Gotta Love That Pesticide!

I saw a commercial last night for a Reno hospital urging us viewers to consider their robotic surgery service for excising our cancers when they show up. Pinpoint accuracy. You're in and out and done, and can return to your busy schedule and your toxic neighborhood.


Here in the Outback, spring has sprung. Our compound is specific about lawn care. Needs to be neatly maintained, "uniform in appearance." Edged. Pruned. Weed-free. The HOA believes that this will "maintain the value of our properties." This pro-active stance is necessary, I'm sure, to safeguard the Compoundians' property investment regardless of the recession, the housing downturn, and Nevadans' falling credit scores.


The first thing the Compoundians do, naturally, is have their gardners reach for the Round-Up. And since the weather started warming here, and shrubberies started robusting forth, the rich perfume of herbicides and pesticides thicken the air, rich, redolent, and clearly the right thing to do. Their lawns indeed look like the sanctified ground, the proprietary moat, the expression of gentrified control over otherwise uncontrollable Nature, that Fritz Haeg describes with such accuracy and humor. Fritz, you are so way on target!


Meanwhile, at our house... I happen to like dandelions. They support an amazing microcommunity, from the ants that run aphid "nurseries" on tender new leaves, to the sphinx moth savoring dandelion nectar. I happen to like thistles. The native finches here cannot suppress their impatience for these plants to hurry up and bloom. They love its seeds. I like the other "weeds," too, for their amazing ability to look so lush--ie, extract so much nitrogen--from a clayey desert soil, or produce a leaf oil that repels all other pesty pests. Maintaing a lawn, in a desert, is just as absurd as supporting an automobile manufacturer that produces irrelevant cars. But what I like happens to be directly opposite the community sentiment here at the Compound. I am grateful we are JUST renting.

On my list of things to do today is pull my 6 buckets of weeds--and, finish my research with the Nevada Extension service. They provide all kinds of herbicide and pesticide alternatives for people with sanctified, verdant moats. From there, I'm off to the HOA meeting to present my petition for our Compound to become a shining example of how NOT to kill green, living things. Meanwhile, on a slightly different tangent...I found this list of how to buy organic fruits and vegetables. It makes choices so much easier! I suppose that's what the Reno hospital wants us to think, too. When you get it, a robot will clean up the cancer like Round-Up does weeds. This technology should make your choices so much easier! Maybe some avoidance-therapy should be the first choice.

Judging Appearances, part I

Not too long ago a young woman made medical history. She stepped up to the microphones and announced that she was recepient of the face transplant. Her own face was blown off in a gun accident. A generous donor stepped in and with unprecidented medical skill her face is now on the way to being rebuilt. She wasn't there to plea for more money for transplant research. Instead, she asked the public to remember her and know firsthand that she is so much more than how she appears. It was time to give up judging people by their looks. Everyone applauded and cheered in loud, hearty enthusiastic approval. The TV station then cut to a commercial...on what? A cream to make women appear years younger. The mixed message had, again, been successfully sent off with its final word to linger, most likely, the longest in viewer's minds.

On a related note, I present to you my Walk Ladies. You may see age, wrinkles, gray hair, and some unfashionable roundness. But these ladies are my heroes, and their looks are most deceptive. One is a two-time breast cancer survivor. She has used her skills as an accomplished horsewoman to teach autistic children by teaching them how to care, feed, and ride horses. Another is a mother of three, of whom meth addiction took two, and not for lack of medical or parental intervention. One is a native of the devastated town of Greensburg, Kansas. She has been instrumental in helping that town recover and redesign itself as a green community. One is a former peacecorps worker who made a career afterwards of working with the sick and one of the few nurses who walked the streets of San Francisco looking for those afflicted with what was later recognized as acquired immune deficiency. She helped start the AIDS quilt. Another has logged over 100,000 miles of travel donating her computer skills and materiel to poor countries in hopes they can participate in the democracy of the internet. Three maintain their status as registered nurses, all help run the local food closet which helps barely-funded local and state governments keep the poor and unemployed fed.

And the dogs? They help all of us keep to the Path.

This Boot Sorta Made for Walking

A few days ago, I finally went to the hospital to have the good doc fix my foot. I have "teachers" arthritis from standing on concrete for 12 years. In the end, my orthotics made little difference other than to forestall the inevitable. The treatment was to take apart the toe bones, clean out masses of calcified overgrowth, recarve the bones back to their original shape, and poke holes in their ends to stimulate growth of cartillage lost while things were calcifying. Once this foot is good to go, the other foot gets it.

Meanwhile, this gives me some practice at what I'm not very good at: letting things...just...be. My motherinlaw continually counsels me to "waste a day, save a life." It has taken me a few years to completely hear what she's saying...another few years to decipher the meaning of the words...and another few years to "get" what is being said...and even more years to try to put this into practice. So, the good thing about this bum foot? I get lots of time to practice wasting a day. And, you know, it ain't as bad as I feared...

Ma Mere Merveilleux

She does not remember my name or that I'm her daughter, but she knows I'm a part of her somehow. She can no longer read or write, and, for being the artist she once was, no longer recognizes a pencil from a table napkin. She can't dress herself; she doesn't know what clothes are for. She wants to chat, but the words no longer make sense to her. She's not sure what to do while waiting her turn to cross over. She tells me Dad visits her now and then. He assures her that all is well but that he's kept pretty busy. She looks lonely most days, and she senses that her world is now much smaller than it used to be.

And yet...

She'll tell you she "hates" bingo, knows a "sharp program" from a dull one, and remains fascinated by patterns the clouds will make in the sky. She insists that dessert is the main course, just like the "olden" days. She'll "shop out" the snazzy outfits from the closets of her fellow residents, and knows how to hold the sleeve of her shirt so it won't rumple up inside as she puts on a sweater. She's a pretty sharp back-seat driver, eschews pumpkin from strawberry cheesecake, and tells me "I love you" every now and again--three words I seldom ever heard from her as a child or adult. When she comes over to my house, she calls for our kitty, Bijoux. Bijoux runs up to her, purrs deeply, and jumps up into Mom's lap. They very much enjoy each other's company, as you can see from the picture.

Alzheimers disease removes all that makes us human--our memory. It is our memories that we savor in our old age, that we did what we did for whatever reason, and appreciate the foible, wisdom, humor, hastiness--and so on--of our choices. Choice may be the keystone to our humanity, but our reflection upon, and memory of, our choices is, I think, rock from which that keystone is cut.

And yet...

Alzheimers is at odds with memory. To be with Mom is to live in the moment and appreciate the insignificantly small instead. To live with it is to give up memory and communicate with emotions and feelings. For me, this has been extremely tough as I am a cerebral child, introspective, reserved of emotion, and dependent on recalled factoids. Alzheimers does not quite take away all. It's gift to me is the humble, significant immediacy of the moment.

Our Family's First Writer Moves On

Her mother and mine were sisters, and with their husbands and young children moved from their family moorings in Michigan and arrived adrift at either end of California during the aerospace boom of the early 60's. Family now meant vast solitude between infrequent, brief, hasty hellos.

She was the eldest of my 28 cousins, and once told me she hated the nickname Cappie. But the name stuck until many years later when she changed it to honor her grandfather, Charlie Valentine. She was, to my everlasting envy, tough, savvy, fun and fragile as a bubble. She was creatively secular, while I was, sigh, a struggling catholic. She read anything and everything like most people breathe. Our only adult visit came as a mistake. Her domestic life was, at the time, just as tumultuous as mine. But somehow we were able to squeeze in one of those infrequent, brief, hasty hellos. She pulled out stacks and stacks of manuscripts. Her passion was mystery writing. Why mysteries, I asked, thinking of the tediousity of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes. Life is one fucked up puzzle, she said laughing, so why not take a back seat and your characters can sort it out for you? Yeah, but writing is so...crummy a way to make a living and besides, I insisted, it always involves somebody somehow getting dished a lot of dead. And then with her characteristic older-cousin rank-pulling, It isn't the death dummy, it's the mystery I want, that's what matters, that's what I LOVE!!

I would say that Charlie's now enjoying a lot of a-ha moments right now. She slipped those surly bonds a few days ago. To the rest of us still here, it seems her departure was unfairly premature. Most of her early life's "manuscripts" were solved, more or less to satisfaction. She was ever the disciplined writer, it was the axis around which her life rotated. There's always something out there, she told me, that needs solving. Now Charlie will have lots of pain-free time to catch up with her namesake and investigate her own defining mystery in, as they say, hot pursuit.

Post-Winter, Pre-Spring Skybeams

> The Outback is amusing. Our first major snow storm arrived about the same time as winter. Our second, and maybe our last, snow storm, dropped by on the skid end of the season. Our ski resorts are happily humming with action. The snow pack looks robust again, in some places too robust and keeping the avalanche guns booming. What happened inbetween? Nothing. Just weeks of warm, shirt-sleeve weather that caused animal and vegetable to wonder if something broke. I asked the Closet Crafters, keepers of the Outback's oral lore and traditions, if this meant we were now part of that broken global system. Aw no, hon, it's just life on the arse side of the Sierras...Don't let this place fool yuh dear...perfectly normal can seem kinda weird at times.

> Meanwhile Bob the trusty Wonder Dog takes no chances. Here he is on duty as my watchful copilot. Broke, robust, or booming Bob treats it all like coyote snooping where it ought not be. Ever vigilant and inexhaustibly intent on doing the job right, Bob insists on the front seat whenever the Other Big Dog is away busy. That I might venture the teeniest trip to the grocery store makes no nevermind in the summer to Bob. But once that cold white icy stuff arrives--the "snow" coyote--I do not drive alone.

> The "other" ruby. Had to put this picture in. I have no way of guessing the value of all these rubies. Each one is about 30-40cm long and 20-25 cm wide, and perhaps upwards to 45 carats each. These are are the Tanzanian rubies. My favorite. Value has no meaning here, nor what the number on the gem scale says. It is rather the profound beauty of Earth's treasure I find so eternally enthralling. Add some facets and a broad visible spectrum and that treasure emits a symphony of photonic music!! Each ruby's "music" is unique, taking in only the light it needs to sing its own particular song!

The Difference Between a Rock and a Stone

What you see to your left is a picture of what I see on my daily hikes. These are rocks. And as most would agree, rocks are rocks the world 'round. They aren't especially attractive, the loose ones clutter up trails, and I often wonder that a rock's purpose in life must be to hold down the dirt. My hikes in the Pine Nut Mountains do offer slight entertainment in rockish variation, from shiny red to rusty speckles to sleekly black and all, amazingly enough, from the same planet. I mention all this because I went to the Tucson Gem Shows last month. This is my 12th year in attendance and I am still spellbound by the planetary and interplanetary riches at these shows. The volume and dazzle continues to keep me utterly breathless even though the old timers assure me that most of the "really good stuff" is now gone, mined out. I arrived this year, as in previous years, wondering why these shows don't sell rocks. They sell stones instead. I suppose there's a difference?


On your left is a stone worth $18,000. It is found in only one place on the planet, in the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and starts out as a rock best described as ugly. After a bit of "natural treatment" (ie, a 500F bake), the rocks are shipped from one specific port in East Africa to Thailand, India, or China to be sorted, graded, and "cut." This is tanzanite. It is a controversial rock. Not only is the supply tightly controlled but, according to the Wall Street Journal, those who control that supply are linked to certain terrorist cells who enjoy substantial financial profit from its sale. Nearly all tanzanite merchants I've spoken to about this alleged "link" have vehemently denied the Journal's carefully documented "opinion." I should mention that those same merchants assure me their tanzanite is not heat treated, which is, of course impossible. ALL tanzanite must be heat treated. In any case, this rock is called a stone because it's color is absolutely hypnotic and thus highly desirable, it's price is...well, pricey, and each stone is part of a much larger, mostly uncertain, story.


This particular merchant showed me an excellent supply of stones for me to "consider." You see there on the left, one of his many trays. Needless to say, I was bedazzled. Conservatively speaking, the value of that one tray might be "in the neighborhood of the high eights or low nines," he said, "of course, it depends on your clients' desires." We are speaking in hundreds of thousands of dollars--wholesale. "I see," breathless with deep appreciation. I wondered how he could part with such "beautiful children." He laughed and relaxed a bit, from his salesman's eager hover to that of a poet about to reflect on years devoted to his true love. "Ah, yes, well it is hard, but some here are just cousins and far easier to send away."


Integral to discerning a rock from a stone is the calculator. Here a Chinese merchant who owns an Australian mine of gem quality chrysoprase "rough" is showing my jeweler friend, Leslie, his price for 120 grams. It was truly spectacular material, of exquisitely homogenous color, and so the asking price was shown, not spoken. Evidently a rock's value can be spoken while that of a stone can not, or, in the case of the tanzanite merchant, politely debated. Rough gem material like this--turqouise and jade are others--can be confusing. One might approach it as a rock (as Leslie and I did here) but the merchant regards it with the tender reverence reserved for stone. The reverse, sigh, is also true.


This is a star ruby from Burma. Burmese rubies are very expensive, highly coveted, and regarded as the ruby's ruby. Burma isn't the only country producing rubies. Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, among others, do too. I personally prefer Tanzanian rubies for the depth and saturation of color. But a worldwide embargo forbids the sale of Burmese rubies as the mines are controlled by the Myanmar Junta. Sale of burmese rubies directly supports the oppression of the Burmese people. The United States enforced this embargo until 3 days before George W. Bush left office. Bush signed a waiver that allows these rubies to be sold in the U.S. for reasons of "national security." Such a "george" thing to do. Anyhow, this gorgeous piece weighed about a pound, was a challenge to wear, and could be hazardous to innocent bystanders if it happened to slip off the hand in the middle of a gesture, and so I asked the merchant to wear it for me. This describes a rock to me, not a stone.


Lastly, the diamond. Here is 28 carats of a "fancy" canary yellow diamond encircled by 4 carats total of flawless white diamonds. The price was the same as the Burmese star ruby: "If you have to ask..." The picture here does not, as they say, do it justice. This stone was, by turns, flashing with fire and brilliance and color paralyzing me with fascination. That's my hand, by the way, and one of 20-some pictures I asked the merchant to take because I was...uh, busy being fascinated. I told the merchant I couldn't buy the ring because I would spend too much time watching it! I'd get nothing done, nothing written, nothing accomplished. My life would dissolve away into the black abyss of....well, you get the idea. This is where stone and rock become the same. Nothing in our planetary system outcuts or outlasts the strength and durability of a diamond. Even my speckled, trail-littering granitic rocks take a back seat to THIS stone borne from the guts of a volcanic eruption.

So...the difference between a rock and a stone? This is what I know, so far: A stone has something either undefinable or extraordinary about it, while a rock is never described by a calculator. This, of course, is not yet the definitive answer. For that, I think I'll need another trip to Tuscon for the 2010 shows.