Of cabbages, kings, maypoles, and witch burning

First of all, I did not win the Mega Millions jackpot.  Oh yeah, I never even bought a ticket. I figured I was more likely to get struck by lightning. I don't know what I would ever do with a lot of money anyway. People who win jackpots often blow it all on stupid stuff and end up back where they started.

Summer is over and we're back to, is it spring yet? Is it...yet? How about...now? 

I've been busy. I'm learning just how many balls you need to keep your eyes on when you decide to accept your responsibility as an active citizen in your community. I love Jamestown, but there are issues...as in any community. And we can sit back and ignore them (and complain about how awful things are) or we can put on our hip waders, engage, and figure out how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

As I said, I've been busy.

My involvement with Occupy Jamestown, which I wrote about a while ago, is pretty satisfying right now. I'm working with some really good people, reaching out and finding even more really good people, and together we're planning an event for May Day--which may or may not involve dancing around a maypole, we haven't worked out all the details yet. What it WILL be--is a gathering of some of the elements that make this a potentially GREAT community. Everyone is welcome to decide that they want to be a part of that.  This is about unity, not partisanship, not militancy, not radicalism.  It is about working for the best possible lives for our families now and in the future. We have musicians, we have artists, we have farmers and gardeners, we have geeks, dreamers and realists, and together we have great ideas about how to make Jamestown a resilient, sustainable community that can handle whatever life throws at us. We're full of positive energy and looking forward to a very good event. While other Occupy groups may be striking and protesting (and Lord knows there's plenty of injustice to stand against), we're attempting to take the next step and move forward and do things better.

You will definitely be reading more about this. Occupy friends--I love you guys!

Now, about some of those other things we need to keep our eyes on...

I met the new library director last night at a forum. And I asked her, point blank, why do you think they hate you so much?  She came to town and took over four months ago. A firestorm promptly ensued. She apparently has a controversial "past"...I will just leave it at that. She has been thrown into the unenviable position of coming in as an outsider to pick up where decades-long local leadership left off, in an era of rapid changes. People hate changes. There have been communication issues, and longtime employees have been grievously offended. Rumors have swirled and grown into mushroom clouds. City council members have been deluged with phone calls.

Really,  who knew there could be so much drama around librarians?  I don't say this disrespectfully.  I have always loved libraries and books and revered the people who labor to make them and keep them temples of learning. I have just not ever run into a situation like this before, and it perplexes me. As a relative newcomer to the community myself, I realize my perspective is not the same as it is for people who have lived here longer,  some of them for their entire lives, and I cannot put myself in their shoes and receive an instant update on all of the history, experiences and nuances they have lived here in this community. I feel the discomfort of my friends and the general "disturbance in the force" caused by the arrival of this stranger in the community, and it makes me uncomfortable.

There is a great deal of fear about "what is going to happen to the library"--a VERY excellent library that nobody wants to see reduced to just another pop culture outlet, managed from afar by some McLibraries R Us outfit. But, is there evidence that anything like this is happening? Is there a way to keep it from happening without resorting to witch burning?

March Madness

Maybe it's the shape of things to come, but right now we are having what seems like unbelievable weather for mid-March. It's still late winter, officially, but it's sunny and balmy. No jackets needed. Kids out in the streets on their bikes and skateboards, even after dinner when it's getting dark.

It's 72 degrees on St. Patrick's Day, which I seem to remember as a time when we kept marching (Girl Scouts in the parade) to keep from freezing solid. For some reason unknown to me, Jamestown celebrated last Saturday, a week early. Maybe they thought they'd trick Mother Nature into an early spring. Actually, I have no idea and pulled that one out of my hat, but this is a city of Swedes and Italians, so what can I say.  I don't think they dye the Chadakoin River green either, but what do I know.  I missed the whole thing.

But I'm way ahead of schedule with my garden cleanup and rose trimming this year. The raised beds are just about ready for planting, but I'm not doing that for a while because this is not normal.

Besides, we're having some more work done on the house in about a week, so I need to get busy and select light fixtures, bath fixtures, tile, and stuff like that. Chaos may be contagious, because Ronnie and Sheryl next door are turning everything upside down in their house too. 

How many of you read the title and thought I was going to write about college basketball?

Springing forward

This week we had a brief taste of spring. This morning it is 18 degrees. March is like that.

This weekend is "Maple Weekend," the first of two here in NY.  [EDIT: I'm a week early! It's actually NEXT weekend! Can't blame me for anticipation!]  It's going to be nice and sunny, if not exactly warm, so why not head out to Big Tree Maple and learn (taste!) more about one of our great local (and natural) products. Sorry, Mrs. Butterworth and Aunt Jemima, you lose out by a landslide to "the real thing."

The forecast for the coming week is even better, so much so that I am planning to  turn over the soil in my raised beds and start marking the squares. I've decided to try "square foot gardening" this year, and have been doing lots of reading and drawing diagrams to get my plans in order.  I have some seeds left over from last year, and some freebies I picked up at last weekend's garden fair, but there are some "decisions, decisions" yet to be made about what varieties to plant! I am loving my Seed Savers Exchange catalog--gorgeous color photos of so many varieties of heirloom veggies that tempt me to plow up my whole yard and turn it into an urban farm.  But...the dog needs room to run, and I no longer wish to destroy dandelions, having decided that they're going to be part of our diet.

Turn your clocks ahead tonight as Daylight Savings Time returns.

When communication fails

Can we talk? Technology will not save us.

The rapid development and expansion of the means of communication has opened up never before seen possibilities for reaching out and touching people almost anywhere, any time, instantaneously. Minds are crammed with information overload. Our lives have become noisier and more immediate. We hear something on the radio or read it on the internet or get a text message, and zap off an instant reply. It's so easy to skip over fact checking and time for careful reflection when we can simply blurt. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, and the rapid response mindset it has brought with it, human error is also compounded and amplified. Words cannot be bitten back because they're already halfway around the world. The genie cannot be put back in the bottle.

We don't take the time to ask whether the message we received was the message sent, or the message intended, or to seek further information. And corrections are too little too late, because the original damage has already been done.

Technology will not save us from our human communication failures.

High wind--the new normal?

We're under another high wind warning today. (It's tempting to blame Rush Limbaugh, but I'll leave it alone.) Considering the tornado destruction to our south the past few days, this is only a minor problem for us. But it did cause some minor damage to our house overnight, and is probably just a taste of what we have to look forward to this spring and summer.

At the moment we're fortunate to be on the northern side of the colliding air masses--the low dipping jet stream, which is going to bring us a bit of snow and overnight lows in the teens over the next couple of days, and the warm air rising from the Gulf of Mexico. This collision is responsible for the violent storms ripping through the south and midwest. And since the Gulf of Mexico is now warmer than usual, the conditions are ripe for stormier than usual weather. We may lose some tree limbs and roofing shingles this year. And watch out for those flying cows.

Anyway, this is probably a good time to review your emergency preparedness.

*****

We had a really good discussion the other night following our third film in our social action committee series, "The Power of Community." First of all, it provided a view of Cuba most of us had little awareness of, given our political weirdness about that little island. Seeing how the Cuban people were able to respond to their low energy crisis by decentralizing education and healthcare, while transforming their communities into glorious, green, petroleum-free food gardens, was inspiring and thought-provoking. The degree to which our lives are dependent on oil is shocking. But what if we started getting more of our food locally, grown organically without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides? What if we stopped relying so heavily on each person having their own private automobile and started sharing rides? What if we farmed tilapia here instead of importing it from farms in South America?

At the same time, the newly reconstituted "Occupy Jamestown" group has begun holding meetings, with a focus on "occupying" our community and working to strengthen it. I hope this continues, because the idea of occupying a park or having a protest march to get attention in a city the size of Jamestown is kind of ridiculous. Can't we just find the people we want to send a message to and TALK to them? That's the beauty of community. But you have to build those personal relationships. I know there are people who favor more militant approaches to changing the world, and good luck to them, they can bang their heads against that wall if they want to. There are always protests and marches in bigger cities, campaign craziness to indulge in, petitions and boycotts to join, whatever. I may, from time to time, be inclined (as an individual) to support some of these things. But I see most of them as a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. I'd rather take a hands on approach to building something that will yield tangible results in the place that I live. I'd prefer to foster a climate of cooperation instead of maintaining and intensifying the awful polarization and quite uncivil adversarial environment we've come to accept as normal. (Do you really wonder why we have perpetual war?) I think I've found some people who agree with this approach. But we'll have to wait and see what develops.

Today, there's a spring garden fair downtown. Tom and I are going to check it out. It's still going to be a little while before garden season arrives in my backyard, but I'm making my plans.