2021 Fare-Thee-Wells and Thanks

 I said a year ago that for me, 2021 began with hope. I end it the same way, with hope and gratitude.

This blog soldiers along at a slow pace these days, as I've many obligations--writerly and otherwise--to fill my hours. But it would be remiss if I did not pause in the final hours of a gone year to give thanks. It makes a lot of sense, instead of drinking too much and then sounding a noise-maker at the stroke of midnight.  

So what am I thankful for, in the Tractorpunk scheme of things?

First, that my wife and I have the health to continue our DIY lives. In spite of a fall for her and arthritis for me, we still remain flexible, strong, and active. Today I moved 600 pounds of chicken feed into storage, after we made a trip to the factory where it is made in the Shenandoah Valley. I'm thankful we found that factory, to cut our operating costs for non-GMO chicken feed. Yes, we must raise egg prices in 2022, but not by the margin we feared, once inflation reared its ugly head.

I'm also thankful that my DIY skills continue to ramp up. I replaced the wire harnesses on our old John Deere M tractor and rebuilt the carburetor for the second time in a decade. With electronic ignition and all that includes, the 70-year-old beast still can mow the grass as well as when it was new. The work left the machine down for months and that delay had its frustrations, but in the end, I learned a lot. That's the satisfaction of much mechanical work. 

Beyond that, I'm finishing the year by putting old-fashioned wood weatherboard siding to replace some of the vinyl on our house. I planed it myself, from wood my brother-in-law sawed, from logs of trees my late father-in-law felled. From tree to board, in one family. We are not Amish (lots of power tools got employed) but there are few manual joys to rival making your own building materials. Eventually all the vinyl siding will be gone: cement board will replace some in hard-to-paint places, but where I have wood available, that will go up instead.

Third, I'm thankful that my wife could retire. So many of my friends cannot contemplate retiring, but our rather frugal lives and my day job, plus the miracle of compounded interest, let Nancy leave full-time teaching July 1. It has been a rough semester for her colleagues with COVID and a return to school of children not accustomed to sitting in a classroom for a few semesters. Now Nan can focus on her tasks with our LLC and do some part-time work for the school system, as I drift toward retirement in a few years. I'm planning to get a first-year writing textbook published, which is no easy task in this publishing market, but at the same time, I've published pieces in Style Weekly, back from the grave thanks to a purchase by Virginia Public Media. I've also written for Hemmings Daily and Modeling Madness (plastic models, not insane fashionistas).

Finally, I'm thankful for the locally owned businesses that have weathered the pandemic. Good Foods Grocery expanded and diversified its selection of foods, and it offers a quieter alternative to Ellwood Thompson's, another favorite. Several restaurants we love hung in despite the virus and labor shortages, and most of our favorites have been recently crowded, including the Athens Tavern, where we held our rehearsal dinner in 1992. We have a new local hardware store, too, to compete with Pleasants. Then we discovered a fabric store just down the street for projects, too. At Virginia Beach, we found The Barclay Cottage B&B where we found gracious hosts for a short getaway. We met a second farm-sitter, too, to help with the animals when we are away.

Not everything we love endured, of course. Our favorite wine store, Sonnys, shut its doors a few months ago, but that was more due to a greedy out-of-state landlord than anything else.Drive through Richmond, and you'd find more than few old businesses shuttered.

So we should count the losses, but at the same time, I'd start by counting what endures. There's a lot to fix, but we start where we can: locally.

Maybe that process can begin in 2022.  

Sunset image from Wikipedia

The Myth of Self-Sufficiency

Self-Sufficiency is a cardinal American value. Yet our chickens demonstrated, just last night, what a crackpot idea it can be.

The hens missed the dusk closing of the automatic door. I'd made the mistake of giving them a treat a bit too late in the day, so they ended up stuck outside the coop. When I went out to check on them, as we do nightly to be sure all are safely tucked away to roost, all six hens were clustered together, for warmth, on and beneath the cleated board that leads to the closed door. In a few minutes, I ushered them inside and shone a light to help them onto the roosting bar.

Chickens, like humans, have no night vision. They needed a light, and without it, they huddle together for mutual protection.

When I visit homesteading e-lists and Web sites, I run into the "Prepper" mentality quite often. These folks often assume that with enough supplies, ammunition, and skills, they could ride out nearly any human-made or natural disaster.

I think they need to watch a flock of chickens. They might also want to imagine their world without helpers with medical skills, without a policeman to call to sort out contentious neighbor, without a local government to resolve property disputes.

No, thanks. I'll take the imperfect compromise we call "modern civilization."  But either way, I'd also take a community over the myth of the heroic, Neitzschean loner who shapes the world with his bare male hands. In truth, that macho posturing gives way to realism of splitting wood with a hydraulic splitter, using a tractor, and hiring help. I do split wood by hand for exercise, but in a time when I must manage other tasks, the big machine helps us heat enough that the splitter has paid for itself in its first two yeas of operation.

Friends offer help, but too often I know them too well. They are not strong enough, they lack the skills and training that I got over twenty years with my father-in-law. They mean well but "play out" after 45 minutes of clearing brush or moving lumber. Even worse, they might be injured and I trust no one with my chain saws, tractors, or other machinery that can lop off limbs or crush a human body. This is what the Preppers fail to consider. Unless they are both physically fit and have a group of similar friends, any ventures into self-sufficiency would fail. Too many of my fellow citizens are metro-area folks and pretty darned soft.  A gym membership does not prepare one for the sort of work a homestead demands. And while I'm not Conan the Barbarian, I can work many hours outside doing physical work. Thank God for that.

So I'd recommend an old and rather forgotten literary reading when one gets tempted to imagine a world without laws or restrictions. Try Emerson's "Self Reliance." I'm breaking his own rule about quoting sages in quoting him, but this passage tells me how an individual might cope with a conformist world without becoming a misanthrope:

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day.

Emerson is not much read any longer, yet this Unitarian minister had a great influence on many American thinkers and what were once called "Men of Action." While his prose might not have the punch it did in a less harried, more attentive age, we might wade in again.

Once we know ourselves, in the way Emerson recommends, then seek out a community of others, we won't be self sufficient. But we'll have the self-reliance to find others to huddle with us, to help us in a sustainable way,  through the darkest of seasons.

A blessed Solstice to you all, as the light comes back and the ground warms enough for another year of turning the soil

Your Ride's Here: Farewell, Steve Gott

It's the sort of light that breaks your heart, a painter's light. It makes the remaining leaves gold and crimson, but those words are poor substitutes for the colors I mean. You can taste the color, just like the crisp air. The light goes fast at this time of year, so it's best to savor every second.

What a time to leave our world, but my good friend Steve Gott did, tragically, in a motorcycle accident. As we all know, we have no motorist to blame, some dunce who was texting while driving. Steve simply did not respond in time to road conditions. Faced with this twist of fate, I have to say something appropriate at his memorial service. I have tried and tried, as I work out watering a little stand of trees planted in his honor at our rural home.

All I can think of is "Steve, you picked the worst time possible to leave this beautiful world."

I begin writing this at my blog, about my life learning to live in the country as I prepare my retirement as a homesteader, organic farmer, and beekeeper. It's appropriate to write this in such a public venue for two reasons. First, I want it to reach those won't be able to attend the memorial service. Facebook is no place for lengthy reflections, though it has sprouted a touching virtual shrine at Steve's profile page. Second, by drafting these remarks online, others who never met Steve will have a sense of his personality and dedication to live life as he pleased.

Steve was a talented zookeeper, a man who spent a good deal of his professional life protecting creatures that have no voice when humans hunt them or destroy their habitats. I am not as nice a person as Steve. I can think of many who should be gone, instead of Steve. All too often, while the evil, venal, and simply greedy live on, we lose our best.

We may ask “why?” again and again. I don’t think there is a why here, and there rarely is when the good and beloved among us suffer or leave us in the prime of life. I can only quote a minister I know, who spoke at the memorial service for a young man at my university, a boy who died at not even half Steve’s age. At the service, the minister reminded us that “God’s heart was the first to break.”

I know that Steve would call me superstitious if I claimed that our universe contains a creative and loving spirit that suffers when we suffer. Call that God if you wish. That’s what I call it. I think God’s heart broke when Steve left a world he loved so much that he dedicated his time and intellect to becoming a naturalist.

Steve's death leaves a huge hole in our lives and I have no idea how we’ll fill it. Steve would, however, be the first to say “move on.” As I will explain, he did during his years with us. Yet I cannot imagine the suffering of his family and Lisa. Any words I write will be poor medicine for them, but I do think I can celebrate who Steve was and how he remains in my heart.

There’s the first Warren Zevon reference of mine, an oblique one to “Keep Me in Your Heart for a While,” one of the last songs Zevon wrote as he bravely faced the last stages of cancer. Zevon was one of Steve's favorite composers, and he inspired Steve and me in many dark and many humorous moments. The singer-songwriter famously reminded his friend David Letterman to “enjoy every sandwich.” Steve often said that to me. I repeated it a lot in the last week.

But now those of us who loved Steve are, as Zevon wrote “in the house when the house burned down.”

The house burned down. And here we are. How to rebuild it?

Take a cue from how others thought about Steve. Even those who had only met him a few times when he returned to Richmond recall him well. One friend e-mailed me her vivid if brief impression of Steve as “kind, quirky, funny, and ageless.”

Ageless. That’s a hard word to use for someone with whom I wanted to share a crusty and irascible old age. Now I’ll always remember Steve as he was when I last saw him, in the parking lot of MacLean’s on Broad Street, arranging his long hair and pulling on his motorcycle helmet. Yes, just like that. A geeky kid like me who, as an adult, turned into Billy Badass. Now those are words I bet you never get to hear at memorials. Deal with it.

Here's a moment I want to share. When Steve came to campus one day, stepping off his bike in black leathers, then shaking out his long hair, I saw a bunch of co-eds about to swoon. Later, a student of mine, smitten after seeing Steve, asked who that man was who came to lunch with me. “Just my buddy Steve,” I said, basking a little in his aura. On other occasion, for a week I had to wear an eye-patch following some minor procedure. Steve said "trying to be like me, eh?"

I have to say that I am more delighted than jealous at Steve's transformation. Learning to live well was not merely for Steve the best revenge. It was simply living as he wanted to live, not as others would ordain it. My dad once said "that boy has some hair." What he meant was that Steve might not get a good job with all that long hair. Guess what, dad? He did get a great job, and his employer and co-workers will also keep him in their hearts for a long while.

Memorial-service reflections are supposed to include a lot of humor; they are for the living. Dad had a shiny head like mine. We bald dudes think about Steve’s ponytail and can only say, as Zevon once did about a Werewolf, “his hair was perfect.”

So was Steve's heart.

As I have listened to Steve's favorite music for the past week, lyrics to one song keep coming back to me. It is Zevon's "My Ride's Here" and the theme is pretty clear:

I said, "Man, I'd like to stay
But I'm bound for glory
I'm on my way
My ride's here..."

Damn it, Steve, you rode off far to soon. But somewhere down that lonesome and endless road, I’m looking forward to my next sandwich with you.