Take FSU ----- Please.

Some things just piss me off. Can't help it. This is one of them. In a time of financial crisis brought on by a combination poor fiscal policy at the national and state level and poor contingency planning by university administrations, most universities have had to cut programs or services or both. Florida State University is no exception. General belt tightening including staff and faculty reductions, program and class reductions and budget reductions for travel, office and laboratory supplies are all underway.

Yesterday the new football coach was named from the existing coaching staff, a savings of some magnitude because the expense of a national search was avoided. Good. And the guy may well be a good coach. His salary: $9,000,000 for 5 years. That's right. NINE MILLION DOLLARS. When cleaning staff are out of a job. Secretaries are out of a job. Faculty are out of a job. Students are out of programs and class size is increased while class availability is reduced. Couldn't the guy manage to get by on say, $500,000 a year? I'll bet you could. I know I could. Some things just piss me off.

Image: blogs.ajc.com/.../2009/03/fsu_criminoles.jpg

Woodpeckers and Women

Just outside my window, a pileated woodpecker is working on a dead hickory looking for breakfast. It is 26 degrees out there. I am thinking that the bird must have a very cold beak. I wonder how many people in the world right now are shivering and wondering where the next meal will come from, and wondering how the world got this way. Too many people, too few jobs, too much religion and you have a recipe for disaster. Look at Afghanistan. Average woman has 7 live children and no hope for a real future for any of them. So the boys become men in the Taliban or some other group that devalues women, the girls become women with 7 live children each and the cycle goes on and on. Same in other countries where women are disenfranchised. A solution would be to empower women, raise the standard of living for all, educate all, provide commerce for all and watch the world get better. A generation or two is all it would take. Reality or pipe dream? You figure it out.

Photo: http://freestylevolunteer.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/pileated-woodpecker.jpg

And, speaking of food........

The heron reminded me of the Australian cuisine, the Chinese cuisine, the Italian cuisine and some others we have seen and/or tried. Witchitty grubs and ant bums. The grubs are slow roasted over an open fire then scarfed down. Or served on biscuits with quandong sauce. Mmmmmm. We were offered but did not participate. Now the ant bums are another story. Catch a green ant, squeeze its bum and lick. Wonderful! A nice lime flavor. Very refreshing. Good for seasoning almost anything that needs a bit of citrus. And, if you squeeze them near your nose and inhale, the vapor opens the sinuses like a Vicks inhaler. And smells like lime. We have all accidentally consumed insects. Spiders in particular. They are everywhere and in everything. So HA! to you arachnophobes out there. And don't ask about peanut butter.

Photo: www.ntnews.com.au/.../2008/01/29/grubs.jpg

Fine Dining? Blue Heron isn't it.

I suppose this admission might get us into trouble, but, here goes. When I was a student at UF in 1968-69, my room mate and I were really poor. Rent, beer (and cheap beer at that)and a few other necessities were all we could afford. With motorcycles, we didn't spend much going out most afternoons to hunt for dinner. We had a simple rule: shoot it if it moves, and then eat it. On one occasion a Blue Heron was accidentally killed while trying for something else. Not into waste, we decided to take it home and eat it. We field dressed it, packed it out and went home. A little salt and pepper rubbed in, and some garlic salt for fun, and in the oven it went. Soon the house was filled with the stench, umm, yep, stench of roasting heron. Overwhelming. When it was nice and brown, we cut a few slices and tried it: inedibly horrible. Even for two hungry grad students. We ate the taters and something else, and fed the neighborhood cats the rest. Advice: never eat a Blue Heron. That probably explains why there are so many of them around. Or, maybe the old "you are what you eat" thing cut in.
Photo: http://www.light-and-shadow.org/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=Claudia-Petersons-Album&id=Blue_Heron_eating_Vole

myakka flood

We were on a visitation weekend and camping with the kids in Myakka State Park. Lot 36 was our favorite lot. Big and well drained. A good sized culvert to rapidly get rid of the occasional storm runoff.

The tent was a big old Coleman "wall tent". Canvas with a tarp-like floor that ran a foot up the sides. Nice and dry. Usually.

The day was overcast with rain predicted, but visitations are set in advance so there we were. The old Pinto wagon got us there on time and we checked in to the park. We had plenty to do setting everything up and then the rain started. We made spaghetti under an umbrella and ate inside the tent. Nice and dry. As it got dark the rain fell harder and we noticed a bit of water moving under the floor. Still dry inside. Sometime later the floor started to roll like a water bed and water could be seen inching up the sides. Raining like hell now. Then, tiny little jets of water shot up through the floor through pinholes in the tarp. A lot of them. By now the water was 2 or 3 inched deep outside the tent, and rapidly wetting the inside. A quick look with the flashlight showed the marvelous culvert was partially plugged and lot 36 was a pond.

It rained all night and in the morning, still raining, we took down the tent and ate cold leftovers in the wagon. No cooked breakfast that morning. Needless to say the car was like a cloud forest inside. We left in the rain, delivered the wet kids and drove back to Havana. In the rain the whole way.

Sal and I had a good laugh last night remembering that trip, but we never stayed on lot 36 again. And yes, they have skunk apes too.

Photo: www.lorencoleman.com/myakka.html

from the fire of despair

"From the fire of despair we forge ourselves into who we are." I wrote this to a former student yesterday. I was thinking of the terrible obstacles she had to overcome to get where she is today. I think we have all been in the "pit of despair" at one time or another and we emerged changed. Most of us learn from trial and hardship and grow as a result. She certainly has. Many of my former students have braved life experiences that would have crushed me. My admiration for the endurance and success of so many is unbounded.
Remember always that you are who you are because of the total of your life experiences. If you could go back and change anything, you would change too.

At the close of this year and the eve of the next, I wish all of you who read this a happy, safe and prosperous life. And always remember that you are who you are precisely because of who you were.

(There was a real 'pit of despair'. Here is a link that takes you there. Warning: this is heavy awful stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_of_despair )

Photo: blog.tilos.hu/irodalmile2/archives/008287.html

Clarence

Frank had a three man operation. He and Stan were the masons and Clarence was the laborer. Clarence did all the support work and the three of them worked together on the job to get ready to lay blocks and bricks. Clarence mixed the mud (mortar for laying block), carried and stacked the blocks and bricks, dug the footers and cesspools, pulled up the forms, cleaned up the sites. You get the idea. Keep in mind this was a small operation. They had no cement mixer. No backhoe. No bobcat. Only shovels, hoes, digging bars, sand screen, hands and backs. During the peak periods Frank needed an extra laborer, and I was it. So, at 17 I signed on to be another pair of hands and a back. Frank turned me over to Clarence to show me how to work. He taught me the way to dig so I could dig all day in the hot sun, and how to carry two 60 pound blocks and swing them up on a chest-high scaffold, and how to mix mud and set cesspool blocks and rings and how to get a 200 pound bluestone chimney cap up two 16 foot ladders. He and I often worked alone on site preparation. We dug footers and cesspools. Now there is a job. A cesspool was built in the ground in a hole that was 10 or more feet deep and about 10 feet around. We dug them by hand. Clarence taught me to throw dirt a long way. Then we dropped the blocks into the hole and Frank built the round cesspit walls. We had lots of time to talk over the years we worked together, but Clarence was a man of few words and I could keep my own company when needed. Lunch time was different. We had 45 minutes to rest and eat and talk. He talked about the world of black men and segregation. How he grew up into that world and how he navigated through it. He owned several houses that he rented out, and had a comfortable retirement planned. He was about 60 when we met. He talked about the events in the South and I listened, but I didn’t understand. It was the time of Brown v Board of Education and Rosa Parks. I was a middle class white boy living in New York and didn’t have a clue what was going on. One day we were talking about racism and he said “If a man steals corn from your field that doesn’t mean the next man coming down the road will steal your corn.” I never thought it did, but that is part of the core of racism. I went off to college in the South and saw firsthand what he was talking about. Clarence was a teacher, mentor, business man, laborer, husband, father and more. I learned a lot from him. He was strong and lean, and dignified. He retired, died, and I never got to tell him that I finally understood what he was trying to tell me. But I did in the end understand. And Clarence, thank you.
Signs: http://www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/jscully/Race/images/colored%20sign.jpg

Tree Spirits

I was sitting in the kitchen looking out the picture window. I have spent hours there watching birds, squirrels, the occasional deer and the trees. One particular tree always gets my attention. An American beech with a healing wound at the base of the trunk. And suddenly there it is: a perfect woman's face, flowing hair and a beautiful serene look. If there are tree spirits then this is surely a manifestation of one. I have loved this tree from the first day I saw it. I have hugged it. (Yes, I am an unrepentant tree hugger, literally on both counts.) What a treat. When I get the camera fixed I'll add her picture to this, if she can be photographed.

Image: www.door2door-marketing.co.uk/

Waking up dead

This is a wandering that starts with a dream. Sally had a dream that she was dead and standing by her body looking at it and hearing and seeing the actions in the scene. Where the hell do these images come from?

This is sort of what I mean when I say "some day I will wake up dead and........" . Wake up dead? How can you do that? Well, if the dream represents some expression of the existence of a soul or something like that it may actually be true that you can wake up dead. Probably not, though.

Brains produce the most wonderful and weird thoughts and images imaginable. I call one process "cortical skipping". When you see something, say a dog, and that reminds you to buy dog food which reminds you that Publix has wine on sale which reminds you of the wonderful sausage you had in Italy which reminds you to ....... Get the drift? You somehow end up thinking about balancing the tires. These thoughts fly around your brain in the cortex and there is absolutely no way of knowing where they will go. There is probably an algorithm in there somewhere, and some of the connections may be more obvious than others, but in my family we are fond of saying "there is no accounting for a brain".

Or how about all the weird dreams where you fly or pass through walls or are someone you surely will never be, like the pope or god or fill in your own weird dreams.

Driving along, my mind wanders in all sorts of directions, which reminds me of licorice which reminds me that I have to go to the Co-op today which reminds me to stop by Ron's with his flywheel puller which reminds me ........

Photo: www.conozcaseasimismo.com/factoreseng.htm

Tea Olive: Southern Delight.

I walked down the driveway to check the mail when I noticed a familiar perfume in the air. Hmmm. Jasmine? No, wrong season and not cloying enough. What else is there around here? Ah. I remembered that we recently planted a tea olive. Poor thing was way over its “sell by” based on how root bound it was. I turned and there it was, blooming like crazy. New leaves and tons of blooms. And that fragrance. The air was filled with it. Sweet but not cloying and heavy in the near-fog of humidity. I think Osmandus was returning the favor and giving us a great big “thank you” for the rescue and planting. What is a southern yard without a tea olive or two? A disappointment that’s what. Now, a few more quintessential plants and we will have the complete southern garden.

Photo: img.photobucket.com/.../TeaOlive1.jpg