True Colors

The clouds broke late in the afternoon on the day of the winter solstice. I was reading and became aware of a cast of light, not yellow, not pink, not orange exactly, but so different that I went out back to see what the sky was doing. So spectacular that a neighbor and his father were already standing outside, taking in the show.

For the next 15 minutes or so, the sky—I have trotted out spectacular but onward—offered a display so fantastical, so extraordinary, so awe-provoking, that were I of the weeping stuff, I would have wept. And wept even more for painters.

With sunsets, the orangey-pinkish-yellowy stuff wows us. Most of us, I think. For me, it’s the blues. Varying shades of blue created as backdrop to the light and shadows, the vivid colors, the dimming sun. And in those blues, I think of the painters I know should they take on such skies. Good luck, my friends.

Over the years, family and friends have given me prints of various sorts—a Wyeth, European posters, sailboats, bridges, trees, more sailboats. I rarely buy a print for myself.

I did add one piece (also a gift) to my wall of student art—former students, former—this year.

When I am at my desk as I am now, the viewing angle is acute, about 15 degrees. The effect is to give more depth to the terrain, the clouds, a dimensionality that fools and charms my eye. The rock that dominates the lower part of the frame seems ready to burst through the glass.

What I originally responded to when I saw this piece was several-fold. One, bold strokes, and two, the smallness of the fisherman measured against the scale of the world. Seems about right to me.

And, the blues. How many times I have seen lakes or the sea, and the sky, show me a range of blues that justs, justs—shuts me up.

This painting with its blues shut me up, too. But less now about color, more about buying via auction.

David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)…. Sold! For $80 million, a record for a living artist.

Eighty million. Of course, I know it’s an original, the only one ever in 1972 and still the only one in 2018. The painting sold for $18-grand back in the day, and adjusted for inflation, of course would be sold at a higher price today—around $108,000. But, the piece went for $80 million, and another $10 million in fees.

By the way, Hockney realized not a penny. Heck, after he sold it the first time (minus fees), someone bought it again within 6 months for $50,000.

At this point, I need to step lightly along the path of moral self-righteousness. Certainly, I could share more with family and friends and those with needs much more essential than I ever experience. Clearly, I have put my price tag on a particular kind of pleasure in choosing The Fisherman.

For all I know, the new owner of the Hockney donates a billion dollars in charity every year. Besides, no statutes compel generosity. And free markets, don’t you know.

But.

Eighty million.

Weather-Wise

Unless tied to a specific event in your life or the date of some weather catastrophe, you most likely don’t remember the weather for the day on the 20^th of last month, or the 20^th 6 months ago, or the 20^th of December 5 years ago. The local weather is part of the daily forgetting as we march forward time-wise.

Which is why I forgot that this snowfall happened December 8^th of last year—Facebook was mindful enough to remind me.

Which I jokingly referenced as saving me the need to post photos of this year’s December 8^th snowfall. Of course, I did anyway.

I moved to this area the last day of August in ’16. The historical record for Greenville-Spartanburg snow-wise is an average between 4 and 5 inches. The number of snowfalls, 1-2 annually.

January 7, the first snow of that first season. I remember the event, but wouldn’t have come up with the date.

Ten days later, another snow. Remembered another one, but not that it was only 10 days later.

Now, we have seen our average amount of snow, and we have been significantly over for total inches seasonally since I have been here. A trend? Historically significant? Not one of these snows is in the record book for heaviest single accumulation (15"), nor have I seen the highest seasonal total (21.4"). Historically speaking, I have witnessed non-events except as they contribute to averages going back to 1892.

I might say more perhaps, but in today’s climate—and let this be a word to the wise—I am reluctant to reach for much of any kind of conclusion other than to say we might see more snow around here or might not.

Reading Matters

Perhaps you have seen it as well, the online pieces that in the vicinity of the title suggest the time it will take to read. Helpful, I suppose. Hey, you can read this one while the oven counts down the final five minutes on the pecan pie. Or, during an oil change. Or as you idle in the car line, waiting on a child’s school day to end.

My blog entries run nearly always between 300 and 500 words. Not sure why that is except these are blog posts spit out in half an hour to 45 minutes. If I have to do any research, well that slows me down a bit. And there is the issue of my attention span, shortening by each passing half-decade.

I did a quick review of reading speed estimates via the web. Generally, average adult readers are pushing along at 250-300 words per minute. Friends, if so, that rate would go a long way toward explaining how it is the average American reads around a book a year.

Of course, either one book or two, unless one finished and the second one tossed out several pages in. Averages, don’t you know.

Consider the following titles: A Game of Thrones, 298,000 words; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 76,944; Of Mice and Men, 29,160; Macbeth, 17,084; and, Pride and Prejudice, 122,685.

Doing some basic arithmetic, 300 wpm is 18,000 an hour. So a little under 100 minutes for Steinbeck, closing in on 7 hours for Austen. A Game of Thrones? Around 16 and a half hours. And you have to figure in some water breaks, and so some water works, too, then.

Begs a question or three, in my mind at least, illiteracy being one. UNESCO currently projects the US at a 99% literacy rate.

USA, USA, USA!

Wait. That’s still well over 3 million of us illiterate.

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 21% of our fellow citizens score at the very lowest level for prose reading, 23% the lowest level for document reading, and for good measure, 22% landed in the lowest proficiency level for quantitative work—math.

But now we’re talking comprehension, not just speed. One out of five readers between 15 and 64 are going to struggle. Seems reasonable to think wpm rates are slowed.

Maybe 5 or 6 hours for Of Mice and Men. Think of it. I say this having a pretty good sense who my readers are. Then consider some of the following landing places for your charitable donations.

Reading is Fundamental https://www.rif.org/about-rif

Room to Read https://www.roomtoread.org/

Reading Rockets http://www.readingrockets.org/resources_new/c604

Local public and school libraries.

And Donors Choose—teachers often ask for book sets. https://www.donorschoose.org/

Here’s reading with you, Kid.

Trigger Finger (F)

My older brother Wayne clapped his hands together once. Our eyes met. “Get the gun,” he said.

I dashed to the barn and grabbed Grandad’s Winchester. As I came around the corner my brother made signs for me to slow down and be quiet. I eased up and took measured steps until I reached him.

“Coyotes” he whispered.

We scouted the slough that ran between the back of our farm and our new neighbors’ property. The pair were meandering along the low spots, stopping to lap up water as they moved away from us.

Wayne raised the rifle. The coyotes disappeared behind some small volunteer pine. Then, pace quickening, they were back in view, starting up the slope toward the neighbors’ pasture fence.

The first shot was aimed at the lead animal. The pair bolted. As they reached the top of the rise, Wayne fired again. The coyotes disappeared into the woods.

What we heard next made us both gasp. It was a scream. It was a crying out. It was a long wailing sound of disbelief and heartbreak.

In the pasture near the fence we could see Janet Berry running. Janet was in Wayne’s Algebra I class at school. We saw her fall to the ground. Her mother called out, “You shot her horse, you shot her horse!” Again and again she cried, “You shot her horse!”

Wayne’s mouth hung open. He looked at the scene as if it were a thousand miles away.

“You shot her horse.”

He finally let out his breath, a sort of grunt, a sort of groan. I took the rifle from him.

“I shot Janet’s horse.”

We heard the girl’s wail again. And again. Later, our mother would name the wrenching sound for us, “She was keening.”

Wayne turned and broke into a trot toward the house. I took the gun back to the barn and set it inside the door.

Wayne was already on the porch steps.

“Call Mama, Thad. Call Mama.”

When I got to Wayne he was on the floor, leaning against the stove, knees pulled up, hands tight to his chest. Next to him was Mama’s prized chef’s knife she bought for a cooking class at the tech school.

I could not misunderstand the scene before me, the blood on the floor, Wayne sobbing, and on the counter, the cutting board, and his trigger finger.

An Index (4)

Experiencing nostalgia for city-states? Some cities, some states under a million in population. Sparrrrrrtaaa!

Delaware          971 (000)

Austin                950

Jacksonville        892

San Francisco     884

Columbus           879

South Dakota    878

Ft. Worth            874

Indianapolis        863

Charlotte            859

North Dakota    755

Alaska               738

Seattle               725

Denver               705

Boston               685

El Paso               684

Detroit               673

Nashville            668

Memphis            652

Portland             647

Oklahoma City    644

Las Vegas           642

Vermont           624

Louisville            621

Baltimore           612

Milwaukee          595

Wyoming          574

Guilt

On the chore list for outside the backyard fence is the digging up of rogue Bradford pear saplings. More than two dozen are growing on the slope I stopped mowing when I moved in two years ago.

First, a mea culpa. I planted a Bradford in the West Ashley area of Charleston around ’97. In ’99, I planted a Cleveland pear in Summerville.

Plenty of pears were planted in this subdivision, but mowing keeps the sprouts controlled. Like most places, however, in overgrown fields, and along roadsides and creeks, and on riverbanks, the spiky intruder is having its way.

But my story here is about taking down the 15-year-old Bradford out front. A typical fast and dirty contractor’s decision, planted it kind of in the center of the yard. And for good measure, only 3’ to the house side of the underground utility lines.

The central trunk stood about 4’ with around a 10” diameter. From there, the typical tall spires of a Bradford, reaching about 20’ or so.

The first thing was to cut away all the branches and cull out the slenderest of the limbs. The ones with some size to them would be cut up along with the trunk for firewood. While working on this part of the operation, a mocking bird landed in a nearby maple and fussed at me.

I was well aware that the tree was a nesting site, but I easily rationalized that plenty of other safe spaces were in my yard—the big butterfly bush out by the shed was used by mockingbirds this past season. And since there are hundreds of trees on the property, I didn’t think too much of the bird’s complaint.

With one tall spire left, I came inside for water. When I went back out, the mockingbird was sitting at the very top. Okay, I thought, a little overly dramatic.

Down came that piece, and time to load the truck with the debris I didn’t want to salvage. As I drove to my dumping site, I saw the mockingbird—had to be the same one—fly to the top of the shed and watch me roll by.

Farther down the hill, I dragged good handfuls of slender tops to the final spot, and when I turned back, the mockingbird was perched on the large pile still in truck.

Now, I don’t know what you may think, but I was pretty sure that bird knew its tree, and I was destroying it. I hated doing it, but I was going to cut it to the ground.

Hey, I’ve planted about 60 trees here. So, you know, it’s just one tree, just one nest. It’s a Bradford. It’s got to go.

Dang bird.

Pathetic, right?

In the Manner of Speaking

An observation regarding my little volume of poems by two former students—one late 20s, one early 30s by my counting—has come to me by way of Facebook messaging: “This doesn’t sound like you”. Now that made me laugh. No, no, I reckon it doesn’t.

Since they didn’t elaborate, didn’t specify tone or subject matter, I’ll go with tone. I chuckled a bit thinking of what they knew as my tone of voice during their time in my classroom. My clear-the-halls voice, my call-to-attention in the room, one-on-one discussions about their writing, informative chatter regarding school news or regulations, oh, and those random meetings out in the world—yes, teachers buy fresh produce. “Mr. Kaple bought a bag of garlic!” Why, yes, yes I did.

Of course—and this point is obvious—I am referring to a spoken voice in the previous examples, and so too shifting tones by way of pitch and volume, etc. I am conflating voice with tone to suggest what they heard in my poems is indeed a voice not quite the same as what they heard during our time together.

Besides, I’m not sure what would be the poetic version of my bellowing at tardy students my favorite borrowed phrase, “Run like a freshman”.

I know their reading is plenty nuanced enough to hear a difference in tone between my poems “The Gnat” and “Emmanuel”. So let them consider hearing me read poems out loud, say Molly Holden’s “Some Men Create” and Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young”. Neither readings were in my voice, and if I got after it for the better those days, the voices were decidedly different from one another.

But I do own that I am the voice behind my written words, each and every one, from the serious to the absurd. Perhaps, then, the word voicings clarifies.

Now I wonder about friends from long ago, or the current crop—scratching their heads?  “I don’t know, could be him, I guess.” And then I think of particular high school friends from way, way, way back in the day were they to sit in the back of my classroom when I was holding forth as Mr. Kaple—gales of laughter, no doubt, and down, down, down my ship would sink.

Taxation, with Representation

Here in South Carolina the state tax on a gallon of gas is not quite twenty-one cents. Pull in to refuel your 2006 Chevy Silverado or your 2016 BMW X5 and the state tax per gallon is the same. We drivers are using the same roads, so fair and square all the way around most would think.

By the way, this tax is a regressive tax, which means the tax is not set upon the economic ability to pay. But I am headed elsewhere topic-wise in this post.

Imagine for a moment that our state legislature decided by law that your primary vehicle—you only get one—would pay a tax of 16 cents per gallon and other vehicles, and commercial and leased vehicles, would pay 24 cents on the same gallon.

I’m thinking a lot of folks would cry foul, not fair, or they can’t do that. Well of course they can.

My property tax on my home—my principal residence—here in Spartanburg County is as mandated by state law 4%. For simplicity’s sake, I’m setting aside Fair Market Value and millage rates.

My property tax on a rental house I own in Dorchester County is set at 6%. Glance back at my state gasoline tax example. See, it can be done.

To keep the math simple, the tax on $100,000 owner-occupied house is $400, $600 when a rental. So, in effect, renters are subsidizing homeowners. (The landlord-owner isn’t covering the difference most likely.) Nice.

Well, if you are the homeowner across the street from a renter. Imagine both have 2 kids in the local public schools. The renter is kicking in 50% more than the homeowner. Nice.

So the tax rate turns on your willingness to be a homeowner or—here the kicker—your financial ability to be a homeowner. Nice.

Renters…. I’m thinking. College kids living off campus, folks waiting for a home to be built, the poor, people transferred into an unfamiliar location and cautious about buying until they get the lay of the land, the elderly who may not be able to maintain a property, twenty-somethings digging out from under college debts. Feel free to expand the list.

According to Federal Reserve Economic Data, as of 2017 home ownership in SC was 72.8%. Now I’m thinking—uh-oh—that not taking into account our homeless population in the state, just about everyone is under a roof, owned or rented. So more than one in four are taxed more heavily because they rent rather than own that roof they are under.

Of course, you know that whole needs thing. Food, water, shelter.

What do I want? That the rate be unified at 4 or 5 or 6%. And then the hassle of millage rates and Fair Market Value can begin.

Dang, there is that word again. Fair.

Own a home? Hug a renter.

Another by the way, once upon a time in our fair land, the right to vote was limited to white male property owners. The last state to abolish the property requirement for all nearly white males to be enfranchised? North Carolina, 1856.

Sorta-Science

While surfing YouTube videos, I stumbled into a short speech from Jane Goodall. As far back as I can remember nearly, she has been part of the landscape at Gombe, studying her beloved chimpanzees. Fifty-eight years so far of observations and notes and studies and lectures.

So when I mention that last week I saw two eider ducks on the lake after an absence of 2 years—nearly—my report is not much weightier than a passing cloud. Several pairs of eider ducks spent the late winter of ’16 here, along with five or six pairs of mallards, and the nearly ever-present geese. However, last winter, no eider ducks, no mallards.

Of course, my observations come by way of happenstance, not from the disciplined, daily, hours-long effort of a Goodall. No, I catch sight of the comings and goings as I work in the yard, or stand at a window, or walk the dog out beyond the fence.

I do note some of the behavior to share with family or a neighbor. I just don’t write it down. The peculiarities stay with me. In July, four white egrets flew over the lake and after a lap disappeared beyond the trees. The next day, a pair repeated the same flightpath. The next day, again a pair as if sightseeing. The fourth day, a solo bird made the lap.

Then the next afternoon a pair of the white birds settled in the Grandfather Tree. And that same evening they returned—I assume the same pair—and circled the lake multiple times close together before settling for the night on some deadfall across the way.

What all that activity meant, I don’t know. But, to me the show was entertaining and interesting.

The last six months I have been slowly reading through Thoreau’s journals (1837-1861). His reputation as a naturalist, of course, has long been confirmed. He makes little drawings, notes first blooms and last leaves, rain and snow, plantings and harvest, all while making observations about the human condition as well the wildlife.

I could start today with a more careful effort, and onward to 2042. I would be 91.

Coincidentally, the current issue of National Wildlife chronicles the saga of Joseph Grinnell’s mission to produce a complete survey of California’s vertebrates. Begun in 1904 and concluded in 1940, Grinnell and his team from Berkeley assembled 74,000 pages of detailed notes that are so well-constructed the approach is referred to as the Grinnell Method, the standard for field biologists.

That sort of science—the dedication, the perseverance—I am unlikely to duplicate.  No, my sorta-science may be keeping an eye out for the eider ducks, or noting two dozen doves pecking at seeds in a small area of my garden without any attendant feuding. And, maybe, some babies to report come next spring.

Trudging Respect

What slowed me down while reading a report on the asylum-seekers was a story that cited a Honduran man who was traveling with two Chinese men. Now there is a long way from home, and then there is a long way from home.

Perhaps the Mind-in-Chief would want to vet the caravans for Chinese. Quite the propaganda coup. But, of course, they may Chinese. Because they are from China.

The trek from Tegucigalpa to Tijuana is just about 2898 miles as the road goes. Curiously, the trip is 3 miles closer by cutting through the U.S. on the way. Of course, that ain’t happening. Either way, it’s a damn long walk.

Like me taking off from my doorstep and heading to Vancouver. Except that trip would be a little shorter. Less a caravan, more a pedi-van I. Nor can I really process setting off on such a journey. I can claim, in fact, walking several miles in a blizzard, both ways. Canoeing and portaging dozens of miles. Trekking 53 miles over 9 days above 11,000’. But trudging heroically and perhaps hopelessly for weeks on end? Nope, can’t fathom the will to do so.

Part of the story turns on violence in Honduras. How parents want their children raised in a safer environment. I get that—plenty of family members and friends to demonstrate by example such commitment. The standard murder rate statistics cite murders per 100,000 population. The latest I could find was 43 per for Honduras.

In the US, that rate nestles between New Orleans at 42 and Detroit with 44. Just FYI, Baltimore last reported 55, and St. Louis 59. Imagine parents in Baltimore also leaving for Vancouver. To escape the carnage. As if those moms and dads could be blamed. Does beg a question or two at least. Like, WWVD?

Oh, and bloody Chicago? That would be 18 per 100,000. Surprised? Yep, our Propagandist-in-Chief has a quite a way with perceptions. And, no, I am not making light of any murder at any rate for any individual or family or community. I just haven’t caved to the post-curious era yet.  

The self-exiled, really to no surprise, are being reviled along the way. In Tijuana the manmade fires of hatred and bigotry are well stoked. I try to imagine being loathed and harassed for weeks on end while plodding forward toward a distant hope, an idea—an ideal. And along the way, the unrelenting venom, the invectives, the violence.

Those of us who have never, will never, tread in such shoes—all I can say is we ought to get down on our knees, daily. Hourly.

Bird Notes

A friend asked how dog Max responds to the blue heron. Easily answered, with hackles up and roaring bark. Each and every time. Started with the inaugural flyover that sent Max chasing to the fence. Continues with the heron’s morning takeoffs and evening glides home to roost.

Perhaps it’s a size issue, maybe it’s the noise—even that word a kind descriptor. Somehow the heron pushes out a sound both a croak and a gak. A croaking gak, a gakking croak, I could not say. Even the three offspring this year drew Max’s ire. Young or adult, herons be damned.

Max gave chase when the first geese came in over his head, but now he rarely acknowledges their comings and goings—sometimes 50 in a flight. Even the noisy launches don’t rouse his interest.

Something there is about herons, to Max at least.

At this moment a blackbird is fluttering around a Cooper’s hawk in the Grandfather Tree. I mention this non-skirmish only to explain how it is I spend so much time watching birds. It’s the vista out back, not that I am any kind of birder.

I did, however, take part in the local Audubon Society’s fall count. Nothing particularly interesting on that one day here. No bald eagle, no anhinga, no red-tailed hawk. In fact, the next day I saw a red-tail out here for the first time. And a tufted titmouse. Go figure.

Rarely a day passes without some action on the bird front. A lot of squabbles. Mockingbirds getting into with mockingbirds. Bluebirds getting into with bluebirds, jays with jays, cardinals cardinals. And they all antagonize other species, some days relentlessly.

Sometimes it seems more play. Watched one afternoon two mockingbirds chase each other around the small trees in my yard as if they were racing pylons. Not once or twice, but dozens of times.

Guess that is what catches my eye so often, the chasing. Watched three crows one morning chase a red-shouldered hawk out of a pine and across the lake, and as they neared the tree line on the other side, the hawk reversed course and chased the trio back to the same pine.

The babies, too, will stop me mid-chore. Baby mockingbirds, cardinals, jays, geese, and the herons. One in particular stood me up—first sighting in my life I am mostly sure—a baby dove.

I never see the doves act aggressively. Do remember seeing an adult mockingbird jousting with a big male cardinal. While their little ones were pecking in a neighbor’s raised bed, the adult birds couldn’t have been louder or more violent in their flight.

I went back to digging—startled at some point by the quiet. Happened to look up. On the roof from left to right, mockingbird, dove, cardinal. Made me wonder. Oh, I know, instinct, always, only instinct.

The babies? Were in the bed still, all just fine in their little world.

Pity 'tis 'tis True

According to the official record, the last American combat fatality in WWI occurred at 10:59 a.m. the morning of November 11^th, 100 years ago. With fixed bayonet, the soldier ran at a German machine gun team that repeatedly called out for him to stop his charge. He did not, and so he was killed.

Any number of media outlets today will report the nearly mystical time stamp ending the war-ending war of wars, that of 11:00 a.m. on the 11^th day of the 11^th month.

Peace negotiations began five weeks earlier at the request of Germany. During that period combat continued along the Western Front. The ongoing battles claimed 500,000 additional casualties. Half-a-million men, killed or wounded during the peace talks.

When the agreement was finally set, a 5 a.m. order with the terms went out via radios and telephones, signifying peace was at hand. In the 6 hours that followed, 2,738 soldiers were killed and 8,206 wounded as scheduled attacks continued according to plans.

That number killed is greater than Allied deaths on D-Day in 1944.

The 92^nd Division, an African-American unit, charged the German line as ordered at 10:30 a.m. that final morning. Seventeen men were killed and 302 were either wounded or declared missing.

On both sides, before the armistice became official, artillery gunners continued firing rounds, all the better to avoid transporting heavy shells back home. Some harmlessly fell short, some brutally targeted enemy positions.

With each battle, with each war, someone will be the last to die. In the final minute before an end, even sometimes after the proclamation of peace.

Around 15,000 US combat troops are in Afghanistan today. This ongoing war since 2001 claimed another American, this time the mayor of a small town in Utah who was serving his fourth tour as part of the Army National Guard.

Of course, I cannot predict the future—his death, the last? Peace, and our troops out of harm’s way? Two years? Five? Ten? Twenty? One more death? And one more? And one more?

Regardless, truly, I am sorry for his family. I am sorry for his friends. I am sorry for his community. I am sorry for his unit.

One more.

A Blue Heron

A Great Blue Heron settled on a log across the lake this morning at 6:45. Of course, yesterday’s clock would have read 7:45. Most likely no matter to the heron just as of little matter to my dog. Each morning Max and I walk just before sunrise, weather permitting, hours and days be hanged.

I suspect for many tomorrow morning will be the lurch in time that matters more. A kind of stealing of time when lives are more likely to be scheduled—school or jobs for my neighbors. That stolen hour will rise to bite next March as clocks are set forward.

Not sure how much clock setting is done these days—an exercise ever quainter by the minute. But, a lot of folks will register that difference as drastic. To many the weekend whipsaw of changing sleep hours drums in this point over and over and over again. As new parents understand. Very much so, I suppose.

An odd human construct, our time measurements. Anyone who has flown west multiple time zones by jet understands the oddness of landing somewhere five hours away within three hours plus local arrival time. For me, the most unnatural sense of moving through time—and space—came by flying east from Bangkok to Los Angeles and so experiencing two sunrises and crashing—metaphorically—into the same day I left behind.

Perhaps our thinking time a commodity tinkers too much with internal clocks. Medical experts seem to have much to say on the issue. More crassly, the notion that time is money underscores the point.

Established in 1883, our four standard time zones here in the US smoothed out an intricate system of train timetables as our railroads reached from sea to sometimes shining sea. The transcontinental system was completed in 1869, so for more than a dozen years town by town, minute by minute, precise arithmetic was of the essence to monitor trains coming and going.

California became a state in 1845—I had to check this date as well. But if no one could get there with any kind of speed then, I guess no one cared too much about the exact time of day relative to the Atlantic side. Except for a job interview perhaps. After all, time is money, some say.

Oh, the heron? Flew off—let me be deliberately imprecise—shortly before seven.

Attention Paid

For a little more than a week, I have intended to write about the relationship between employer and employee in terms of a job being paid attention. Simply, that the employer wants an employee’s full attention in exchange for the wage. Some of the motivation for this reflection was thinking about working as a busboy for a family-owned restaurant in Duluth.

When the restaurant was busy—crazy busy at times—all of us were in constant motion. Waitresses, bartenders, cooks, dishwashers, and busboys. We busboys were attentive to cleaning off tables and replacing tablecloths, moving collection tubs to the scullery, running errands for more butter, more ice, more dishes for the kitchen, and more and even more.

I remember tapping beer kegs down in the cooler as a mixed blessing. On the downside, if your area of concern was hopping, you would fall behind in the rush of work to be done. Of course, when hot and sweaty, going to the cooler provided relief for a few moments. The next trick was to slip through the kitchen without being tagged for a chore and get back to the work you were expected to stay on top of for a buck-thirty-five an hour (We did get a share of tips).

Inevitably, as the evening wore on, the stream of customers would slow, and on weekends the busboys might take a moment to stand and chat or even horse around some—okay, more than some sometimes. Now when one of the managers saw 2 or 3 of us idling for a bit, we could count on a scowl at least, at worst one of us was punching out and heading home.

Either we were getting paid, or the business was. Got it, the bottom line.

But, as so often the case, this mulling over one thing stumbles into another.

The past few weeks folks I know as friends or former colleagues and students or family have exchanged their time—money, too—for my first published book. They have chosen to pay attention to my effort. Of course, spending their money is part of the exchange, but time is the commodity expended that I find most generous in this case.  

Given all the options that define our culture, all the forms of entertainment, the varied media—well, of course I’m humbled by their choice.

And yet, another rerouting—how the mind works—and so I offer up this observation from Parker J. Palmer: The human soul doesn’t want to be fixed, it simply wants to be seen and heard.

Thus, a bottom line of a different sort, attention paid.

An Index (3)

Hey, Publius! Something doesn’t add up. Go figure.

59,094               Delaware, 1790 (smallest state by population, 1 congressional representative)

249,073             South Carolina, 1790 (5 representatives)

573,720             Wyoming, 2018 (smallest state by population, 1 representative)

622,781             Montenegro, 2016 (81 members of parliament)

623,960             Vermont, 2018

738,068             Alaska, 2018

747,610             Virginia, 1790 (largest state by population, 10 representatives)

755,238             North Dakota, 2018

877,790             South Dakota, 2018

971,180             Delaware, 2018 (1 representative)

3,929,214          US, 1790 (65 representatives)

3,940,521          Oklahoma, 2018 (5 representatives)

5,088,916          South Carolina, 2018 (7 representatives)

8,525,660          Virginia, 2018 (11 representatives)

39,776,830         California, 2018 (largest state by population, 53 representatives)

Shrimp Lyman

About the time you share a recipe for a specific dish, like a cassoulet or your Aunt Betty’s buckle, some folks are apt to respond with “That’s not how I fix it”. Well then, cook some up and have me over.

Shrimp Creole is a spicy dish traditionally—spicy, but not sear your lips off spicy to my way of thinking.

But, these days I rarely season much for other folks, choosing rather to let individuals do so to their tastes. And so here is a Shrimp Lyman, this time around.

Now if you want to use Cajun or Greek seasoning or a curry, or just salt and pepper, works just fine with this recipe. Call it Shrimp Brizo or Shrimp Goa, or Shrimp Fill-in-your-name. No harm, no foul.

In a 12” frying pan,

on medium high brown diced kielbasa, spicy or otherwise, about a 6”—section;

add one hand-sized, skinless chicken breast, cubed, and turn heat down to medium low;

when chicken is brown on the outside, add ¼ cup olive oil and diced vegetables—celery, onion, bell pepper, and tomatoes…1 cup of each, a pinch or two of salt, and gently sauté for a few minutes;

then add ½ cup of marinara and ½ cup of chicken broth; add spices and cover with heat to as low as you can go simmer for 10 minutes.

Bring to boil and add peeled medium shrimp (any amount up to a pound). Turn heat back down to low and cover. Give your guest(s) a five minute warning.

When the shrimp are pink and orange and cooked, but still have a pop when you bite them—hey, you’re the cook, you can sample—the dish is ready for eating.

Serve with warm rice. Yes, warm. We’re not barbarians here.