Burke's Backyard Archives 2002 - Dairy GoatsFirst Barn Chores All Summer

Wearing last year's gloves, and the stench of last year's rutting billy goat is now soaked into my hands. Heady stuff, dizzying odor. I mucked the donkeys' stall this morning. I'm out of shape in regard to mucking. By the first two shovelsful of poo and wet hay I was dripping sweat. It doesn't help that it's humid and warm. Donkey poo has less of a pleasant odor than some other barnyard poo, or maybe it's just that I'm out of practice. I did enjoy our first minutes together when Rachel and I were the only ones there and I was dispensing carrot bits. The goats liked me but not the carrots, except one doe who ate them happily. Maybe it is fresh billy goat kid musk I have on my hands. The babies have horns like the first joints of little thumbs, and I scratched behind those wee horns.

I love yard sales, garage sales, tag sales, thrift shops, clearance sales and boxes marked "free." I love a bargain and love things with provenance. Recently I bought a big box at a barn sale. The box contains all the horse tack that the barn owner's great-grandpa used to run this farm: bridle, harness for a plow, various straps and buckles, all of it ancient and ugly. I was so enchanted by the romance of this, a decrepit farm down the road from me, and here in the trunk of my car went part of its economic engine. My husband groaned and said, "That will stay in that box forever, now." Stubbornly I insisted that I would clean it up with Murphy's Oil Soap and maybe make an art piece out of it. I did spread it all out on the floor of our garage and take photographs. Nevertheless, back in the box it went and still remains.

Two honeys at Baltimore's Hon Festival, 2003

Confessions of a Recovering Child Fundamentalist

...actually, I always questioned things to the point that I got in trouble with my Sunday School and Vacation Bible School teachers...

Note to my beloved and only brother, ex-Marine, owner of indeterminate politics, one from whose mouth terms like "baby-killer" and "queer pervert" have issued (admittedly, half a lifetime ago.):

Dear T:

I am struggling with something that I think you can help me understand. John's Uncle and Aunt (hosts of our wedding) are coming to visit soon. We are pretty close and I love, trust and respect them. Uncle F sent me an email recently that said simply, "Vote for Bush." Now, he knows what kind of person I am and what my values are. "Why?" I responded. "Because he is the best candidate," wrote Uncle F. I fussed and fumed and eventually wrote back, "I must respectfully disagree." We haven't discussed it further.

So I have become worried about their visit. I am concerned that I will want to haggle with Uncle F--why on earth do you think Bush is the best candidate, yadda yadda yadda. I totally can't understand why anyone would want to vote for President Bush, and I also recognize that 1/2 or more of the country will vote for him. I do not understand it and would like to. People with Bush stickers on their cars seem like alien pod people to me.

What good is there about President Bush? How to address all the well-known bad--false representation leading to ill-planned war in Iraq, bigotry, cronyism, undermining basic constitutional principles--like separation of church and state--that have been part of what caused this country to be as strong and powerful as it has been, etc.

~~~~~~~~~full moon, hormones in nuclear fission mode~~~~~~~~~~~

Email to the membership services department of the GOP upon reading a NYT article about their convention staging:

Dear Folks,

As a former NYC resident and survivor of September 11, 2001, I find it disgusting that you all would use the site as a visual and emotional backdrop for the Republican convention. I am forever changed by that day, have flashbacks, nearly faint at certain smells, weep when discussing it, have nightmares and I know that I am among thousands if not tens of thousands of people who feel the same way. That day, and all that occurred thereafter in our neighborhoods, is not yet a political tool! Maybe December 7th is ok to use, or D-Day, but not 9/11, at least not for me.

It seems heartless, tasteless and not savvy, as did President Bush when he stood in flight uniform on the deck of an aircraft carrier with a banner that said "Mission Accomplished."

My new favorite musicians are Sheila Chandra, Afro Celt Sound System and Brooklyn Funk Essentials. Internet streaming radio is just grand!

The New York Times > Arts > Art & Design > Art Review: Caution: Angry Artists at Work

John got up early and I slept in this morning, bolstered on one side by Cruiser and on the other by two cats. Heaven.

A blue heron has taken up a stance on rocks in the Au Sable river near our house. I never see it on the same rock, but it always looks the same, like a sculpture. Maybe it is a joke.

Late August and the leaves are turning. Nights have been in the forties. This summer we never once went swimming in the famous Jay swimming hole, although we did once go swimming in a spot near us. We haven't had a bonfire or slept outside in a tent. So much rain and so much chill, and so much to do all summer. We have been very busy.

John has learned a new word for me: mouse potato. Courtesy of the NYT magazine this past Sunday.

Proust Questionnaire

Your most marked characteristic? duality, as in graceful and clumsy
The quality you most like in a man? gentleness
The quality you most like in a woman? strength
What do you most value in your friends? love, compassion, loyalty, discretion
What is your principle defect? being judgmental
What is your favorite occupation? puttering, reading, napping
What is your idea of earthly happiness? having endless creative and physical energy in an environment of peace and contentment
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? losing freedoms
What would you like to be? someone who leaves many legacies of good work
In what country would you like to live? USA
What is your favorite color? red
What is your favorite flower? lily of the valley
What is your favorite bird? bluebird
Who are your favorite prose writers? Edith Wharton, Annie Proulx, Margaret Atwood, Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Gene Stratton Porter
Who are your favorite poets? Ogden Nash, Emily Dickinson, various sonneteers
Who is your favorite hero of fiction? Aslan
Who is your favorite heroine of fiction? Girl of the Limberlost
Who are your favorite composers? Aaron Copland, Meshell Ndegeocello and many in between
Who are your favorite painters? My mother and father, Mary Cassatt, Alice Neel, Botero
Who are your heroes in real life? Rosa Parks, Kevin Jennings, Ruth Lilly, all reasonably competent waitresses, my husband
Who are your favorite heroines of history? Harriet Tubman, suffragettes, women in the Bible
What are your favorite names? Elizabeth, Thomas, John, Meagan, Maggie, Samantha, Cameron, David, Grace
What is it you most dislike? fear and pain
What historical figures do you most despise? Idi Amin, Chinese Cultural Revolution functionaries and others like them
What event in military history do you most admire? the 1978 Camp David Peace Accords brokered by US President Jimmy Carter between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat
What reform do you most admire? repeal of prohibition
What natural gift would you most like to possess? athleticism
How would you like to die? with all my affairs in order, peacefully, if not on my own terms then instantaneously via gunshot, beheading or other means
Who would you have liked to be? a pioneer in the American West in the 1700s, partnered lesbian woman passing as a man
Your favorite virtue?* generosity
What is your present state of mind? calm and focused
To what faults do you feel most indulgent? sweet tooth, sloth, gossip
What is your motto? bless yer heart

*Virtue, Faith, Honesty, Gratitude, Perseverance, Forgiveness, Patience, Courage, Respect, Generosity, Discipline, Compassion, Humility

Chilly August morning. That's an impossibility in Baltimore, where I come from. Winter is right around the corner. I feel like Persephone, above ground and in the light now but thinking ahead to my nuptial duties in Hades.

Ah, the end of two weeks of vacation. I did a whole lot of nothing. Actually, that's not quite true. Main accomplishments: weeding garden, putting up pounds and pounds of zucchini (shredded, breaded, cubed,) harvesting herbs and hanging them up to dry in kitchen and dining room windows, weeding and mulching the perennial bed. I wrote cards and letters to a bunch of people, read books and novels.

The most interesting and evocative book I read during this vacation was Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. This book brought me right back to the late 70s when my father was a missionary and he was helping folks, notably an Iranian family of four, to achieve political asylum or otherwise immigrate to the U.S. under the auspices of the Christian church. I remember some of my girlfriend Mahnaz's stories of the revolution and her escape--stories which by now are certainly edited through my own political filter and the length of time it has been since I heard those stories--but what stays with me is Mahnaz, then 15 (and I twelve), saying she had been in class at school, masked gunmen came in and machine-gunned the classroom. Mahnaz's teacher was killed and her classmates fell all around her. She fell too, underneath the body of her girl cousin. The cousin was killed but Mahnaz lived, without physical injury.

Mahnaz and her brother R and their mother P came to the U.S. a year or so after their father Mahmoud, who was blind. Mahmoud's blindness was the result of a motorcycle accident in Tehran in the early 70s. He had become an outcast and for whatever reasons he came to the U.S. and lived with us. Who knows what twisty paths led a wounded Iranian to a Christian household in Baltimore. When Mahmoud's wife and children arrived, a year or so later, I remember hearing that P, his wife would have divorced him if they had stayed in Iran.

They had a loud, bickering relationship, which couldn't have been made an easier by culture shock. Neither Mahnaz nor her mother wore the chador, but when we went to their mosque in Washington, DC we all put it on. That day--I was 13--a Moroccan sheik, a member of a Moroccan Air Force group that my father was escorting somewhere, asked me to be his first wife. Mahnaz was sitting next to me on the schoolbus which my father was driving. She ducked her head. I was too young to feel embarrassed, and felt I should be polite. I told the man I would have to ask my father. The man said he would let me have stereos, TV's, and help him pick his other wives. Later Mahnaz said this offer was a great honor. Now I don't know. We were young girls and these men were knowledgeable about war and terrorism. Soon the Ayatollah Khomeini took U.S. people hostage and all that stuff happened, and Jimmy Carter, the President we could feel comfortable with, was trashed in his re-election bid by Ronald Reagan.

I turned 15 just after that election, and the 30-ish man I adored came to my high school production of "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" with my parents, and asked them if, when I turned 16, he could date me. And that's another story which I may never tell.

The Washington I see on the news is now vastly different from the airy, green and marble place I knew when I was a child. It is much different from the place I lived as an adult in the 90s. Bollards, Jersey barriers, Constitution Avenue blocked off, the White House surrounded by armaments... I wish my father were alive today to give me his opinion on all this. He would have understood the Muslim fundamentalist movement in a way I never will.

Once, riding in the front seat of my parents' car (1965 Dodge Dart Swinger, reddish-orange body and black vinyl top,) I sat between Mehdi and my father. Mehdi was 16 and wearing shorts. His legs were very hairy and his knees were square. We were friendly, or at least, Mehdi was friendly for an angry Iranian boy who was stranded in the U.S. I don't know his circumstances. We were talking about what was happening in Iran. "Would you fight?" I asked. Certainly. Would you kill? Yes. Would you kill me? Yes. He was controlled, calm and serious. I don't remember if my father said anything.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now it is almost four p.m. and raining. Beef stew is simmering in the oven. I am sipping red wine, John is downstairs in the living room listening to the soundtrack of O Brother Where Art Thou. Soon I must prepare several coolers full of lemonade, ice tea, water for the Saturday evening JEMS concert, and defrost the collection of homemade cookies that has accrued from previous weeks' concerts. Because of the rain it will be inside the Au Sable Forks community center, which is a drag. The Jay green is much more fun.

Hours-old alpaca with her wobbly legs. Her herdmates are looking on with as much curiosity as an alpaca can muster. Courtesy of Jay Ward, Au Sable Valley Alpacas.

John & Martha with Jay Ward's alpaca Starlight and her new baby Peaches-n-Cream, whom we helped birth that morning.