With reference to the last post, somebody has asked about the bowling ball which appears to be a fixture in my front yard. I can tell you now, those are not for beginners--they are quite difficult to grow from seed. I have a pink one behind the house. These tend to wander off--they way they reproduce is by rolling down the street until they find a suitable mate.
Michael McGrorty
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Well, it's November and that means another springtime here in Pasadena, Ca. We get two of them here--the usual one and another just before Thanksgiving. You know--cooler weather and just enough tang in the air to encourage new plantings.
And so, I've been out in the yard working in preparation for this time of year. The pictures below show what used to be a patch of lawn in my front yard, now with the sod removed, the soil improved and a border installed. Also, you will see some large ceramic pots and one rectangular planter box there; the latter being transferred from the back yard. And boy, was that square box heavy.
Eventually I will remove a good deal more of the front lawn. We have a very large, wonderful old live oak next to the street, and I don't like the idea of damaging its roots, so I have to go carefully with the sod removal. If you think that soil looks good, it does, Chief: it has been sifted through a 1/8 inch riddle and then had riddled manure added as well. Soft as flour. Only took me what, thirty hours. But that's what I enjoy the most--the doing, not the done-ness. At any rate, I'll post pictures when the place is planted and things begin coming up.
Michael McGrorty
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Everybody has a fantasy--a secret dream they turn around and around in the mind when things get dull. I've got a few dozen. One of them involves a particular set of products. Want to know what I'm like, real deep down? Take a look at these websites, but remember, this is real personal stuff.
http://www.wwmfg.com/product_category.asp?idcategory=1
http://www.garrettwade.com/jump.jsp?itemType=PRODUCT&itemID=107076
M. McGrorty
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Today I had to take my terriers to the vet for an appointment. One of them, Tulip, needed a blood test. If you own any animals you know what it is to wait for the vet to see your creature: the waiting room is a mix of dogs, cats and people, with an occasional reptile, too. Most of the time there aren’t any significant problems—at least not among the animals.
While I was waiting, a fellow maybe in his mid-thirties showed up, carrying one of those cardboard boxes that copy paper comes in. Out of the hand-hole I could see the white face and green eyes of a cat.
Sometimes people are upset when they come to the vet—animals can break your heart, especially when they are sick or in pain. The fellow with the boxed cat looked like he was trying hard to hold something in. After a while he couldn’t keep it down anymore, and growled at the receptionist,
“I’ve got this cat here. He got ripped up again. He’s all torn up.”
The lady at the desk said, “I know, Sir. We talked just now on the phone. It will only be a few minutes.”
The man gripped the lid of the box as though it contained a tiger, though the cat inside didn’t make a sound or a shiver.
The man suddenly barked, “I just want this finished. Sixty dollars to put a cat down! Fifty dollars just to walk through the door!”
I asked the man if the cat had been attacked by a dog. He sat there staring at the wall, then mumbled, “He got out. Dog ate him up. Full of holes. All infected.”
After this there was a space of silence, then the man went back to griping about the cost of putting down a cat. I decided that it would be better to go for a walk outside rather than risk an incident which would require my wife to throw money down for bail. As I left the room I surveyed the faces of the others—it looked like I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to breathe the same air as the man with the torn-up cat.
When I was done with the vet, the man with the injured cat was still in the waiting room. The last thing I saw was that pair of green eyes, staring through the hand-hole in the cardboard box. On the drive home my two terriers were very quiet, like they get when they think something has made me upset.
Add a CommentMichael McGrorty
I recently received an email about a nephew of mine who will be interviewing soon for admission to Harvard Medical School. I'm very proud of the boy, but I wanted him to know that it wasn't that big a deal. So I called up the school and read my qualifications to a lady in the admissions office. She put me on hold and when she came back, she told me that my background could definitely get me in. She gave me some information, and I plan to contact them first thing tomorrow. Wait till I tell my nephew. He thinks he's so big. If you want to see if you qualify for entry, just give them a buzz. Bet they take me first. Here's the information:
Harvard Medical School
Anatomical Gifts Program
260 Longwood Avenue, TMEC 158
Boston, MA 02115
617-432-1735
617-432-0425 (fax)
The Los Angeles Times continues to run its regularly-updated feature on homicide in the local area; the article is complete with a map indicating the scene of the murders. A very interesting and useful tool for numerous applications.
The New York Times also has a homicide map available; you can find it at http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20060428_HOMICIDE_MAP.htm This map is not updated, but the data may be presumed to represent current trends.
And even Topeka, as well: http://www.topeka.org/crimestats/Map.aspx
And all the rest: http://www.programmableweb.com/tag/crime
The interesting thing about the L.A. Times’ map and information is that the researcher may discover just how safe she is, or not. You can also find where to go, or places to avoid, especially at prime murder rush hours; you can plan, let’s say, not to be non-white in a particular part of town in the middle of the night.
Cynics like me risk coming to the conclusion that murder at our American rates is tolerated because of the characteristics of the victims, but that’s the chance you take looking at raw figures. Explore, but don’t stay out too late.
Add a CommentMichael McGrorty
Today was not the very best of days. A friend of mine has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. There is not much more to say about that right now, nor much more that ought to be.
Needing some diversion from that, I went out to a second-hand store and found a very nice oak hall table that I can either use as-is or refinish to suit. I really didn’t need to be in that end of town, but wanted diversion. Sometimes (and I’ll only tell you this if you can keep it to yourself) I also visit the animals at the shelter here in town. It is a kind of therapy, but I can’t explain why.
At any rate, I parked down the block a piece and then walked to the shelter. From a distance I could hear the scattered barks and yips of the residents. The lady at the desk let me come in—they always do—and I passed through to the area where the animals are kept for adoption.
This shelter is maintained very nicely: the floors are always clean and it hardly smells of animals at all, certainly less than many other places I’ve visited. I noticed that they have an alligator in one pen. He was dozing and didn’t want to talk so I moved on. I said hello to a lot of different terriers; one of them was so very small that it seemed he could have walked out between the bars if he’d wanted to. The cardboard sign said that he had been found just the day before. I told him I hoped his owners would come around soon.
Most of the smaller dogs were either cheerful or nervous, or both. Remembering my two terriers at home, I sat down on the concrete outside each pen and exchanged small talk. Terriers like it when you talk to them from the ground. They are used to everybody being taller and lording it over them, which is perhaps why they get so feisty at times. One little fellow with a tail that curled back upon itself, told me that he had lived with an older lady who passed away, and that now he was looking for another home, preferably with a couch near a sunny window. I told him that my two girls at home had lost a fight with a skunk a week ago, and he laughed, saying, “I don’t know what it is about skunks. Even though you know what’s going to happen, you just go after them anyhow.”
Over to one side was a curly-haired auburn dog with a long, rather refined nose; she lay disconsolate on the concrete in the shade. Before her sat a large bowl of food. I said, “Why haven’t you eaten? Isn’t the food agreeable?” She slowly replied, “I don’t know if the food is fine or not. I don’t want to eat. Couldn’t eat a bite. My master left me, abandoned me in the park.” To this I said, “There must be some mistake. Nobody would abandon a fine dog like you.” But she only dropped her head upon her paws and muttered, “He told me I was beautiful, but then he drove away without me. Don’t you think I’m beautiful?” I told her that I thought she was the most beautiful dog in the world, and then walked on.
In the next section were the pens with the larger dogs. I noticed quite a few German Shepherds. I asked the keeper why there were so many of those and she said, “A very popular breed until they get large. They need more exercise than most people want to give them.” As I passed one of the pens, a large Shepherd strode up to the bars and whispered, “If you take me home, I can play catch and run with you all day long.”
A few steps away I found a mahogany bull terrier squatting on his hams in a pool of sunlight. He had nothing to say to me, but his face told a story: one eye was damaged and his ears had been inexpertly docked—they were ragged and sore looking. Next to him was another Pit Bull, and another and another, down the line. None of them looked very happy, and they kept their peace like they were waiting to talk to a lawyer. I asked a brindle-colored bull if they were in there for fighting. “Nope,” he mumbled—more like not fightin.’ I wasn’t going to die over somebody’s damned wager.” The others nodded or simply looked away. I waved the keeper over and she told me, “We get these from a Pit Bull rescue group. They find them chained up to a tree in somebody’s yard, if they find them alive at all.”
On my way out I found a chubby little Pit Bull puppy, a little gray pudding of a pup, asleep upon his paws. I wondered if he would ever know what he’d escaped. I poked his little behind until his eyes came open—they were as blue as sapphires. I said to him, “Are you awake? Can you talk?” He fixed me with those eyes, licked his pink chops and squeaked, “Can we go home now? I’m afraid to be in this place—there are no other children.” I held him in my two hands and said that he would soon find a nice home, a warm place where he would be spoiled. When I looked down he had fallen asleep again.
And then I drove home. I fed my two terriers their lunch, took them for a romp in the yard, and then we all had a nap and a dream together.
Michael McGrorty
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Tonight I ran across an old friend, one I thought I’d never see again. Or rather, taste. On an outing to the local bottle shop I mentioned in passing that I missed very badly the old taste of Schlitz beer, a brand that disappeared, then came back, albeit only in select markets.
The proprietor said to me, “My friend, we have what you want on the bottom shelf of the cooler.” Sure enough, there, in a frosty cardboard wrapper lay a squadron of the old familiar cans. I grabbed a bag of pretzels, hoisted my beer and drove home as carefully as a man can who is in a severe state of excitement.
I cracked a can, poured the golden liquid in a mug and took a long pull. There it was again, after all the years; that bland, corn-fed taste, unrefined as a hod carrier, completely without breeding, a gorgeous sample of the last of the working-class beers. Plain as denim, shallow as the Ed Sullivan Show, a beer that wouldn’t leave a welt if you drank a half-dozen. A beer to drink with a shot of ordinary rye; a beer to place beside a ball park hotdog. It damn near brought a tear to my eye.
In the decades since I first drank Schlitz my tastes improved—or rather, got more complex. By the time I was thirty I had become a home brewer, making specialty beers for myself and the numerous friends one develops from that hobby. I not only knew good from bad but every degree up and down the ladder. I became a beer snob. But in my heart I cherished the memory of the cheap, happy beers of youth—Pabst and Old Milwaukee, Olympia and Rainier. Sometimes I came across them in out-of-the-way taverns, but then they began to vanish from sight, victims of brewery consolidation and prosperity that killed the national desire for cheaper brew.
For those of us old enough to remember such things, Schlitz used to tout itself as The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous. Their cans proclaimed “Just the kiss of the hops.” Indeed, Schlitz is so under-hopped as to make one wonder if that kiss even brushed the cheek of the aging tank. But that is just as it should be: Schlitz is a lawnmower beer, a beer for hot afternoons after chores, one to pour when the ballgame is just coming on the radio and the shoes are under the rocking chair. It is not so much that Schlitz lacks character as that it plays as an undertone to life’s melody.
And so here I am, young again on a pleasant spring evening, a glass of golden youth in hand. Would that all of life consisted of such simple joys.
Add a CommentMichael McGrorty
Today at the gym, a man I see there all the time asked me what I think of when I'm rowing that machine for an hour every day. I told him, "Nothing," but he didn't believe me. The truth is, I write stories, poems, sometimes essays. On occasion I build houses. At the end, after about fifty minutes of pulling, I think of a race, some kind of race. Lately I've been thinking of the Olympic Eight Final at Athens in 2004. A video of that race can be found below. You can look up the history if you're interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcthtn3BBN0
Michael McGrorty
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A few minutes ago a delivery truck rolled up to our house. A couple of burly men got out, unloaded a large box and wheeled it along the driveway to where my wife waited. The men cut open the box, revealing a refrigerator; my wife gave it a good look, shook her head, and the men took the refrigerator back to their truck.
We are getting used to this routine. This is the third time we’ve received a refrigerator from this particular company; each time the thing has arrived with some sort of damage. The first time, the shelves were shattered; next, we got one with a cracked interior. This time, the outside was dinged up.
Today was a day for damaged goods: I checked out a book from the Pasadena library that the most recent reader had used as an ashtray, coffee table and notepad. I have no idea how they pulled the signatures away from the binding, but that’s how I found the book. I would rather find a roach in my salad than a library book in this condition. Come to think of it, I’d rather find a roach in my library book than somebody else’s pithy comments.
We live in a careless age. I have yet to purchase a new motorcycle which did not have vital connectors, bolts or screws missing. These bikes were manufactured by the finest of Italian and Japanese companies. Forget about getting a finger in your chiliburger—think of your motorcycle handlebars being attached with fewer than the requisite screws.
Well, enough of this for now. I’m off to read a few chapters of that little ashtray I borrowed from the library.
Add a CommentMichael McGrorty
Today, as I was riding home from an errand, I turned at the usual corner uptown, then glanced to the right side of the street, looking for a familiar face. There, on a slight rise of lawn beside a commercial building sat a thin woman somewhere between youth and middle age. She was dressed in a yellow shift, some castoff from the charity bin; her hair was a tangle of auburn, only beginning to go gray. But it was her eyes, as always, that I saw most clearly: not so much their pale color as the wildness of them, as though they were slaves to some fierce compulsion.
At a shop nearby the clerk has told me that the woman is insane. At the very least she seems a stranger to the concerns which drive most people. On this warm spring day she sat in the shade of the pepper trees, staring at the passing traffic. But I have seen her otherwise: she will rise and whirl a dance upon the sidewalk, arms gliding like a swan’s wings through the dusty air; sometimes she will stamp out rage upon the pavement, swinging an invisible wand at nothing, hands clenched like talons, face a mask of rage. At those times she speaks, not in words but in a sort of half-choked song whose melody is fury.
Today I pulled my motorcycle over to the curb, not so very far away, and waited. I lifted my helmet visor and called out a soft greeting; she turned with the slow grandeur of a princess answering a retainer’s call; her pale eyes met mine, but she said nothing. Then her hands rose from her lap like the delicate limbs of a marionette, up from the wrists by hidden wires; then the hands descended one upon the other into her lap, her head inclined a very little, and there came to her mouth the slightest trace of a smile.
And with that I tipped my visor down and rode away.
Add a CommentMichael McGrorty
Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that a Hong Kong health club has wired up some of its exercise machines in order to make use of the energy produced when patrons work out. According to the report,
“The gym chain has rigged up 13 machines at one of its clubs here. When all of them are in use, the power generated amounts to about 300 watts, roughly enough to run three 27-inch television sets, five 60-watt bulbs or several hundred video iPods. If all the exercise machines were in use 10 hours a day for a year, the gym could generate roughly $183 worth of electricity. At that rate, it would take about 82 years to pay off the initial $15,000 investment.”
The rowing machine I use at my YMCA is a pretty good example of how this works. I put out about 25 watts of power while rowing at moderate pace. That, of course, is just enough to run a rather dim bulb, which you’d have to be to depend upon this sort of mechanism for your reading light. The cost of this is about 400 calories, which translates to two Snickers candy bars, or a fast-food chicken sandwich.
This sort of experiment reveals in graphic form the sad truth that, in only a few centuries we have gone from almost complete self-reliance to utter dependence on alternative sources of energy. By the way, a person reading expends about 75 calories per hour—compared to sixty for absolute rest. That would create about 4.5 watts of energy. Now all we have to do is wire up a few thousand patrons and we can give a few of them enough light to read by. It makes more sense to put the reading tables closer to the windows, I think.
Michael McGrorty
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I've just returned home from a trip up north to visit a friend in the Bay Area. The drive up there takes me along Highway 5 from Los Angeles to the turnoff; about half the 350 miles are through the farmlands of the Central Valley. It is my habit to take stock of the animal life along the way. Not far outside of Coalinga there is a cattle feedlot whose odor would knock a buzzard off a dunghill. That facility, one of many such, was going full-blast when I passed. There were also the usual sheep grazing here and there. As to actual free-roaming wildlife, I noted that the insect life was at its low ebb; I didn't have to pull over to clean the windshield at all. An informal census of animals killed by automotive traffic: four domestic dogs, three cats, countless skunks and crows, three coyotes, at least four hawks, one egret and fourteen barn owls. If you are wondering, yes, I actually do stop when I have to tell the difference between a dog and a coyote, or a hawk and an owl. Mind you, these were just the ones that I could find easily at the side of the road without any real searching. I did no counting on the way home.
I am especially distressed by the loss of the hawks and owls. These are very useful predators, not to mention beautiful animals. Their numbers are not so high as to make their loss a minor thing. I have seen how the road kills them: hawks fly through the turbulence of traffic and hit unexpected winds that drive them to the pavement; owls hovering by night or at dusk experience the same danger. If I count a dozen owl kills, how many must there be every day along that road? It rends my heart and never becomes less painful over time. There is no sight like an owl fluttering silently over a dormant farm field in the dim light of dusk. The picture above shows a barn owl that was killed not long before I found it. Its wings seem spread as if in flight--perhaps a flight to the next world, where there may be no automobiles, and where animals can live out the lives nature intended.
Michael McGrorty
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