wings in the peddlar's pack

back in action

2009-07-04T14:08:00.000-07:00

That's right. After a year in the basement collecting dust and growing mold on its plywood deck, the bike trailer is back. Made by Bikes At Work in Ames, Iowa, I bought this beauty back when we lived in Berkeley to haul my gardening tools around the neighborhoods of the east bay area. Since we moved to less-bike-friendly-but-getting-there-Chattanooga, I haven't felt all that motivated to take it to the streets, but today was the day. I took off one section of the trailer so that it is lighter to haul on the hills and ridges around town, and then headed over to Crabtree Farms to pick up our produce.

Was I partly doing this for attention? Absolutely.

And also, as it is Independence Day, to commemorate the Boston Tea Party, who chucked a bunch of boxes of British Tea overboard into the sea in order to tell the British, "We don't need your stinking caffeinated beverages." And lo and behold, to this day, 9 out of 10 Americans, when asked if they would like coffee or tea, they'll choose coffee. So my one-man-bike-trailer-parade-with-no-official-audience today was my only mildly serious way of saying, "We don't need your stinking foreign oil."

from Wendell Berry...

"Judging from our epidemic of obesity and other diseases of sedentary life and from the popularity of the various strenuous employments of the 'physical fitness movement,' the greatest untapped source of usable energy may now be in human bodies. It may become the task of a future economy to give worthy employment to this energy and to reward its use."

Nora

2009-05-08T12:31:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about living here in Chattanooga is that I live within a block of a dear old family friend, Linda. Linda and my older sister were best friends since elementary school so I have memories of Linda from as far back as I can remember. While its hard living so far away from my sisters living close to Linda is next best thing, as she really does feel much like a sister to me. She took these pictures of Nora and me. As you can tell from the pictures, she is an exceptional photographer. It it kind of funny, we must have been thinking about each other this weekend....she recently posted some more pictures on her blog (http://beinggreen5.blogspot.com/) of Nora and me, if you want to check them out...her blog is well worth a read too!

first climb / first deadwood pruning

2009-03-28T17:13:00.000-07:00

A month or so ago I climbed my first tree. (That is if you don't count childhood tree climbing of course...) A water oak, Quercus nigra, in an undisclosed location...The identities of the ground crew and photographer (all one person) will also remain undisclosed. I was both learning how to climb for the first time as well as removing deadwood and hangers, i.e. dead branches that had already fallen but gotten hung up in the canopy. I used an arborist hand saw - no chainsaws yet. Walk before you run and all that. I was also using a rope system to ascend and move around in the canopy as opposed to using spurs on my boots, the method that is generally associated with tree climbing. Climbing with ropes is actually more common, more accepted, safer, easier, and does a lot less damage to the tree. It was a blast. I hope to do it again soon. I've caught some kind of primate fever.

Lenten Rose

2009-03-01T12:47:00.000-08:00

Along with the early daffodils and forsythia, Lenten Rose (Helleborus x hybridus) has been showing its face in the garden for the last several weeks - an early announcement of Lent, of which today is the first Sunday. It blooms every year around this time in the understory shade of larger trees when the days are still a bit too short. I suppose it was given its name in an effort to say that Lent is not all about deprivation and solemnity since flowers are rarely symbols of such ideas.

Botanically, it's not a true rose - you would never mistake it for one if you walked by it growing in the ground. Since the rose is so significant in literary and religious metaphor, it might be interesting to discover why this plant was given such a weighty and familiar name coupled with one of the longest and most puzzling seasons of the church's calendar.

If you have one of these perennials in your garden, make sure it's in a shady spot, wherever you might plant your hostas and ferns. Ours, an inadvertent gift from the previous owner of our home, and probably the previous owner before him, is set in the ground on the south side of our house where I'm guessing it gets scorched every summer like a shirtless Irishman on an LA beach. We'll have to move it to a darker spot when the time is right, but for now, we'll just let it keep blooming until the weather warms up.

prayer

2009-02-14T17:49:00.000-08:00

Yellow

is a dream-hidden daffodil,

brown shyness beneath the loam,

waiting

behind a hatch in the bulb.

Careful hands,

bring a rain-water bucket,

brimming with peace.

Douse life from its winter sleep.

Careful hands,

tempt joy from the ice-ground

and barge

shine sounding

into the day -

a clarion of Easter-coming.

an oak in st. elmo

2009-02-10T03:57:00.000-08:00

Our neighborhood, historic St. Elmo on the south side of Chattanooga and at the foot of Lookout Mountain, is one of the oldest neighborhoods in town. I vaguely remember someone referring to it as the original suburb of Chattanooga.

The old houses stand along three avenues that run for twenty blocks or so, and range from bungalows, to Victorian monsters, to architectural mishmashes that have sprung up or evolved over the hundred plus year life of our little community.

As full of character as the houses may be, they wouldn't be the same without the massive trees that stand in our yards and line our streets. I have yet to find out if some of these giants were planted early in the 20th century after a clear cut, or if some were left standing from the forest that was here before the land was developed.

Anyways, it's inevitable that a city tree's life span will be capped by it's tough environment - air pollution, root disruption from construction of homes, tree houses, the occasional homeowner with a chainsaw. Considering these and other factors, trees are remarkably resilient and have numerous ways of adapting to their environment and healing themselves, which is why there are oaks and maples and sycamores throughout St. Elmo that have grown quite huge, some with trunk diameter's pushing four feet. That's why, treehugger or not, we'd all agree that it's sad to see one of the giants go.

Our neighbors a block away are having this giant oak removed by a local tree company - Robert's Tree Service. What a small world. I have a theory that once the wild, wild west was settled and became corn farms, suburbs, and ski resorts, all of the cowboys and outlaws had nothing dangerous to do, no ruckuses to raise, no taverns to tear apart in senseless brawls. So, what did they do with themselves? They bought a bunch of chainsaws and woodchippers and started tree companies.

Why is this oak being removed? Apparently, the small house at the bottom of the tree is being lifted off of it's foundation by the oak's sprawling roots. It also has serious rot throughout the main trunk's cambium and heartwood. It's only a matter of time before it falls on its own and causes serious damage to two houses beneath it, obviously, considering it's canopy covers somewhere around 2,000 square feet of ground space.

I've taken up the hobby of naming the trees around town. (You can roll your eyes now.) I like to think this tree was here before St. Elmo was developed, before roads were cut and the frames of houses were raised. In light of this oak's efforts to pick up the house built on top of it's roots and (if life were a comic strip) slide it off the hill so that it rolled down Hawkins Ridge and smashed into a mess of shingle and vinyl siding on Tennessee Ave., I've named this one "You're Not Welcome Here."

ghosts in the woods

2009-02-05T18:28:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had chestnuts roasted on an open fire?

Me neither.

Have you ever wondered why not?

Me neither, until I started to become a tree geek a few years ago. If you ever find yourself putting one foot in the door of arboriculture, it won't be long till you here about the American Chestnut, and how it is no longer.

Last December, I proudly shared this fact with my mother, an avid and skilled gardener:

"Mom, did you know the American Chestnut is virtually extinct?" I said, proud to show off my arboricultural acumen.

"Well," her tone was famously polite, "yes, except that there are half a dozen of them growing down the street."

I accused her of lying, or even worse, a mistaken botanical identification. Polite, yet not easily swayed, my mother suggested we go for a walk, and so we did. Sure enough, we found half a dozen chestnuts with one and two foot diameter trunks growing along Riverside Drive, right there on the edge of Atlanta.

I wasn't wholly wrong, however, because it is true the American Chestnut, Castanea Dentata, has virtually disappeared from our forests. A century ago, a blight on the chestnuts began its steady progress through the northeast, then spread south down throughout the east until almost every chestnut, sapling to towering giant, was nothing but a skeleton of trunks and limbs.

My grandfather, who grew up in Sweetwater in eastern Tennessee, remembers the year that the blight swept through our part of the world. He said one year the forests and hillsides were covered with massive chestnuts. The next year, only dead trunks and stumps.

If you're in the same generation as me, you've never thought of chestnuts when you think of the woods. Pines, oaks, maples - all of these are familiar to us, and we would notice if they were gone, tree geek or not. But we don't realize that our forests look very different from the way they did just over a half a century ago. They're still changing, and the forests of the southeastern mountains are going to look completely different to us within a decade if and probably when the eastern hemlock goes extinct in the wild, but that's a different story.

Some good folks in the worlds of botany, horticulture, and arboriculture, have devoted their life work to hybridizing American Chestnuts that will resist the blight that wiped, and would continue to wipe them out. The American Chestnut Foundation is at work in forests all over the place reintroducing and protecting fragile populations of chestnut trees.

Right here in Chattanooga, ringed by mountains, we live amongst forests that used to be dominated by Chestnuts. That is one reason why the ACF has chosen a swath of land on the Georgia side of Lookout Mountain to plant hundreds of chestnuts in an effort to reintroduce them in the wild. The Lula Lake Land Trust, a well kept secret in eastern Tennessee that is only open to the public once a month, is the site of this work. We spent half the day last Saturday hiking around the land trust and got to trek over to the pocket where these tiny saplings are growing underneath massive old oaks and on the edges of hemlock groves.

And what did Nora think of all this talk of arboriculture, extinction, and hybridization?

She was thrilled.

letter to nora part 4

2009-01-29T03:06:00.000-08:00

I pedaled my humble green bike furiously through the rainy back streets of Berkeley and Oakland, grateful that the route home had by now grown familiar with my daily ride to and from work. Had I not ridden that way every day for the last several months, I very well might have gotten lost, as I am prone to do, which is why I hope you inherited your mother's sense of direction and not my tendency to walk or drive off towards nowhere in particular.

But I wouldn't get lost this day and finally wheeled in behind our apartment building to the backdoor where our neighbor Tony keeps all his plants congregated and over-watered.

After riding through the downpour, I felt like his jade plant must feel when he stands five feet away with garden hose and spray nozzle and firehoses the foliage.

I expected to find your mother inside, cast onto the couch in utter misery with the onset of labor, with your Oma and Aunt Charlotte fanning her and feeding her chipped ice. I don't know why chipped ice came to mind. This was my first run at childbirth. Putting my key in the lock, I braced myself for a war zone inside, for blood sweat and tears like I had never known.

Instead, I nearly clobbered your mom (and you, come to think of it) with the door on my way in as she was passing through the narrow hallway between the kitchen and the bedroom. My memory is foggy regarding whether it was a laundry basket, a broom, a mop, or some other implement of domestic destruction that she had in her hands. Whatever it was, I startled her slightly, but then she quickly recovered and said, smiling,

"Oh! Hey, you're home," which startled me in return. I was expecting banshee-like screaming or lioness-like roaring. I wondered briefly if I'd received a prank call, if this was the wrong house, or had I missed the big event? No, it was just that confounding peace in her that and you and me both will spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out.

gifts from the winter forest

2009-01-22T17:41:00.000-08:00

Our walk in the woods last weekend proved there was much more to the winter landscape than barren trees.

The thimble sized cones of the tsuga canadensis, our treasured but quickly disappearing eastern hemlock.

Wild Hydrangea, hydrangea arborescens, hanging onto its dried summer blooms against all odds, is the lowly native relative of the pom poms we all grow in our gardens.

Some temperatures on Lookout Mountain registered 0 degrees Fahrenheit!

These flakes of fungal growth are transforming this dead oak back into the forest floor.

Winter Jasmine

2009-01-22T17:14:00.000-08:00

I first met this plant in June, six years ago. It was a heaping mound of green growing along the top of a wall, and I was a skinny college kid who'd found a summer job gardening for an OBGYN who had built himself a complex of restaurants, B&B's, and coffeeshops in downtown Chattanooga. The eccentric Dr. who hired me, along with the rest of the grounds crew, weren't too positive that I'd last a week pulling weeds and mowing grass in the East Tennessee heat. They put me through my paces early, like the day when the good Dr. walked me over to the cascade of Winter Jasmine running 50 feet along a wall, handed me a 25 lb. power tool - Echo gas hedge trimmers - that resembled a chainsaw with meaner teeth, and said, "let's see what you can do with that..." A thousand drops of sweat and two burning shoulders later, I switched off the machine. The giant Dr. walked up and said, "Looks good." I was proud, but relieved that I would eventually return to the college classroom in preparation for a life of teaching, not pruning. Oops.

I never knew the same plant would show up in front of our first house in the midst of one of the coldest winters I've ever known in the southeast. And true to its common name, Winter Jasmine, Jasminum Nudiflorum announced itself at the bottom of our front steps a few weeks ago. From a distance, you might mistake it for forsythia, but the time of year that this multitude of yellow flowers arrives is your main clue that this is something else, something not-so-native, something brought to our neck of the woods from China. If you do have it in your garden, try to remember not to prune its tangled mass of viny growth in the fall or early winter because you'll chop off all the quiet buds that will eventually become these lovely blooms. If you plant it in the right place, you might not ever need to prune it except every half decade or so to nuke all the old growth...Just be sure you do it after the blooms have passed late in the winter when the forsythia is starting to show.

Nora's Birthday

2009-01-21T17:59:00.000-08:00

A few photos from her birthday party....

...a few more from the actual day.

Nora loves to play in the garden.....

2009-01-07T19:10:00.001-08:00

December....

2009-01-07T18:29:00.001-08:00

Just a few photos from around our home

We had a lovely Christmas in Atlanta with the Heiskell's.

November

2009-01-07T17:59:00.001-08:00

Nora and I got to spend some extra time in New Jersey before Thanksgiving. We were there for almost a month in all. We went because my dad was having some surgery on his arm and I was hoping to be able to help out. However, while we were there my nana's health took a significant decline and she passed away on November 26th. I am grateful that I got to be there and be a part of her last days. Here is a sweet picture of Nora and Nana taken when Nora was just 6 weeks. Nora is named after 3 very important women....Robert's great grandmother (Nora Heiskell), my mom (Norma), and my nana (Norma)....so this picture is really special to me.

We also got to spend some extra time with Eva and Mara since they stayed at my mom's for a few nights. Nora loved it!

And Nora had her first picture with Santa....however she was happier if she was just looking at him from a distance.

These are just a few extra pictures from the spectacular fall leaves that we had this year.

Halloween

2008-11-01T14:13:00.000-07:00

Nora goes Spelunking!

2008-10-03T19:22:00.000-07:00

nora can talk

2008-06-08T14:02:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, Nora sat down for a recorded interview with our friends Bryan and Stephanie Mazzarello while they were down here visiting from Seattle. (Bryan and Stephanie are both artists and do some amazing graphic design work...check out Mazzarello Media and Arts.)

Well, we knew Nora could type, but we didn't know she could say the words she could spell. Much to our surprise, she can...click the link below to listen to her chatter...

Nora's Story

camping at armstrong state reserve

2008-05-01T07:22:00.001-07:00

So its been a while...

2008-04-24T10:23:00.000-07:00

Here is a little photo update on what we have been doing with March and April.

Easter Sunday

We took a weekend trip to Yosemite and stayed in these great little cabins. Here is Nora all bundled for a cam

pfire.

Oma, Papa, and Eva came out for a visit. We had a wonderful time. Nora was baptized on Sunday, here she is in the dress that not only her mama wore, but her Oma and a few cousins as well. We had some unusually warm weather during their visit and had several visits to the park. Here is Nora in her sundress at the park. The last picture is of Nora and Eva a few months ago when we were in NJ. It was so fun to spend some time with Eva. She has the sweetest little spirit and was so good with Nora.

and they danced all night, to the fiddle and the banjo...

2008-02-28T18:41:00.001-08:00

My good friend, Joseph Edward Decosimo, married a lovely young lady from Shelby, North Carolina, Ms. Kasey Poole, now Mrs. Kasey Decosimo. We three California kids had the privilege of attending the affair, which was probably one of the finest weddings ever held in Chattanooga - beautiful stone chapel for the ceremony, good friends from all over the country, a sit down dinner at the historic Read House in downtown Chattanooga, and a string band present to play for a square dance once the eating was over with...

To give you a little background, I met Joseph during my first year of boarding school at McCallie. Our paths crossed on the cross country team - he was a freshman, and a rising star from the ranks of the Junior School running program. He was a muscular, shaved head rock climber with in an intimidating seriousness in his beady little eyes. I was almost 16, (older), scrawny, uncompetitive by nature, fresh out of the Atlanta the suburbs, and I had big hair. But I scared him because he was afraid I would beat him. And I did! But we became fast friends when we realized we shared a profound love of music, particularly traditional music of Ireland and America. Since then, we've played music together on and off for the past 10 years, performed together a few dozen times all over the southeast at restaurants, on bridges, at the diamond of the South - The Mountain Opry, at a few weddings to the chagrin of just about everybody but ourselves, and we even made a goofy little CD before I went off to college. (The album was entitled "Traditional Non-Chilean Music" and featured traditional and original string music, as well as an album cover photo of an ancient Chilean woman sipping on Yerba Mate. Don't ask. But be informed that the album went platinum in Indonesia 4 years after it's release.) Since all of that, we've remained good friends - he stood by me when I married Laura, and I was honored to do the same for him two weeks ago when he wedded Kasey.

On the musical front, I ended up quitting my job as a teacher and moving to California to play music for a church. Joseph, on the other hand, got hired as a teacher and has meanwhile gone on to become one of the most well-respected fiddle and banjo players in the old-time music community. (Note: Old-time is distinct from bluegrass in subtle ways, but most clearly in the way that old-time music has remained relatively uncommercialized, whereas bluegrass could be considered, among other things, a radio-friendly version of old-time music.) He can be found playing for awed audiences everywhere from the streets of Chattanooga to the legendary stage of the Ryman auditorium in Nashville, home of the original Grand Ole Opry. He won first place in the old-time banjo contest at Uncle Dave Macon days, a huge festival in the southeast.

If you have a moment, check out this link to a Chattanooga Times-Free Press article about his accomplishment. There's even an mp3 and video linked from the article.

Newspaper article link

Listening to him play might be one of the nicest parts of your day...And check out his band's myspace page for a few more tracks of good old time music.

River City Roustabouts link

superstar

2008-02-27T16:34:00.000-08:00

When people ask me how I became the most famous person in my family, I smile and bow my head with deep humility and reply:

"No, no no...I can see how you would think that to be the case, and in fact, people ask me this question all the time, which is no great surprise, really. But, I must be honest and tell you that it is not I who am most famous in the Heiskell family, but rather, my younger sister, Constance."

She, also known by aliases Connie, Connie two, Lil' Connie, LC, and Connie the Younger, is the superstar of the family, which is ironic, because out of all 5 of us, she is the one who would most rather not be...well, except for John. The others of us are more likely to be fame-grubbers than not, but me least of all and Jamie MOST of all...

Anyways, getting back on track here: you may be wondering what this humble young lady did to propel herself to the top of the charts of humanity?

Well, she is the winged-foot-wonder.

That's right. She's fast.

fact:

She can outrun most women.

fact:

She can outrun most men who deny the fact.

fact:

Highway patrolmen mistake her for a red corvette.

(that wasn't a fact, just an opinion)

fact:

She ran a half marathon a couple of weeks ago in Birmingham in 1 hour and 33 minutes (i think). And for those of you out there doing your long division, that's blazing.

I won't list her laurels from nearly two decades of swiftness. She'd run me into the ground. (ouch).

Instead, in a somewhat unrelated vein, I'll try to make myself more famous by posting a song that I wrote for her some 5 or so years ago. I didn't get around to recording it until the day before last. It's the first song of my own that I've ever recorded, and it's homegrown indeed, but the quality is tolerable enough. Hope you enjoy it.

(Hint to those not too familiar with "the internets" - click on the word "song" if you want to hear the song.)

an other stuf peepls made 4 me, by nora

2008-02-09T17:02:00.000-08:00

my papa is reelly gud at making stuf with wood and hammers and nales and things. he's also gud at telling corny jokes, but that's not wut this blog post is about. my papa made this cradle for me out of wood and hammers and nales and stufs, and i luv it. i sleep in it all the time so mama can eat bon-bons and watch tv, except that mom and dad don't even half a tv, which really stinks. anyways, i'm getting sidetrackted. since my oma didn't want me to sleep on the wood and hammers and nales that my cradle is maid out of, she made the mattress and bumpers and bedding for me to sleep on in the cradle. dad says that he had to sleep on a bed of wood and hammers and nales and stufs when he was a little oompaloompa like me, but i doesn't beleeve him. he's not tuff enough. mom, on the other hand, is tuff enuff. but she doesn't say silly things like that. oops, i keep getting sidetrackted. i would tell you hoo made the blanket 4 me, but i have to go sleep in my cradle now so mom can eat bon bons and stare at the wall, so stay tuned. thanks papa and oma for my cradle! i luv you!

nora

sights and sounds of berkeley

2008-02-09T16:37:00.000-08:00

As I'm trimming the water shoots off of a redwood burl by the university's North Gate, I sense an object in my peripheral vision moving rapidly down the hill of Hearst Ave. running adjacent to campus.

(Shouting from onlookers and pedestrians)

"IT'S A MAN!"

"IT'S A BICYCLE!"

"NO!...it's....it's....UNICYCLE-MAN!"

(Author's Note: This part didn't really happen, nobody really said this, but everything else did, I really, really promise that it did. Please believe me.)

Lo and behold, to my wonder and dismay, I see a mangy looking teenager pedaling the single wheel of his vehicle furiously, arms flapping and waving akimbo.

I make a mental note that unicycle's don't have brake's, and then I continue watching.

Gaining speed, he begins a parabolic path off the street, heading towards the north gate where too-cool-college Joe's and Jane's can neither see him from behind their googly-eyed Prada sunglasses, nor hear him over the din of their inner-ear iPod headphones.

I make another mental note to feel sorry for these sheltered youngsters, missing the show that UNICYCLE MAN is providing for everyone, and then secretly hope as I watch from my perch under the redwoods that UNICYCLE MAN'S lack of a proper braking apparatus, and too-cool-college Joe's and Jane's oblivion to the world will result in the holy ruckus of a collision.

However, with circus-performer-skill, UNICYCLE MAN weaves through the throng of under-20-somethings, makes the death-defying turn while maintaining his blistering velocity of 15 mph, and pedals on under the granite arches of the North Gate, passing a few middle-aged women in business suits and sneakers, out for their lunchtime exercise.

These excercisers - they are not oblivious. They know a good show when it pedals by them. They see the acrobatic-acumen of the mangy kid. And wanting to show their appreciation, they begin applauding, hooting and hollering, smiling and expressing their awe and admiration.

Yet, to everyone's further wonder and dismay, UNICYCLE MAN will have none of it. Looking over his shoulder as he pedals off into the distance, he shouts:

"It's NOT a performance! It's a MODE OF TRANSPORTATION!!"

letter to nora - part 3

2008-02-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

"Go ahead boss," Juan said, answering the radio right as we climbed back into the cab of the pickup. With the defrost on high, wrapped up in my plastic rain gear, I felt like a drowned rat sealed up in a ziploc, except for my feet, which were more like a couple of scumpond catfish wrapped in wet newspaper and shoved in Uncle Marion's icebox next to the jar of peach moonshine in South Carolina.

Maybe I'm exaggerating.

"Yes boss, we cleared the drain and there is no more flood on the road." Juan spoke loudly, slowly, his hispanic accent thick, into the radio.

"Great!" the boss squawked back, his voice adding another element to the aural chaos of heavy rain on the windshield and the accordions blaring from the local latino radio station.

He continued, "I want you guys to me at 9:30 at Cafe Strada. With this terrible weather today, I'm buying coffee for everyone at break time."

Score, I thought. Free coffee and a new baby. Aside from warm feet, this day couldn't be better.

It wasn't but 30 seconds later while Juan was still on the radio and we were driving along the row of sycamores by the Valley Life Science Building that I felt my phone begin to buzz in my pocket. Sorting through the layers of raingear, flannel, and polarfleece, I wondered if this would be like every other time your mom called me over the last two weeks. No fault of hers, she always seemed to call as I was running some heavy piece of machinery, or was up 14 feet in the air on an orchard ladder, or was in a department meeting with one of the university bigwigs. And every time, the panic and the excitement was the same - could this be it? Were you finally coming? Up until now, the voice on the other end of the line always said, "No news."

I yanked the phone out - mama was indeed on the horn:

"Hey, I think you should come on home. I think this is it. I think the contractions are coming more regularly."

"I'm on my way home," I said breathlessly as I stepped out of the truck.

I told Juan, "I'm going to go home..."

"Go!" He said, his eyes grinning, "Ok! Go! Good luck! Hurry!" His accent still as thick as the rain.

I walked off quickly, detouring back again five minutes later when I remembered he had the keys to the room where my bike was locked up.

Another interminable walk back across Lower Sproule Plaza, a stop by the the gardener's room at the edge of campus, and I was finally back on my bike again, again riding the 2 mile stretch between home and work in the newest, heaviest rainfall of the new year...

late night conversation...

2008-01-31T21:20:00.000-08:00

...as i was crawling into bed:

Laura: Hey, just to warn you, I saw some ants in the bathroom.

Robert: Oh really? Are there a bunch of them?

Laura: No, there are 10.

Robert: Oh, did you kill them?

Laura: No, I counted them.

***

Author's Note: All characters, names, events, and views included in this entry are entirely fictitious and do not represent, symbolize, or otherwise resemble anything that happened in real life.

stuf peepl maid 4 me, by nora

2008-01-30T23:03:00.000-08:00

thanks ant connie 4 my neet-o burp cloths. i burp on them all the thyme.

luv,

nora

what does "moby" mean to you?

2008-01-27T06:01:00.000-08:00

Perhaps a large white whale?

Perhaps an iconoclastic techno musician?

Perhaps a swatch of soft cotton 1 foot wide by 78 feet long used to tie babies to their parents and requiring extensive training in Origami for proper use?

In our family, "moby" means the latter, as in "The Moby Wrap." Observe...

There are many advantages and uses of the Moby Wrap. An extensive, though not exhaustive list, is included below for your education and edification.

1. Mobility - Nora is secured to mama, allowing mama a wide range of motion, and keeping Nora out of trouble.

2. Safety - There is enough fabric to secure Nora to mama, as well as to secure dad to mama, reducing mama's range of motion, but keeping Nora and dad out of trouble.

3. Warmth - The Moby Wrap successfully traps the body heat of both mama and Nora. 98.6 degrees multiplied by two people equals heat that Ernest Shackleton and co. wished they had had stranded on an ice floe in Antartica.

4. Action - Mama can play lacrosse & dodgeball, ride public transportation, navigate the produce section at the Berkeley Bowl, and throw dozens of pottery coffee mugs on a kick wheel without ever holding Nora in her arms.

5. Accessibility - If mama had married a man with no arms, he could have worn the Moby Wrap. Fortunately, dad has arms.

6. Caffeine - (Note: this has been field-tested) Mama can order a cup of coffee, carry the non-recyclable paper cup to the condiments stand, remove the plastic lid, insert the cup into a cardboard sleeve so as to reduce the surface temperature of the non-recyclable paper cup, tear open sugar packets, dump contents of sugar packets into said hot, non-recyclable paper cup of coffee, pour half and half from a stainless steel carafe, stir caffeinated beverage with wooden stirrer thingy, finally replacing plastic lid onto non-recyclable paper cup and strolling out onto the city sidewalk.

7. Dancing - (Note: this has not yet been field-tested, but dad is confident in mama's ability to simultaneously wear the Moby and pull off "the sprinkler," "holster pistol," "churn the butter," and a sundry of other dance moves. A trial run is scheduled for February 16th at Joseph Decosimo's wedding reception.)

8. Ploughing - As in, the back 40 with our team of mules.

9. Walking - As in into the office to check on what dad is writing in the blog.

10. Flying - Back east on a big ole jet airliner to visit family in a few weeks!

letter to nora - part 2

2008-01-27T05:23:00.000-08:00

When I rolled in, soaking wet, to work, I heard the same greetings I'd been hearing every morning since Christmas Day, your due date.

Ray: "Hey dad!"

Me: "Nope, not yet."

Flavio: "Robert, what the heck are you doing here? No baby yet?"

Me: "Sorry, can't help it."

The boss, gregarious as always: "HEY ROBERT! No news, eh?"

Me: "Actually, things might have gotten started at home this morning, so if my wife gives me a call, I'm going to need to head home."

The boss: "Really!? I mean, that's GREAT! Sure, no problem! I mean, you'll need to get home right away!" From all appearances, you'd have thought he was kin. To his credit, his enthusiasm was sincere, and he also allowed me to take four and a half weeks off after your arrival - a good man, doubtless.

I hopped into a truck with Juan, and we drove out to check storm drains for clogs first thing that morning. Preoccupied as I was with how mama was doing, if you were really coming, was I really going to be a father?, I put on my rain coat and rain paints but neglected my knee-high rubber rain boots, a mistake which caused me quite a bit of discomfort a couple of hours later while I was standing in chilly rainwater half way up my shins furiously raking magnolia leaves off of a grate.

For me, on any other day, wet feet and clogged drains would have guaranteed a grumpy disposition until I fell asleep in the evening. But a coming child brings on a certain oblivious joy, a giddiness, that seems to change the way the world feels. The obvious comparison to falling in love comes to mind, but I suspect there's a generous helping of that feeling that David got when he tore off all his clothes and danced with all his might out in the street in God's presence...

human powered horticulture

2008-01-25T12:05:00.000-08:00

When I emailed a picture like this one to my elder brother Jamie, he wrote back and said, "Nice training wheels." I'll show you training wheels, big brother...

I am now the proud owner of a Bikes At Work bicycle trailer, as you can see above. I take care of a couple local gardens as a side business, and this being Berkeley and all, I decided to run my operation in as "green" a fashion as possible - petroleum free. That leaves me with electricity and my own arms and legs, so, I saved my pennies and bought this 64AW, the extra wide model, fashioned completely out of aluminum, measuring around 8 feet long from hitch to rear reflectors, and weighing about 45 lbs.

It's maiden voyage was Wednesday, where I rode high up into the Rockridge neighborhood lugging all my tools through backroads, either for safety reasons, or to avoid the unavoidable stares that seem to ask, "Is that a UFO?" After all, E.T. did get around on a bike.

letter to nora - part 1

2008-01-24T12:02:00.000-08:00

Dear Nora,

Your mama is a courageous person, but by the time you are able to read this, you will already be well aware of the fact. I thought it important to put the story of your birth into writing because over the last twenty days of your life, your mama's courage has been something worth marveling over - something worth remembering - and I thought you might someday want to know all that happened on the day you arrived in this strange and beautiful world.

My alarm was set for 5 am on Friday morning, my normal waking hour for a normal work day. I don't have to be at work, a measly 10 minute bike ride away, until 6:30, but the quiet at that hour, if I can slough myself out of bed, is really one of God's many good gifts.

Mama was already awake:

"Hey, I've been feeling contractions all night long."

"Really?" I smiled, then sat up in bed quickly as I tried to make sense in my half-sleep stupor of why she had been so courteous as to wait for my alarm clock to share this somewhat important news with me.

"Yeah, they've been coming on and off for a while now. I can't decide if they're the real thing or not." (This playing down of what the old-timers refer to as "the pains" was sort of the hallmark of 80% of mom's laboring to birth you.

Needless to say, I was excited, but lest we get our hopes up and this train of pain come to a mysterious halt, as labor tends to do, (or so they tell me), I went ahead and put my carhartts and long underwear on, made a cup of coffee, and filled up my thermos with green tea (a macho combination if ever I've heard of one) to head out for a day of gardening.

Mom and I, being the decisive types, debated about whether or not I should "call out sick," finally settling that I should head on out, knowing that I could get home pretty quickly if the proverbial weather began to change. So I wrapped myself up in polarfleece, clicked on my headlamp, and pedaled out into the rainiest day I can remember since we moved to Berkeley...

Nora Faith Heiskell

2008-01-21T10:06:00.000-08:00

We joyfully announce the birth of our first daughter, Nora Faith Heiskell. This munchkin was born on January 5, 2008 at 1:05 am, weighing in at 8 lbs. 14 oz. and standing 22 inches tall in the world.