Simply 60

Bottles, cans & the recycling of the American psyche

The notion of recycling is foreign to this part of Georgia. Perhaps they're on to something.

Here all refuse gets tossed into one bag, the way we all used to do it in the simpler 'good old days.' This is worrisome to many visitors. Most of us labor to comply at home. We toil to fill bins according to direction. But look around America a bit and try to find two cities that recycle the same way. This is what is most confounding — the lack of any national standard in spite of the good faith efforts of millions of Americans. 

Of the few places I know well, from a recycling standpoint,  no two share recycling policies. In Nantucket, my favorite to dis, there is a genuine double standard: when you recycle from your home to a trash collector, you have two categories of separation only: metal/plastic and glass. If you don't have pick-up and go to the dump, you must separate all your plastics by the number stamped on the bottom; metal is on its own as is cardboard; glass goes into a dumpster all by itself and household refuse does too; newsprint isn't recycled at all. In Kalamazoo, MI, glass, metal/plastics and newspaper are all recycled. In Concord, we get to put all glass, metal and plastics together and, interestingly, compound containers like milk and juice cartons are recycled along with the rest, too.

So. If every community is doing it differently, how do our individual recycling efforts add up to an environmental boon? Or is this a Great Big Hoax played out on those of us who work to live up to (local) recycling initiatives because we believe in them?

These would be the same Americans who might find themselves in rural Georgia taking the High Road of moral indignation when they see that absolutely no recycling whatsoever is required here. But what if they — we — are just dumb lemmings? Here on the Bluff, folks can take their trash to the dump. And if they can't be bothered with that, they just toss it out of the car window. Littering, we've noticed, is a popular alternative. 

Truffle: Georgia blue. Between the avid Georgia bulldog fans and the Confederate flag, red is the most prevalent color here. But it should be blue. Montana may be — is — Big Sky country but the clear air of low country Georgia produces the most extraordinary deep blue skies. Simply breathtaking.

Quote of the day: "Il fait aller voir." (Jacques Cousteau's personal motto — we must go and see for ourselves)

Taking the 'idle' out of afternoon

There was an 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chili. Hawaii was battening down the hatches in preparation for a tsunami. The Northeast was digging out after yet another snowstorm and here in little Shellman Bluff we coped with our own weather blunder. I will argue that the right to complain is relative. The earth did not move, the sea did not rise up in outrage, the skies threw nothing at us and yet — and yet, it was raw here on The Bluff today. Overcast skies, moisture thick with chill in the air. Ugh.

What's a girl to do? Write, of course. And clean house. All the things that are universally put off if the sun shines. So I changed the sheets, washed clothes, swept and vacuumed. Then I wrote. Note the order. I profess to love putting the written word on paper and yet cleaning the toilets came first. Yikes.

Then I wrote. An introduction to Beverly's 40-year retrospective at the Nantucket Historical Association. This was one of three projects I brought along, and a good thing I did. There's nothing like a good project, well procrastinated, to fill an idle afternoon.In case you want to read it, here it is: Download BHretrointro

Truffle: A moonlit stroll around our Bluff block — the moon full, our shadows long and the stars above indicating fair weather for tomorrow.

Quote of the day: "Atheism is a non-prophet organization." (George Carlin)

Jump Up

When you're of a mind to cook, you ask in your neighbors and, if they're of a mind to come, they'll jump up at the invitation. That, as I understand it, is the derivation of the Georgia phrase 'jump up.' Not the verb form of jump up as in 'jump up upon a table and shake your booty' but the two words as a noun phrase as in 'we're havin' a jump up ta'night. Come on over, y'all.'

Lin opened her home to a couple dozen new and old friends tonight. Jimmy, her husband, showed everybody the bar, helped them find their first libation, then said, "The rest is up to you," meaning "help yourself hereafter." There were oyster shooters and stuffed peppers, chili dip and cheese puffs (at least I think that's what they were) to start things off, get the indulgence ball rolling. 

Then Lin got down to some serious cookin' — an irony here in Georgia, "g's" are an endangered linguistic species here — before we all sat down to a fine and rowdy feed: a barrel-load of fresh sauteed wild Georgia shrimp, corn on the cob, sausage, taters and onions, creamy coleslaw with raisin and nuts and her personal specialty, Lacy Cornbread, a crispy cornbread pancake that is out of this world. Here's the recipe:

Lin's Lacy Cornbread

Corn meal, preferably white

Salt

Ice cold water

Olive oil

Mix the first three together into a hearty-soup consistency. Refrigerate. Heat about an inch of olive oil in a deep skillet till it's good and hot. Remove batter from fridge. Put spoonfuls in the oil and fry. Remove when the edges are crispy brown and serve. Leftovers — if there are any — can be warmed the next morning and served with maple syrup. Yum.

We ate, we drank, we talked up a blue streak with people whose names we were still struggling to remember. But for this one minor detail, you'd have thought we'd all known each other for decades. The secret ingredient? Warm welcome. Warm what? If only standoffish old New England had a bit more of this in its repertoire. 

Truffle: Pulling Opie, the Rotweiller pup, out of the swimming pool — a flashback to the old days of poolside boredom and occasional heroism as a lifeguard. Nice to know some instincts, trained or otherwise, still rise to the surface when needed.

Quote of the Day: "People who love to cook love life." (Jump Up guest)

Geechee

If you don't recognize the word then prepare to have your vocabulary expanded by one. 

On Sapelo Island, where we ventured today, there is a small community called Hog Hammock. It is 434 square acres and has a resident population of about 65 these days. All of them can trace their roots to slaves. It is the last such community of its kind. The rest of the island, which measures 12 miles by four, or, about the same size as Nantucket, is owned by the state of Georgia. The folks of Hog Hammock are regularly called Gullah by the ignorant (of which I was one only this morning). But, they will tell you, Gullah folk herald from the South Carolina sea islands and Geechee from the Georgia isles. Part of the difference is pride, these days, and part is a slight variation in language both of which take from the English, French and Portuguese of the slave traders, mixed liberally with a healthy dose of west coast African to form a patois that only an expert and native ear can distinguish, one from the other.

George Walker gave us a taste of his island today in a van he drove that can only be described as an island car. You have to live on an island to know what one of these is: seen better days; has no inspection sticker, current or otherwise; probably no muffler; certainly no shocks; and a whole lot of missing parts and rust. We opened the door with a string, got locked out if we didn't remember not to close the door completely as we exited.

Indeed, George's car became a metaphor for the island itself. Its heyday, if not in the plantation cotton days that worked hundreds of slaves to the bone, was then in the Jazz Age opulence of Howard Coffin (Hudson Autos) and post-war boom of R.J. Reynolds (tobacco). Both these latter men lived in a mansion that would make any antebellum plantation look like a shanty. Today the mansion, like the tiny last remaining Geechee community, is being reclaimed by the salt air, the once domesticated now wild hogs, the vegetation. 

In fact, perhaps this is a double vocabulary lesson: who knew that hummock and hammock mean the same thing, a small rise or hill? On Nantucket we have Hummock Pond; it could as easily be Hammock Pond. On Sapelo, Hog Hammock could just as easily be Hog Hummock. It's like Geechee and Gullah and like Christian and Muslim. The difference is not in the definition but in local lore.

Truffle: Two couples walk into the Sapelo Station restaurant where we are having dinner and utter these words — "Who's driving the car with the Massachusetts plates?" Birds of a feather, both couples were from Cape Cod and looking for their compatriots.

Quote of the day: "What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others." (Pericles)

Woody Pond

 The wolf . . . shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid. Isaiah 11:6

Where oh where is my camera when I need it? Of course, my zoom would not have done justice to the sight. What I needed was Beverly and her camera.

I know it's out of character for me to quote the Bible but I have to confess that that's what came to mind this afternoon. We discovered Woody Pond on Harris Neck last week. It is typical of ponds here — melting into marsh so casually it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. It makes for some spectacular bird watching. Today several trees along one bank were littered with black-crowned night herons, so many of them they looked like goofy goblins lurking among the limbs. On another Y-shaped dead tree immature white ibises lined each branch like feathered foliage. The grown-ups were convening on an island farther down pond. We spotted a new duck (for me) the green-winged teal, perhaps the most beautiful duck I've ever seen — though, now that I think on it, wood ducks are right up there in the beauty department. And we identified both breeding and adult moor hens and coots. 

That was all before we spotted the alligators. We saw one the other day. Today I lost count at well over a dozen. Including three juveniles. The first of these had its nose above water just below the path we were walking. It was small enough to look like something that had been flushed down somebody's toilet. The next two, lounging on opposing tree stubs out in the pond, are what caught and held our binoculars. One was sprawled out on his stub at a 45° angle, snoozing. Across from him was, let's say for the purposes of this story, his brother. All we could see of him was his head and shoulders on which leaned — and here comes the Biblical imagery — the outstretched head of a turtle. Make no mistake about it: alligators eat turtles. The following quotation is from a University of Florida website:

An alligator's diet depends on what is available to it, which means it will eat just about anything including fish, frogs, birds, turtles, insects, snakes, small mammals, other alligators,  white-tailed deer, wild hogs, and sometimes people's pets. Once the prey is caught, it is typically swallowed whole. Alligators have tremendously powerful jaws that can crush turtle shells and the bones of small mammals. 

We watched the turtle cozying up to the alligator for a good ten minutes before he slipped into the water without disturbing his strange bedfellow's slumber. So, unlikely as it is, what popped into mind (as I carefully lead my small mammal away from Woody Pond), was the old parable of the lion and the lamb. Or, as Isaiah really says, the leopard with the kid.

Truffle: Baked fresh redline — aka red snapper. And then Edy's Butter Pecan ice cream — two helpings. I mean, it's the little things in life, no?

Quote of the day: "Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory." (Albert Schweitzer) 

Love-Hate Relationship

No, I'm not fed up with Pete. There simply is no such thing as too much of him.  :-)

I am fed up, however, with golf. Here is why I hate golf:

It reminds me every time I play of the athlete I once was but will never be again. This is not about age but about age+disability = ugly reality. One of my most cherished and deeply held memories is of running down alongside my brother-in-law's house on Gull Lake. It was a moment. That's all. A flash of recognition: to be long-legged and move like a gazelle, the freedom, the grace of it. And know it. Revel in it.

I pretend everyday of my current life that I am able-bodied. I loathe reminders of the truth. Golf is always that.

Pete and I play for some pretty hot stakes — a dollar a hole. Up until today he also always gave me one stroke. Most games he outscored me but I came home with a few extra bucks. It softened the chronic losing. We played 18 this afternoon; I owed him $8 for the front nine alone. Which means I lost eight holes out of nine, and the ninth we tied. 

Once I was a natural athlete, good at any sport I chose to play, all-state in basketball. Now all I have is memories of those times. Small consolation in the face of the everyday reminders of what I cannot do. Like play golf.

Here's what I love about golf (there has to be something or why keep coming back?): the deer overseeing the 18th tee, the wood stork coming in low over the sixth fairway, four hours of Georgia blue sky, making a lone par.

Truffle: The soul-soothing tranquility of late afternoon sun, a dog, a husband and a bottle of wine on Lin's dock. 

Quote of the day: "In search of my mother's garden, I found my own." (Alice Walker; in memory of Marjorie Cope Stout, b. 02.23.1911; d. 03.13.1981, who might have been 99 today)

Shellman Bluff makes The Boston Globe

SHELLMAN BLUFF - If there’s a place where “Keep this a secret’’ comes to mind, it’s the Georgia coast, strung with barrier islands as big as Bermuda, and back islands - 1,600 of them - as large as hundreds of acres to the size of a pickup truck. To find so many wildly beautiful islands in one state is remarkable enough, but it’s the fishing that draws anglers here.

via www.boston.com

In case you're wondering why we came to choose Shellman Bluff as our destination of choice, here's the skinny as it appeared in the Boston Globe on Sunday. Naturally, we are ahead of the curve!

Truffle: Finishing one of three projects saved for Georgia — completing the editing of the Social Science Club's 125th anniversary book's Club History chapter. What better use for a rainy day?

Quote of the day: "Rainy days and Mondays always get me down." (The Carpenters)

Propeller

Cajun is a rescue dog. She hails from Louisiana, hence her given name. She was six months old when she came to us last May, and one of the first things I noticed about her was that she did not wag her tail. I thought for awhile it might actually be broken. After examining it, much to her discomfort, I knew it was not broken, except perhaps in spirit. Still, there was no wagging.

My darlin' girl, Scylla, a lab mix I lost to cancer in the fall of 2008, would wag her tail in wild circles when she was happiest. On a scent or a good walk or playing in the house or with random children, her tail would beat back and forth in what might be called an enthusiastic but normal wag. But throw a ball into one of her two favorite bodies of water — the ocean in Nantucket or the Sudbury River in Concord — and  'round and 'round her northern hemisphere her tail would go. 

Cajun has her mojo back. Or perhaps I should say her mo-joy. This week in Georgia, particularly nosing around the swamp, she has rediscovered her inner pup. She galumphs through muck so deep she sounds like a heard of panicked cows pulling their hooves out of the mud — but in spring leaps. Then out she bounds, tail whipping around in those once familiar circles, like a propeller gone a little bit wacky, checking to make sure she knows where we are — then bounding back into the marsh grass to pounce! — on what? — who knows? perhaps nothing. Maybe it is the armadillo of her imaginings? Maybe it is a coy snipe?

Does it matter? Not at all. The joy she exudes is exhilarating. What would a dog be without an enthusiastic wag? What would a wag be without something so marvelous to behold by nose as to set the whole being shaking, trembling, propelling down to the tip of one's — what else? — tail? And what is a wagging tail, particularly one doing circles, but a pure expression of joy? And what is joy seen in others, even four-legged others, but shared delight.

Truffle: 67° and sunny on a February day.

Quote of the day: "Ask of the beasts and they will teach you the beauty of this earth." (St. Francis of Assisi)

The Bluff

We call it The Bluff now. Only newcomers call it Shellman Bluff, and we've been here a week. Naturally, we are taking a proprietary interest in our 'new community' that grows stronger with every passing day. And, not inconsequentially, with our increasing understanding of how things work here.

Let's begin with the trailers. In a phrase, I've grown accustomed to their smiles. Lin Rogers, the woman who manages rental properties of which Moonpie is one, came by today in her souped up golf cart and inquired, "Have y'all had your religious experience yet?" By which she meant, did we drive down Leon Lane for the first time, take a look at our neighbors and say to ourselves, What the hell have we done?

If she'd asked that question six days ago, we would have lied and said no, to be polite and non-offensive. But by today we could say no and not be lying, exactly. In the week we've been here, we've seen the march of development, stopped dead in its tracks — thank God — by the recession (you see, you naysayers out there, something good does come of everything), all over the place in this remote but oh-so beautiful part of America. Ghost gates haunt every road for miles, dozens of them. A few found their way to ghastly fruition —  trophy homes of unimaginable size and bad taste — before the bubble burst. Lin calls these developments The Projects. 

The trailers, we've come to realize and Lin verified today, may not be what we New England snobs are used to but they are the history here. Folks bought land here a generation or more ago to get away from the drudgery of farm life and inland heat, so they could fish these rivers and gaze out over these spectacular natural vistas when they got some time off. Weekends, school vacations, summers. Rather than plunk down a fortune to build a house they only use occasionally, relatively speaking, they bought a mobile home. They parked it on their land, not on the cinder blocks of impermanence but with landscaping and plantings, adding screened in porches and proper stoops and, in so doing, 'made nice' but kept it simple. Kept it practical.

Smart, huh? They don't waste time in these parts trying to impress their neighbors with 'bigger is better,' unless of course the subject is fishing.

Truffle: My dream last night in which I am recruited to coach a new sport — Olympic swing set.

Quote of the day: "We've got two lives, one we're given and the other one we make." (Mary Chapin Carpenter, "Come On, Come On")

Mud bath

This is a golf story. But stay with me here. Consider the subject line. If only I can convey to you what happened to me today, in the spirit, not in which it was given, but in which it was received by me, I can guarantee laughter.

It was my Tiger Woods moment. Pre-personal maelstrom (his, not mine). Picture this: I hit my drive off the tee. It is straight and firm. Then it takes a bad bounce and rolls to water's edge. And I mean, edge. It was right there — it's bald white head standing straight up, calling my name. I have a choice: try to hit it and save a stroke or loose a stroke and drop a ball on nearby terra firma. I picture Tiger. Hardly a round goes by that he does not hit some looper and then saves himself with a mere wag of a club. I can do that, I think. It is a messy error in judgment. But it was a true lesson in the consequences of one's actions.

With (as it turns out, undue) confidence, I walk to the water, pitching wedge in hand. I address the ball, as they say in golf (which does not mean I gave it a howdy-do). I consider the lie, the angle of the hill, the water. I am bursting with (undue) self-assurance. I whack the ball. An instant later I am covered in mud. Literally. Mud in my hair, ,dotting my visor, mud all over my sunglasses to the point of obscuring all vision, my jacket and slacks riddled with blobs of grassy mud. It was on my nose, in my mouth. There was only one possible reaction.

I laughed. I laughed so hard I could not stand up, could not breath. My nose ran and I wept. And still I laughed. Laughed so hard Pete got tickled and laughed while he mopped me off. I thought I would wet my pants, I laughed so hard. And then I laughed because I was laughing so hard. I cannot remember the last time I did something so deliciously idiotic. Certainly, I can't recall the last time I laughed as hard. 

Now I need a bath.

Truffle: The belly laugh of a lifetime.

Quote of the day: "What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul." (Yiddish proverb)