Raw Human Emotion

We went to the Good Friday service at Clay United Methodist Church. We're not full members but have attended regularly for nearly a year now. The service was a powerful one.

They did five readings, progressing through the story of Jesus's crucifixion. After the final reading, the choir stood and we all sang Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? My 11-year old son, Alex, had been following along intently and joined in singing. Between verses, this passage from John (19:31-35) was read:

"It was Preparation Day, and to prevent the bodies remaining on the cross during the Sabbath, the Jews asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken away. Consequently the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with him and then the other. When they came to Jesus, they found he was already dead, and so instead of breaking his legs one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance; and immediately there came out blood and water.

Then we sang again. "Were you there when they pierced him in the side?" That was where Alex lost it. I heard him begin to cry, big tears and heaving sobs. And he continued to sing as well. Through his tears, I heard him sing, "Tremble, tremble, tremble..." The folks in the pew behind us, along with Michele and I, began to cry as well. I have never been so overcome by such pure, raw emotion as at that moment, singing those words on that day, hearing Alex crying his heart out as the significance of it all struck him like a thunderbolt.

Happy Easter to all.

P.S. - While we were all singing and crying, my nine-year old, Isaac, was stone cold passed out at my side, his head against Michele's shoulder. We feared that at any moment he would start snoring as the congregation was filing out in complete silence.

Fast forward to this morning at 12:30 AM, when we were awakened by Alex coming to report that Isaac threw up in his bed. For the next hour, we were cleaning (well, mostly Michele while I battled a powerful gag reflex) a most horrendus smelling substance from sheets and stuffed animals and hair, etc. About every hour on the hour, Isaac has had to charge to the bathroom and is one sick little boy.

He lamented amidst one such trip to the bathroom, "Why me? Why does this have to happen to me?" Being the wonderful, caring parents that we are, Michele and I told him that he was likely being punished by God and Jesus for falling asleep in church. He was not amused.

Relatives Growing Obscene Things

Since we can't plant anything until round abouts Mother's Day, there's not much new about the garden. It's still a patch of poop-covered soil in the yard. There is other news to share, though, and it's nearly as disturbing as my apparent fixation with excrement.

The picture at left is of John Barillo, husband to my cousin Tref. What he is holding may look disturbing, but Tref assures me they are called Cucuzzi, or Italian zucchini, however I still harbor a suspicion that they're actually alien breeding pods.

These long dongs are described as "a vining annual, with large pubescent leaves..." I knew there was something rotten in Denmark.

John and Tref also grow stuff in their basement. If their subterranean farming efforts are as impressive as these, I fully expect some delicious "brownies" coming my way soon. (To any potential readers employed in the arena of law enforcement or service with the DEA, the above comment was JUST A JOKE.)

Here's another joke somewhat related to farming that I heard this morning:

Why do they call it PMS?

A: Because Mad Cow disease was already taken.

/ducking/

Operation Poo

Today, we made our much-anticipated trip to the North Liberty, Ind. horse farm for a load of the fresh stuff. My nine-year old son, Isaac manned the camera and did a bang-up job capturing the tapestry of oderiferous action.




Without further ado, there it is - horse shit. Dropped last year from the hindquarters of a somewhat chubby quarter horse named Cinnabar, collected by caring owners Cindy and Darren and piled up to compost into nature's finest fertilizer. And, as they both expressed to us, it did indeed smell good.


Real-life man of the land Darren, right, patiently explains the proper way to shovel crap to moron, wanna-be Front Yard Farmer, Yours Truly, left.



A frisky "paint" named Maria gets all up in Isaac's stuff. Michele encourages Maria. "Bite him! Bite him!"

These are fish - crappie and bluegill near as could be guessed - tacked to the wall of an outbuilding dating back to the 1890s. Darren estimated that the fish had to be at least 50 years old and were inexplicably nailed to the wall of the building by the prior owner of the homestead, who also happened to leave strategic caches of vintage porn magazines in the farm's other buildings, including an old outhouse. Then Darren asked if we wanted an old outhouse. We politely declined.

And finally, the poo makes it home and is spread onto the ground. In all, the loading, unloading and spreading/mixing into the soil couldn't have taken more than 30 minutes. The other 2 hours at the farm were spent shooting the you-know-what, drinking Darren's beer, jumping on a trampoline with Alex and Isaac, and petting horses, dogs, barn cats and the discovery of a dried out crawfish that had made its way from a pond across the street. In other words, about as fun a day as one could possibly expect to have shoveling shit, thanks to our awesome hosts, Cindy and Darren.

Point of Order Haiku

Is it a Front Yard

or is it not a Front Yard,

Here, you make the Call:

Clarification

I (Michele) would like to clarify that the future garden is not in the front yard. We are on the corner of a cul-de-sac. We have a front, side and back yard. The garden is on the side yard. While I am not disputing the "hillbilly" reference, I am in disagreement with my hubby of the locale.

Obamas Following Our Lead

President and Mrs. Obama totally stole this idea from us, those copycats. Good to see this fledgling little journal is already making the rounds. Kudos to Jason Kelly for the NYT link.


A tip of the cap to entertainment columnist Jackie Harvey for the unique style of the rest of this post.


ITEM! Tomorrow, we'll be making a trip to a horse farm for a free load 'o the stinky stuff to turn into the dirt. Coming soon, pictures of poop!


... I should probably learn what growing zone we're in. Michele and the boys couldn't hold their

water about a month ago and not only bought some seed packages, they planted them as well.


So far, we have sprouting beans, lettuce, cucumber, I think carrot and, in the white planter, that there is corn. No, we don't expect them to survive the transfer into the ground, but at least we know the seeds work. We got them at Wal-Mart so ya never know.

Next we'll be heading to Rural King for stuff, which may be a dangerous thing. They're selling baby chicks for $1.50. The advertisement says they'll grow into fleshy, meaty monsters. Mmmmm... chicken.

A Rock and a Hard Place

WARNING: moderate leap of logic forthcoming: This post has something to with gardening, but indulge me a little.

Before we began turning our yard over, I told to a coworker at the Tribune what we were planning to do and she offered to let me borrow her motorized tiller. I was tempted - who wouldn't want free use of a big, bad, earth churning machine to do in a few minutes what it would take us several hours to do with a shovel? But then I thought about our yard, or specifically, the scores and scores of large rocks that exist just under the sod. Using a post hole digger in my yard is one of the most depressing and frustrating jobs I have ever undertaken.

I turned down the offer of the tiller because I was afraid of what lurked beneath. I knew I would hit something and then have to replace blades, or perhaps even worse. As you can see, I made a wise decision. These are the two biggest examples of what lurks within our soil, but there were and still are handfuls of fist- and egg-size rocks just waiting for a blade to strike against them and topple us over (that happened to both Michele and I - right on our asses). Instead of risking damage to someone else's property, we chose the more difficult route - the shovel.

And that brings me to... AIG. Or, more specifically, the fervor and furor over the $160 million-ish in bonuses paid out to AIG execs out of the $170 billion in federal bailout money they've received. There has been great outrage over these bonuses, which apparently weren't unknown or unexpected before this week. The government has known, or should have known, that these payments were coming, since, ya know, they agreed to allow them already. Here is the most salient passage from the linked story:

While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. The provision, now called “the Dodd Amendment” by the Obama Administration provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009” -- which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax.

And more from a Fox News story:

This would seem to exempt the AIG bonuses that lawmakers and President Obama are looking to recover. Incidentally, Dodd is the largest single recipient of 2008 campaign donations from AIG, with $103,100, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

So, what's my point? It's like the rocks under the surface: If you know they are there, why raise a fuss about them after they're exposed and cause damage to other peoples' property? You take of the problem and move on. If you claim you didn't know about them, then you're either unprepared for the job at hand or you are being willfully ignorant of the situation.