Tales from the Shark Tank

I did not, by the bye, fall off the face of the planet over the July 4th weekend. I went to visit friends, all by my self. I have other friends in the area, and did not even call them, as the point of the trip was not to see how much I could cram into a weekend, but to give me a chance to unwind and find my mental balance. I shall make separate trips to visit the other friends, I think.

Mission accomplished. I left Friday early afternoon (a saga in and of itself) and came home on Monday. In between I had a wonderful time. I got to do things on impulse, like walk down to the local farmer’s market, decide that it all looked *way* too good, and collect ingredients which I got to turn into a huge pasta salad that evening. It was something neither my son nor my husband would eat, and I got to prepare it with no interruptions beyond telling a cat to get her nose out of the veggies. There were no intimations of immiment disaster because Pooh Bear fell in the wading pool, or for any other reason. For a whole weekend, there was interesting adult conversation without interruptions about how the tiger on the Jungle Book video needed a “time out”. We stayed up until about 11:00 Friday evening playing a hilarious game of scrabble. That sounds unexciting, but when you haven’t done anything without considering its effects on at least three people in years, it becomes incredible.

The trip home was interesting, in several senses of the word. I delayed it a day in the first place (having taken Monday as a vacation day anyway) because there was a nasty band of storms between my hosts and home. I spent an extended period reading cookbooks, because I was sitting dead still on a Chicago area interstate for over an hour. Once I was able to move, and attain access to an exit, I decided that state roads, while potentially slower, were preferable to the interstates and meandered my way across northern Illinois. The result of that was that I passed a collection of beautifully carved totem poles at one point, and watched bees swarm past my car at another. I saw egrets in a marsh, and a red-winged blackbird that looked like it was wearing a little crimson vest. I also stopped for lunch at a restaurant that was supposed to be Chinese, and was about as oriental as meatloaf. It wasn’t bad at all, but it was not Chinese.

All in all, it was a weekend that was good for the soul. I got to nap when I wanted or needed to, and sleep past 6:00 a.m. without being bounced upon. No one woke me. I could read when and where I desired, or sew or do cross-stitch without putting the project down every 5 stitches. I had the rare experience of being able to follow a train of thought without dealing with anything else in the middle unless I wanted to.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my husband dearly and my son is the joy of my life. I was glad to get home, and glad to see them both. But every so often, I need defusing, and there’s no way it can happen at home. My friends made it possible, and I thank them for it.

Our local news media are full of floods. Rivers, they say, are as high or higher than they were in the flooding that set state records up until now in 1913. They give numbers of feet past flood stage, numbers of sand bags filled and used, numbers more yet needed.

All the statistical information conveys the information, but the visceral impact came from my walk at lunch today. White River, which runs through much of the state, is at flood. In many places it is up to the edge of the levees built to control it. I knew all that from listening to the news, reading the paper, and so forth. Today being under 80 degrees for the first time in what feels like forever, I chose to walk through White River State Park, which borders my office.

There are trees which I know from prior walks are a good 50 feet tall, submerged to the base of their crowns. Banks where I am accustomed to seeing people fish are entirely water covered, such that shore plants I know are taller than a man wave in the currents below the surface. A sign that warns that no swimming is allowed, which normally stands five feet back from the water’s edge, is now 30 feet out into the water. Only the sign itself shows; the post is underwater. It’s far enough out that if I hadn’t had the opportunity to read it before I would have no clue what it says, because it’s too far out to be decipherable. The current, usually fairly lazy, is rushing fast enough to be clearly audible long before I got to the bridge over the river, and the only way to tell where the usual sand bars and islands were is by the tree tops that stick out of the current. A relatively small, generally tame urban river has become a force of nature. It is truly awesome.

Now that the weather is doing its best to imitate a sauna, I have taken to doing my walking in the tunnels between the government complex and the downtown mall. I was doing so today, and chanced to walk by The Museum Company Store, which is an emporium I visit just to see the pretty things pretty much whenever I’m in the mall.

There are huge signs in the window, proclaiming that it is going out of business! It seems the Museum Company filed for bankruptcy and was purchased by a liquidator. I can’t claim I’m surprised, upon reflection. Their merchandise is not inexpensive, and I suspect they’re one more victim of the recession we’re not having. But it’s still a bad thing. Phooey.

It’s been interesting lately. Our ultraconservative Supreme Court got somthing right recently, when it knocked down the Texas sodomy statute. My husband was so surprised when he heard that on the news that he called me in the middle of the day to tell me about it. I have strong feelings about what the Court does, and I am very, very glad to see them draw a line in how far states can go in regulating the lives of their citizens. What the opponents of the decision don’t seem to realize is that the authority of the states can cut both ways. They want the state to be able outlaw sexual practices that don’t meet their standard of “normal”. What they don’t seem to see is that such a standard would mean that the state could then outlaw any private practice of which the majority disapproves. This isn’t about gay rights; it’s about whether or not government has any business inside our bedrooms. It’s not about decriminalizing or destigmatizing homosexual behavior; it’s about keeping religion separate from government. Separation of Church and State, to my mind, includes not legislating private morals. I don’t mean at all that private morality doesn’t matter. I choose, for example, to be monogamous in my marriage. But not everyone does, and it should not be a subject for legal action. I’m relieved to see the Supreme Court rule that, at least in this instance, it is not.

Then there was Strom Thurmond’s death. I can’t help but wonder how effective he was, his last 10 years or so in office. I did meet him once; he came to Indianapolis to speak at one of the local universities, and sat on my sunglasses at the reception held afterwards. He really was a consumate politician, which is to say I have seldom, then or since, heard someone use so many words to convey so little information. He spoke for an hour, and when he was done I had no more idea of his opinions on the issues that were current then (1977, I believe) than when he started. I wanted to know what he thought; I wanted to know what was being said among the people making the decisions. And he just wasn’t saying, not in his speech, not during the question period after, and certainly not at the reception. No, I didn’t gather the nerve to talk to him directly, but my favorite professor did, and I listened. That frustrated me then, and frightened me later. Still, his death really does end an era. I heard on the news this morning that his coffin was to be transported in a horse-drawn hearse. It seems fitting.