Spring Cleaning

I didn't mean to end up like those people on TV, whose houses are absolutely full of stuff that they can't bring themselves to throw away, but here I am.  There is stuff everywhere.  When we put the second floor on the house, we packed up and put a lot of stuff into storage, and then, somehow, we never took it out.  Anything we really needed had long ago been replaced, and the boxes just stayed in the storage unit, and we paid rent to keep them there, month after month, year after year.  I don't even want to say how many years it's been there.  I'm too embarrassed.

But Tom has taken the initiative to get us out, one way or another.  There are boxes of stuff piled up everywhere, now, but there also is a dumpster in the driveway.  My job is to sort out the stuff I want to keep (my medical school diploma, for example, which is in a box in the foyer) from the files of old photocopies of even older articles that I probably didn't need when I first got them. 

And I am not only facing this at home - it's exactly the same thing at work, where we are getting ready to move to a new building with post-modern file space (which is to say, no file space), so almost all the accumulated paper in my office has to go, too.  I guess it's helpful this is happening at the same time, because otherwise I might try to take stuff from home to the office, or stuff from the office home.  Now, it just all needs to go in the dumpster (or maybe the recycling bin, at least until its full).  There was a pile of relatively recent journals in the foyer that were supposed to go to the office, but there's no point.  I just went through them, saved a few and tore out a few articles I thought I might actually read, and took the rest of them to our blue recycling bin, which is almost full.  (Yesterday, the photocopied articles went there.)

Yesterday I went through boxes of books, and maybe half of them are boxed up again, to go to Goodwill, and there's another pile - old guidebooks and some very out-of-date medical books - that will go in the trash.  This morning I moved more from the "keep" pile to the Goodwill pile.  Years ago I went to Fiji, and I guess that's why I have a copy of  "Fiji in the Pacific:  A History and Geography of Fiji," 3rd edition (1976).  I realized, this morning, flipping through the yellowed pages, that even if someone in this household did want to know something about Fiji and we did keep the book, it would never occur to any of us (even me) to go looking for it; we would do what we always do, nowdays, when we want to look something up, which is to start with Google.

It's the same thing with the journals.  If I actually needed something, I wouldn't look in my files - I'd look in an on line database and download the article as a pdf file.  I don't even know exactly why I still subscribe to all these journals - I have access to electronic subscriptions at work - and if I needed something, I wouldn't look for a paper copy.

In the meantime, several of the local Border's bookstores are closing, and the company is in bankruptcy - it couldn't compete with the online retailers.  I already wrote about the neighborhood videostore going out of business.  The newspapers have been in trouble for a while and it's not clear what the business model is that is going to keep them in business. 

I'm sure someone foresaw the effect of these disruptive technologies, but I didn't.  If I had, maybe I wouldn't have saved all this paper.  I didn't save it because it was valuable, or because I had a sentimental attachment to it, but because I thought it might be useful sometime.  But of course it's only useful if you can find what you need when you need it, and that's why Google is going to take over the world.

Anyone need any empty boxes?

More Bad News from the Neighborhood

More bad news on Monday - Movies Worth Seeing, the local video store, is going out of business.  I guess in retrospect it shouldn't have been a surprise, given the demise of Blockbuster at Ansley Mall and Sage Hill, but I thought this would be different.  Movies Worth Seeing had classics and cult films and, well, Movies that were Worth Seeing, but not necessarily the latest Blockbusters.  And there were flyers for film festivals, and people walked there with their dogs.  The guys behind the counter always gave Bullwinkle a treat, and they knew a lot about movies. 

Monday night Tom and the girls separately went there to see what was for sale on the inventory liquidation and - I expect - to confirm that it was really true.  When they got back, Caroline said she had told the guy behind the counter that she was in mourning, and he said he was too.  Sarah said she felt old, that she would someday tell her children that when she was a kid, you had to walk to a store to rent a movie.  I didn't tell her that when I was a kid, if you missed a TV show, you had to wait for the reruns during the summer, that we didn't even have VCRs.  Talk about old.

I'll miss the walks to get a movie on a weekend evening.  I don't know what technology it is that's putting the video stores out of business - Netflix?  broadband? - but whatever it is, while using it one is less likely to talk to a neighbor who's out in their yard or walking a dog,  or for that matter, interact with a human being in any way. 

I'm sad for the owners and the people who worked there, sad for the neighborhood, sad for every kid who won't have the chance to discover a Movie Worth Seeing that they'd never heard of. 

Somehow, this does not feel like progress.

Robbery on St. Patrick's Day

The email was sent at 3:12 p.m. to one of the neighborhood email lists:

San Fran Coffee at N.Hihgland and Amsterdam just robbed at gunpoint.

According to the news accounts Thursday evening, the robber waited in line as if he were a customer just trying to get a cup of coffee, but when he got the the front of the line, pulled out a gun and told the cashier to empty the cash register.  Then he was gone.  Fortunately, no one was hurt.

San Francisco Coffee is an easy walk from our house, and for many years has been one of the (many) reasons I love our neighborhood.  There's good coffee, and a nice ambiance, art work  (much if not all of it from neighborhood artists), and lots of small tables that can seat two or three people.  At least at the times I go there, there are nearly always students with laptops and textbooks there, scattered one per table, catching up on work and friends.  It's a place people could meet an old friend or a blind date or take the kids for hot chocolate.  We go there sometimes for a leisurely Sunday afternoon cup of coffee, or an after-dinner walk and coffee.  When Earthlink decided to cut off our DSL, we spent a lot of time there, using the wifi.  We've had Girl Scout leader meetings there, and Caroline now goes there sometimes, with her laptop and textbooks, to do homework.

It's not just that Tom or I or my children could have been there when this happened - it's that this is one of the places, in walking distance from our house, that felt like it was ours.  So it wasn't just an armed robbery - it was a home invasion.

So . . . we do the things we can.  Keep the doors locked, the outside lights on at night.  Pay attention, talk to the neighbors.  Maybe follow up with the Atlanta police about setting up that neighborhood watch. 

Because when "home" extends beyond your house, you can't secure it by yourself.

Shrove Tuesday

Last week, I had dinner at a restaurant after a long day at a meeting.  My table included a couple of co-workers, a woman from Luxembourg, and a woman from Brazil.  The conversation about Brazil turned to Carnival, which led to a discussion about how it was celebrated in other countries.  I said that in Louisiana they celebrated Mardi Gras, but in the rest of the country, I didn't know that people did too much, but that eating pancakes on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday was traditional.  As I said it, I knew how ridiculous it sounded - there's Carnival, there's Mardi Gras, and there's the rest of us, having pancakes for supper.  (I told Sarah that I thought the "Shrove" in "Shrove Tuesday" was Old English for "pancakes," but that's not actually true.)

But I also told them that we make King Cake at my house.  I don't remember exactly how or when we started doing this (the recipe we use was printed from the web in February 2007, so probably then) but it's a tradition we like in our family, now.  You can only make it between January 6 and up until the day before Ash Wednesday.  I told them about the weekend day - it must have been in 2007 - I dragged Iain all over Atlanta, trying to find a porcelain baby to cook inside the cake.  I finally gave up and bought a six pack of plastic babies at Michael's, and put one in the cake after it was was baked and had cooled.

Nadia from Luxembourg said this sounded a little like the traditional cake that she associated with Christmas, where there was a special cake with an item in it, and if you got the slice with the item, you got to wear a paper crown and were king or queen for the day.  If you believe what you find on line, that is part of the same tradition, but somewhere along the line we got to have more than one cake over the months preceeding Lent and a pound of cream cheese filling got added.  (Later, when we swapped recipes, she told us that she had been surprised to learn that the king cake of her childhood actually was supposed to be served only on Epiphany, which made the linkage even stronger.)

So Monday night, my friend Suzette was in town, and we made jambalaya and the Last King Cake of 2011.  Suzette put on the icing and the colored sugar while I set the table and put the finishing touches on the jambalaya.  After dinner we cut it, and the six of us ate most of it, but we sent Suzette back to her hotel with a slice on a paper plate for breakfast, and the next day - Shrove Tuesday - we finished it up.  By Tuesday night, it was all gone.  No more King Cake til next year.

I had struggled a little, over dinner the week before, explaining why we had adopted this particular tradition in my household.  We're not from Louisiana and I don't think I'd heard of King Cake til someone brought one to work years ago.  It's not just that it's delicious (which it is).  Most of us no longer grow or hunt for our own food, and we make our living in ways where we are isolated from the rhythms of seasons and tides; the seasons of our work lives revolve around fiscal years and procurement deadlines, not winter solstice, the first signs of spring, or the harvest.  But traditions feel right - they make for warm and comfortable memories, and special celebrations and dinner with friends and family - and I am only two generations removed from the farm; for most of human history, if the animals didn't come back for the rains didn't come, we starved.

So sometime next December, we'll start anticipating the next King Cake, and we'll make one sometime soon after January 6. 

And on Tuesday night, Sarah and Iain and I had pancakes.

For Sale on Cumberland Road

A couple of months ago, there were two young men with a video camera, on the sidewalk in front of a house on Cumberland Road.  It was one of the brick ranch-style houses that were built in the neighborhood in the 1950s and early 1960s.  The house was not a remarkable one (it was just a few doors down from a house that I know must have a story), so I asked them what they were doing.  They said they were making a documentary about the house.  The longtime owner of the home was moving into an assisted living facility, they said, so they were making a film about the the transition - presumably of the owner, as well as the house itself, although I didn't ask the follow up questions.  I wished them luck and walked on home.

Later, the "For Sale" sign appeared in front of the house, and for the last couple of weekends there have been yard sales there.  I wish I had had time to stop by ("the good stuff is already gone," according to one of my daughters), not because I need more stuff, but to ask about the owner, and the film.  (Perhaps one of the filmmakers is a grandson.)

I feel like a voyeur, looking at the photos on Trulia.   It could have been my mother's house.  The photos show a house being emptied of belongings, articles arranged on tables anticipating yard sales, a life - in that house - over.  It's a house that by neighborhood standards is due for an upgrade, from the look of it, but at the price they are asking for it, I am surprised it hasn't sold.  This is Morningside, with restaurants you can walk to and sidewalks on almost all the streets except Wessyngton and a well-regarded elementary school.  You can't by a house in Morningside for $210K, a real house with a yard, or at least you couldn't til now.

If the house had been put on the market before the bubble burst, it would have been snatched up, knocked down, and replaced by a Large House that is Architechturally Difference from Adjacent Houses.  But the bubble did burst, and maybe the house has a chance to be a home again for a family that will make do with only 3 bedrooms for a while, planning on adding a second story later on.

So I hope someone buys it who wants to live in it.  We'll see their children in the yard, and see them walking to school.  We'll say hello as we walk the dog.  I live here, just around the corner, so whether the filmmakers come back or not, I will know how the story ends.

Suddenly Spring

After all that cold and ice, and now suddenly, it's spring.  Driving the kids to school on Monday, and pointing out to Mimi, our visitor from Germany, the different flowering trees.  The tulip trees bloom first, and then the Bradford pears and the redbuds.  But it was February 28, I told her, and it could still get cold again, and freeze everything back.  I was out of town for a few days, and now the trees are starting to leaf. 

With the loss of the two large dogwood trees that used to be in the backyard, all that's left for hanging the birdfeeders are two large Chinese privets, so that's where we have them.  There's the new squirrel proof feeder with the motor, that does seem to have intimidated the squirrels sufficiently that they just stay away from it, and the finch feeder filled with thistle seed, and the hummingbird feeder that never got brought in for the winter and now needs to be cleaned up and refilled.  Now that I know that privet is an invasive species (thank you, Trees Atlanta), I know we should get rid of it.  I guess we could put the bird feeders on poles, but we haven't.

On President's Day weekend, Caroline and I participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count.  I was a little disappointed that during the half hour that we counted, there was less diversity in our backyard than usual.  That weekend both the robins and the redwing blackbirds were having conventions in Atlanta, and the locals were staying in, I think, kind of like what we did during the Olympics.  That said, we were able to identify most of the birds we saw except for several little brown birds that I assumed were some kind of sparrow but I had no idea which kind.

So later - after we did our count - I got out the binoculars and the bird book and really looked at them.  As it turned out, they weren't all alike.  One of them had a dark spot on the breast and I think was a song sparrow, and the other had a yellow spot by its eye and was I think a white-throated sparrow.

When I got back home yesterday, all the feeders (including the suet feeder on the dining room window) were empty, except for the finch feeder, which was half empty.  Too tired last night to do anything about it, but after I put on coffee this morning it was the first thing I did.  Suet in the suet cage, sunflower seeds in the window feeder and the big feeder on the privet, thistle seed in the finch feeder.  While I was out, I checked on the trees.  There is now the first sign of green on the apple tree I planted last year, and there also are signs of life from the dogwood tree we planted on Mother's Day. But only two of the four blueberry bushes seem to have survived.

Back inside, with a cup of coffee, on a grey damp March morning.  The cardinals are back, and the downy woodpecker that comes to the suet feeder has already been by.  It makes a racket, when the metal cage knocks into the dining room window.  And if you look, there are the little brown birds hopping on the ground.