Blue and Gold

I have watched my fathers hometown slide into graceful ruin over the past 50+ years. When I was a lad, there was a grocery store, tavern, cafes, filling stations, chicken hatchery, and telephone switchboard. The switchboard was replaced when the two sisters who ran it retired.

The tavern was abandoned and replaced with a liquor store sometime in the 50's. Two old buildings on the south side of the main street slid into decay, roofs and floors collapsing over the years, until by 1959 the only reminders were sunken lots and broken tile walls attached to the adjoining buildings. These tiles were colonized by sparrows and finches. I was fascinated by the chirping, fluttering chaos of those walls of a late summer evening. We had plenty of sparrows at home in Kansas, but nothing to compare with the yellow splash of the gold-finches.

I was reminded of those walls a couple of days ago when I looked out onto our backyard and saw a pair of gold-finches flitting around our blueberry cage. We lost all our berries last year when something nipped the blooms before they could germinate. We suspect bunnies or squirrels - since there was evidence of chewing on the bushes. So we built a cage - close spaced chicken wire around the perimeter, with a tomato cage panel on top. Our local squirrels are too chubby cheeked to fit through the tomato cage, so we felt reasonably safe. The blueberries blossomed and set buds - we counted up to a dozen little green swellings by mid may. Half a dozen of them had turned blue and bulbous by late May. We had one anxious morning when we saw blackbirds sitting on the cage. They eyed the situation carefully for a few minutes, but apparently decided not to risk getting trapped inside. Then, about two weeks ago, I noticed that the blues were gone - neatly trimmed at the calyx.

I watched the gold-finches - at first because they are an unusual sight in our neighborhood, but then because they hung around our cage. The female sat on the southern edge of the cage, while the male hopped about the northeast corner. Then he did a very finch-like maneuver and swung around his perch. Now he was holding onto the cage 'roof' but was inside! He stayed there for perhaps 15-20 seconds - obviously checking out something inside. I could see his head and neck moving, but otherwise have no clue what he found. He then swung back up and flew away. The female followed shortly.

I did a little research on finch foods. They are not known for berry picking. But we have obviously created a habitat that they are one of the few vertebrates capable of exploring. Cardinals, robins, starlings, and bluejays are more likely scavengers in our neighborhood. Still I am intrigued with the notion that we have created a puzzle favoring our more adventurous, and flexible, feathered friends.

1965 Impala

I am not nice to cars. I have ruined almost every car or truck I have owned. Some of this I can write off as inexperience in my callow youth. But, the truth is, I was ruining cars well into my 30's.

My first car was a 1965 Chevy Impala. It was sturdy, and held up to much abuse. Actually it was a tank. I got the car in 1969. I was a 22 year old college student and proud if myself for having talked the price down $500 by threatening to walk out of the dealers showroom. My first accident came after I owned the car about a month. I backed out of the driveway one morning and swung it around to face down the street. K. came out of the house waving her hands for me to stop, so I did. The Impala had a scratch on its rear fender, but my neighbors car had a significantly dented front end. From this incident I learned about insurance and to keep an eye out behind me. This same car succumbed to front end damage in the early 70's when I looked down to see what fell off the dashboard just as a tree entered my lane on 11th street. It finally succumbed to major abuse one weekend when I went to Kansas City. I drove over a curb in a fit of parking lot rage, bottomed out the front end and cracked the exhaust manifold. I must have also damaged the transmission, since I lost 3rd gear. So I roared back to Lawrence down highway 10 that night in 2nd gear. I sold it to a junkyard that same month.

Criminal Justice

I worked for a brief time in the Mid-70's for an group in New York called the Pre-Trial Services Agency (PTSA). They were a branch of the Vera Institute of Justice that handled an arcane piece of the criminal justice system called 'ROR services'. Their mission was to provide research and follow up on people who were arraigned before the city courts. The rationale was that, with better information and more feet on the street, the courts could better decide who should be released on recognizance pre-trial, what appropriate bail should be, etc. Absent such information, the courts would often remand people to an already overcrowded and increasingly unmanageable jail system (see Rikers Island).

While working at PTSA, I visited an official who had an interesting chart on his wall. It depicted the Criminal Justice system as a flow chart - with 'Crime' on the left - flowing toward 'Corrections' on the right. I was impressed with the scope and detail shown. I recently found out that the chart was done as part of a report "The challenge of crime in a free society" done by the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration
of Justice, 1967.
You can find an updated version here: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/flowchart.htm

This chart and the accompanying text do a remarkably complete job of providing a '10000 foot' level overview of what is really quite a complex system in America. As the overview states: "There is no single criminal justice system in this country. We have many similar systems that are individually unique." There are obvious Federal, State, and local jurisdictions with often overlapping concerns, and many historically and politically based differences. It is a remarkable system, of which we should, by and large, be proud. It is essential to our sense of order and justice, and embodies many of the principles on which our country is based - our system of rights - and our determination that 'all men are created equal'. The chart, and the presidential commission which created it, were a response to political pressures in the Mid-60's when large segments of our society did not feel as good about our police and courts as we do today.

I recently started looking for an overview of the american healthcare system that would be as broadly conceived and coherent as this chart. I am still looking.

Householder

Its been a long sojourn as a householder:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Householder_(Buddhism)
I still think of myself this way - especially since taking on a number of definitely home-owner type tasks more or less full time this summer. Leaking shower, stained ceiling, clogged gutters, broken lawnmower. The list is circular and self regenerating - much like life itself.

There are midwestern folks who migrate to the coasts and find themselves there. I am one of those who found that who they are is very much tied up with where they come from. So, while I appreciate the exotics who enhance and inform our culture, I am more charmed by the ways in which the crafty amongst us find ways to incorporate the old and the new. So - solar and wind power, pellet stoves, craftsman houses and furnishing - all these serve to make the center more stable - to make a strong core that endures when the edges become brittle or frayed.