The Deep Middle

"The The Impotence of Proofreading," by TAYLOR MALI

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:48:00 +0000

HA!!!!!!!!!!!

LST-325, A WWII Amphibious Transport

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:34:00 +0000

This past weekend I went to Indiana for my 10 year college reunion at the University of Evansville (which has the swankiest new union I've ever seen in my life--I got shafted!). Besides catching up with several friends I'd not seen in at least eight years, I visited the LST-325 docked in Evansville on the Ohio River. And, like an idiot, I didn't bring my camera along, but go here for good ones.

LST stands for "landing ship tank." It's a 327 foot amphibious transport, having a draft of only 2' at the bow and 7' at the aft, with lots of 40mm and 20mm guns for defensive purposes (and bigger than you think--the 40mm took a two man crew just to aim and fire). At only 1,600 tons empty displacement, or 4,000 full, it ain't that large (I once visited the HMS Belfast in London, a light cruiser, and it was "small" at 10,000 tons). Still, the 325 was larger than I'd figured. There's irony.

Stuck on France at low tide. Notice the blimps in the background, designed to discourage German planes from strafing allied ships.

LST-325 was in the fray landing front line troops and tanks at Sicily and Salerno. It was part of the backup "B" landing at Omaha Beach in France, but even though it didn't see the intense fighting of the first landings, I was honored to stand on the deck of a ship that made the trip, and caried wounded and dead soldiers back to England. I've been to the beaches at Normandy twice before, and it was easy to let my imagination run wild.

I made my wife go along on the tour, which was a fast 2 hours. I thought she'd hate it, but she kept asking questions of our super-informative Korean and Vietnam War vet tour guide--who graduated from UE on the GI bill decades ago. The 325 still houses vets who are restoring the ship, and has a working galley (spaghetti the day we toured), and a washer and dryer. Two dozen old vets brought the ship over from mothballs in Greece a decade ago, and 325 looks decent given its age. Hard to imagine 21 sherman tanks in the belly, and as many jeeps and artillery pieces and supplies on the deck. I can't imagine riding the 40 trips back and forth across the English channel during the war on a boat with a flat and high bottom--vomitous.

Apparently, Evansville was the top builder of LSTs during WWII, making over 500. And of course, the labor force was largely women. 325 was built in Philadelphia in 1942. Our tour guide said that at first, it took the workers 1-2 months to build one ship, but by the end of the war they'd crank one out every week or two. Amazing. Today, the old vets take the boat on tours along the Ohio and Mississippi, and other rivers. What a life, a life I'm thankful we can freely live.

Today on the Ohio River.

Sesame Street Goes Green (For 2 Years)

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:45:00 +0000

"Sesame Street's 40th season aims to educate children about the wonders of the natural world and teach them about concepts such as habitats, hibernation, and migration.

No matter where they live, "we want kids to know there's nature in their neighborhoods," Truglio said. In tomorrow's premiere episode, Michelle Obama—fresh from harvesting the White House's new organic garden in the heart of Washington, D.C.—will help Elmo and Big Bird plant vegetables in the ersatz inner city of Sesame Street."

and

"Elmo and Abby decide to help Bert find this pigeon, and in their search they run into all these other kinds of birds. After kids watch this show, they'll be able to identify chickadees, blue jays, robins, and blue bar pigeons by their shape, size, and birdcall."

and finally

"Global warming and deforestation—those are really adult concepts, and it's just too scary for children," said Rosemarie Truglio, vice president of research and education at Sesame Workshop, the New York City-based nonprofit that produces Sesame Street.

"The place we're coming from is, 'Let's love and care for the Earth, because it's so beautiful, and we appreciate its awe and wonder, and we're going to respect it.'"

Sesame Street's producers hope that children who learn to love and respect nature early on will grow up to become passionate advocates for our planet.

"When you love something," Truglio said, "you want to take care of it."

To see the full National Geographic article, allons-y.

Monarchs in Spaaaaace

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:21:00 +0000

"The next Space Shuttle launch is scheduled for November 16th.
Atlantis will carry three 4th instar monarch caterpillars to the
International Space Station (ISS) in a small rearing chamber. This
chamber will be placed in an incubator aboard the ISS where the
developing monarchs will be monitored. Still and video cameras will
continually capture images, which will be made available online."

from Monarch Watch

A Sad Discovery

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:06:00 +0000

I have a habit of piling up mail order nursery boxes on my patio / deck. They might stay there for two months, protected from wind and rain. A few days ago, though, the last of my fall cleanup days was spurred on by 70 degrees and rare sunlight, so I went out to toss some trash and cut down the cardboard for recycling. Here is what I found.

A female monarch, crisply dessicated. I'm not sure how a caterpiller found its way up the deck, up a chair, then around and into this box, because it was closed with another box stacked on top. The cat could apparently get in, but, of course, the butterfly could not get out. I wonder how long she struggled--being buried to death by her own drive to survive. And why did she have to be female? Tooth and claw I suppose, but I have a special affinity for monarchs. You can rest assured my boxes won't remained piled out there from July to September--prime monarch season for me here in Nebraska.

Embalming--Early 1900s Style

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:49:00 +0000

If you're ever in Weatherford, OK, check out this undertaker's diorama at the Heartland of America Museum (get it? Die-o-rama?). It's a phenomenal small town museum which is HUGE and VERY detailed. I enjoyed pondering the use of the medical instruments. No. I did not. And I now want a coffin with a window, just like I want an office on campus with one.

Stewart Brand On Shanty Towns as Green

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:03:00 +0000

I'm intrigued to pick up his new book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmitist Manifesto. In this video, Brand says squatter and shanty towns in developing nations are good things for saving the planet. Poor farmers leave the country, the country recovers. These farmers in the city create jobs and have fewer kids, since kids in the city (vs. the country) or not as beneficial, so world population will climax at 8 billion in 2050 then drop sharply. Maybe this is true--it's an inteesting take on something I think we most think of as a bad phenomenon. I'll have to read more so I can speak better on it, though. He also is a proponent of geneticlly modified plants that can produce more food per acre, thus taking up less room and allowing for more nature (ha), and plants that are no longer annuals but perennials, thus being no till (which means less carbon released into the air, and less topsoil blown away).

Poet Costumes / Poet Graves / Vampire Poems

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:47:00 +0000

Ah Halloween. You can wear a Benjamin Vogt costume, or go as Dickinson, Poe, Williams, Whitman, or Sapho. Link here.

As a gardener, I like Whitman for the butterfly beard and grass stains....

You Will Need:
A beard
A simple collared shirt
Rustic pants
A floppy brown hat

Extra Credit
Hide butteflies in your beard

(In "Ode to Walt Whitman," Federico García Lorca wrote: "Not for a moment, Walt Whitman, lovely old man, / have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies")

Roll in the grass to complete the look: when someone asks what that is stuck to your shirt, you can reply as Whitman does in "A child said, What is the grass?"

And why not spend the weekend visiting a poet's grave near you?

The Vampire Bride

by Henry Thomas Liddell

"I am come—I am come! once again from the tomb,
In return for the ring which you gave;
That I am thine, and that thou art mine,
This nuptial pledge receive."

He lay like a corse 'neath the Demon's force,
And she wrapp'd him in a shround;
And she fixed her teeth his heart beneath,
And she drank of the warm life-blood!

And ever and anon murmur'd the lips of stone,
"Soft and warm is this couch of thine,
Thou'lt to-morrow be laid on a colder bed—
Albert! that bed will be mine!"

More?

We've Got Color, Yes We Do

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:12:00 +0000

17 pics of the 2 year old fall garden. Though there are still many open spots on two sides, those will vanish next year. I'm happy with the color I'm seeing this fall--which is partly due to plants maturing, and partly due to the fact I picked some good specimans. I love myself. Sooooo much. (But let's not talk about the front garden, ok? I hate myself.)

I'm not going to show you maples (bright red) or willows (bright yellow). In fact, we need to praise the perennials and shrubbery (ni!), not the usual trees. I can't believe I just said that.

Oh and let me apologize for the mixture of quality. Some pics were taken by my point and shoot on a cloudy day, and others by my SLR on a sunny day--a fateful combo that makes the differences of both obvious to me.

Look at that 'Little Henry' itea with its bright red leaves on the lower right. Its big brother 'Henry's Garnet' is languishing beneath ironweed and eupatoriums and needs to get moved, but won't.

I love this shot. Aster 'October Skies' in front of 'Purple Dome', all in front of chokeberry 'Brilliantissima,' river birch, arbor, and way back 'Prairie Fire' crabapple in bright orange.

I was playing with the warping fence. Eh.

A cloudy day with the arbor shot. On the left some 'Isanti' dogwood is purpling, and on the right a delphinium is reblooming. Speaking of which, I have two 'Isanti': one grows like gangbusters (morning shade, moist clay) the other seems to be shrinking (partial sun, full sun afternoon, wet clay).

Fall crocus. Of course.

Eupatorium 'Prairie Jewel' seed heads. In sunlight, it's literally like snowfall.

Queen of the prairie seed heads. Lovely.

A view I don't often include because the back is so bare--which it won't be next year. No sir. On the left is an 'Autumn Brilliance' serviceberry, very svelte. I'm also happy with the 'Red Feather' viburnum behind the bench. Even the slow-growing-non-blooming 'Blue Muffin' is yellow along the chain link fence. 'Blue Muffin' sucks by the way.

Now here's a nice view. I hope no one overlooks sedum for fall color. Bright yellows to red and orange. I don't remember what I have along the steppers, but they get very red and orange. The goldenrod along the right helps perk things up, as does the fabulous rust of the bald cypress. Toward the middle of the photo is a yellow purple coneflower--usually mine turn black, so this was wonderful. I enjoy the white tops of the Eupatorium 'Prairie Jewel' along the fence, too, for even more color. By the way, 'PJ' self seeds. I have a few starts all over my garden, but I imagine it'd be prolific in a field. Its spring leaves are bright mottled yellow and green, and in summer cream and green, and in fall the insects come in millions.

Another shot I don't often include. A few new additions here as I try to fill out the garden on two sides (the house in the background is new, too, alas). You can see the bright red black and red chokeberriy shrubs. Right next to them the mauve leaves of a ninebark, and behind it the yellow leaves of a 'ruby Spice' clethra. Fall color is the only reason Mr. Clethra is still in my garden.

Horse penis liatris. I mean, L. pycnostachya gone to "seed."

Miscanthus 'Nippon'--I believe that's the cultivar name. It's growing slowly in a spot too dry for it.

Close up of lovely 'Prarie Fire' crabapple leaves.

Oh look. A crabapple to beckon you from the street to the garden entrance. Now make like a tree and leave.

Red chokeberry berries, which will still be there in spring.

Nice texture and color I think!

Twilight over the neighbor's acreage. It's getting cold out there after 3.25" of rain in the last two days.

Breeding Wheat With Prairie Grass

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:22:00 +0000

Cool NPR article on a 600 acre Land Institute in Kansas, run by Wes Jackson, trying to solve agriulture's 10,000 year old problem--that'd be unsustainable practices with planting annuals that soak up nutrients, and plowing that lets the dirt fly away / run off. Click here. They've started hybridizing wheat with grasses, and making perennial sunflowers and sorghum.

Top MFA Programs (and some MFA Blogs)

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:01:00 +0000

Poets and Writers has an article appearing in the November 2009 issue that, seemingly, more accurately portrays the top writing programs in the country. I ain't in the loop--and don't care to be right now--but someone somewhere at some time might find it helpful. It does not list low res or PhD programs.

Top 50 Programs (along with top 100 or so)

You can download the whole kit and caboodle here for $5.

A few blogs seem very helpful for those applying or looking for program gossip:

MFA Weblog

MFA Chronicles

And since I'm awake, let me make it abundantly clear to anyone who might stumble their way here, an MFA program is for LEARNING THE CRAFT. It is for spending time reading and writing your butt off among peers and in a fully-immersed atmosphere of writerly orgasm. Indeed, many writers hook up and.... Anyway, it is not a PhD, it is not a gateway into a college teaching job or a book. I hate to burst your bubble or rain on your parade because that parade is what gets you through. Shoot for the stars, but be a little real about it, ok? It can be all of the above, but I think too many approach and enter an MFA program with delusions of grandeur regarding it being like ITT Tech or something. There are too many programs now and far too many graduates--which I think is just fine and dandy (not so if I think about my impending job search in a year or two). And please don't go into significant debt, or debt at all, getting an MFA. Please.

And finally, go to Ohio State. Just go.

Trip To Oklahoma Homesteads

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:16:00 +0000

Mine, my father's, my grandparent's, my great grandparent's, and my great great grandparent's. It's taking me some time--my whole life--to come to terms with the fact that Minnesota is not my homestead, but Oklahoma is. Usually, upon entering that windy southern state, an immense dread, heaviness, and darkness pulls me under as if I were drowning in tar. This time it was different. Maybe because I was older, empowered, on a mission to do research for my next book, I don't know. But here--in many photos--is some of what I found, and most of it is only the tip of the iceberg I'll never know.

I come from German Mennonites on my Dad's side, who escaped the Spanish inquisition in the Netherlands by settling in northern Poland (Prussia at the time), and then escaped Prussia by going to southeastern Ukraine near the Black Sea in the late 1700s. They wanted religious freedom and nonviolence, i.e., no military conscription--this last reason is why they were constantly on the move, and why, in 1874, my great great grandparents (20 and 21 with a 1 year old son) came to Kansas via Castle Garden / Battery Park in NYC (pre Ellis Island days), then to Oklahoma in 1894 in one of the many land runs that displaced the last of the crammed-together Native American tribes in Oklahoma Territory. You should see the pictures--men on horseback and families in wagons on a starting line, then screaming south in clouds of dust at breakneck speed after the gunshot. So begins the pictorial narrative.

Great great grandparents, Abraham and Elizabeth Janzen, who I put money on never spoke a lick of English. Abraham was her second husband who she married in Kansas, after her first husband, Peter Kliewer, died of a fever just a few weeks before their first daughter died of it, too--daughter was 3 months old, and wouldn't be the last infant to pass away.

A small part of Washita County in western Oklahoma, centered around the town of Corn (Korn prior to WWI). The green squares are individual Native American quarter sections (80 acres), and the tan 80s belong to white settlers.

I struggle with the depiction and oral retelling from family of white settlers as brave and such. Yes, no doubt they were, I have no idea. And no doubt they were a product of self-serving religious and cultural mantras that lead to events like the 1st dust bowl (when will the 2nd one be?). I find it hard being both a product of too much higher education and a good Mennonite descendent. But there's more to the story than this--I just haven't found it yet.

(I'm also afraid that whatever I write on will not be the positive, rosey-glasses sort of thing everyone down there might want to read or expects to read. It won't be. It will be. But it won't be.)

Elizabeth earned her living--and supported her family in tough times--throughout her life as a seamstress, and this is the sewing machine she bought in 1875. It's in the Corn Museum on loan from the family.

The Janzen homestead today, home to great great grandparents, great grandparents, and grandparents. It is stunning how all across the plains the last reminders of these places are windmills. Not silos, not stone walls, but in the end just thin metal towers that beat tornados and lightening and fire (which all took a surprising number of family barns, churches, and other landmarks).

The Janzen place as it stood, perhaps in the 1920s or 1930s. Not sure. Someone is. (not sure why it wouldn't load correctly, either)

Pic of me, grandma, and my sister on a forced pilgrimage to the homeplace. It was burned down by a farmer in the 1990s or so when cows got stuck in the cellar, died, stunk it up, and as with all structures, was buried with topsoil and farmed over. Lost forever.

The Bergthal Church cemetary where Abraham and Elizabeth are buried. It stands across the street where another prairie disgrace happened.

Apparently locals were tired of windows being broken and vandals getting in, so they just gassed the thing a few years back. This pisses me off to no end. What is it in us that insists on razing our lives, physically and emotionally? There is so little left of us, and especially of those before us. We pushed millions of bison to within extinction down to a few hundred head, wiped away millenia of Native American culture, and now do the same to our own culture and sense of place. No wonder we are crazy. You won't find any historical markers, except here at Bergthal, ironically. Someone may remember just by chance where something was, or some old cedar tree might still mark the location of the first sod post office in Corn in the 1890s, but that's it. Poof. How long will it be before some farmer cuts the cedar down for a few more square feet of wheet or maize (or milo, as I heard).

My great grandparents, John and Katie Janzen. John quit smoking when he found the lord. Also died of a heart attack trying to get his car out of an icey / muddy / snowy country road one January. Someone found him there soon after.

Here is Gyp Creek (lots of gypsum) where John often fished, about 1 mile south of the Janzen homeplace. Catfish, I think.

And under the nearby cement bridge are mud swallows and their poop.

Here was a (in)famous tree, the Hanging Tree at Big Jake's Crossing, where Native Americans were hung after burning and skinning cowboys who had first retaliated against (read killed) the Native Americans who stole some of their cows to feed their starving families. History is rich, isn't it? Eye for an eye for an eye for an eye.... I was also suprised at how older folks still very much harbor stereotypes, ones I can only imagine as a Saturday morning cowboys and indians cartoon.

Where my dad spent his first 6 or so years. The house was moved to Weatherford. I went inside the barn, disturbed a huge owl, and saw lots of rusting things.

Where they kept the baby chickens / brooder house.

Also, apparently, where they kept the lawnmower.

Chicken coop, which was filled with roll after roll of barbed wire.

The only few sunny hours of the damp trip. Last remnants of the front lawn.

A rusty old driveway grader.

The wash house.

Wash house with pressure tank. In the back corner you can see the area where they once had a fire to heat a water basin hanging above.

Rusty old storage tank.

Crumbled milking barn. This is our equivalent of castle ruins, I think.

I know I'm a bleeding envrionmentalist. Whatever. I like this picture with the mid 20th century electrical stuff, and in the far distance, a large wind farm (click to exapand).

I like this shot, too.

Here are some final pics of other houses in the area:

That cow on the far right would NOT stop staring. I mean a straight on, vacant-cow-disturbance-in-the-force-telekinesis kind of stare.

-Fin- (for now)

Early Autumn in Tennessee

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:27:00 +0000

Before a October's gold veneer
Of leaf has covered the chilled creek,
And all the trees have grown antique
With change, before the wind unveils
Each rickety and grim physique
Of maple, poplar, oak and elm,
The cotton downs the drying field
Like strange, anachronistic snow.
The monarchs come. The monarchs go.
But still there are late swallowtails,
The cloudless sulfurs, too, that glow
Like incandescent lemon skins.
Just yesterday the evening sky
Grew gas-blue like a pilot light.
The meadow purpled into night.
And as a flock of grackles came
The black confetti of their flight
Seemed suddenly to shape a slurred,
Profoundly large and fleeting word
Against the cool and fragile dusk.
At the meadow's far end I heard
The downward spiraling of song.
It was a screech owl's shrill reply
To what was written on the clear sky,
Though, really, who could comprehend
The meaning of that mournful cry?
The air was sweet with soil and hay.
Two jet trails hooked a loose crochet
Across the writhing apple-green
And phlox-blue of the dying day.
It was a feeling more than a thought
That those cold colors glowing there
Seemed like the colors despair
Or some unnamable regret.
While such forebodings, it is true,
Will seldom sway the courts of law,
Or topple legislative chambers,
They may give prophets pause, or make
The broken-hearted exiles weep,
And this, for many, is enough.

-- Daniel Anderson

It's Too Depressing...

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:36:00 +0000

...so I won't even show you pics of the early snow. 1 inch. Up the road in Omaha they got 3", and a few hours west, 4-6".

It's 27 now and will be 20 tonight. Methinks even the asters and solidago won't make that. And so much for a non-straight-leaf-drop fall.

I'll Take a Nobel, Too, Since They Are Just Handing Them Out

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:25:00 +0000

I'm glad the whole wide Earth prefers Obama to Bush, what with double digit gains in global polls. But who elected him? Everybody? I swore it was just the U.S. International approval polls make a Nobel Peace Prize winner? There was no one else more worthy?

Look, he's not achieved anything substantial--yet. No nuclear arms reductions, no pollution reductions, no peace initiatives (and nothing much locally, either).

This simply lets every one of my half-assed students know that if you try, that is a goal in and of itself. If you hope to succeed, well shoot, that's good enough. If you simply seem to exude hope or any positive attribute, that's also good enough. Great. "A"s for everybody because you put on your sweatpants and showed up to class smelling of Corn Flakes and eggs, which implied you at least had a decent breakfast and have some level of public decorum.

(On the other hand, it teaches students the value of rhetoric and good presentations, but they won't get that.)

Feel free to disagree, but you're wrong.

Where the Hell Was Fall?

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:58:00 +0000

Welcome back home, Mr. Deep Middle. Snow showers Saturday with up to 1/2", high of 35, and low of 23. I get one last day today to enjoy my flowers, then BAM!

Spring was long and warm and glorious, but my favorite season is brief. I fear the winter. Don't fear the winter. Or the reaper.

Many pics to come on Oklahoma--I saw and soil sampled the homesteads of many a person dating back to the 1890s (and more to see in Kansas on another trip). Now I've got way too many books to read and photos / notes to organize and label.

Oklahoma

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 01:16:00 +0000

I'm going in. Wish me luck.

Ooook-lahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain
And the wavin' wheat can sure smell sweet
When the wind comes right behind the rain.
Oklahoma, Ev'ry night my honey lamb and I
Sit alone and talk and watch a hawk
Makin' lazy circles in the sky.

We know we belong to the land
And the land we belong to is grand!
And when we say
Yeeow! Ayipioeeay!
We're only sayin'
You're doin' fine, Oklahoma!
Oklahoma O.K.

(We had to memorize this song from the musical in grade school growing up in... OKLAHOMA. Not OK!)

PBS and National Parks

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:57:00 +0000

Ar you watching it this week? The National Parks: America's Best Idea (Ken Burns). The first episode tonight was very moving for me, and had personal favorites talking and being talked about: John Muir, William Cronan, and Terry Tempest Williams. So good. Every night this week on PBS. Go go go.

(And as an aside, I used to think it strange talking to trees, sitting on the ground for hours watching that small world of a few square feet. But it's not. And I realize I've got more Muir in me than I previously thought--though I don't see myself spending the night in a tree during a storm to understand what the tree goes through in a storm).

Gardens, Poetry, Silence, Absence

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 21:31:00 +0000

Here's a short piece from my memoir / manuscript Morning Glory: A Story of Family and Culture in the Garden....

My family has grown up on the prairie, in the Midwest, on land that, according to author Kathleen Norris, rubs off on us to make us feel that “we don’t need to connect. The prairie landscape isolates us from each other as well as from our history, and yet the plains are quiet, absent of people and their noise, provide for an experience of self to fit within the environment, to notice the little things that mean much.” Norris, who grew up and lives in North Dakota, frequently stays at upper Midwest monasteries for reflection and to continue her monastic-influenced spiritual education. These monasteries, according to Norris, often “follow silence at certain hours, but I had never before immersed myself in the kind of silence that sinks into your bones. I felt as if I were breathing deeply for the first time in years. To live communally in silence is to admit a new power into your life. In a sense, you are merely giving silence its due. But this silence is not passive, and soon you realize that it has the power to change you.”

There are places for silence, moments in our days that we require, not that we want, but that we absolutely need. And the more we have them, I think the closer we get to ourselves and the world. I know that when I am dusting or cooking, the world drops to the side, but not completely away, and I am absorbed in the focus of my work, just as those monks who are finding praise and glory in their silent prayers of work. But most of all, I find the kind of silence Norris speaks of so deeply and transformatively right here, in this moment, writing out these words. I suppose that I have mini moments where I allow myself to daydream on the chair or on the porch, but they are soon interrupted by other thoughts. Here, the focus is intense, onrushing, consuming, it sinks into my bones to the point that every part of me is aerated and I breathe deeply some fresh, new life—as one might do on a cool summer’s evening after a hard rain.

In these silences, these deep breaths, there is a necessary mystery I follow, sometimes discovering new roads, new ideas, sometimes ending up in a place I’d never dreamed of, sitting back, and feeling blessed for having had that moment. It is an intense shuddering through my body, it reverberates, it’s like a limb warmed up after coming inside form the winter cold, tingly, pulsating, coming alive again. This is the same feeling I get in some poetry, like this short piece by James Wright:

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in the green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

Did you feel that pulse? That fear and hope? Read the poem again. I’ll wait.

There’s a pensive tension in it, an unexpected rhythm, a shuttering of sense and realization and finally transcendence as we move from one image to the next and take on new perspectives—and this happens daily in our lives. It happens in smaller, almost imperceptible degrees, but when they happen we feel releases, we breathe deeply just once with a newly changed sense of realization and we can never go back to the same life before. I also think to have such an experience is terribly frightening. There is so much uncertainty in living a connected life, a fully aware life. There is much more room for heartache and destruction, to be so open is to be so vulnerable, so touchable. But to be alive one must surely dig into the unknowable. How intoxicating that this can happen even in the smallest moments.

Here’s Stanley Kunitz talking about poetry, gardens, silence, and discovery:

The poem holds its secrets and keeps its tensions by closing out the opportunity to explain…. Art conceals and reveals at the same time. Part of the concept of the garden is that you never see it all at once. This I got from my understanding of Japanese gardens, that the way to see a garden is by circling it, by walking through it.

You don’t see the garden as a whole form any point, but you begin to know it by making a tour around it. Then it becomes a garden in the mind, and you become the instrument that defines it, just as you have to create the wholeness of the poem in your mind….

In the poem, there is an impulse that moves form line to line, from image to image, but complete revelation is not achieved until the poem arrives at its terminal point, at which time what has been secret before in the poem begins to reveal itself, and you have to really meditate on the poem. It’s like someone removing a garment slowly, slowly.

When Kunitz says art conceals and reveals at the same time, he’s not talking about art—he’s talking about being alive, breathing, eating, sleeping. But what’s the payoff of meditating on anything? Who gives a rip? The absence of a thing is that thing. Look at the garden in winter. All I can see are monarda, coneflowers, iris, rudbeckia, asclepias, sedum, miscanthus…. Look at your life, what do you hunger or long for the most. Suddenly, it’s just as or more real then having it, and maybe the reason is partly because you’ve spent so much time becoming intimate with the idea that you know the thing in more meaningful ways than the shortcut of physicality could ever allow. One of the huge issues with modern language and communication and media, and a continued appeal of silence in the face of it, is the realization that too many words and images pollute the direct power of the original. Less is more. It allows us to circumnavigate an issue and find our way to the center—it allows us to discover ourselves in the places we inhabit, physical and emotional. I think that’s sort of what Kunitz is getting at when he’s talking about tensions and silences, and what Norris finds in monasteries. But why not hear it from a real monk, Thomas Merton:

There are not a few who are beginning to feel the futility of adding more words to the constant flood of language that pours meaninglessly over everybody, everywhere, from morning to night. For language to have meaning there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him.

I get in trouble all the time for being silent. Even after nine years of grad school and being silent in classrooms, and being chastised by peers and teachers alike, no one has ever suggested—and me neither until just right now—that my silence wasn’t ever so much about shyness (though certainly it played a part) as it was about respect for language and the search for belonging and understanding in this chaotic world. In my personal relationships I’ve noticed a tension of silence in my refusal to chit chat with those closest to me about things that seem to be already implied or said. Words can fail when there are too many of them, and frankly, there are too many of them. They confuse the issue of being alive, of being alive not “with” but “in” the world.

I don’t understand people who jog or garden with headphones on, and I certainly don’t understand and even despise the construction workers with loud stereos fixing the siding on the house down the street. There is so much language around us everyday that there’s an overload of perception in place before we wake up, and I’m not talking about human language at all. Here’s Merton again.

I came up here [to his hermitage] from the monastery last night, sloshing through the cornfield, said Vespers, and put some oatmeal on the Coleman stove for supper. It boiled over while I was listening to the rain and toasting a piece of bread at the log fire. The night became very dark. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!

Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.

When I’m in the garden I learn the names of birds without having to turn my back, or shutter with the seemingly large shadow moving over me. I don’t jump back (as much as I used to) when I’m dive bombed by a bee. I’ve learned to comfort myself outside by the presence of the wildness around me. I know the call of the red wing blackbird, the cardinal and blue jay, house finch and grackle and yellow finch and mourning dove and so many more. The other day a buzzing, a terrible buzzing came up behind me and I thought fur sure I’d stumbled across a hornet’s nest, but it was just a dragonfly come to perch atop a penstemon. How beautiful it was, clear shoji screen wings, pencil like abdomen and tail. And how beautiful they are at dusk, plastered along the west side of the fence in the fading sunlight, a full warmed silence until the crickets and frogs take over at dusk. Yes, language is all around us, and so much of the time we tune it out and call it silence when in fact it’s not even a fraction of true silence—it’s an echo or afterimage only.

A high school art teacher once told me that in drawing and painting you should first sketch the shadows, and then the forms of what you intended to draw would reveal themselves more truthfully on their own.

Summer Blows, Fall Rolls (rate my off rhyme?)

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 19:12:00 +0000

Spring--blah. Summer--over rated, too hot. Fall--many flowers AND dead grasshopper sex.

In bloom are new england aster, aster laevis, aster lateriflorus, aster puniceus, aster tartaricus, aster oblongifolious, sedums, boltonias, butterfly bushes, goldenrods, sages, helianthus, eupatoriums, monkey flower, turtlehead, agastache, penstemon, cardinal flower, and clematis virginiana aka sweet autumn clematis. Heck, some of these are only just barely starting to flower. Bring on the 40s next week.

Welcome. Tickets please. Don't have any? My giant preying mantis and grasshopper bouncers will show you the way out.

If had more than one turtlehead I wouldn't like this nearly as much.

Eupatoriums: 'Baby Joe' and 'Prairie Jewel.'

Helianthus 'Lemon Queen', eupatoriums, clematis virginiana.

E. 'Wayside'

Look back toward the house.

Boltonia 'Snowbank' begs to be cut back next June. Yikes. Roots aren't even big enough yet to hold it straight up.

Happened to walk by just as it was deskinning.

Push yourself up into the silk. (Unfortunately, a few days later tachnid fly larvae emerged.)

I couldn't open my tool chest for over a week until this guy emerged. Notice the proboscus.

Yeah, sure, he blends in perfectly....

Can a live grasshopper have sex with a dead one? Sorta looks like it.

And finally, we have viceroy eggs on the dwarf arctic blue willow shrub. Easy to spot--placed on the very tip. The young instars will overwinter in silk tubes made around willow stems. I think we may now have more viceroys than monarchs flying about.

Trip to Spring Creek Prairie

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:22:00 +0000

Tons of photos to ensue. Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center is less than 30 minutes southwest of Lincoln, NE, and is also where my wife and I had our wedding reception two years ago. We visited it Tuesday, an overcast and warm / damp foggy morning.

The prairie sits on 800 acres of never-tilled land, and also hides the remnants of the Nebraska City to Ft. Kearney Oregon Trail cutoff (see pics below, but we didn't see any wagon ruts due to foliage, I'm guessing).

Lots of native plants, lots of Piet Oudolf looking vistas, and--unfortunately--lots of invasive weeds (which I'd assume will get less and less as the prairie ecosystem fully restores itself). Stop talking. Show me pictures. Ok. Click to expand if you'd like.

The welcome and education center, replete with shop.

One of many mown paths we found ouselves simply wandering on. We ignored the map.

Everything is beginning to die back. The grey is especially pronounced on this morning, but I still find the view breathtaking. Do you?

A comfy place to rest. There was so much thistle everywhere--likely invasive varieties--and so many insects on them, I put in a seed order when I got home for Cirsium discolor, the native pasture thistle.

Glad to see my ironweed isn't the only stand that looks like junk.

It's all about the linkages of shadows. I had an art teacher in high school who taught us to first draw the shadows of what we were trying to capture, then that object would more truthfully be rendered. A lot of metaphor in that idea--that shadows define us as much if not more than our actual selves. Shadows: memories, hopes, dreams, worries, fears, defeats, impressions, loves, beliefs. All that is left of us in the end is a shadow, much like the image of a photograph.

What cool texture of milkweed pods.

My wife insisted this looked like a nest of baby rodents.

I found this indentation added much character to such a relatively small area where we walked. We encountered a pond, a marsh, this gorge, tree lines... everything.

Prairie sculpture.

I'm really partial to this image. It's like sedimentary gradations. In the middle is, I believe, a stand of buckthorn--on the left still green, on the right already a warm bronze. Lovely texture.

I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes.... (name that annoying band)

Guess this is where the wagon trail is.

He stood still for me long enough to get a nice shot of both him and the thistle bloom.

Spotty patches of Salvia azurea where peeking through various grasses, and really stood out.

Quintessential plains view.

On a dark day these unknown grass / weed heads stood out like a halo. In fact, if you click on the image, it sure seems to me that each one does indeed have a halo.

As well as these. Gorgeous in the breeze.

What makes prairies so beautiful to me are how overlooked they can be--especially this time of year. It's easy to stop and gawk in July at the various blooms, but to stop and gawk at the subtle foliar forms, changes of color, the way each species naturally organizes itself and literally leans upon one another above and below the ground--well, there's something to be learned on a few metaphorical levels. To walk among the end of a season with hope and faith, to imagine what was and will be, is to live fully in the now; I think prairie vistas are especially instructive in this regard as they wear their changes on their sleeve, so to speak.

Best Nebraska Blog

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:12:00 +0000

I command thee to go vote for TDM as the best Nebraska gardening blog over at Blotanical. Come on.

Starting Another Book--Hopeful Hopelessness

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:54:00 +0000

I'm preparing a last batch of essays and poems to send out for the mad fall rush, then I focus. I hope. On a third book manuscript. The other two are floating out there in the world, pissing me off, making me cry.

Today I got yet another encouraging rejection on my writing, and lately it's been the creative nonfiction. Left and right, but few takers. This is really, really, getting tiresome. I am competitive, I am envious, I am jealous. I am confused, I am saddened, I am disnechanted. And if I wasn't, I don't think I'd be a writer or any damned use to any potential reader. That's not much comfort, though.

So I feel like I need to quickly reflect, purge my system of these other two manuscripts--though I know that if taken (no, it's when, right??) I will likely invest much time in them again.

Afterimage: Poems -- Frankly, I could care less who takes this book any more. Sound crass? I used to think it mattered who published your work. Well, it does, but you know what... I don't think it matters nearly as much for poetry as prose. The audience for poetry is far less, and I think the poetry book is more a statment for the c.v. that says something like "Yes, I'm competent, see? I can write poems, know what I'm talking about, and can focus and train myself enough to actually produce a book. Yeah, I'm a writer."

Morning Glory: A Story of Family and Culture in the Garden -- This thing is seven months young--vs. the poetry which has been shopped around for five years--so I am much more concerned about where it ends up (it is a hybrid memoir that is maybe proving a bit tricky to market, partly because of the hybridity, partly because I'm still learning how to write queries and proposals). I think first books often don't mean as much to one's opus as later books and where they come from, but first books are like first dates. Memorable first dates. Or just really nice handshakes--you know the ones, because most people don't shake hands very well at all.

So I'll soon be off to Oklahoma and Kansas to undertake something incredibly massive--a memoir of sorts (and maybe a side collection of poems), but that's all you're getting. I've no idea where it will lead me, what narative will unfold to bring order and focus to further research and--eventually--the writing. After a slew of rejections recently in the midst of sending out work (it's like eating Haagen Daz as you run to the toilet) I think that, ultimately, the only thing that can possibly satiate my impatience and dismay and doubt is to focus on writing again. Like never before. Because I ain't half bad at it. I think. Maybe. What do you think? Oh man, validate me, please.

Nebraska Statewide Arboretum Plant Sale

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:41:00 +0000

Was a delight. Got to talk to the assistant director Bob Henrickson--who in many ways reminded me of Mr. Renegade Gardener Don Engebretson. You know, the mavricky (not the Palin kind), opinionated, occasionaly swearing, dirt under the nails, overly tanned plant junky. We lamented the state of arboretums planting way way way waaaaayyy too many annuals and non natives (pricey and tacky), after I mentioned I was surprised with such at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum a week ago. Bob said you'd think regional, large arboretums and botanical gardens (like the Lauritzen Gardens in Omaha) would demonstrate the local and regional areas and various micro climates, thus teaching most folks good things.

Then he gave me a free liatris squarrosa because he said it needed a good home and couldn't stand another winter potted up. Other plants I got:

Aster ptarmicoides--upland white
Allium cernuum
Echinacea pallida
Liatris scariosa 'Alba'
Liatris microcephala 'Alba'
Echinacea angustifolia--narow leaf coneflower
Monarda fistulosa
Pulsatilla patens
Zizia aptera (bring on the black swallowtails!)
Lespedeza capitata--roundhead bushclover
Filipendula ulmaria

And my 15% member discount was lovely.

Now I'm off to spread my proprietary seed blend on A Street here in Lincoln: various members of joe pye weed, ironweed, milkweed, liatris, and coneflowers.

Side question--anyone know why my Helianthus 'Lemon Queen' buds go limp and fall off just before blooming? A dark spot forms about 1-2" down the stalk where it sags and drops. I am at 50% bloom this year and it sucks.

Texans! Save the Monarchs!

enfrancais@att.net (Benjamin Vogt) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:14:00 +0000

According to Monarch Watch, the drought in Texas may produce one of the lowest--if not lowest--overwintering population of monarch butterflies in Mexico this year. The drought has lead to fewer nectar plants in the final pit stop / major gathering place for monarchs before they make their final leap to Mexico. So if you can, restrictions or not, water your flowers.

And while you're visiting Monarch Watch, get your garden up to speed and then have it certified as a Monarch Waystation.

But if you're in Minnesota this weekend, you can help Monarch offspring that will come back north next spring by attending the Minneapolis Monarch Festival. Make milkweed seed mudballs, enjoy 4 acres of restored prairie on Lake Nokomis, make me happy. (You can also come dressed as a monarch butterfly but, personally, I think you'd look terribly strange.)

Of course, according to the Nature Conservancy, in 90 years we might not have enough water to even take care of our own food sources. They've recently forecasted temperatures in the middle Great Plains to rise by as much or more than 10 degrees--with Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa leading the pack. You can download a report on your state. Have fun.

A dry spring in Nebraska led to to a later and lesser appearance of Monarchs in my garden, at least that's my theory. I got home yesterday after a long weekend away and only found 5 caterpillars outside--4th and 5th instars. Last year, we were still plucking many younglings off the milkweed well into late September. Peak migration here is around September 15, so it does make some sense that there aren't many egg layers around.