The End of the Beginning?

Or the beginning of the end? Don't know yet, but today marks the end of 365 days of writing this blog. I started it with this quotation:

“These days I must take the world in small and carefully measured doses, it is a sort of homeopathic cure I am undergoing, though I am not certain what this cure is meant to mend.” (John Banville, from ‘The Sea,” p. 143 of 195 pages, Vintage Paperback edition, 2005.)

I feel that no less now than then and the blog has been, in its way a measured dose, ‘a sort of homeopathic cure,’ although I am not able to say whether I’m any better for the treatment.

In any case, over the past twelve months, I’ve written almost every day, written a total of almost 200,000 words; perhaps ‘a sound and fury signifying nothing.' (The Tempest like King Lear are works one is not advised to think about too closely in old age.) It has been more interesting than I had expected and more demanding. I found myself thinking about possible subjects from the time I got up in the morning until I found one. Rarely did I have more than one in mind, but not infrequently, one would suddenly present itself to me around 5 in the afternoon. And that constant need to focus both led me out of myself and led me away from the things I usually focus on.

It’s not like writing a journal, where you can blather on all you want about anything, or as little as you want about nothing because nobody is ever going to read it. I’ve never been a journal writer except for brief periods, such as a particularly interesting trip. A blog isn’t a journal. Somebody out there, it turns out, is reading it, so you have to at least attend to the idea of an audience, even if you don’t exactly know who the audience is. It’s a very strange kind of writing. I like it enough to keep on doing it, but I don’t like it enough to keep on doing it every day. So I’ll be posting less frequently in the days to come and see how that feels. Thanks for reading during the past year. I hope we’ve both learned something.

No Sooner Said Than Done

Yesterday, I noted that border ‘exit interviews’ are being required for private airplanes, and asked what’s to keep Homeland Security from requiring them for people in private automobiles. Today, Ed drove down to Bellingham and points south and upon his return to the border at Peace Arch, was treated to an exit interview by the U.S. border people as he was driving to the Canadian border people. The exit interviews were being required of both Nexus and Non-Nexus travelers.

And what were their questions? Where are you going? Do you live there? What were you doing down here? Where do you fly out of?

“What were you doing down here in the U.S.?” This is now a question that we ask of a U.S. citizen. Not only that but a U.S. citizen in the fabulous trusted traveler program. Not very trusted. When last I checked, American citizens have a constitutional right to travel anywhere in the U.S. And I would think that might include not having law officers ask you what you are doing if they have no reason to believe you are doing anything that is against the law. But then, oh, right, I forgot: he was in a ‘Constitution-Free Zone,’ that amazing little circle that travels around with the border people, wherever they choose to be (within 100 miles of the actual border/coastline).

Karl Kraus, an Austrian journalist-writer who died in 1936 (and thus didn’t get to see where it all ended up in the 20th Century) once wrote that Vienna was ‘the research laboratory for world destruction.” Ah, where has the laboratory moved to today?

What's My Problem?

I am wishing that I knew why we have a Department of Homeland Anything. I don’t remember anybody every talking about the U.S. as the homeland. It reminds me immediately of the Russians use of motherland and the Germans use of fatherland during World War II. To me, it has an inherent sound of fascism, although Wikipedia says only that it has 'ethnic nationalist connotations.' Who in the last dismal administration thought that was how Americans think of their country? When they get around to figuring out who ordered all the torture, I hope they allow a few moments for determining who named that new agency 'The Department of Homeland Security,’ rather than, say, The Department of National Security.

And speaking of DHS, they instituted a new regime last November (the waning days of that dismal administration) designed to irritate me and doubtless others, even though it doesn’t actually affect me as it stands. But as it stands, it could easily be transferred to affecting all of us who leave the country by legal routes. As of November ’08, anyone who leaves the U.S. in a private plane must first inform the DHS that they are leaving the country and who is leaving with them. Obviously, one has to do this when one is entering the U.S. in a private plane, but why should one have to inform them when one is leaving? Because they want to know everything about us, I guess.

When I leave Point Roberts by car, I am not required to inform either my father or my Congressperson or my U.S. border guards that I am leaving. Why should anyone have to do this just because they are leaving in a private plane instead of a private car? Well, says DHS, it has the authority to do this because it already requires commercial airlines to report their passenger lists to DHS before the commercial plane takes off on an international flight. I don’t know by what authority they can do that, but then I don’t know by what authority they can require the same of private planes. Something like the DHS Sec’y is allowed to do whatever he wants if it occurs to him to think doing that will keep us safe. No reasons required.

I suppose that if we oppose this, then the terrorists will win. At least that’s what it says here. [This site may be hard to bring up because of heavy traffic. I got it this afternoon, but can't get it to come up tonight. jwr]

Solitary Child

It’s really not warm enough or sunny enough most days yet to feel great enthusiasm about going out for a walk, but I am trying to do it anyway each day in hopes that I will not forget how to do it. Today, I headed up Benson to check out the iconic cow, who is yet wearing his silver tarp and beige corduroy hat, but has moved away from the barn and up closer to the street. I thought she might be preparing for Valentine's Day, but not so (or not yet). Then a little way past the cow, I heard this strange noise. At first I thought it might be someone chopping wood, but it actually sounded more like metal on wood and it was sufficiently off-and-on not to sound like a standard work kind of sound. Puzzled, I crossed Benson at the entrance to Baker Field to see what I could find.

Barely off Benson (where, alas, it appears that come people have concluded the entrance to the Field is a marvelous place to dump entire bags of trash), I saw my sound. It was a work sound, but not the kind of work sound I was thinking of. Instead, I found myself watching a boy, maybe 13 or 14, on a skateboard, repeating his skateboard moves over and over at the local skateboard park. I watched him for awhile until he noticed me which caused him to decide that this was a good moment to take a little rest. So I moved on and wandered around in the woods for awhile, leaving him to his work. But it made me think.

First of all, this was the first time I’d seen the skateboard park, which was put together with some kind of community group effort about eight years ago. If I hadn’t spent the last year with the P.R. Community Association trying to get the community events sign rebuilt, I would not for a minute have even begun to appreciate how much work it must have been to actually get this little skateboard park constructed. It’s maybe 20x30 feet (I have little skill with estimating distances so I could be wrong in either direction by a factor of two, but it probably wasn’t 10x15), with a little stand of bleachers that might hold a dozen people sitting close together. And it has 4 or 5 different places to do different skateboard maneuvers. So, first off, congratulations (belated) to those who got this to happen. A substantial piece of work for a good purpose.

Second, was the sight of this lone boy, practicing his moves over and over in the late afternoon. Kids nowadays seem to come equipped with lots of velcro tabs, such that they are always attached to some other kids or some adults. To see one adolescent alone for an extended period of time harkens back to a couple of generations ago when kids spent a lot more time on their own than they do now, what with lessons and groups and constant adult oversight to keep them from being kidnapped or something. But here was this kid, and here it is 2009 and he was working on something he cared about all alone.

And that’s another good thing about Point Roberts. You can be a kid and be alone outdoors here.

Looking Ahead

When we first came to Pt. Roberts, a long time ago, and were looking at houses to buy, we made on offer on a tiny little house down on Maple St. in the South Beach area. It had a downstairs and a loft that was high enough to have a bit of an ocean view. It was one of those houses that you don’t often find when you are out looking: houses that are perfect as they are, that own themselves, that don’t need you to take them in hand in order for the house to continue to lead a respectable house life. Unfortunately, somebody else saw that quality just a few hours earlier, so they bought it and we didn’t.

But I still vaguely think of it as one of my former houses, so I keep an eye on what is happening to it. Today, I was walking down that way and found that my house was fine, but that the neighborhood was going to the mcmansions. Next door, someone has scooped up four or five adjoining lots, cleared them all of whatever was on them, and are now building a house that fully occupies three lots. It must have 20 rooms. Maybe the new owners are planning to offer a home away from home for the L.A. lady with the octuplets. Maybe they are going to operate a hotel (although I’m afraid the zoning is all wrong), or maybe they are just some more of that long line of folks who retire to giant houses. I always wonder whether they spent their previous 60 years feeling dreadfully crowded and only now can spread out. Whatever…

But because I am always thinking at some level about abandoned houses, I wondered if these houses will end up in that way? If, as seems quite possible at this moment, the U.S. is going to undergo a serious and long-term readjustment in its way of life, what will become of such houses? Who will want them twenty or thirty years from now when families are even smaller and when Pt. Roberts will probably still be trying to figure out a route to economic development?

When you go for the big house after retirement, you are somewhat unlikely to have a host of children and grandchildren who have fabulous memories of going to the grandparents’ for wonderful summer vacation and thus are anxious to keep the fabulous house of their summer memories in the family. When the inevitable comes, the house will get sold, but who will want so much house?

I think that the larger abandoned houses we already have have something of that kind of history. Too big, in the wrong place, family members no longer nearby even to use it let alone create grand memories, and no one anxious to buy it. So the now-untenanted house lingers around in some kind of limbo, and then it just begins to house itself and there aren’t many memories left of it. The next thing you know, it’s become an abandoned house.

So, now I’m looking at these oversized houses with different eyes. They have a future that may be of considerable interest to me. On the down side, of course, their future and mine probably won’t have much of an overlap.

The Way They Built Then

Here is the Hansen/Johnson house. It is probably the first or second best-known of all the abandoned houses in Point Roberts. It is located immediately across from the post office on Gulf Road, When I first went into it in 2002, I walked around the various rooms, which were very clean, very tidy, but a tad exposed to the elements on the south side underneath that vigorous vine you see growing on the right hand side of the house. The main room was wallpapered with cream colored paper with a fairly large floral print in oranges and beiges and greens. I could hardly imagine living with such wallpaper day and night, week after week, except for the fact that I remembered such wallpaper from houses when I was a kid, 60+ years ago. We liked it then.

The house is very sturdy and I was told that the walls themselves were built of reclaimed crab traps, wood long soaked in the ocean. And the house is, indeed, still very true. There are some things about it that puzzle me: e.g., it does not face Gulf Road. You would think it would, but it faces its own driveway, which comes off Gulf Road up the front door. Also, it has a very small skylight. Surely not something originally part of the house, but so small that it is hard to imagine that it would provide much in the way of light.

When we left the house the day we visited it, I picked up a piece of wallpaper that was lying on the floor and put it in the back seat of my car. I rode around with it in the car for several months, with the sun shining on it and drying it up and curling it up. Then I realized that the wallpaper piece was a vital part of the quilt I was making and I was obliged to resuscitate it with moisture and weights. And it flattened out well because it’s much thicker wallpaper than they make nowadays, I’d guess.

The first picture of the house comes from early in the spring of 2002; the second picture is the house in December, 2008. It has changed relatively little in those intervening 6 years. By contrast, some of the abandoned houses, less well constructed, have fallen apart in six years. Mr. Hansen, Mr. Johnson, whoever you were, good job!

The quilt depicting the Hansen/Johnson house is currently displayed on the wall of the waiting room at the Aydon Wellness Clinic in Point Roberts. It is 30”x37”, and is framed with wood reclaimed from the fence in my yard. The piece of original wallpaper lies underneath/behind the quilted house.

Dwindling Darkness

I’ve gone out for a walk the last three days around 5:30 p.m. and it’s plenty light to see where I’m going. That alone conveys the promise of spring. Of course we’re almost two months out from the Winter Solstice and we get something like six minutes more light every day, so it was bound to happen. Still, when there is so much dark, it often seems like it will take forever to get back to what you remember it being, assuming it ever does.

The raspberry canes and the currant bushes are starting to leaf out; the crocosmyia has tiny shoots up everywhere under the last year crop of soppy, dead leaves; the day lilies are not being backward about being forward. Tulips and daffs are everywhere showing their stride. All looking very promising, very good. Only, at least at my house, are the crocuses holding back. There are crocuses at the library, and there were crocuses up in Roberts Creek, but here at my house in Point Roberts the crocuses are in hiding. Usually, they bloom by Valentine’s Day. I believe that would be six days from now and I just don’t think they’re going to make it.

Some plants look as if winter did them in. Penstemon that has lived through the winter every year for the past 10 years looks dead. Some branches on the rhododendrons look as if they have chosen to no longer participate in the plant world. Alyssum that normally winters over, not. Well, not impossible to replace these things and we are grateful for all that did make it through. It's not that it was so cold this winter but that it was pretty cold for much longer periods of time than it usually is. These plants failed to endure rather than failed to resist.

I spent a couple of hours in the garden on a couple of days this week. Mostly cleaning up the still menacing piles of late falling leaves, uprooting the herbe Robert, and cutting back the old sword fern fronds. The ferns will be putting up their new curled-up fronds soon and once they’re up, the old fronds are much harder to cut without also cutting the new ones. It’s mild work and mostly it’s designed to get my muscles, tendons and joints back into the right groove. Alas, I have the enthusiasm of a 20-year-old, the energy of a 70-year-old, and the knees of, I suspect, a 90-year-old. Wishing me luck….