IMHO

Decades ago I opened A Thousand Acres, realized an affair was on the way, closed the book and took it right back to the library. The Iowa women I've encountered don't behave like that and I was offended. This year, I read further, kept King Lear in mind and became engrossed in just a few chapters.

The King Lear of the novel is a cantankerous, even evil, man who has gathered his thousand acres by profiteering off of others. He is able to work this enormous spread by using two of his daughters and their spouses, all but the Cordelia of the piece, who has escaped the farm and her father's evil by dint of the protection of the sisters who raised her. Cordelia, who has made her own life as a lawyer, is clueless as her father's mind unravels and the children he has subjugated are caught in an impossible web of circumstances as his deteriorating judgment and behavior first embarrass them, then turn the entire community and Cordelia against them.

All this happens during the 80s when farm bankruptcy was an epidemic and CAFO's were getting started. It was fascinating to read a book that is so authentic in it's portrayal of the daily routines of Iowans - the canning (or rather jarring) of beans and preserves, the work ethic, the well water poisoned by chemicals considered essential to farming. Only the baking of bread is missing. I am sure Ginny and Rose baked bread as well as cleaning, canning and pitching in with the heavier farm work when needed.

I set the book aside the first time because it seemed inauthentic. I read to the end this time because of it's authenticity, the realizations Ginny came to about her oldest relationships, the basic goodness and decency that trapped her and made it impossible to extricate herself from the inexorable destruction of not only the farm that had been her home, but the relationships that had surrounded and bolstered her. In the end, her basic decency means that she chooses to remain silent, remain the villain to her Cordelia, believing it was better to allow her to remain ignorant than to shatter the illusions, destroy what we mistakenly think of as innocence.

It is raining hard today. Water streams down my driveway, puddling at it's base. Over in campustown passing cars raise a wall of water that swamps their own windshields. My rain barrels had been getting low and I was glad to have to pick my way carefully along the tilting sidewalk pavement in my venerable neighborhood to avoid dousing my socks coming home this evening.

On the bus I had been thinking about the partially used can of Campdry in my basement - wondering if the fellows who live in the picture you see here had used some for their tents. There is a small community here along an inviting woodland path, each dwelling not quite out of sight of the other.

This is where a homeless man was murdered last year. A resident tells me another was stabbed last week. The police have a shoe print, he said, and some blood.

My guide moved here last February. February, for those of you who have never spent a winter in Iowa, is deadly. Utilities here are not allowed to cut off service in February. You have to wonder how a company can get away with foreclosure in that deadliest of all months; who could make the decision; who could enforce it.

Maybe my partly used can of Campdry would run out before they could weatherproof their tents. It would be no good to them now at any rate, because it's raining. You can't use Campdry in the rain.

I change into dry pants and socks and sit in front of my TV, warm and dry, thankful that my rainbarrels are filling; stroking my cat. I think about men who live in tents, imagine they must be uncomfortable, realize that I can't be completely comfortable either...`

Labels: Homelessness

I was in the bowels of my basement this afternoon, sorting through a collection of nails and screws when I noticed a bumblebee crawling on the floor. A dusty gob of detritus-laden spiderweb trailed behind him, impeding his progress. It wasn't hard to entice him to crawl onto a scrap of rag and take him outside, where he readily crawled onto a dandelion bloom. The trailing web stuck to and pulled at his wing. There was a long white hair attached to it somehow that wound around to one of his legs, binding it, as well.

He was still hanging to the blossom when I returned with a pair of scissors, pulled on the hair and cut him free.

By the time the camera arrived he had dropped off the dandelion and was drinking from that other beautiful and equally reviled little spring beauty called Creeping Charlie. As I fiddled with the settings, he crawled from one blossom to another, began to buzz, and flew off, leaving me with this oneric image.

Last Thursday Reiman Gardens opened it's Dinosaur exhibit. While taking pictures I heard the trilling of Bufo americanus. It's a beautiful song. In my neighborhood I am lucky to hear one or two. Here it was a chorus.

Click on the picture and you'll see the full image. Note the pouch under his chin. The little guy is singing his heart out.

You can find a close up of this elegant black fellow on the Clemson University site:

http://www.clemson.edu/cafls/departments/forestry/cef/images/herpetofauna/anura/bufo_americanus.jpg

One of the joys of spring in Iowa is the sight of our native milkweed seeds emerging from the pod that protected them
all winter.

The wind will catch these shining silken threads soon and lift them up into the sky where they will carry their seeds away, coming to rest, hopefully,
in a welcoming place,
nourished by a gardener who cherishes
the old fashioned lavender blooms
and the monarchs who will
feed and breed beneath them.

This deer trail follows the human one used by scavengers of the original Ames dump. Fanciers of old bottles with a certain patina rendered by age, earth, and weather gather over there to hunt. It is said a homeless man was murdered nearby.


I wonder if crows gathered to cacophanize him, these deer stepping carefully around those stilled limbs?

This looks like a companionable threesome - a man, his dog, and a squirrel - or is this a rabbit? - walking side by side down the sidewalk until you happen to notice the squirrel/rabbit stepping in the man's tracks (or is it the man stepping on the squirrel/rabbit's tracks?). Even with Obama in office, I guess we'll have to wait awhile to see those lions and lambs lying down together...

These crows were making quite a racket in those trees. Since they are scavengers, I looked for an injured animal, but when I got too close for comfort they flew. The mob of crows, surprisingly, included a large greyish white bird. I expected it to be a hawk, but it may well have been an owl.




So what kind of a relationship was this? Were they mobbing a predator, following a hunter whose leavings might sustain them as well?