Yom Kippur, the driveway, and the first fall lettuce
This week included Yom Kippur and the beginning of work on our driveway. My personal work this week included working on the Sex Wars powerpoint presentation. I tune it up every year. I’ll be presenting it at Indiana U at South Bend on the 2nd of November, after the Port Huron Conference in Ann Arbor. I want to add four new graphics and remove two I don’t think work as well as I’d like. I’m revising the script. It’s on ongoing speech I give someplace or places every year, and I like to finetune it. If you’ve read the novel, you know what I’m talking about—the period after the Civil War with so many issues that we are dealing with right now and the movers and shakers involved in the first wave of the women’s movement. Of course, in a speech with powerpoint, I can only touch on a few points the novel covers, but I think it’s interesting and useful nonetheless. I’ve given a version of it at 26 colleges and universities.I hope to finish it up in the next 2 days so I can get back to poetry and short stories.I lit the candles at the Am ha-yam Kol Nidre gathering. Ira and I had individually and together discussed the changes we would attempt to institute in our lives, in our behaviors, our routines. We do it together after self-examination because as I’m sure you noticed, your partner has very specific ideas how you could improve. We are all tough on ourselves in some areas and lackadaisical in others. We often think we are better than we are to those around us. I’m sure if the cats could take part, they would have a number of complaints.This is the 3rd day it’s rained a lot. I’m not complaining. It had been very dry for quite a while and that makes me nervous, not only for the plants and trees in fear of fire. Pitch pines are well named. They go up like large torches.We have been seeing lots of friends the past two weeks. Now that the summer is over, people become more active socially and politically here on the Outer Cape. It’s as if a large heavy lid has been lifted off.The tomatoes are slowing down drastically. We’ve probably harvested our last eggplants, but the cucumbers and peppers and beans are still going strong. We may eat our first fall salad tonight if the rain lets up. The fall crops are coming along, especially the lettuce, endive, escarole, bok choi and Chinese cabbage. We have to start planting fall bulbs this week and I must get to potting the herbs and plants I want to bring in for the winter: rosemary, chives, basil, cilantro, lemon verbena, and a few ornamentals.I have a friend whom fall depresses, but it invigorates me. I prefer spring and fall to summer and winter. Both summer and winter seem to outlast their welcome for me. I am not a lover of hot humid weather. My brain turns off. But spring is ever changing and so is fall. Spring for me beings in midMarch when we do our first planting of hardy crops. Fall here usually lasts into December. Few leaves have turned yet, except for those on stressed trees. But before the rains came and afterward, I expect warm days and cool nights. Great for sleeping. Great for working outside or walking.