WORMS!

I live in the desert. One of the hottest places in the United States - and it is a very hot desert, not some whimpy chapparal country like San Bernardino where if it hits 90 degrees everyone freaks out. No, we're talking 80s in May average, 90s in June and forget anything less than 3 digits until October hot. It is so hot there are certain times of year when my family will not come out to visit.

So, needless to say when I attended a compost class and they assured me that eventually there would be worm in my compost I scoffed. Dig down 5 feet and not a worm will you find in the native soil/sand. I thought the Master Composter (yes, its a real title) was just engaging in some wishful thinking.

But yesterday I was doing some compost maintenance. Mine has never heated up despite outside temps even. I always thought I was sort of doing something wrong, it was out of balance and therefore worms were a pipedream. But as I turned the advanced one over (I have two, one advanced and one I'm adding to) there those squiggily little red suckers were. Wow. Ain't nature wonderful? Who knows where they come from!? Waaaaay underneath the earth... but how do they know? Some tell tale taste must trickle down and they decide to make their way up. My compost bins have been active almost two years now. Wow, worms, I'm so proud.

We Are Not Consummers

I just signd up for a blog email list called Theatre Ideas. Here is my response to the latest posting.

I worked with a theatre owner on a project just recently in LA and he said be believed LA people were too self absorbed to be interested in what other people are doing. That is probably very much a factor in that transient, goal oriented town. And remember being responsive to one's community means having to actually pay attention and care about what is going on in it - it means getting off your ass and into the community and talking to people!

I recently went on a brief websearch for funding for a tour for a play I am involved in. If one were a visual artist, painter, sculptor, mixed-media whathaveyou, it could become a full time job applying for grant after opportunity after design our logo request. And it got me to thinking, what about visual art is so much more compelling than theatre or other performing arts? And the answer lies, I believe, in the systemic problems of our country and culture as a whole. We have bitten the apple as it were. We are a nation of consummers, which means we are far more comfortable with art we might be able to own (read: stuff) than experience which is what performing arts offers. We currently like our experience impersonal, detached. We like our TV and our movies and our Internet - because they involve relatively little actual human interaction (theoretical human interaction sure). But we are all hungry for human experience, for interaction. Why else would we have gotten ourselves into such a consumming frenzy over the last few decades? We have been involved in addictive behavior, trying to fill a whole. This is evidenced in any mall in America - watch the 'shoppers' wander around aimless, looking side to side, alone amongst many, searching for something to fill up the hole, something to feed themselves with. Why go to a mall? Why facebook? Because we want something we have gotten so far away from to understand any longer.

We have lost for a time - because I don't believe it will be forever - the ability to entertain ourselves and what's more, to be entertained. Entertain locally. This should be right on the heels of Shop Locally, Eat Locally movements. But we have to keep waving our hands in the air, jumping up and down shouting "over here, over here!" - and more theatre artists need to start doing it too - until we get our people back.

Regards,Daniela Ryan---

On Sun, 3/29/09, Theatre Ideas wrote:
From: Theatre Ideas
Subject: Theatre Ideas

Theatre Ideas
Mick Montgomery on Mike Daisey
Posted: 28 Mar 2009 12:59 PM PDT
(Big h/t to Dennis Baker)In a blog post nearly entitled "My Disillusionment," Mick Montgomery of Art of Function writes about the "Post Show Roundtable" that followed a performance of How
Theatre Failed America in Los Angeles. Montgomery writes:

I listened to someone from the Odyssey say the words that spell the down fall of all theaters in this country... "I don't want to do Children's Theater, I want to do the Art I want to do."My message to those folks running theater in this town is... "Guess what? That's not your job." The job of the theater is to support it's audience and community, not exist soley for the purpose of indulging the creative proclivities of the artists entrusted with running the stage. Artistcally, I may want to do a season filled with "True West" and "End Game" and the like, where I could star in or direct them all, but that's not my job as the steward of the theater. My job is to embrace my community for who they are, and then go from there. I'm not saying this is soley doing Children's Theater, but it's about engaging your audience where they are at, not asking the audience to engage you where you are at. Theater is about people, audiences and artists sharing things together. Theater is not about a building or a 'great space' or subscriptions. The theater is the product of the people coming to it, not the other way around. We don't understand that here in Los Angeles........................

I found it ironic that Mike Daisey railed against theaters trying to 'get more money' to solve all their problems with paying artists in his piece, and then comedically, 10 minutes after the show when he asked his panel, what would you need to make big changes to the theater culture in L.A. the first answer out of someone's mouth was... "We need more money."I sat in my chair and hung my head. Did they not listen to the show?It's not the money that is the issue. It's our model. Maybe theater needs to be less capitalized and more socialized. Maybe the City should figure out how to support the Theater Arts in L.A. like they support the visual arts. Maybe we do need $5 dollar theater Wednesdays. Maybe we need A Theater Alliance that truly correlates resources and marketing stragies. We have a city with a School District crying out for subsidized arts education, yet no one is there to help that process along. And here I sit asking myself, "What the Fuck is everyone doing? Why doesn't anyone understand how to make this work?" How come people in Portland or San Diego get it, but the place I live, where some of the most talented people in the world are living, can't figure it out?Los Angeles Theater is the great disconnect. The Theater Community fails to understand the audience, and thus it fails to understand itself. Everyone is just scrambling for crumbs, no one is building relationships with each other through the art. The solutions are so simple. That's probably why I'm so frustrated. [ital mine]As has been the case for the past two years, Mike Daisey continues to provoke long-overdue reflection and questioning on the part of artists. Theatre artists have a single kneejerk response to every problem: give us more money. Or, in lieu of that, the other knee jerks "we need better marketing." When i reality, we need to do a Cartesian rethinking of the whole thing from the ground up. Peter Brook gave us a good starting point with the first lines of The Empty Space: "I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged." Three elements: a place, an actor, and an audience. What Brook fails to mention is the relationship between the three, which is what we need to be doing right now.I would argue that the connection needs to be ongoing, committed, and interactive. As Wendell Berry says in an interview in Conversations with Wendell Berry, ""I think art comes about in answer to a need. At least, mine does. The community needs to talk about itself, needs to remember itself. It needs to recall significant things that have happened, and to mull them over and figure out what the significance is." In this case, "itself" embraces the three points of Brook's triangle: place, artist, audience. It is a three-way conversation that takes place over time. Berry sees the artist not as "an isolated, preeminent genius who materializes ideas from thin air, but as a person who has been in a community a long time, has been attentive to its voices...and who is prepared to pass on what has been heard. There are two things the artist must do: pass on all this is involved -- the art, the memory, the knowledge. And take responsibility for his or her own work -- that is the reason the work is signed, and that should be the only reason." Responsibility, not credit; humility, not self-aggrandizement.Mick Montgomery made this realization, and it made him hang his head. That is the first step. The next step is to raise your head, look around, and start listening to the people around you.

Desert Winter Garden Update

My vegetable garden beds are against a south wall so in the winter time they get almost no sun at all. But because it is very hot here I figured that would be kind of ideal for some winter vegetables. Here are my winter garden results:

Cabbage: Warm weeks in January caused them to bolt - at least I think that is why they bolted. Not enough direct sun means no heads.

Lettuces and Endive: Stellar, thriving.

Radish: Pretty good growing but planted too close and didn't thin enough.

Carrots: Still waiting from an October sowing which can't be good.

Beets: Same as carrots!

Parsnips: I read now in my Desert Vegetable Gardening book (from Arizona, relevant but Coachella Valley is a much drier and hotter and much different desert so not always helpful) that parsnips not well adapted. This seems to be bearing out. But the greens are so pretty!

Peas: Come to find out I have planted the wrong variety! I had not shelling peas as I was looking forward to but drying peas. They are doing great but I feel so silly!

Spinach: Beautiful and tasty. The lack of direct sun is keeping them quite small in the leaves, nice.

Pole Beans: Hmmmm... rot on the bottom leaves, too much watering I suspect. Just as I was ready to rip the whole thing out there have sprung up some flowers, so we shall see.

Butternut Squash: Rotted leaves, same as above. I noticed some new leaf growth but the cold weather we are now having may do them in.

And my attempt to start strawberry seeds proved as difficult as mentioned in above mentioned book. Started with about 25 seedlings but one day of neglect left them dry and dead. My attempt to revive them only lead to 4 odd sprouts. I'm holding on to see if these are maybe runners. I will buy plants in April and though normal weather says that is too late for planting in our desert I will hold my breath for mild temperatures!

Ah the Economy... And the Angry White Men Who Control It

Bye, bye. Thanks for all the prosperity/crash. You've got yours so, really, don't bother about us. Us working class - lower middle class they used to say - well, we don't need much. And by much I mean, food, shelter, clothing, etc. We won't mind working well into our 70s despite how much we save. That is if we can maintain the healthcare to stay alive into our 70s! Hahahahahahahaha.... awwwww, shucks. Well, you all take care now. No, no, I'm serious, you go on a holiday or something. Have you been to Rome? It is a great city. Naw, naw, you've done enough. And when you think about it, you've really been thorough. In fact, we'll still be feeling the residual effects of your 'economy' for years to come. You deserve to float around on a yacht in the Mediterranian Sea with a beautiful girl (who's with you only for the money and yes that orgasm was faked) - ooop! Did I say that out loud? It was just a bit of fun. Like that funny thing you all did, tapping the phones, yeah yeah like a reverse crank call... yeah, good fun that....

Ah well, see ya. Oh you're around through the end of the year... you could leave a little early, I'm sure no one would mind... you have what? Oh, a few other things to destroy first, the enviornment, last few banks want to make sure they've.... right, totally under.

OK. Oh and angry white men who've been running our lives (into the ground) my name is Citizen, not consummer. You never got that right.

Lawn saga

Here it is, the cool season in the desert. Well, cool-ish. Compared to the rest of the country this is spring. Great for vegetable gardening - I've got peas coming and beets, cabbage, lettuces, parsnips, even strawberries from seed coming up. But the lawn saga is what I really wanted to update.

This morning I went to a desert landscaping seminar hosted by the Water District. I had the chance to speak with someone in the landscaping department from my city and he told me there is "no alternative to the bermuda/rye grass overseed cunundrum". What I have is cool weather drought resistent fescue - not, as he pointed out, heat resistent. "It is sure to look awful in the height of summer" he said categorically. Well, true, but not that bad. As I pointed out there is no one actually on the grass in the summer and so the need for it dwindles as the heat rises. So, the fact that it looks bad becomes solely an aesthetic concern. And frankly, even the Bermuda summer grass looks bad, patchy, brown, whereas the tall fescue I have actually goes bald in spots. Not the most attractive but it was a far sight easier to reseed than having to kill off another type of grass and then coax new grass up. The hoops I went through to get the lush green water conserving grass I now have - which was basically fertilizing, manureur and some nitrogen addition, throw on some seeds and water like heck - is a lot less than what my own gardener and gardeners went through around town to 'overseed'.

By the time September and the end to the drastic heat came about I had a lot of bald spots in the lawn but I must say the middle - where we have the graded gully (for flood reasons - doesn't happen often but better safe than sorry) and the rotor sprinklers overlap was thick, lush and deep green all summer no matter what the heat. This grass loves company. There more there is the more there will be. If it starts to give in to the desert it goes rapidly until the balding meets a densly packed patch of thick blades, then it will stop.

So the idea this year is to reseed the cuss out of my lawn until I can get it as densly packed as the soil will stand... and then when summer comes, hang on.

Consumption Begins

Last evening commenced what is the official start of the consumption/candy/overeating season in America. I was heartened to know that my son's school teaches a little something about day of the dead - I think it's important to know why holidays came about as much as it is to celebrate them earnestly. But I was a little taken aback at the renewed emphasis on candy.

Here's the thing. Everyone wants to feel generous, that they've given a little something, been festive and lightened someone's day but when everyone is doing it, and to such an extreme it becomes too much... and meaningless... and worse for children, expected.

When I was a child I walked through miles of snow... just kidding, hate to bring up that old device but I think it may be relevant... when I was a child you went door to door on Halloween - that was the only way to get candy - and you got exactly one piece of candy per house. One. Uno. Not even dos... maybe if you happened to hit a house late and they had too much left over they didn't wish to themselves consumme. But one. If you wanted more candy you had to hit more doors, walk farther... and be costumed!

But this year there and for many years I have noticed, since having my own children, that there is candy everywhere. Not only can you get candy at the mall, the museum, the store, everywhere you happen to land at on or about Halloween, but you also get a handfull of candy at each door when trick or treating! We hit exactly our block, roughly 20 houses, and the kids could no longer hold their buckets so full of the stuff were they. And then when they took over the answering the door and doling out the treats they were giving great handfuls to the kids at the door (not to mention many, many uncostumed teens! oi). I had to stop them and tell them to give only two per kid - which I thought, my age showing here no doubt, was pretty generous - to their confused and 'if you say so, mama' looks.

And then today there was candy offered up at every stop. At school there were treats given, several to a bag so that the ancillary take alone was probably as much at the trick or treating portion. In kindergarten last year my son was as likely to get a pencil or eraser as candy bar which I thought pretty responsible. And whatever happened to the cupcake? Is an on the spot treat not enough anymore? Why does there have to be a takeaway prize too to the school party?

And all this consumption and giving, what does it do really? Fills our colons and bloodstreams with excess sugar (oh come on parents, you know you're in your kids' stash), our landfills with wrappers and plastic, our dollar bins with discounted more the days and weeks after, our fat cells with stored energy, too much to burn off in one day. But what in terms of goodwill or connection is it giving us? Our lives are still lived on the surface, we still know very little about our neighbors, we spend lives in private little familial cliques in front of TVs. It's 'fun' for the kids, but what is the message in the final analysis, to expect gifts?

And Christmas is right around the corner.

An Update

OK, so admittedly, I was told by several gardening professionals that I would "not be happy" with my choice of grass... And now, of course, I see why. There are patches of bleak brownness giving way back to the desert and growing, just as the edged of clearcut rainforest give way to desert. But that part that is well watered and dense looks just lovely. And true enough it has taken quite a lot of water to keep it going during the torrid hot days of summer here in the desert. I suspect the proponents of the rotator type watering system somewhat exaggerated their wetting power. The patches that succumbed first to the desert were those that are on the edges of the rotators and probably do not get the volume of water the lovely green middle does. But I am still committed to my thick blades of deep green grass, even if I have to baby them along! I mean, seriously, can a kid pick up a bug with a wimpy thin yellowish-green blade of Bermuda grass or the fussy rye grass that gets reseeded come fall out here? I bought a 15lb bag of seed and have started to experiment with timing and temperature.

I did get a chance to use some of my compost on my reseeding experimentation. I is nice and black, just like northern soil. Note to self: Be careful not to shred those fake credit cards that come in the mail with credit offers - they don't biodegrade! At least not in months in the compost bin. I have several strips here and there in my grass! Nor do pistashio shells, peanut shells ace but pistachio, nope. And even though all the books suggest one put egg shells in one's bin they do not totally disappear. They are like little smiling teeth all over the reseeding patches of lawn. They'll keep feeding the soil - plants need calcium too come to find out - but if you are an aesthetic gardener maybe you should just bury them. Me, I kind of like the messy. Particularly since I live in the land of perfection - paradise - beauty - pick your adjective. The neat, tidy, sunshiny, paradisey goodness of this desert does get a little relentless. Seriously, 350 days of sunshine is just a little bit of crazy-making. I know why people want to move to the rough hewn hi-desert....

I digress. But I have many plantings that are really loving this climate - a thriving scilla violacea (that our baby-gal picked out herself), pachypodiums doing fine though a little sunburnt, adenium droopy but haven't figured out why yet, even the orange tree that isn't supposed to like this weather is pretty lush. I right killed a fockea edulis though. Perhaps I'll try again when I have some sort of bushy tree or shrub to put it under. Oh and I got a tiny little palo borracho tree - only 12 inches high - which I thought I killed which is doing really well. Jose, the gardener who does all the things I cannot, like putting in irrigation and trees - said "Isn't it going to be messy when it gets big and push up the wall with its roots" "Yeah, but I won't be around in 50 years, so why should I care!" Seriously, it will get too big for the yard and I promise that when we move I'll have it removed... but I am soooooooo looking forward to its butter colored flowers... in 4, 5, 6 years maybe!