The Little Words Mean the Most

Webinar noir

Strange little webinar today. Award for traveling farthest: Indonesia attended at 2 AM their time. Spain attended 8 PM their time. The oddity? I took two question breaks yet elicited just one question, by a young fundraiser who talked in nothing but jargon. Which I pointed out to her, and she laughed. It's one of the most important lessons: you can't talk this way to donors; they literally (by which I mean, psychologically and emotionally) cannot understand your jargon. She did say one thing that penetrated: Kids raised by the government tend to turn out badly. My question-incurious webinar in action:

The Tuba Museum

My refuge: Traveler's Club Restaurant, a.k.a. the Tuba Museum, in Okemos, MI. It's that, too. More restaurant than museum, since the tubas hang from the walls unlabeled, and the specialties are draft beers and buffalo burgers. I'm having both, as I wait for the man-phobic cleaner to leave Jane's house. Today's pint: Dirty Bastard Scotch Ale, with "a punch" 8.5% abv, from Founder's Brewery in Grand Rapids; today's 2nd (and final) pint: Nut Brown Ale, from Michigan Brewing Company in Webberville. And if I get spirited, I can buy the Barack Obama presidential coffee cup here or the PB&J ice cream bar. This is one of my favorite spots on a Jane trip.

This place, Out of

Listening to Eric Burdon's heavenly, riff-thick 9:32 rerecording of the 1960's hit, We Gotta Get Out of the Place. My college buddy, Bob Kingsland, used to play this song obsessively whenever he grew restless. Which was often. He spent his summers scuba-diving at archaeological sites in Central America or tuna-spotting from an airplane off the New England coast. Last I heard, he had welded himself together a steel sailboat and was cruising the Caribbean.

 

The day so far. We spent the morning shuffling Jane's medical files between the hand surgeon's office and the back specialist's office. Jane is Simone's 80-plus mom. A feisty, unsentimental, complex woman and mother of six. That's nine words, and Jane's a couple of good volumes' worth. She's exercised every day since the mid-1960s. She has the bones of T-Rex, thanks a milf-fed youth. But she's falling apart. She's a Honda with a million miles on it. She's been in unrelenting pain for a week, needs an intervention, but can't take any drug stronger than Tylenol because tomorrow she's due for carpal tunnel surgery. She has another problem we heard over breakfast: she can't have a hard bowel movement without extruding her intestines, so she's on a laxative that turns it all to pond scum. "God, I hate my body," she groused.

I'm about to decamp for an Internet cafe, where I can write, eat, email. I need to leave because Jane's house cleaner is due soon. Apparently, the woman is terrified of men. It's better if I'm gone when she arrives. No complaints here: one of my life goals is to scare as few people as possible. And, as it happens, this Internet cafe is the area's best pie company, too. On the seasonal pie clock, the hour hand now points toward strawberry rhubarb, probably my favorite after dutch apple with crumb crust.

Why every wine-drinking American should make one trip to France

To see how wine should be priced. I'm in East Lansing, MI, on Jane's deck, laptopping, sipping a wine purchased last night, Puydeval 2007, from the Pays d'Oc (i.e., Land where they say Oc instead of Oy [today, oui]). Our French house is there, in the Pays d'Oc. Puyvedal is quite nice: 60% cabernet franc, 30% syrah, 10% merlot. A sunny personality with a rind of plum, mid-fruity.

Cost here in Michigan, about $14 at the local rip-off wine merchant, Dusty Cellars. (OK, not that bad. Pretty typical, actually.) As Mr. T liked to say, "I pity the poor fool..." who has to purchase wine in America, where a $35 bottle of wine at Dusty's is seen as mid-range. Oh, duck! Quack, quack. Wine is NOT a luxury good. In France, a $10 wine is mid-range. And quaffable-to-delicious-to-shockingly lovely and different.

On the air highway: connection Minneapolis

Maybe there are only tortoises or hares. Human metaphorically speaking.

The tortoise behind the bar deep inside the Minneapolis airport asks me if I want a shot to go with my wine. No. An offer worth exploring, though, if you're in the mood. I like the feel of a bar pressed into my sternum. He's wearing a pretty good Hawaiian shirt in an Polynesian-themed joint, so I ask him if the company supplies the duds. No: bought it himself; the company one was a fire-hazard, aesthetically anyway.

Next to me, this German guy in a dark suit shoulders in. Wants to cash out. Bartender asks how the trip's been. Oh, geez! The guy laments his long day from Frankfurt. Major suffering! Accepts his change, walks away. Leaves nothing. "You're very generous," the bartender coos toward the gods. You don't tip waiters and bartenders in France. Germany, too? I now wonder. Still, we're kissing Minneapolis here, so technically the German guy's just proven he's a thoughtless asshole. Learn the local customs, Siegfried.

"Last call" is the next thing. It's 9 p.m. I order a second glass of cab for the road. My next flight lands in Calgary at midnight. I feel lazy. A tiny bit drunk would be nice for the rest of the evening.

The tortoise sees me taking notes in my Mini Legal Pad, manufactured in Roaring Spring, PA. The pad advertises its STIFF BACK; its broken back now, after thousands of miles in the outermost pocket of my carry-on. They sell these mini-pads to nano-lawyers. Don't let their size fool you, though. They are every shocking thing lawyer jokes imply.

"You a writer?" asks the tortoise. Affirmative. "What'd'ya write?" I tell him. "Poet," he admits about himself. "Published a couple of chapbooks. Worked for a decade as a reporter on...." He names a rag I don't know. "Been working here since 9/11." In the airport bar. Journalism is a bad trade and getting worse. Nice Hawaiian shirt though. Leave him a tip and a half. Hope to see him again someday.

The drunk next door

Kelly the roofer was wiry. He wove down the airplane aisle and pointed at the seat next to me, laughing. "I don't know what's up with them at Chili's," he said. "I was there at 6:30" in the morning "and the waitress asked me if I wanted a drink. I had three vodkas. Guy next to me gave me gum to chew so they'd let me on board. Canadians, ay? Love to drink." He smiled. "Don't worry about me, though. I'll be out in ten."

He liked take-offs. "Like the speed, ay?" The rest didn't interest him. He was en route from a drunken birthday party to a promised-to-be-drunken wedding where the bride-to-be avoided him as much as possible.

We talked about Clint Eastwood. Kelly had a favorite quote from The Unforgiven. This was the second quote from that movie I'd heard in two days, both from guys. One recalled the character William Munny saying, "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have." Kelly recited, giggling, "You better bury Ned right! Better not cuttem', otherwise harm no whores! Or I'll come back and kill everyone of you sons of bitches...." as Munny reared out of town in a downpour. The heavens wept. Oh, Clint: the classic pathetic fallacy. Although it always works on me: give me a heavy rain, in real life or in film; and you own me, emotionally.

I spent the four hours Kelly slept watching movies and listening to music. Air Canada. They've become a flying entertainment center. The back-of-the-seat touch screen offered a dozen recent films I could stop and start as I pleased, TV shows, news, an iTunes-like music selection, games, and satellite radio. When we landed, Kelly awoke as we braked at the gate. I offered him aspirin. He counter-offered to buy me a beer. But I had to run. I got through US customs and security and arrived at my gate with 10 minutes to spare. In Kelly's honor, I purchased the sacred beer, the time-to-let-your-hair-down glass that marks the end of a journey across North America and back in three days: Molson on tap, $10 Canadian with tip. And boarded the Beech 1900D through the rain. I was seated next to the right-side turboprop. It was like sitting on a vibrator for two hours, with a cold wind sailing between my shins.

Does this podcast make me look fat?

Fortunately, no, because we turned off the video. I've just spent the nicest, most informative, back-and-forth hour with (1) Jeff Brooks, creative director at Merkle, and (2) Steven Screen, founder of UberDirect. They're in Seattle. I'm in Little Rhody. (Both rainy today.) We record via Skype a podcast re: donor newsletters. Our hour of professional chatter, honks, wheezes, and false starts, gets edited down to 20 tight minutes. It will be posted in a week or so on the Fundraising is Beautiful website.

Gardening in the rain

I think gardening in an unsteady rain might be my favorite kind of gardening. It's about all we have to choose from lately, anyway.

Today's rain started so light you could count the navy blue drops on my slate blue shirt for a long while, as I made the rounds, tending to one small remembered task after another. Trimming hair. Pulling the willing weeds.

The good weeds are the ones that give up the struggle without intrigue. They come out willingly, root, runner and all. Quitters actually win in this game. As long as I can easily prevent weeds from taking over, I'll leave some, the interesting ones, in the perennial beds.

Tough-rooted weeds, though, must be BANISHED from the garden UTTERLY and with NO chance of redemption. Same as the old British policy for crushing Scotland's rebels: Eradicate them, root and stock.

Light rain to steady rain, fine. It's the perfect time for a second feeding, too; to boost flower displays. I fling fertilizer granules from tall rocks I moved into position, that give me a downward angle into the foliage. Te rain will help wash the food in. I don't feel like sweating under rain gear, even though I've got a chest cold that feels like I have a vegetable brush where my lungs meet. I'll shift to dry clothes when I come in.

John Whelan's 50th

John is the one-time Irish button accordion champ and composer of "Simone," a tune commissioned for my wife's 50th and recorded on one of John's best CDs.

Yesterday was John's 50th. Musicians and neighbors arrived all rainy day. Sometimes 3 flutes, 5 fiddles, multiple guitars, multiple banjos, a drum were all playing the same song in a circle under the tent. Tables bowed with food. We talked to the guy who plays the bones, and he showed us how it's done. Simone talked to the guy in the kilt with the jeweled knife stuck in his sock. And some Irish celebrity musician showed up whom everyone rushed to greet. One tall man reeled away from the mob, saying over his shoulder, "Ah, a man such as yourself is busy." Too busy for the likes of me, was the implication I heard.

Every day has a little adventure. While Simone spoke with her mom by cell phone, I pulled into a highway rest area to, you know, rest. On the way in, a middle-aged white guy in a Yankees ball cap leaned toward me and asked quietly, "Can I talk to you for a second?" He closely resembled my brother-in-law, Larry Kramer. My defenses shut off. The guy told me his car had unexpectedly run out of gas, some gauge wasn't working; his parents were waiting for him to pick them up at Logan airport; and he'd forgotten his wallet at home. "This is very embarrassing." He looked it, too.

"Will twenty do it?" I fished one out.

"I'll send it back to you!" he insisted. I said no. People have done me favors all my life. Scam? Sure, could be possible. It felt good anyway. Helping always does. MRIs prove it.

Diary entries for early June, this sad year