I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or soles. How soles of feet know
Where they are supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?
- Pat Schneider, from Another River: New and Selected Poems, 2005
I tried to chime in on the last post in response to Matthew's comment about growing things in the summer, but for some reason the comment section wouldn't allow it. Maybe I am too far away?
I feel very far away - in a totally different season really. Paris summers are much more like our springs, and I am very happy about that. I have learned to think of North Florida summers like folks think about winter in the north - a time to let the garden rest. Even things that can survive the heat - eggplant, seminole pumpkins, some pole beans, peppers, cherry tomatoes, okra, and peanuts, for example - are better off planted in May, not June.
It's best to use the summer for spreading manure, mulching, and building your compost pile. In addition, I would highly recommend perusing the seed catalogs, prefarably while floating down the Ichetuknee river or in one of our many beautiful springs. Even better if you can also manage to balance a little bowl of muscadines or boiled peanuts on that tube.
You can begin to start plants from seeds again in late August. This planting guide from the the University of Florida exension office is a great help and inspiration for next season's garden. Scroll down to Table 4 for times to plant.
Enjoy this season of harvest and rest!
Whether you are into bio-regionalism, the locavore or local food movement, food security, sustainability or whatnot, gardening seems to be at the center. And the prime purpose of a garden, of course, is to be able to grow your own food.
But I have a little confession to make. Behind the utilitarian value of it all, I’ve discovered that I am a bit of an aesthete as well.
Sunday, despite the ungodly high temperature (heat index over 110 degrees!), my son and I spent over two hours beautifying our little plot—picking up trash from around the vacant lot, rearranging the bags of leaves we use in our compost, cutting down the overgrown grass around the garden’s perimeter, and so on. We also managed to pick around 90 incredibly delicious cherry tomatoes, 175 pole beans, and various peppers, some okra and squash too. And even though the food is the main thing (and the little orange tomatoes were especially delicious), the best part of the day was stepping off a little ways away and taking in how beautiful the garden looked after our efforts. (And in the interest of full disclosure, it’s our friend Bob who has been doing the really hard work over the past weeks—weeding.)
I appreciate the vegetables very much, but it is the flowers which really move me and draw me to our garden. Zinnias and sunflowers dominate the front edge and the heart of it. When I see them through the wire fence at the back of our garden, or coming round the corner of the house that sits on the front of the lot, or from my car window as I drive slowly by along 2nd Street, I get a catch in my throat. They’re beautiful. I’m kind of giddy as my eyes are drawn skyward to gaze on the new sunflower just opened; I am lighthearted and joyful when, after being gone a few days, I return to find a dozen multi-colored zinnias suddenly burst open during my absence.
So, with apologies to Dorothy and the immigrant women who first coined the slogan at the Lawrence Textile Strike in 1912: “I want vegetables, yes—but sunflowers too.”
-John
Two kind friends
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
- Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian poet
This week, and several times a year usually, we have a group of high school or college students doing a "retreat" with us at the Gainesville Catholic Worker. The retreats are equal parts spirituality, service and education. But the goal is the same: to share something we’ve learned that we think is really important and essential to being human at this time and in this place.
Our own desire to live differently and to learn to live in
the rhythms and cycles of a particular place are really only part of the
challenge. A sense of self-reliance, an ethic of limitation and responsible use
of resources, respect and compassion for others—all these things must also be
passed on to the generation which follows us. Many of them are already way
ahead of us compared to where we were at that age. But the lies and
misrepresentations about what makes a “good life” are still being spun, with
horrifying speed and incredible effectiveness, by our opponents on Madison Ave and
Wall Street, in Hollywood
But more than this, we have a responsibility to our children
and our grandchildren. When they come seeking, we need to make the time—and
have the patience and willingness—to pass it on.
-John
Our life at the Gainesville Catholic Worker might be best
summed up by the word hospitality. Our meals often consist of 8, 12, 15, or even
30 or more people. Our doorbell rings a dozen (sometimes two or three times
that) times a day, with friends or visitors looking for a place to sit out of
the sun for awhile, a drink of water, asking to use the phone, and so on. And
we regularly have people who have no other place to go staying with us
overnight—29 different guests stayed with us this past year for a total of
about 450 nights.
Hospitality is often defined by the work of mercy dictate
“welcome the stranger.” But the phrase doesn’t quite capture what I think we
do. For the most part, we “welcome our friends,” or even our “brothers and
sisters.” Maybe you could dismiss it as semantics, but I don’t think that would
be fair.
Perhaps one of the most countercultural and therefore
difficult aspects of “learning to live locally” is the simple task of getting
to know one’s neighbors. Colloquially, we may think of neighbors as those
persons who live in proximity to us. My own faith tradition defines neighbors
as those who treat others, especially those in need, with mercy. But our
society functions to steer us away from the practice of “neighborliness,” which
is just another word for hospitality. We learn to turn primarily inward, to be
concerned for our own needs first, and the needs of those in our immediate
family. As children, we’re taught to be suspicious of the stranger and we continue
to operate out of that mentality even as adults. The most divisive voices among
us—whether in the media or politics or economics or religion or culture—stir up
our fear of each other, and frighten us into a world of “us and them,” with
“us” being whittled down to ever smaller circles.
The truth is that if we are going to live locally, then we
are going to have to learn to start seeing others as being “in the boat” with
us. We’re going to have to learn to lend a hand and then also turn around and
ask for help when needed. We’re going to have to learn to work together,
sharing food and garden space and tools and maybe even our homes. We’re going
to have to meet and talk with and get to know people very different than
ourselves. And we’re going to have to figure out how to share what we do have,
sometimes doing without or making a sacrifice so that what we have will go a
little further to help our neighbor, our friend, our brother or sister in need.
Neighborliness, the practice of hospitality, is something
every single one of us can do right now. We can think of that which we have as
being not simply for us and our families, but, in the most honest sense, for
others. Welcoming a guest to our table; sharing the produce from our garden
with our neighbor next door or someone with whom we work; exploring how that
extra bedroom no one ever sleeps in might be made available to someone who
really needs a place to stay.
If we are to live locally, then we need to re-learn what it means to be a neighbor, as well learning the names and hearing the stories of our neighbors. The antidote for this economic collapse we’re experiencing now (and for the ones sure to come in the future) is not to draw the circle ever tighter and to protect what it is ours. The antidote is to reach out wider, to get to know one another, to care for each other. And to remember that we’re all in this together.
-John
We will feel forgiven for a past that was not all it should have been when we commit to a future which is what it should be. - John O'Donahue, Anam Cara
John is on a work-related trip to D.C. this week, so neither of us are being local... But I was delighted today to see one of my favorite local "weeds" growing on purpose in a formal French garden: Spiderwort!
I had heard that this maligned wildflower was coddled in cottage gardens in Britain; I was happy to find it in Paris as well. It's a bit paler and pinker than our robust local version, but it was lovely interplanted ith a bed of red roses. It lined the walkway of a portion of the 4.5 km "Promenade Plantée," - the beautiful linear garden planted along an ancient viaduct that begins less than a mile from my apartment and end at the Bastille. Seeing it today was like running into an old friend! (I'm a bit lonely.)
I was amazed when I arrived in Paris on Saturday by all the people on the sidewalks dragging carts of household goods behind them. As I approached Joe's street, I saw why. Apparently the mayor of this particular area of Paris declared the day a "Grand Vide Grenier" or "Empty Your Attic" - a giant garage sale. All along both sides of the street and beneath the tents used for the weekly market, neighbors were spreading out their stuff. Besides being generally interested in what it is exactly that Parisians have in their closets and attics, I really enjoyed seeing the many backgrounds represented by the things Joe's diverse neighborhood was jetisoning. Plus I had forgotten socks (it is cooler than I expected), and I was asked to bring children's books home to a new French teacher I know. Score!
Of all the ways to get rid of excess things, my least favorite is the garage sale - so much trouble for so little return. And as much as we like to buy used things, you have to wonder if all the driving to get to them negates the other resources saved.
This seemed like a wonderful solution, and do-able at home too. Parking wouldn't be a problem because you could just stroll around your own neighborhood. It would be a way to formalize and streamline what neighbors have traditionally done in the past when we knew each other better - trade children's clothes for the next size up, exchange toys, share books, tools, etc. on a larger scale. If the enconomy continues to slide, maybe there will be more folks willing to "empty their attics"at the neighborhood level.
