Oikos mou

F-18 Hornet and SNJ in formation

Today is Freedom Fair on Tacoma’s vibrant waterfront, and the air show is in progress.  We’re home with our projects, enjoying the air show from our front yard.  The World War II era SNJ Navy trainer seems secure with his F-18 wingman.

Lady Washington, shooting at us

They really are wonderful, even if the parade of sail starts to seem like a living museum drifting by. Coast guard boats and helicopters keep up a kinetic pace, even if the sailing ships are cruising under power at about four knots. Their crews keep their sails unfurled so they can drift in beauty into Foss Waterway.

Not many things can lure me into a crowd. Somehow, I managed to stand on concrete, sit on a backless wooden table, and sit on a wake-jostled wooden pier for five hours. I was very excited to see the tall ships under sail, even if they were “sailing” under power. Their jibs look more like wings than the wings of airplanes.

Lynx

The Tall Ships parade of sail is the best thing that happens in Tacoma. They last came in 2005, and I didn’t go to see them sail in; I saw them docked later in the evening, their sails furled. How much more dramatic it is to see them under sail, and shooting cannons at us, as well.

I wanted especially to see Amazing Grace, and I saw her. Happily, she was ninth in the parade of 29, and cruised by while my camera still had vital batteries.

Amazing Grace

Cutty Sark and Bligh's launch

I finished a three-mile walk on my treadmill, forcing myself to read something substantive while I peeled off the miles in my scenic red study. I was reading about a missionary to the New Hebrides who knew real hardship and real swipes with death on a daily basis among murderous cannibals. I felt useless and awkwardly suburban in my own sanctum.

I really didn’t want to change my clothes to work in the yard and then shower again, but I was too claustrophobic to do anything else. I needed to get outside and I could think of nothing else purposeful to do. I’ve never been one to relax outside and just gaze out at our yard. I don’t sit outside and do things because our outdoor chairs are uncomfortable for reading or knitting; besides, the bees have dominion over the deck. My husband wasn’t home yet to play croquet. I decided not to change and just to pull a few weeds and somehow stay clean. I have no idea where such a concept originated.

I filled a 5-gallon bucket, mostly with dry bluebell stalks and Stinking Robert, which in my area is an officially designated noxious weed. I find it gratifying to pull up because it uproots easily, and its spread makes a huge weed disappear for little effort. I stuffed the weeds down in my bucket, pulled more easy weeds, and emptied my bucket in the 90-gallon yard waste container outside the gate. Across the street, two of my neighbors were chatting.

I went back for more weeds. Both my arms started itching. I tried to tough out the itching because my gloves were dirty. I noticed hives coming up on both arms. Oh well. I pulled some more weeds behind some ferns. Now my right arm was really stinging. A tiny, thoroughly evil black spider was probing his mean little proboscis into my arm. Who invited you into the Ark? I determined his offense capital and summarily executed him. A half-dollar-size welt formed in his place.

I emptied my bucket again. My neighbors were still chatting. While you were out here chatting it up, I have pulled 10 gallons of weeds that will grow back overnight, been attacked by a killer allergen, and had an attempt on my life at the presumptive teeth of a spider. But their yards are perfect, so they get to chat. It’s my turn for outdoor adventure and weeds and spiders.

I get the inexpressible joy of a hot shower at 4:00 in the afternoon, and know the lavish comfort of clean socks and the absurd chatter of a peaceful neighborhood free of cannibals.

What bounty comes in two buckets of Stinking Robert.

A big change between Solomon’s time (c. 990 B.C.) and our own, is the number of supervisors it took to get a government project done.  A quick math check of 2 Chronicles 2:1-2 is revealing:

“And Solomon determined to build an house for the name of the LORD, and an house for his kingdom.

And Solomon told out threescore and ten thousand men to bear burdens, and fourscore thousand to hew in the mountain, and three thousand and six hundred to oversee them.”

Solomon’s temple is doubtless one of the most prodigious public works undertakings of all time. The king engaged 150,000 workers and 3,600 supervisors. The supervisors thus constituted 2% of the project force.

During the Works Progress Administration (WPA) years, New Deal America spent billions of dollars to put millions of people to work. One in 20 workers, or 5%, were now supervisors. The supervisory wildfire was barely ignited.

The Federal government today is the nation’s largest employer, employing about 2% of the total workforce. About 18-20% of federal workers are supervisors.  (Source)

The National Labor Relations Board predicts that by 2012, 23% of the workforce will be supervisors.  (Source)

For all of Solomon’s excesses, he ran a slim ship when it came to hiring supervisors. Maybe instead of a top-heavy crew, he had willing, competent workers.  Maybe they were motivated to eat, and work was the only way that was going to happen.

About sixteen centuries before Solomon, egomaniacal pharaohs were ordering construction of pyramids for themselves. Here are some estimates of the number of supervisors and workers it took to build the Pyramid of Cheops.  Broken down by task, supervisors made up between 4% and 20% of a particular task force. The pyramid took about 20 years to build.  While it is probably the case that most of the pyramid workers were slaves, it likely made little difference whether an Egyptian pyramid worker was enslaved or free.  Work was not optional if one aspired to eat.

The men building Solomon’s temple differed in several ways from contemporary government workers. For one thing, they were building a house of worship. For another thing, they were men. There was no equal-opportunity dickering. It was obvious to people in those times that people who built things were men.

Men don’t spend unnecessary time with treacly ritual greetings of “How are you?” in order to deflect workplace tensions and keep the touchy-feely mood elevated–or at least they didn’t prior to the era of the feminized workplace.

Think of the staff meetings, the Affirmative Action accountings, the EEOC filings, and the union pandering that Solomon didn’t have to deal with. God provided the plans for the temple to David, and David passed them to Solomon (1 Chronicles 28:11-12). No engineering studies were necessary, no wetland studies, no requirements to hire women contractors. No wonder he got the temple built in seven years (1 Kings 6:38). Most cities can’t break ground in seven years because they’re still in environmental permitting stages. And Getting Things Done is one more secret lost in the sands of time.

Impassive rider,
Next time, be all you can be:
My hood ornament.

They were precocious chicks, and we had high hopes for them. They were early fliers and so unbelievably cute. They began laying at five months, and most laid an egg every or every other day.

We had five buff Plymouth Rocks in the beginning; one died at the end of their first year when she passed her oviduct. The four seemed to go on with life as usual. They molted, stopped laying, brooded in turn, went back to laying.

Then one became a chronic brooder, then another. They seemed to live to pile on top of one another in their roosting boxes. By fall 2007, none was laying with any regularity. Sometimes weeks would go by without an egg.

We’re pushovers. We had commenced a duty of care. We went on buying feed and pine shavings. We expanded their outdoor quarters, but they weren’t interested; all they wanted to do was brood.

We locked them out of their hutch during the day. They wouldn’t lay outside. In the evening, we’d let them back inside and they’d brood. But once in a while, one would lay an egg.

It got worse. They began eating the one or two eggs they would lay. I’d find the broken shell fragments.

We hadn’t really decided to convert them to stew if we couldn’t break their brooding cycle, but we spoke of it. I visualized my husband strangling the birds that had climbed on my finger as chicks. Surely to goodness we could figure out a solution to their chronic brooding.

At last we did, and it worked. We closed off their nesting boxes. We simply stapled cardboard over them. My husband built a slatted grate and placed it over framed mesh. Now they lay on the grate, they don’t brood, and the eggs go down to mesh where they’re safe from cannibals. We’re getting three to four eggs a day from our foursome.

So, we outfoxed the chickens, they get to live, and we get eggs.

 I thought some exercise might help regulate Coolidge’s diabetes. I’m doing all I can with diet and insulin, but his glucose values swing wildly, mocking any meaning of regulation. This Cat isn’t exactly what you would call exercise-motivated. He will play with a toy if it lands within inches of him. I have to toss it there. Then he lies on his back and shreds it with his back feet for a while, looks bored, and waits for me to toss it again. Then he regards the toy with indifference. Yes, you tossed that last time. It’s no longer interesting. Guess what I really want….

I decided he needed something that would move under its own power, something to engage the hunting instincts years of life lying in his window hammock have suppressed.

 My husband looked online at various robotic birds and cars, and we decided that something moving on the floor might inspire the Cat to get up and move around to investigate. We were afraid something flying overhead might send him under the bed with a nosebleed. Besides, reviewers said the robotic birds were noisy.

The iBird reminded me of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Artist of the Beautiful,” a story about a watchmaker who makes a wonderful, lifelike mechanical butterfly that flies of its own power. The watchmaker presents the butterfly in a jewel box to his master’s daughter. The girl opens the box and the butterfly flies forth; she reaches out delightedly to catch it, and unthinkingly crushes the mechanism to bits. The iBird is not as beautiful as Owen Warland’s butterfly.

I went to Radio Shack, and they had a special on little radio-controlled cars. Explaining that it was for my Cat, I bought a Zip-Zaps Bumblebee for $6.97. It is unimaginable that anyone would have paid the original price the salesman said had been $25.00.

The Zip-Zaps Bumblebee is for kids 8 and older. Coolidge is 10, thus age-appropriate for him.

What was age-inappropriate was me trying to read the instructions. They were written for people who rely on pictures and don’t read. They were written by Chinese manufacturers who have the inside scoop that American 8-year-olds can’t read. I lack the icon gene; I need words. Crisp Anglo-Saxon action words get things running in this country.

I chucked the instructions and went at it intuitively. I put batteries in the “RC” and turned the unit on. The green power indicator light came on. I moved a directional button. The car did not move. I chucked my intuition and called the guy at Radio Shack.

He didn’t want to be insulting, but had I put batteries in the unit? If I brought it in, they could figure it out or replace the whole thing. Had I charged the car? Um, no, was I supposed to charge the car? I thought the green light meant I was good to go.

It took a minute, but I finally noticed some possible contact pins and contact points on the car’s underside and the RC’s topside that clicked together. The light went red. It turned green in a few minutes. I removed the car and moved the directional button. The car sped off the table.

The Cat was fascinated. He descended from his window hammock and investigated. I mastered forward and backward, but had trouble with turns. Coolidge approached the Bumblebee cautiously. At least he was moving around, and he wasn’t going to pounce on the car and shred it.

He padded after the car while I powered it down the hall. It went down the threshold but couldn’t get up again. I got it to turn around and enter the study. Coolidge looked disdainful that such a thing would enter his tower room.

He worked up an appetite watching the Zip-Zaps Bumblebee. He walked around the car and ate half a bowl of tuna. Then he went to the study window and sat on the sill. I started the car and he paid no attention. He regarded it now as a disturbance. What is that stupid noise? I am scanning the western front of my domain now. I am not to be disturbed.

I cannot recommend Zip-Zaps as a feline diabetes management tool; but then, that is not the purpose for which the thing was intended. The guy at Radio Shack said I could return the car if my Cat didn’t like it. And I will, unless my husband wants to keep it.

I’d tried a magazine; his weapon of choice was a rubber band. The fly was canny and agile.

“You missed him.”

“I didn’t want to hurt the light fixture.”

“He’s behind you.”

The fly did a few more high-speed dips and cavorted around the kitchen before landing in an open cupboard. He sat on the edge of a plate I had been just about to retrieve. How was it that he anticipated my every move?

“Get out of there or I’ll poke your eight little eyes out.” I waved him out and he dove for me. “Ugh. He’s on my shoulder. Get him off! Don’t hit me, just get him off!”

The fly had dominated our interior airspace, a capital offense, all afternoon.

“I’ll spray him with Malathion,” said my husband.

“You’ll have to coax him outdoors first. Then he can claim asylum.”

“Right.”

“Why didn’t we ever teach Coolidge to hunt flies? But of course, he was never interested in them. He likes moths. He likes to smear windows with them and leave them there. It’s his art.”

My husband clapped his hands abruptly over the sink. A clap of the hands, and we were no longer hostages. The siege was over. Death has its uses.

Photo credit

In our garden, I am Joshua, the weeds are Amorites, and I want to kill them all.

People weed differently. My husband weeds like a farmer. I weed like a suburbanite. He turns the weeds over with a roto-tiller, or implements, or his hands, and leaves them on the ground, roots up, to die. I pull them up by hand, by their roots if I can. When unable to uproot a stubborn violator, I cut it down to the ground so the plot looks nicer. I do not leave them on the ground; that looks terrible. I put them in our 90-gallon city-issue yard waste containers. Filling two of these with weeds and trimmings produces a bravura sense of triumph.

He loves the land. Our quarter acre is the Ponderosa to him. I like the grapes and the flowers. I like looking out the window at them from our air-conditioned house.

I take pleasure in the discipline of tending the garden for an hour at a time. When my back and knees get sore, I bellow for a condo.

Pruning exercises my mind and relieves my back and knees. I exercise discretion over every branch of every bush and shrub. Most decisions are aesthetic; some are based on the good of the bush. Roses send out all sorts of needless shoots. If a shoot has no buds, I lop it so the plant’s energy will support budding shoots. A few decisions are frankly driven by revenge against branches whose spatial parameters have coincided too closely with my own. Wounded people amputate wounding branches.

The diversity of color and form, even among roses on the same bush, amazes me. I am seeing a microcosm of God’s infinite creation, appearing in more discrete forms than I can ever take in. No doubt every organism of this infinitesimal patch of creation groans under my deficient stewardship.

The Supreme Court has not legitimized Seattle Mayor Greg Nickel’s executive order to ban guns from city property, though he evidently thinks it has. Unlike the situation in Washington, D.C., what snares Nickels’s aspiration to disarm his city is Washington state law, Western to the core in its ethos, and more protective of its citizens’ right to keep and bear arms that the Second Amendment. Washington state law preempts all local law in the state. 

Another minor hindrance, over which Nickels could probably more easily exert influence to change, is the Seattle Municipal Code.

I don’t think it likely that Mayor Nickels will persuade the Washington State Legislature to alter state law so that people with CPLs cannot carry their firearms in Seattle parks. Restrictions on carrying in public buildings are specifically enumerated in the state statute.  Hint:  Seattle City Hall is not included in the no-guns-allowed list.

I suspect Mayor Nickels will only seriously annoy state Democrats if he attempts to incite an overhaul of state law. Even liberals in Washington state know their populist roots and are responsive to gun advocates. The ban is a bad idea whose time is nearly up. But I don’t think the mayor will take no for an immediate answer.

Mayor Nickels’s arrogant “so sue me” attitude affronts taxpayers. Sue him, sure; it’s not his money. We can hope no one will have to sue to prove state law means what it says it means, even as the Supreme Court has held that the Second Amendment means what it says it means.