Farm News 12-25-05
Christmas morning, after chores, 38° with birdsong
A Happy Birthday
This week I began my 69th year of living. What Fun! For my birthday, all I could arrange was a blood test, which involved fasting overnight, driving to Lawrence on an empty stomach, and then having three vials of blood drawn. I considered a colonoscopy instead, or maybe a prostate exam, but the only thing the young physician I see would agree to was a check of my blood. I still had fun. When the nice vampire stuck the needle in my vein I yelled as loud as I could. It startled her and she poked me hard, but it was worth it.
“Shh!” she said, as if she were a librarian, “Every body can hear you.” Well of course they could, why else would I yell? We Americans are entirely too self-contained, we need to learn to make a big noise when someone sticks a needle in us.
Roger Barker and Paul Gump are two of my heroes, I suppose. They developed something called Ecological Psychology, which has to do with social environments, not natural ones. What they gave us was an exceptionally robust framework in which we can analyze and understand the behaviors of those around us. In English, they help me understand people.
Anyway, one of the asides made by Paul Gump was that people who do not conform to the appropriate range of behaviors in a particular setting are generally considered to be a little crazy. In other words, if you yell when someone sticks a needle in you in a health clinic, you are considered to be a little crazy.
So, I yelled when she stuck the needle in my arm. The clinic is in Lawrence. 'When in Rome . . .', you know.
On the way to Lawrence I stopped to pick up Calvin. He wouldn't drive because he was wearing his mud and snow boots, which are so big they won't fit on the pedals of a Honda without considerable overlap. Calvin claims his shoe size is only 15, but I think it is closer to 27.
While I was misbehaving in the clinic, Calvin waited in the car, smoking a cigarette and running the heater blower on his feet to keep his great big toesies warm. Warm air, blowing over manure encrusted boots, coupled with the smoke of a hand rolled cigarette, and an undercurrent of wood smoke, gave the car a rich aroma that brought back memories of riding with my grandfather in his Model 'A' Ford.
Age brings responsibilities. Helping Calvin come to the point where he smells a lot like my grandfather is, I suppose, one of those things you do to help fulfill your responsibilities. So is keeping a milk goat and storing colostrum in the freezer for an unexpected orphan. Caring for an orchard is another responsibility for seniors. Seniors find it very difficult to ignore children who are in need of care; few young people keep goats, therefore, few young people are able to provide proper care for their children without a lot of input from seniors.
All my life I have felt a little bit crazy, except for the times when I felt completely crazy. Now, by acting foolish and trying to fulfill my responsibilities, I have somehow externalized my craziness and gained a very pleasant internal tranquility. Now, at 69, it would seem appropriate to recognize the process of becoming a weird old fart as a righteous path.
In 1968, I met an very nice fellow, slightly older than me, named Bill. Bill was fairly conservative in appearance and action except that he was openly gay. He was also the President of the NACHO, the North American Council of Homophile Organizations, a national 'umbrella' organization for fairies and dykes. He was a nice guy, and I was becoming sick and tired of hippies, so we hung out together some. Paula liked him and we both liked his boyfriend, who I don't remember at all. Anyway, we got together socially once or twice a month.
At that time, Paula and I were living in and operating The Ecstatic Umbrella, a phone-in crisis center that operated in Kansas City and Wichita. We had four phone lines, a good referral file, church-based funding, and were an important part of the nervous system of the radical movement in both cities. Across the nation, similar efforts were springing up, trying to bring together civil rights, feminism, and hippies. Now the queers were starting to show.
During the Summer of Love, most of the hippies were political innocents. They thought they were above that sort of thing, their mission was to leave San Francisco and turn on the rest of the world. Thousands of hippies, each armed with a large bag of pot and a small bottle of Orange Sunshine, drifted east out of San Francisco to infect the continent. I lived in San Francisco during that period, gainfully employed producing 16mm educational films (including my masterpiece, Guppies Eating Daphnia, a bold excursion into the realities of food chains). I was not, however, immune to my environment, and as the hippies began to drift east, I, too, began to drift east.
I drifted to Wichita, caught on a branch for a while, then drifted on to Lawrence for a brief stay, then up to Chicago, leaving just before the 1968 Democratic Convention exploded onto the streets to move on up the lake shore, and, finally, dropping into KC. There, after some adventures, The Ecstatic Umbrella was formed, and some church official introduced Bill and me. Nineteen Hundred and Sixty Eight was a busy year.
Anyway, in 1969, Bill asked me if I would fill the position of 'token straight' on the Board of Directors of NACHO. The Orange Sunshine was probably responsible, but I agreed. That was when I found out that 1969 was 'The Year of the Queer', and it was. That was the year that gay rights started becoming a really important issue. The rest of the board members, all queers, tried their best to help me understand their various issues and problems with the mainstream.
Hippies, drifting east from San Francisco, were essential in the homosexual conspiracy. Maybe it was the drugs, but most hippies didn't have any problem relating to queers. Many young queers were hippies, too, so there was no way to divide the two. During that era the civil rights movement was able to accommodate homosexuals because the hippies in the mix helped lubricate the friction points.
So, I was in KC, in 1969, deep in a hotbed of leftist causes, including a bunch of queers. That is perhaps the reason that now, when I have reached the age of 69, I realize that this is my 'Queer Year', the year during which I should pay some sort of homage to all those fairies, dykes, and etceteras who tried to help me understand their problems.
A year of consorting with catamites is out of the question, nor do I have any interest in acquiring a 20 year old boy who plays tennis. No, as I was once told, 'queer' doesn't only mean homosexual. Shouting when stabbed with a needle is weird, maybe, but not really queer. How could one go about planning to be queer? I don't know and suspect the question is oxymoronic.
Rooting in the Canal
The morning of my 69th birthday I visited the clinic to have blood extracted. The following morning I visited the dentist to have a root canal done. My cup has been running over in wondrous ways.
Is there a special class in schools of architecture covering the design of bad professional offices? Or, is there any way to make a dental office waiting room pleasant? This one wasn't too bad, there was a decent enough print on the wall, but it still struck me as some blend of funeral parlor and display window design.
At least the receptionist was not hidden behind closed glass windows. If you are sitting in the waiting room of some health care facility, you are seldom waiting for good news. The reception desk staff are important, they are the people who set the tone for the office, but putting them behind glass blocks their ability to interact with the patients. As much as it costs to see health care professionals I think I have a right to expect a friendly greeting from a nice woman with an occasional smile while I wait. She should not be sealed behind a pane of glass. What if she should be suddenly overcome with desire to kiss me on top of the head?
After a brief wait another nice woman called me in to the sanctum of the great endodontist. I was relieved to see that there were no roto-rooter trucks in the vicinity. Some of these guys are gadget nuts and you need to keep watch on them. The heart surgeon who used his backhoe to open my chest convinced me of that. The nice woman placed me in a comfy chair and tilted it back.
The great endodontist came in wearing a tie dye lab coat and with a brilliant spotlight shining from the middle of his forehead. I was impressed but before I could say so my mouth was covered with a sheet of latex. That was a bit alarming: my first thought was oral condom? I was able to yell when he stuck a needle in my jaw, even though I never did feel it, but I didn't feel like I was in any position to make much of a fuss. When he leaned over me with his gleaming third eye, I could tell he was the kind who could replace that sheet of latex with duct tape if I didn't behave.
That man was intimidating. I thought about biting him, but he put a block between my teeth to keep me from biting. I growled at him a few times but he just ignored me. He kept doing strange things in my mouth but wouldn't tell me what he was doing. Finally, I pretended to go to sleep, just to show him he couldn't bother me.
After what seemed like several hours they removed the strange things from my mouth, including the oral condom, and the nice lady untied my arms and legs. I was able to sit up after a few minutes and I carefully stretched out my arms and legs, feeling the blood flow return after the long period of being tied down. Slowly rising to my feet, I staggered to the door. The pleasant receptionist, her smile replaced by a snarl, demanded that I pay a toll to go through the door.
Boy, they have some expensive doors. It cost me the price of a good milk goat to get out of there. Fortunately, I had a stolen credit card.
Christmas
Bah! Humbug! What is all this business about “Happy Holidays” versus “Merry Christmas”? Has anyone ever told you they were offended when someone wished them a Merry Christmas? Have you ever told anyone that? Who in the hell is inventing this 'assault on Christmas'?
I am offended by activities with obvious religious themes receiving government support: that is contrary to the constitution and the intent of the founders. Prayers at middle school football games and nativity scenes in the courthouse are, to me, acts of bad manners and poor citizenship carried out by people who blithely assume that, because it is 'Christian', what they are doing is proper. Those same acts, carried out in the company of friends and family, can be perfectly proper and appropriate, but when we step out into public we must restrict our behaviors somewhat. As an extreme example, conjugal relations are appropriate behind a closed door, but definitely not in public.
Do you care whether a department store newspaper ad carries the banner “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”. I don't find the “Merry Christmas” offensive, but I think that “Happy Holidays” means that Jews are free to shop in the store, also. Is there any organized movement demanding that the store's ads be irreligious? Not that I know of.
Perhaps Christian conservatives need to look at their own leadership a bit more critically. I suspect that the 'assault on Christmas' is nothing more than an organizing ploy. If Christians can be made to feel like their religion is under assault they will rally around the leaders. If anyone doubts that there are televangelists who would use such strategies they are not paying attention.
Whoever is inventing the assault on Christmas is lying to us and should be challenged. Those who wish to create civil discord merely for their own advancement are entirely too deeply set in evil to be believed.
Guy the Vigilant
It has been cold recently, but Guy Noir, the black tom turkey, continues to watch over his territory every night. His girls, Blanche and The Blue Sisters, have moved into the open shed attached to the barn, but Guy still roosts at the very top of the wisteria arbor where he can keep watch.
At night, when a car pulls into the drive to turn around, Guy sounds off. That alerts our Trusty dog, who then dashes out to challenge the intruder. The geese honk, also, when the dog starts barking, and, if the uproar continues long enough, Claudius, the bantam rooster, will start crowing. Simply pulling into our drive at night is like setting off a firecracker in a zoo.
The radio in the barn stays on all night and is tuned to KCUR, a KC public radio station that runs BBC World Service from midnight to 5:00 am. None of the residents of the barn have shown any indication of having learned a thing about global affairs due to this exposure but the gentle accents of BBC add a nice undercurrent to the occasional outbursts of cacophony.
Guy has mentioned that a famous radio character is named after him, an amazing assertion considering that Guy is not yet one year old.
Wednesday morning I found him displaying for the benefit of Buck, the male goat. Male turkeys have an incredible belief that if they display enough, almost any moving object can be turned into a receptive female turkey. All of which shows that turkeys are capable of faith in the ridiculous, something we all knew anyway.
A Happy Birthday
This week I began my 69th year of living. What Fun! For my birthday, all I could arrange was a blood test, which involved fasting overnight, driving to Lawrence on an empty stomach, and then having three vials of blood drawn. I considered a colonoscopy instead, or maybe a prostate exam, but the only thing the young physician I see would agree to was a check of my blood. I still had fun. When the nice vampire stuck the needle in my vein I yelled as loud as I could. It startled her and she poked me hard, but it was worth it.
“Shh!” she said, as if she were a librarian, “Every body can hear you.” Well of course they could, why else would I yell? We Americans are entirely too self-contained, we need to learn to make a big noise when someone sticks a needle in us.
Roger Barker and Paul Gump are two of my heroes, I suppose. They developed something called Ecological Psychology, which has to do with social environments, not natural ones. What they gave us was an exceptionally robust framework in which we can analyze and understand the behaviors of those around us. In English, they help me understand people.
Anyway, one of the asides made by Paul Gump was that people who do not conform to the appropriate range of behaviors in a particular setting are generally considered to be a little crazy. In other words, if you yell when someone sticks a needle in you in a health clinic, you are considered to be a little crazy.
So, I yelled when she stuck the needle in my arm. The clinic is in Lawrence. 'When in Rome . . .', you know.
On the way to Lawrence I stopped to pick up Calvin. He wouldn't drive because he was wearing his mud and snow boots, which are so big they won't fit on the pedals of a Honda without considerable overlap. Calvin claims his shoe size is only 15, but I think it is closer to 27.
While I was misbehaving in the clinic, Calvin waited in the car, smoking a cigarette and running the heater blower on his feet to keep his great big toesies warm. Warm air, blowing over manure encrusted boots, coupled with the smoke of a hand rolled cigarette, and an undercurrent of wood smoke, gave the car a rich aroma that brought back memories of riding with my grandfather in his Model 'A' Ford.
Age brings responsibilities. Helping Calvin come to the point where he smells a lot like my grandfather is, I suppose, one of those things you do to help fulfill your responsibilities. So is keeping a milk goat and storing colostrum in the freezer for an unexpected orphan. Caring for an orchard is another responsibility for seniors. Seniors find it very difficult to ignore children who are in need of care; few young people keep goats, therefore, few young people are able to provide proper care for their children without a lot of input from seniors.
All my life I have felt a little bit crazy, except for the times when I felt completely crazy. Now, by acting foolish and trying to fulfill my responsibilities, I have somehow externalized my craziness and gained a very pleasant internal tranquility. Now, at 69, it would seem appropriate to recognize the process of becoming a weird old fart as a righteous path.
In 1968, I met an very nice fellow, slightly older than me, named Bill. Bill was fairly conservative in appearance and action except that he was openly gay. He was also the President of the NACHO, the North American Council of Homophile Organizations, a national 'umbrella' organization for fairies and dykes. He was a nice guy, and I was becoming sick and tired of hippies, so we hung out together some. Paula liked him and we both liked his boyfriend, who I don't remember at all. Anyway, we got together socially once or twice a month.
At that time, Paula and I were living in and operating The Ecstatic Umbrella, a phone-in crisis center that operated in Kansas City and Wichita. We had four phone lines, a good referral file, church-based funding, and were an important part of the nervous system of the radical movement in both cities. Across the nation, similar efforts were springing up, trying to bring together civil rights, feminism, and hippies. Now the queers were starting to show.
During the Summer of Love, most of the hippies were political innocents. They thought they were above that sort of thing, their mission was to leave San Francisco and turn on the rest of the world. Thousands of hippies, each armed with a large bag of pot and a small bottle of Orange Sunshine, drifted east out of San Francisco to infect the continent. I lived in San Francisco during that period, gainfully employed producing 16mm educational films (including my masterpiece, Guppies Eating Daphnia, a bold excursion into the realities of food chains). I was not, however, immune to my environment, and as the hippies began to drift east, I, too, began to drift east.
I drifted to Wichita, caught on a branch for a while, then drifted on to Lawrence for a brief stay, then up to Chicago, leaving just before the 1968 Democratic Convention exploded onto the streets to move on up the lake shore, and, finally, dropping into KC. There, after some adventures, The Ecstatic Umbrella was formed, and some church official introduced Bill and me. Nineteen Hundred and Sixty Eight was a busy year.
Anyway, in 1969, Bill asked me if I would fill the position of 'token straight' on the Board of Directors of NACHO. The Orange Sunshine was probably responsible, but I agreed. That was when I found out that 1969 was 'The Year of the Queer', and it was. That was the year that gay rights started becoming a really important issue. The rest of the board members, all queers, tried their best to help me understand their various issues and problems with the mainstream.
Hippies, drifting east from San Francisco, were essential in the homosexual conspiracy. Maybe it was the drugs, but most hippies didn't have any problem relating to queers. Many young queers were hippies, too, so there was no way to divide the two. During that era the civil rights movement was able to accommodate homosexuals because the hippies in the mix helped lubricate the friction points.
So, I was in KC, in 1969, deep in a hotbed of leftist causes, including a bunch of queers. That is perhaps the reason that now, when I have reached the age of 69, I realize that this is my 'Queer Year', the year during which I should pay some sort of homage to all those fairies, dykes, and etceteras who tried to help me understand their problems.
A year of consorting with catamites is out of the question, nor do I have any interest in acquiring a 20 year old boy who plays tennis. No, as I was once told, 'queer' doesn't only mean homosexual. Shouting when stabbed with a needle is weird, maybe, but not really queer. How could one go about planning to be queer? I don't know and suspect the question is oxymoronic.
Rooting in the Canal
The morning of my 69th birthday I visited the clinic to have blood extracted. The following morning I visited the dentist to have a root canal done. My cup has been running over in wondrous ways.
Is there a special class in schools of architecture covering the design of bad professional offices? Or, is there any way to make a dental office waiting room pleasant? This one wasn't too bad, there was a decent enough print on the wall, but it still struck me as some blend of funeral parlor and display window design.
At least the receptionist was not hidden behind closed glass windows. If you are sitting in the waiting room of some health care facility, you are seldom waiting for good news. The reception desk staff are important, they are the people who set the tone for the office, but putting them behind glass blocks their ability to interact with the patients. As much as it costs to see health care professionals I think I have a right to expect a friendly greeting from a nice woman with an occasional smile while I wait. She should not be sealed behind a pane of glass. What if she should be suddenly overcome with desire to kiss me on top of the head?
After a brief wait another nice woman called me in to the sanctum of the great endodontist. I was relieved to see that there were no roto-rooter trucks in the vicinity. Some of these guys are gadget nuts and you need to keep watch on them. The heart surgeon who used his backhoe to open my chest convinced me of that. The nice woman placed me in a comfy chair and tilted it back.
The great endodontist came in wearing a tie dye lab coat and with a brilliant spotlight shining from the middle of his forehead. I was impressed but before I could say so my mouth was covered with a sheet of latex. That was a bit alarming: my first thought was oral condom? I was able to yell when he stuck a needle in my jaw, even though I never did feel it, but I didn't feel like I was in any position to make much of a fuss. When he leaned over me with his gleaming third eye, I could tell he was the kind who could replace that sheet of latex with duct tape if I didn't behave.
That man was intimidating. I thought about biting him, but he put a block between my teeth to keep me from biting. I growled at him a few times but he just ignored me. He kept doing strange things in my mouth but wouldn't tell me what he was doing. Finally, I pretended to go to sleep, just to show him he couldn't bother me.
After what seemed like several hours they removed the strange things from my mouth, including the oral condom, and the nice lady untied my arms and legs. I was able to sit up after a few minutes and I carefully stretched out my arms and legs, feeling the blood flow return after the long period of being tied down. Slowly rising to my feet, I staggered to the door. The pleasant receptionist, her smile replaced by a snarl, demanded that I pay a toll to go through the door.
Boy, they have some expensive doors. It cost me the price of a good milk goat to get out of there. Fortunately, I had a stolen credit card.
Christmas
Bah! Humbug! What is all this business about “Happy Holidays” versus “Merry Christmas”? Has anyone ever told you they were offended when someone wished them a Merry Christmas? Have you ever told anyone that? Who in the hell is inventing this 'assault on Christmas'?
I am offended by activities with obvious religious themes receiving government support: that is contrary to the constitution and the intent of the founders. Prayers at middle school football games and nativity scenes in the courthouse are, to me, acts of bad manners and poor citizenship carried out by people who blithely assume that, because it is 'Christian', what they are doing is proper. Those same acts, carried out in the company of friends and family, can be perfectly proper and appropriate, but when we step out into public we must restrict our behaviors somewhat. As an extreme example, conjugal relations are appropriate behind a closed door, but definitely not in public.
Do you care whether a department store newspaper ad carries the banner “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”. I don't find the “Merry Christmas” offensive, but I think that “Happy Holidays” means that Jews are free to shop in the store, also. Is there any organized movement demanding that the store's ads be irreligious? Not that I know of.
Perhaps Christian conservatives need to look at their own leadership a bit more critically. I suspect that the 'assault on Christmas' is nothing more than an organizing ploy. If Christians can be made to feel like their religion is under assault they will rally around the leaders. If anyone doubts that there are televangelists who would use such strategies they are not paying attention.
Whoever is inventing the assault on Christmas is lying to us and should be challenged. Those who wish to create civil discord merely for their own advancement are entirely too deeply set in evil to be believed.
Guy the Vigilant
It has been cold recently, but Guy Noir, the black tom turkey, continues to watch over his territory every night. His girls, Blanche and The Blue Sisters, have moved into the open shed attached to the barn, but Guy still roosts at the very top of the wisteria arbor where he can keep watch.
At night, when a car pulls into the drive to turn around, Guy sounds off. That alerts our Trusty dog, who then dashes out to challenge the intruder. The geese honk, also, when the dog starts barking, and, if the uproar continues long enough, Claudius, the bantam rooster, will start crowing. Simply pulling into our drive at night is like setting off a firecracker in a zoo.
The radio in the barn stays on all night and is tuned to KCUR, a KC public radio station that runs BBC World Service from midnight to 5:00 am. None of the residents of the barn have shown any indication of having learned a thing about global affairs due to this exposure but the gentle accents of BBC add a nice undercurrent to the occasional outbursts of cacophony.
Guy has mentioned that a famous radio character is named after him, an amazing assertion considering that Guy is not yet one year old.
Wednesday morning I found him displaying for the benefit of Buck, the male goat. Male turkeys have an incredible belief that if they display enough, almost any moving object can be turned into a receptive female turkey. All of which shows that turkeys are capable of faith in the ridiculous, something we all knew anyway.
posted by The Geezer at 8:48 AM
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