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The Views They Are a-Changin'

6/25/2012

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Now

Now through misty eyes

Now through squinty eyes

Now I's adjusting to later

Lucky me. A house with a crackerjack view.

A bonus, it turned out.

Five years ago, I moved into what I called an "evolving neighborhood," which essentially meant that I expected, for a chunk of my immediate future, to awaken to the sounds of backhoes and concrete trucks, hammer strikes and power nailers.

Then arrived that teetery economy you might have heard something about. And my imagined intimacies with heavy equipment thudded to a halt, my evolving neighborhood one big goose egg that never hatched.

But more than pollination was going on in the weedy vacancies: incubation, apparently, as last fall there began a rumble. Followed by a convoy of dump trucks. Then flatbeds loaded with lumber and trusses. Soon, houses began to erupt from the intermittent gaps on my side of the street. Houses which have subsequently begun erupting with people, neighborly people.

So, no real surprise last month when I noticed surveyor's markers in the empty field across the street. And this morning, on my computer screen, detailed development plans provided by the city. But wouldn't you just know it: in these intervening years I've grown mighty fond of that view of no houses beyond my front windows: the meadow and its shifting colors; the scurry and freeze of killdeer; clouds chugging across the sky, the hawks floating and diving; the black locomotive of weather powering in from the west. If I squint and look to the north and west, I can see the ant line of traffic coming into town on Coburg Road. And there's the county land behind, where backyard burning is seasonally allowed, from which the acrid smoke rises in tiny columns before dissipating into the wind. Not to mention all the poems which have come to me from that field, merely by the act of my looking out into it.

Despite all the obvious signs of change, it was just this past weekend that I realized this would be the final summer I'd have this view, this bonus of the past five years. I'm stoic, reminding myself of the evolving neighborhood of my original euphemism. Certainly there will be new vistas to enjoy: the growth of the houses (which I actually find a compelling process), the arrival of newcomers, finches and jays in the street trees, the night views with others' windows lit up, lives revealed from the inside out. To my future neighbors who will inherit their own transient moment with my view, I hope that it fills you as much as it has me.

And now to haul a lawn chair to the third floor bathroom. If I arrange it "just so" on the platform of the tub, I'll be able to watch the colors on the Coburg hills ebb and flow in the evening light.

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What's New, Pussycat?

6/18/2012

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Now you don't see it . . .

Now you do!

After watching Frida Kahlo, the cat, play the shell game, I thought about trying this with my own cat, Kobi.

Thought about it. Kobi, though primarily socialized by dogs and humans, still remains true to his feline essence. That is to say—he pretty much does what he wants, when he wants, in whatever way he wants. And, at 14, he's beyond responding to the elementary insults that might have sustained the interest of his younger self.

Besides, I'm a believer in not asking anyone to do things I'm unwilling to do myself. And if I'm going to ask Kobi to set aside his resistance to learning something new, I ought to be open to doing the same myself. Oh, ugh.

But wait a minute! Haven't I already been doing just that?

When I worked mornings at the post office, I often needed to pass along new information to my customers. When they couldn't apprehend a convoluted restriction or a change in the rates, I'd reassure them by joking that it was okay—they were only required to learn one new thing each day. If they'd just absorb what I had to tell them, they'd be free to keep their minds empty for the rest of the day. Now this was the motivation they needed to hear!

I was kidding with them, but I've always believed that once we stop learning, we may as well pack up our boxing gloves and head below ground as earthworm chow. So one of my daily obsessions is to read something believe is of no interest to me. A review of anti-perspirants, for example. Or a newspaper article on budget wrangling in a State not mine. A trade magazine essay on the history of rototillers.

Of course, what makes me yawn might be just the thing that gets your pupils dilating. But the subject doesn't matter much. It's all about crooking a toe into unexplored waters and seeing what sort of treasure can be hooked. The tidbits I've snagged and stowed away have served me well over all this time—at the supper table and water cooler, in line for pizza, in the bleachers waiting for a match to start. As happens when children play telephone, it's impossible to predict where one delicious fact might end up. Best of all, I've even created a few poems along the way.

I think I'll find a catnip treat and some walnut shells, give ol' Kobi a try after all. Perhaps I'll even learn something, once I read past the headlines of his bared claws.

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If I'd Only Had The Googles

6/11/2012

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If I only had a brain, sings the Scarecrow so famously in the 1939 film classic, The Wizard of Oz.

I'm beyond wanting a brain. Just give me The Google. Or The Googles. (If singular is good, is plural better?) My midlife filing system may be getting a bit corrupt, but it turns out that there's still more than enough room in the interstices for me to keep chucking in the data.

Although I realized long ago that my mother had lied when she told me, "You can do anything you set your mind to" (my shaky hands, for instance, could never have managed a scalpel), my mind is still as eager a trapper as it ever was, those bits and bytes in my head sparkling like fireflies in a jar. And while I know that all that brain junk rattling around certainly doesn't make me any smarter, it does make me feel more secure. Which is something, I'll admit, that counts for a lot.

I was an inquisitive kid, always poking into things. My mother would drop me off at the library (a mother could do things like that, then) and leave me there for hours while I explored the day away. The trouble was, my curiosity was squelched by insecurity. I was easily embarrassed and equally afraid to admit what I didn't know. Ever worried about doing the wrong thing, I often did nothing at all. The answers to all my questions were limited to what I discovered by chance on my own.

So went my education, spiraling like a barber's pole in its contained little circle. I stuck with resources I knew I could access without risk of failure or humiliation. The dictionary was a faithful friend. The encyclopedia as well. The World Book filled the bookshelves at home. The library carried the intimidating Encyclopædia Britannica (with its funny spelling, so few pictures, and all that tiny print!) and something called Compton's, which even to a young girl seemed a resource only "babies" would use. I would never have dared to approach the librarian and ask for help. When I finally figured out how to use the card catalog, I felt as if I'd discovered the universe.

So I wonder what access to The Googles in 1968 would have meant to a girl like me, a girl who faked her way through everything so she wouldn't have to admit to not knowing anything. Not that it really matters now—aren't we all our worst enemies, in one way or other? But I'll tell you this: Last night when I happened on a bit of computer shorthand I didn't recognize, I didn't have to ask anyone but my trusty, faithful Internet friend.

Which means I can turn to you now in all my cool hipness and say with confidence that

I <3 The Googs!

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Read All About It!

6/4/2012

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SWAT!

I was published this morning.

In the "Mailbag" (aka: Letters to the Editor) section of the Register-Guard, our local newspaper.

What fired me up was a headline which appeared a few days ago above an article about a trio of 20-ish siblings who'd been "spinning cookies" in their car, the driver allegedly drunk. The headline referred to the behavior as "driving antics."

Antics? Really? Dictionary.com, my handy ready-reference, defines antic(s) as "a playful trick or prank." To my mind, there is nothing playful, tricky or prankish about such behavior. And I imagine—would like to imagine—that most grown-ups agree with me on that.

Don't worry. However worthy a rant, I'm not going to lecture about drinking and driving. (I'll leave that to MADD, which has spent three decades working to get that particular message across.) My beef is with sloppy language—in this case, the sloppy editing that allowed a headline to equate reckless endangerment with playground hijinks.

I can't speak to what led the writer of that particular headline to miscast the word "antics," though I can theorize aplenty: Was it a lack of understanding of the actual definition of the word? Tone-deafness to the nuances of meaning? A biased perspective on the seriousness of driving while impaired? Perhaps it was a simple matter of economy, the word chosen for the purpose of meeting that day's space requirements. Regardless of the reason, the choice of one word over another can make a huge difference in the message we send.

Today's editor didn't have to print my letter with its stinging tone. But it was printed. I like to think that my message was heard. That it was important enough to pass along.

Our voices matter. Words matter. Choose wisely.

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The Views They Are a-Changin'

What's New, Pussycat?

If I'd Only Had The Googles

Read All About It!

Nancy Carol Moody

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