Quite nicely, thank you. August will mark the beginning of our tenth year here in Fuquay, which means both Donna and I have lived here longer than either of us has lived in any other one place in our lives. Our house may be tiny, but we've got a great, roomy lot, full of trees and bordered by some thriving green spaces (our back yard descends to what used to be a farm pond, and what is now a lovely wetland with frogs, turtles, deer walk-throughs, and all manner of happy, chirpy wildlife). Slowly--one corner, one perennial, one fruit tree at a time--we've been building the yard (organically!) into the peaceful haven that head gardener Donna was able to envision when we first saw the place. It's been a lot of work, but the results are increasingly rewarding. Donna is the true gardener in the family; for her, the actual work in the dirt is an end in itself, green therapy for the daily pressures of her job. I'm not a gardener so much as the hired help, and my gratification is delayed. For me, the digging and planting and weeding are pretty much a chore. The real pleasure comes as the plants mature and fill in, and I finally get to see in front of me what Donna saw in her head all along. I highly recommend it. I've posted some pictures at Flickr, including a couple of "time lapse" shots that show how things have progressed over the years. It's pretty remarkable to see how far it's come when I look back at the older pics. We're not at all interested in having a "lawn," by the way, though that's what many homeowners seem to obsess over. Grass holds little interest for us, and the mowable bits of the property are probably 75% weeds. It's all green when you mow it. The plants are the thing!
Well the BHOC (Black Hole of Cuteness) has been settling in quite nicely--she's getting along with her siblings, happily crunching dry kitten food, and primly making use of the low-rider litter box we've provided her. So far, so good. Right now we're leaning towards Donna's suggestion for her real name: Cricket. It seems to fit her little black bug appearance as well as her tiny chirping meow. Of course she won't be tiny forever (or even for long), but Cricket seems to suit. Or perhaps we should call her Enigma, the Ninja Cat of Secret Stealth. I left the critters alone together this morning to go get some strawberries and veggies at Hilltop Farms, the CSA we belong to. When I got home, Greta and Porter greeted me as usual, but Cricket was nowhere to be found. I looked into all the places to which she has gravitated in her first few days with us, but nothing. She can barely jump high enough to grab and pull herself up into a kitchen chair, she wasn't on the floor or any of the low furniture, and I was beginning to get worried. Had she somehow sneaked out the door behind me when I left? Finally, me eyes rose a little bit, and there she was.
How did she do it? As you can see in the picture, there's nothing next to that tall bookshelf to leap from, and as I said, she can't really leap yet anyway. Look at her peeking out from behind the day-by-day calendar, (you can see her little eyes glowing from the top shelf in the picture on the right) smug in the knowledge that she's blown my mind with her mad ninja kitty skills. Spooky. Except I'm pretty sure she's going to need me to get her down.
The day before yesterday was a beautiful Spring day here, so all the windows and the front door were open all day. And from time to time, I kept hearing the unmistakable "Help" cry of a tiny kitten. But every time I went out the front door to try to track down its whereabouts, the mewing stopped. When Donna got home from work and stepped out of the car, she heard it too, and the hunt was on. After a few minutes of intermittent cries, we were finally able to triangulate the signal and take a bearing. Broadcast origin--under the rosemary bush in our front garden. This is what we found: Do not attempt to look directly into the cuteness without goggles--you will go blind. The vet reckons she's about 4-5 weeks old and in good health. The vet also agreed with us that she's a veritable black hole of cuteness, in whom the cute matter is collapsed so densely into one 16 oz. point, that no cuteness can escape her gravitational pull. As of yet she has no name and is referred to only by her astronomical designation, Black Hole Cygnus X-1. We've been slowly introducing her to her step-siblings Porter and Greta (yes, of course we're keeping her), who are fortunately two of the most amiable animals on the planet. As you can see from the footage below, although Cygnus X-1 has yet to be in the house for a full 48 hours, Porter has decided that--as far as stepsisters go--she'll do.
Hey fellow earthlings, today is Earth Day. You know, Mother Earth only gets this one special day every year, so how about honoring your one and only place to live by taking her out for a special dinner, or maybe picking up after yourself without being asked JUST THIS ONCE ALREADY?! Flowers are an entirely inappropriate gift for Earth Day, as they simply remind Mother Earth of her own mortality. Kind of like giving your mother a lovely bouquet of her own hair and nail clippings. And guys, don't get her lingerie; Mother Earth does not want lingerie for Earth Day. This is her special day, not yours.
A friend of The Broken Stove needed help--and my pickup truck--to get to the local metal scrap recycling center with her totally non-metaphorical broken stove. At first I thought it would be just a typical favor from a friend with a truck to a friend without one. Not a big chore, but not exactly a barrelful of monkeys. But then I saw THE CLAW (see picture). It turns out that at the center you can pull in with your bed full of scrap (just one stove in our case), get weighed, pull up to THE CLAW, and THE CLAW WILL REACH DOWN TO YOUR TRUCK like the Harvester in Terminator Salvation, and effortlessly lift your scrap away. It was very cool. Then you get weighed again on the way out and paid based on the difference in weight. My friend got four whole American dollars! OK, not much, but as she pointed out, it beats paying the county for the privilege of throwing it in their pile. Now I find myself looking around the house for stuff that I can break, just so I can OFFER IT TO THE CLAW. "[It] has been chosen, [it] must goooo!"
OK, you know you have too much time on your hands when you spend about an hour and a half at (an admittedly very fun) website called Xtranormal.com creating an existential, text-based, minute-long "movie" about God and Santa. If you're a normal, busy, productive person, I beg you not to click the link. It's a total timesuck. Nevertheless, GretaPorter Productions proudly presents: "A Crisis of Faith: Santa vs. God."
1) possessing the claimed or attributed character, quality, or origin; not counterfeit; authentic; real: genuine sympathy; a genuine antique.
2) properly so called: a genuine case of smallpox.
3) free from pretense, affectation, or hypocrisy; sincere: a genuine person.
--from Dictionary.com, emphasis mine
As I continue my extremely intermittent alphabetical stroll through the music in my iPod, I now find myself at the songs that begin with the letter "G." There are 148 such songs on my iPod right now, and as has been true for most of the other letters, they represent a broad range of my musical interests and vary in quality from disposable to indispensable. As I searched through the titles for some kind of unifying theme to wrap this post around--good, goodbye, ghost, give?--I was instead struck by a word that didn't actually appear in the titles at all: "genuine." "Genuine" is a pretty slippery term to toss around in music criticism--or any other kind of criticism for that matter--because its evaluation depends upon purely subjective criteria, and its application doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the quality, good or bad, of the music being discussed. The pop songs of Miley Cyrus may be catchy, good pop songs (though not my thing), but few, I think, would apply the adjective "genuine" to what she does. She and her songs are mass market products, slickly produced, tested, and marketed to a very specific demographic by a powerful entertainment company that knows its business. The Sex Pistols, on the other hand (also not my thing), though they could barely play their instruments, were "genuine." Their music may have sounded like their instruments were being sawed to pieces by angry, tone-deaf sociopaths, but they were an organic product of--and reaction to--the musical and cultural scenes of their day. With that in mind, here is my list of the most "genuine" G-songs from my iPod, songs that seem to me to best fulfill the above definition in that they are free from pretense, affectation, or hypocrisy, and, like Linus's pumpkin patch, absolutely drip with sincerity.
"Good Work (If You Can Get It)" by BoDeans The BoDeans were one of my favorite bands in my college and grad school days, and while I don't have them on "heavy rotation" anymore, I can still pull out their first few albums from time to time and marvel at the freshness they've maintained. They attracted a lot of critical attention for their straight-forward roots rock sound when they debuted with "Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams," but though they've always been a college radio mainstay, they never were able to make a big mark on the charts. The video here, terrible sound notwithstanding, shows them at the height of their powers in the late 80's, tearing through a Berry-esque raveup with David Letterman's band. Paul Shaffer even gets excited enough to put his foot to the keyboard รก la The Killer. Genuine three chord rock and roll.
"Goddamn Lonely Love" by Drive-by Truckers Drive-by Truckers is a country rock band that manages to avoid the worst excesses of a genre they share with the likes of .38 Special and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Song-writing duties are shared and the lineup changes, but their albums nevertheless maintain a signature sound and mood that make them something like Alabama's Bruce Springsteen--which, if you're not sure, is a good thing. If you can't get past the "goddamn," you'll miss a haunting song of yearning and regret that sounds like it was written on a beer-stained napkin at a really dingy bar at closing time. Occasionally, a profanity is just the best word for the job. "I could take a Greyhound home; when I got there it’d be gone, along with everything a home is made up of/ So I’ll take two of what you’re having, I’ll take all of what you've got to kill this goddamn lonely love."
"God Give Me Strength" by Elvis Costello Now you might think that performing a song with a full orchestra and Burt Bacharach on piano could violate the "no affectation" clause of my "genuine" definition. But you'd be wrong. "God Give Me Strength" comes from Costello's collaborative album with Bacharach, "Painted From Memory," and while the arrangements may be lush, the songs are none the less genuine for it. Bacharach may have that whole schmaltzy vibe, but he's a talented artist (see my Neil Sedaka discussion), and there's no doubting the feeling behind Elvis's performance in the video here. "I want him to hurt!"
"Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine" by The White Stripes Once again my iPod discussions lead me back to The White Stripes. Rock doesn't get much more "genuine" than when it's stripped down to a guitar and a drum set, and unlike the songs on all of my local radio stations, Jack and Meg's creativity and originality keep me from feeling old. There's still great music being made out there, fellow 40-somethings, but unless you're in a huge market or have a good community-supported station, it's probably not being played on your radio. But look...here's some right here! Spank that high hat, Meg, it's been very naughty!
Peter Waldron is a writer and bon vivant who currently lives in a tobacco field south of Raleigh. He enjoys cheese, homebrewing, and travel to those places not covered by various restraining orders. He has been a contributing writer for The Onion News Network, and his scribblings have appeared at Yankee Pot Roast, The Science Creative Quarterly, and in his head, where they never fail to get a big laugh.
Quite nicely, thank you. August will mark the beginning of our tenth year here in Fuquay, which means both Donna and I have lived here longer than either of us has lived in any other one place in our lives. Our house may be tiny, but we've got a great, roomy lot, full of trees and bordered by some thriving green spaces (our back yard descends to what used to be a farm pond, and what is now a lovely wetland with frogs, turtles, deer walk-throughs, and all manner of happy, chirpy wildlife). 
