to the editor

My letter to the editor--a news scoop for my readers. And do you know how hard it is to keep it to 200 words? Sheesh. I don't have 200 word thoughts!

I've heard time and again that some people in this country do not deserve health care. Immigrant workers are a prime target in the debate. Consider this: These are the people who pick and process our crops so that we can have plentiful, affordable food. Migrant workers, a high percentage of them illegal, do dangerous, labor intensive work that no one else wants to do. As one Wash. Post article states, "the pay is so low, the benefits nonexistent, the conditions so harsh, if you can, you do something else." The same article states, "If you took every illegal out of the United States right now, you would shut down the food industry." Agricultural workers have increased rates of many diseases due to pesticide exposure, and increased injuries from hazardous conditions. They live in poverty, and yet are indispensable to us. Some people say that we should send them home, we owe them nothing, not even basic health care. Perhaps, then, they wouldn't mind going into a grocery store to find empty bins where their fruits and veggies once were. We are an impoverished nation if we don't care even for those who bring the very food to our tables.

love and pie

Husband and I went on one of our urban hunting and gathering missions, as we like to call them, last weekend. There is an apartment complex near us that was built about 15 years ago on old farm land. They left two of the farmer's apple trees for landscaping, and I don't think anyone who lives there has ever wandered over, picked up a dirty apple, wiped it on the leg of their trousers, and taken a big old bite out of a tart, old-timey apple. They all just rot on the ground, so much worm food. So we go over every year to confiscate a big bag full, and this seems to be an extraordinary year for apples. Sure, hey're small and buggy and bruised, but that in no way affects their eat-ability in our eyes. We collected about 15 pounds worth. It's like finding treasure. Urban pirate booty, ours for the taking.

I've just finished baking the second apple pie this week for my beloved family, husband and number one son, anyway. Number two son doesn't eat fruit in any form. I keep telling him some day he will grow up and try a piece of homemade apple pie and realize that he has missed years of homemade apple pies and he will weep at the thought of it. The first pie, I cut the slits in the top and a tiny heart in the middle. Made with love by yours truly. Tonight, I was tired. I rode my bike five miles to work. I worked all day. I ran at lunch. I pulled a calf muscle. I rode five miles home in the heat with a pulled calf muscle. I made dinner and I cleaned it up. Dead tired. So tonight, where the heart was last time, I cut a small dollar sign in the middle of the crust, just to remind my dear ones: you can't buy this kind of love ;)

(photo: the ever-beguiling Skittles)

screaming at the market

Normal beautiful day at the farmer's market this morning--very cool for late August, with gray skies, but the abundant produce glowed and overflowed with color. All of those colors and flavors are so exciting to me, and when the vegetables are all lined up on our kitchen island, I love creating dinner. What a fortunate life we lead, with money and time and opportunity to buy such delicious food. We are among the blessed and I feel that as strongly here at the farmer's market as anywhere else on earth. We wandered through, and at the back of the market was a table for health care issues, anti-Obama, with a middle aged woman working the table. Husband and I had said many times, while watching the news, that if we were the person facing down an anti Obama health plan screamer, the first question we would want to ask them is, "Do YOU have health care? Do YOU benefit from medicare?" Just curious. It's a lot easier to hate something new when you are the Have and not the Have Not. I mentioned this to the husband, "We should ask her if she has health care." He say, "Ok, let's go ask her." Maybe a bad choice for my own health, in hindsight.

But we did. Husband asked. She said yes, she had health care. I said, "But what about those who don't have health care." She said, "I have health care because I work for it. If others want health care, they can work for it too." By this time an older dude and an older couple, also working the table, joined in. Husband asked the older couple, "But you have medicare, isn't that socialized medicine?" They said, "WE worked our whole lives and payed for it ourselves (a running theme with these folks)." Husband reminded them that WE are now paying in for THEIR care because the dollars they paid in are long used up. The system is nearly bankrupt. They didn't pay in anywhere near the amount that they are now getting out. I said, "What about those who can't work and get health care? Doesn't everyone deserve health care?" The first woman chimes in, "No, not everyone deserves health care. If you don't work, or you smoke hose cigarettes, or you eat bad food, then no, you don't deserve health care!" Ok, now these people are freaking me out. "What about children?" I ask, "Did you know that most of the uninsured are children?" Older dude cannot come up with an answer for this and so he screams at me at this point, "YOU ARE A COMMUNIST SOCIALIST LIBERAL DO NOTHING! IF YOU WANT HEALTH CARE THEN YOU SHOULD GET A JOB AND WORK FOR IT!" "Well huh," I tell him, "Matter of fact I DO have a job. I have had a job since I was 15 years old. And guess what? I STILL care about OTHER people. I care that OTHERS including many many CHILDREN do not have health care." He screams at me, "THEN WHY DON'T YOU USE YOUR OWN MONEY TO HELP THOSE PEOPLE YOU THINK DESERVE HELP." "Matter of fact, I do, by giving to charities as much as I can, as often as I can," I tell him. He then screams a me "THEN YOU ARE THE EXCEPTION AMONG LIBERALS WHO DON'T GIVE A PENNY TO CHARITIES!" Um, huh? Wow. This man is indeed crazy. I picture him with a the little Hitler mustache that they've been putting on Obama. Then yet another 65 year old dude starts screaming at me about what a socialist-communist-such-n-such I am. Husband steps in and repeats his question at some point, "Doesn't everyone deserve basic health care?" "NO," the dude screams at us. "Not everyone deserves health care!" Husband is still engaging older couple in debate, but at this point I said, "I'm walking on, I have nothing to say to that except that apparently I care more than that about my fellow humans." He screamed at me, "WALK ON SOCIALIST LIBERAL AND KEEP WALKING!"

I went over and sat down on a wall a little way away. A little boy, mentally and physically handicapped, plopped down next to me, smiled up at me and said, "HI! I'm Wyatt!" I said, "Hi Wyatt, I'm Julie." His mom asked if he was enjoying the fiddle music behind us, and yes, he was. I asked him if he'd heard the drum group on the other side and he nodded enthusiastically and started drumming on his knees. Wyatt started to wander off and his mom had to corral him, and did so with all the patience in the world although you could tell it was a more than full time job. I was still shaking. I was thinking about kids like Wyatt. Is he supposed to work for health care when he's an adult? Women like Wyatt's mom, is she supposed to work a full time job for heath care? Where does Wyatt go when she works? What about people who are heavily discriminated against in the work force? What about the handicapped? What about people with chronic illness or disease? Everyone, basically, who didn't win the genetic lottery that the
white guy who was screaming at me apparently won (in some respects)...what are they supposed to do for health care? I don't sleep at night thinking about suffering people, suffering children. I don't sleep at night thinking about the sanctimonious asses who screamed at me. I don't sleep over a lot of things. I'm feeling a lot of people's pain right now.

oxygen

Oxygen is a new "perk" here in our office. I know, I know...what will they give us next in bennies--a coffee machine that works?? For the four years that I've worked in this building, it's been stuffy and hot back in our area. Like "trapped in a small box with no airholes" stuffy. We complained over the years, but everyone pretty much wrote it off to the fact that there are a lot of people and computers back here, and we are in what was the old University Library's "stacks" area, so the floors are closer together, the ceilings lower, to support the weight of the books. The rest of the building has very high ceilings--anywhere from 10 to 30 feet high.

But in the past year, the stuffiness got worse and worse. The amount of sickness in our area last winter was appalling, with everyone passing around everything two or three times. I just couldn't BREATHE. I thought it was because I'm outside a lot and we keep our house very open, and I am just used to more air flow. Turns out, we finally complained enough to get them to place monitors in our area. Good levels of C02 are between 300-400. Danger-to-human-life
level is 8000. We were reading 4500 by 15 minutes after everyone arrived at work, and staying there all day. We literally did not have enough oxygen in here to breathe freely.

They did some investigation and found that the main problem was not air flow from other areas, but that of the 25 air exchange fans on the roof of the building, 18 of them were not working! These were fixed over the weekend, and on Monday, we noted an absolutely amazing difference in the air quality. It feels so much better. I'm not catching myself doing this tired-like sighing thing all day like I was from feeling so groggy and suffocated. Our heat/air units were also not working, which explained the complete lack of air conditioning and the 90 degree temps back here all year round. They fixed that, too, and it's a pleasant 70-something in here now. Hopefully I won't have to wear tank tops to work this winter.

I told my boss that I was feeling happy happy about the air situation. He said, "That's scary." Apparently I'm a bit too perky on all this oxygen. :)

buns of steel, teeth like baleen

I run through an Indiana summer heat wave. I run because I can again. Because it feels good again, after years of surgeries, babies, backpain. Years of doing all kinds of other things besides running, but still missing my first love. Twenty-five years ago, running was my life, and then *poof* I couldn't do it anymore. Like an addict, though, I never got the desire out of my system.

I can run again, but I have to force myself to keep going through the heat. Any running is progress, any stopping is backsliding. Half of running is mental--mental strength or mental illness, sometimes it's hard to tell. The weather site still reads ninety degrees and ninety-plus humidity at nine pm. Ninety, ninety, nine--some kind of cosmic joke on us. Why do people live in Indiana? (That's the lead in to the joke.) But we do live here, for various reasons, and ninety degrees at nine in the evening is what we get dealt sometimes. Very funny. With my family gawking at me like I'm a mental case, I go out and run anyway.

I am instantly soaked. It's a somewhat sadistic kind of pleasure that makes me feel tougher than I really am. "Punch my ass," I tell my husband, when I've been doing a lot of running. He's known me for a long time and tolerates my stupid desire to prove to him that my ass can be tightened into a rock hard lump. "I'm not going to punch your ass." "No, seriously, punch my ass." He finally does so I'll shut up, and he acts suitably impressed, and then I laugh because it is completely ridiculous that I need him to understand that I am TOUGH AS NAILS HERE.

By the string of small ponds, in a low spot where the breeze--if there were any breeze at all--is bunkered by blue spruce, I run through a thick cloud of tiny insects. They stick to my face and my bare sweaty arms. Breathing hard, I close my mouth just a little and imagine myself filtering the swarm through my teeth like a blue whale in my blue running shorts. "More protein" is the old joke that goes through my mind. I laugh to myself. It's hotter than Hades. The air is thick and damp and barely breathable. But I am running again, and that makes me happy.

how boys do mother's day

One might wish for a daughter from time to time to share girl things with, but, honestly, it's hard to beat teen boys for truly heart-felt displays of affection--once you get used to their ways. You have to look a little harder for the diamonds is all. For mother's day or birthdays, I always tell them: don't spend money on me--just make me something or do something for me. Really. Let's keep it real boys. One has no money and one has gas and car insurance and some college expenses to pay for.

So No. 2 son (fifteen) washed a big sink full of pots and pans for me last night. I had to strongly suggest that that would be the perfect mother's day gift, and he protested, but he did do it, and it was nice to wake up to an empty sink this morning. He worked on a card, but that did not materialize. Crafting is not his thing.

When I rolled out to make coffee this morning, No. 1 son (eighteen) had left me a lovely rose in a glass of water, and a note that said, "Happy Mother's Day....another gift upstairs." The rose came, he said, from "the place you go when you decide to buy a rose at two in the morning." Then he insisted that I walk up the stairs with my eyes closed. At the top of the stairs was my gift: at two in the morning last night, which is when he came in from being out with friends, he had patched the big hole he had punched in the drywall during a fit of anger. And in his room, another big hole with another patch. (Eighteen has been a tough year for the kid who has never given me a moment's trouble up to this point ;) I gave him a big hug.

Back in the kitchen, I had an empty Cabernet bottle on the counter, and the rose's glass looked a bit short, so I said, "Hey, I'll put the rose in the wine bottle. That will look nice." No. 2 son came back with, "Or trashy. We'll just have to see." Good point. Teen boys pretty much call it like they see it. Another plus on mother's day or any day. If you prepare to walk out of the house in something stupid, they will tell you. If your last hair cut was less than attractive, they will not varnish the truth.

And that, my friends, is the way teen boys express love--dishes, roses, drywall patches, obvious truths, much humor, and always many hugs.

give me a sign

Hyperbole aside, I will say that I very rarely sleep anymore, and almost never between 2am and 5:30am. Last night I listened to a whippoorwill for an hour or so. I should get up and do something, but I'm always convinced that any minute I will fall back asleep, and I don't want to miss my chance. I do hear things, though, that I might not hear if I was a normal person who slept at night. Last fall I had an owl friend. Hopefully whippoorwill will visit again.

But this is not much of a story, so I'll tell you how I got a deep discount on a nice dress. (I decided that, after 47.5 years, it was critical that I have a little-black-dress and with a couple of events coming up, and no respectable dress, it became a pressing issue, and thus, off to the mall at 7:30pm last night with a credit card and a goal.) I was suffering the usual anxiety and failure that I usually experience when clothes shopping and was in the last store in which I intended to look before slinking back home empty handed. I was standing there, looking at a wall rack holding a dress that not only came in my size, but looked like something that might work, and it wasn't all that expensive. Could it be? Just then, out of the clear blue florescence of overhead mall lighting, a big four foot by four foot sign fell off a high shelf over the dresses, the edge of it landing smack in the middle of my head. I bent over in pain and sort of moaned. The young salesperson ran over and started cooing around and saying she was very sorry, although I really think she felt no personal responsibility. I think she half expected me to start yelling that I would sue, or something. She ran to the sales desk and presented me with a twenty percent off coupon as the lump on my head swelled and throbbed. I was determined to still try on the black dress, and it was really all I could hope for, so I bought it and I got twenty percent off. I'm not made for this whole shopping thing, but despite the lump--which has gone down some today--I pretty much scored big.

Photo: Son, at the last minute, could not find his black dress shoes for prom, and so he had to wear his Converse, and so it often goes at our house.

into the mist-ic

It was a cool, rainy day all day yesterday, but as the sun started to set, it was only misting out, and so I cajoled the family into taking a walk with me. Number One Son agreed to go but then got a better offer to go to a friend's house, so he apologetically scooted out. Before he left, though, he sidled up to me, and being the sensitive young

man he is, asked me if he had made me feel sad by not going on the walk. I told him that I'm happy that he has such good friends and I know that when I was 18, even though I loved my parents, I would always rather be with my friends. I said to him, "I don't think you'll understand this until you have kids, but it's sometimes sad for a parent to know that her kid would really rather be somewhere else, while at the same time it's normal and good. I know you are not a little boy anymore, but I still have the experience of that little boy in my memory, in my heart, in my very bones. So, yes, I do get a little sad sometimes." He reminded me that he is living at home next year for his first year of college. Yes, I know that. And it's not all a bed of roses living with a headstrong 18 year old. But still. There are some moments I miss experiencing with him, and this misty Spring evening walk felt like one of them. At eighteen and a half, he is such a man in some ways. But when I see his smile, a lock of hair that always curls a certain way, the tiny mole on his chin, his big expressive eyes, I see my little boy as he has always been.

But Husband and Number Two Son gave into my plea, son preferring to scoot along beside us on his bike. And it was amazing out. The grass is lush and green (everywhere, that is, except on our property where our pesticide-free yard is still a bit sparse--left to it's own devices, our yard is constantly trying to return to the mix of woodland grasses and weeds, wild olive, and redbud shoots it was before we were there). The crab apples are all bloom and perfume, while the Bradford pears are now in leaf, their recent finished blooms covering the sidewalks like a dusting of snow. The bass and grass carp were active in the small ponds up the road, and our buddy the muskrat was taking his evening swim. I see him almost every time I walk there, and I always envy him his quiet, solo swim in a placid pond at twilight. I briefly reconsider letting Husband buy the backhoe he's been going on about, and letting him dig a pond at the bottom of our property so that I can be a muskrat on summer evenings at twilight.

The walk back was even more magical as a foggy mist settled into the low spots on our road and the spring peepers went into full song. Cardinals and other song birds flashed and twittered in the shrubby undergrowth that overtakes all the unkept edges where our dead-end road fades into deeper woods. A red-wing blackbird sang from a marshy area. It was hard for me to believe my luck at being alive on this damp, deeply green-scented evening. What luck to live on my small acre and a half of shed, garden, woodpile, pine row, fallen tree, bird-filled thicket, cozy house, screened porch. Even through the ups and downs of life with other humans and work and worry, I find much peace here, and being outside at twilight presses that peace into my very being.