a proposal about the consequences of proposals...

I ran into an acquaintance, C., the other day; she's a part of our sheep-and-goat circle of friends, and the breeder of a couple of our sheep.  She was about as happy--and frantic--as could be.  She's extra busy at her job, which is growing in both duties and rewards; she's moving, having bought a farm that, while it is much better suited to her needs, needs new fences; and, she's getting married.

Talking with her, it seemed that the one raincloud on her horizon was the need to get rid of a lot of stuff (because her new house is somewhat smaller than her current house) and to get rid of yet more stuff (because both she and her sweetie have separate, complete households and they only need one).  Added to this, people seem to want to give her even more stuff because she's getting married, and working from a registry and giving newlyweds stuff is what we do in this society.

After discussing the issue for a bit, we may have hit upon a solution.  It won't require much additional work from C. or anybody else, it will clear some clutter, and it should allow people to satisfy their social urges to pile up fancily-wrapped boxes on a table at the wedding reception.

Here's the scheme.  C. takes a picture of every thing she would be rid of--a stack of bowls, a set of china, the toaster, a chair, tchotchkes, and so on.  She can figure out a price for each thing, probably steeply discounted.  She also makes rough measurements of the item, and if feeling moved, writes a brief description in her finest catalog-ese (e.g. "This handsome, smaller-than-life ceramic dog was hand-crafted by skilled artisans in Mexico; his slightly skewed grin will remind you of carefree nights in the tropics, while his significant heft will guarantee that papers placed under him will never blow away.  He may not fetch, but he sure can collect dust.")  She then dodges past Bloomingdale's and Nieman-Marcus and Cabela's, and makes her own registry for wedding invitees to look at.  She then forgets about it, and returns to fretting about her wedding dress or whatever brides do (C. is more likely to work on fences for her new property). 

The lucky people who get an invite to C.'s wedding also get a link to her registry, where they see what they'd see at any registry: a list of items with associated prices.  They choose something--first come, first served, so don't delay!--and the item is no longer in the registry.  They receive an automatic email that informs them of the size box needed to hold the item, and a chit that they will put in the box.  They also put the suggested price of the item--or less, if they're poor, or more, if generous--in the box, preferably in a red envelope.  Their job, then, is to wrap the box (like they would for any wedding gift) and bring it to the reception.

Ah, the blessed wedding day!  Look at the radiant bride and the grinning groom!  Look at the buffet!  Look at the stack of presents they got--wowza!  In the traditional scheme, bride and groom spend the better part of a subsequent day opening boxes and trying to make sure that the card stays with the item, or noting which uncle gave the day-of-the-week tablecloth collection.  In the new scheme, C. and her sweetie spend the day opening boxes, happily collecting the contents of red envelopes.  Even more happily they read the chits and fill the boxes with no-longer-needed household goods, and thanks to the registry, they have a complete record of who is connected to what.

The filled boxes become the responsibility of the wedding invitees; they have to pick them up, or arrange for their pickup, whether by UPS, Goodwill, or buddy with a pickup truck.  Given enough technical savvy, I'm sure that some system could be arranged on the registry to make the chit a pre-paid shipping label.  Recipients of the boxes don't have to keep the "gifts"--they can donate them to whatever charity they wish, or burn them.  Whatever happens, they are no longer C.'s problem.  As I figure it, making problems disappear--and cash in a red envelope--are about the best gifts you can give newlyweds. 

Despite its logic and practicality, there is something about human nature that makes me doubt this scheme will catch on.  Oh well.  It's out there, and it just needs a snappy name (deregistry?  leave suggestions in the comments) and maybe it can go viral. 

The situation here

More words of wisdom from the genius of der volk:

on moving--from our neighbor who is also about to sell her house and move with her hubby and five kids to Montana: If you gotta eat an elephant, just do it one bite at a time.

on a person attempting to do a job in a ridiculous manner--from one of the people installing fence on our property: You're more messed up than a soup sandwich.

These have been swimming around in my head so that I had a nightmare in which I was a soup sandwich trying to eat an elephant. I will leave the explication of that to Dr. Freud.

Being a tourist

I spent most of last week being a tourist. The Real Doctor's brother, his wife and two-year-old son came for a visit, so I used this as an excuse to tour a bit of central Oregon. Roseburg is conveniently situated to see some wonderful stuff. Crater Lake, for example:
Trying to take a decent picture of Crater Lake is like trying to take a decent picture of Beethoven's ninth symphony. The color of blue is unique, and there's plenty of visual beauty around. But (for me) the lasting impact of Crater Lake is not an image, but how it makes me feel, thinking about the forces and events that created this sight.
We also went the other direction to check out the Oregon Coast. Cape Blanco is the westernmost* point in the continental U.S., and home to a classic lighthouse.
(Click on the picture to get the full effect.) The place has as much drama as Crater Lake--it's either rainy and windy, impenetrably foggy and windy, or sunny and very windy. The lighthouse is one of the few that the USCG will allow civilians to enter. The real attraction on the tour is the Fresnel lens, a work of functional art built in the '30's in Paris. It's huge, over 2 m tall, and mesmerizingly beautiful.
And what do you know, it works--here's the view from Agate Beach in Port Orford, ten miles away. Click on the picture and you can see the wink of the light:
I have to say, there's plenty of Sturm und Drang in the landscape here.
It was good to act like a tourist, since I don't really feel like a native in this landscape yet. I am still learning the plot.

Every landscape has a story. I've always told my students that the life we see today is just one still from a motion picture
Landscapes are the same way. In most of the places I've lived, the plot has been easy to follow. The Sierras are like Wagnerian Opera, with ice giants and godly forces. Wisconsin and Sacramento are like a minimalist opera, with little movement but the steady back and forth of erosion and flood deposition. The Bay Area is like a disaster flick, mostly boring but with predictable, violent events. But Roseburg? The plot here leaves me confused and disoriented.

It's like three completely different movies showing on the same screen at the same time. On the west edge of town, we have coast range geology, with sedimentary mudstones and pillow basalts folded into a complex mess. On the east side, we have the flood basalts and ash deposits of the Cascades. And butting into the south of town is the mysterious, ancient mess of the Klamath mountains. They used to be attached to the Sierras, but 100 million years ago decided to up and move themselves 80 miles away. If you get to a high enough vantage point to see a big area, no single plot emerges. There are valleys and ridges running every which way, and all sorts of different rocks. It's a mess, and I'm still disoriented. So, I should get out and be the tourist more--drive around with my Roadside Geology of Oregon, maybe take a float down the Umpqua river. It can be hard to follow the opera without the libretto.

*There's a place in Washington that makes the same claim; however, except at very low tides, it is an island and not part of the mainland.

Officially a resident of Oregon

So, I'm officially a resident of Oregon. The Real Doctor and I trooped down to the DMV, which provided an experience much nicer than any I've had in California. I actually managed to get a driver's license photo that isn't horrible. The Real Doctor's makes it look as if she hasn't slept for a few days and has just seen Rupert Murdoch cavorting on our front lawn wearing only a speedo.

Anyway, the unpacking continues; coincidentally, I found a rather older driver's license. Me, without a beard, but with a pony tail and a bit more youthful idealism.
Kind of frightening. Been a while since I've been able to muster that much of a smile for an official photo.

Standard Answers

It seems that nine times out of ten, when we'd tell people that we were moving to Oregon, they would reply, "Oh, it's nice there."

Now we're in Oregon, and living in a fairly small town. How small? It seems that nine times out of ten, when we tell people that we're renting a house in the Laurelwood neighborhood, they reply, "Oh, you mean that cute yellow two-story house with the apartment and garden in back? That's a nice place."

Closer to home

The living room of our rental is still so full of boxes that one must walk through it edgewise. There are still widgets in the kitchen that have no real home. The bicycles are still not rideable, and I have no idea where my helmet or the Real Doctor's cleats are. I'm using the same clothes I've used and washed for the last month, since I haven't unpacked my clothing boxes. I have not set up the workbench. My piano is still in storage in Sacramento.

But.

Tonight we had the first dinner cooked at home for ourselves since June 1 (spaghetti carbonara) and a very nice bottle of wine that was captured sunlight and CO2 and water nineteen years ago (Dickerson Vineyards Ruby Cabernet, Napa). So, I feel less like a displaced person.

Lost in America

I spent most of yesterday morning in an uncomfortable state of not knowing where I was. We had only been in Oregon a couple of days, so I still woke up thinking that I was in Sacramento. We had spent the entire previous day indoors, unpacking the mountain of boxes that the moving company had deposited in our house, so very little was done to reinforce the fact that we were in Oregon. To make matters worse, we had stayed up until 3:00 AM trying to get things ready so that we could fly out to Wisconsin for the Real Doctor's parents' 50th wedding anniversary--so I was already thinking hard about Wisconsin, a second home to me.

After three hour's sleep, the Real Doctor and I staggered out to our car, loaded the carry-ons, and drove the three hours to Portland to catch the plane. The road signs did nothing to help my sense of place: there are exits on I-5 in Oregon for the towns of Saginaw, Ontario, Dallas, Boston, Lebanon, and Albany. The geography also conspired against me: after emerging from the hills of Roseburg, I-5 goes through the Willamette Valley, which in places looks an awful lot like the Sacramento Valley between Sacramento and Stockton. In other places, if you can ignore the mountains in the distance, it is a dead ringer for bucolic Wisconsin. I'd say that by 9:00 AM, it would have been really easy to brainwash me. Without too much work, I could have been persuaded that I was driving through Timbuktoo.

Fortunately, at the end of the day's travels, I was given the soundest of moorings to my surroundings. As we circled the Madison airport, the woman in the seat behind me pointed out a lake to her neighbor, and said, "oooh, that's Lake Wescahhnsun," pronouncing "Wisconsin" as only a true native can. Dinner really grounded us in the Dairy State. There is nothing, nothing in the world that tells you where you are like a dinner of deep-fried cheese curds, battered walleye, and a bottle of New Glarus Spotted Cow beer.

------------------

A note on the flying experience: the last leg of our journey was on a rather old Airbus A320, at the very back of the plane. The guy in front of me was big, and as soon as the flight started he almost violently reclined his seat as far as he could. I found myself thinking "I just don't know this guy well enough for him to fall asleep with his head in my lap."

America's Moving Adventure

Yesterday was d-day--our final move from Sacramento. The mezzuzot were removed from the doorways and the flag was lowered from the fort:
The original plan was to drive up in our two cars, but the big pile o' stuff (a lot of wine that the movers wouldn't touch, all the violin building stuff, four fiddles, an accordion, the stuff required for camping out for a month, a dog (but not a cat; more on that later)) all added up. So, America's Moving Adventure literally became "America's Moving Adventure (tm)" as we rented a U-haul and trailered up one of the cars.

California is my native land. The first time I moved away from California, what made it really hit home was looking backwards through an airplane window and seeing Mt. Shasta recede in the sunset. I got to relive that experience yesterday.
But wallowing in nostalgia for things lost is not conducive to progress. Forward!

Familiarity breeds...

Familiarity breeds something that is not contempt. This is becoming evident as I leave this neighborhood, in which I am one of many “familiars”. As it becomes known that the Real Doctor and I are leaving, people who I don’t know very well—and who don’t know me very well—tell me that they’ll really miss me.

It’s possible that they’ll really miss Opal, and I am lumped together with her. But it’s even more likely that Opal and I—or, “Tall Guy With Funny Hat and Cute Doglet”—are simply a familiar feature in the neighborhood. We’ve been here, walking around, every day for about a decade. We’re part of the atmosphere, just like Lady With Two Scotties, and Oriental Woman with Petunia the Puppy, and Cigar Guy, and Frizzy-haired Mom Who Walks Her Two Kids To School.

Like just about every other animal, we humans love regularity and habit, so we come to love these familiars. Heck, Cigar Guy could be an axe-murderer in his spare time, but he’s friendly and says Hi, and he’s a regular—so even though I don’t know him at all, I like him. This is probably what these familiar strangers are expressing to me and Opal when they say we’ll be missed. “Oh, there’s Tall Guy With Funny Hat and Cute Doglet—all’s well with the world.”

Take away those familiarities, and all is not well.

Another of the familiars who make me feel that this neighborhood was home was Elderly Italian-American Couple. They used to always go for a morning walk together, until he developed some joint issues and started walking separately. So I got used to seeing her pacing along by herself, and him slowly measuring out his walk with his cane. Both were good for a cheery hello and a brief discourse on the weather. But in the last couple of weeks, I’ve only seen her, and barely ever.

I saw her this morning, and crossed the street to talk with her, mainly to say that I’ve liked seeing them and that I’ll miss them when I leave the neighborhood. However, she told me—barely checking the tears—that her husband had been killed a couple of weeks ago. He was out for his morning walk, and a car backing out of a driveway in too much of a hurry ran him over. He died from his injuries. She had told him that he should go thataway that morning, and he did; and so he died. She can barely walk from grief. She makes it to church and back, crying both ways.

I’m pretty shaken by the loss of this familiar stranger. Like most of the familiar strangers, I know nothing of the personal lives of Elderly Italian-American couple; I can guess that they’d been married for a long, long time. I can be pretty certain that the loss of five decades of intimate familiarity feels like the end of the world.

Before and After

Gratitude

I am thankful for the unidirectional, noncyclic nature of time. It means that no matter what, I won't have to experience yesterday ever again.

(A day that begins with the Unnamed Cat somehow opening the valve on your Thermarest bed at 5:30 AM, and ends with wrestling a leaky toilet to a very damp draw at midnight just isn't ideal; I'll just say for now that those weren't the worst bits.)

In the spirit of exodus from Sacramento...

Dayenu!

Had I just the angst of knowing that I would be moving, Dayenu!

Had I just the anxiety of knowing that I would be moving, and to a new state, Dayenu!

Had I just the anxiety of knowing that I would be moving, and to a new state, and that we had to sell our house in one of the nation’s most depressed markets, Dayenu!

Had I just the anxiety of knowing that I would be moving, and to a new state, and that we had to sell our house in one of the nation’s most depressed markets, and that our 90-year old house had termite issues, Dayenu!

Had I just the anxiety of knowing that I would be moving, and to a new state, and that we had to sell our house in one of the nation’s most depressed markets, and that our 90-year old house had termite issues, and lead paint, Dayenu!

Had I just the anxiety of knowing that I would be moving, and to a new state, and that we had to sell our house in one of the nation’s most depressed markets, and that our 90-year old house had termite issues, and lead paint, and that we’d be moving during finals week, Dayenu!

Had I just the anxiety of knowing that I would be moving, and to a new state, and that we had to sell our house in one of the nation’s most depressed markets, and that our 90-year old house had termite issues, and lead paint, and that we’d be moving during finals week, and that the UC was trying to undo some of the Real Doctor’s pay, Dayenu!

Had I just the anxiety of knowing that I would be moving, and to a new state, and that we had to sell our house in one of the nation’s most depressed markets, and that our 90-year old house had termite issues, and lead paint, and that we’d be moving during finals week, and that the UC was trying to undo some of the Real Doctor’s pay, and that I’d have about four hours of sleep per night for the last week, Dayenu!

Had I just the anxiety of knowing that I would be moving, and to a new state, and that we had to sell our house in one of the nation’s most depressed markets, and that our 90-year old house had termite issues, and lead paint, and that we’d be moving during finals week, and that the UC was trying to undo some of the Real Doctor’s pay, and that I’d have about four hours of sleep per night for the last week, and the movers arrived ahead of schedule, Dayenu!

Had I just the anxiety of knowing that I would be moving, and to a new state, and that we had to sell our house in one of the nation’s most depressed markets, and that our 90-year old house had termite issues, and lead paint, and that we’d be moving during finals week, and that the UC was trying to undo some of the Real Doctor’s pay, and that I’d have about four hours of sleep per night for the last week, and the movers arrived ahead of schedule, and it started to hail when all of our stuff was out of the garage and in the driveway, Dayenu!

Had I just the anxiety of knowing that I would be moving, and to a new state, and that we had to sell our house in one of the nation’s most depressed markets, and that our 90-year old house had termite issues, and lead paint, and that we’d be moving during finals week, and that the UC was trying to undo some of the Real Doctor’s pay, and that I’d have about four hours of sleep per night for the last week, and the movers arrived ahead of schedule, and it started to hail when all of our stuff was out of the garage and in the driveway, and I woke up on the last day of class with a stomach ‘flu, Dayenu!

Had I just the anxiety of knowing that I would be moving, and to a new state, and that we had to sell our house in one of the nation’s most depressed markets, and that our 90-year old house had termite issues, and lead paint, and that we’d be moving during finals week, and that the UC was trying to undo some of the Real Doctor’s pay, and that I’d have about four hours of sleep per night for the last week, and the movers arrived ahead of schedule, and it started to hail when all of our stuff was out of the garage and in the driveway, and I woke up on the last day of class with a stomach ‘flu, and with a migraine, Dayenu!

Dai, dai-yenu, Dai, dai-yenu, dai, dai-yenu, daYEnudayeNU!

(For faithfulness to the original, there should be some mention of miracles--I suggest tea and tylenol.)

How to feel like a complete bastard

As part of the business of moving, we must sell our house. This means that we have to fix up a bunch of stuff to make it saleable--repair potential termite damage, replace a shingle on the roof, fix a leaky bathtub, paint, and fix up the front porch, which has these big cracks running through it.

This last issue means that we're going to have all kinds of conniptions on the front porch, which means that it's a totally unsuitable place for a hummingbird to build her nest.
Fortunately, she had just started--the nest was about 1/4 built, and there were no eggs. But we could watch her fly up with a bit of fluff, tuck it in, then sit in it and wiggle her butt to get it in place.
It had to go.

So, up the ladder I went, and down came the nest. It was mostly spiderwebs, and surprisingly solid in its attachment to the cable. But boy, did I feel like the lowest, meanest cur on this planet as I took it down.

That plus a buck-fifty will get you coffee at Starbuck’s

Both the Real Doctor and I will be leaving our current employment in June. I leave from an employment situation that other lecturers have described as akin to an abusive relationship. I have the anxiety and uncertainty of whether I’ll be employed every three months, the financial compensation that would be humorous were it not real, the lack of collegiality, and the outright hostility of the university administration. I don’t know yet what I am moving into, but I can say with certainty that it won’t be much worse. The Real Doctor, on the other hand, has a different departure. There was some testiness between her and her supervisor. This irritation--the sort of thing that leads to a movie’s producer and director citing “differences in artistic vision,” but actually meaning something far less appealing—has been sort of resolved, and sort of buried, so she is leaving on better terms.

I really doubt there’s going to be any official acknowledgement of my departure. I have rendered very useful (and hopefully competent) service to my department, but it’s not in the character of this department or any UC department to get overly worked up about teaching or the departures of staff. The situation is somewhat different for the Real Doctor. In general, the real doctors will at the very least go for a nice lunch or a dinner or cake or something. However, despite her imminent departure, no such plans have been made, which the Real Doctor finds a bit discomfiting.

It’s nice to receive recognition for one’s work. I have some evidence that I do an OK job teaching. The Real Doctor is a more-than-minimally-competent physician. Her patients seem to like her, and she takes the time to talk with them. Additionally, she does a lot of service work—organizing journal club, teaching family practice residents, and so forth. To our surprise, we both feel as if we should get some sort of official recognition for transcending mere competence.

We were talking about this during a bike ride the other day. Both of us, as soon as we had this feeling, wondered why we should have it, what exactly we wanted, and whether or not it this desire was morally objectionable. We both do our jobs, and we are both paid—exactly per contract. We are owed neither recognition nor cake. But money isn’t esteem. While money makes the world go ‘round, the esteem of peers lubricates the pivots. It’s not fungible, but it would mean a lot to me and the Real Doctor to get some sort of “good job!” from officialdom. It doesn’t make any sense at all, and it verges on greediness. I know the job I’ve done, and I need no certificate beyond my students being prepared for whatever is next in their lives.

Neither the Real Doctor nor I had a good solution to this puzzle about ourselves. So there it lies, destined in all likelihood to become a snarl of unresolved feelings when we leave in a few weeks.

What's buried in the garden

The Real Doctor and I are grappling with the frantic business of moving. So far this week, we have met with two realtors, a mover, three painters, and a general contractor. Monday, we meet with a pest inspector and a garden guy.

I’ve been spending some time every day trying to get some of the uglier weeds pulled out of our garden. At this point, it’s not terribly hard. Several years of persistent work have given us some very well established plants, so an hour’s toil makes a good patch of the yard look somewhat presentable. Of course, the garden is a work in progress. There are still plots that just haven’t gelled—something unsuitable got much too established, or something was established but just up and died, leaving a big dead spot. And of course, our neighbors still have vinca and St. Augustine grass, which requires unsleeping vigilance. A decade or so more would have made it perfect.

Leaving our garden will be one of the hardest things about leaving Sacramento. We have a loverly herb garden—just about every herb imaginable, six kinds of thyme, four kinds of oregano, winter savory, summer savory, rosemary, sage, chives, lemon grass, lemon balm, lemon verbena, lovage, horseradish, sorrel, and so on. It’s a joy to the nose, and not bad looking either. The plants are mature, forming nice mounds of deep green, yellow green, emerald green, olive green, gray green, and grass green. Elsewhere in the garden are fruit trees, asparagus, artichoke, the alstroemeria and irises (or irides) that my Mom gave me, and more. These replaced the wilderness of brambles and vinca that greeted us when we moved in.

All the philosophies that I use to console myself advise against attachment. This move is proving a mighty test of philosophical equanimity. Until now, I’ve never really understood attachment to a plot of land. After all, plants will grow in Oregon. But in my backyard here, there’s a bunch of time, a bunch of labor, a bunch of me and the Real Doctor. If you go out past the garage to that patch of lawn she liked to lie down on, and dig down about three feet, you’ll also find the decaying bones one of the best dogs I’ve ever known. So now, I kind of understand why patriots think that one particular bit of the earth’s surface is better than any other similarly endowed acreage.

But it could be worse, and it will get worse. My Mom’s garden is (as has been noted) better than yours, or mine, or pretty much anybody else’s. My parents are getting old and my Dad is infirm and fading into the fog of dementia. Their living situation gives them some hardship, and there are definitely mechanical aspects of their life that would be much improved by moving to an “assisted care facility” as the Real Doctor’s parents recently did. But I think it would destroy my Mom. Separating her from her house and garden—from the mature trees that she planted, from the exquisite collections of bulbs and aloes and succulents, from the landscape that she made—would be separating a body from its heart. Philosophers will counsel against attachment, and the intellect will nod sagely and agree. But reality and the heart can dissent loudly and painfully.

My inner philosopher compels me to note: I will not miss the leaky taps, the ill-fitting doors, the gentle breezes that one can feel indoors on a windy day, the unusable spaces in the kitchen, the three-quarters of the house that is uninsulated, the idiotic, outage-prone electrical system…

Now you're thinking with chickens!

I wanted to cook something that required some eggs, so I checked to see how many were in the 'fridge. Not enough. "No problem," thinks I, "I'll just wait a couple of days and then there will be enough."

Unfortunately, this sort of thinking no longer obtains. I eventually realized this, and after a short trip to the store, made some pasta carbonara. I miss my birds. They are apparently finding their way in the pecking order of their new home--a horrible process to human eyes, but I imagine that it is vaguely reassuring to the chicken psyche.

Alea jacta est!

The big deal in my life right now is that the Real Doctor and I (and Opal and as yet unnamed) will be moving this summer. I find moving traumatic, no matter how necessary it may be. I know enough of the Four Noble Truths to realize that the cause of this trauma is attachment, and that I need to let go of things, but it's still hard when those things have personality.

Last Sunday we said adieu to our yard chooks; they've gone to a new home with one of the Real Doctor's coworkers, and are busy finding their place in the existing pecking order. So, here's some last pictures of the girls, as they were bundled into a carrier and greener pastures. Goldie, the gold-laced wynadotte:
and Rosie the Rose comb Leghorn with Barbarella the Barred Rock:
I've already started missing them; I was ripping up some weeds in our overgrown backyard and found a big, fat, juicy, green caterpillar. I'd picked it up and started walking towards the coop before I realized that there would be nobody to fight over it.

Ave atque vale, birdies.