. Spinning .

Under the tree every Christmas, Madame Alexander dolls with mother-made taffeta dresses, the dolls bought nude because they were affordable and Mother’s mother had sewn ballgowns in Poland. A doll, books and games my sister and I would ask from Santa, the same drunken old man at Howard & Barber every year–I have pictures of us on his knee. The first year we moved up the hill, from my grandparents’ house down below, the first winter, walking up the road in snow a couple feet high, I got walking pneumonia and stayed out of school for four months.  The year my dad hosed the front yard into a skating pond.  A hundred trees planted, another fifty, and several more.  A family room and a two-car garage added on after the first oldest married and left.  Working with my dad on the oak flooring–he had me marking out the holes for the walnut pegs. He taught me to paint, how to trim around woodwork, how to wire a light fixture, how to fix a faucet. Barbeques as the family grew larger. And oh, walking uphill to see her sister, my aunt, the time my mom near set the house on fire because we stayed too long and forgot dinner.  A wife and three daughters nervous watching my dad putting the roof on himself, a colonial–he had no fear of height.  So one Christmas we had him climb the maple tree to put up a star. The fires we’d start down in the lot, my dad and me, trying to burn up the brush, feed the lawn; the fire department only had to come help us twice when the wind caught the field up at Jacek’s.  So much more, so much more than a house.  My childhood, my parents, my family all gone for a paper I reluctantly sign.  Even as I know things end into beginnings, there’s an emptiness in my whole being I can’t deny.

Even without the focus on personal problems now, I still wonder what sense it makes to stress about things on a grander scale that go wrong unless there is a way I can do something about it.  Some things however will get my dander up and while I do realize that my more common sense based opinions are far from politically correct, if only bringing things to the forefront helps, well, that I can do.

Outsourcing and defective parts has lead to a major shake up at Stratford based Sikorsky aircraft.

80% of toys sold in the U.S. are made in China.  (News tonight, can’t find link)

The U.S. National Guard has wasted millions of dollars trying to rebuild some of their older ships.  A total failure, the boats leaked, some boats were built that were too heavy to float without expensive additional engine power.  These designs were all presented by outsourcing firms not even in the U.S. (60 Minutes)

Now it could be just me, but it would seem that if we put a ceiling on imports, and work being done outside the U.S. that is easily available here such as engineering, design, manufacturing, not only will our economy improve, but jobs available to American workers would alleviate the poverty and unemployment conditions of our own country.  Why, oh why, should 80% of all toys available in the U.S. be made in China?  Even without the problems of lead paint and other quality of work and materials that have come up with some products, the fact is simply that while Americans need the employment, the stability, the assurance of opportunity that illegal immigrants think we still offer, U.S. corporations, with the full knowledge and approval of the government, are instead taking advantage of cheaper outsourced labor. 

It is our government, and the large and powerful corporations that are in a position to help America return to a land of opportunity and self-pride.  I can only talk about it.

How strange that crabapples still grow when Chris is gone.

Today I’m going to pick the fruit off the tree in our backyard.  Tomorrow, I’ll likely go to Gus’ and pick the fruit off the single tree Chris planted in their yard that same year.  You see, Chris and I were migrant workers up to then.  We’d hop in the car with plastic bags and drive the circuit according to the season.  In late summer days we’d roll the windows down and blast the radio. Chris’ beat-up Rabbit looking every bit the part of king of dusty roads and laughing good times. The yellow crabapples in Terryville behind the school, the now-wild once-cultivated wine grapes behind the car dealership in Torrington, the quince bush on Hall Street where the old man said we were helping him because he wouldn’t have to rake "those bastards" up, the two cute crabapple trees at the mall driveway opening that Chris and I picked clean every year in under twenty minutes, the grapes on the locked fence of the fish hatchery where Chris calmly answered the cop’s question as to what we were doing with "Picking grapes."  The local cop, by the way, the same one who asked me what I was doing with a shovel on a small bare triangle up the road when I was planting marigolds.

We used to ask permission where we could, but sometimes it was just more fun to do it, feel like we were stealing what we knew would only rot and go to waste.  Once we–for the crabapples at the mall–went into the MacDonald’s and asked if we could pick the trees outside.  Each blank-stared kid in turn pointed us to another until we got the fresh-faced manager who suggested quite gruffly that we’d have to call the corporate headquarters for approval.  We suggested that he do so right away and had the trees stripped bare before he even thought about it. 

But Chris and I decided that things had gotten out of hand, that we’d plant what we wanted, grapes and crabapple and quince and peach trees–Chris put in strawberries too, I had blueberry bushes–and become self-sufficient on our own lands instead of making the runs, moving with the crops as they came ripe and due. 

Maybe, if there is nothing beyond all this, we did indeed leave something good upon the earth.  Applesauce, jelly, preserves, wine.  Our fruits of love and labor.  Our gifts of friendship to each other and all who follow in the places we have been.

Here’s a thought that’s pestering me today: If man is completely mortal, souless and given but one fairly brief stint at living on this planet, what is the purpose and goal of progress?  Shouldn’t we be touching and changing as little as possible in our environment and leave it clean and just as we found it for the next guy? 

Of course if you have children then you’re into making it a better world for them.  And if you’re truly a magnanimous entity–which, btw, if there is no form of a god or judgement then your actions are a completely altruistic venture or a very disappointing one, depending on your belief–and care about mankind as a whole, then yes, make life easier than you’ve had it.  Easier via technology, more interesting via travel and invention, and most important, happier.  That last one’s the toughie, for even discounting peace of mind in warless times, and people being nicer, there’s still hunger and poverty to wipe out before you even tackle crime.

What is better or worse?  What is the standard we’re going by?  Obviously, no one left hungry or cold, no one beaten or subservient to the will of another, a chicken in every pot–not to be flippant, but obviously, these are what we’d be striving for for all people.  But we’re wrecking some things as we go and these things aren’t repairable.  Like forest and clean water and untainted animals and fish.  At what point in our history was it maybe time to stop?  Ever?  Does the future look any better? 

Then too, there are the philosophers, Aristotle, Boethius, Plato, Augustine, and all who followed who claim that the truest form of happiness is not to be found from worldly things, but rather from knowledge or a belief in the spirit.  Boy, if they’re wrong, they sure wasted their x number of years on earth. 

But then, each of them made it a better place for all who rented the space after them.

Most days the sun brings only just but sometimes dawn comes changing things around and just by sounds of whipping leaves and bumping branches you can tell even in the grey premorning light that something’s gone or hidden and there’s a new something in its place.

This morning it was summer that was stolen and a pseudo-autumn left behind.

Last night’s rain and wind gave way to a sun shining all the brighter in its trials to overcome the cooling wind that drove itself back from a murmur to a frenzied whoosh!  Long legged jeaned and sweatered I take a quick note of what must have happened overnight: crabapples ready now, even as the young forkhorn munched them days before their bitterness was brought to full maturity; pears above a certain height that he can’t reach ’cause deer won’t go up stepladders and I will; peaches maybe in another week or so, I need them extra ripe for wine; and grapes about two weeks away from royal purple.

And so I plan my life around the harvest that this morning’s wind announces.  And though it’s cool for August the wind will die around late afternoon and supper will be the fruits of the vegie garden choppped into a blend of yellows, greens and reds with just a sprinkle of baby fresh cilantro.

Gazpacho is all of summer saved in a bowl of soup.

Red ponytail swings behind the fresh-faced girl jog-bouncing down the hill, she’s just a kid, I think, and wave in recognition of the woman there.

Hours later spent in quiet work I take a break, I think, and end up halfway out the kitchen window deadheading the petunias, pouring sugar water for the hummer, my knees hurting from the hardness of the kitchen sink and then I hear an engine purring down.

Red ponytail swings behind the woman in the driveway, all grown up and yet, she’s just a kid, I think, and smile.

In the middle of the local news last night, I felt a change of sorts.  Belief, or my perspective of the world suddenly became doubt and I listened closely as the news anchor, after reporting on the two parolees responsible for the murder of a man’s wife and daughters in their own home, said something to the effect of "how you can protect yourself from home invasion."

I’ve heard this or something similar a hundred times before and yet in an instant, it became something different that I was hearing.  First, it hit me that the anchorman was warning the "good" people against danger from the "bad" people; that there indeed were people out there that would break into homes and rob and murder.  I know this, and yet for the first time it sounded odd, as if this were a futureworld and the rare crime became the norm, that it was up to good citizens to protect themselves against an evil force. 

For a flash of time I had an image of someone wanting to break into our own home.  Why would they?  This is something that I couldn’t answer as the immediacy of the moment melted back into the comfort of our living room, me on the couch, laptop working, snores from the bedroom, all the familiar things melting into a sense of stability unquestioned.  Yet something had changed for all time. 

I do have my hometown blog on rss feed, though honestly, not much seems to be going on.  However, I was thrilled to see that a webcam has been installed on the top of town hall and going to the website, I watched for about five minutes while the live camera feed supposedly updated itself every 10 seconds.  There was what looked like a white pickup stopped on the main drag at a crosswalk, maybe a light.  It never moved.  Now I remember why I wanted to get out of town.

Derby, CT Webcam

Lilies at the grocery store stop me short, pull me from the produce aisle and suddenly there is the sound of children’s voices, thin and high in song.  The lyrics drift through phonetically, the same as how they once were learned, without the understanding of the words but just in time for Polish celebrations at St. Michael’s school and church.  White dresses, always white and frilly for giggling little girls who sway unblushingly as they sing.  And for the boys, red, white and blue in bowties, shirts and Sunday pants all a-jigger with the itchiness of starch and baseball on the schoolyard where they really feel they ought to be.  A hum of bees or maybe the fluorescent lighting brings me to the flowers, lilies, and back from green grasses to linoleum and supermarket apples, peaches, grapes.