Karl Meyer Writing Blog

* the following commentary aired on American Public Media’s Marketplace on December 27, 2007.  If you scroll down the right side of this page to “Blog Roll,” there is a link to their web page and the story.  I think it works…

KarlMeyer                                                                                           © 2007

                                     Fishing the Big Three

There was no room for panic; no margin for error.  I watched–as if from above.  One minute I’m enjoying the simplest of quick-lunch pleasures; the next I’m hurtling down a path toward oblivion, a twig-like object wedged between my teeth.  The culprit was a can of chunk white albacore.  I plunged my hand into the mess and clamped on the menacing stick.  Pulling back, I experienced the same rush cardiologists must feel when the paddles bring a heartbeat back to life, “I’m rich!”

The tuna bone, an inch-long relict of Thunnus alalunga, glistened.  My eyes darted to the can.  Yes!  I’d hooked into one of the Big Three!  Now, instead of my life ending in premature asphyxiation, I’m suddenly contemplating ascension to the ruling class.  Call me lucky, call me Ishmael– just don’t call me late for dinner!

Shaking, I washed the bone.  I contacted the tuna company’s website, stating facts: I have the bone; I have the can in a photo with a dated newspaper.  I didn’t mention lawsuit, or involuntary manslaughter.  We’re all professionals.  This could be handled neatly.  I’d await their generous offer.  I started pricing houses and hybrid cars.

The letter arrived a week later, standard mail, “A bone the size you reported is not typical of our efforts to produce the highest quality canned tuna on the market.”  A settlement of sorts was enclosed: four free cans of albacore with hopes that this would restore my consumer confidence.  They requested the bone back, and included two coupons for 25 cents off.  Big Tuna, showing me the love.

So this was customer care?  Double coupons–my loyal-silence secured for the price of stinking mackerel??  Well not so fast Chunk Lite!  Even a fish knows fishy when he smells it.  No deal–bottom feeder!  Try starting with roses next time, maybe a little sushi.  For now, I’m securing your little tuna terror-bone in a tiny evidence bag.  Have your people get in touch with mine.  We’ll talk turkey, brand-loyalty, hybrid cars…

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December 13, 2007           Copyright: Karl Meyer

                    Karl’s Christmas Kitsch Farm

Looking for an alternative, environmentally-friendly way to ring in the holidays?  Come to Karl’s Christmas Kitsch Farm in nearby Confield!  At Karl’s you can experience the excesses of the holidays without having to “buy” into them.  Come to Karl’s and hack down your own plastic spiral tree—it’s easy as one-two-three with our Karaoke chain saw.  Rev her up and “Timber!”, that PVC beauty is lifeless on the ground.  Enjoy the crisp air as it bumps along behind Santa’s golf cart.

Worried about the environment?  The Kitsch Farm can help!  All Karl’s trees can be rented on an annual basis.  Drive up to KCKF and pick a plastic tree at any season.  We’ll tag it; water it, and mulch it until you arrive for the Big Day!  When you’re done, simply ship it back in the Kitsch Mailer.  We return it to the stillness of our ancient PVC forest and its own pre-sunk stand.

Want to make a dent in climate change, but don’t know where to turn??  Let the Kitsch Farm help with holiday venting!  Follow Snowman Drive to our sea of blow-up, Frosty Snowmen.  Imported exclusively from China, each Frosty is carefully inflated to maximize Kitsch appeal.  Your venting options diverge here: you may simply unplug your Frosty, letting it ooze out its life like the Wicked Witch of the West; or rent a simulated Samuarri dagger and “take the snowman out” shouting expletives from Caesar’s time; finally, send Frosty packing with a blast from our holiday shotgun—available exclusively on our Plastic Reindeer Safari from Karl’s expert PVC Guides.

Lest you think there’s a Kitsch bias at Karl’s, you’d be mistaken.  How about Karl’s Plastic Menorah Darts?; Karl’s Kwanza Demolition Derby??; and, for “ye of little” or no faith: Karl’s Kitschy Gift Card–for consumerist venting any time of year.  Karl’s products are fully guaranteed.  Your spiral tree will fall in a perfect single helix; your Frosty will pop with the sound of fresh powder; and your “Kwanza Car by Karl” will plow into that bloated pile of gifts with unflinching speed.  We promise!  Remember: “Thinking Kitsch?  Think Karl’s!”

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This was written as a radio commentary                          December 11, 2007
© Karl Meyer

             The Institute for Foul Language (IFFL)

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Karl Meyer                                                                                December 9, 2007

                  Holding up a candle

I am at a meeting of excited townspeople, and a certain magical realism seems to be at work.  The evening’s focus is the building of a sustainable downtown.  It’s a sharing of ideas. I’m feeling like I want to hold up a candle, but that would be a mistake.  Though it might seem otherwise, what’s mostly heard here is an affirmation of the belief there will be continuing plenty into the future.  And the crowd continues to warm to that idea of plenty.  Slowly the sentiment builds into a celebration of much-ness.  But maybe it just an awkward human jab at a universe that perhaps seems filled with dark–an indoor howl at a fluorescent moon.

I am new to this town, though I’ve known it for years.  I wanted to see what neighbors might have to say about living in harmony with a warming planet and each other.  And those neighbors showed up–close to a hundred.  Most are what are called progressives here.  In general they appear to be either business owners or nascent entrepreneurs.  Tonight’s sustainable topic is fostering vital downtowns.

The downtown here is a little ragged, but making progress.  A seemingly endless theme has been the political tug of war over when, if, and how, a big box retailer should be brought into town.  Since, overall, it’s not a particularly wealthy community, big WalMart-ideas get good traction among the less well-to-do, who are not represented here–and the better-healed chamber types and construction interests.

But the people at this meeting believe in a smaller version of things.  They want to see shops and businesses in the downtown spaces—and they want to be running them, or retailing products through them.  But something is missing.  The conversation in this town of eighteen thousand always swings back to perceived customer bases that are either tourists or people on the other side of the globe hankering to purchase distant products over the world-wide web.

Some presenters do speak briefly and well about sustainability and community.  But that message has been heard before, and no one is here to step on anyone’s toes.  Several have done their best to incorporate products and ingredients from local manufacturers and growers.  One is a local food coop/grocery store.  Another is a pub-restaurant that has reduced its footprint to just one bag of trash per night.  Another briefly mentions reestablishing a vanished infrastructure of regional dairy, meat, and manufacturing plants.  But the majority have businesses and dreams fixed on a big-box pipeline—overseas imports arriving at astonishingly cheap rates that promise their particular sustainable/local enterprise comfortable profits into the future.

This crowd, and many of its panel members, are a cheering squad for big time marketing by small players.  Though a few are about cooperatives, most pattern themselves as the enlightened individuals of the entrepreneur frontier.  A glow of dollars flashes across faces when profit is mentioned.  They want to profit from ideas.  And, in return for such things, we’d each like to believe that the earth should offer us sustenance.  And a whole lot of comfort beyond that.  But unacknowledged in the back of this thinking is an invisible pool of cheap labor, the foundation of this dream of cheap goods and money.

Of the actual people here that produce something sustainable there could be a dozen.  At least three people are from farms, and several more sell and install soft energy products.  But there are no union people here, and no one looks poor.  This is not the face of diversity.  Most here have probably had a least one restaurant meal in the past week.  Ultimately they give a college cheer when someone explains a gimmick to bring a nearby run of tourists up the hill and into town from the interstate.  Everyone smiles at the idea of money from elsewhere, marching onto Main Street.  Those consumers will surely purchase meals and jewelry and imported treasures and electronics.  Or, they can be sold financial services, insurance, web-sites, second homes, advertising, or art.

But almost nowhere is the bedrock question about the fuel behind this windfall of consumers addressed.  They will be expected to sweep in daily and then leave—as regular as the tides.  There is no mention of gasoline—sustainability; a warming planet.  Though someone mentions bicycles, no one is talking trolleys, passenger rail, or even tour busses.  There is up-front recognition that this group’s sustainable idea of itself could never be supported by a community of a mere 18,000 souls.  These market ideas require a much larger pie.  They are meant to serve armies arriving in individual vehicles—convoys from New York City, 170 miles away.  And there’s the rub.

What’s mostly missing in this view toward a sustainable and vital downtown is the idea of sustainability.  Though many of these folks don’t like taxes, neither are they prepared to admit the obvious—that we’ve taxed the planet to the point of no longer sustaining us.  We believe our ideas–and a few well-placed investments, are enough afford us a comfortable living.  We feel entitled to be comfortably fed and warmed by the planet simply for figuring out how to get money from people from afar.

Honest sustainability talk might acknowledge that systems need to change—that we need to change.  Our notions can no longer be fueled by exhaust spewing cars from afar–arriving with hungry tourists wishing to purchase products from distant lands with dollars leveraged on over-heated, carbon-fueled, production fires in Asia.  Honest talk would recognize the hum of devastating wars that fuel this idea of plenty.  That too is unsustainable.

One woman makes a point that begins to address the underlying issue in a simple thought.  She’s one of the farm-connected people.  She states that what ultimately is going to impose itself as the limiting factor–above any and all ideas here, is the carrying capacity of earth’s systems–the actual limits of the planet we each inhabit for just a few short years.  But her nugget of common sense is mostly-missed by this crowd.

And, as a newcomer, I do not hold up my candle this night.  It is best.  It’s not something I’m good at.  I’m more likely to bonk people over the head and say—what are you possibly thinking?  No one would see that clumsy light.  But I’m grateful for my friend Tom, who holds his candle light up into the face of the night’s roaring fire.  It is humble; it addresses the present.  And what he has to say perhaps reaches a few who care to see beyond its small flame.

Tom’s in his eighties, but you wouldn’t know it.  And he’s been sick for a while, but you wouldn’t know that either.  I see him stand—way up front, and be recognized as the night’s last speaker from the audience.  His message is brief.  He speaks honestly of sustainability, but perhaps what’s most important is encapsulated in his last words: “I hope as we go forward, that we’ll all take the time to take care of each other.”

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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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