Now is the Time to Kill

According to Ecclesiastes there is a time for just about everything, and now is the time to kill garlic mustard. Please strap on your sprayer full of round-up (or generic equivalent), don your very thin weed-pulling gloves, put on old shoes and pants and go out and take on the garlic mustard in your woods and neighborhood. If you live in the midwest, then you have garlic mustard, and if you only have a little then you should feel grateful and act fast. Pull it carefully at the root now and toss it in the road or on a pile to dry and die; if you wait until it goes to seed, then you will have to burn it. If you love spring wildflowers such as trillium, jack-in-the-pulpit, trout lillies and May apples, then you should kill garlic mustard. Kill with love for those flowers (and biodiversity) and kill with care. If you want to help me kill my garlic mustard at my house, just let me know, for I am planning a garlic-mustard-pulling luncheon and cocktail hour. If you want more information on the evil noxious weed, check out http://www.nps.gov/plants/ALIEN/fact/alpe1.htm.

Writer needs your help

Hip hip hooray! My new collection is going to be published by Wayne State University Press in Spring 2009, but I don’t have a title. The working title was “Winter Life” but that sounds too clean, too crystalline, considering the content of the story: storms, men who work in foundries and as custodians, snow, cold, methamphetamine abuse (“Love and Meth”?). I’ve got a list of hundreds of phrases for inspiring titles, but none of them can quite stand up for the whole book. Often folks use a story title as the book title, but none of mine are quite compelling enough: The Inventor, Winter Life, Falling, The Yard Man, The Solutions to Ben's problem, Moved, Bringing Home Belle, Fuel for the Millennium, World of Gas, Family Reunion, Storm Warning, Somewhere Warm, The Burn, Boar Taint. The stories have physical pain in them (how about “Skinning a Man Alive”?), cold weather (“Naked in Winter”? “Furious Season” “Cold Rushes In”?), slightly redneckish men (“White Guys”? or "The Last Man Standing?"). Isaac Dinesen has a book “Winter Tales,” and I thought I might borrow that title, but maybe that’s even more clean-sounding than “Winter Life.”I want a title that makes people laugh a little or say “hmmm.” Every title I come up with gets frowns from my pals; for example I wanted a title with the word “bastards” in it, like “Sons of Bitches and Bastards.” Or how about “Local Monstrosities”? Can anyone help me? There's at least a free book in it for you.

Running Around the Neighborhood

I’ve been jogging lately, trying to get back in my fighting form. There are a lot of dogs in my neighborhood, many of whom seem angry about my exercise. This one yellow dog on Market street always barks, Rar-rar-rar, from behind the chain link fence. Then, yesterday morning, the yard gate was open, and the Rar-rar-rar came closer. As I tried to run past, the dog seemed inclined to chase, so I stood screaming while the yellow dog slowly approached. “Your dog is out! Come get your dog! Whose dog is this?!” I screamed so loud my throat hurt. Luckily a couple of cars came between us, driving very slowly, and I used them for cover and ran away. Last week a pitbull came down the road in full muscle, a complicated harness on its body, leash dragging. I wondered if he had eaten his owner and now was out for his post-prandial, or dessert. I climbed up onto a stranger’s porch as the dog approached, and I was partway up on the roof when an old man came out of the house and fell against his minivan. With two of us there, the dog lost interest and continued past the house, so I got off the roof and helped the man back to his walker. He told me he was eighty-three, asked me if I wanted to come inside. He had a disease he said, that was taking away use of his muscles, he couldn’t remember the name of it. That house that’s for sale on the corner, he said, he was hoping to buy it, though it needs a lot of work. It is listed for $36,000 he told me. This morning near the trailer park, I approached a woman maybe twenty years old who was holding a baby out in front of her in a strange embrace. Had a big bag on her arm and she seemed to be wrestling with the child as I passed. I turned around and jogged back. “Do you need some help?” I asked. She was holding a shoe in one hand. She handed me her baby, maybe a little more than a year old, and I held her while she slipped the shoe on and fastened it. “I couldn’t get anybody to babysit so I have to take her with me to this job training,” she said. “It’s not a job, just the training.” I handed her back her child, who seemed content to be passed around, dragged off to job training, and she continued toward the bus stop at a fast walk.

Bleeding

Julie R. is in the hopital in Ann Arbor, not doing well with her bone marrow transplant. Her husband John says now is the time for a miracle. She is bleeding, he says, and her body is ravaged. Seems like the whole world is bleeding now. I've just been to the doctor with my complaint, my friend L is contemplating surgery to stop her bleeding. Chris was splitting kindling wood with his little maul and slipped and gashed his shin. A deer just limped by my window on three legs, holding the fourth damaged limb aloft, a victim of the road. Our bodies are out of their minds in their desperate sympathy, thinking our blood might help save a life.