MJ, you were our Elvis

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Like most people my age, Thriller was my first album. My dad got it for me for Christmas that year and claimed it came from Santa. Before then, I only knew Michael as one of the voices of Motown on the holiday album we played every year on Christmas morning, whom I was just old enough not to believe in anymore but not able to fully interrogate on account of a younger brother who was still a true believer. That year, we played Thriller. I fell in love with the entire thing, from the first addictive beat of track one all the way to the crooning fadeout of track nine. I became expert at putting the needle on the record in just the right places to listen to The Girl Is Mine over and over, far more careful of scratching this record than I’d been with my parents’ Led Zeppelin or Helen Reddy, favorites that were quickly displaced. When we traveled to my grandparents’ house later that day, I brought the album with me, just the first of many days that Michael Jackson and I were inseparable. In one of my all-time favorite photos of me as a child I am standing in my grandparents’ living room, wearing the enormous padded headphones my grandmother made my grandfather use when he watched soccer. The headphones are plugged into the stereo-hidden-in-a-console, already by that point my favorite piece of furniture, which I was actually being allowed to use for the first time because I had a record of my own to play. I am wearing a raglan-sleeved baseball-shirt-type nightshirt, and my grandfather is looking over my shoulder as I intently sing along by reading the liner notes (the side where Michael and Paul are pulling the girl apart, in the drawing Michael did himself, which is perhaps the most impressive thing about the whole experience for me).

For most of that year, and much of the years to follow if we’re honest, I listened to Thriller as much as I could. I played it on the stereo that I wasn’t really supposed to use when my parents were at work, turning it up louder than we were really supposed to in the duplex so that I could hear it out the windows on the front lawn. I learned the Beat It steps from the girl next door, who had cable and therefore the ability to see the Beat It steps, and when she moved away I practiced them by myself in the living room. When kids in my class had birthday parties at the skating rink, we all skated our most suave to Billy Jean. Most of all, during those years, we coveted the inimitable red jackets covered in zippers of the rich kids.

It was an embarrassment to us when Michael’s hair caught on fire, because what was he doing pimping Pepsi when everyone knew Pepsi sucked, New Coke or no New Coke. By the time he put out Bad, we were old enough that our younger brothers and sisters were more into Weird Al’s satire (about which we were actually pretty proud, since it just proved what awesome songwriting abilities MJ still had). Eventually, though, it got to be too much: the hair and the nose and all the ugly stuff around kids. We ceded him to the Japanese teens (about whom we were actually pretty happy because it proved that MJ still had it going on even if it was painfully clear that he was way too uncool for us to be associated with anymore, especially now that we had discovered punk, wave, and hardcore). Of course, there were diehards, and we lived vicariously through their devotion, mocking them even as we suffered willingly through yet another playing of Dangerous in the car.

And then we were grown, and MJ became the stuff of tabloid stories involving Elvis’s daughter (about which we were actually pretty accepting, because it proved that someone could still see the spirit we’d loved inside the man about whom we’d come to feel so awkward). We still paid homage to his musical greatness at parties when it was just late enough and we were just drunk enough to be able to rock out to Thriller like we were eight again, or at karaoke where it was a matter of pride to be the one best able to belt out The Way You Make Me Feel. Or maybe my friends just indulged me; it’s true that they were remarkably okay with me claiming their Thriller CD as my own, when I was so obviously ecstatic to be reunited after years without a turntable on which to play my first love.

So, Michael, thank you. Thank you for being the hip highlight of my childhood. Thank you for setting the bar so high as the King of Pop that 90s top 40 never stood a chance. Thank you for hanging in and not dying on a toilet seat.

Tonight I got an extension cord out of the basement and played that nicked Thriller CD on the boombox on the porch while I deadheaded the front flowerbeds. When I was done after side one, I sat on the porch and watched the fireflies come out, thinking about Indiana and the eighties and way music gets inside you and becomes intertwined with the small moments of your own family. One of the college kids across the street came home and sat on his stoop talking on the phone until the end of the album. As he went inside and The Lady In My Life came to a crooning end, I poured out a shot of my best Scotch (Inchgower, 22 year old single malt, cask strength) and had a moment of silence for the man. May you finally have some peace, Michael. Really, that’s all we ever wanted for you.

And who knows: maybe I’ll visit Neverland Ranch one day; maybe I’ll even buy a velvet painting.

MJ, you were our Elvis

Food, Inc. screening

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A couple of weeks ago, we went to a pre-release screening of Food, Inc., downtown at the E Street Theater. We’d never been; it’s nice and worth the trip downtown to be able to see limited run films in a contemporary setting. Old theaters have a lot of charm, however there’s a lot to be said for being able to feel your kneecaps when you get up to leave.

The film itself was well done. There wasn’t much new information in it, although I was pleased to see that my favorite parts of Pollan’s book—the bit about the pastured chickens and the section about corn corn corn—were apparently everyone’s favorites, as they were the basis for a large segment of the film. I had a reaction similar to my response to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which was to think that either I was even more unusual than I realized (there is at least one person in our household who is a proponent of this view) or the authors really misunderestimated their audience’s knowledge. In support of seeing the film even if you already know everything it’s telling you, it’s definitely more striking seeing an aerial view of factory cow farms and an up close view of chickens that are simultaneously too big and underdeveloped to be able to hold themselves up than just reading the book (or watching Chicken Run for the gazillionth time). It’s easy to see footage of bushels of potatoes rolling down assembly lines being cleaned and sorted and be lulled into an easy contentment about how nearly Jetson-like our current era is; it’s nearly impossible to do the same when the potatoes are chickens. Similarly, while reading anything about Monsanto is enraging, the segment covering their persecution of an old Hoosier over his seed-cleaning business made me feel more loyalty to where I grew up than ever before. Also, I wanted to fly back home and personally beat to death (this is hyperbole, FBI) the schmuck of a lawyer who was willing to get his minute of fame stating on camera that losing this case would set a terrible precedent, but wasn’t willing to see it through to the end pro bono. [Insert your favorite ass-word derived expletive here.] Yes, it’s true that every time I see an old guy operating somewhat arcane machinery I think of my grandfather, and that makes me sentimental; it’s also true that the Indiana I grew up in may look the same—miles and miles of corn and soybeans destined for industrial processing—but it’s been totally transformed socioeconomically by Monsanto and that idiotic Thomas-driven decision. (If you’re reading this, Supreme Court, that one is high on the list of ‘stupid things that never should have happened, that we can get down to work reversing just as soon as humanly possible.’)

Besides rousing my ire, only moderately soothed by having had the foresight to wear my ‘Food for people, not for profit!’ t-shirt from the UMD food coop, the film did a decent job of highlighting the way in which our food choices are about more than just the concentration of pesticides in our toddlers’ urine. They are about the way the workers who harvest our food are treated, the health of the communities uphill from the slaughterhouses and downstream from the CAFOs, the economic solvency of the farmers who buy the seeds and rent out the chickens, and the preservation of the natural variety that makes our ecosystems more resilient when faced with pests and disease. This is the part where my partner believes I’m the unusual one, because I think about all those things when I decide how to spend our money, and at this point I’m feeling pretty confident about our mish-mash of choices. I know that we are privileged to have the marginal income to choose to spend on food rather than cable TV, and still pay for health care as well. I know that, and I’m not talking about personal economic choices made by the working poor. I’m talking about the choice to take the time to cook something from scratch, rather than buy the thing that’s full of corn syrup made from the corn grown by a guy in Indiana under the yoke of Monsanto and dependent on federal subsidies. I’m talking about the choice to pay more per gallon of milk to know that the money is going to farmers who are treating their animals well rather than to the shareholders of an enormous company that buys up farms and consolidates them just as soon as organic food starts to look profitable. I’m talking about making this balance work by eating less meat and processed food, and shifting the savings toward the budget for organic vegetables and dairy.

Really, I’m talking about putting your money where your mouth is and making a commitment to a way of participating in the food provision system in this country that reflects your core values about workplaces, environmental impacts, and product quality. Yes, I know not everyone cares as much as I do about whose pockets the profits from my dollars go into at the end of the day (or the quarter), and that’s fine. But everyone cares about something that can be reflected in how we spend our money and obtain our food, and that’s really the larger point that Food, Inc. is making. Figure out what that thing is for you, and let it guide the way you shop and eat, whether it be workers or green spaces or farmers or pesticides. It may take longer and appear to cost more than the alternatives, but we’ll all be part of a happier and healthier society for it.

Food, Inc. screening

garden : foundation bed, volunteer wildflower, and leaves on the twig

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The front flower bed, newly planted.


The front flower bed, one month later.

A month after planting the foundation bed with flowering perennials, we’re seeing all kinds of growth. It doesn’t look like a mature flower garden yet, but it’s showing signs of how it will be when it fills in. When the plants first arrived, I was disappointed; I had expected all of the plants to be in pots and all of the potted plants to be larger. Now that the bare roots have sprouted, we’ve been able to tell which had crown rot and need to be replaced and which are likely going to survive. I probably should have been prepared for how scraggly it looks with just sprouts, but I have never done this kind of planting before.


Lavender buds just opening.

In terms of flowers, the bellflowers were coming into bloom when they arrived, so they have been a nice splash of purple. The scabiosa took off, and they are also sprouting multiple pale purple blooms. While lovely, neither is the true blue that was advertised, and everything looks washed in purple with the lavender in full bloom next to the bed. The butterfly weed grew like, well, a weed, and several of the shoots have developed flower buds. I look forward to that splash of orange or yellow color. The dwarf aster bloomed as well, and I can’t remember whether it was supposed to bloom this time of year or whether it was just early because of the planting schedule. And, the small rudbeckia on the other side of the steps has bloomed, and looks quite cheery in that dark little patch. Besides those, everything else is still in the sprout stage; I’m not sure I’ll get any daisies at all this year at the rate they’re growing. I remind myself that it’s barely summer, and there’s plenty of time for them to shoot up and get established.


The volunteer aster.


Leaves on the clethra.

Elsewhere around the front yard everything’s loving all the rain and heat. The clethra now has a full set of leaves, and we’re hoping to see more shoots once it starts actually photosynthesizing. The aster that I left unmowed has bloomed all over with lovely yellow-centered white flowers. I kind of like it as an outpost at the property line, but I’m under some household pressure to relocate it into the flowerbed. The monarda has grown significantly, and now has a healthy colony of predator insects eating the healthy colony of aphids that discovered it within the first days of planting. It hasn’t bloomed yet, but I’m hopeful. The daylilies are bursting out all over, of course; they love this climate and have been reveling in the rain. I had been thinking of phasing them out in favor of more natives, as I wasn’t sure anything found sustenance in them; I’ve since seen some insects eating the pollen and at least one butterfly—possibly a Delaware skipper—drinking from a bloom.


The daylily bed, with the clethra in the lower left corner.

garden : foundation bed, volunteer wildflower, and leaves on the twig

home : green living room

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Our big accomplishment at the end of May was painting the living room. The living room was the last large room on the list to be painted; we’ve already completed the dining room, family room, and bedroom, as well as two of the three bathrooms. What can I say, after decades of living in whitewashed rentals I wanted some color on the walls! We left the living room for last partly in the hope that our painting skills would improve on some of the less central rooms (which they did) and also because we had no idea what we were going to do with all the stuff that is in the living room while we painted it. In the end, we moved the sofa and freestanding bookshelf into the dining room and piled everything else in the center of the room. This left not very much space to get around, which meant that my partner did all the actual painting in the end. Usually he edges and I roll, but he deserves all the credit for this one.


The living room in the process of being painted.


Living room, out the front window.


Living room, from the doorway toward the far exterior corner.


Living room, from the doorway toward the far interior corner.

Eventually, we’ll have actual chairs to replace the porch chairs (I’m holding out for something like these), a non-green rug, and some lavender pillows. You know, when I win the lottery.

home : green living room

home : sewing machine

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In addition to all the other things that happened the first weekend of June, I scored a sewing machine at a yard sale in Takoma Park. The machine is five years old, but unused: the cord was still secured with a twist-tie and little plastic cover on the plug, and the accessories were still sealed in a plastic bag. While Singer doesn’t make this model anymore, it appears to have been replaced with several in the $200 range; I bought mine for $70! I say this not to gloat, but because this is the kind of thing that never happens to me, the finding of something I’ve been waffling over getting because of the cost for a totally affordable price at a yard sale that I wasn’t even planning to visit (my partner saw the machine when he passed the sale to go to an appointment, and alerted me to it when I arrived to pick him up). I hope that the person who sold it to me is as happy to have the $70 as I am to have the machine!

Following this exciting development, I was able to return the loaner machine to my neighbor across the street (just in time for her grandchildren to insist on using it when they visit this summer). I now have all the quilt blocks squared up, and just need to cut the on-point triangles and then the top will be ready to be assembled. I have several ideas for the next quilts I want to make; first, however, I need to come up with a plan for the back and decide whether I want to try actually quilting it myself. Having a machine that I’m not concerned about breaking that comes with the necessary accessories goes a long way toward that option being an actual possibility.

home : sewing machine