In The Community Garden

It's not much, our little section of the community garden.  Twenty feet by four feet.  Already, though, we've got zucchini and peppers and some flowers and pumpkin growing.   There's a lot of other stuff also growing but I don't quite remember what because I threw away the seed packets.  The red ants are still there.  We've reached some kind of truce, it seems.  I won't cover them with any more organic corn meal and they won't bite me.  I'm holding up my end of that deal.  I hope they are small insects of their words and don't bite me.  I think I'm allergic to red ant bites.  Perhaps we are all.  Here's what I do know.  Corn meal doesn't slow them down at all.  That's okay.  There seems to be plenty of room for everyone.
The community garden of which I am a participant was started in part by Amy's Farm which uses the polyculture approach to farming.  Polyculture is agriculture using multiple crops in the same space in imitation of the diversity of natural ecosystems.  It avoids large stands of single crops.  This approach often requires more labor but has some advantages:  The plants are healthier and produce more.  For example, a study in China reported in Nature Magazine showed that planting several varieties of rice in the same field increased yields by 89% largely because of a dramatic decrease in the incidence of disease.  The greater variety of crops provides habitat for more species, increasing local biodiversity.  This is an example of Reconciliation Ecology, or accommodating biodiversity within human landscapes.  For example, my ants are doing well and have invited other types of ants to come live in my plot of the garden.

The main advantage for me, though, of this type of gardening is that I am left feeling that I've done something that is part of a movement of return -- return to a time and a way of life fast fading unless strangers get together to help each other grow good food.
Here's a thought.  Find a community garden and ask if you can help out.  You improve not only your mood and your sense of belonging but you help out the planet, too.

Adventures of a Lizard Hunter

The Family Dog is fortunate that we adopted him almost nine years ago. For a street dog, he didn't have a lot of street smarts. Now that we are living in a less urban area, I hoped his hunting skills would improve. Sadly, they have not.

Yesterday we were taking our walk when a bigger-than-usual lizard darted in front of us. Seeing The Family Dog, or at least sensing a large predator nearby, the lizard ran towards a bush. The Family Dog followed. He sniffed intently at the bush for a good thirty seconds, during which time the lizard had ample opportunity to get through the bush and around behind the dog. I had to stand there and watch my lizard hunter sniffing the place where his prey had been and gone, and see the lizard standing behind him. I swear I could see his little reptilian sides shaking with laughter. I took The Family Dog home and gave him a biscuit. What would I do with a dead lizard, anyway?

The Morning After the Fourth

Do you think if the Roman Candle knew that come Monday morning it would be nothing more than an empty memory left on a West Hollywood sidewalk it would still - as darkness fell on July 4th -- say strike the match and watch me dazzle the world?

I'm hoping that it would.

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light.

Edna St. Vincent Millay -  "A Few Figs from Thistles", 1920
 US poet (1892 - 1950)

Not that I'm a fan of burning candles at both ends.  On the other hand, neither am I a fan of keeping candles Roman or otherwise neatly packed away in drawers waiting for just the right and possibly the safe time to strike the match.

Fireworks are Nice, but the Concept is Grand

We drove home from Orange County to Los Angeles and watched the fireworks displays, legal and illegal, on both sides of the highway. It was great, and I hope everyone enjoyed the freedom to risk fingers and eyes setting them off. But how many people thought about the meaning of American independence? Well, at least one person and his readers did. This nation is facing formidable problems but I like the hope and belief that blogger Spencer Ackerman exhibits in today's entry in his personal blog, Attackerman (http://attackerman.firedoglake.com) I also happen to like Spencer Ackerman,whom I have known since shortly after he was born. Here are his words about America:
"You know what the great thing is about a country founded on a set of propositions? About a series of commitments that define what it is to be a citizen of that country? It’s that to be an American is an endless process to show fidelity with those commitments. The frontier never actually closes. We’re never in America yet. America is always yet to come. Like an Englishman once reminded us, the future is unwritten, with liberty and justice over the horizon. If we’re decent and strong and dedicated enough to press onward."
Thanks, Spencer, for reminding us of the founding principles of this country and of what it takes to stick with them.

Gainfully Employed

Yesterday, I received something that I hadn't seen in a while. It's called a paycheck.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I had been unemployed for fourteen months. I spent the last six months of that time in a training program which did exactly what it was supposed to do - get me a job. However, it paid exactly the same as if I had been sitting home watching daytime TV.

Columnist Paul Krugman wrote an editorial entitled "The Third Depression" in last Saturday's New York Times. He writes, "Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending." As Krugman sees it, we are at the beginning of a long slow depression, and this is not the time for governments to try to balance their budgets when they should instead be creating jobs.

A few days ago, I wrote about three young schoolteachers I know who lost their jobs at the end of this academic year. So many people, young and old, want to work, need to work, and the job market just keeps shrinking.

Krugman ends his article with these words, "And who will pay the price? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again." I am in my late fifties, and for many months I was afraid that I might never work again. I am very grateful to be gainfully employed, and I hope I don't forget all those out there who want the same chance. More important, I hope our government doesn't forget them.

If You Prick Him

He will bleed.  And if you tickle him, he will laugh.  And if you find yourself alone in an elevator with him, you will probably feel very frightened or at least unbearably uncomfortable.
Not only does he suffer from a significant mental illness, he also navigates through each day born with a developmental delay/disability.  He can't read and he can't write.  Quite frequently his speech is garbled.  In spite of all of these strikes against him, he's a friendly guy who likes nothing more than to help people carry their stuff.
Two days ago his sister died.
Through his tears and choking sobs he tried to tell me the cause of death.  He stammered and pointed to his nose.  I asked a few questions and none of them satisfied him.  I still don't know the cause of death.  It doesn't really matter.  What matters is his grief and his need for comfort.
I do know that he has spent a lot of time sitting or a bench or on a curb weeping.
Today I met him on a sidewalk.  He was walking one direction.  I walked the opposite.  We stopped.  He told me he had to shave and put on clean clothes.
This time I correctly guessed that he was going to the funeral.
He predicted that he would probably cry a lot.
I assured him that funerals were the perfect places for tears.
Then he pulled a small pack of tissue from his pants pocket.
"I'm going to bring these with me."
I told him that he was doing what a lot of us forget to do -- take good care of ourselves by planning our needs ahead of time.
He put the tissues back into his pocket, burst again into tears, and headed home.
He couldn't see my tears.
Heroes sometimes save lives and sometimes fight wars and sometimes just remember to take a pack of tissue to the funeral of someone they loved.

Meanwhile In Canada

In early 1850 the Provincial Lunatic Asylum in Toronto, Canada, admitted its first patients.  For years the facility was one of the largest public buildings in that nation.
Dr. Joseph Workman, Superintendent from 1853 until 1875,  stressed the importance of taking family histories and seeking hereditary traits, because he believed that many patients seemed to be born with a tendency to mental illness. He observed dysfunctional families but saw the illness as the cause and not the result of the family dynamics. Freud, Jung and psychoanalysis had not yet arrived on the scene. He studied alcoholism and even noted what we now call 'fetal alcohol syndrome'. 
At Workman's suggestion, the study of alienism (now known as psychiatry) was introduced into medical schools in both Canada and this country.

The Lunatic Asylum was demolished about thirty years ago.  On that site now stands The Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital, as well as one of the world's leading research centers in the area of addiction and mental health. CAMH is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto, and is a Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization Collaborating Center.
The CAMH project is unique for many reasons.  The old city asylum was torn down and replaced by an urban village where people with mental illness and addictions can mingle in an everyday way with people not suffering from mental illness.  The CAMH project is part of a bigger project called The Inter-generational Wellness Center.  The Center will house a Geriatric Mental Health program, and a Child, youth, and Family Program.  When it's completed, the project will become an ordinary part of Toronto life with shops, restaurants, offices, and apartments.
Imagine the lack of stigma recipients of CAMH will enjoy.  Amazing.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles county it becomes increasingly difficult for the indigent mentally ill to just find a place to sit awhile and feel safe from constant command hallucinations much less find a place to receive medications or hospitalizations.
If Canada can do it, why can't we?