Miranda's Revels

My daughter has an elderly cat named Miranda. Everybody thinks their own cat is a particularly special one, but Miranda who is, of course, not my cat, has had something of an unusual life. She was born in Minnesota and entered my daughter’s family life in the course of some personal sadness and that may be why, although she was never my cat, I had a particular fondness for her even though I’m not particularly a cat person, not least because I have a mild allergy to cat hair. After a few years of graduate student-apartment life in Minnesota, Miranda and her family moved to Washington, D.C., where she lived in a bigger apartment with a new kitten named Fenton. But in between Minnesota and D.C., Miranda spent a year with my son when my daughter and her husband went to Germany. At my son's 5-acre place, Miranda learned to catch mice and run wild in the tall grasses. But after that year was over, she returned easily to apartment living.

A few more years and a baby, and Miranda and Fenton, the baby, and the grownups moved on to a small town in Missouri on the Mississippi river. There, Miranda had the run of an entire house and, on occasion, a stroll in the yard with real grass and flowers. But she never went out of the yard by choice. She’s a pretty cat, but of an ordinary appearance in the grey stripe direction as you can see in the picture above. She watched birds right close out the window there in Missouri. She met and took no liking to yet another baby. She wasn’t all that crazy about the first one or about Fenton, either, but she tolerated them all in that superior way that cats have. On the other hand, she loved my daughter and my son-in-law.

Then, one day, maybe 6 or 7 years ago, when she was around ten years old, she walked out the door one day and didn’t come back. Days passed; no sign, no collection by the cat pick-up people, no news. No Miranda. Well, of course, there were plenty of cars around, and the town, while not rural in any way, has wildlife that could easily provide the end of Miranda. So there was mourning for Miranda. Then, many months later, Miranda reappeared. Wherever she had been, she was now home, but she was living in a drainpipe in the small woodsy area behind the house. She was sleek, well-fed, and self-sufficient, with no interest whatsoever in returning to the life of a house cat.

Over time, she did come to live nearer to the house and, finally, in the garage, at least in the winter. She accepted cat food as within her wild animal definition of okay food. She even let the children (and me) pet her now and then, though she definitely showed no interest in reigniting her relationship with Fenton who is a solid housecat in every sense of the word. She was in this domestic world, but she was not OF this domestic world, she made clear.

Last night, I received an email from my daughter with the picture of Miranda admiring some flowers a month or so ago. My son-in-law had found the cat dead in the yard that evening. She was 17 years old. Miranda’s revels now are ended, but I am very happy to have known a cat even slightly who had those kind of revels, who appears to have found--on her own initiative--exactly the life she wanted and was willing to undergo extraordinary changes to have it. She was a cat who, late in life, went on a quest and, in some sense, came back with the grail.

The World of Trash

Almost everything in a place like Point Roberts is just a little more difficult. Want someone to lay carpet? Probably have to convince somebody to drive the 100-mile round trip from Bellingham (crossing the border twice on each trip, of course), or find somebody in nearby Canada who has a green card to work in the U.S. Need to get the snow off the road in the winter? Probably have to have somebody from Bellingham make that same trip, but probably only after they’ve ploughed all the rest of the roads that are much closer to them. From the perspective of the rest of the county, indeed perhaps from the rest of the world, the response usually is ‘Well, what did you think you were doing when you moved to such a strange and isolated place?’

And for lots of things, that is a pretty fair response. I think we do have a fair complaint about the border because all the people who were here before 9/11 (coming up on 7 years ago) definitely didn’t know that the border was going to become so very difficult when we moved here. For all those other things, though, it’s a response that at least has to be addressed.

One of our current problems is trash. When we moved here 12, 13 or so years ago, I don’t think there was any organized trash collection of any sort. Certainly, we composted what we could, recycled what we could by taking it either to the U.S. or the Canadian recycling depots depending upon which one we drove by first. But I don’t know what we did with that, for us, very small remainder of stuff that neither composts nor recycles. Perhaps delivered it in person to the transfer station. Then, Hosanna! (as I guess we must have felt), a young man and his family came to the Point to start up a regular private trash and recycling business.

The county and the state, of course, have a lot of regulations about how such a service is supposed to work. A private service is allowed, but it must meet certain standards, one of which is that the service must provide regular pick up of recyclable material. If it’s a private service, apparently the use of the service has to be voluntary. That is, a private service doesn’t mean the county is going to hire a private company to pick up everybody’s trash and pay for it via taxes. Nor is the county going to send its own garbage trucks up that route to haul any trash, assuming the county has any trash service, since that is usually more of a municipal function. But somehow, the service got started and you paid by the can for regular pickup service and a monthly fee for the recycling. The company has the use of a transfer station (which I think is public land) to get all this stuff moved from one place to another: we don’t have landfills in this tiny area waiting to be filled.

It’s now 5 or 6 years at least that this service has been working for us, but recently the recycling truck, which the company had purchased used, broke down and was beyond the point of repair. And the company hasn’t the money to buy a new one. So the company suggested that residents just bring their recycling to the transfer station. The state/county aren’t happy with that because it's against the rules: private garbage pick-up must provide regular recyclable pickup. What to do?

We can force the company to go out of business by insisting that it operate only if it buys a new recycling truck; or we can require everybody on the Point to be part of the garbage collection system (which would increase revenues sufficiently to support the recycling system); or the state/county could provide some financial assistance or some truck assistance or some rule-bending assistance. Or, finally, we could stop producing trash. So, what did we expect when we moved to a place like Point Roberts? I’m pretty sure I didn’t think about it at all.

Volunteer Careers

When people move to a place like Point Roberts, it is often because they have retired from some other career or, have achieved semi-retirement with some continuing career work via the net. One couple retired from a university somewhere else but are extending their academic career at a Canadian university in Vancouver. Ed and I took another alternative and, for three or four years, lived here for a month and then returned to Los Angeles working the next month there. Over a decade, the six months in each place slowly turned into no months in Los Angeles and all the rest of the time here in the northwest. And then, there you are with every day open to whatever suits you.

It’s a lot of time to work with after the first few months. Most of us have lived lives of carefully and full-time scheduled lives. Without all that work stuff, we are left with three meals a day (which, of course, take on great new significance) and whatever other routines we can figure out. Lots of people who come to Point Roberts under those circumstances take to volunteer work of various kinds. There are a lot of organizations on the Point that operate with volunteers. But it isn’t entirely easy being a volunteer as compared with having a job because jobs are relatively clear and suited to your abilities, while volunteer jobs often are neither clear nor suitable.

It seems to me that by the time you’ve finished off your work life, the people you know and work with pretty much understand your strengths and weaknesses, your skills and your non-skills. You are generally encouraged to do things you do well and discouraged from doing things you’ve shown no great aptitude for. And life is the better for that most of the time. But you move to a new place where no one knows any of those things, you may well be asked or encouraged to do things as a volunteer that you have no ability to do, but not asked to do things you really know about.

In my work in Los Angeles, no one I know would have ever allowed me, outside of a classroom, to be involved in meeting with and encouraging a lot of people I didn’t know to do something. I’m a bedrock introvert and I hate asking people to do things that they haven’t already agreed to do. Other people are terrific at doing this kind of thing (think of all the people who are fund raisers for various causes, which seems to me the very extreme end of this kind of job). Nevertheless, I have somehow found myself agreeing to do just this thing in my attempt to be a cooperative volunteer, and nobody stopped me.

So, here’s the small lesson: before you become a post-retirement volunteer in a small community project, remember to remember what you do well and try not to stray too far from that, at least not as a first step in expanding your abilities.

Little Dark Days

Wednesday was the coldest June 5th in historical records (which means that the lowest temperature for every other June 5th was higher than this June 5's highest temperature) here in the northwest corner. For the third time, we have un-turned off the pilot light. At least one can say that hope springs eternal. Not only has it been unusually cold, but it has also been very cloudy and dark and it has rained almost steadily from Monday evening until Thursday noon.

It has not been an easy three days because we have just gotten to the point where we are thinking that warm weather is our natural right. But the sun came out today in the late afternoon, many large slugs were trying to find darker corners to hatch new plots and new slugs, and the people are once again looking forward to a good day.

In the meantime, if you can find the June 9/16 New Yorker, read Haruki Murakami's wondrous essay on how he became a novelist and how he became a long distance runner (unfortunately, not available on the web). It showed me with absolute clarity why it was that I didn't become a novelist, didn't become a long distance runner. I wish I'd read it when I was 16.

Thanks to Whom?

Today was the celebratory day for the purchase of Lily Point, the southeastern 90+ acres of Point Roberts, which is now the joint responsibility of the Whatcom Land Trust, Whatcom County and Washington State. An exquisite piece of land and waterfront is now safe from development. One of the speakers at the ceremony pointed out that the Lummi Indians had taken care of this land for 10,000 years and now it was the responsibility of the people of Washington to take care of it for the next 10,000 years. (There is a little in-between time there that we're not talking about that ended in somebody selling the area for $3 million and change, and I guess we can stipulate that for that price the 'owner' took good care of the land along his way.)

I try not to be too much of a cynic, but it does occur to me that nobody offered the Lummi a very good price for that land while it was in their hands. It's certainly possible that their cultural values would have resisted the sale of land that provided at least a major part of their food supply, but I'm not so sure that Washington citizens for the next 10,000 years will be able to resist the offer of big money given the many other things that they may be needing or wanting money for (Clean water? Energy resources? Clean air?). Especially given the fact that Point Roberts is no big food supplier for anyone and likely to be less so as the fish and shellfish go away. But let us hope for the best, and just settle for good outcomes for a century or two.

The celebration was set for today because today was the lowest tide for some long period and it was indeed impressive to see the extent of sandy shore that was uncovered. All the bald eagles in attendance, looking for a little seafood of their own, were also impressed. Whatcom County Parks staff provided guided walks around the trails and on the shore; and a spectacularly good lunch was served to all the attendees, some 150 or so people. On the other hand, the weather was less than desirable, being in the late 50 degrees, with a very gray sky, and light wind: weather designed to make you feel quite cold while standing for an hour or so in the gorgeous outdoors to watch and more or less listen to the 'ceremony.' (More or less because there was no amplification and most of the speakers did not have enough personal volume to be heard clearly beyond the first few rows of people standing around them. I got the general drift of what they were saying, but often not the specifics.)

Actually, it was a pretty stunning example of the inability of people of my tribe to produce anything like a ceremony. Elders from the Lummi tribe did their part to pull it off, offering tribal costumes, drumming, singing, and a few stories each about their experience of Lily Point from their personal and tribal past. When they spoke or sang or drummed, it was clear that they were trying to make a connection with the audience. They spoke of how lucky they felt that this land in which their ancestors were buried was now safe for them, as well as for those of us who were later arrivals on Point Roberts. The Lummi elders were followed by the 'new caretakers,' who went through a fairly endless routine of thanking themselves for their good work. I appreciate their good work, but who is it that thinks that repeatedly thanking yourself and your colleagues for your and their good work constitutes a ceremony? Well, to some extent I know the answer to that at this moment.

But welcome to Lily Point Park! If I had a sparkler, I would wave it in the sky as a ceremonial gesture. Since I don’t, here’s my imaginary sparkler saying, ‘Welcome! Welcome! Welcome! Stay 10,000 years.’ (And thanks, too.)

The Younger Generations

Once you get past a certain age, I think, you really lose track of kids and what they’re like. Babies and toddlers seem more familiar to me than older ones, probably because there’s not quite so much variation among them. But the rest seem to merge into a single person: kids. It isn’t exactly stereotyping, but it is certainly some kind of over-generalizing tendency. When I see teenagers, for example, on a bus, or flooding the mall at lunchtime, or at the movie theatre, they all seem sort of the same to me. They all seem to be wearing the same outfit, the same hairdo, the same kind of shoes, listening to the same kind of music, reading the same books if they read at all, talking with the same limited vocabulary. They don’t differentiate well for me. And I begin to think that they are indeed all the same. They are teenagers (and not nearly as admirable as teenagers were when my generational colleagues and I were teenagers).

I was brought up by this today because I had a new quilting student in for her first two-hour lesson. I don’t have a lot of students (only two at a time, in fact), but what struck me by this new one was how absolutely different she was from the others I’ve had. I expected this lesson to be pretty much like a first lesson for any of the others, given that they are all beginning sewers first and foremost. But it wasn’t and she wasn’t. Although the process is the same for all of them, and the project they start with is the same, yet each one comes to it with a different attitude, different knowledge, a different physical approach, and different physical aptitudes.

Some of them are quick to see how the machine works, others slower; some are almost afraid of the machine, others indifferent to its speed and motion; some pick fabrics very carefully, while others move more spontaneously. For every movement needed by the task, there is variation among the students. That this is true and indeed a truism, of course, accounts for the real joy of teaching. But when you have 30 kids in a class (as I have had in university teaching), you very often, perhaps daily, or even every minute, are wishing that there was just a little less variation. The luxury of one student is remembering that the kind of teaching that feels just plain good involves looking at that one child to see how she or he is responding each moment to each action or idea that arises, and finding, as a teacher, the words or action that will effectively move that moment on to the next one.

We are a culture that tends to believe that teaching is not a particularly valuable skill. The sadly common aphorism, Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach, attests to that. Rather, we believe that anyone can do it. That might even have some truth to it since we are all called upon to teach throughout our adult lives, although not always in a classroom setting. And a willing teacher requires a willing student. But probably no one can teach very well if they do not have the opportunity, at least some of the time, to teach just one student at a time, an opportunity to see each student as a genuinely individual person. That it is a luxury (or an absolute omission) and not a necessity in our classrooms speaks volumes about our culture, I’d say. But it is a luxury that is given to me by me. Good choice on my part.

Kindly Canadians

A tiresome trip between countries today because we are now into the summer weather, which means that the ferries become very unreliable as to having enough room on them for everyone who wants to board. Gas prices and all that to the contrary notwithstanding, it appears that driving up to and back from the Sunshine Coast of Canada via the Queen of Surrey ferry continues to be one of life’s very best pleasures for a lot of people. Once aboard, they can eat, play video games, and buy tourist trinkets, or just look out the window for 45 minutes. Why not a crowd?

Today, we aimed for the 12:20 ferry, but when we got there (about twenty minutes early), we were already too late. Almost three hours later—spent in the ferry line-up lot--we boarded the next scheduled ferry, which was running a little late because of its heavy loads. Then a Sunday traffic-heavy trip around Vancouver, with an opportunity to stop at every stop light ever installed, and to the border by around 5 p.m. Blessedly, the border guard hardly even had us stop long enough to note whether the pictures on his computer matched us in our car.

Leaving your home for two+ weeks during the late spring and early summer is always a little dangerous for yard and garden maintenance. If it rains a little and is gray and overcast a little and the suns shines a bit, it usually works out okay because nothing grows too fast or gets too dry. And that is the typical pattern for the weather at this time of year. But the last two weeks have been longer on the sun and absolutely deficient on the rain, so I expected every little seedling and small plant to have simply fallen over at the ankles and not to respond to any form of resuscitation I had to offer. Similarly, Ed expected the yard paths (which are the only parts of the grass that gets mowed) to be knee high if not waist high from all that sun (they get underground water I think). But when we got here, what should we find but nicely mowed paths and plucky little plants everywhere the eye could find a little plant or path.

Usually when we are gone, I impose upon my neighbor to do a little watering for the most needy plants, and I do the same for him when he is away, as he is a Canadian and is also not here all the time. However, he is a 70+ year-old hockey player as well as a terrific friend and neighbor, and a month ago his hockey playing came to a temporary halt when he broke his ankle and some other bone higher up in the shin. It seemed an extraordinary imposition to ask a man with a broken leg and ankle to hobble over to water my plants on a regular basis, so I didn’t mention it when I left. But, lo and behold, not only did he water the plants but he mowed the lawn-paths as well. That’s a doughty fellow!

I went over to thank him for all this and he and his wife pressed upon us a pint of freshly caught spotted prawns for our dinner. Not only doughty but generous and very kindly. In Los Angeles, no one ever mowed our lawn for us or gave us prawns. And that’s why we’re here and not there, I guess.