Author: Kathy Waller

I’ve decided: I’m going into farming.

It was an impulsive decision, of course. Like all the others.

On my way into HEB this morning, passing shelves packed with plants, I had a vision: homegrown tomatoes. Red, sweet, tart, fleshy, seedy, from-vine-to-table tomatoes. Real tomatoes.

Bacon and tomato sandwiches.

I selected two hardy specimens and set them in the baby seat of my shopping cart.

Then my eye fell on the bell pepper plants, and I had another vision: $1.18 each, regular price.

That’s today. Goodness knows how much they’ll cost tomorrow.

I selected one pepper plant and set it in the shelf at the front of the cart.

Then I pushed them all over the store so people could appreciate my virtue.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that God made the country and man made the town.

I shall sow little seraphic seeds, regenerating the asphalt jungle.

I shall be a veritable Wordsworth, taking solace in nature.

Five minutes into planting, I shall start to itch, but a poet must sacrifice for his art, and I’m determined to have at least one decent tomato before summer is over.

It won’t be easy, though. I come from a long line of farmers, there’s not an agrarian bone in my body. I spent my life wandering among the cotton wagons lined up at the gin scale, but I can’t tell you when the ginning begins. August? Late July?

Every summer, I asked what people meant when they talked about the square, and my mother would launch into a detailed description of the maturation of the cotton plant. I never got the picture.

I know what a nice stand of maize looks like, and I can identify a corn field burning up in the sun (South Carolina, summer 1986), but that’s about all. I know that oats are very green and very pretty in winter.

I should be ashamed of myself. My father loved nothing more than getting on a tractor and plowing, watching the black soil turn. He and Mother talked crops and cows over dinner.

I, on the other hand, spent my life with my nose in a book. In summers, I took my nose out long enough to go swimming and horseback riding, but most of that was done between chapters. I named all the cows, but I saw them as pets.

My body was in the country. My mind was in the bookmobile.

But now I’m returning to my roots.

I brought the plants home, set the tomatoes in front of the microwave and the pepper on the table. (Counter space is at a premium here.)

When William jumped onto the table, as I knew he would, I put the pepper in the sink.

Before I go to bed, I’ll put all three plants into the bathtub and close the bathroom door. Cows you can trust; cats you can’t.

Tomorrow I’ll buy potting soil, get out the Benadryl, and make myself a farm.

And then I’m going to apply for my government subsidy.

*****

Thanks to William Cowper ( “The Sofa,” from The Task ) for writing, “God made the country and man made the town.” Thanks to Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice) for writing the rest of that sentence.

Image of tomato by David Besa from Sonoma, USA (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Image of bell pepper (Quadrati d’Asti Giallo) by JayMGoldberg (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Image of cotton boll by KoS (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I started to write a post about the free online to-do list I found: Toodle-do. You can list tasks and goals and make notes and set due dates and start dates and set it to send an e-mail each morning to remind you what you’re supposed to do for the day. You can spend hours setting up your list, deciding whether things look better in green or blue or pink or salmon or beige.

Then I thought about Myrna Loy in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. She’s telling the painter what colors she wants the various rooms painted, describing the colors in the  most specific terms possible. I googled the scene and found it on Youtube, and I watched it, and she is just marvelous.

I noticed a link to an episode of What’s My Line when Myrna Loy was the guest challenger, so I watched it. I’d never realized how much she looked like my Great-Aunt Elizabeth.

My grandmother looked  like Claudette Colbert, and right down the column was a clip of the episode with Claudette Colbert as the guest challenger, so I watched that, too.

Then I watched episodes of What’s My Line with Bette Davis, Lucille Ball, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jonathan Winters.

After that, I watched Jonathan Winters on the Steve Allen Show; and on the Jack Paar Show, first playing the Voice of Spring just arrived from the forest, and then improvising with a stick; and then as Maudie Frickert on the Dean Martin Show; and then being interviewed by Jack Paar in England, first playing a British gentleman and then playing an American tourist; and then in a recently-discovered clip, playing an airline pilot; and then on the Dean Martin Show, improvising with props in an attic.

I read a comment that reminded me that Jonathan Winters was in It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Because I had just seen a link to the entire movie of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, I decided to see whether I could find a link to the entire Mad World movie. I couldn’t.

Remembering that I had intended to copy the link to Myrna Loy choosing paint colors, I again googled it and so found myself back on the page with all the links to What’s My Line. I was tempted to watch the one with Alfred Hitchcock and the one with Grace Kelly as well, but a look at the clock reminded me that I had begun this post with the intention of finishing it tonight and then moving on to write a piece I have to send to a Story Circle Network friend who edits one of its newsletters.

I volunteered to write a column for April, but that was in January. Actually, I volunteered for February if she couldn’t find anyone else, but she did, so I’m April, and it’s due tomorrow, and oh, how I wish I’d done it in February and gotten it over with. But I didn’t.

I e-mailed the editor this morning and told her I hadn’t forgotten, even though for several weeks I had, and said I would send it to her. I intended to write it this morning and e-mail it, but the muse was busy helping someone else–I don’t have a muse of my own, mine comes from a temp agency–so I’m hoping that the pressure of a deadline will come to my aid tomorrow well before breakfast.

Now for the other things that were to go into this post: I was going to write about all my Franklin planners, particularly the ones that were stolen from my car one night while I slept, along with a can of asparagus, and I was going to refer to Alice Flaherty’s observation in The Midnight Disease, and quoted in my last Teaser Tuesday, that to-do lists don’t cure procrastination because people who procrastinate know exactly what they’re not doing, and I was also going to point out that although Toodle-do sends me a daily e-mail saying that each of the three tasks I entered is overdue, said Toodle-do cannot make me open and read said e-mail.

That’s what I was going to write about before I thought about Myrna Loy. I will mention that Myrna Loy was also an outstanding citizen who held benefits for my hero, John Henry Faulk, back in the ’50s when he was blacklisted, but then I would have to go into everything about John Henry and the First Amendment and the Constitution and James Madison and Louis Nizer and John Henry’s court case and Molly Ivins and various other things, and I would also remember that last Thanksgiving we had lunch with friends at Green Pastures, the Faulk family home, which John Henry’s sister turned into a restaurant, and that it sits among old live oaks and has peacocks strutting about the lawn, and that it isn’t far from here, and that they start you off with a milk punch (3 C vanilla ice cream, 1-1/2 C milk, 1/2 C bourbon, 1/4 C white rum, 1 jigger brandy, 3 ice cubes, nutmeg, combine and blend until consistency of milkshake, serve in wine glasses and sprinkle nutmeg on top, makes about 5 C) that is to die for and that I drank both mine and David’s and was quite relaxed and rather jolly throughout the buffet luncheon.

Isn’t it amazing how you can manage to come up with 900 words when you don’t have to write but can’t eke out a half-dozen when you do.

And, Susan, if you’re reading this, don’t you dare tell Lee how far behind I am.

For a look at what I did the rest of my day/year/life, please watch this video:

http://www.addadhdblog.com/age-activated-add/#71ec7

Doris Day is eighty-eight today. Or eighty-seven or eighty-nine. The number doesn’t matter. To celebrate, we watched Send Me No Flowers. Not her best–I much prefer Lover, Come Back–but we were limited to whatever we could find on streaming. She’s still cute. Rock Hudson and Tony Randall are still cute. They’re part of my childhood. I like them. So sue me. Doris Day is also good to animals.

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Richard Chamberlain was seventy-seven several days ago. When I was ten, he was Dr. Kildare on TV. All the girls in the fifth grade were simply agog. He sang, too.

I’m going to post this to meet the midnight deadline. Then I’m going to come back and write some more.

*****

That was totally unprofessional, but until I’m paid to do this, I shall take liberties.

*****

In one episode, Dr. Kildare sang. Actually, he sang in more than one episode, but I remember best his rendition of “Hi Lili Hi Lo.” Here’s a link to a video accompanied by the song.

*****

Lew Ayres starred in the film Young Dr. Kildare in 1938, and went on to star in several more Dr. Kildare movies. According to Wikipedia, he was offered the starring role in the NBC television series. Ayres requested that he show have no cigarette advertising. The network refused and the part went to Richard Chamberlain. That was in 1961.

Rocking the boat over tobacco was a very Lew Ayres thing to do. Denied guaranteed entry to the Medical Corps in World War II, he declared himself a conscientious objector. Faced with unwelcome publicity, the government revised the rules. Ayres joined the Medical Corps and served in the Pacific.

Lew Ayres was one of those actors, like Charles Laughton and Audrey Hepburn–who brought class to a show–whether Johnny Belinda or Mary Tyler Moore–by just showing up on the screen. That class obviously wasn’t an act.

Here’s a link to Young Dr. Kildare. In its entirety.

*****

Now that I’ve demonstrated my own deficiency in the class department–posting an unfinished piece shows an appalling lack of respect for my readers, as well as for myself as a writer–and now that I’ve groveled sufficiently–I’ll put an end to this.

Thanks for your support.

 

11:56 p.m.: Some things do not change.

Here we go again.

April 1, 11:38 p.m., I’m working as fast as I can to finish Hotshots! so it will go out tomorrow–today no longer being an option–and I remember that I said I would blog every day this month.

So I close Hotshots!, open To write is to write is to write, and start typing. Not thinking, just typing.

11:41. Charlie Rose is conversing with Roger Rosenblatt and Stanley Fish. They’re saying all kinds of memorable things about writing, but I’m not fast enough to write them down.

11:44. But here are some scraps. Writing is for some students the site of anxiety. Couldn’t get Harvard students to get anything original out of themselves until he closed the door and said, “Write. No throat clearing. Write.”

11:46 Clip of Ian McEwan. Beginnings are difficult. You finally find yourself in control. That’s the real pleasure. How can you not write? But always craving to reach the end.

11:47  It’s in my DNA. To figure things out and explain to other people. Same joy as teaching, but teaching is harder–pesky students aren’t always cooperative.

11:48 Rarely know what I’m thinking before I write. Don’t have anything to explain. Living in the mystery and discovering what you’ve said when you look back. Write what you know? Shelley: Must learn to imagine what we know.

11:49 Write what you want to know. A problem or a puzzle you want to figure out what’s going on.

11:50 Satisfaction from teaching. Don’t want to let them down. Writing lonely. Give self to students selflessly. If you fail them, you want the time back.

11:51 How do you know when it’s finished? Have a feeling, like music. Easier to know when finished than to know when begun. Eliminate the first paragraph.

11:52 In search of something. In search of answers. Then surprise when what you’ve written raises a question you didn’t know before and you want to follow it. We express ourselves, and the selves we express are different.

11:53 Quotation–last lines from “Dover Beach.” Writing makes suffering beautiful. Quotation–from George Herbert’s “The Forerunners.” Verbal thing that knocks your socks off.

11:55 Goodnight.

WordPress directs us today to On Techies’ “Blog More. It’s Good for Your Health.”

For scientific details, On Techies directs us to Scientific American’s Blogging–It’s Good for You: The therapeutic value of blogging becomes a focus of study.

The latter article cites research done by neurologist Alice W. Flaherty, author of The Midnight Disease, which was the subject of yesterday’s Tuesday Teaser. Despite the quotations I used–I displayed them because I liked them, not because they reflected content–the book reports serious scientific research. And it’s fascinating.

Flaherty, who studies hypergraphia and writer’s block, notes “‘that drives are involved [in blogging] because a lot of people do it compulsively,’… Also, blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art.”

The article also cites the work of University of Texas professor James Pennebaker, who for nearly twenty years has been studying the link between writing about personal emotional trauma and a strengthened immune system as well as an increased sense of well-being.

Now. Do I have to be told all this about writing? No. I’ve known about Dr. Pennebaker for years. I’ve known about Dr. Flaherty for years (fewer than about Dr. Pennebaker, but still years). I didn’t know about the finer points of the articles, but I believe what they say.

I question the part about blogging improving memory and sleep, because I tend to do my blogging between 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m., and all that adds to is sleep deprivation. Nothing good comes of sleep deprivation, sleep debt, disordered sleep patterns, or messed up Cicada rhythms (to use my husband’s phraseology). I am a living example, and if you don’t believe me, you can look it up.

In addition, while I was blogging every day, I still spent a disgusting amount of time trying to remember why I’d opened the refrigerator.

But overall, I agree that blogging helps the blogger. When I posted daily, I had more energy–at least mentally–and I got more writing done. I had to produce a post a day, so I had to think. Even if I ended up  inviting Emily Dickinson to guest, I had to find the appropriate poem and a photograph to go with it.

Having to think is not a bad thing.

Furthermore, I was more fluent. Pressure of a deadline required me to come up with a topic and the words to follow. Practice increased my ability to come up with more words, and faster.

What happens when I slack off? More slacking off.

What can I write about? I can’t think of anything to write about. If I don’t have to write today, I’ll leave it until tomorrow. Or the day after.

Blah. Blah. Blah.

I sound as if I’m back in junior high.

I even start to slack off in my reading and commenting on other blogs.

Stopping the daily post seemed, at the time, the right move.

But I had concerns.

Sure enough, eschewing has led to more eschewing.

I received an e-mail today from NaBloPoMo reminding me to add my blog to its April blogroll if I intend to post every day.

So I suppose it’s time to resurrect the obsession/compulsion/addiction/hypergraphia and see what happens: Improved sleep or no sleep, plus T-cells or minus T-cells, arhythmical Cicadas and all.

It’s already 1.75 hours after my bedtime.

But I’m wide awake.

All this dopamine is doing wonders for my mental state. Five more minutes and I’ll progress from cheerful to ecstatic and I might make it to the border of downright manic.

Now. What in the world will I write about?

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