The Seeds of Dissention

You might assume that, when it comes to local government, the most burning, most pressing, most divisive issue would be taxation and the municipal budget. You might assume that residents have the strongest feelings about their pocketbooks. You would be wrong. If you want to start a local civil war you only have to say one little word, and that word is "parking."

I have been listening to arguments about parking for five years. Local merchants complain that the meter fees in the central business district are too high. Everyone complains when the meters are enforced and tickets are written. When the meters aren't enforced, everyone complains that compliance is spotty. When tickets are written because people are parking too close to intersections everyone complains, and when enforcement of intersection sightlines are ignored everyone complains about that.

Those who live in higher density residential neighborhoods who don't have off-street parking complain when they can't park directly in front of their own homes. People who have driveways and garages complain when neighbors or visitors park in front of their homes just because they don't like the view of parked cars from their front windows. People who live near schools or local businesses located within residential neighborhoods complain when customers or staff park near their homes. People who live on streets with plenty of parking for all complain if anyone parks on their street, even for a minute.

Propose a new business or redevelopment project in my city and everyone will immediately start complaining about parking. Propose a new parking deck and everyone will complain about the wisdom of parking decks. Propose a parking lot and everyone will complain about impervious surfaces. If you want neighbor to turn against neighbor, friend against friend, simply lean into a group of peaceful-seeming people and whisper, "Parking." Within 30 seconds fisticuffs will commence.

If there's a solution I don't know it. When you live in a place with medium or high density, in old neighborhoods built before every home contained a two-car garage, you're going to have a lot of cars competing for on-street parking. Distraction is probably the best method to combat the divisiveness of the parking issue. Lean into that same group and whisper the second-most controversial topic and parking will become a distant memory. That topic? Street trees.

Another Reason to Change Careers

If my cat ever decided to post an online profile, his "hobbies and interests" would be, in order of importance, eating, sleeping, and grooming. I'm glad cleanliness is important to him, although I wish he'd understand that it's a rare human who cares to have his anus thrust into the face, no matter how clean that anus might be. At any rate, his propensity for grooming leads to hairballs. No amount of brushing and no "hairball control" treats can stem the nighttime tide of hairballs thrown up onto my carpet.

I suppose I should be thankful that he throws up on the carpet rather than on the bed or the couch. His process is to jump down and wander around retching until he finds a perfect, unspoiled section of the carpet to spoil. He never vomits in the same place twice, and no matter what I've tried nothing will get up the stain that's left. Things sometimes creep up on you, so that I woke up last week and noticed stains all around me, in the bedroom, in the office, down the entire length of the hallway. It was time to call in the professionals.

Carpets obviously get gross and it's better not to ever think about it. Better not to think about the dander, sweat, dead skin, germs, crumbs, and god knows what else that lodges there. Better, in other words, not to look at what comes up the steam cleaner. Let me put it this way: I thought the base color of my carpeting was much more tan than it turns out to be.

The point of this post isn't to be disgusting, however, but instead to marvel at what a racket carpet cleaning can be. Before I called the guys in the truck, I tried both Resolve and a consumer steamer, neither of which did anything but leave their own bleach stains all over the place. I rented one of those larger steamers from the grocery store, which succeeded only in leaving the carpets soggy and smelling like a wet dog. Unless you want to own some unwieldy and ridiculously expensive machine you have no choice but to pay someone with the proper equipment.

Once the carpet cleaners realized pet stains were involved, I was instructed that simple steam cleaning wouldn't be enough, because moisture would only release germs and odor. My experience with the grocery store machine bore that out. The result was that I had to spend an extra $60 for an antibacterial/antimicrobial pretreatment, on top of the hundred bucks for the cleaning of the two rooms and hallway. So, OK, it's not as if I had any other options, save ripping out the carpets or tearing down the house. I had to pay whatever it was I had to pay.

But here's the thing: the whole process, pretreatment and steam cleaning, took exactly 10 minutes. I paid $160 for 10 minutes of work. Yes, they had to drive here in the truck, but my appointment was scheduled for a day when they were already in my neighborhood, and yes, the two guys were in the house more like 20 minutes and their labor was part of the cost. But come on, $960 an hour? To clean carpets? I am so in the wrong line of work.

Winner Takes It All

Because jobs in my field are hard to find these days, I've decided my financial plan is simply to win PowerBall. It's a nice jackpot this week: $122 million if you take the cash rather than the annuity. Even after taxes, that's, well, it's enough money for the rest of my life. I bought 10 tickets, so clearly I'm going to win this thing. In spare moments, I've been trying to figure out what I'm going to do with some of that money. If a check for $122 million won't burn a hole in your pocket, then nothing will.

Of course I'll buy a new car, and book a trip first-class on Emirates Air so I can experience the private sleeping compartment. That's maybe $200K, though, leaving me with an awful lot of change. I really like my current house even though it lacks a pool, so I'll re-landscape and have one put in. That still leaves me with way too much money. One advantage of spectacular wealth would be my ability to avoid winter altogether should I so choose, so I decided that I'd buy a winter house someplace warm.

Because I love mid-century modern architecture, Palm Springs seems like the most logical winter destination. Plus, I could attend the Indian Wells tennis tournament every year. So, yesterday I went onto the Palm Springs MLS to see about dropping a couple of million and helping to revive the California economy.

Can you imagine my joy when I discovered that for $3.25 million I can purchase Twin Palms, Frank Sinatra's actual house? This feels like an incredible bargain; it even comes furnished. I can't wait to have sex in Frank Sinatra's bed, or for my cat to shed in Frank Sinatra's ugly chair. My dog has a weird propensity to crap on concrete rather than grass, and Frank Sinatra's house has an amazing patio for him to defile. Twin Palm means family fun for everyone.

The drawing is tonight, so I can go pick up my check tomorrow and buy the place over the weekend. If you don't have any Labor Day plans, come fly away to Palm Springs.

Add Another Casualty to the List

Farewell, birch tree. You are older than me, and your time has come. When you were planted, Eisenhower was President, my house was brand new, and you were just a pretty thing, standing amid a sea of oak and hemlock. Now you're 50 feet tall, barely clinging to life. I'm sorry to euthanize you, but although you shade my porch you also threaten it. You look like you want to fall. I don't want you to fall. I'm felling you.

It's all good, birch tree, I promise. The tree people will chip you up and haul you off someplace, where you will be chemically treated and turned into mulch. By next spring, you'll be spread all over the shrubs of some suburbia, helping to keep the weeds at bay. And look on the bright side: no one will pee on you once you're mulch, or at least Brody won't pee on you anymore.

None of this is your fault. You didn't ask to be planted too close to the house, and you didn't ask for that twister to come through last summer, damaging you beyond repair. All you ever did was grow and shed leaves, year after year, and get taller and taller, as trees are wont to do. You were a good tree, maybe even a great tree, and I'll miss you and your white bark.

I know you've overheard me talking about the Japanese maple I'll be planting in September. It's no offense to you or to white birches in general; I just need to have a shorter tree so close to the house. You're not being replaced, exactly. Think of the maple as a reminder of the post-war feeling of optimism and expansion from whence you sprang, and a reminder of how our ambitions are now just a little bit smaller.

It's been a tough month for all of us, birch tree. First Farrah, then Michael, then Karl, then McNamara, and now you. There will be no memorial service at a civic center, no special issue of Time or People, no tributes from Quincy Jones, but still you will be missed, perhaps more than all of those others. RIP, overgrown birch.

Help Me Find the Cure

Until last year I'd never once gotten any kind of poison - ivy, oak, sumac, I was immune to all of it. I didn't even know what the stuff looked like. I've probably peed in the woods and used sumac as toilet paper without repercussion. I discovered last summer that I'd purchased a house with a yard filled with poison ivy, lost my immunity, and spent two months battling the rash and the itch, until I gave up weeding and hired someone to deal with my hedges.

This year I'm committed to doing all the yardwork myself. I now know what poison looks like, and I've been gardening in long sleeves, long pants, gloves. I've been as careful as I can be, yet I'm still getting small outbreaks. It could be that I'm picking it up from the dog, or maybe from the air. At any rate, because I do want to spend time in my yard and because I don't want to garden while wearing a HazMat suit, I'm wondering if anyone knows of anything to do to try to contain, if not avoid, poison ivy.

Here's what hasn't worked:

Technu: This stuff appears to do absolutely nothing except smell bad.

Rubbing alcohol: Applying this everywhere before showering immediately after coming inside might or might not contain the amount of poison I get, but it certainly hasn't prevented it entirely.

Bleach: Lightens the hair on my arms, dries out my skin, does not effect the poison.

OTC hydrocortisone: This does not seem to hasten the drying of the rash one bit, nor does it help with the itch.

Calamine/Caladryl: Relieves the itch, but doesn't seem to hasten healing or prevent spreading.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I really don't want to spend the entire summer walking around with the pink stuff caked all over my extremities.

The Joys of Home Ownership

I'm supposed to be happy that I own a home. Building equity and all that. But it often feels as if home ownership actively works against you. Let's say, for example, that a year and a half ago you bought a home with a really old refrigerator, so old that it's a lovely harvest gold model. You think, "I'd like to replace that one day," but you don't, because the old refrigerator still works, and you have other ways to spend your money. On occasion you look at the fridge and think, "One of these days, when I can afford it, you will be carted off and a stainless steel Kenmore Elite with french doors will occupy your spot," but then you finish your coffee and get on with your life.

Your old fridge will soldier on until, two days before you are expecting guests for the weekend, two days before a weekend when you will have no time to sit around waiting for a delivery truck, two days before you need things like ice and cold drinks, it will silently die. It will die at exactly the time when carpenter bees have decided to invade your wood deck, necessitating an expensive visit from the exterminator. It will die at precisely the time when you can least afford the Kenmore Elite of your dreams. It will die on the day you are paying your monthly bills and feeling poor. It will die at the worst, the absolute worst, possible time.

A year ago, your washing machine conducted a similar assault on your morale, leaving this world right in the middle of a spin cycle that included all of your underwear. Although you've never done anything but clean and gently use them, your appliances appear to hate you. The carpenter bees clearly hate you. The US economy definitively hates you, although the chances are that the refrigerator that you must now rush out to purchase will probably be on sale, which is the one bright spot in this saga.

Aren't you glad you're not a renter?

Free the Weeds

I've spent a decent number of hours and a decent number of dollars over the past two weeks to do a spring clean-up in my yard. The fact that I dedicated days to leaf blowing and raking just four months ago seems to have mattered little. I have a partially wooded lot, full of older and not necessarily healthy trees, and winter's after-effects include a yard full of downed branches, sticks, pine needles, and leaves blown over from the neighbor's.

I know some people either like or take satisfaction from yard work, but I'm not one of those people. It feels to me that I'm fighting repeated battles with nature, and nature always wins. Pull a weed and two replace it, cut the grass and it just grows back, trim the hedges and they climb twice as high. Why do we bother?

Until around a hundred years ago, Americans didn't have lawns. Their yards were comprised of dirt and utilitarian vegetable gardens. Until the invention of the lawn mower the only way to trim a lawn was either by scythe or by letting sheep or cattle graze, so it really wasn't worth the bother to plant grass. Our native grasses aren't lawn grass, so until the invention of hybrid grass that could withstand our climate without too much watering, lawns were pretty much the province of the wealthy who could afford the paid labor needed to trim and water grass.

What made people bother? Why replace carefree dirt and healthful gardens with high-maintenance grass? To some degree we have the American Garden Club to thank. During the 1920s these grass enthusiasts waged an aggressive PR campaign promoting the beauty and benefits of the lawn. By then, the middle-class could afford a rotary lawn mower and to buy produce rather than grow it, so the notion of a lawn for every house took hold. To a large degree we also have the American hatred of the weed to thank. One thing manicured grass can do is take up all the space, light, and nutrients available and starve away weeds.

In order to make life easier, or at least to make my life easier, all that would need to happen is that every invasive plant species currently categorized as a weed be recategorized as a thing of beauteous splendor. A cultural appreciation of dandelion, crabgrass, goldenrod, sumac, and every other thing that wants to take over my property would allow me to give my property back to the forces of nature. Nature doesn't want me to have a yard. It wants me to have a clearing filled with sticks and leaves and "weeds." I'm tired of fighting it.

Try Walking

Robert Frost claimed that good fences make good neighbors, but he was wrong. This might have been the case a century ago, but these days off-street parking makes good neighbors. To get even more specific, having off-street parking and using it makes good neighbors. Last night I endured yet another meeting, probably my tenth in five years, about the "parking situation" in my small city. 1960s radicals had it all wrong. If you want to start a revolution, forget the pamphlets, demonstrations, and bombs. Just mention parking.

Our central business district has been struggling for decades. The reasons for this are easy to see: urban renewal emptied the center of town of residents, businesses have also slowly decamped for strip malls, what retail remains are small, underfunded niche businesses that suffer from a lack of foot traffic. The real problem, according to merchants, isn't cultural and demographic trends. It's parking. The meters cost a quarter, the police ticket people who don't feed their meters, when it snows the parking spaces aren't plowed out, sometimes people have to park a block away from the destination, there isn't enough parking, there's too much parking, it costs too much to park, we should have Muni-meters, we need more lots, we need another garage. Who cares about the economy, the culprit is parking.

Emotions run equally high in our residential neighborhoods. Because we are an old city, many of our neighborhoods were built at a time before cars. What off-street parking exists tends to be a pad for one car, but because many units were subdivided into several rentals, and because these days each household has multiple vehicles, parking can be competitive. People think they have a divine right to park directly in front of their door despite the fact that they live on a public street. People blame the municipality, the public transportation system, the police, street cleaning, absentee landlords, and yuppies when they are forced to park around the block from their homes. If you live in a high-density neighborhood but don't talk to your neighbors, it's probably because of parking.

Suburban living does nothing to ease the tensions. Every home on my parents' cul-de-sac came with a driveway and two-car garage, but even so occasionally cars were parked on the street. When I parked on the street the neighbors across the street would get mad. When the neighbors' son would park on the street my parents would get mad. The last time I visited the old block all anyone could talk about were the new neighbors who didn't use their garage and always had two or three cars parked on the street. The only issue that even came close to the angst engendered by on-street parking was one neighbor's floodlit Christmas tableau featuring Santa, his sleigh, and all eight reindeer.

People have cars. People need to park their cars. Everyone needs to get over it, so that I never have to attend another parking meeting in my life. Thank you.

Top of the Morning

I'm not the smartest person in the world. I'm pretty certain that, were one to gather up all that I don't know and put it in one place, one could fill the hold of a battleship. I do know, however, that if the water company pulls up to your driveway at 7 AM and starts digging holes on said driveway that you aren't in for a good day. I also know that if you put on some clothes, walk to the end of the driveway, and ask the water men, "What's up?" and they say, "Just looking for the source of a problem," your day isn't likely to improve.

That is all.

Leaf Blowing, Exposed

I know I'm finally an adult because I now own all manner of yard and gardening equipment. Because my house is surrounded by a lot of trees I end up with a lot of leaves each fall, so I broke down last week and bought a leaf blower. Leaf blowers, as it turns out, are a lot like relationships: the first one is practice, so you can get it right the second time.

I don't yet completely regret my decision to get the electric rather than gas-powered blower; the electric is lighter, plenty powerful, easier to store. The problem is the 100-foot cord. I'd somehow managed to own a home without having a really, really long orange extension cord, and the blower didn't come with one, so off I went to the big-box home store to purchase one. Some of those cords cost as much as the blower itself. That's crazy! I thought. Why would you spend 35 bucks on an extension cord?

So it doesn't tangle. I bought the $13 cord, and it turns out it's resting state is in knots. So it stays attached to the blower. This cheap cord slips out of the cord clip, and in the middle of an important blow it tends to detach and curl around itself into yet another knot, causing me to stop and straighten everything out. So it comes with a holder. Go ahead, try to wrap a 100-foot cord around your forearm without creating even more knots. I dare you.

Before buying an electric leaf blower you might want to assess the number of outdoor outlets around your house. As it turns out, I have a dearth. The extension cord won't reach all parts of my yard. Sure, I can buy a second cord, but I don't even want to think about dealing with twice as many tangles, and the need to wind up double the cord.

One day I will decide on the ultimate solution. I will simple cement over my entire property. Sure, the neighbors will hate me, but nature in all its permutations will finally be at bay.

Party Like It's 1959

Enough of politics (although I'm really looking forward to tomorrow night's debate). The most exciting news I've had in a while is the fact that Revolutionary Road has finally been made into a movie, directed by Sam Mendes and starring Leo and Kate Winslet, no less. Yates' is, I think, the best novel of the 1950s, of suburbia and conformity; it out-Cheever's Cheever. It's filled with bleakness, drunken-ness, and all around bad behavior, which perhaps explains why it's taken 45 years for it to be adapted for the screen. My assumption is that the success of Mad Men led the studios to think the time was right for this particular period film.

If you're not familiar with Richard Yates, he served in WWII, had TB, wrote a couple of great, minimalist novels and some of the best short stories of the 20th century, was an accomplished creative writing instructor, and drank himself to death. Read his collected stories and see that Raymond Carver didn't come out of left field. In fact, just read his collected stories; many of them are truly wonderful, ultimately better than any of his novels.

Revolutionary Road is the story of April and Frank Wheeler. Frank works in PR; he and April meet at a party in the Village, fall in love, marry. Despite their "artistic" leanings they move to the suburbs. They are predictably unhappy. They talk and talk to each other, drunkenly and manicly trying "communicate," to work through their angst. They decide that if they move to Paris everything will be different. They never make it to Paris. I'm not giving away the ending, just read the book for yourself. The title is, of course, ironic.

In times of trouble we long for the safety and certainty of the past, or yearn toward the better times of the future. We watch period dramas secure in our hindsight; we know better than the Wheelers, we know their plot has nowhere to go but to grief, we feel definite that we're smarter now. But are we? How many dreams were sublimated into mortgages during the past decade, how many aspirations swallowed by consumerist desires? We still want what everyone else has, we still need at the same time to feel different.

The Wheelers' story unfolds on the cusp of cultural, political, and generational change, a cusp we are today similarly balanced upon. We smoke and drink less, we no longer wear fedoras or girdles, we believe we are more enlightened about sexual and racial politics, but underneath the song remains the same: the more we strive, the more we compromise.

Here's a Bucket, Start Bailing

Brody and I are getting ready for our road trip to Virginia. I'm nearly certain that the Amherst Motor Inn will not feature free internet, or any internet, for that matter, so I'll be offline until Monday. I'm hoping that while I'm gone the Senate Banking Committee decides to give me a bailout. It's true, I haven't done anything to damage our entire economic system, and in that sense I'm not the most deserving among us, but I could use a bailout nonetheless. In exchange for a truly modest sum, the American taxpayers can have an equity stake in the home Countrywide and I co-own. It's a really good deal for everyone. I think taxpayers like me would be better served with a stake in my mid-century modern house (it's got central air! and a garage!) than with a percentage of AIG or some tottering investment bank. Why buy failing securities when we can buy a nice three-bed, one and a half bath with fireplace and hardwood floors? I'll even throw in partial ownership of my cat, if Chuck Shumer wants me to. He's a nice cat, and he'd be proud to be partially owned by the American taxpayer.

Come on, Senate Banking Committee. Stop talking and bail me out already.

How to Spend a Saturday

There's little better to do on a gorgeous late summer/early fall weekend than to drive around the country, go to an orchard for apples, buy produce at roadside stands, and enjoy what scenery is left around here before it's paved over into strip malls and subdivisions. This time of year, nurseries are full of "hardy mums." Everywhere we went Saturday, signs encouraged us to purchase "hardy mums," as if somewhere down the road one could find a stand selling "delicate mums." If each and every mum is "hardy," why bother with the adjective?

One friend who gardens told me "hardy" means that these are mums that can survive a light frost. Another told me that it means that you can plant them in the ground, that "hardy" mums are perennials. The internet told me that all mums are perennial, all mums survive a light frost, and therefore all mums are "hardy."

Except my mums. The sign at the stand where I purchased mine said, "Hearty Mums."

Nature Nurtures Itself

Before I bought it, my property housed two different sets of old people. When the house was built in 1955, the landscaping was undoubtedly beautiful. Unfortunately, I don't think the flora has seen the likes of a pruning sheer, chainsaw, clippers, or weed killer since. My "hedges" are 20 feet high; my trees are so overgrown they're half dead; my "shrubs" are taller than the house. Add this fact to the events of Sunday night, and I'm left pretty much hating nature right now.

I've never liked gardening. I get absolutely no pleasure, no sense of accomplishment, out of weeding or pruning. I like it when flowers come up, but have no interest in thinning beds or moving bulbs around. Nearly all of my friends have perfect gardens, filled with flowers and vegetables. They all say, "Oh, you just need to weed a little every day, it doesn't take much time. And it feels so good!" I've tried, I really have, but it just doesn't feel good to me. In my last house I waged a six-year long battle with a trumpet vine. The vine won; I moved rather than continue to deal with it.

How do you know what is weed and what is "plant" anyway? Everything's a weed, if you think about it. Our culture just decided to value day lilly more than dandelion. Based on my experience, all plants are invasive. They just grow and grow, attempting to take over the property, until a storm comes along and rams them into the house. If nature had it's way I wouldn't live here at all. Nature is a beautiful woman who knows she's beautiful so she flirts with you and then breaks your heart. Vigilance can lead to the appearance that culture is capable of holding back nature, but one can't be vigilant each and every day. Blink, and your yard is full of poison ivy. Take a nap, and you'll awaken with a trumpet vine in bed next to you.

Even so, I'm not paving over the property, at least not this week. The storm debris will be cleared out and chipped, and someone is coming to cut the hedges back to a height where I can, in the future, trim them myself. I lose each and every battle with nature, yet I continue to fight the war.