Karl Meyer Writing Blog

Karl Meyer                                            December 6, 2007
Greenfield, MA

                             On making assumptions…

Never assume anything–particularly wrens.  I made that mistake recently and a wren got the jump on me.  It was a good lesson.  The weather was brooding and dreary.  The afternoon world was wrapped in dulling late-fall rain.  Then a wren barged in–spring-boarding off the window casement three feet from me.  Its scratchy wildness scuttled any thoughts of surrender to dreariness.  A world with wrens is magic.  I’ll never again assume to the contrary.

It’s not that I ever discount wrens.  In southern New England we’re never completely without them.  A few hardy winter wrens–secretive denizens of evergreen shadows, don’t retreat south from our winter chill.  And Carolina wrens, a species that jumped north to our latitude in the mid-1900s on global warming’s edge, are now widely dispersed through varied scrubby habitats.  They hold their turf in winter to the point where significant die-offs occur some years due to intense cold.  The other wren varieties we enjoy from this plucky, gravy-boat-shaped family—the house, sedge, and marsh wrens, all retreat south at winter’s approach.

But here–out of the bleak afternoon universe on the cusp of winter, comes the wren.  It’s a lightning bolt visit.  Quickness is the livelihood of wrens.  Just a flash: a head with a curving bill, a bright eye with arching white eyebrow, and the briefest flicker of a stubbed brown tail.  Then it bolts from view.  Wren!—unmistakably wren.  Quick, stubby, plucky, and warm brown—a Carolina wren!

You may not know this bird from sight, but likely somewhere you’ve heard–spring, summer, or fall, in the last decade.  In the size-to-volume range this wisp of feathers pumps out song like it has a bullhorn.  It’s a boldly sweet, “tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea,” pause, “tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea,” pause—“tea-kettle tea.”   And then again, over and over—until it’s through with that variation, and moves onto something quite similar but varying by a quarter note, and runs through that repertoire.  And then another barely perceptible change, and then another run of wren song.  It’s what wren’s do.

More Carolina wrens are making it through more Eastern state winters–further north and at higher elevations, as our climate warms.  That’s good news for the wrens, while we’ll have to do the math on what it means for humans.  In summer here you’ll now you hear “tea-kettle-tea” high in hilltowns, where it was never heard before.  So, even at winter’s approach it’s incumbent on all of us to prepare ourselves for wrens.  You just never know.

The actual prep work isn’t much really.  It amounts to un-cultivating the certain understanding that life can appear boring at times—routines can collect in a dulling sameness, leaving us vulnerable to the element of surprise.  And then, WHAM!—that wren hits your window.  To those not mentally prepared, this might assault our slowed senses as annoyance—there’s a leaf, a branch, a twig, some sparrow blundering onto the deck.  It is not.  It is magic come to visit—so be not fooled.

Why a wren you might ask—why here, why now??  Well because insects and spiders crawl around your porch steps and window casements—all are winter gifts to a Carolina wren.  And then, even in urban neighborhoods, there are likely a few choice berry and seed producing shrubs that can supplement a wren’s insect diet through a winter.  With enough scrubby shelter and available water, this half-ounce feather ball just might make it to spring, and a new round of tea-kettling in your neighborhood.

If that happens they’ll be two Carolina wrens looking to nest.  They stay together year-round and mate for life.  The males do the bulk of the tuneful singing, but they both work on the domed nest that’s wound like a beehive and is made from bark, grass, leaves, hair, and even plastic.  There will be an entrance at the side, and 3 – 7 eggs will be placed at its center.  It’ll make for a very melodious summer.

Meanwhile, if you’re out in the wilder, dense evergreen woods, you might listen for the intense little spit-stutter-scold of the tiny winter wren.   These guys are tiny, grayish-brown, secretive and amazingly quick.  They are usually not far from water and dense cover—which includes brush piles.  Don’t let them get the jump on you!

Curiously, the winter wren is the only wren species that we share with Europe, Asia, and Africa.  Same bird.  In Ireland there’s the medieval tradition of the Wren Boys.  On St. Stephen’s Day, December 26, groups of young boys go around and get the jump on a winter wren—known simply as “the wren.”  They kill the poor creature, tying it to a stick.  They then go around dressed-up, singing songs and begging money for the dead bird on a stick.  When there’s enough money for a party they give that wren a solemn burial, then drink themselves silly.  So, even if you’re a wren: never assume anything.

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December 3, 2007

© Karl Meyer

The snow writer

The night felt restive, I think that’s the word.  The snow had ended by noon.  But it had already been dark for an hour.  I walked home in the half bright, half smoky-dark of an urban/suburban landscape.  This was, I remember thinking, something like the neighborhood I grew up in—working class; little in the way of glamour.  But this evening, shadowy, had an odd sort of edge to it.

I’m not sure what it was—maybe the walk through the city end of town and the shadowy park where the young kids were all lighting cigarettes and pretending not to notice the cold.  Or the little dive bar where two grown patrons were just stepping onto the snowy walk to light up themselves.  I split their conversation in two as I squeezed by.  There was the meter maid of course, off duty.  She was standing in front of the over-priced “outlet” store, which has been there forever and has standard functional clothes.  None of them has ever been discounted down to what would remotely resemble outlet prices.

For whatever reason—window shopping?, the meter maid was standing in the snow, stepping back to gaze into those jackets, gloves, wool sox and boots.  Was she looking for something?  Did she work there, moonlight doing displays?  Was there a husband inside—the owner?  I just can’t say.  I’ve somehow developed this really remote crush on her, though she doesn’t know me from Adam.  We’ve had a pleasant word or two–in passing daylight, even before I moved to this town two months back.

So, not meaning much but friendly on the glow of a half-dark urban street I feel compelled to speak—to make a joke as I pass, sheltered under my hood and carrying a canvas bag with a coffee mug, appointment book, empty lunch container; reading glasses.  She has to move a bit away from the window to accommodate this passerby.  “You know,” I say, “if you stand there too long you could get a ticket.”  I watch her face, she smiles, and I’m sure I haven’t made a mistake—about who she is, or the joke.

I look back as I pass.  “Oh, I’ll keep an eye,” she says, joking back.  Hooded, but no longer shadowy, I keep walking but add, “It’s just that you should be warned.”  Somehow this cheers me.  I’m now heading down what’s basically social service alley in this county seat town.  There’s a lone porn store just a few doors further down, and then a young couple standing outside yet another bar, which I think is new, or newly reopened.  No glamour to it.  The young woman looks hesitant and they both seem to agree that another place, Taylor’s, would be a better choice.

I walk on, soon I’m passing my therapist’s building—a house really.  Curiously, there’s a light on in the top little garret office she uses, though her hours are irregular.  Surprised, I had just thought of her this morning.  I hadn’t been there in months and my visits are infrequent.  I’m kind-of a drop in, not a particularly lucrative client.  But I’d brought cash the last time, twenty bucks for a fifteen dollar co-pay.  She didn’t have change and seemed annoyed at me.  Pay me next time.

So, I would.  But there had been no next time.  And that was summer.  July.  Here it was with snow on the ground.  I thought, momentarily of going up the stairs and knocking on the door—only after a second remembering that she wouldn’t be in there alone.  But that is your image of therapy–that person is there for you only.  I discarded the idea. 

I’m not suffering from anything more than the usual pre-holiday malaise about global warming, family, and consumerism though at this point, so I don’t know when I’ll be seeing her next.  There’s not an address listed in the phone book to send a check to, but I guess I could just slip it under the door someday.  But I’ve seen her for enough seasons now that I wouldn’t want to not wish her a happy holiday in person.  That’s therapy for you—you ultimately confirm that you’re not much nuttier than the folks out there trying to help.  And of course partly for that, you like them.

I walk on, down to my landlord’s office—directly across from the AA meeting site, which is directly across from the Salvation Army offices.  There is a small knot, maybe fifteen people, just starting to gather, having a smoke before the doors open.  Cigarettes seem to be a theme of this walk.  When I’m abreast of the struggling drinkers I cut left down the driveway opposite and walk up to a half-office, half-Laundromat, with a door slot on the left.  I unzip my jacket, reach into a breast pocket, then drop the rent check down the chute.

Back on the street the meeting crowd is still picking up stragglers, smokers.  I walk on, past a plow with bright, bright flashers cutting through the snowy, dull night.  Cars and pick-ups whoosh by, in hurried, violent bursts.  There are street lights, but any and all people out appear merely as shadows.  Crepuscular, I think—I’ve become somewhat crepuscular, in my new life in a half- city.  I like walking at sundown, later even—in the twilight, in the time just before people are sitting down for dinner.  There’s something animal about it I find, comforting too.

And there’s always someone out.  I walked last evening.  Had stayed in all day—then decided it really was unhealthy to not go out for a bit of exercise.  So I walked and it turned into a 40 minute journey.  It was cold.  At one point I was walking where the sidewalk was not far from the porch stoops of a run of houses.  I’m nestled in my hood—my own thoughts.  Just as I’m about to pass this driveway, dark, with just a bit of early snowflakes gathered, I realize there is a person standing, quite tall, about a car length up the driveway.  Actually, he’s towering some–and in a statue-like pose out of the corner of my eye.

Once I realize that he’s been staring at me, I have to say something.  I give him a basic, though not unfriendly, “How’s it going?”  His cigarette has just finished glowing from a deep drag.  “How are you?” he replies.  It’s just an exchange, a curious male peace offering in the dark.  Still, walking on, I can’t help but comment on his odd stance—he’s quite possibly standing and smoking atop a doghouse.  “I thought you were a statue,” I say.  He hesitates, surprised, “I feel like a statue,” he says, with a smoker’s shiver.

And then there’s this night.  As I turn the corner that will bring me up to the end of my street, I see a woman—thinnish, wispy, standing near the edge of the snowy lawn of a former school.  It’s now the school department offices.  I’m thinking she must be smoking too—maybe another of the restless social service clientèle not absent from many corners within three blocks of here.  But in a minute I realize this is different.

This slender being–this sprite, suddenly moves—comes alive.  She veritably prances across the last five feet of snow; then nimbly steps to the sidewalk.  Her path will bring her near me, but the timing will be off.  I don’t want to be intimidating in the dark, but I’m curious, fascinated, that she’s been writing something.  I want to simply ask, “What’s it say?”  But, as we don’t quite intersect, I’ll have to leave it.  We both walk on.  Then, I think: I just want to know.  I slow my stride, letting another stroller—also a woman, walk on a bit, so it doesn’t look like I’m turning back to follow her.  Once it’s comfortable I re-cross the street and back-track.

As I near the corner the street lamp clearly shows that she was writing, and that it’s simple, just three characters: “I heart, U.”  I can’t help but smile.  Perhaps it is best not to have asked that stranger what she’d written.   Though, with her deer-like lightness, maybe she could have pulled it off unselfconsciously.  As I walk back along the edge of that lawn I see what might be other writing, though my angle is poor to view it exactly.  I’d have to hover like a helicopter.  Still, what I think I see is not writing at all.  Its swirls of quiet footprints making wide, graceful fairy wings in the dark across the season’s first snow.       

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Day dreams 

Spending an entire day outdoors is unusual in these electronic times.  Fortunately there are a couple of yearly dates I rely on to get me outside all day.  These often echo back to me as some of the most memorable in my yearly cycle.  The Christmas bird count is one, and another is a Memorial Day bike ride around Quabbin Reservoir.  I’ve been doing both for more than two decades.  A third, added a decade back, is helping with race course duties and bus parking at the state high school cross country running championships in Northfield.  No matter the weather, these events are often remarkable.

This year’s November 10th cross country race was no different.  Lightly overcast and cold in the morning, the early afternoon turned to bright sunshine.  What I love most about this event–besides getting upwards of forty school buses arranged in unobstructed rows, is the glory of watching all those young, fit, high-schoolers doing something that I could not even touch when I was their age.  I was a pretty asthmatic kid; distance running was out of the question.

But these young people are a wonder.  Their athleticism, their stride, enthusiasm—their accomplishment, amazes me.  For some this may be the peak of their high school sports experience.  For others it is only a beginning; they’ll be at this for years to come.  For others still, you just know that their participation is the victory–to have made the team and stuck with it.  For them, finishing the course this day–some of them lumbering, limping, walking at times, is a benchmark all its own.

 As a bystander I applaud  them all.  That first place kid is no more heroic than the overweight, scrawny, disadvantaged, or flakey kid digging out those last bit of guts and stamina to complete a grueling three-mile run.  Not a few straggle to the finish line under the stares and cheers of hundreds of parents and classmates.  Every kid that runs is a winner.  Watching them makes me smile.

The other thing that made me smile on race day were the birds: snow buntings–in early November.  The race was still two hours off when the first few buses arrived.  So I’m there with nothing to do for minutes at a time, until the next bus tops the horizon.  But then, in the half-sunshine, a small, lilting knot of birds veers into view.  They circled wide over a grassy area, and nervously alight in a patch of pebbly dirt near the road.  As they slow to land I catch the white wing-bar flashes on these tawny, tan-white, flyers.  Snow buntings!

Winter birds!  Snow buntings are not a common sight from year to year, particularly if you don’t get out to their open habitats often.  And, with our “open”—sometimes snow-deprived, winters of late, even if they are around, their field choices can be immense.  You’re best to look for them along the windswept edges of snowy fields and roadsides.  Small airports and landfills are snow bunting specialties. 

But here they were, early, at what could possibly be the front end of a real New England winter—one with snow.  I was delighted.  They had just settled about thirty-five feet from me when they decided that my immobile stare was something of a threat.  They took to the air, undulating in a tight-ish flock, wing bars flashing in the light.  There are certain habits you get to know if you follow birds for a while.  The buntings flew in a half arc, this one fairly narrow, then simply put down at the field edge on the opposite side of the pavement.  They settled about sixty feet away.  I hardly moved as I watched their repositioning—reconfirming that these would be my first grassy species of the new season.  No mistake—snow buntings.  However, the birds quickly changed their mind about their new parking area and took off in their wavering flock of fifteen or twenty–heading to greener pastures among the sprawling of open fields to the north.  Still, like the young runners, I applaud them just showing up.

I shared my story with another friend who was helping with the race.  She tracks birds, and told me she’d heard it was going to be a good year for winter finches and buntings.  The wild seed crop in the north that includes the spruce-fir forests and boggy openings known as the Canadian Shield, has apparently been poor this year.  When that happens, those species will migrate further south to locate food.  She says she’s already had pine siskins at her feeder. 

At some point the final wave of runners sprinted up the starting hill that afternoon; then the last of those fire-breathing young dragons pulled themselves, limping, through the toughest three hundred yards, reaching the finish line.  I was yanking down flags, stakes, and fencing while race scores were being broadcast to hundreds of assembled kids and parents through a megaphone.  Cheers and applause filled the cool fall air.  A Cooper’s hawk gave two solid strokes of its wings, then angled high over the grassy fields, scarcely noticed.  One by one the buses peeled away.

I dozed off to sleep later that night after putting down a book of stories written by a Canadian doctor.  One was about a hallucinating patient and a questioning of reality upon seeing a purple bird–indoors and out of season.  Do you believe the vision, the patient, or discard all of those unlikely notions for a common sense explanation?  I awoke in the middle of that night, remembering that somewhere in my dream I’d clearly heard a house wren’s sweet, spitfire song.  They are months gone from this part of New England. 

The next time I woke–hours closer to actual morning, I’d been dreaming I was staring out a window on a mixed flock of birds.  Most were in a tree in the background.  Some were finches; and a very yellow one probably was a goldfinch.  But I remember thinking in my dream–maybe it’s a yellow warbler.  And I’m certain–quite certain, that I heard the fragmented, late-summer calls of a rufus-sided towhee.  Wasn’t that it, right there in the background of that tree?–here in southern New England in the middle of November??  My night’s gleanings from a day outdoors.

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Karl Meyer
November 6, 2007

The Wages of Chocolate

I didn’t get a job today. I got a candy bar instead. I looked for a job. Alittle. I read through the want ads. I emailed an editor to see about writing a new story. I started a long–frustratingly, endlessly long, letter to another magazine editor about a bigger story. That letter just kept growing as my confidence in its potency withered. I put it aside after staring at it for hours. I looked up job listings on-line. I looked in the phone book for places to call about work. But in the end I got one reply from that first editor—all the spring articles have been assigned. Are you interested in summer?–we have an issue on bugs?? As I said, I didn’t get a job today.

Well Scarlet, tomorrow’s another day. As the light faded, I thought it would be tolerably responsible to go out again—even though I’d already taken advantage of the decent weather to have a midday bike ride that lasted an hour and a half. But I would go out, return a library book; maybe pick up some new reading. And I’d stop at one of the stores with a news rack out front and pick up a copy of a new magazine someone suggested I could maybe write for.

In the end I got two books. And I borrowed a music CD. Clearly these things were not jobs, but they were pretty good. Plus, they were free. I was not spending like a drunken sailor as I went through my underemployed day. But in the lobby of the drugstore, the sirens were calling to me: candy! CHOCOLATE! Halloween is just past. I didn’t get any candy for trick-or-treaters since I wasn’t going to be home. But neither did I go any place where there was candy put out for little adult candy beggars like myself. There are years when you’d be hard-pressed to avoid the candy deluge–and you wouldn’t think twice about missing out. But, when it’s not there… you know.

So, in I went, like a zombie stalking in candy land. And there were the bags of the stuff, all in snacky-sizes, half price. I wanted chocolate. Chocolate alone. There was one crinkly plastic bag with a couple of dozen chocolate bars all individually wrapped inside. It depressed me—unpeeling all those wrappers. I’d have to look at them. I wanted something bigger. I wanted a big honkin’ block of no-job chocolate. I followed my nose, and there—just ahead, were the big bars. You know the ones. Paper binder over tin foil. On sale. Eureka! I grabbed a bar and had me a purchase—no bag, thank you very much.

Suddenly I felt as if I almost had a job. My job would be to eat this chocolate bar when I got home. Here was work that no one else had thought of. I would get right in the trenches and take care of it. But I got to looking at that candy bar on the walk home and started to decide this job was not going to be all it was cracked up to be. This candy bar was small—smaller than the ones that were on the shelves just a year or two back. Even on sale it was more money, less chocolate. Have you noticed this? I felt more than a little cheated. I’d ended up with a part-time gig, when I was looking for a full-time job. I didn’t necessarily want work that seemed like I was going around in a clunky old pick-up with scrawling on the side that read: No Job Too Small. I wanted work; I wanted chocolate.

In truth, the wages of chocolate are low. If I had more money—and better taste, I’d be buying the high-priced, fair trade stuff. The people harvesting cocoa beans, primarily in Africa, are sometimes—even often, working in slave-like conditions. So eating bad chocolate, or even just a lot of chocolate, is not a particularly good job at all. There’s a lot of misery behind all that sweetness.

However, when I got home, I bit in. And I sat down to continue working on that arduous query. The bar, five ounces—not the former eight of just a year back, slid down my throat in silky bites. It wasn’t hard work at all. But, by sheer weight, this commodity is overpriced compared to the wages the cocoa corps imposes on the laborers. And at this end it’s higher prices; smaller bars–a chocolate pyramid scheme. Candy bars used to cost a nickel, then a dime—the quarter, now sixty cents on a good day. That’s for those weenie part-time bars.

So I’m wondering, as I sit here looking at my smaller “large” bar, with a bigger price tag slapped on it to disguise its deficiencies, if we really are all just being programmed. Will we continue to accept less, for more?—be tricked into thinking that a treat of something smaller is the same? Can they make us believe that small is big, just by saying it is? This is a serious worry for me. I have one last chunk of candy bar and then wrap the remainder in its foil for another little morsel round tomorrow. This whole chocolate thing is hard work. And I need a job.

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Copyright: Karl Meyer
November 3, 2007

Crows in the night

They’ve become simply, “the crows.” And they are ever present. Of course they are ever present everywhere. But here, in this town of Greenfield, they have a large and not so secret roost. I do not know where it is yet, but I’m sure many do. Thousands of crows gather in the dusky skies nightly, heading for home. But it’s what they do that’s of most interest to me. It’s what’s most fun–most antic. What is it that the crows know?

They sometimes strafe the ridge top place where I sit above town. I was there early the other morning and a lone crow was rolling along in gleaning flight along the ledge. I startled it–which is unusual for a crow, and it quickly veered away from the cliff face in a broad arc. It’s not everyday you get the jump on a crow, so this day’s little quirk belonged to me. Surely I was not a serious material threat, just a known crow predator– a human. I did honor its passage with a quiet crow call, signaling no harm intended. It flew on.

But the other night, secure in my apartment just after dusk, I heard crows through an open window on an unusually warm, late October night. The radio was on. Truly it was dark, but I was hearing birds. It’s the radio, I thought, background noise not edited from a news interview. I ignored it. But then, next story, there was that noise again—a low, caw-caw-caw. And then it would stop.

At the third sounding I flipped off the radio; went to the window. Dark. There was just an afterglow in the western sky. This was night in late-October night. Birds don’t sing when the street lights are on, save owls and the odd mockingbird at the full of the moon. And, though the full moon was near, these were no mockers. “Caw, caw,” again. The call was not feverish, but a minimal communication, a signal–a crow sharing news. “Caw-caw,” something is up, someone is up, something is exciting and newsworthy in crow culture. Perhaps it is the moon, or, more likely the weather. Or maybe it’s just late-day crow intimacy too juicy to wait until daybreak.

It is night. The crows are singing. I’m fascinated and grateful to have these new neighbors—as someone who’s just moved to the city from the country. At this moment they are as wild as wildebeests.

And this morning, awakened, pre-dawn, by some unknown bump or scratching, I am up before six to make coffee in the glow of a single light. I return with it to bed and grab a the thick novel I’m working through. Shortly though, I hear it. Caw! Then another. Then, caw-caw-caw-caw-caw-caw! They are up, and not just one or two. This is bait I can not help but take. I rise again, and quietly head out the door to a second floor deck overlooking back yards and the dead end of a street.

Looming above is a tulip tree, nearly a hundred feet tall, with a large silver maple in its understory. The leaves are half-fallen. And there are the crows, yelling, then silently moving to-and-fro in pre-dawn silhouettes. The chorus is truly big neighborhood news, but the neighbors are not up yet. It’s too dark to see if perhaps the point they are making is that there’s a predator in this tree—an owl or roosting hawk. I’ve seen a Cooper’s hawk around. The yelling continues. More crows fly in, joining dozens. Others scoot by for a look, some moving off to the west. But the core of them stays, continuing to grow. There is split-second quiet when I move, telling me they’re aware of my presence, but it is momentary. Whatever they have to share is more important. The gabfest goes on.

Coffee in hand, I’m there for ten minutes, fifteen. When it seems like the darkness has lifted enough to make binoculars useful, I duck in and some. The noise continues; crows swirl. I can’t make out any lump of an owl or hawk, or marauding raccoon or fisher either. It’s just those shadowy crows. They have something. They must. But my vantage just will not reveal it—there is a side of these two trees that will remain hidden from my sight as darkness continues to lift. I move up and down the deck, hopeful of catching some predator’s hunch, or a bit of movement. Once or twice I hear a plaintive, low call—something more than a cooing, but similar to it. I can’t place it though.

Daylight makes a slow entrance this gray morning. The catcalls of this wondrous hoard continues, but with less intensity. Inevitably morning brings a subtle, quiet dispersal. Crows peel away one and two at a time until its just me left on the deck, pondering their wildness–wondering who and what had come to rest in that tulip tree to receive the honor of such noise. I’m awake, in a still wild world.

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Coyotes and tigers and bears…

It seemed perfectly safe. It was a brilliant October mid-morning and I needed a walk in the woods. My allergies had been haywire. I felt a walk would clear my head. I trundled through suburbia toward the woods and ridgeline above Highland Pond in Greenfield. The sun shimmered off yellowing maples and still-green oaks–a perfect fall day in New England. And then, it screamed at me. WARNING: Coyotes in Area. The sign, in bold red-orange, must’ve gone up over night.

Stunned, I halted in my tracks. Coyotes—in the AREA! My gosh… What to do?? Life had suddenly become scary. I collected myself. My racing heart slowed. I looked around quickly. Everything seemed, NORMAL. There were no people around, but then this was The Woods. But MAYBE that’s just what the coyotes want you to think, then…WHAM! Modern life is a full of danger signs, thrown up by who knows who. And choices.

I was upset, confused. I reviewed my options. I could turn back, find safety in the bosom of civilization. I could sit down where I was and look over into the scary woods—a warped version of reality TV. I could call the police and hope for an escort through the treacherous area. Or, if I waited, someone might come along and we could brave the wild canine gauntlet together. At the very least I’d make sure they were warned.

And then, a certain hero-scenario came to me. It was a simple dream: that I would someday collect enough coyote-defense skills, weaponry, and wild dog security equipment to start the Franklin Coyote Escort Service. I’d bring people for tours through the area—in hum-vees with stereos and side-slits for coyote sniping. Make this place a haven for civilization, like Iraq. But no, it was a crazy notion—few people ever attain that level wilderness courage and business savvy.

I stood before that sign, my life’s journey teetering in the balance. My impulse was to sprint back to the civil-safety of traffic, cell phones and shopping. But something stopped me. I’ll never know what. Suddenly I’m walking past the warning sign like some Stepford sacrifice, into the very heart of Greenfield coyote country. Each step brings me further from coffee and buy-one, get-one free–further toward the gaping maw of the woods and blood-thirsty hounds. There is no other human in sight. I’m alone—an Incan offering, thousands of miles and centuries off the mark.

In my auto-pilot state everything SEEMS normal. Squirrels chatter, chipmunks squeak, migrating robins scuff for worms in the leaves. I begin climbing upward, unaware of how many wild eyes may be devouring me from close-in. I reach Sachem’s Head and the old wood platform that once served as a dance floor for mountain visitors, before these howling woods became lousy with wild dogs. Oh for those peaceful days once more!

Me, I’m a babe in the woods—a shadow propelled by forces unknown. In my madness I sit down IN THE MIDDLE OF COYOTE COUNTRY, and read the newspaper—with that craven hoard likely so near I could’ve heard them breathing. Blithely I scan the horizon south to the beautiful ancestral bottomlands of the Pocumtuck, now “old” Deerfield, tracing the arc where that river leaves the Berkshires and pushes to its meeting with the Connecticut. In my altered state it all seems beautiful.

And then this: bizarrely, I lay down in the open and close my eyes for a nap—focused only on sinuses and the aches I’m nursing from the five games of volleyball I engaged in two nights before. I play exactly three times a decade–to stay ready for those instances where a man’s preparedness might be tested in some life-or-death Jack London setting as this one. Instead, insane, I doze for a full ten minutes, Pocumtuck princesses dancing in my head. That I do not awaken to a flash of canines at my throat remains a miracle.

A raven calls in the distance, another shadowy creature bent on destruction. Two crows sail by on the October wind—feathers glinting mockery at the fall sun. This is a set-up, I’m sure: the coyotes will rake my throat; crows will peck my eyes; the ravens will gorge on my liver. Dazed, I rise up–some final ounce of courage sustaining me, and finish my walk. Yet to this day I remain under the coyotes’ spell. It grips me as I sit here, thinking: WARNING–you have more to fear for yourself, your pet, or the suburban deer herd from the neighbor’s dog or the Rottweiller down the street, than you do from coyotes! The records bear this out. So, you see, I’m hopeless. I know that only my blood, at the full of the moon, will satisfy what the coyotes want of me. I am ready.

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The mid-afternoon call was a surprise. “Is this Mr. Meyer?” “Yes.” Then, “You have an appointment with Dr. MacDonald on October 23. There’s a problem with the appointment. I apologize; we’re going to have to change it.” I’d been having pain in my foot for weeks. “Why?” I ask. There’s more hesitation. “The appointment was made with the wrong doctor.” “Wrong doctor?” “Yes, I’m really sorry,” she says, “It’s my fault.” “But it took so long to get the appointment.” “I know. I really am sorry.” “Who was the appointment made with?” Again, hesitation. “Well, actually it was with a hand doctor. I put you in with Dr. Adler.”

With that, she laughs, “We’re trying to change his profession.” My mind begins spinning with the implications of seeing a hand guy, when there’s a foot problem. I’m on an examination table, the appendage stuck from beneath sterile sheets. The doctor eyes the elongated, stubby-fingered “hand” and exclaims, “Nurse, we have a Triage One emergency here. Prep this patient for surgery.” And then, calmly to me, “Mr. Meyer, you’re in luck. We received the hand of a young man who expired this morning—one of those IPod, cell-phone, texting in the EZ Pass lane mishaps. It’s a perfect fit Sir, a young southpaw, iced and ready to go. We’ll get you fixed. Is there anyone you would like us to contact?”

I try to imagine what a hand might be like where my left foot is. There might be benefits. I could never do cartwheels as a kid. How could you miss perfection in this area, starting out on a third hand? On that note, nothing with me would ever be second hand again. It would all be third hand–removed yet another tier from the actual source, like doctor to patient–all funneled through a nurse or receptionist: “The doctor would like you to…”; “Dr. So-and-So requires your signature on…” I could suddenly be completely off-handed with people, limiting legal and personal exposure. Not bad, I’m thinking. I’m turning cartwheels in my head.

And my apartment furnishings, some carefully restored “by hand,” would never again have to be considered “second-hand.” With this new, once-removed quality, they were suddenly taking on the subtle characteristics of “antiques”—being now technically a generation deeper in antiquarian thinking. My whole abode seemed to be taking on a deeper hue, its objects infused with historic significance. Nothing to thumb one’s foot at.

But then I realize there would also be a down side to any new extremity dexterity. All my stories would have a distant quality to them. Everything I’d attest to, including tales related among friends, could rightfully be called into question as third-hand information. If the operation were allowed to go forward–if this mistake was allowed to stand, everything I ever said—every remark made, would henceforth be off-handed. This would not be ideal in personal relationships, or when contesting parking fines.

The other shoe was about to drop. Suddenly I’m unsure about gaining double-southpaw status. Aside from outlandish dreams about a late-life run to the mound in Big League baseball–or developing an unorthodox windmill motion and burning up some fast-pitch softball lineup, the costs might outweigh the benefits. And, mistake or no, the expense of such surgery for one individual’s relatively small problem would certainly be steep. Surely that hand doctor would be cranking out a bill of Frankensteinian proportions at some point.

Who would foot that bill if it was rejected by the insurers? That seemed a real possibility, and it would leave me with hardly a leg to stand on considering my resources. And, even if that third hand did fly by the actuaries–should I rightfully expect society to shoulder the cost of what would ultimately be a cosmetic or elective surgery? Many of us desire a third hand, but are we really entitled to one simply because they’re more readily available?

Mr. Meyer? The phone brought me back to reality. “Mr. Meyer I can get you in with Dr. MacDonald on the 31^st at 3:20. Will that work?” “Sorry,” I say, I was just mulling over the possibilities of having a hand attached where my foot is—cartwheels, that kind of stuff.” “Oh, that would be interesting,” she offered, “And, there’d be other stuff you could do too,” trailing off with an honest snicker. “Wait, that’s Halloween isn’t it?” I say, “Are you sure I’m not going to come in and get rushed through because the doctor has to shove off for trick-or-treating?” “Oh no, I don’t think so. Dr. MacDonald is not like that at all.”

I scratch down the appointment time. “Hey, maybe I’ll come dressed up as I hand,” I say. “That might work,” the receptionist replies. “OK, I’ll see you on Halloween! And remember: keep your eye on your work.” “Oh, I definitely will–that wouldn’t have been good. Bye Mr. Meyer.”

So I’m thinking of maybe turning this office visit into a real trick or treat phenomenon. But then again, maybe I’ll stop and see my primary care doctor first. It seems he has too much work. I just read a notice stating he’s currently only seeing “existing” patients. Which very much leaves me wondering just exactly who he was seeing before..? Clearly, this guy could use an extra hand.

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Wailing on Freedom

(note: this posting was written earlier this summer–then removed, and updated. It ran as an op-ed piece locally)

I went to the driving range one morning this summer. I’m not a golfer. The first and last time I was on a real golf course was decades ago. I don’t find it to be a real sport. On this morning, however, I was compelled to pick up a stick and swat little balls. I was driven to the driving range that day by Congress, Dick Cheney, and Monsieurs Bush and Gonzales. We all hopped in a little cart and went driving together.

You see, that morning the radio was blaring how Congress had just past the Protect America Act of 2007. What it basically did was take telephone and internet surveillance powers away from the courts (via the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), and hand those powers directly over to the executive branch and a perjurious Attorney General.

This cowardly Congress gave the cookie jar to the Cookie Monster, then packed up and left for vacation.

Any number of analogies came to mind: evil flourishes when good men stand by and do nothing; or, to paraphrase the Speaker of the House, “The Constitution is off the table.” These people not only don’t have the courage of their own convictions—they don’t have the courage of anyone else’s. There is little dignity left in being a member of Congress as part of the Democratic Party. Better to resign, than to capitulate to a dictator’s bullying. Yet here they were abetting the enshrinement of an Imperial Presidency—something that will not be returned to the people by any ensuing incumbent. They were guilty of ripping freedom away from the future.

So, on a muggy, rain-threatening mid-morning, I teed up at the range. I was the only one at it. I grabbed a driver, tried to remember a serviceable stance, and addressed the ball—as Mr. Bush. Big, creaky back-swing, and WHOOSH—the ball dribbled a few feet past the tee. Fine! I’d get it on the next one. I was remembering our new stance on torture now. I ambled over to the tin basket and plucked out another little white dome. I placed it on the narrow neck and addressed it: this one’s for you Mr. Cheney. I straightened up, balanced my stance, pulled back, and… bluummp. The ball trickled lamely away for about twenty yards.

And then it came to me: I was over-thinking this—caring about them each in a personal way, when they hardly think of me at all. They were garnering a bit too much individual attention. I grabbed another ball, put it on the tee. I wiggled my hips, measured my spread, wound back, and WHAMMM!—there went the whole damned Congress, a pretty sweet line drive hooking right, but finding its way up beyond the 150 yard marker for its first bounce. Oh did that feel good. “Thus, Congress doth make cowards of us all.”

Well, it was mostly improvement from there. Sure there were slices, and unintentional chip shots. But I wailed on the Attorney General’s little pocked sphere, and Condi Rice went for a blistering 175 yards, before bounding left. I still swung so hard and passionately for the president and vice president that I got under the ball. They both tipped into the air rather unconvincingly a few times. But, there were those other times when I connected, and there went that spying, lying, cowardly executive branch—bending in searing arcs toward their inevitable halts, way out by the 200 yard marker. There is nothing like connecting with a solid drive when it comes to wailing on freedom.

So, for a few satisfying minutes I stood bashing the bashers of freedom at there own game. I was quite dripping with sweat when I was done. But it was an honest sweat, something I think these people are unfamiliar with. And though I think golf may quite rightly be called the stupidest thing parading as a sport since auto racing, there was something organic about whacking that little sphere. You always think things can’t get any worse. But just in case I’ve already reserved several spots in the demolition derbies at next year’s county fairs. And teeing-off again is definitely NOT off the table: I’m worried we’ve yet to see the full cowardice of Congress.

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Copyright: Karl Meyer 

August 2, 2007

Colrain, MA.  We have entered the dog days.  I realized this upon heading out for a walk at 6:30 this morning.  It is mostly silent, mostly clear, and definitely going to be hot by mid-morning.  Predictions are for 95 degrees.  As I walk along a quiet secondary road between farmhouses and pasture I think that there is likely no more apt description than “dog days.”  It just fits.  It captures those humid, listless, pre-harvest weeks like no other term.  Others that do justice to similar venues in time and space are horse latitudes, and “the doldrums.”  Whoever came up with these had a descriptive gift—even as they lay there, dripping in sweat, launching groggy, adjectives above the rim of a gin and tonic.

The air here was actually sweet at that early hour.  The sun was peeking vaguely from behind mountain and mist.  And, though most bird song has gone quiet as parents and young gobble up a summer’s insects, a few tuneful exceptions are noteworthy.  Song sparrows are still piping away—likely they’re working on second broods.  And a yellow warbler tossed its voice from a bush.  This was probably a young one just trying out its lungs. 

But most-busy right now are the indigo buntings, which will raise a second family before heading south.  They are brilliantly both deep and bright blue, all at once—the sun or shadow making the difference in their outward flash.  The other late nesters here are the goldfinches, who will be with us through the cold of winter.  The bouncy songs of these last two species intersect closely; and yesterday I saw a brief territorial fight and retreat between an indigo bunting and a goldfinch in a grass patch.  It was wondrous to see that bold yellow and flashy blue interacting.  Who knew they even paid attention to each other?

Mid-summer is also a culling time for wildlife.  There is a small roll-call of dead on my route these last few days.  It’s not gory, just unfortunate.  The sun quickly desiccates what might otherwise be messy.  That tally has included a rose-breasted grosbeak (male), a bluish-green garter snake, a little brown bat, a shriveled red eft, and a chipping sparrow.  The sparrow was new this morning.  Another was hovering near so I took a stick and moved it off the roadway so that bit of bird mourning could possibly continue without another fatal bump from a car.

That little brown bat—all 2-1/2 inches of it, was something I moved off the pavement too.  It wasn’t particularly mangled, just a neat lump of velvety, light brown fur, bat bones and wing.  I just didn’t want to see it get smooshed, so I took a stick and moved it to the shoulder.  This was purely to satisfy my personal aesthetic.  What was curious was that when I pushed it along with the stick its vestigial thumb-nail was what caught and held it, so it could be moved.  It’s called the calcar, and they use it—not for hanging, but when positioning themselves to hang, or during those instances when they have to climb along limbs.  I know bats need to be upright while giving birth, so the calcar is probably employed during this time too.  The bones in a bat’s leathery wing are just one long, skinny, ghoulish, delicate, hand.  Bats are in the order Chiroptera—which translates from Latin as “flying hand.”

All in all I was lucky to get out for a cool, quiet morning walk.  There was one farmer out, set off against a hillside as he made his way up in a white tee-shirt to cull some wood with a chainsaw.  The local bloodhound breathed heavy from a farmhouse window near the road.  She’s used to me and didn’t bark as I passed.  I think we might be friends under other circumstances.  But when she’s out, she’s controlled by an unseen electric fence.  I talk to her across that covert fence when she’s loose, and she makes hunting-dog faints at me, and charges along her invisible fence-line.  Mostly though, I can see her stubby tail wagging.

The turnaround point of the walk came toward Fort Morrison farm.  I could hear the fans humming in the milking barn.  A couple of dozen cows were lowing deeply, waiting to unburden themselves.  The sun was just eating away the center of the early mist when I made my way back to Colrain Center.  A milk truck hurried by.  

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Already in the System

For me a trip to the mall is something akin to seeing the dentist: most times I’d rather just skip it.  But there was no getting around this visit.  I was after bedding, something no longer available in town–at least at prices that don’t feel like tooth extraction.  I bit my tongue and pushed through the double doors, smack into the jowls “big box” bedding.  I was greeted by a tidal wave of prints and plastic packaging.  It just seemed too MUCH!

 
I walked toward an area that seemed promising, and waded in.  The choices ranged from flannel, cotton, polyester, cotton blend, and silk, to striped, dotted, flecked, splashed and patterned.  Then there was the confusing tableau of size, color, depth, thread-count, and etc.  Tiring precipitously, I grabbed something plain, vaguely off-white (and hopefully the right size), and bolted to the register.  This would be quick.  There were two people in line.

And then I heard it: the first customer parroting his phone number to an inquiring cashier. I assumed they were not contemplating a date.  And I knew–for me at least, this was well into the realm of the personal.   This guy’s purchase consisted of hand towels, or something in terry cloth—about as impersonal as a quart of milk.   “It’s none of your business,” I thought.  The towel man soon had his plastic bag and receipt.  He moved on.  Maybe we’d all call him at home.  I started to do a little burn.

But then–I was saved.  “THANK YOU!” to the woman in front of me at the check-out.  When asked her phone number as the transaction commenced, she replied, “Oh, I’m already in the system.”  A light went on in my head.  “YES!”  I’m already in the system!  Here at last was the sweet rejoinder to every prying, annoying request for phone numbers, postal codes, maiden names–makes, models and plate numbers.  Here was a reply that would play as well on Main Street as at the mall.  Wall Street be damned, “I’m already in the system.”  The transaction proceeded seamlessly. 

 I started practicing.  Of course I was going to lie, but I wouldn’t have to sound uncooperative–not have to feel I was single-handedly challenging the global, free trade megalith.  Instead of tensing-up at the thought of disappointing a blameless cashier with, “I don’t give out that information,” I’d smile and chirp, “Already in the system!”   

In these days of security cameras, credit monitors, warrantless phone sweeps, pre-flight searches, thousand-mile border fences and vigilante boundary guards—I just want to keep a few boundaries around me.  The point for me is not to become another point, or series of data points.  The rub is not to be the rat in the grid: “Oh, he’s buying THOSE now,” blinks a message toward buyers in China or India, or Pakistan, “Make more of THOSE for him.” Maybe I don’t even like THOSE, or I am buying THEM for someone else and the world doesn’t need anymore of THOSE.  Maybe THOSE are already next week’s schlock and the planet would be much better off if we stopped making THOSE, or if we figured out how, once again, to make THEM nearer home.

The product–which the “friendly“ system was concerned enough about to ask my phone number, was a full-size, fitted, bottom sheet.  And yes, they used to make THOSE ten miles up the road.  I imagined them calling at night, “Mr. Meyer, hello.  Oh, sorry sir—you were sleeping.  Just wanted to check on that sheet.”   Nope, I would not be offering up any bites of personal data this day.  My sleep preferences–for now least, would remain my little secret.

As the “already in the system” woman completed her purchase I thanked her.  I was honest about my intended plagiarism, “I’m going to use that.”  She smiled, somewhat knowingly, but added, “Well, I really am.”  In explanation I offered my thoughts on out-of-control data collection.  “You’re quite welcome,” she smiled again.  The cashier eyed me as I stepped to the plate.  Before she could begin, we each raised an eyebrow.  “I know,” she said wearily.  Our transaction was seamless.

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