We left Smith River on May 30th. The furthest East we got was Bennington, Vermont, where we visited Robert Frost’s house and got in a fight in front of our kids and maybe some strangers at a park. We made it home on June 30th, in time to make dinner and watch the sun set over the ocean somewhere at the edge of the ranch.

The van chugged along through the Sierra Nevadas, the Black Hills, the Badlands, the tips of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a brief foray into the Green Mountains, and a day in the Catskills. She weathered the whole thing well for being almost 30 years old, swimming along like a barge on the blacktop. The kids did well too, with the exception of Willa, who doesn’t sit still unless she’s asleep. Safran gained a few pounds (or more) and traveled like a happy sack of potatoes.

Several people have asked me what my favorite part of the trip was, and after some thought (and some not very thought-out replies), it was certainly the people. We saw people we hadn’t seen in over 10 years. We saw people we had met the year before. We met people we would like to see again. We visited living family in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ohio, and dead family in Elmira, New York. We visited Mark Twain’s grave and saw his old study, transplanted to a lawn in downtown Elmira from the farm where he was neighbors with my great-great grandmother.

We saw the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and Benjamin Franklin’s Private Cess Pit in Philadelphia. We drove around Little Roundtop in Gettysburg and past the spot where Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address (it was too hot to wander around like we did last time with baby Molly). We took a hike in Ohio across a very solid stone bridge that Lincoln ordered built immediately after his inauguration—having almost died crossing the previous, wooden iteration on his way to the inauguration. We visited Plum Creek in Minnesota and saw the footprint of the Ingalls’s dugout there in the green shade. We walked into the saloon where Wild Bill Hickock was shot dead in Deadwood, South Dakota. In Cheyenne, Wyoming, after mass I bought a coffee and (rather incongruously on a whim) a pair of pants, in an old building where Calamity Jane was once arrested.

Everywhere we went people were kind and courteous. A few stared. In New York City someone shouted, “A FAMILY! I haven’t seen a family in years!” The Jewish owner of Russ & Daughters serving us bagels with shmear and herring (for Spencer) saw all our daughters and explained their business was the first in the United States to have “& Daughters” in the name. Waiting in line to pay, someone said, “Hey we’re from California too!” And everyone in the shop was shocked and laughed when they found out we live 14 hours apart in the same state.

In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania we stayed with a wonderful Mennonite family and listened to the sounds of Amish buggies and wagons coming down the road quietly and rhythmically. We saw lightening and lightening bugs. The kids throve like lambs in green pasture on time spent with other farm kids. They didn’t enjoy the driving days very much. But oh to let them loose on farms with other bare-footed children, streams full of minnows, a million rows of ripe unsprayed strawberries, herds of grass-sleek cows and even calves raised on their moms, like we used to have! It was hard to leave those places.

At home again, everyone asked if we were glad to be back. And we stumbled over the answer and smiled awkwardly, because it felt a little like we were in exile, pulled away from all our friends old and new, and unsure if or when we would see them again.

It’s such a big country. It makes you sad and proud all at the same time to think of it. Looking back on the trip it all folds up like a map that you’ve spread across your knees, and it really was too short. There were other people we missed.

And the fireflies.

God bless you, and happy late birthday, dear Nation.

It’s been a little rough. I was starting to get pre-eclampsia so we had to induce labor. That was a new experience! Then two weeks into recovery everyone got The Flu. The Worst Flu Ever. Everyone is still exhausted, two weeks post illness. Safran didn’t get it.

The day after he was born, the ewes started lambing. Most of them are with a friend in the greater Sacramento area, but we have a little group here, and both groups started the next day. I guess we were all ready to go.

The cows are all out on pasture, and I am ready to get outside myself, after spending almost a month in the house.

Happy Spring Equinox from all 9 of us :-)

That’s Saint Valentine’s head, displayed for veneration with a crown of flowers in the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome. He was a priest (possibly a bishop) beaten and then beheaded in the 3rd century, during during the reign of Claudius Gothicus, and hastily buried along the Via Flaminia in Rome. Shortly thereafter his body was dug up by his friends, and bits of it have been spread throughout Europe over the years for veneration. In the Eastern Orthodox Church his feast is celebrated on July 30th, and in the Roman Catholic Church it is celebrated today, February 14th, which is believed to be the day he was killed.

There was no major Christian persecution under Claudius Gothicus that we have clear documentation of, but it was also not a time or place where Christians were widely accepted. Claudius Gothicus was known as a tough guy—supposedly once punching out a horse’s teeth in a fit of temper—and is said to have liked St. Valentine well enough until he tried to convince the emperor to become a Christian. The emperor prior to Gothicus had been tolerant of the Christians, but the two prior emperors (one of whom Gothicus served under in the army as a young man) had forced Christians to worship the emperor as god or be killed, and the emperor after Gothicus went right back to it. So, not a time of peace for Christians by any means. They were seen as a superstitious and socially disruptive new cult, and one of the reasons for that was their belief in the importance of the human body in the eyes of God.

The Romans, like most civilizations throughout human history, viewed and treated the human body as an object of power politics more than anything else. If you were in the lower castes in Rome, especially a woman, slave, or child, your body was an object for the gratification of pleasure of those in power. If you were an infant born at the wrong time or place or with obvious disabilities, you were viewed as human garbage and left to die (this was such a common practice that the temple prostitutes and parents of Rome filled wells with the bodies of unwanted infants over the years, a practice well-documented by historians and archeologists). Then along come these silly people who believe that every human is made ‘in the image of God’ and beloved of God. They begin to save unwanted infants. They condemn the ravaging of women and boys as sexual playthings for the powerful. They claim marriage is a sacred covenant between only one man and one woman, and that having sex with someone besides your spouse is so evil it will send you to eternal punishment in Hell. They claim that, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” – Galatians 3:28

A socially disruptive sect indeed. Especially if you were someone who enjoyed visiting the temple prostitutes, or keeping a slave girl or boy on the side while your wife was busy raising the kids at home, as most upper class Roman men did.

The body suddenly had value in and of itself, according to these followers of the executed God-Man Jesus, and the value was inherent regardless of social status. Christians had their superstitious new liturgy, which was much like the Jewish temple ceremonies of the time except that instead of an animal being sacrificed and offered to God, they believed that their priests were able to turn bread and wine into the literal body and blood of their incarnate God, which they then ate—a sort of glorified cannibalism. Once again the human body was weirdly glorified here. God’s physical body, broken for them and served up to fortify their spiritual life by being literally ingested as food. And their own physical bodies, becoming literal temples of God, where He would reside physically for a short time until the substance they had ingested was broken down. Wildly weird! And baptism, the ceremonial cleansing of the body practiced by the Jews, also transformed into a new ceremony that was believed to literally imbue faith and grace into the human body and soul through the physical application of water and the use of words spoken by a physical mouth (“I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”).

The implications of these beliefs and acts were that the physical was intrinsically tied into the spiritual and vice versa, and that the human body was a meaningful receptacle of God’s love. Not in the way a Roman would assume (think Europa and the bull, Leda and the swan, etc.), where a god lusts after the human body as an object that will temporarily serve his pleasure. No, but as an intrinsic part of the whole person him or herself, which God desires to bring into Himself in full communion, because He is love itself, and has created each individual human—soul and body in unity—as an expression of His love. Not only could the body be a meaningful receptacle of God’s love, the human body was meant to be that more than anything else; more than a tool for use in work, or a toy for pleasure, or a temporary cart for the immortal soul. This idea was, and is, radical.

It is this belief that gives value and rights to the socially undesirable person, and to children and women, in the eyes of western law. It is this belief that allows one to get along with a body that is obviously falling apart and dying, and still treat it as a beloved object worthy of kindness and care. It is this belief that can help us to appreciate and love our bodies as they are, and to care for them with all their weaknesses and flaws in mind even when we feel as if they are a sort of cage—as they may seem sometimes. And where for many centuries we have been so used to this idea that we treat it as a natural part of human civilization, we must absolutely recall that it is not a “normal” idea, or one that was shared by most human cultures until about 2000 years ago, and even then only in the areas that adopted Christianity broadly. Thus it is easily lost once again, and must be cherished and held onto if we wish it to remain a part of our own culture moving forward.

All this is to say, this belief carries all the compassion our western civilization can muster on its back. You may call it superstitious, you may even feel that it is socially disruptive now that we are so technologically adept. Maybe there is a culture pushing it aside and replacing it even as we speak with the idea that our body is just a fleshy object to be manipulated for our own desires. We are become both Europa and the bull, so to speak.

But there will always be those who enter the incense-scented temple and kneel before the decayed skull crowned lovingly with flowers. There will always be those who pause in reverence before that strange symbol and reality of the body as both imperfect and beloved, worthy of honor even when it is separated from the soul.

Saint Valentine, pray for us.

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Thanks for all your support and kind words throughout the year! Still waiting on Feral Farm Kid #7 to make his appearance, we’ll let you know when that happens. . .

The book club I am part of here is reading War and Peace for the end of the year, and I finished it a week or so ago. I had forgotten how much I love that book, and was caught between wanting to read it every night before bed for a couple hours (no time during the day), and wanting it to last longer. Alas, I did not have patience, and finished it in 5 weeks. The first time I read it I was 11, and my best friend, 12, had started it on a dare with her father—she read the whole thing in a week. It took me a month, but I loved it. I read it again when I was pregnant with my first child, and it took about a month then too. In fact I took it to the hospital with me, thinking I would read while in labor. Labor wasn’t bad, or that long, but definitely not the time to read anything, let alone War and Peace! How silly I was then, and how silly I must still be. After I got home I finished it while learning to nurse the baby. Now I have finished it again in the weeks before I learn to graduate the baby, who is long past babyhood, and about to be past high school. I find myself overwhelmed at the idea of her becoming an adult, and amazed at her abilities in math and the general intrepidness and determination with which she faces life.

Simultaneously, I find myself again expecting the emergence of a new person into the family, sometime between the end of February and the beginning of March. The commentary on this upcoming event has varied widely from, “you look great! How exciting!” to the more common and ambiguous, “oh, wow.” And the less charitable, “you’re going to be all stretched out,” or “this is the last one, right?” As if I were a pair of cotton underwear whose elastic has gotten crunchy. Well, thankfully, women are biologically set as far as carrying and delivering children goes, and we don’t normally fall apart at the seams. Stay active and strong and eat well, and learn from someone with experience how to move around and get in a good position to have a baby, and the event can be just as calm and sometimes as quick as it is for all the other mammals out there. Even if it’s not as easy for the average woman as the average ewe or doe, it can certainly be an empowering experience when treated with biological realism instead of superstitious fear and pseudo-medical patronization. The old orange-out-your-nose analogy is probably one of the worst possible ways of describing labor, since an orange is not designed to fit through a nose and a nose is not designed to deliver oranges into the world—but you’ll still hear it told to young mothers. As far as fruit and vegetables go, my favorite comment so far was made by a total stranger in the grocery store. He was probably about 70, and as I walked past him in the aisle he turned and said loudly, “I told you not to swallow those watermelon seeds, now look what’s happened!” I wish that good soul a very merry Christmas; he made me sincerely enjoy my current state of silliness.

I think that a large percentage of the folks subscribed to my Substack are expecting a more farmerly newsletter. My idea of this expectation has made posting infrequent, because these days I am generally cut off from farming. Not that I don’t still read and think about it, and in fact probably spend too much time thinking about it instead of focusing on homeschooling, but I have no farm besides the one I plan out in my head. In my head, the numbers and dates and markets and expenses and rainfall and seasons pace around in a path that is so well-tread that it has become a little trail I am stuck on. I write them down occasionally, as hypothetical business plans based on hypothetical locations, and the last time I did so I remembered a homeless woman that I was friends with in Sacramento when I was a teenager. She would fill notebooks full of tiny script from page edge to page edge, while sitting in the bushes underneath a railroad overpass, growing a thin moustache and sometimes mumbling quietly to herself. Her name was Eve, and for the first few weeks that I said hi to her as I walked past on my way to work, I couldn’t figure out if she was a woman or man, if she had said “Eve” or “Steve”, so much one with the bushes and the sidewalk and the overpass she was. After I suddenly recalled Eve’s notebooks, I stopped writing down the numbers, and mostly haven’t thought about them either. There is no immanent farm. Nothing is immanent except Christmas, potty-training, sleep training, Lent and then another baby.

Some women find parenting and homeschooling very satisfying, and some women do not. I do not. I long to get out of the house and do work that involves my hands, fresh air, animals, dirt, plants and notebooks. But I also remember how free and wild a homeschooled kid gets to be, how they have space and time to develop themselves and explore in a way that most public schooled kids don’t anymore. I want to protect my kids from less-than-willing exposure to porn, which has become inevitable in public school, and from the bruising ugliness of peer politics and 8 hours spent in crowds and lines indoors and sitting in boring classrooms with a bunch of kids on smartphones. I want them to learn to love reading and writing, to learn how to learn, to master at least basic cooking, math, budgeting and business planning, and to know how to dress a chicken or mend a tear—maybe even how to fly a plane or ride a horse or draw a good likeness of someone, if they want to. I have not been able to reconcile my desire for more time out of the house with the stronger desire that they have more room to be children and enjoy childhood, and thus I homeschool while still dreaming about farming. I am learning the capacities of my time, but I still pace along them like a fence.

That’s a long explanation of why I haven’t made more farming-related posts. I’m sure they will come again in time.

I’m posting a couple links here for better things to read, and an image. Enjoy, and to you and yours a Merry Christmas! And a happy Feast of St. Stephen (the 26th) and Feast of Saint John the Beloved (the 27th) too, while you’re at it.

Not political and beautifully written:

Mildly political but good nonetheless:

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-return-of-the-jewish-question/?ref=compact-newsletter

And last of all an image I’ve found very beautiful and consoling lately:

I have taken a moment to re-open my Etsy shop Pastrix, and sell the last of my last batch of sheepskins. In between a trip to Sacramento, a trip to Minnesota, and another trip to Sacramento I thought it needed to happen now or never.

My grey, black and spotted sheepskins are probably going down to Petaluma to a shop called Pennyroyal that sells extremely lovely things. If they don’t end up there look for them in my Etsy shop as well.

I hope to have more skins going to the little tannery that we found to replace our old tannery in SF that finally closed shop after 100+ years in business. There is a stack of them salting in the garage, and I am choosing which ram lambs we keep back to feed our family in 2026 based on the quality and color of their fleece, with more sheepskins in mind.

What a whirlwind Summer it was! I am happy for it to be Fall, and feeling ready for a slower season in some ways. We shipped off all the ewes to our friend for the coming year, except a handful of older ewes who will stay here with the adult rams and our guard dogs. The ram lambs will stay here until we sell and eat them. While the information that the land we are leasing would sell this year (our main reason for shipping off the ewes) was apparently not very reliable (the landowner called to inform us he was definitely not selling, about three hours after the sheep hauler left with the flock), we are taking it in stride and looking for other ways to cover the cost of the lease for the next year without any income from the coming lamb crop. (Always get things in writing and don’t trust a blessed soul!). What a shitshow things can be sometimes, but God is good, in and through the shitshows. If the ram lambs sell well, we can cover this year’s lease costs and maybe pay for a little of next year’s lease. In our spare time we are spitballing ideas to make money off of 80 acres of sheep pasture without sheep (fattening beef cattle we can’t afford to buy? Pumpkin spider farming?The next Woodstock? HipCamping in a pasture? Haha, not covered by our insurance or the lease, alas…)

Well, in the 15 minutes it took me to organize my thoughts and write this, all the big girls left to ride the horses, Willa was put into undies by someone (not potty trained yet…) and peed on the top of my writing desk, and some sort of Play-doh and school book apocalypse happened at the kitchen table. So I better go. But, expect more actual writing and photos, after Thanksgiving!

(In one sentence’s time Willa has moved on to disgorging the contents of my wallet and attempting to use them as a soil amendment for one of my orchids. What a prodigy of creative destruction this one is!)

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Shearing will have to wait another day, along with all the pretty pictures.

I had a new and exciting experience a few days ago, which involved a funny twinge that happened in the lower back area while lifting water troughs onto the flatbed of our truck. Went to bed after that in not very much discomfort and woke up kind of crippled. After a few days and a nice swim in the river, I am back to normal, mostly. But it was a good wake up call that I need to be a bit more careful how I hoick large objects around, and to put some time in getting stronger again. A year off of farming, combined with gaining a million or so pounds while pregnant with Willa, were not helpful. Since I am not 28 anymore, bouncing back will take a little more planning. The gym has been helpful in this regard, but it only helps if I go, and the past 40 days have been too full of fun (and a stomach bug) to squeeze in time there.

One of the upsides to being not so darn young anymore is watching my older children start to get moderately good at life. They are good drivers, swimmers, and riders (of bicycles and horses); they can throw a ball and catch it, hear a tune and sing it back, do math that I either forgot years ago or never learned, and know more about history than I ever did, and they look great in all the clothes I used to wear when I was 19. They are excellent braiders-of-hair, babysitters, and lamb skinners. They can dress out a rabbit like putting on their socks, climb a tree, and stitch up a torn skirt in the blink of an eye, all while being friendly and cheerful to those around them (except each other…sometimes). Adele is a skilled and patient gardener, Molly loves sewing things from patterns she makes herself. It’s a pleasure to watch them grow. Meanwhile Jack and Willa are still peeing on the edge of the toilet and ripping up book jackets, and my time is unbelievably full just trying to keep them alive. That’s how it goes though, and in 15 years I will be looking at them in wonder as they take on grownup tasks and responsibilities. Ida and Max are in that funny in-between age where childhood is still their full reality, even though Max is 5 years older (as well as a pretty good driver and horse-rider herself).

Well, as an apology for not writing in so long, here is one of our favorite “treat” breakfast recipes. Typically we would serve some sausage or bacon first while it cooks, and a nice black cup of coffee to go with it.

CLAFOUTIS
(we’ve been pronouncing it klah-FOO-tee for the past 19 years, so I’m going with that)
Serves 4-ish

1 lb of sweet cherries (frozen or fresh)
3 eggs
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons flour
2 cups of milk

(you may use unpitted cherries, which is actually more traditional, but you will have to remember to spit out the pits as you eat)
Heat oven to 425 F.

Butter a shallow baking dish well (I use a 9x9 pan for a single recipe), and put the cherries in it so that they make an even layer.

In a mixing bowl, use hand beaters to beat the eggs well, then add in the sugar and flour and beat until the mixture is smooth, adding in the milk gradually until it is a liquid batter, and the almond extract if you remember it :-)

Pour the egg/milk mixture over the cherries and bake for 20-30 minutes, depending on whether your oven likes to burn things or undercook them (mine does both—did I mention how much I hate electric ovens?) The top will be lightly golden and the cherry juice bubbling, but a knife should come out clean.

Top with powdered sugar if desired (it sure looks pretty), and eat while still warm (good cold too, in a pinch).

The 8 of us can clean up a double recipe in one sitting, so plan accordingly.

p.s. can be made with good quality prunes as well, although this changes the taste profile considerably!

We took a trip to celebrate Easter with our brothers and sisters in the East. They call Easter Pascha, and celebrate it by throwing holy water and rose petals, and swinging candelabras full of lit candles wildly (it reminds one of an earthquake, and it’s meant to), while chanting and yelling “Christ is risen!” in Greek and English. The priest and his servers are robed in white and gold, the floor is strewn with fresh bay leaves, and the scent of the bay leaves under your feet, the censor full of burning incense being swung round and round, the rose petals and the bay leaves and the incense and the chanting and the gold and white! Then the feasting, dancing and more feasting!

Easter afternoon we visited our brothers and sisters in the West, and once again the gold and white; there were three priests together in gold and white, glittering under the little cloud of incense, singing the liturgy in Latin, and we sang in reply, and Christ visited us there at the altar, hidden in the bread and wine and gold and white and the little cloud of incense. There were white Easter lilies on the altar, and they must have come from Smith River, just like us. All the colors of the faces around us were turned up towards the altar, flowers turned up to the Sun. We were all looking towards Him and singing and feasting. It was good to celebrate Easter there, at home in the West.

This is the homily given every Pascha, every Easter, in every Eastern Rite church around the world:

Are there any who are devout lovers of God? Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival!

Are there any who are grateful servants? Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!

Are there any weary with fasting?
Let them now receive their wages!

If any have toiled from the first hour,
let them receive their due reward;
If any have come after the third hour,
let him with gratitude join in the Feast!
And he that arrived after the sixth hour,
let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.

And if any delayed until the ninth hour,
let him not hesitate; but let him come too.
And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour,
let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.

For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.

He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour,
as well as to him that toiled from the first.

To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.
He accepts the works as He greets the endeavor.
The deed He honors and the intention He commends.
Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!

First and last alike receive your reward;
rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!
You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!

Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.
Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith.
Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty,
for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.
He has destroyed it by enduring it.
He destroyed Hell when He descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.

Isaiah foretold this when he said,
“You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below.”
Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.

Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.

O death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!

Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

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We used to get teary-eyed after we left, thinking about Maryland and the greenness of it and the smell, after we had moved to the hot, dry steppe landscape of Panoche. We would see little lights on the landscape that weren’t there in the evening, missing the fireflies so badly we imagined them.

This was the farm road down to the stone house, commercial kitchen, farm store, garden, hay barns and equipment shed. It was the road that we came down from the trailer we lived in at the top of the hill. Molly and Adele are dressed for church here. It must have been a Sunday.

Mittens was our travelling cat. She had the soul of a good dog. Everywhere we went on the farm she followed us, even onto tractors, through electric chicken fencing (didn’t go well), through snow, rain, and mud, and on the little electric golf cart that we used to zip around on for chores. The seat was slippery; she would spread herself out flat and hang on with her claws as we zoomed through potholes and made precarious turns in waist-high grass. One day she disappeared, and we feared the worst, that a coyote had run off with her in the night. We all shed some tears, and then around bed time we heard a faint meowing coming from the little shed next to the trailer, in which we kept some of our things. She had snuck in the previous evening when Spencer got something out of it, and spent the night and day locked in safely. There was much rejoicing, and she greeted us with her favorite greeting, a hearty licking of the human forearm, repeated until your skin started to feel slightly raw.

I grew a “lasagna style” garden there, with great success. It was six inches of compost, and another three or four of wood chips over that, and we planted right into the compost. That compost was beautiful. It was one large pile in the bay of a newer barn, and into it went everything dead and used up from the farm, mixed with wood chips. We put a whole dead horse in that pile, the farmer’s sister’s old pony. We scooped a dead bull calf into that pile, big and chestnut colored. That was the first calf we ever saw born, and he was the worst calving experience we had for many years. So huge he couldn’t get out on his own, and with no experience at all and the farmer at work for the day we got to try pulling him with only hay string to help. The farmer’s wife made calls on her phone while her little dog ran around the cow yapping and getting under foot. Finally after an hour or more of sweating and cursing and me gritting my teeth with a kidney infection at the same time (bad things come in threes, it’s true, although the third thing is long forgotten), some dairy farmers from nearby were called (late! Too late!). They were big men, with big arms and strong shoulders, and they looked disdainfully at Spencer as they entered the barn. Lo and behold, none of those milk-fed sons of bitches could pull that calf either, even with the proper equipment. It ended poorly. The calf was dead when they finally got it out, and mom ended up slaughtered for beef later on. It was a heck of a first calving experience, discouraging and brutal. But not enough to throw us off the track we were headed on.

This was a sweet 15 year old cow that lived around our trailer for a while, because she couldn’t keep up with the herd. She was a beauty, with a lovely calf who would run laps around the trailer in the evening, getting out her zoomies as calves, lambs, and kids will.

That fence behind Old Cow was hot hot hot. I know, because a paper plate I had just finished eating on was shuffled along by a breeze right through it. Resting on some vegetation just past the wires, it required cleaning up, and I reached for it without thinking. The reach threw off my slightly front-heavy balance (I was pregnant), and without thinking I caught myself on the wire with both hands. Oops. The stone wall behind it is probably older than most structures in the great state of California, and when it was intact, it served the same purpose as the electric fence without shocking anyone. Back then plates didn’t fly around in the breeze either. Life was simpler and less painful, unless you got a bacterial infection or smallpox.

On Saturdays, after Spencer had worked a half day, we would get in our truck and drive into Lancaster County, just over the border. Our Amish friend Aaron sold raw milk and butter through a farm club sort of thing, and it was good. Golden and rich and smelling of clover and flowers. I would pick and wash a handful of succulent little radishes from the garden, slice them part way down the middle, wedge a scoop of raw butter the color of sunshine right into the radish, sprinkle salt on it, and eat the thing in one bite. Crisp, peppery, juicy, buttery and salty. When the El Dorado Hills Style Magazine ran a very short local business owner Q&A piece on me, one of the questions was, “favorite food?” Of course, I answered raw, grassfed butter (and pictured that tub of Amish butter). If I looked a little fat in the picture it was not due to my love of butter, although the readers would not know it. I was 9 months pregnant with Ida. In fact, I gave birth the next day. Here is Lalu, who decided that Ida and I should have some kind of protection from the stranger taking the photo. She was a serious dog, quite old in this photo, but always ready to rumble if she felt that her flock was in danger. Anyway, I liked butter a lot before Maryland, but in Maryland we learned to enjoy it like a fine wine, which may have, in part, led to running our own dairy farm and grazing business, which in turn led to this awkward picture of me and my favorite dog:

Our time in Maryland was very important, because it was there we fell in love with dairying, with cows, and with pasture. Meadows are rare in California; many of them are swallowed up under reservoirs in the mountains, or under housing developments and almond orchards in the valleys. In Maryland we learned about the natural human desire for the meadow. It woke up and shaped the course of our journey.

Later on we would learn that native Californians lovingly tended the meadows, pulling up saplings and burning to keep brush and trees from swallowing them, and hunting the wild livestock that favors those green cradles. Humans are at home in meadows, in pasture. In January Spencer visited Estonia, and learned that after decades of neglecting them, the Estonian government has finally reversed course and is now fighting to protect the country’s historic meadows by grazing them again. They are late to the game, and the meadows, which were maintained by humans since prehistory, and neglected since communism came around, are greatly encroached upon by the forest. They don’t even have enough cattle or sheep to do the job. But in the long term, the culture of meadows will return, and it is encouraging to hear that Estonia has recognized their importance again. Full circle. The smell of humus and chlorophyl and rain. The taste of sun-yellow butter. The feeling of Mittens licking your arm raw out of love, and Lalu, old, toothless and lion-like in her glory. We are all standing in a meadow, in my memories.

Full circle.

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Seven out of the eight of us had pneumonia over Christmas. It took January to get all the way over it, and then we felt good for most of February, and I should have written more then. Now we are on to the latest version of Covid, or the flu, or whatever virus that is going around, and it has been bad. The three littles are sleeping 4 -6 hours during the day on top of 9-12 hours overnight, and I wish I could sleep that long too. Only the teens seem to have been spared the worst of it, although they are tired too.

This winter was less muddy, less of a mess, and thus less intense for Spencer in many ways, but it has been a slog due to illness. Writerly inspiration has been minimal. The river has not hit flood stage this year, although there has been plenty of rain.

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Those are the three oldest girls on that rock. I told them if all hell breaks loose they should build a monastery up there.

Here are the sheep. In a pasture we don’t own, with shite feed. Life goes on.

Here am I, with a baby. As usual. Babies, toddlers and writing don’t mix well. But you can read Dante while they fall asleep nursing at bedtime. I made it through Purgatory last night. Now on to Paradise.

Here is the Husband. That word comes from the word hus, which meant house, and the word bondi, which mean dweller, peasant, free holder. The word husband came to replace the word wer, which meant married man, and was the partner of the word wife, which meant married woman, and which we still use. Wer is still used in English in one place: werewolf, or more literally, man-wolf. Here is my werewolf and our pups. He is looking a bit wolfy though, isn’t he?

This is our current Winter Solstice situation. I am laid up with a cough that’s lasted a couple months, a crawler, a screamer ( 2 is the year of the multi-purpose scream—you can express anger, pain, cheerfulness, and fear with it, even in quick succession), and the rest of the menagerie. Not much writing is going on. Ida turned 6 today. We made buttery, saffron-yellow lussenkatter on Saint Lucy’s Day, and apple pie on Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete means rejoice (the imperative, a command, do it!) and eating homemade apple pie is one way to rejoice. It is one of two Sundays in the year when the priest is supposed to wear rose colored vestments. Our priest’s were more like Pepto-Bismol, but I have seen vestments that glowed gold and pink like a sunrise. In the middle of the dark of Lent, in the middle of the cold of Advent, a little moment to remember to rejoice. Gaudete! Christ is coming.

When I was 10 I heard a piece of music on the radio that I caught part of with my tape recorder. It was so beautiful. I lost the tape, but kept the memory of it. For 27 years I never could find out what it was. Until last week, when Spotify threw it into a playlist of music. It was The Tallis Scholars singing part of Palestrina’s mass for a new pope. Here is the link on Youtube. And if you enjoyed it, here is the whole mass, which is worth sitting down in a quiet room to listen to.

Merry Christmas, Happy new year.

Gaudete!

p.s. the lamb arrived this morning, a winter solstice baby with a bad mom. Ida enjoyed the birthday surprise!

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I would like to write about Maryland, without making anyone sound bad except myself. Not because I am a particularly humble person, but because I am so dang proud that if I can’t be the best at something else, I’ll take being best at being the worst. But that would be a lie. Everyone was their own kind of trouble there, in Conowingo, Rising Sun, Colora.

Maryland is full of forests, hills and streams that run into the great, broad Susquehanna River, which carries the burdens of the east coast down to the sea via the Chesapeake Bay. We crossed that river every Sunday on our way to church in Bel Air. It was a road that passed over a dam on the river, and on the northern bank there were always bald eagles waiting in the trees for the dead fish and flotsam that passed through the dam. It was just a two lane highway that passed over the dam on the Susquehanna, and once we crossed it behind an Amish buggy, pulled by a dark bay horse trotting energetically ahead of a line of impatient cars.

When we arrived in Rising Sun, Maryland, we had crossed the United States almost from coast to coast, 2760-something odd miles. Our chariot was Lucky Lucy, our load was the trailer on which we had hoped to build a tiny home, and it was full of all our worldly possession, tarped under and over and strapped tightly down. Little Molly and Adele occupied the backseat of the cab with our cat Mittens in a comfortable crate between them. The girls were, and remain, excellent travelling companions. Mittens was also great at travelling—sleeping peacefully as if drugged all day, and then taking out her energy all night by traversing the motel room curtains like a squirrel going up and down a tree at high speed. Neither toddlers nor cats are known for being fun on cross-country trips, so I guess we lucked out.

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The sheep have arrived from the heat of the valley, and are settled in to eating what’s in front of them. The friends who were keeping them for me have marked some of the herd: red dots for those that are pregnant, and mysterious orange and blue “X” marks on a handful of extra miserable looking individuals. So far, the mysterious X’s seem to mean “least likely to survive a change of climate” and two of them have keeled over without much ado. I am monitoring everyone for runny noses and other signs of illness. The warm sunny days and cold, damp nights happening now are the hardest kind of weather for sheep, who seem to tolerate all kinds of burning hot months and sleety freezing cold without trouble, only to come up with pneumonia suddenly when the temperatures get confusing in the fall. They say it takes livestock 5 years to acclimate to a new environment. They will have to get used to confusing fall weather.

The dogs don’t seem troubled by the new weather. I think they appreciate the lack of ripgut brome and foxtail barley, goathead and star thistle. They rode here in the sleeper cab of the truck, like queens. I have so missed the hand-sized paws and slobbery jowls welcoming me every day when I get to the field!

The garden is almost done, these pictures are from early September. The tomatoes are producing still, while the beans and flowers begin to peter out. Our Saia tomatoes from Italy have ripened and are as delicious as we remembered them to be. We have to pick them early and let them finish ripening on the counter, because there are black beetles that will devour them after they turn red. I am saving seeds again, although nothing dries out well here.

“O-veeeee!” is supposedly the way people call sheep. Personally, I just yell “sheep!!” like an idiot.

I missed them so, those wooly cretins. Watching them graze on a fresh break of pasture gives me such pleasure. But if I can’t make money with them in the next two years somehow (live lambs, whole lambs, wool and sheepskins?), I will sell them. They can’t be a hobby. I am not retired. Yet :-)

We have hiked in the redwoods more in the past couple months, enjoying the outdoors as much as possible before the rains come. This pool was obviously someone’s swimming hole. But if you let go of the rope swing that hung over it and broke the stillness of that water, it is entirely possible that you would slip into a fissure in time and emerge in a different universe. All the possible outcomes of your life would have changed unaccountably.

And this must be exactly how my sheep feel.

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Often, I find myself thinking of this area as some other place besides California. It’s definitely not Oregon, Nevada or Mexico, but it doesn’t feel quite like California either.

When I was a child in Sacramento, there were occasional summer rainstorms, but never the kind that drop 3 inches of water in 2 days. The garden appreciated the bath. Our corn, which was first stomped out by a few loose cows one night, then ravaged by neglect, has now become the domicile of a handsome spider the size of a small plum and the color of a flashy race car. 3 inches of rain didn’t bother her.

Spencer weeded the tomatoes over the weekend, which are covered in huge green, ox-heart shaped fruit. Everyone here says they will never turn, it just doesn’t get warm enough without a greenhouse of some kind. They passed through the rain unscathed and one is just starting to turn some kind of color. I am holding my breath for a miracle of ripeness that will allow me to at least save seed from this variety.

We received two of these huge tomatoes about 16 years ago, from an Italian man who smuggled them home in his luggage from Italy. I have not seen a variety like them anywhere else. They are large, red, ox-heart shaped and faintly striped across the shoulders. They had a rich sweet flavor. I grew them with great success in Maryland, but had to leave them all still very green on the plants when we moved back to California. I grew them in Placerville once, but the deer got them all one night (along with everything else in the garden except the winter squash), before they even had a chance to set fruit. Try and try again.

Spencer is reading Lord of the Rings out loud to us in the evenings. I think this is our third go round with it as a family. He is reading through it with a handful of guy friends. They meet to talk about it over coffee. None of them are nerdy, the majority don’t read much, and all of them are enjoying it thoroughly. When I first read the books as a teenager, I was so uber-nerdy that I learned the elven script out of the appendices in the final book, and would write notes in my sketchbook in it to keep them private. Six children later, I have forgotten the script completely. But I would pick it back up again if I had the gumption. Call me a nerd, I am too old now to care.

I just finished reading The Eternal Woman by Gertrude Von Le Fort, a book that I wish I had got ahold of when I was younger and needed some kind of philosophy to build an idea of womanhood for myself. So much of current feminist philosophy seems to be not much more than a backhand slap at the idea of man being the wrongful center of everything. As if the best that can be said is a negation of something rather than a new thought—an erasure of man to bring woman to the foreground, instead of a legitimate clarification of the meaning of woman in and of herself. It is a Catholic book, and advertised in such a way that it sounds extremely religious (I bought it on a whim in spite of this), but I would have found it just as meaningful before becoming Catholic.

My girls are currently finishing the Harry Potter books, reading the last two of the series. I gave up as a kid after the 5th one, which I deemed headed down a wormhole of teen drama. Although they agree that the first few were the best, I must admit I am curious now, and maybe I will read the last two books myself. Some of the kids at my church growing up were not allowed to even have them in the house, because of “witchcraft”. I was always embarrassed by that. There is no real witchcraft in them, and much to be admired. I believe that the greater danger was that the grown ups in church were not talking about the spiritual realm except as it relates to demons, and even then they were avoiding talking about demons as well, or talking about them in a way that made you feel scared. Angels were mentioned in anecdotes once in a while. The idea of having special, traditional prayers that were useful to guard against demons or get them out of your house, or of thanking angels for guarding you, or asking them to guard you, was considered heretical and dangerous voodoo—like Harry Potter, I suppose. It figures that I found myself drawn to a Church that has a very long history of treating the spiritual realm as real and even ordinary. I suppose some of those same parents would look sadly at me now, and say that’s what becomes of someone who was allowed to read Harry Potter as a child ;-)

These are dahlias my friend grew. I am not a huge fan of pink, but I love these flowers. I am determined to grow some myself next year. My own garden is producing a small amount of more mundane blossoms, cream-colored calendula and dark orange Cosmos from Indonesia, and little orange dahlias from the grocery store that the earwigs like to nibble on.

We have not owned a lawn mower for 16 years. After 3 inches of rain in August, I can say it might be time to get one for our tiny “lawn”. The rabbits are not organized enough to keep things tidy on that front, and the weed eater doesn’t have quite the same neat effect. One of our neighbors, who doesn’t speak English, calls the weed eater a “Weedle”. It is an excellent name. Henceforth, they should all be called Weedles, and using them denoted by the verb, “weedling”.

I should tell you about Maryland soon. Sometimes it smells like Maryland here, on the opposite side of the continent. It must be the forest and the rain. But most of the time it smells like the ocean and cows.

Here we are Mad Maxing around the ranch on our ATV. The lady who took this picture thought it was amazing we all fit; we didn’t have the heart to tell her we often throw a couple more kids on there too. This was the day before the rain. The air smelled of the ocean, which is directly beyond that line of trees in the background, and cows, which we had been tailing right before this picture was taken. I guess it smelled like California. It smelled like home.

More soon, Dear Reader.

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Back to Georgia, where we were laid over until returning to California. Remember this part of the story? Way before Placerville, before Panoche and before Maryland, there was that attempt on NYC. There was George in the candle shop and then Bubba and our blown up engine, culminating in my Aunt and Uncle rescuing us and a two month stay at their house while we tried to get our van fixed and figure out what to do next.

My Aunt and Uncle love good books, and their house is full of them. One day we were chatting about the Amish we had seen in Loganton, and my Aunt got a book off the shelf and suggested we’d find it interesting. That book was Better Off: Flipping the Switch On Technology by Eric Brende. I don’t plan to write a review here, except to say it is an excellent book, and changed the course of our plans substantially.

Artists, which we thought we would be, are very busy. To some degree, the world of the arts is an unfriendly place for children. Much is lost to get good enough to make a living, especially in performing arts, which is what Spencer was training in. You cannot bring your little kids to work while you rehearse a play or dance or attend a gallery opening. We wanted to be with each other and with our children, to share a life together instead of spending the day missing our kids and getting home too tired to enjoy their company. Eric Brende ended up making soap at home and selling it at farmer’s markets, among other home-based enterprises. That is exactly what Spencer tried in his spare time when we finally gave up on getting the van fixed quickly, and flew back to Sacramento.

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A former landlord leased us a house in downtown Sacramento; he graciously rented it to us even though it was more than we could afford on paper. We sublet the bottom story to a couple finishing law school. Near the commuter train and not too far from Spencer’s job, the location meant we could get around easily by foot or bike until our van was finally refitted with an engine. Spencer spent time after his 9-5 (and a side job) trying out soap making, and I started walking to the huge downtown branch of the public library to read about gardening, cooking and other skills of provision. I worked on selling art and had some success with ceramics. Things moved along.

Our tiny back yard was completely shaded, and although we salvaged wood and built some lovely raised beds, filled with good soil (for free) by a sweet friend, nothing grew without sun. Spencer made several batches of soap, and discovered he didn’t care for it. I sold some sculptures. The van made it back from Georgia on a car hauler, after having a new engine put in and then breaking down again, and we decided to sell it.

At this time another book, serendipitously wedged in the garden section of the library, ended up coming home with me. The Contrary Farmer by Gene Logsdon, a delicious read about small-scale farming by an ornery Ohioan. We were on some kind of slippery slope of reading. Dangerous things were happening. We borrowed a car and picked up three chicks from a feed store. Immediately after getting them settled into our brooder, our dog jumped two baby gates, pushed a door open, and killed two of them. We got three more, and successfully raised the 4 and had our own eggs in 6 months.

Our neighbors loved the hens and would drop vegetable scraps over the fence for them. One chain smoking punk named Carla from the apartments behind us would talk to them lovingly through a knothole in the fence every day. We built them a sturdy coop out of a cabinet and some plywood we found in an alley, strong enough to resist the nightly forays of a family of racoons.

Reading Gene Logsdon (an excellent and entertaining writer whether you are an urbanite or agrarian), lead to reading Joel Salatin. God bless them both, Gene and Joel. They made it sound so doable and right. And that picture of the Amish farms in Loganton was there in our heads like a little homing beacon. We thought, what about farming? Why not try farming? A little vegetable CSA with some chickens on the side, and us and our kids working in the field together, or at the market selling our produce—together. We would leave the city on weekends to get into the countryside when we could, why not make it a permanent move? This was where the idea began to really solidify.

We took the money from selling the Beast and bought a ‘96 Dodge (with the 12 valve Cummins) for $6,000 (Lucky Lucy), and a small 1960’s travel trailer for $700. Our weekends were filled with trips to visit small farms in California and out of state, learning and thinking and planning.

Our downstairs tenants finished law school and we made a plan to move into our tiny trailer at my parents house in Sacramento, to save up money for 6 months instead of paying rent. Our sweet, chicken-killing, stock-chasing dog was rehomed to family in Roseville, our hens to a family in Citrus Heights. Spencer’s parents had recently moved into his grandparent’s house in Minnesota, which came with 20 acres of hay field. We made a plan with them to come out and build ourselves a tiny house, and try growing things on those 20 acres. We sold our 1960’s travel trailer for $2000 after the 6 months and moved into my parents house temporarily, using the proceeds of the little trailer to buy a big triple axle trailer that was made to carry a tiny home. Things were moving along on that slippery slope.

Then, when we were getting all set to go with our little bundle of savings and our big trailer, family disaster struck. No details here, but things changed significantly in Minnesota, and we couldn’t land there to build our tiny house or try farming. We wavered, unsure if Spencer should still quit his jobs here, unsure of what to do and quite miserable about putting my parents out any longer as house guests. Our next decision was to take up an apprenticeship on a farm somewhere, and we looked especially for a farm that offered an apprenticeship with separate living quarters that could house a couple and two little children. This limited our choices, but we found a farm in Maryland that had a large trailer for apprentice housing, one with a queen bed and two bunks that would fit our family perfectly. We could get in some working education and maybe still build our tiny home and work some piece of land somewhere. An artist friend said we were naïve, it was really hard to farm, her daughter had tried it and it didn’t work out. That raised my hackles. We would be farmers some day—I’d show her.

We packed up that big trailer with all our worldly goods, tarped the load carefully to protect it from rain and snow, and left for Conowingo, Maryland in the late spring. Lucky Lucy pulled that load like it was nothing. She did not break down, then or for the next ten years. We made a stop in Minnesota to visit Spencer’s family, and landed in Maryland in March, just before a late snowstorm.

That was quite the chapter.
I promise the next one will be shorter.

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There are two kinds of life-altering reading.

Books of all kinds can change your life in all senses of the word: spiritual, physical, mental. This applies equally to fiction and non-fiction.

For example: if you asked me whether Dante’s allegorical fiction or G.K. Chesterton’s paradoxical non-fiction were more influential on my conversion to Catholicism, whether it was Peter Kreeft’s philosophy or Evelyn Waugh’s fiction that drew me in, I would have to reply both. It was both the “smells and bells” of the Latin mass and the enormity of the less aesthetically overwhelming (and largely ignored) Catholic theology in combination. For a long time the Catholic teaching had made sense, but it took the otherworldliness of one almost silent Latin low mass, populated by the mumbles and thumps and quiet chaos of small children ensconced in pews in great number, to push me and my family over the edge. I knew and had known that Christ was present in the Eucharist. But there was need still to see this fact play out in real life—it had to be part of a story which could swallow you up, and not just a how-to book of knowledge.

A good work of fiction is not a lie, it is a picture of the truth in some form that you cannot forget and which is not fully amenable to dissection. Some non-fiction is the same way. But non-fiction of a certain kind is amenable to dissection and even benefits from it—great works of history and science and philosophy can be teased out and parsed in a way that typically deadens the impact of great works of fiction. Both stories and facts as presented in book form can change your life.

I am speaking of books here though. Good, solid books.

Now to the life changing schlock. We are swimming in it every day online. Articles that tantalize with gossip, or insult, or emotion, while dulling reason and slowly suffocating the imagination. The relentless cycle of the news, 99.9% of which is some form of schlock regardless of which direction it is coming from or how pertinent it is to our daily life. The cute TikTok videos and infuriating X posts and Instagrams you want your life to look like. If you want to find yourself less and less enchanted by life, less and less interested in the things happening around you each moment, and more like some sort of sea cucumber that sits and absorbs and belches out its guts pointlessly at regular intervals in an attempt to protect itself—well, then by all means continue swimming in the shlock. Schlock is addicting by design, and it takes great work to pull yourself up out of the pool. You will feel as heavy as lead for a moment, and want to sink back in. And from the edge, standing on the cement, it still looks cool and inviting. You must run away. You must get away from it in a way that takes work, maybe planning, even a little bit of suffering. Even then, having escaped, it will take vigilance to avoid falling back, something easy to do if you find yourself stepping back suddenly from an unexpected blow.

The pool was delicious but filthy. It felt so soothing in way, but you were swimming in shit. It was not a great book that you disagreed with, it was a slow death of the imagination that you were agreeing to without realizing it. Better by far to read something excellent that you can’t stand written out on paper (ok, even a Kindle counts, though less so), than to go on with that slow death of the soul.

I would like to suggest, as a way of reminding yourself the pool is full of shit, return to a river. A real one. A literal river. Stand with your feet in it at least. Find a spot clean enough and safe enough to swim, and if you are not a swimmer, at least stand in the water. Do not bring a speaker. Do not bring snacks. Just stand in the river and shut up for a minute. If necessary, chuck your iphone far out in to the middle of the river where you absolutely cannot retrieve it. The tiny panic attack you will have as it hits the surface of the water will subside shortly, and you will hear the sound of the river a little more clearly afterwards.

At minimum, even if you cannot bring yourself to turn that little pocket-nestled demon into a momentary projectile bound for watery oblivion, stand in the river for at least 10 minutes without it in your hand.

Most people cannot go from bathing in schlock to reading a great book. But you can start with the one thing that we all have some access to. A body of moving water that is not your bathtub or a fountain at the park. Water in the wild. Get in it. Try to avoid the still kind with leeches, but if you are so located that you can access nothing but a pond, put your legs in it and watch the swallows dipping over it in the evening—leeches be damned. Look for water bugs or tadpoles or even just dragonflies. If you are bored there, learn to get over it.

Let your rage at being purposefully boiled alive in schlock help you to free yourself from it. Remember, that is how they want you—trapped in the pool of shit, dying. Get angry about it, and use your anger to free yourself. Make a plan. Slowly acclimate yourself to the bracing air of real life. Practice reading real books, even if you can only handle little chapters at first. Build up strength and learn to turn pages with your fingers more adeptly than you can swipe screens.

There are all kinds of excuses you can come up with to avoid escaping the schlock. I am too tired. I am too poor. I am just trying to feel better. My work is so hard I need to relax. I need to know what’s going on. The kids systematically destroyed all my brain cells today and I don’t have time to do anything else between diaper changes and meal-making. These are my usual excuses. We cannot afford them anymore, regardless of our social stats, lack of patience or perverse curiosity.

Don’t die in the pool. Your neighbors, children, community and future civilizations depend on your survival.

Get in the river.

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We had AAA coverage for a free tow or two, and that is how we met Bubba. He brought a second man along to drive some of us, because the tow truck didn’t have room for the two car seats the girls rode in.

I don’t remember what time of day the Beast died, but it was dark by the time Bubba and his employee arrived and drove us to his shop.

He was balding, with a round forehead and small friendly eyes. Bubba was a white guy who worked in a dirty trade, his pale skin permanently tinged with black grease, and his sleeveless t-shirt draped over a classic beer belly. He was missing most but not all of his front teeth. Combined with a thick Southern accent, this made understanding him difficult. You had to listen hard and attentively. I don’t recall the name of Bubba’s employee, but he was black and had his teeth and less of an accent, so we could converse as he he drove me and the girls ahead of the tow truck.

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“What’s your problem?”

“Some folks around the corner suggested we should ask you about an apartment for rent".”

Appeased that we did not have a problem with him personally, George made a phone call to a man who could show us two units for rent. The bathrooms had just been remodeled, he said, waiting for the man to pick up.

“Hey, I need you to show those apartments to a guy. . .”

Spencer could hear the man ask how he would know whom to watch for.

”You’ll know,” explained George, “he’s all white”.

Turning to Spencer, George added, “No offence, it’s how we describe people like you.”

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