My feeble attempt at urban gardening: two tomato plants. I need more land! I am tryin' tolive on 1/10th of an acre! I can barely park my cars on that!I also know it is real summer because of the heat. I am sleeping in an attic and the nights are warm, restless, and balmy as I snore on my pallet made outta comforters someone threw away in Price Hill last spring. Thankfully the summer has been wet as of yet in Southern Ohio and the corn I have seen outside the city looks good. Last year was awful here for gardeners. The drought killed damn near everything, includin' all the stuff I planted.
I am here with local artist/barfly/minor celebrity/nerd/hillbilly Nathan Turner, my good friend and new roommate. He reports from his home in Southwest Virginian Appalachia that mountain top removal coal mining practices and changing weather patterns created a damaging tornado in Wise County - a heretofore unknown phenomena. The region has also been battling a record years-long drought. The weather sure is getting interesting. Could it be perhaps global warming?
Climatologists report that global warming is causing a total shift in the weather patterns of the American south. Pine forests devastated by drought will give way to deciduous forests. Al Gore is calling for America to rely on 100% renewable energy for our electricity by ten years from now. Gore calls for a paradigm shift relying on a combination of wind, solar, and geothermal power. Gave a big speech Thursday.
Click here to see Al's speech challenging America to get its ass in gear.
I found this campaign poster on EcoGeek.As I sit sweating on my porch (see photo below) watching the neighborhood's kids ride bikes I contemplate what climate change will mean for me. I think more and more about wanting to live closer to land, grow my own food, live simpler. I am convinced that I could live anywhere where I could keep all my books, have a garage or barn, and some kind of electricity to run a computer and maybe a light and a fan. I could live without plumbing fairly easily. I am still fantasizing about building an electric car out of an old Beetle. That'd basically wean me off gasoline. I could heat with wood; I knew people who relied on wood stoves growing up. Having contemplated all of this extensively recently I hope to earn my Ph.D. in Sociology someplace inexpensive and then go work at a state school in a smallish town where I can live on a small tract of land out on the margins. The other scenario I envision is urban farming on a stretch of vacant lots or a brownfield someplace in the rustbelt. The Rustbelt and Appalachia are home to me; I grew up at their intersection and my family history is intimately tied to how macroeconomic shifts clobbered both of them in the last century.
Rolling Stone magazine this month bears a smiling portrait of Barrack Obama on the cover. Just beyond his interview with the venerable pop culture glossy is a full-length article about the melting glaciers of Greenland. I discovered this development while waiting for a West African pharmacist to fill an order for sulfa-related antibiotocs for my sick guinea pig at the Winton Place Krogers last week. I had some time to kill and Rolling Stone seemed more interesting than lowrider magazines and Redbook. I was amazed that the demographic that reads Rolling Stone actually cares enough about global warming to warrant a whole article about it. Perhaps times really are changing. I wish I lived in a country that could get its shit together to stop the crash course we are on with ecological apocalypse, but being a student of history I expect massive folly, corruption, and incompetence. That seems to be pretty much par for the course for American history as it has unfolded thus far - a la the recent film There Will Be Blood based on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!.
So in further news from the home front the city of Cincinnati is threating to take me to court if I don't rebuild my front porch. Apparently this is the result of a building code enforcement blitzkrieg initiated by the Northside community association or the neighborhood council or whatever. It was mentioned on an article I saw in the Building Cincinnati blog.
I jest been hanging out with Mr. Turner and ma dogs. We are eating a lot of greens and grilled boneless pork ribs. The dogs are restless, they want to go out to the park more and they are shedding like crazy. I also bought a scooter and a matching sidecar. Its a 2008 Genuine Stella from Metro Scooter over at Dana and Montgomery.
Presently Nathan and I are exploring the magical world of old Jim Varney commercials on Youtube. I didn't know this but Ernest P. Worrell emerged into stardom from a slew of local TV commercials in Nashville. There sure are a hell of a lot of them commercials! We have also watched all of season 7 of Trailer Park Boys. We are thus educating ourselves about our white trash brethren north of the Canadian border.
I am also shopping online for a cheap used diesel Volkswagen. I found a wrecked 83 Rabbit in Pennsylvania I might buy on ebay - that shit gets 40a gallon! I always prefer previously abused automobiles - they have more personality. Plus their blemished bodies make them a lot cheaper. And I'd probably fuck 'em up anyhow. I also dream about building another artcar like the one that landed me a scholarship at the Art Academy back in 2000. That was fun. I need a big cheap old Cadillac or something for that.
I also learned an important lesson about urban living: you can't burn yer unwanted furniture in Cincinnati. At least not where I live. I had an ol' sofa that somebody aroun' the block threw out. I brought it home and the dogs slep' on it an' tore it up. Nathan and the dogs had to fight each other for sleepin' room on it. Anyhow I decided to git rid of it. So I threw it in the backyard, doused it in grill lighter fliud and lit it on fire.
The charred area on the bottom right is where all this occurred. So then the couch was burnin' and after about ten minutes we had a big fire that was about fifteen feet tall. Then the fire department came and made us put it out. Actually I saw them before they saw me and startin' hosin' water all over it 'cause Nathan said that if they come and have to put out your fire they charge you a fine. They asked us how the fire started - that was the best part. I told 'em the truth an' they said "Naww you can't do that." So I guess that's the lesson here. You can't do that in the city. Damn. Now I have a half burnt couch I don't know what to do with.
That's about it from the house. Over and out. 10-40. Keep yer hammer cocked an' yer powder dry.
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