Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Syrian Refugees Are Welcome Here

 Syrian Refugees Are Welcome Here
I am not expressing any concern for the Syrian refugees because I am not doing anything about it. Yes, they can come here. No, I do not have a spare bedroom.
What is the point of merely expressing concern? There has been a great deal of shallow posturing on social media about this. Yes, you have a right to an opinion. But are you actually doing anything about it?
I don't care how you feel. Tell me what you are doing.
Becoming an American. Speaking of refugees landing on our shore.........It's possible to become an American, but it's never been easy. Newcomers were given the worst jobs and lived in the worst neighborhoods. They were mocked and abused and worse. People said they looked funny and they couldn't speak English and their food smelled awful. People said much worse than that, but over a period of time, we got used to them, and they became like us, and we became a little like them. But it was always difficult.....It was never easy. Immigrants today are treated with more tolerance than in years past.
Cultural appropriation. I confess. It started with pizza -- I didn't think anyone would mind. I thought I was being cool. But it got much worse. Listening to Marvin Gaye late at night, taking karate lessons, reading Black Elk Speaks, doing Zen, and not just eating salsa but talking about it like I knew the context. Finally, I asked for help.
Donald Trump. I have not figured out how to get Donald Trump to shut up.
Islam. It's all about Islam. It's all about God. It's all about religion. You can say otherwise. Say it all you want. My devoutly secular friends want it to be about "criminality" or "psychopathic tendencies" or "becoming marginalized." 
Hillary Clinton and President Obama express this idea most sincerely. Because they want it to be true. But it's not true. It's all about Islam. It's all about God. It's all about religion.
I should pretend it's not about Islam because my Moslem friends won't like me if I criticize their culture? We should mince words?
Christendom and Islam have been at odds for 1,500 years. These are competitive systems, sometimes at war, sometimes at peace. Currently we are at war with Islam. Not for the first time. We will survive. They will survive. We might even achieve a more lasting peace. I have hope of that.
But we are not friends. Not now.
Substandard Housing. When I lived in the Skagit Valley, it was always hard for me to make a living, and I had very little money and I settled for living in shacks and trailers and low rent dumps. So I lived in the great beauty of the Skagit Valley, but my own premises were really crappy...... That was the deal I made. It was like I got to live there but not live well....I'm so glad I left.
(I left out my ex-wife and my two grown children who were with me in those shacks. I might ask them how they feel about it. My ex-wife has returned to Oklahoma, back to the home town where she started out. I speak with her on the phone now and then. Susan Semple. A lot of Skagit Valley people will remember her. My son Eugene is a librarian in Los Angeles and he lives in a nicely appointed apartment in a good neighborhood  -- no shack for him. My daughter Eva lives in Ballard, in Seattle, and she is quite comfortable in her residence. She has no longing for the old farmhouse we lived in.)



Chinese Characters. Let me know if you cannot see the photo I inserted here. This is a page from my Chinese notebook. I draw the characters over and over again. Repetition leads to success. The two characters are "many" and "hand."   Together they make "many hands."  or in Latin letters "duo shou."  I have not progressed too far in pronunciation, as I am in search of a learning partner -- some Chinese student who wants to improve his English. We can make an exchange.
Laurie and I hope to visit China soon. If I learn some Chinese I will be able to read street signs and say stupid things.
We discussed Islam earlier in this newsletter. Islam and the Middle East are saturated with religion, hip-dip, wall-to-wall. China, by contrast, is the least religious of all cultures. That's why I like it. In China it's not about God and it's not about religion. That is a relief from the drumming sounds of war
Gardens. Spend more time in the garden. Go to work on a farm. These are safe places. Never a terrorist attack in these places. When traveling abroad, visit vineyards and parks. And always be attentive to your surroundings, no matter where you are.
Or you can hang out with horses.
Happy Thanksgiving. Happy thanks, everybody.

Frog Hospital Subscription Drive.   Your contribution of $25 is greatly appreciated. The Frog Hospital newsletter has been cruising down the Internet for 16 years now. I have tried to kill this newsletter several times – tried to stomp it out like the ember from an old campfire, or dig it up like a pestiferous weed, but it won’t die – Frog Hospital just keeps on going.
So please send a check. Your contribution keeps me from getting cranky. It helps me to maintain a detached attitude. Let’s keep it going….

Go to the Frog Hospital blog and hit the PayPal button for $25,
or
Send a check for $25 to
Fred Owens
1105 Veronica Springs RD
Santa Barbara, CA 93105








































































































































































































































--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My gardening blog is  Fred Owens
My writing blog is Frog Hospital



Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Eating and Sleeping


I was in Ojai last week and I stopped for coffee at the local place. You get all kinds of Hollywood types who come into Ojai -- Psychics, Aromatherapy Dreamers, Organic Pudding Salesman. All idiots, like me. Practical people go elsewhere.
Who should I meet at this coffee shop but Writer Sean Daly perched on a stool. I had not seen him in three years, since we both stopped attending Doc Murdock's weekly writing workshop, held at the Ojai Library.

I said I admired his recent novel. He said he enjoyed reading Frog Hospital. And what are you reading these days, he asked. History, I said. Captain Cook and his epic journeys. But Sean is reading contemporary short stories.
We were both sitting on stools inside the coffee shop. Stools are tippy and uncertain. I am afraid of heights and I can't enjoy coffee and conversation while perched like a bird. Besides that the coffee shop was packed and noisy at the ten a.m. hour.
I said to Sean, let's sit outside, pointing to an empty table on the patio. He said, nah, I gotta go and eat something.

This I understood. I eat breakfast every morning at 7 a.m. while watching the local news on TV, while reading the daily newspaper, while making very brief comments to Laurie. She does not want to hear my excited reaction to a news story, or my pithy summary of major events. Just the bare bones facts.
We talk later in the day. For the meal itself, today I had Cheerios with almond milk and a scoop of plain yogurt. Over that I squeezed some honey.
I need that scoop of yogurt -- need that protein.  Even so, I get hungry again at mid-morning and carry a banana with me if I'm going to a gardening job. Or crackers and cheese.
My weight is good at 175 and five foot ten inches of height. It never varies. I get exercise everyday and Laurie loves me. 
That's the program.

Sleeping. I am an excellent sleeper. I could give lessons. If I could make money teaching people how to sleep, I would do that.
Even right now, at 8:30 a.m., I feel well-rested and ready to take on the day. Why? Because I had a good night's sleep.
I get in bed shortly after ten p.m. and read a book. Ten minutes later I switch off the light. Ten minutes after that I am sound asleep. At night, with my head on the pillow, I forget my cares and woes. I am happy enough to be in a warm, comfy bed. During the day time I struggle and moan and sweat and scheme  -- all that nonsense. At night I sleep.
Sometimes I have dreams. Last night I dreamed I was at an all-day hippie party at Beth Haley's house in LaConner. Why did I have this dream? I have no idea. Dreams make no sense to me at all, except that I have them and they are usually pleasant. I knew Beth Haley's late husband, Charlie Berg, and her son, Olav Berg. Beth herself grows flowers for a living. I would often see her delivering flowers around LaConner. I was at her house once, about twenty years ago. I  have never had a conversation with her. But this is typical of living 25 years in a very small town, and seeing someone delivering flowers day after day, and year after year -- such a person becomes imprinted in my subconscious -- and sure enough she showed up in my dream last night.
Most nights I sleep soundly until about five a.m. whether I dream or not. In that early hour I begin to -- not wake up, but I am lightly dozing and moving about under the covers. Thinking about stuff at this early hour is not a good idea, and I try not to let my brain start working, but if often does. I just tell myself that any conclusions I reach at five a.m. are null and void.
I get up at 6:15, later on weekends. The point is that on most nights I get almost seven hours of sound sleep, and maybe an hour or so of light sleeping. It makes me feel like God's special child. During the day I complain a lot because things are not going my way, but at night -- sweet dreams.
And this is what I ask when I hear someone has a toothache or a head ache or minor ailment. Did you sleep well? That is the boundary for me. If you sleep well, you will recover naturally from your ailment. but if you are robbed of sleep because of pain or worry, then you need to seek help, medical or otherwise.
A good night's sleep is the measure of tranquility in your life. No matter the daily strife and conflict, if you can sleep good in your own bed, then you are truly at home and at peace.
Politics. All this news from Missouri, from Ferguson and now from the University of Missouri. It makes me think of my Uncle Bob. He lived in St. Louis. We often visited him and Aunt Clare when we were growing up in Chicago. Dad grew up in St. Louis. Aunt Clare was his baby sister. She married Uncle Bob and they lived in a tidy house in outer St. Louis with their two children, Terry and Donna.
Uncle Bob did not have a favorable attitude toward black people. He explained that Missouri was in the northern part of the South and so had southern attitudes about race, which he supported. I took note of that as a growing child when we we stayed at his home.
Uncle Bob was a lineman for AT&T, a steady job. He supported a wife and two children, owned a home and sent his kids to college. Well done, I would say.

 And he drank Pepsi for breakfast. I though that was so radical. My mother let me have Coke once a week, and here it was Uncle Bob drinking all the soda he wanted, even at breakfast. It made me want to grow up -- because if you were a grown man you could drink Pepsi for breakfast, if you wanted to.

It gets so hot and humid in St. Louis in the summer time. When trouble broke out in Ferguson this summer, I knew the heat and humidity just made it worse. It would not have happened in the winter.

I don't know what Missouri is like these days. I last visited my cousin Terry in 2004. I highly doubt he thinks the same way as his Dad about race. But it was not something we ever discussed. Terry worked for the phone company too, but he kept being shifted from company to company, from AT&T to Lucent and to other permutations of telecommunications. The old days of llifetime employment with Ma Bell are over. Still Terry made a pretty good living and owned his home and also owned a forty-acre farm out in the country where he built a cabin for weekend retreats.
This story about Uncle Bob, and his son Terry, and the generation born to Terry -- it's all relevant to the events  in St. Louis. It gives you a context. St. Louis is a rich and highly diverse city -- poet T.S. Eliot was born there, jazz great Miles Davis was born there too.

Frog Hospital Subscription Drive.   Your contribution of $25 is greatly appreciated. The Frog Hospital newsletter has been cruising down the Internet for 16 years now. I have tried to kill this newsletter several times – tried to stomp it out like the ember from an old campfire, or dig it up like a pestiferous weed, but it won’t die – Frog Hospital just keeps on going.
So please send a check. Your contribution keeps me from getting cranky. It helps me to maintain a detached attitude. Let’s keep it going….

Go to the Frog Hospital blog and hit the PayPal button for $25,
or
Send a check for $25 to
Fred Owens
1105 Veronica Springs RD
Santa Barbara, CA 93105


 



--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My gardening blog is  Fred Owens
My writing blog is Frog Hospital



Tuesday, November 03, 2015

The Mad Monk Meets Gary Snyder



By Fred Owens
Hugo, the Mad Monk, broke out of the Hare Krishna Temple in San Diego. "The food was too sweet, I'm allergic to incense, and that damn song was driving me crazy."
He threw away his sandals and everything he owned but his bedroll. "I'm through with religion. I make my own path now. I find my own way," he said, to the sky.
Then he looked down at his bare feet and his dirty toes. "Feet, take me further. Take me wherever you will."
Off he went to the north. We met him in Santa Cruz. We were staying in a cabin by the creek, under the redwoods. Someone gave us a box of Swisher Sweet cigars, so that's how we met the Mad Monk -- he smelled us out.
"Call me Hugo," he said. "Can I have one of those cigars? I'm dying for a smoke. Yes. Thank you. Hare Krishna. I'm going to Grass Valley to meet Gary Snyder. God told me to go there. I don't believe in God anymore, but I still get messages."
We were not ones to ask him why or to pass judgment. Many seekers passed our way in that summer, 1975.
Hugo is going to tell the rest of the story -- the complete version -- and he will send it to me some day.... but basically, he never met Gary Snyder. What happened is that he got as far as the park in the town of Grass Valley, where he reposed a while, having a smoke, and sitting on his bedroll.
"Minding my own business. I mean this is America, but the cop rousted me and I took issue. He said show me your ID. I said I'm Hugo the Mad Monk and I mean no harm to anyone. The cop said don't get smart, show me your driver's license. I said I don't drive. Okay, then show me your social security card. I don't have one, I don't work. And no library card either because I don't read. But you ask me who I am and I just told you. I'm Hugo, the Mad Monk and I mean no harm to anyone."
"Get in the car."
"Fine. No problem. You meet good people in jail."
The charge was Failure To Identify.
"I was in for seven days," he told me later. "The food was terrible, I never met Gary Snyder, but the fellows I met in the tank, they were all right. It was a blessing. Do you have any more of those cigars? I'm dying for a smoke. Thank you. Hare Krishna."

Forty Years Pass. I remember this story because Gary Snyder, the poet, is coming to Santa Barbara in two days and we bought tickets to hear him read. It's forty years since he wrote and published his poem and manifesto called Turtle Island.
Now Snyder is an old man. He's 85. I wonder how he is doing. I remember reading Turtle Island forty years ago. I took it all in. Nature! Pretty much how I was thinking, but Gary Snyder said it better.
Turtle Island was his re-imagined name for North America, as if the forested continent was sprouting on the back of a giant turtle, and the giant turtle was paddling slowly across the universal sea.
Well, put that in your pipe and smoke it. Plenty of people did. That was forty years ago.
Where are we now? And why would Gary Snyder know any more than those fellows in the Grass Valley jail?
I called Hugo and left a message. He lives in Florida now, so he can't come to the reading. He's still mad in that joyful way, so it doesn't really matter whether he comes or not.
Bear Paws. This is my drawing of a bear paw, copied from the Turtle Island book of poems. I know nothing about bears or whatever they do in the woods. Let me know if you can't see the photo. Sometimes the G-Mail photo option doesn't work.
.

Rain. It's going to start raining today. This is really, finally, the end of summer heat and the beginning of winter rain. So many trees are dying, so many trees can barely make it one more day, but if it rains they might come back to life. We hope.
Shark. Peter Howorth, the marine biologist in Santa Barbara that I trust, explains the shark situation. We have a lot of sharks now, biting surfers and kayakers. He says it's not the warm water that brings them, and it's not the cold water, and it's not the presence or absence of seals for sharks to eat.
He says, and of course he could be wrong, that we have an abundance of sharks now because shark fishing was banned in 1994. It takes 10 to 15 years for a great white shark to mature enough to predate on people, and now we have a lot of sharks since fishing for them was banned.
Howorth, living a peaceful life, wishing to stay out of politics, does not draw the obvious conclusion -- we should resume shark fishing.
Politics.  You probably like the Mad Monk story better than hearing about Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio. But we are all God's children. All beautiful souls, all marred and conflicted, the rich and the poor, the healthy and the sick, the peaceful and angry ones.
Ahhhg! You're right. I can't stand politics these days.
Gardening. I darn near got heat stroke on Saturday morning. It was too hot and I was working too hard. I was drinking water, but not enough, and it should have been ice water. And I was working too fast and lifting loads that were too heavy.
Why did this happen? Because it was such an ugly garden. Overgrown, trashy, neglected, dusty, weedy. If I worked furiously I could make it all beautiful again. WRONG. Always work slowly. Always love it how it is. You don't fix it, you're just there, and your first rule is Do No Harm, not to the garden or to yourself.
The slower you work, the more you get done. This is true. Because when you work slower, you make fewer mistakes and you don't break any bones, or smash any irrigation lines, or dig up the wrong plant. When you work slowly you do a better job.
But I forgot that on Saturday morning, and I worked myself into a lather.
Garden Update. Today is Tuesday, three days after the Saturday disaster.  The weather is much cooler. And I have a much better new customer to work for -- I spent four absorbing hours pruning 24 rose bushes. I did light pruning, then scooping out the old dead rose leaves around the base of the bush to expose the topsoil, then forking in a handful of organic rose food on each bush, then spraying all 24 bushes with a natural insecticide to ward off those pesky little green caterpillars, then giving each rose a bit of water. Well done -- I said to myself. This is the way it should be. Sustainable effort and ready to go again tomorrow.

Frog Hospital Subscription Drive.   Your contribution of $25 is greatly appreciated. The Frog Hospital newsletter has been cruising down the Internet for 16 years now. I have tried to kill this newsletter several times – tried to stomp it out like the ember from an old campfire, or dig it up like a pestiferous weed, but it won’t die – Frog Hospital just keeps on going.
So please send a check. Your contribution keeps me from getting cranky. It helps me to maintain a detached attitude. Let’s keep it going….

Go to the Frog Hospital blog and hit the PayPal button for $25,
or
Send a check for $25 to
Fred Owens
1105 Veronica Springs RD
Santa Barbara, CA 93105


 





--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My gardening blog is  Fred Owens
My writing blog is Frog Hospital