The Stupid Things I Save...

While clearing out some files tonight, I found this. I forgot I wrote it, much less saved it. I never received a reply. Of course not. Those who write about "rural" issues and live in large cities prefer to not discuss matters with those who live "in ground zero," if you will pardon the phrase.

Three years have gone by.  I have only one correction to make.  We are now "Detroit" up in Macomb County, and medical marijuana is what is driving up the housing market.  Those from the city are buying up housing and setting LARGE operations then financially destroying the rural townships who have ordinances regulating operations.  This is Michigan, after all.   Take your beating, residents, because that's what the Michigan state government is for, to destroy its residents.

That said, here's a laugh for everyone:

In your article “Getting Real about Rural America”, you wrote, “I’m sure that some rural readers will be angered by everything I’ve just said, seeing it as typical big-city condescension. But that’s neither my intention nor the point. I’m simply trying to get real. We can’t help rural America without understanding that the role it used to play in our nation is being undermined by powerful economic forces that nobody knows how to stop.”

Yes, I am angry; No, not at you. Perhaps I am more tired and annoyed than angry. I live in Southeast Michigan, an area that constantly is tossed in with Detroit though it is not Detroit yet. While health care, child care and infrastructure are problems that we all can agree exist, the real issues facing the rural areas here are greedy real estate moguls, the change of agriculture to agri-business, and the mafia. More localized are the natural gas issues and increasing crime as the gangs travel north.

I am 43 years old. I do not want to bombard you with my experiences, because in my experience those who write for newspapers are only interested in something that gets him or her 5 minutes of glory, not actually dealing with the issues at hand. No one wants to talk about the “immigrant families” who five and six generations down still have to work twice as hard as others to get an education. No one wants to talk about how small farmers have been destroyed so that a few could take over that which Thomas Jefferson lauded as the basis of freedom. No one wants to talk about how one person’s reality is so very different from another’s. If you care to read about some of my experiences, you will find them here: 

Don’t take my word for it; come and see for yourself. However, NO ONE wants to come up here and see. Half the battle of fighting stereotypes is to come and see, and it is easier for Michigan if no one notices what has been going on for generations. Should you come to Michigan to see, look me up and I’ll show you the forgotten areas and what life is really like for some of us Americans.

Elvis has left the building.... Maybe

If you go back in time on this blog,  There is a post about something called "Triangle Island."  Triangle Island was a quilt along run by Captain Dick of Treadle On, when Treadle On was still Treadle On.

Two posts are here http://claraspet.blogspot.com/2009/11/triangle-island.html  and http://claraspet.blogspot.com/2011/02/im-off-island.html

(Great Howe, the link to the TO site in the post still works!!!)

Then there was the mystery quilt, Survivor - Rectangle Island from 2009.  For that one, you will have to visit Internet Archive. 

But I'm sorry to report, folks, Elvis has left the building.... maybe. 

The man, the mystery, the slightly goofy Captain Dick hasn't been around much due to advancing age.  Recently, he made a comeback until the Bobbits forced him into a semi-exile.  Then came the injury with a table saw -- and his internet presence is gone now.  All that remains are the memories of the good times and rumors of the Evil Twin -- not the one that looks like Tom Selleck -- and dremls -- dragons --- bears -- remember Romance in the Afternoon (aka Lust in the Rust)?   The soap opera of sewing machines.... that went where no one dared go.  

But folks, this isn't like when I was 15 and had to walk away from my cats and home, go live in town and work in a nursing home kitchen.  (Yes, at 15.)  Treadleonia -- the mythical land some want to forget -- can still live on in us.   Shame on us, those of us left, if we let Olde Treadleonia die.

Like Vincent Starrett wrote in his poem 221B: 

Here dwell together still two men of note

Who never lived and so can never die:

How very near they seem, yet how remote

That age before the world went all awry.

But still the game’s afoot for those with ears

Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:

England is England yet, for all our fears–

Only those things the heart believes are true.

A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane

As night descends upon this fabled street:

A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,

The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.

Here, though the world explode, these two survive,

And it is always eighteen ninety-five.

Olde Treadleonia is still west of Inspiration and north of Reality.  It never existed and so cannot die.

LONG LIVE TREADLEONIA!!!!!

Links to the old days:

https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.dickwightman.com

https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.treadleon.net

Note 1:  I wrote a research paper on Sherlock Holmes in 1994.  Pre-internet days meant I had to pay research services because all my newspaper articles were from the 1910s-20s.  There is serious research out there about a man who never lived.

Note 2: Bobbits.  In the spirit of Captain Dick, I created them while recording the latest saga..... maybe I'll get brave and post it some day.  I will mention that I moonlight as a writer for The Underground Richmond Press News (URP News, cf. Foxtrot strip August 6, 1997.)

Note 3:  I've still got it.  Treadleonia AND Sherlock Holmes AND Foxtrot references in one post.  That one's for you, Bill Amend.

Armada Tornado

 We had a lively night, Saturday night.  An EF-1 tornado hit the village of Armada, just two miles north of me.  We watched it from our house.    Not a very good picture, but we were too worried for everyone, and too busy watching the sky at our house.  We had rotating clouds by us, too.

The wall cloud after the tornado had passed:

The National Weather Service says it was max wind speeds of 105 MPH, 3.6 miles long, 700 yards (0.4 miles) wide.  There are damage pictures galore out there, so search "Armada MI tornado" and you'll see them.  One office building has become the face of the village, but at least 5 houses will have to be demolished and rebuilt.  Many more were damaged.  There is a good video up at Macomb County Scanner facebook page.

There seem to have been no injuries, Thank God.

The night of the tornado, our County Executive Mark "Media hog" Hackel was right in Armada, like he really gives a rip.  NO ONE in this damn county gives a rip about us up here, unless it means something to their political campaign or means money.  Sorry Mark, I know you were once one of the good guys.  Go crawl back to your Macomb Township home and stay there, in the cancer of the county.  

I'm writing this from my uncle's house, as I haven't had internet that completely functioned since June 25.  No, really, I can't get anything else and have been put on waiting lists, assuming one day we won't be a dead area anymore.  That is due to the Michigan Telecommunications Act https://www.michigan.gov/documents/mpsc/pa179_453242_7.pdf

There's the humorous part of the tornado, if humor can exist in such a thing.  It weakened to an EF-0 when it hit the schools, and the electrical poles and some trees got the worst of it.   The schools survived.  Unfortunately, too many homes and a couple businesses didn't.  But the people survived.

This is what has been going on

 If a picture is worth a thousand words, this should be worth a million.  These signs showed up in my township the last few days:

The entire text of the proposed ordinance changes are here:  

https://www.raytwp.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Proposed-Zoning-Amendments.pdf

All that is missing from the text is the ordinance requiring all those without an approved income, lifestyle, or house value to be removed from the township.  

Perhaps I would be less upset if the eejits hadn't tried to raise my taxes on my garden lot 90%.  Or if they hadn't, oh, told me I didn't really live in the township.   As the old billboard on Featherstone Road in Pontiac read, "A bullet in the head would be more merciful than 20 years of political torture and..." 

EDIT:  I spoke with the township supervisor.  He had the ordinance removed from the proposal at the last meeting and he was not in favor of it.  Unfortunately, this points out another issue in the township -- communication.  Zoom meetings work when you have decent internet, but there are those of us who don't.  I am so grateful that I don't have to fight this battle that I can live with the rest of it.

 

Food for Thought

- As another community member said when he saw the kinds of seeds I gave Donna, "There is so much that we forgot to take with us before the flood."  Enduring Seeds, Gary Paul Nabhan

That sentence makes me cry every time I read it.

"The flood" refers to the Garrison Dam.  Built from 1947-1953, it coming into existence meant that the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara had to leave the lands they had lived on for centuries.  Most accounts say they accepted payment of 5 million for their lands; but anyone who ever dealt with a large corporation and/or government knows what that really means.  "We're taking your land, and here's some money that you have to sign this paper for."  In the end, they got about $33 per acre.  They lost their homes, their way of life, and even their seeds.  (Look up the full story.  Everyone should have to hear the brutal truth what happened.  Better yet, read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.)

Yet some of their seed survived, which made their way into the hands of seed savers.  More importantly, those seeds are still with their people, or have gone back to their people.

That's more than I can say for my ancestors' seeds.

Some of my ancestors came from the German/Poland border (then called Prussia), from Mecklenburg, and from France (Hugenots who lived between France and Germany) on my mother's side.  On my father's side, from Moravia, from Germany allegedly (that great-grandma claimed a lot that can't be proven), and from Ireland and Scotland.  

So they grew.....  well....  there's those family seeds from.....  

I suppose that's one of the issues with being from an immigrant family.  Anything you had that survived until the World Wars, you lost to patriotism.  Language included.  Today it is popular to point fingers and scream "white," but even 30 years ago, when I was in high school and college, you had better not show anything that made you look less "English."  No accent or speech patterns.  No religion.  I once was mistaken for having a Canadian accent.  I should have let that individual think that.  

So this year as I plan my "culturally diverse" garden, I will think about all the different places my seed has come from and rejoice at the variety.... but part of me will always wonder "what did my family grow?"

Happy 2021

I wish everyone a very good 2021, with hopes that this year turns out better than it promises to.

Perhaps I would have more hope for the year if I wasn't watching, while at this moment, news reporters are calling people who oppose them "anarchists." In Michigan, we watched as real anarchists took over Seattle last year and ran massive protests. I watched and prayed, as close to my own home, we were invaded by those same anarchists from Washington and Oregon. They were supported by our governor while it was a crime to leave our homes because of a virus. Visit the anarchists' websites, if you don't believe me.  

I declare this year's heroes should be the late Group Captain Harry "Wings" Day of the RAF (1898-1977), and the late Colonel Jerry Sage (1917-1993). Their books are well worth the read, and they ought to be read in the schools. (I hear the laughter.)  

And so, my ode to 2021. At the rate it is going, Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky is the poem of the year.

To Lewis Carroll, poet brillig,

Now raise your bloody* glass!

Jabberwocky, Bandersnatch,

We’ll drink an ode to you.



For common sense let’s raise a pint

To common sense, now dead!

Let’s take a cup of kindness yet,

Before that, too, has died.

CMK 2021

*British word used in place of something else

Dark Winters and Seeds

 I received an email a few days ago from Seed Savers (SSE).  This is what I read:

How are you doing? If you were able to plant seeds this year, were they for food, or beauty, or both? Did your garden, whether a large plot or a small community space or a windowsill, bring you peace, joy, and nourishment? Did you save any seeds, or share them? I would love to hear about your experiences this year, and how you are finding ways to connect to the seeds and to the people around you.

Instantly I was transported back in time to earlier this year, when in Michigan, lottery tickets and alcohol were essential items, and seeds were considered non-essential items by our governor.  Right then and there I was grateful I am a seed saver.  I laughed at the idiocy which made me want to cry, and I planted my rebellious garden with a quiet gratefulness that I had learned about SSE nearly 20 years ago.

I grew up on my grandparents' farm, born the same year SSE came into existence.  Now and again I find pictures of gardens past on the farm, but it was a dwindling farm by the time I was around.  My grandparents were in their 50s when I was born, and ten years earlier they had fallen victim to the destruction of the dairy farmer the State of Michigan so strongly desired.  When I was a kid, we had pigs and beef cattle, Polled Herefords for those who care.  On the land that wasn't pasture Grandpa grew hay, wheat, corn, and Maple Arrow soybeans (the last few years.)   And of course, there was The Garden.

I tried to mark the estimated location of The Garden, but if you look closely, you can still see the marks.

.

In my mind I can still see it.  Pear trees on the fence line.  The barbed wire twisted into the trunk of one of the trees from one of the tornadoes that went through.  Green peppers.  Eggplant.  Tomatoes.  Chucking rotten tomatoes over the fence line towards the tower line.  Beets.  Green beans... the never-ending row of green beans.  The rhubarb we got from Uncle Norman, beautiful large plants.

I was about 10 years old when I wanted to be a farmer like my grandpa, and he told me there was no future in farming.  I believed him even while it hurt to hear that, but knowing my grandpa, I'm sure it hurt him to say it.  He was an old-type farmer, where 80 acres was enough until government got involved.  He was right.  Just a couple years later when I was 12, the State of Michigan began another major assault on rural Michigan.  I remember 7th grade well because everyone talked about taxes doubling and tripling overnight.  The two major topics among my classmates were taxes and the Richmond Community Schools trying to kill busing for parochial school students (of which I was one.)  (That was also the same year U2's The Joshua Tree came out.  Just sayin'.)

   

Rural area in the 1980s, folks.  Even the kids understood more than most politicians today.

We never saved seeds.  I only remember hearing my grandpa say, "You can't save seeds," and I remember Grandma said it was too hard to grow tomato plants from seed.  Years later, after I had learned otherwise, I asked Grandpa why he always said "you couldn't save seed" because I was.  He looked at me with that look I knew so well ("how dumb can you be"), and said, "It was all hybrid seed."  (Diane Ott Whealy does an excellent job in her book  Gathering: Memoir of a Seed Saver talking about the issues in the 70s and 80s.)

The garden on the septic field, 1976.  Even at a year old you knew where I would be! 

In the last few years, as I have been trying to rebuild any knowledge of what my family would have traditionally grown, my mom has been some help.  With her help, I know that one great-grandma grew Victor tomatoes and some peas of some sort.  (The seeds she saved were probably thrown out after her death.)  The other great-grandpa favored Burpee's Stringless green beans, which were grown until no one could get seed any longer.  (I remember Blue Lake something-or-the-other.  One number was OK, the other not.)  My grandpa, however, gave me the most clues to figure out what seeds would have been grown.  He told me, when I asked what varieties we grew back when, that he didn't remember but Ferry Morse was good seed.  ("Well, it used to be," he said.)  Thanks to Internet Archive a few years ago, I found a whole collection of Ferry Morse catalogues.  They were from Detroit originally -- and our farms were all just north of there.  (Erin Twp, Clinton Twp, Sterling Twp, Lenox Twp.  Don't ask what they look like now.)   But anyway, thanks to those catalogues and the descriptions, I was able to figure out the Victor tomato.  It's something, anyway.  

So what about "dark winters"?  Well, 20-some minutes ago, while I write this, Michigan is "Pausing", not in lockdown.  Not yet.  We have a vindictive governor.  Give her time.  That said, other than screwing up my son's ability to take Woodshop 2 in high school and the economic issues, I'm not too worried about a "long, dark winter."  I find winters are way too short to do what I need to, and it won't be long before I'm starting seeds in the house.  (I stocked up on what I needed for when seed-starting supplies are deemed "non-essential" again.)  Besides, Internet Archive has many more seed catalogues.  So many old catalogues, so little time.  Last year I got into trouble with the Isbell Seeds catalogues from Jackson, MI, and found a kick-tail tomato called Golden Colossal.  If you are reading this, you really need to check out a tomato so popular it lasted 30 years in the catalogues...

Take it from someone who is expendable.  Don't fear a long, dark winter -- read a seed catalogue!

2020's garden in June.  From 80 acres to less than one, between two gas companies.  It proved that 2020 wasn't all bad!