News You Can Use (And Other News, Too)
I rode the T in again today. People are back to coughing and sneezing with abandon. Now that swine flu hysteria seems to have peaked, they aren't afraid others will cudgel them to death if they let out a little psychogenic cough, so everybody's doing it. Proof positive that it's better for everyone when people are always a little afraid of being set upon by an angry mob and cudgeled to death, don't you think?
Even the well-dressed fifty-something businessman next to me on the way in, in the natty overcoat with the leather briefcase sitting squarely on his lap, ventured a weak little fake cough without covering his mouth, just for the fun of it. I mean, heck, why not live a little?
People are totally right back to their old germy ways, that's for sure. You will not believe what I saw on my ride home last night. A smartly-dressed, reasonably intelligent-looking, sporty Davis Squarian got on at Harvard. She was crunching into an apple. She had eaten off all of the skin, but there was still a lot of meat on it.
So she gets on and sits down a couple seats away from me. She sets the apple on the metal frame of the seat next to her and opens a book. I figured she was going to get off and leave the half-eaten apple behind, but she was no litterbug. When we got to Davis, she picked it up, crunched into it again, and dashed off.
Everything you think you know about human nature is turned on its head once you get to the Harvard stop on the T, isn't it?
Riding the T is an education in itself. And Metro is the perfect companion-piece to a Boston commute. And now that newspapers are on the verge of extinction, and Murdoch and his gang are poised to charge us all for news online, I never pass up the rare treat of a free Metro. I mean, I never thought the day would come when William Carlos Williams' adage about the news would be turned on its head:
It is difficultNow, finally, it will be cheaper and easier to get the news from poems than from newspapers. This could be a real life-saver. I mean, if I'm understanding Williams here.
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
Still, I hope Metro sticks around awhile. It's its own kind of poetry. This morning's paper had a front-page picture of the first American face-transplant, Connie Culp. Mazal tov to her. The print version of the story left nothing to the imagination, with before, during, and after shots. And it was very informative on the question of where her new face came from:
"Her new face," Metro reported, "came from a woman who had died." Period. End of story.
Well, at least they're not out there snatching faces off the living. Yet. All I can say is: thank God Metro's still around to keep tabs on the face-snatchers.
In the category of "strange run-ins at the T": Lately I've run into the same guy outside the Davis Square T station. The first time I noticed him he looked badly beaten up and was yelling about how he was an "Ultimate Fighter." Then two days later he was dressed up like a doorman from a hotel - today I saw him yelling (at nobody or a woman who was walking very quickly away, I'm not sure which) about how you "shouldn't mess with me. I'm the Diablo."
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Sounds like one of my housemates.
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The garden is breathtaking. Certainly your pictures make it seem so. It is masterful that you have managed this wonderful blue and lilac vista for spring with white and the very sparing tulip accents. Is the small-flowered mass of light purple vinca? I can see you have peonies. Do you have phlox? Lavender? You once posted a picture of a neighbor's hostas. Do you have any? I always had a battle with slugs over who would get to enjoy the hostas.
The subtlety and control of your cool color scheme reminds me of Gertrude Jekyll's elaborate color rules for perennial borders. I always started a new garden believing I could attain the blue garden I craved but never really succeeded.
Most often I would be seduced by forsythia and daffodils and be carried away with the pastel splendor of a look more like Daphne's garden. The touches of yellow-green foliage are so amazing with her flowers. Magical is the word for what she has done. Still, that cool blue beauty beckons.
Your pictures are amazing, as always. The lilacs are real enough to smell. I am especially fond of white flowers and your dicentra spectablis alba is lovely, as is the cornus florida. Are it and the crabapple in your garden?
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Anita -- you are too kind. Thank you for your always kind words! I do appreciate your encouragement.
As my garden has matured I've been trying to balance out all that blue and lavender a little, but this time of year it tickles me to see it, and it's such a pleasure to be there whenever I can be.
To answer some of your questions: the bed under the lilac is phlox. I do have quite a bit of vinca that comes in what I'd call royal blue. I recently added two white peonies to the tree peony and red peony I've had for the last couple of years. I'm a big hosta fan -- love lush shade gardens -- but my plot is mostly sunny, so hostas tend to get singed in the summer. I have a few along the back, but we'll have to see how they grow.
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