Bucket Lists, A Garden Report, and a Nugget of Local News

I hear a lot of people talk about bucket lists.  Occasionally I admit to thinking of something I’d like to do before all this is over, but I’ve never been big on lists.  I do realize some of the things I once strived for are probably now out of reach.  For example, it doesn’t appear I’ll be pitching for a Major League baseball team as I once dreamed.  I’ll be 67 in August and my curveball never really developed into what you would call an out pitch.  Besides, my legs aren’t what they used to be.  They say the legs go first for ball players.  Mine left a long time ago.

Nor does it seem likely I’ll have a romantic encounter with Vanna White.  Neither of us is getting any younger, though she looks the same as always.  My wife thinks she’s had work done.  Vanna hasn’t answered my fan mail for more than twenty years.  I’ve drawn a line through that list item too.

I do still hope to make it to Ireland on an extended trip.  Both my wife and I know the towns from which our families emigrated.  Dingle in the south for her, Ballymena in the north for me.  We plan on spending a week in each place, maybe a third knocking around elsewhere.  I’d like to take in some golf.

My brother just got back from Berlin, a town that was on his bucket list.  He made a career in the military, has been all over the world, and was stationed in Germany twice but missed out on Berlin.  He wanted to see the Brandenburg Gate, visit the site of Checkpoint Charlie, and see for himself the many things in Berlin he had only heard of.  I’m not sure what is left on his bucket list, but I’m glad he was able to check that one off.  He’s older than me, but damned healthy.  If you ask me he could add to that list and still get it done.

The name “Bucket List”, as I’m sure you know, comes from the concept of doing a number of things you’ve always wanted to do, but have put off, before you kick said bucket.  Advancing age prompts this list making.  You have to imagine the end before you plan for it.  I’m not sure when this starts, but young people think time is vast.  Is that a word you would use to describe time now? 

There is a variation to the bucket kicking concept, brought up by a friend of ours.  She wants to go places she has not visited not to beat her last day but to visit while she can still walk, enjoy travel, and remember where she’s been when she gets back home.  You know, not just technically alive but really alive, able to hear the music, smell the coffee, taste the food.  It’s up to you if you make a bucket list.  I think I’ll pass.  I’m afraid it would be one more batch of things I regret not doing before I’m through.  Let’s move on.

My garden is producing peppers, and I sampled them this morning.  I grow hot peppers, and they look great this year, though looks and taste are not always the same.  So to see what I had, I made a red pepper omelet.  Two serranos, a nice bull nose, and four tiny red Thai hots.  I sautéed them with some onion and garlic in oil, folded them into a three egg omelet along with mozzarella, salt and pepper, and had it with wheat toast and a glass of milk.  You never know about peppers, how they taste, how much heat they produce.  They vary from season to season.

These peppers were hot.  The serranos gave the most sustained heat, the Thai hots little bursts of intense heat that faded quickly, and the sweet bull nose mellowed both those out.  I was wiping my nose after ten seconds.  I’d call it a three egg, two Kleenex omelet.  It’s going to be a good year for chili  paste, salsa, and all the pepper dishes.  The ones I ate this morning are the first.  The Habaneros, which I use to make Jamaican jerk, are still small and green.  I will have peppers to spare.  I’m excited.

The rest of my garden did not fare as well.  I didn’t fence it, because frankly fencing is a pain.  Stepping over it, weeding around it, reaching down from the other side of it.  Gardening is better without a fence, so I skipped it.  Nothing eats the tomatoes, the garlic, the eggplants were spared, rarely does anything develop a taste for the hot peppers, the lemon grass is always safe, as are cucumbers and Brussels sprouts usually.  I hadn’t grown kale before so I didn’t know what to expect.  But as I said before, all years are different.  This year I took a chance on less protection.

Something ravaged the cucumbers while they were just vines (I got only two), stripped the Brussels sprouts of all its leaves, initially spared the kale but then stripped it daily.  (I get that about kale by the way.  I didn’t like it at first either.)  And though they left the tomatoes alone as always, about half my tomato plants grew as if they hated the dirt they were rooted in.  Scraggly as hell.  Vines browning out before the fruit was ripe.  So aside from the peppers, garlic, and eggplant the rest was pretty hit and miss.

Interestingly enough, in addition to rabbits, the culprits also included deer.  My wife, who doesn’t get as personally involved with vegetables as I, does have quite the relationship with the flowers she plants and tends, both annuals and perennials.  She waters them faithfully, talks about them (maybe to them), asks if I’ve seen their progress, predicts when they will open, and how long they will last.  She’s all about the flowers, especially the lilies.

She expanded her collection of day lilies and has them spread all over.  They’re a variety of colors, and as they get closer to blooming she gets more and more excited.  She predicts the day they’ll bloom.  Anticipates it with joy.  It’s a summer highlight.  I think she loves them.

Apparently so do the deer.  She came stomping out to the shack one morning, indignant, reporting that something had eaten the bloom on the lily in the corner of the flower bed by the garage on “the very day it was going to open!”  The nerve.  She wanted whatever ate that lily gone.  Dead I presumed.  She was on the internet within minutes searching for repellants.  Interestingly enough, one of the more effective substances to put on your flower beds is human urine.  She wasn’t keen on that.  She was hoping for something she could order on Amazon.

The next morning, as I was making coffee and she was coming downstairs, we both caught sight of the culprit.  A fawn, its spots still on, daintily took a lily bloom in its mouth, twisted if off, and gently munched.  Rather than screaming she said

“Oh look, it’s a fawn.’

The fawn was soon joined by a doe, its mother who, ever watchful, sniffed the lilies but didn’t partake.  Then the fawn switched its attention to its mother and began to nurse, nuzzling her hindquarters.  The doe stood patiently, looking off placidly towards the shack, her fawn busily drinking.  My wife spoke again in that motherly voice she saves for adoring babies and witnessing something touching.

“It’s hungry.”

I am amazed at how anger can be eased once we understand the motivation for another creature’s behavior.  We all coexist here, after all, and all God’s creatures have to eat.  Some of the lily blooms were spared, and I got a little kale after all.  In the end it’s all good.

Finally, I have to share this bit of local news.  It was Tip O’Neill, speaker of the house during the Watergate hearings, who said all politics is local.  I have to add that all really juicy news is local too.  Perhaps you have to be a follower of small town journalism and journalists, as I am, listening daily to our local radio station and faithfully reading our local five day a week newspaper, to know this. 

I’m convinced the really elemental, what you want to know news, the stuff you are compelled to read, springs from such local media.   It doesn’t look like I’m going to be a newspaper reporter either, something I once dreamed of, but that doesn’t mean I can’t envy the opportunity to write articles like this.  I’d have given anything to get this assignment.
In The Times, an almost daily paper serving the communities of Ottawa, Streator, and the surrounding area, appears this account of local events, this nugget of local news, in their April 7-8, 2018 weekend doorstep edition I found this headline:

Some headlines just grab you don’t you think?  The genius part of this particular headline is the ending phrase “with feces.”  Had it simply been “Streator theater bathroom vandalized’ I might well have skipped the story.  But “with feces?”  How can you not read that story?

The story, written by Brent Bader (whom I envy, just for the sheer experience of the assignment) was no doubt found among municipal police reports and then bolstered by a telephone interview with the theater manager, Eric Gubelman.  I think I would have done an onsite interview and taken a cameraman but staff reductions being what they are at small town newspapers I understand.   As I do with many things, I read I read the first few paragraphs and skipped to the end.  Here’s how that went.

“The bathrooms at Streator Eagle 6 were vandalized Wednesday night, but what was more surprising to Eric Gubelman was the community’s support.  One individual spread fecal matter on the walls of the bathroom with a plunger and toilets were clogged with toilet paper and a bowl cleaner brush.  Three staff members had to clean up the bathroom….’It just sort of ruined the night of three employees who had to clean I up’ Gubelman said.”  (I can imagine.)  

At that point I skipped to the last paragraph.

“Gubelman said in a follow up email.  ‘This is not a story about a unique event, it is another story of the unique and welcome reception we have received from LaSalle County.”

That was a head scratcher there.  Now I had to read the whole article. 

Streator police were called.  They stopped the movie.  While an individual did not fess up to the crime, it was determined he was one of a group of five.  All five were banned from the theater.  Here’s the great part.

In an effort to be as transparent as possible, Gubelman posted the details on Face Book.  630 FB users interacted with the story and it was shared 175 times.  Gubelman thinks that’s because “our customer base is very loyal and proud of the theater and they were appalled.” I’m not sure I agree with Gubelman on that but who knows.  Apparently comments were overwhelmingly supportive of staff and dismissive of patrons that would vandalize the bathroom.  Support the staff, shame the smearer.

“…99.9% of our customers are wonderful.  The ones that misbehave almost always pick less dramatic ways of misbehaving,” reports Gubelman.  Let’s all be thankful for that.

Here’s a link where you can read the entire article.

http://www.mywebtimes.com/2018/04/06/streator-theater-bathroom-vandalized-community-lends-moral-support/akd3l5z/  

For some reason, the online edition chose to omit “with feces” from the headline.  A big mistake I think.  Also, the article could have been longer.  I found myself wanting more artistic detail.  Perhaps an interview with the staff who remedied the uh, situation. 

Be that as it may, you gotta love small town papers.  The pay may be better in big cities, but I don’t think you get the chance to write stories like that, and keep a straight face as you do.  Thanks Brent Bader.  I’m always on the lookout for local stories like that one.