Month: April 2016

Friday, April 15, 2016

At Winter Wood, setting for The Juniper Spoon, I spent a couple of hours yesterday caring for the compost station. The kitchen, as you would imagine, produces lots of offal. Instead of complaining about it, Lali and Doug put it to work.

If we simply spread the offal on the lot, animals would make a mess of it. Therefore we put it into bins.

If we placed only kitchen refuse into the bin, the slops would quickly turn sour. We need a four-to-one “brown stuff” to “green stuff” ratio. Kitchen refuse is green. For brown we use straw, grass clippings, cardboard and stalks.

A bin gets plenty of good air, but it needs regularly watering.

After the material has begun to decompose, we empty the bin, spreading the partially broken-down material into a row so that we can turn it regularly. Any of the brown stuff not yet soft gets thrown back into the bin.

Material that we placed on a row this past autumn will be ready to spread on the garden this spring.

Even after years of cultivating compost, I marvel that kitchen slops can become the richest soil supplement available.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Today I returned for another season of working in 100 acres, part of the Indianapolis Museum of Art complex. My job is just what I want — helping in the woods.

By the time we got to our work assignment the temp was hardly above freezing.

I stopped to see my favorite mud hole — always interesting.

Early sunbeams threw shadows across the grounds.

Our job today was digging honeysuckle from two patches of forest floor. Sometimes the plants pulled easily. Other times we had to dig.

Some time ago a wind storm brought down a sizable tree. The guys cut a chunk from the trump, perhaps eight feet long. Then they made a longitudinal cut, so now they had two planks. After considerable sanding, they mounted each plank on two thick chunks. Result: beautiful benches for the 100 acres. Here is a detail on one of the planks.

Already I look forward to next Wednesday.

Monday, April 11, 2016

I grew up in the country. While the farm and the fields were home, I enjoyed going to town. Towns, that is.  Landisville, Salunga, Sporting Hill, Manheim, East Petersburg.

From what I now know of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, those five towns are thriving, in part because Lancaster County is thriving. Further, at least two of the towns — Landisville and East Petersburg can be seen as extensions of suburban Lancaster.

What comes to me visually and by media report, then, is sad news. Small towns in Indiana are not thriving.  The evidence is everywhere.

Consider Darlington, a town several miles from Winter Wood in Montgomery County. It was once a railroad stop and a farming center. One end of town features an old covered bridge. The other end an even older turnpike bar. Also at both western and eastern ends there are cemeteries.

Today 750 people, possibly more, occupy the village. While there are lovely houses, those building are outnumbered by lesser structures and manufactured housing. The town has no grocery story, no pharmacy, no in-town school, no doctor’s office that I am aware of, no professional building and no shopping strip.  There is a small bank, a gas station/part-time restaurant, a very small hardware, a hair stylist and one small fire engine. What is abundant are churches whose attendance must be quite small.

I am charmed by Darlington but what I know of towns other than Darlington is discouraging. Such places offer minimal employment opportunities; in consequence the populations are becoming poorer. With lack of cultural opportunities people, youth and adults, are turning to drugs. Rural meth labs have become a critical social issue in Indiana. Now the latest news analyses indicate that there is an frightening escalation in deaths of middle aged white women in rural communities.

As rural populations decrease, county bursars realize a smaller and smaller tax base. Thus funds are reduced for basic services such as infrastructure, education, family assistance, police protection, parks, sanitation and the like.

Darlington still looks quite good. East of us an hour is a crossroads settlement that can hardly be called a village. It is a collection of dilapidated houses, unkempt properties, no public buildings and from my perspective, nothing to be proud of. I grieve each time I pass through this rural intersection.

I asked the chair of a town council to name the council’s greatest issue. He responded quickly: to try to find employment opportunities for the citizenry. The council can no longer expect a factory to come to town. What else might there be?

According to what I read, the economic health of rural towns will continue to go down. This problem seems to me worth the attention of multiple governments cooperating to find ways to bring a renewal to country living.

 

Sunday, April 10, 2016

My quiet moments recently have allowed me to consider large and small. I shall refer to two stimulants.

One — large numbers.

Jared Diamond got his Ph.D. in the early 1960s. Since then he has devoted his scientific research in molecular physiology and evolutionary biology. Much of his research was in the field, giving him experience and evidence to write Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. The book was called to my attention when someone read my question about why the Aboriginals in the West did not develop modern technology but remained a simple hunt and fish culture. Diamond is a fine response. To make it easy for people who want simple answers, he has written a one sentence precis of his long and intense book: “History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among people’s environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.”

An early chapter pertains to the time required for evolution.

— Our closest living relatives are three surviving species of great ape: the gorilla, the common chimpanzee and the pygmy chimpanzee.
— Human history began about 7 million years ago.
— The evolutionary line leading to us had achieved a substantially upright posture around 4 million year ago.
— All of that human history remained confined to Africa.
— Homo erectus had arrived in Java one million years ago.
— Five hundred thousand years ago, Homo sapiens lived in Europe.
— Between one hundred thirty thousand and forty thousand years ago populations of humans in what is now Europe and Western Asia are now given the label Neanderthals.
— Thirteen thousand years ago migrations from Asia crossed the Bering Strait (which may have been dry land).

Two. Nature’s minutia.

And if I had the lens, I might see deeper into the smallness — perhaps tiny knobs on those hairs and finer ridges in the textured bark.

Large and small.

 

 

Saturday, March 9, 2016

Here is the report from yesterday:

• Heavy frost
• Bird bath frozen solid
• Cold wind
• Rain
• Sleet
• Snow

Last evening the hearth was warm.

Friday, March 8, 2016

Two granddaughters are with us for three days — their spring break from school. Our house tries to accommodate all of these:

• drawing, citing, gluing
• watching “The Wizard of Oz”
• putting together jigsaw puzzles
• playing the little lute
• covering a cardboard sofa with felt
• watching PBS children’s shows
• baking brownies
• bouncing ball in the basement

At any one time — unpredictable — you may hear humming, arguing, laughing, begging, whistling. Negotiations take place constantly — who sits where at the table, who uses the blue glitter first, a bath before or after lunch.

For a full hour the girls play with the miniatures from the type case. Other times they want Nana or PopPop to play with them.

Not long ago we went through this stage with four grandsons, now in their late teens. Gone are the days when we have grand toddlers at our house.  Our grandchildren help us to so number our days that we enjoy each one.

 

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

A trip to Chicago requires a trip to The Art Institute.

But first we go to the 17th floor of our hotel to look down.

And then to the museum with great expectations of seeing the Van Gogh exhibit. The two grandchildren seem to know his work.

We saw the three versions of his bedroom and many other memorable paintings. And then we separated — some to see modern art, others the miniatures, I to the photographs. A visit to the Impressionists helped the girls recall their previous visit to this gallery.

Museum-going is hard work for adults and children alike. Oh, my aching feet.

I love Chicago, could happily live in or near the loop. Please notice my favorite Chicago building — the Standard Oil building, the tall white structure to the right of center of the photo

.

 

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

I have nary a doubt: three hours of strong university credit for Ancient History 305 could be achieved by dwelling for a month in Chicago’s Field Museum.

My granddaughter’s first choice was a visit to ancient Egypt. There, among many other exhibits, we entered the tombs of pharoahs.

The second exhibit of animals included the dinosaurs.

Museum-going is very hard work. I wish we all had had more time to absorb more of the  civilizations of the western world.  Next time.*

We also saw the traveling  Terracotta Warriors. My granddaughters’ dad visited that archeology site while on Study Service Term from Goshen College.

*I wrestle a long-held question.  Admitting the exceptions of Machu Pichu and the Mayan structures, why did the western civilizations not advance further in technological, agricultural, scientific modes? Why did they not establish towns and cities like many parts of the eastern world?  More on this later.

Today, the Art Institute.

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Tonight Morgan Freeman, whom we saw years ago in “To Sir With Love” will begin his feature “The Story of God” in a six-part National Geographic series.

A clip from today’s Washington Post:

The man famous for his godly voice and portraying God in “Bruce Almighty” doesn’t believe in God — at least in the traditional way. Morgan Freeman believes that man invented God. But that doesn’t mean he is an atheist. “My opinion does not question the existence of God, merely how we arrived at the existence of God,” Freeman said. Even though man invented God, Freeman feels, God is still God. This God just exists in the mind rather than out in the universe as the creator of all life. Despite his nontraditional beliefs, Freeman has been traveling the world to learn about different religions for this new series.

He sounds much like Karen Armstrong whose early words in A History of God are “In the beginning humans created God.” And like Armstrong Freeman does not use that basic understanding of myth construction to denigrate religions. This series will surely reveal his humane curiosity and his humble respect.

I doubt very much that Freeman will make evaluative comments, nor will he rank the religions.  To do so would require measures far beyond the wisdom of any one individual in one area of the world in one century of time.

However he is likely to show efficacy — that is, the ways in which faith prompts people to think of the divine, to understand themselves and others, and to construct meaningful explanations of mystery. Furthermore, he will likely comment on how their faith prompts them to act in particular ways.

I wish I had taken a good university course on world religions.  Not having done that, I shall try to see Freeman’s series.

 

 

April 2, 2019

We have it both ways: we live in the city; two of our children live in rural places. It’s a good day to go rustic.  Such as yesterday.

The photo title is rural intersection. Actually it is a public road and the lane into Winter Wood where daughter Lali and her family live.  Yesterday’s sky was a drama in many acts and scenes.

Typically my job at Winter Wood in in the lawn, garden or compost area rather than in The Juniper Spoon kitchen.

Seven-year-old Christopher and perhaps seven-year-old Ringo and seventy-eight-year of yardsman haul wood shavings and chicken manure to the compost piles.

 

The cages are used for raw compost (4 parts brown, 1 part green) so that animals don’t spread the stuff.  After due processing, the compost is put on a pile where it can more easily be turned. The finished product goes back onto the gardens.

“A good time was had by all.”