, I'm in a fight!  If I'm in a fight, I can't say I approve of this backing away from an initial strong assertion with detail but not enough cursing, and qualifying things so that people know whether you are talking about them, and requests for enlightenment and appreciation for other points of view.  When I'm in a fight, I like to scorch the earth in front of me and burn the bridges behind me!  So let's do this thing!  Back to your original question:  are professors really small-minded, mean, pigfucking assholes?

I cut my hair off!

Even more off, since it was already pretty short.  Now it is more shorter.

And I took a blurry picture, which is think is sufficient to show you the important part, which is that I have bangs now.  I haven't had bangs in twenty years, but I'm embracing change.

I took some picture of the trees that we will see when you move here, and produce.

It is rough. I understand.

Came out of Central library last night, walked over to my bike.  Just past my bike was a homeless lady, big, long blond hair, her stuff around her.  Clean but weathered.  She was in the same line of sight as my bike, so like I do with everyone I look at, I made eye contact and smiled.

"DON'T FUCKING SMILE AT ME!"

Whoa.  What?  "I'm sorry, what?"

"I'M NOT YOUR HOMOSEXUAL LOVER!!!"

Aahh yes!  I remember her!  We've met before!  Margie and I were walking back from lunch, walking behind a woman pulling her cart.  With no warning, she turned and shouted at us to stop following her, looking at her ass, being huge dykes and wanting to rape her.  She doesn't do that, no.

Margie was pissed; I suppose being a member of the class being vilified in the hate-speech makes you more sensitive to the crazy.  I wasn't pissed.  I was delighted.  This is prime-grade homeless-crazy and adds surreality to my day.  I'm nearly always in favor of that.  Now that I know where to find her, I kindof want to experiment.  Does she also shout at men?  What happens if Dave smiles at her?  What would she bring if I asked her sorrowfully why she doesn't remember our nights together? 

It isn't fair to tease the mentally ill, and I suppose her days are hard enough already, surrounded by ravening lesbians everywhere she goes.  If I recognize her before the eye contact, I'll try not to bother her next time.  But I still kinda want to.  I like having crazy characters in my city.  I should see if anyone knows her name.

OH!!! AND I SHOOK HANDS WITH DARRELL STEINBERG.

I had a wonderful weekend, darlin'.  Chris came up to Sacramento and we stayed at his parents' house, which is familiar and cozy.  We went out for Second Saturday with a fun crew.  I didn't find the dj I loved so much six months ago, but I'm fairly sure that there are two separate samba parades, which now seems like the minimum for a citywide walk.  I could have strangled Chris; he sandbagged me with the handsome Iranian guy who was successfully hitting on me at one of the galleries.  We had just picked our favorite paintings when Chris cruised up and I had to introduce him*.  The whole vibe changed as Chris stood next to me and did Chris realize and mention his other imaginary girlfriend?  No, he did not.

Still, we went on to meet up with Roxie and my hip youngster friends who are up for anything.  They are, in fact up for doing readings of some sort, including Shakespeare.  You know who was ALL FIRED UP to read Shakespeare?  Our six-year-old friend Eliot.  Eliot's mom was neutral and prefers other authors, but Eliot was enthralled by the whole prospect.  She doesn't want rotating readers, no no.  She wants us to take parts and others to watch and I think she'll be directing our staged production within a month.  I don't even know how Eliot knows who Shakespeare is.  But I don't think she's going to give her mom a choice about whether to come to the readings.  We ended Second Saturday at a construction site, where we moved heavy pipes around for fun.  That's what sophisticated aesthetes do on art walks, you know.

Yesterday was equally lovely, a sunny clear day.  I got my winter garden in; had another run in with black widows at the compost pile.  Why is the universe bringing me shiny black spiders these days?  I cooked for a potluck, where I sequentially introduced Chris to three or four cute women and then disappeared into different conversations, which is what you do when you love your friends and want them to be laid and happy, instead of hovering like a boyfriend.  I went to the cafe today, and will head over to my garden in a second, to encourage seeds to grow.  They should know I'm waiting eagerly to meet them.

I usually try to avoid "state of the Megan" posts**.  But all I have to tell you is a story about giggling with friends and a sunny weekend under tall blue skies and digging in the dirt and flirting.  So that is what you get.

Better late than never, right?

Darlin, I am so sorry you had to wait for these.  I think of you, so far away, anxious and fretting.  But this is the first moment my camera/cord/city alignment worked out.  Anyway, here they are, perfect and new.  I love them so much.

  Broccoli!

Brussels sprouts!

Chard!

One day, when they aren't cute anymore, I will sever their heads, fry them in olive oil and garlic and eat them.

(I have carpool stories for later.  And house shopping thoughts.  But I'm running out to go on a team scavenger hunt/puzzler.  I've never done it before, but it sounds great.)

I suppose the wasps would tell you.

The house next door to my room in Sac has a beehive in the wall.  I watch it every day.  I almost feel like the universe is mocking me.  My sister and I want a beehive a whole lot.  It is hard to trust subjective perceptions of course, but considering the plantings of flowers we have in the backyard, it feels too still.  I'd like more of a buzz and dance about the place.  I eye my cucumber plant suspiciously.  Only three cucumbers this year?  Would that be more if we had a beehive?  I know some people fertilize their blossoms by hand and paintbrush, and I think that is fine for consenting adults to do in the privacy of their own yards.  I would never judge them.  But for myself, I find reserves of prudishness; even the lure of additional vegetables will not tempt me to have sex with my plants.  I need bees.

I can't figure out what to do about the hive next door.  I'm afraid the landlord won't appreciate a beehive in the walls of his house, with a possible hundred pounds of honey waiting to melt.  I fear that he would not use the gentle funnel method of removal (one puts one-way funnels at all the exits of the hive (difficult to do in that picture?) and as workers cannot return, the hive eats the wax and honey until none remain and the queen leaves), but would instead fumigate.  So I haven't mentioned the hive to them.  I would set up an alternate home, and I would call the bees to live in lovely brand new frames and promise them all the flowers they request to me in writing, but even if they moved in, I don't know how I'd get the hive to Oakland on the train.  Anand thinks the Capitol Corridor needs a livestock car.  I agree that it would solve this problem for me.

This picture, on the right, is not a picture of a showy orange flower.  My camera thought it was, but it is actually a picture of the big spider in the lower right.  I don't love the seasons where the day shortens, they make me melancholic and anxious that I don't have enough acorns buried in enough stashes.  But a part that I really do love is that in the Bay Area, these big orb-spinners show up.  They're real pretty, with stripes.  If I walk in the hills I see lots of the Charlotte's Web-type circles, some with anchors several feet away.  You sometimes write that I am observant, but I'm not sure where you got that impression.  This year is the first in the decade I've been around the Bay Area that I saw similar little spiders in July and August.  All the other years, big spiders just suddenly appeared in fall.

When we were kids, sometimes a spider would spin a big web conveniently outside a window.   My whole family would follow it over the season, note if it caught a big meal or had grown.  I particularly remember some big boxy light orange spiders.  There was one outside the window by our kitchen table that grew and grew and spun big neat orbs.  My mom saw the end of that one.  It got so big a wasp noticed it and plucked it off the center of its web. 

My mom told us, and made it into a parable about being too successful, about having a right size and growing too big too fast, so that the next biggest thing came and got you.  That's a hard one, because if you'd always been successful so far, enough to rise to the next level, how would you know that it was the one where the wasps lurked?  Anyway, I've been thinking about boxy orange spiders and webs out there in the open and Sarah Palin.

Instead of my usual "bench bodyweight".

Aw man, I want more friends.  More specifically, I want a certain kind of friends.  It isn't that I don't have enough friends, because I have lots of friends that I love spending time with, or at least I'd love to spend time with them if they didn't live all over the place.  Friends, why did you scatter?  We were doing so great when we were in one place, but now you live in all these different cities and I CAN'T FEED YOU NACHOS OVER THERE.  Then when I visit, I want to spend all day with you and your beautiful kids, but if I do I am not spending all day with my other friend, so I split the day and feel bad leaving each of you and totally remember how amazing you are so I want to hang out more, but I can't.  This is because there is never enough time because you are not here.  So I don't want more of those far friends.  I want a crew.

I want a crew and I want it close.  I want a crew where doing things together is the default.  I want a crew that knows to stop by after work, for a drink or to return the drill or to get back that shirt that someone else left on the porch.  I want a crew that loosely knows the others' locations, as in, "Chris isn't coming; isn't this dance night for him?"  I want a crew that generates things to do, because someone walked by that flyer on the way to work.  I want a crew so that you don't need anything to do, because someone will show up with cheese and olives, and someone else will have a six-pack, and there're chairs on the porch and the night is warm, wasn't someone suppose to call Monica back?

I have the start of a crew in Oakland, because I have Anand and Chris, and we don't need to have anything to do to get together on any occasion and spend the next thirteen hours together.  But Anand is still an hour away and Chris is in grad school, so he only wants us to be near while he studies, which isn't as thrilling as Chris's full potential.  My sister has been hanging out with us some, which is great, because she has fantastic deck hanging-out skills.  But three people who are far or distracted are not a crew.  I have slight hopes for next year.  If Karen and Jeremy move to Sac (as we all hope) and Chris moves back (as he intends), I bet I could also get Monica.  That means we'd be up to five plus babies within three miles, which is a good core for a crew.    

It matters to us when they miss.

I didn’t tell you the other part about the weekend, the part that is not so nice as pies.

Saturday night, about midnight, I was watching Jay Smooth’s videos on connectedness and rejecting the thug aspects of commercial hip-hop when the shots started. Two bursts of several shots, loud and very close, then a car screeching off. I turned off my lights, crouched for a couple seconds, ran to the front of the house to find my sister. Found her crouched in her room in the front, calling 911. We waited a couple more minutes, until we heard a man calling for help and saw a neighbor come out. We went out to see what happened.

More of our neighbors were out on the corner, forty feet from our house, looking at the car crashed into the parked cars. They’d been driving and a car came up fast behind them, shooting into the car until it crashed, screeching off ahead. Two men were shot. One walked to the ambulance. One was wheeled on a stretcher. We don’t know if he’s OK. There were a bunch of casings in the gutter at our feet. Oh.

The rest of the night was a little surreal. You know, for a decidedly not-street person, I feel like sitting on my porch as police work through the night is getting too familiar. I’ve done it four or five times now. The nephews woke, so we sat on the steps, the littles on laps tucked into our sweaters. They were somber too, and we quietly discussed the police cars, the flashing lights, that everyone was sad because some people hurt some other people, what the yellow tape was for.

Telling Anand about it today, he worried that we must have been so scared. So here’s the part that I don’t like. No. I wasn’t so scared, not once the shots were done and we knew that the shootings were a drive-by intentionally directed at someone. Once I knew it was related to the Section 8 housing down the street, I wasn’t scared anymore. Because things that happen in those lives aren’t things that happen to me. So I was detached enough to think abstractly when I saw two women screaming and crying and rushing the cops, asking to please please tell them if that was her husband. I thought, ‘oh, women’s grief, to be afraid it was yours that got killed.’ I thought, ‘you know, considering how much this is adding to the commotion at the scene, you’d think the cops could include information gathering and dispersion in their procedures.’ I thought, ‘they’re not helping, with the frantic crying and shouting and trying to push past the cops. I bet they’d get a lot farther if they approached the cops with composed requests.’ But I didn’t think, ‘oh no oh no, which of my neighbors got shot tonight?’ I didn’t think ‘oh god, what if it were one of us?’ Because really? It isn’t going to be one of us.

That’s what makes me sad. The apartment complex with the Section 8 housing is half a block away and we live parallel, non-intersecting lives. The white gentrifying hipsters all came out the next morning to gawk at the smashed cars, introduce ourselves and point to our houses. We talked about hearing the shots and lost sleep. I’m sure we will talk to the people we met again. I have no idea how the apartment complex reacted to the injuries of two of theirs. Even when gun battles break out on the street in front of us, even when our neighbors are shrieking with grief, that is for them. We watch until we get cold, then tuck the babies back into bed.

Because those lives seemed so separate, it took me half a day to remember the fundamentals of community. Oh yeah. When your neighbors are hurt, you take them food. My sister was ahead of me; that afternoon she baked and brought them banana bread. But people from those apartments haven’t been community. They’ve only been neighbors in the sense of geography.

One other neighbor came out that night, equally disconnected from everyone human. A brazen raccoon walked calmly past the police line, went partially up the stoop across from us, then stopped when he saw our neighbors out. He crossed the street in the changing yellow and blue shadows, approached our steps and stared at us. He left again, equidistant from tragedy and watchers, unconcerned about either. I don’t feel any need to befriend the raccoons. But I should do better about connecting to people who live right next to us.