~b

A busy week. Two new articles finished, two new ads for the Wedge, a new first chapter and new direction for a key thread in Patron Saint of Plagues, Iko was sick, the disease-ridden elm tree in our backyard was finally chopped down, weeding and hoeing and gardening - but most time-consuming of all, the dishwasher went on the fritz. Laugh if you want, but the dishwasher is the linchpin to our schedules now: We add 7-10 hours per week to our lives when the dishwasher isn't making grinding noises and failing to clean the dishes. The Sears repair guy came to fix it, and a day later, whammo, a new chapter spilled out of me.

Speaking of hoeing and weeding, I should also mention the compost, because I know you're dying to know how my army of microbes is doing. I opened up the bin this weekend, looked inside, and wondered, Who the fuck is dumping dirt in my compost? I was pissed until I realized, oh wait, that is the compost. Humus all the way up to the top, baby! Rich, dark, crumbly, perfect. Like potting soil. There are still some undigested bits of orange rind, a slice of bread or two, but otherwise, it's ready for the garden.

So while it's sad that the elm came down (Iko's been talking about it non-stop for a day: "Tree. Gone. Truck. Tree. Gone. Truck..."), without it we now have a swath on sunny yard space just begging for a load of perfect compost-humus to be dumped on it. My tomato and sunflower seedlings are yearning toward the door like little lap dogs with full bladders. "Plant us, you bastard! PLANT US!"

Not much else to say except my migraine season restarted itself. Not too bad - mild. Manageable. But god what a bummer.

Someone at Anheuser-Busch.com has been checking out this blog. Welcome!

A few days ago, I reported that A-B had announced that they wouldn't buy rice from Missouri, if the state allowed the cultivation of "pharmed" rice (rice genetically modified to create two human hormones for a new baby formula). I'm sure the A-B surfer was just checking to see how the Brand was fairing in blogosphere.

Well, over the weekend, A-B buckled, forcing me to take back all the nice things I said about the beeropoly. From Oca.com:

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- Anheuser-Busch Cos. has dropped its threat to boycott Missouri's rice crop after a biotechnology firm agreed to grow its genetically engineered rice farther away from commercial rice farms in the state.

"The agreement reached Friday ends a dispute between the beer giant, the state and California-based Ventria Biosciences, which wants to grow about 200 acres of genetically modified rice to produce human proteins used in drugs."

What a relief. Now I can go back to drinking the good stuff again.

I'm almost through this damn cluster of migraines, AKA the hour of my discontent. Since they were only coming once a week for a good two weeks there, I was pretty sure they were on the wane. But alas, the beast is a cunning predator, and on Saturday, it caught me unawares without my migraine Rx at work. The computer screen started to hurt me. Intercoms were killing me. Coffee didn't knock it out, as caffeine often does (last night I killed the beast with a Coke). so I eventually had to punch out and go lie down in my car, and let the beast crunch on my skull for about an hour.

Which was actually kind of pleasant. A chilly April rain was falling. No one was out on the streets. Everything was misty and grey. Lying back in the drivers seat was so comforting with the sound of rain drumming, and with the windshield and windows warbling with running water as if my car had been parked at the bottom of a sea. Sure, the migraine was a bummer, but if you have to suffer through an ice pick being jammed in your head, this is the way to go.

In other news, I made a diaper run to Target last night and found a garbage bag in the parking lot. In it was a parka stained with blood, a filthy Finding Nemo blanket, and one clown shoe with the name of a rental company on the side.

Someone write a story about this, ok? If it's a good one, I'll even cough up a prize for your efforts.

I have the reputation of being "anti-sugar" in my little family. It's not a crusade of mine, by any means. It's just that sugar is a pretty potent upper for a kid's little body, so I think it should be a treat, you know? Special occasions. Birthdays. But I'm not a cop about it, I promise.

Anyway on Friday, I took Iko on the light rail. On the way to catch a bus to the depot, we passed the neighborhood Dairy Queen. I was holding him, and Iko got this big, shit-eating grin on his face, pointed at the DQ, and said, "Mama..."

"What?" I stopped and looked at him, verging on scandalized. I mean, if we're gonna feed him drugs, let's at least give him the good shit. "Iko, did your mama take you to Dairy Queen?"

Iko gave his lustiest, "YeeeeaaAAAH!"

"What did she give you there? Do you remember?"

Same grin. "Ice."

"Very interesting," I told him, and off we went to catch the bus.

Like I said, I'm not a cop about it. But, oh, I had a delicious time busting his mama on that one.

Bush's refusal to cut farm subsidies to giant ag corporations shows how perfectly liberal Republicans can be. Farm subsidies, that is, YOUR MONEY, as the Grover Nordquists of the world like to say, flow into the coffers of giant ag industries - AKA "family farms," AKA "the GOP base."

Democrats delude themselves that they want to rob from the rich and give to the poor. That's fine, but farm subsidies rob from everyone in order to give to the rich. Subsidies go to top production only, after all - the more you produce, the more you get.

Lo, hear the suffering lament of Monsanto and rain alms upon her.

Don't get me wrong. I think the government should support farmers, and not just all my groovy organic buddies, either. Cooperative rural businesses, ag extension services, seed savers, sustainable ag in all its various stripes - there's plenty of aspects of US ag that deserve our investment. But here's a brilliant idea: how about supporting farmers who actually grow food for human beings to eat? (Oh I forgot: it's a dying art, and we don't dole cash to artists.)

The problem is that farming doesn't fit into the notion of private ownership in a free market. The idea that a person who owns the land will be inspired to produce better crops is absolutely incorrect, because the free market encourages competition and ye olde "race to the bottom" for prices, particularly where primary producers are concerned, and this forces farmers to cut corners, increase yields chemically at the expense of future land and water use (and human health), pay insultingly low wages to workers, etc. And the only people who benefit are the CEOs of ag corporations. Bumper crops are the kiss of the death in ag-capitalism: if everyone's got the product, no one makes any money. Thus, instead of encouraging sane stewardship of the land and a sustainable rural economy, the free market fosters what we have - big land barons on the dole. They alone thrive in a competitive ag economy, and, when a disaster hits, like the Florida hurricanes, competition forces the small players out, rarely allows them back in, and solidifies the holdings of ag barons. Heightened mechanization and industrialization of farmland makes it virtually impossible for the common American to start a new farm and compete with the money already ploughing through the fields.

Agrable land is a public resource, and a sane, sustainable farm policy (AKA Land Reform) would address this. Dissolve corporate, carpetbagger, and foreign ownership of US farmland. Only give fed-subs to farms with a truly representative mechanism for workers and owners on the land itself, i.e., co-op, union, or other democratic structure, in order to encourage democracy in our flagging republic. Beyond federal assistance as needed (blight, weather, etc), give every farm, regardless of size, a flat return based on a percentage of the gross national production of that crop. This will obviously aid the smaller farm over the larger, but instead of relying on the lie of competition, the ethic of "all for one, and one for all" - which guided the birth and early development of US ag long ago - will be the catalyst for sound production.

Most importantly, we should invest in ag innovations that encourage sustainability. No food = no civilization. We have to develop ag for the long haul - not merely this quarter's earnings.

(For the record, I am too writing. This is back story for my novel. So there.)

I've been blogging a lot about Iko, mainly because that's where all my attention has been lately. When I got back from my brother's funeral a few weeks ago, I sank into a deep-body depression - sleeping a lot, dark thoughts, the whole schmeer. Being at work was a trudge, while being with Isaiah on our days together was completely rejuvenating.

I feel some sort of urge to talk about Robin in the blog, mainly because I know he came to this site now and then on his crappy nursing home connection. He'd send me emails that said "xoxo" if he read something he liked, usually about his nephew.

So here's a Robin story. One of my faves.

My biological father was a psychologist for many years, and around 1974, my brother Robin was staying with him, his wife, and my step-brother (who is my age; about 9 at the time of this story) in their home in Waterloo, IA. Robin was 19 and a pretty accomplished partier in 1974, so him staying with the conservative Christian wing of the family was jampacked with some pretty wacky hijinx.

Case in point: One of my dad's patients was trying to quit smoking pot, so he gave my dad a pound of marijuana and said, "You gotta get rid of it for me. I don't want in my house or I'll smoke it."

My dad is a smart man, but shockingly naive at times. He brought it home and asked my brother how he should get rid of it. My brother had some ideas, but Dad didn't go for it. He told Robin to get an old pan and together they lit it and "fried" it in the garage. Billows of Cheech and Chong smoke wafted out of the garage and over the neighborhood, so in a panic, Dad closed the garage door and supervised Robin till the pot was all fired up.

When Dad finally left, Robin heaved up a few precious lungfuls from the smouldering pan, and after the deed was done, he went out with some friends to enjoy his newfound headspace.

When he came back at around 2 in the morning, all the lights in the house were still on. Odd, thought Robin, for this middleclass family - and on a school night, too. Hmm...

He came in the basement door, where the family had the mandatory 70's orange shag-carpeted den and tv room, and there was dad watching tv at 2 in the morning. Not only that, but Dad had the cat on his lap and was stroking its head and back with a weird look on his face, entranced by the television screen. (Note: That cat absolutely despised my dad - like, arch the back and scream whenever Dad entered the room. I can still get a good belly laugh imagining stoned Dad trying to coax the cat onto his lap for an hour or two.)

Then Rob went upstairs to the kitchen and found Joan and Trent - up and laughing in the kitchen. Trent's gerbils were out of their cages and wre rolling around in those clear plastic hamster-balls. Mom and son were watching the balls roll around the kitchen and shrieking with laughter when they collided into a wall or cabinet.

Ah hell. I can't tell this story right. Only Robin can tell it correctly. It's the hardest realization, knowing that I'll never hear Rob tell this one again. Or the one about Gene the Mad Filipino. Or the time he got arrested in Iowa City with a brain full of acid and thrown in a jail cell with a guy wearing a deep sea-diving suit. Or the suitcase full of meat story. Or the Straits of Gibralter story. Or...you get the pic.

The other thing I'll miss is not being able to talk to Rob about being a dad. Eventually, the partier became a family man - he married his highschool sweetheart and became the consummate stay-at-home dad. He raised two fine kids with loads of affection and laughter, both of whom are interesting and unique adults now - and a day doesn't go by that I don't measure myself against Robin as a dad.

I'm sure this is why my expansive hours with Isaiah are a refuge right now. I can be with both Iko and Robin in these long afternoons of trains and swings and running gags.

Lisa and I had a rare dinner out on Friday night and ate at Jakeeno's, just a few blocks from our place. With the weather as luscious as it's been, the main draw for us was Jakeeno's patio, which looks out on 36th Street through wrought-iron fencing. Perfect for encapsulating the goblin-boy.

But Iko is nothing if not resourceful. As soon as I had my plate of raviolis, the boy hit the dirt and flattened out, ready to go under the fence. I took a quick look at the space he had to work with and said, "Good luck," and turned back to my pasta. A second later, Lisa's shouting, "Isaiah!" and leaping for him from the other side of the table.

Not only did the little goblin have enough room, only his diaper kept him from from sliding under the fence and toddling off down 36th.

Lisa barely caught him in time, grabbing on to his leg. I did a quick Dick van Dyke impersonation, jumping up, knocking over my chair, lunging for Iko, then lunging about the patio before realizing that I would have to go through the restaurant in order to get outside and retrieve the goblin.

So that's what I did. I ran through the restaurant and out the door, and I wish to god I had a jpeg to show you what I saw: My little blond cherub half-way down the block, trying to wriggle free from his mama's grasp on his ankle, looking back at her through the fence with this furious scowl on his face, like, "Hey, I almost made it! Would you freakin' let me GO??"

I scooped him up and brought him back through the restaurant, with a saracastic greeting from the maitre-d ("Welcome back to Jakeeno's...") and one from our waitress ("Got yourself a live one there.").

Funny. I remember fine dining to be so much more "fine" than this...

I've been following the Marburg outbreak in Angola for about a week now. WHO has the most detailed information, though it's not always up to the minute - ditto CDC. CNN and the NYT have been very prompt in reporting Marbug updates.

One question I have about the outbreak involves the city and its residents. Uige (pronounced "Wheezh") is a city of 200,000 residents. When the outbreak began, stories surfaced almost immediately about citizens distrusting hospitals and health care workers. This wariness apparently sped the spread of the virus, since the infected didn't want to go to the hospitals because, well, people die from Marburg there. As reported in CNN two days ago:

"This kind of reaction from local people is not uncommon in a hemorrhagic fever outbreak," said [Richard Thompson, WHO's spokesman on communicable diseases]. "They (locals) sometimes believe that it is the medicine people who have brought the illness to their communities."

But take a look at what Doctors Without Borders said yesterday to the NYT:

"The hospital has been the main source of infection," [said Monica de Castellarnau, the organization's emergency coordinator in Uige, Angola]. (So much so that DWB is recommending that Angola shut down all the hospitals in the city - a drastic and nearly defeatist measure for an urban outbreak, obviously.)

So, I'm no Sherlock Holmes or nothing, but by my read, the "locals" understood what was up at the hospital long before the enlightened "medicine people" showed up. Children have been dying in Uige since October 2004 and others suspected the hospital earlier, too (CNN from April 8: "There is a possibility ... that the hospital served to infect children who came to be treated there. It is not confirmed, but it is a hypothesis," Pierre Formenty, a WHO expert on hemorrhagic fevers told reporters.) .

Hemmorhagic fever is a bloody spectacle. Just because Europeans and Americans identified the virus as Marburg in late March doesn't mean that Angolans didn't suspect that something was way wrong in these hospitals long beforehand - especially with their own kids involved.

Isaiah and I took a stroll through Powderhorn Park with our good buddy Melissa on Friday. We went to the playground and Iko had himself his first run-in with a bully.

Actually it was just a 3-year-old with a hyper sense of entitlement and territory, which is precisely what being 3 *is*. Bruno was the older kid's name, and he was being obnoxious with Isaiah - not intending to hurt him, just invading his space. Bruno singled Isaiah out of a small pack of playgrounders and sort of mimed a glass wall in front of Iko's face, blocking his way, etc. Bruno's mom was cool and attentive, picking him up and pulling him away from Iko to talk him through his obnoxiousness. Melissa and I just hung back, waiting for Iko to give one of us the signal so we could airlift him out of there.

For his part, Iko handled the whole thing expertly by shrieking at the top of his lungs at Bruno. He didn't back down. Didn't cower. His shrieking was just a toddler expression of "Get out of my face!"

After about the third time of Bruno crowding Isiaiah, Iko finally explained matters to the bully. He pointed to himself and said "I" [Isaiah]. Then he pointed to Melissa and said, "Na-sa" [Melissa]. Then he pointed to me and said, "Da da da."

Translation: Three against one, bitch....

So I spoke with editor Juliette Ulman, at long last. Though it was our first convo, we slipped into a nice rapport and spoke for about an hour and a half. Great person. It's a relief to know that I'm going to enjoy working with her.

Case in point. I'd heard through my agents that she didn't like one part of the book, so in the meanwhile, I came up with a good fix to satisfy her (I thought), one that would allow me to keep key aspects of the section in dispute. Before we spoke on the phone, I emailed her a new draft of the outline and a sample, "fixed" chapter, explaining how I thought we could keep the material in question. Alas, no. She wasn't going for it. Juliette was firm but kind. "No, I don't want it reworked. I really think it needs to go."

Two years ago, this would have rocked me, especially coming in the first phone call from my new editor. But deep down, I know she's right, and others have told me that the material seems out of place. Plus, I just want to get on with this damn book, you know? I wrote the first draft of the short-story version at Clarion in 1998, meaning that, in one way or another, these characters and this situation have been haunting me for almost 7 years. Seven. SEV-EN.

Hand me that axe and stand back. I got some chopping to do.

Sure some of my reaction is rooted in the expanse of time this project has swallowed, some is Juliette's kind touch, and some is my eagerness to break new ground. Too, this anecdote could be filed under the "kill your darlings" rubric, of course.

But I credit Isaiah with some of my reaction as well. A kid teaches you to look at your priorities, all of them, with a jaundiced eye. As a parent, you can't hang on to anything the way you did as a non-breeder. Time isn't yours. Your body is barely yours (especially para las mamas). Even writing stands in line behind Isaiah's needs. The sarcastic among you might call this "learned helplessness," and that's not far from the mark. But really, parenting is a full-on education in Zen non-attachment, because you still have your priorities, but you have to hang back from them, let your goals be met in their own due time. Post-Isaiah, I'm less dramatic, less attached to every word I write and every precious hour at the page. I'm even less attached to my "identity" as a "writer," because my writing is dwarfed by the enormity of my love for Isaiah.

So I find myself contemplating this cut with creativity, and I have good solutions for how to make the first incisions, which wouldn't be possible without the detachment of parenting. I do believe.