Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

It’s hazy tonight, the blue moon won’t be visible, certainly won’t be blue. It’ll be a grey sunset. So why am I walking to Atwater Bluff?

Then I noticed cloud wisps of luminous pink, and the ambivalence fled. Soon I could see Michigan’s grey water overhung by a hazy sky, and a white streak of mist glowing along the horizon. And I could hear humans, red-winged blackbirds, and sea gulls, calling from all directions. Symphony of sound, subtlety of hues, the magic of the bluff was there as always. May the bluff, and the grass that abuts it, remain that way, magical and non-toxic, all summer.

It’s 6 AM. I wake up thinking about the calls I absolutely have to make today, at least ten, better write a list. Also have to work out next week’s talk on the creative process. That should come first. It’s for visual artists, so I have to skew it more in that direction, have to figure out where to insert visuals. Or will the audience look at the visuals then and ignore what I’m saying? Maybe I should put them at the end. But what about the garden? Tomorrow is already June. I decide to do my yoga, make breakfast, read the Times, do the crossword, and relax before settling in for the marathon.

While skimming the newspaper, I see an article in the HOUSE AND HOME section on recycling grey water, read it, and want to write a poem. I go to the computer, grab some scrap paper, and scribble: We all want to save the baby, Can we save the bathwater, too? Earth is going down the tubes, What should we do? Can dishwater provide us with a flush, Or will it bubble? Can we use it in our garden, Is that too much trouble?

Don’t have time to work on it now, and anyway underneath the paper I’m writing on there’s an envelope that needs to be postmarked today. I stamp it, 39 + 2, and run it to the corner mailbox. When I return I hear the bindweed in my front yard screaming at me, angry about that last blog. I start to pull it out. Endless. I imagine there’s so much bindweed because we got rid of all the other weeds, got rid of its competitors. Also know that pulling will probably stimulate growth, like pruning a tree. Thinking of this reminds me it’s time to write a new blog, better mention that the new bike rack arrived at Pick ‘N Save, and it’s very popular. I go back inside and turn on the computer, about 100 messages since midnight, at least 95 of them spam. Delete, delete, delete.“Senate approves Iraq money with no withdrawal,” spam or politics? The spammers are getting more and more clever, and I trash everything that creates suspicion. There’s the doorbell. The post-woman. I return to the computer, write my blog in shorthand, enter it into Microsoft Word, telephone rings. And now it’s already 11:30. I haven’t even written my list.

I’d been looking forward to this week not because of what’s happening but because of what’s not happening. Our Grand Opening is over, I have no performances for the rest of the month, just little chores to do, no major projects. Anyway, that’s how I looked at the future on Sunday morning, before I began to work in our parkway flower garden.

Reality always diverges from expectations. In four hours I managed to do what I thought I’d finish in one. Earlier this month, I’d planted half the plot; now all I had to do was mulch around the remaining edges, rake up the weeds, sprinkle seeds, and then I could work in our vegetable garden with our friend Doug, who’s sharing the work and the harvest, if there is one. But the yarrow held fast against my rake, the violets formed an unwanted carpet, the wild rose bushes remained rooted, dandelions had already gifted their spores to the whole neighborhood, and not even these intruders could compete with the main bane of my flower patch: bindweed. I raked back and forth, back and forth, tugged and loosened plants, piled them on newspaper along the edges, and mentally wrote an Ode to bindweed.
No not an ode.
Nothing is owed
To bindweed.
Nothing is owed
I wish that I’d hoed
When this viny foe
Appeared years ago
Seeming benign and so
Beautiful in its wild morning glory.
I wish I had hoed
Nipped it in the bud
Kept instead the dandelion
And pulled up every sign
Of the wicked weeds that bind.
This is not an ode, nothing is owed, should all be hoed.
For bindweed is nature’s version of the multi-national
Totally irresponsible, totally irrational
It strangles its competitors, wraps its tendrils round and round,
Spreads from plant to plant, both above and under ground.
It kills and propagates. Why is it so rapacious?
It takes over everything in a world created spacious.

Have you ever seen an area completely overrun? You will if you ride the Metro-North train from Manhattan to Tarrytown. The wild morning glory has co-opted one section of the vegetation that abuts the railroad bed, has created skeleton trees whose only leaves are morning glory leaves.

My poem has a ways to go, and so do I. Lots of bindweed sneers at me in my swatch of parkway.

I thought I’d post the press release for the opening of our new gallery, so here it is! And I hope you'll come:

The Oriental Pharmacy Lunch Counter is back. For several years it visited various museums, galleries, and libraries in the Milwaukee and Chicago area. Now it and other works by Adolph and Suzanne Rosenblatt are on view at the Rosenblatt Gallery above Artasia Gallery and Museum at 181 North Broadway. The grand opening is Friday, May 18, 5:30-9:30 PM, reading by Sarah Rosenblatt at 7 PM.

The present exhibit showcases selected artwork by Adolph and Suzanne done over the past fifty years. Adolph's sculpture captures the energy and essence of whatever excites him in his everyday life. In New York City it was the potpourri of pedestrians, pavement, and traffic, as in his painted wax sculpture of Herald Square. An early Milwaukee piece turned life lived on the front porch into bronze. When bronze became too expensive, he used clay, forming the moist hunks into restaurants full of eaters, swimming pools with swimmers, front pages of the New York Times, into many of the people and places whose paths crossed his.

Suzanne was Adolph's first student, in 1960, and like him is involved in energy and essence, movement and light. She draws dancers only when they're in action, people on the beach only when they're being themselves, unaware of the artist eying them. She paints sunrises although the sky and water change by the second. Since she's also a writer and performance poet, many of her drawings contain embedded poems. Landscapes by Curt Schroeder, who was also one of Adolph's students many years ago, are on view in the guest artist gallery.

The official Grand Opening takes place Friday, May 18, 5:30-9:30 PM with a special feature: at 7 PM Sarah Rosenblatt will read from her second book, ONE SEASON BEHIND, illustrated by Suzanne and published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. John Ashbery wrote the following blurb for Sarah's book: Sarah Rosenblatt writes about things we all know--sun, light, wind, children, rumpled domestic interiors--in poetry with the brightness and buoyancy of Soutine's landscapes. Though there are shadows, the mood is predominantly joyful in its unquestioning acceptance of the rules we live by.
Sarah's home page: http://www.rosenblattgallery.com/sarah/index.shtml

Here are the details:
GRAND OPENING ROSENBLATT GALLERY
Friday May 18, 5:30-9:30 PM
Sculpture by ADOLPH ROSENBLATT, including the Oriental Pharmacy Lunch Counter
Paintings, Drawings, Prints by SUZANNE ROSENBLATT
Paintings by CURT SCHROEDER
7:00 Reading by SARAH ROSENBLATT on ARTASIA Stage
Live Music by STUMBLESOME
Art and Artifacts from ARTASIA's Latest Container
In the Isabella Ryder Building
181 N. Broadway
In the Historic Third Ward

I hope Shorewood will one day be green, not solid green, just GREEN, in harmony with earth’s wellbeing. Green, with no toxic runoff. Green, with still more rain gardens, more native plants. Green, with special skip the car days to encourage bikes and buses, with parks and parkways where kids can roll around without being poisoned. Here’s a starter, Trustee Dawn Anderson sent a notice around about a meeting to discuss green spaces on Wednesday:

Please join us at an open house on May 16 to participate in a discussion about the public green spaces and recreational facilities in Shorewood. The meeting will take place between 7:00pm and 9:00 pm at the Shorewood Intermediate School -- 3830 N. Morris Blvd..

A committee has been working with PDI (Planning and Design Institute) for the last several months to develop a new Park Plan for the village - the last one was done in 1992. Your input at this point in the process is IMPORTANT!

This will be the only open house, so if you can't make it and have questions or comments, please feel free to contact danderson78@wi.rr.com subject=Shorewood Park Input, Trustee Dawn Anderson.

The University should be a paragon for the community, yet this past week UWM has been an anti-paragon. Instead of demonstrating how an educated population can live in harmony with the environment, it’s poisoning the environment. Cindy, a member of Grass Roots, wrote me on Monday that UWM sprayed once again! She found out we can complain about this to the UWM Physical Plant phone: 229-4742. She also suggested contacting Chancellor Carlos E Santiago, ces95@uwm.edu, (414) 229-4331.

Cindy’s Email:..Does anyone know WHY they apply Pesticides to the Lawn areas on UWM campus? I noticed the little white signs around the UWM Union last week and around Mitchell Hall today. (They say to keep off until May 18th) Most of the little signs are actually knocked DOWN so people may not even know the area has been treated. We just had the 1 mile WALK A MILE IN HER SHOES in this same area on Sunday May 6th. Many children and dogs were in this event. So they may have been on the treated green areas without even knowing...Isn't there ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE Solution for whatever "Pests" are bothering whomever is treating our campus with known carcinogens? ..For a little more info, check here.

I forwarded her Email to the Grass Roots list, and here are some of the responses:
This from Sarah L: I called and they said to call Dennis Greenwood at 229-6272. I left him a message saying small children and pets walk on the grass, and pesticides have been shown to cause cancer. I urged him to use a more organic method of maintaining the lawns.

This from someone who actually saw the stealth spraying: On Saturday, May 5, I arrived around 8 a.m., and two Chemlawn trucks were applying chemicals in the areas around Downer Ave and Greene. The air reeked of the chemicals being applied. Shortly after I arrived, the trucks moved on. What struck me at the time was - what time did these guys get to UWM? And, how sneaky can you get? Give me a break, Saturday morning before 8 a.m. to apply herbicide and pesticide to UWM greenery seems a very odd time for a job like this. Don't you agree?

This from Ney: I read your blog, Suzanne. Violets and dandelions are such a comforting sight because they indicate an absence of poisonous lawn chemicals. Few people know that Fritillary caterpillars can only eat violet leaves. Without violets, Fritillary butterflies would become extinct.

This from me: Refuse to use Chemlawn
According to Pesticide Watch
17 of 32 (53 percent) of TruGreen ChemLawn’s pesticide products include ingredients that are possible carcinogens, as defined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
- All 32 of TruGreen ChemLawn’s pesticide products include ingredients that pose threats to the environment including water supplies, aquatic organisms, and non-targeted insects.
- 9 of 32 (28 percent) of TruGreen ChemLawn’s pesticide products include ingredients that are known or suspected reproductive toxins (7/32 known, 22 percent)
Even ChemLawn’s sales practices are dishonest. Why would anyone want to trust them with toxic chemicals???

This morning I came to City Market to escape my things-to-do list. Walking here, I contemplated, and mentally wrote about, the dandelion, the innocuous dandelion. Kids have always loved to pick bouquets of fresh blooms, and later in the season they love blowing showers of spores into the air. How did the dandelion, sometime between my childhood and my grandchildren’s childhoods, become the enemy?

I can see demonizing mice and rats and bindweed and garlic mustard. But dandelions? Lawns patterned with yellow are much more alive than flat, dead green lawns. Pure grass, no violets nor clover nor groundcover, is poison to me. I don’t want to walk on those virgin lawns, don’t want dogs to sniff them or children to run on them or songbirds to eat the toxic worms. It’s the pesticide companies that have set the aesthetic, and I’m not buying in.

Organic lawn care companies use corn gluten for those who want safe yet dandy-free lawns. But why no dandelions? Last night I actually watched the TV ads, wondering what they say about our society. One was particularly offensive: let the real you show, cover your grey hair! That’s illogical, unless of course you’ve dyed your hair grey! The real me is blond with streaks of white and grey, reflecting all the years I’ve had, hopefully to learn about life. And I wouldn’t want to hide it.

So I walked to City Market and judged people by their lawns, as always amazed at the willingness to risk the health of the community and the earth in order to keep lawns free of streaks of purple and yellow. I wish home-owners would stop picking on dandelions and just dye their hair.