Finding Your Bees

I went out for a walk (OK, it was my once-a-week smoke break) during my lunch hour yesterday.  Across the street from my office is a seedy, no-name motel - the kind of place that you seldom notice.  It is typical 1960s motel architecture: run down, no shade, with little-to-no green space, located in the middle of a downtown area.  Parking lot to one side, now-defunct bank on the other.  Not the most welcoming of places.

Testing the theory that stolen food tastes better

A year ago, I spotted a volunteer eggplant in the patch of grass next to the street.  On my walk this week, I wandered over to see if the volunteer had re-volunteered another generation of plants.

Sure enough, near the original spot, there was a big, green plant.  I lifted the canopy of leaves to find a host of small, beautiful, lavender eggplants.

I smiled, and picked one, slipping it into my pocket, while marveling at how wonderful nature was, to volunteer plants where there was once just a patch of weedy ground and a discarded eggplant.

Yeah, I don't know who discards eggplants, either.  That is to say, I don't know of anyone who discards raw eggplants in weedy lots.  I know plenty of people who discard cooked eggplant, and when I was a kid, I was responsible for some such discards when Mom was not looking.  But I don't think that kind of discard results in many volunteers.

But I digress.

Not much space.  Not much green.

The eggplant bush was in a tiny grassy area.  I looked around, and there were a bunch of weeds along the opposite edge of the parking lot, interspersed with decorative plants.  The nearest of the weeds, though, looked an awful lot like a pepper plant.

Dang.  Sure enough, it WAS a pepper plant.

A little further down, another pepper.  And another.  Twelve plants, interspersed in with the ornamentals. On a narrow strip of ground between the parking lot and the grungy parking garage of a sad motel.

Basil, too.  And mint.  And lemongrass.  Suddenly, I am seeing that this is not a volunteer location.

Instead, I had just raided someone's garden.  In a motel parking lot.  I looked around for the inevitable cameras that recorded my petty theft.

And then shrugged, with full smile on my face.  Someone had taken a crappy little corner of the universe and made it theirs.  They had found a way to bring something positive out of the peeling paint and auto-exhaust begrimed surfaces, and brought forth life for their table.

I love that idea.

A friend likened it to my hunt for bees.  For most people, having an infestation of stinging insects is not something to meet with joy.  But everywhere I go, I always keep an eye out for any bees, anywhere, especially hives that I could steal, bring to my house, and give them a new home.  My friend challenged me to write about it.

So the "Finding Your Bees" series is dedicated to everyone who has taken something that is overlooked and made it into something wonderful.  And I ask for you to share it with me - either in the comments or in email form.  Examples can include:

New Orleans Container House....

• Artists who make things with found objects 
• Repurposing artists (my brother Parker is a master at this!)
• Guerrilla Gardeners - who tame abandoned lots and make them into community gardens
• People who build houses out of shipping containers (not as novel now, but somebody did the first one not so long ago)
• Scientists who are working at re-introducing lost seeds to farmers
• Archaeologists who are introducing old techniques to help improve the lives of modern folk 
• Linguists who are working to revitalize languages in indigenous communities
• Brewmasters who re-introduce old recipes, based on either historic data or archaeological evidence
• Someone who figured out what to do with kudzu (or nutria, or water hyacinth, or Asian carp, or...)
• Someone who makes musical instruments out of unusual stuff, or that make sounds that are unexpected (left handed sewer-flutists like Michelle Bowe need apply!)

If you know of a Johnny Appleseed character, group, or collective, let me know about it.  Or if you are doing something where you are taming - or wilding - a piece of the world in a novel way, I want to hear the story.  

Non-profits and other programs are fair game.  My sister pointed me to a news story that talked about writers who were invited to move to areas of Detroit that were hit hard by the economic downturn - with the idea that creative folk can lift up a neighborhood (see the story at http://www.writeahouse.com/).

The world is an amazing place, filled with incredible people.  I love it when people see things in a different way than usual, and see possibility when the rest of the world sees none.  It is almost like they are giving the world the gift of a visual pun.

Tell me yours.

Family Heirlooms - Cut and Light

Last night Kathe and I sat with family members at the dinner table in my mother's house and 'talked story' about family for hours.  One of the most delightful stories concerned the enormous table that had been the setting for Thanksgiving dinners at my great grandmother's home back when my mom was a little girl. 

There were a hundred people who sat at the table.  It was enormous.  You could walk underneath this magical table, standing upright, and it took forty people on each corner to lift it.

Such is the nature of magical tables at your grandmother's house.

The table now sits in my mother's kitchen in Bluffton, SC.  It is a beautiful table with claw feet and spiral turned legs.  It is roughly four feet by six feet, and there are a couple of additional leaves to extend it. 

It is a fine piece of furniture.  But it is no Arthurian table of legend. 

While we were talking, I looked down and admired the table.  The antiquarian in me always finds it fun to see pieces that have an old connection to me and my family, and this one was cool.  The wood was quarter sawn oak - a beautiful way of cutting red and white oak (well, mostly those two species are used) that shows off an interesting pattern.

I have always been attracted to quarter sawn oak.  I grew up with wood all around me - from the molding manufacturing business to the building supply business - and I love the fact that there is a 'revealed pattern' if the piece is cut a certain way.  The medullary rays and the growth rings combine to show off a fingerprint - unique to each tree. (For those who are curious to see how you make quarter-sawn lumber, there is a neat video here).

Each quarter sawn pattern is unique to the tree, and is only revealed by alternating the cuts the way the video shows.
 
The color difference increases with age - the light bands stay light, and the dark color deepens, and the beauty of the wood just intensifies over time.  Add to that the patina of old wood, and I can hardly tear my eyes away.

Even if it doesn't seat a hundred people.

After looking up the quarter sawn video, I was talking about the process with my mom, and mentioned a similar lapidary process that I still don't fully understand.  Iris agates are very thinly sliced agates, and when they are lit from behind, display a stunning rainbow.  Not every agate will do it, but some will, when subjected to the hand of a master cutter.



Iris Agate.  http://www.lhconklin.com/Gallery_II/QuartzIris.htm

As with the oak plank, it requires a specific cut and a specific play of light to bring out beauty that is already there. 

Isn't that the way it is with people, too?  If you get the right light, make the right cut, and show people off at their best angle, they shine in a unique way.  I look around and see people who are really spectacular at one thing or another.  The most amazing biologists, engineering wunderkinds, woodworkers, public speakers....

And then ones that impress me the most.  Parents.  These guys are ones who are cutting, and buffing, and adding patina to their kids, and like the master cutters, shine the light on their kids to make them shine. 

I look at friends like Allie Griffeth, and I see the shine.  I look at Sarah and Craig Williams and find myself loving the display of the pattern that was carefully buffed and polished to a striking beauty.  I see Joshua Adams and the light shining through him is just amazing.  All around me are kids who have been loved and lovingly molded by their parents.

To me, that is what a family heirloom really is. It is something that is passed down from one generation to another, deepening with time, and becoming more beautiful with each passing year. 

Cultivating a Garden

So I ran across a quote from the end of Candide today - "We must cultivate our own garden". While the rest of the blog was about guarding against the unproductivity of unbridled optimism (and the concomitant self deception that accompanies it), it touched on a topic near and dear to my heart right now - failure. I am teaching myself to play banjo. It is a painful process. I love learning language, even with the pain and embarassment of getting it wrong. I am in a new job, and I gloriously suck at it. Because I am learning.
 

 

Maybe pure optimism isn't an optimal feeling. Maybe 'hope for the best, prepare for the worst' is a great summation of the motto that should be used instead. But I like the idea of each step in the learning process being seen as a process of weeding. Tending the garden. Encouraging the plants I like, discouraging those that I don't.

 

 

And there might be short cuts. Spray everything with toxins. Use massive industrial machines. Keep chickens and pigs and cows in boxes where they are fed chemicals and recycled chicken parts.

 

 

But the real value gets added at that moment when you realize you have been using the word in Russian wrong, and you laugh with your new friend about it.

 

 

When you hit that banjo lick right for the first time, and then try it ten times more.

 

 

When you watch the radishes come up, thinning out the ones that make the density too high. Fertilizing, mulching, weeding. Watching the pepper plants go from small to large.  Blooming, putting out peppers, turning from green to yellow.  Then making my pico de gallo.


Watching the cotton grow, pink flowers, then boll. Eating my own sunflower seeds.  Popping the popcorn that grew in my garden.


Playing my banjo, even when I'd rather be watching tv.

 

Cultivating our own garden, just maybe, is the only thing that is worth our time.

No short cuts.

Red Zone

In my agency, we hold Red Zone Meetings when construction nears completion. It allows us to identify the areas in which we need to make adjustments before completing the project.  Stakeholders, construction folk, contractors, local sponsors, project managers, and even some of the brass from the Corps join together to see what remains to be completed.

It gives everyone a chance to revisit expectations, to discuss the way that the project should be completed, to talk about lessons learned, and to lay out the plans for turning the completed project over to the local sponsor.

For those of you who are not football fans, the Red Zone is the area within the opponent's 20-yard line; the area where the offense has gone 80 yards, and only have 20% before they can cross the goal line and score. Each team hase Red Zone offensive plays that are developed specifically to address the problems of finishing strong.  RZ offense is tricky: the closer you are to your goal, the things holding you back from reaching your goal seem to multiply.  When those obstacles are compressed between the project plan and project completion, it is much harder to slog your way, and frustration is greater, at the same time that execution is the most critical.

I love the metaphor.  And I have recently begun to reflect on the process of planning for the finish line. (I have always worked in the planning process, which takes place before ANY of the construction is done; this part of the process is new to me.)  And some questions have started to occur to me: What changes would you make if you knew that you were 80% done?  What adjustments?  What new plans would you put in place?

Last month, I joined a group of guys in hiking the Inka trail.  Beforehand, we heard horror stories of day 2; one co-worker who had done it said that going through her chemo treatments was easier than Day 2.  The first part of the day was brutal - we hiked from 9,000 feet above sea level to the impossible elevation of 13,800 feet, and celebrated at the top of Dead Woman's Pass.  Then we hustled down to 9,000', where we met the porters, who had run the same route (loaded down with our equipment and food and tents and....) who had lunch prepared for us.  Thirty minutes later, we were headed back up to the second pass, at 13,200'.  It was an exhausting climb: the oxygen was thin and climbing was tough.  More than anyone on our trip, I struggled with the thin air, and for every fifty steps I took uphill, I had to stop for two full minutes until the gasping for air receded.

And finally, we had made it through the pass, and were headed back downhill, for the rest of the day.  Out of a ten-hour hike, the last two hours were going to be all downslope. We were exhausted, but the camp slowly started to get closer and closer. 

And with only a half mile to go, we were able to see the bright red tents welcoming us with the promise of popcorn and hot chocolate (Llama Path's version of happy hour).  And the guide looked at us and said, "OK, that archaeological site (he pointed to the left of the trail) is the last thing we do before we head to camp."

Straight up.

My friend Miles and I had an honest conversation about whether we were going to go up and participate.  I mean, a huge amount of the appeal of the trip was the archaeology.  But after 11 hours of the hardest hiking I had ever done, I wasn't sure if I was up to another push.  I had not included the uphill climb at the end of the day in my RZ plan.

What happens in the Red Zone is more important than what heppens on the rest of the field.  The decisions made there are more critical, and affect outcome more than any other location. 

So what am I doing in the last hour of an eight-hour day?  Coasting?  What does my Friday afternoon feel like?  Am I pushing hard to get things done, or already mentally cracking the revenue on the bottle at home?

Football teams are defined by the success of their Red Zone offense. And more importantly than reputation, the really good things happen if the effort in the RZ is successful. 

My friend Miles looked at me, and told me it was my choice.  That he would go with me straight to camp, skipping the archaeological site, or we could go up and see what the guide was showing us.  The result was one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen. 

Maybe, just maybe... I'll push a little bit harder in the Red Zone. The payoff is pretty awesome.