Walking at dusk a couple of days ago in the suburban Louisiana neighborhood where I reside, I came upon a sign. No, not an ethereal sign but a sturdy sign stuck into a mound of earth perhaps six feet high. The sign read: Free Dirt.

What a gift! I'd been thinking of mounding dirt at the base of a couple of fragile trees in our yard, to help insulate and nourish the roots. Here it was, dirt for the taking.

I walked home, fetched my shiny steel pail and a hand spade, and returned to the hill of dirt. Six trips, six buckets of dirt later, the job was complete.

I'm not a gardener, yet I'm learning that plants respond to gentle attention of almost any kind. And I'm grateful for the neighbor's gift.

Now, it's 5:21 AM, just before dawn. It's dark out and the streetlights make bright yellow globes in the fog.

We had family visiting today, and the TV was on 'mute' as images of an old episode of The Brady Bunch flashed on the screen. This led to talk about family television shows from the 1960s - such as The Partridge Family. We could have talked about Father Knows Best, and Leave It to Beaver, and The Ozzie and Harriet Show but came up with two other programs. One was My Three Sons, a show with a dad, grandfather, and three boys. The other was Family Affair about a wealthy civil engineer (Uncle Bill) and his valet (Mr. French) who took in two nieces and a nephew after the kids' parents were lost in a car accident. Both shows were popular and survived many seasons. The characters were household names; the actors received many accolades.

Tonight I watched YouTube clips from My Three Sons and Family Affair, at times funny and touching. I thought about what we call traditional families today - the mom, the dad, and the children. It's a relatively new and constricting concept. I look back at stories from my parents' family trees. In some cases (we're talking 1920s through 1940s here) stray aunts, uncles or cousins were patched into the nuclear families, or they filled in as caretakers, rearing kids when families were hobbled by illness, death, war, jobs requiring long absences, or emotional/mental issues. Kids were raised by the family community, and this wasn't out of the ordinary and it was not frowned upon, but was accepted, expected, and respected. The family - in its larger definition - was providing for the kids. Uncle Bill and Mr. French reluctantly filled a great need taking responsibility for three kids. The three kids in turn transformed the lives of their new parents.


This photo was a publicity shot for My Three Sons circa 1962, and was available through Wikimedia Commons : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1962_My_Three_Sons.jpg

I look at this picture, and try to imagine an ethical justification for our man-made creation, and nothing, nothing comes to mind.

Photo taken 1994
USAF
wikimedia commons image
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B-2_spirit_bombing.jpg

Cenacolo di Fuligno, fresco, in Florence, Italy
painted 1493-1496
image taken 2006
wikimedia commons image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Supper_in_Christian_art

Jerry says, 'There is something about baseball that the other sports lack.'


(Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois, 7-30-2004 image by Rick Dikeman
From Wikimedia Commons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wrigley_field_720.jpg )

I thought about that - could it be the complexity of the shared awareness among team members?
the clockwork elegance of the unfolding of the innings?
the pleasure of being in the stands? (comaraderie, hot dogs, and beer...)
the passion of the fans across distances and decades? (Well - there are other sports that do have this quality.)

There are a number of references to baseball in the novel The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway. A boy and an aging fisherman in Cuba follow the US teams by listening to games on the radio and discussing the plays and the histories and character of the teams. The conversations of these two humble people echo outward from the island, from the book, and leave an enduring impression.

'Sleeping Princess'
by Victor M. Vasnetsov
(Wiktor Michajlowitsch Wassnezow 1848-1926)
Wikimedia Commons image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%A1%D0%BF%D1%8F%D1%89%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D1%86%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B0.jpg

I planted four tomato plants. Two of them are Creoles, and two are Better Boys. Before I bought them, I made sure the fuzzy leaves smelled like a tomato plant. (There was one variety whose scent I couldn't smell at all. That ruled it out.)

There's peace in the labor of the body. Shoveling the earth or walking to the bus stop; sweeping overnight debris from the doorstep or wiping down the car. The mind empties, and the circulation of oxygen throughout the body hastens. We lose some of our anxieties, and others are diminished. Sleep comes more swiftly, and we sleep more deeply.

The scent of leaves of a tomato vine warmed in the sunlight is sensual and bright. I'll rest better for having breathed their pungent earthiness. I'll dream of butterflies, and bees humming in the garden.