Our Spring guests

My wife's parents stopped by a couple weeks ago, and spent the weekend with us. They have stayed with us several times now, and at this point we've used up about all of the easy tourist hotspots in the area, so we pondered as to where we could bring them. We would have been perfectly happy to just hang out with them at home, but as home is still just a 2 bedroom apt., the closeness of the space is a fairly potent factor in getting us all out and about.

We ended up taking them to several stops on the Azalea Festival trail. The AF trail is a spring tradition in the River Oaks [1]section of town. When the azaleas are blooming, it's supposedly pretty fantastic.[2]

We started at Bayou Bend, the home of socialite and philanthropist[3] Ima Hogg[4]. It’s a manor home and large landscaped grounds. We paid our admission fees[5], and headed on in. The grounds are awash in azaleas….when they’re blooming.

Unfortunately they were not.

Nada. Maybe one or two blossoms here or there.

All I could think was, with all apologies to Ian Malcolm similar query about dinosaurs and rides, “eventually you plan to have AZALEAS at your azalea festival, right?”.

We felt very bad that we couldn’t show them the place in its full “glory”, but luckily the magnolias (?) were in bloom[6] and the grounds are still nice to see.

We did manage to find a FEW azaleas poking their heads out, as well as some of the odd trappings of uber-wealth.

We also stopped to marvel at some of the micro-changes in elevation near the bayou, topography in general being a rarity in Houston.

(with some ultra-wide angle distortion…sorry Kate…)

We hit a couple of the other stops on the Azalea trail, including the “Rienzi” manor home, and some private houses.

The private houses were really kind of a bust. Not much in the way of gardens. It felt more like an exercise in “Come see how immaculate and well appointed my home is, so that I may feed on your envy”. This sign pretty much summed up the underlying tension between the society set and the rest of us trogdolytes:

We ate at the legendary Hobbit Café[7], after which we spotted what seemed like a statistical oddity….a Delorean (rare in and of itself) with handicapped plates.

Hey, Doc’s getting old. He can’t sashay through time quite like he used to.

The next day we took a leisurely stroll through the park[8]. I had been discussing bird identification with Kate’s mom when nature saw fit to present me with a challenge. Across the sky suddenly flew not one, or two, but what looked to be three different raptors, all in tight formation. It turned out to be a red-tailed hawk, red-shouldered hawk, and large American crow (not a raptor) all harrying each other for airspace. Seeing two of these together, especially a crow and a raptor, is common, but all three was pretty impressive.

Later on, Kate’s dad and I went for a long hike in a nearby flood control district project area, and generally messed with photographing bits of the wild.

On Sunday, we took them to the Menil gallery, one of our favorite little art places[9]. The Menil is a small collection, with a fantastic room of antiquities. Their modern/surrealist offerings[10] don’t do much for me, but it’s just a really great space. As we came up the walkway we were shocked to see what looked, very convincingly, like a small boy sitting on the roof.

As it turned out, it was just part of a special exhibition, though the boy is no less creepy zoomed in.

They also happen to feature two installations by one of my favorite Earth/Land Art[11] artists[12]. So, in full realization of the irony of making art from other people’s art, here’s my take one of the Heizer pieces.

All in all it was a great visit. We miss having family around so it’s always great when they swing into town.

---

[1] Personally, I'm not a big fan of River Oaks. River Oaks is the sort of place that makes Martha Stewart look downright ghetto (even pre-jail time). The Houston paper has a “Society” section, mostly to serve these people. River Oaks is the sort of place that, if it were characters in an 80’s teen movie, would be the spoiled rich camp/school that the heroic plucky band of guys- and girls-next door have to work hard to beat, and who get their comeuppance in the end. It’s an exercise in a very peculiar alchemy, turning oil into plastic-fantastic opulent manor homes, each guarded by its own perfectly coiffed southern belle stepford wife. I’m fairly sure it’s unofficial motto is “River Oaks: Let Them Eat Cake”.

[2] If one is in to such things. To me, it mostly looks like the same uber-rich enclave it always looks like, but with some flowers.

[3] It’s ironic to me that that title is reserved almost exclusively for the ultra-rich. I have known many real philanthropists who have never been called as such, and couldn’t afford to drive through River Oaks. Apparently the word means something different than I think it does. Based on the “Society” page, being a philanthropist seems to involve going to a lot of fancy parties for fashionable causes (parties to which the causes’ benefitees are rarely invited) and having your picture taken with other over-buffed pretty rich people. Personally, as wonderful as it is for part of their money (earned on the rest of our backs) to go to charity, I don’t find a lot to admire in someone who has more money than they can ever spend, sharing a little with the “little people”. It verges on being somewhat condescending, as if the solution to all our problems can only be a well financially lubricated dues ex machina descending down from their ethereal realm of oil-sodden wealth. But I digress.

[4] Yes, she really was named Ima Hogg, though the popular legend of a sister named Ura is untrue. I good naturedly asked one of the society women “docents” on the tour if they had any inkling of the unfortunate homophonic (I’m a Hog) nature of the name. They looked at me as if I was some godless heathen peasant who had just urinated in the flower pot, and coldly said that no, it was a perfectly normal name for the time, and that I was free to move along to the next room. There was an unsettling degree of hero worship going on.

[5] Which weren’t cheap, especially considering the lack of azaleas. The Azalea “Trail” is apparently paved with money.

[6] Which, blooming from stately trees, I secretly think are far superior to the overly-domesticated pastel azaleas bushes.

[7] The hobbit café is a local landmark. It really is reminiscint of a hobbit hole, and has a 70’s hobbit feel, rather than a peter Jackson hobbit feel. Regardless, this is a café that loves it some hobbits. And without a hint of irony. All the food items have Tolkein names. Every wall was strewn with hobbit related paraphernalia. One almost expected to find awkward youth playing dungeons and dragons in every corner.

[8] Well, I and my mother in law strolled. Kate and her Dad ran. A waste of perfectly good nature if you ask me.

[9] http://www.menil.org/ As with most of the arts in Houston, it’s the product of mega-rich folk turning their hoardings over to the public to secure their legacy. Not that collecting, that odd human fascination, is their trait alone. They just do it on a vast scale.

[10] Alternatively, one could say, they bore me to death. Call me uncultured, call me insensitive, and I’ll counter that I’m simply not afraid to tell the Emperor he’s butt naked. Abstract art can be easy to appreciate, even if it doesn’t emotionally do anything for me. But surrealist stuff, to the greater degree, tends to neither impress me intellectually or emotionally. It just seems pretentious; I don’t particularly buy the argument that the deconstruction of art is itself art. To me it’s often a fairly meaningless private game. “Clever” art rarely is. As an example, the special exhibition consisted mainly of odd arrangement of taxidermied animals, including a dead horse with INRI on a sign with it. Oh how very shocking. You get all the attention now. Zzzzzz. To me, someone like Magritte is wholly different because the art still has an art componenet. He’s still a skilled painter, even if it’s of bowler hated odd men. Dominion of Light is one of my all time faves.

[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_art

[12] Michael Heizer, though they are not by far his best pieces.

Of Vegetables and Men

Growing up, we had a garden. I’ve spoken of it before[1]. We never planted more than an acre (most places around us had at least a back 40 or so reserved for feed corn), but it was a proper garden, with corn, tomatoes, carrots, and rich dark earth. I didn’t spend much time in the garden proper (one venture into the tomato patch as a very young child, and the resulting realization I was surrounded by massive tomato/hook worms, was enough to keep me wary for some time), but I would spend hours chasing the leopard frogs that shaded themselves in the tall grasses at the boundary of the garden and the lawn. It accounts for a good part of my adult inclination toward nature and green growing things. Over time, we let it go fallow, but its earlier vibrant colors and rich smells still fill a small corner of my mind.

I was lucky to go to college in a small town with an abundance of nature around it. A vast valley, an on-campus arboretum, waterfalls and grand gorges provided enough opportunities for outings that the transition from living in a sprawling (if decrepit) country manor on hundreds of acres of land to a small 12X12 dorm room didn’t feel too stifling. I did miss green growing things, but, as with most college men, my thoughts were more occupied with other more pressing concerns. Fruits of the vine still figured prominently, but not quite in the same context.

Fallbrook, Geneseo, NY

Letchworth Gorge, near Geneseo, NY

I bought two plants that freshman year of college. One of my friends was in a botany class, for which they sold plants as a fund raiser. The spider plant, a species which I was convinced until recently could survive full-on nuclear war, was the only one alive after the first year.[2]

Over the years, that spider plant begat, as spider plants are wont to do, a host of other spider plants. I kept some, and gave many others away. However booming , my spider plant cultivation was pretty much the sum and substance of my plant-rearing all the way through graduate school.

In the intervening years, I have not owned land or a proper garden. Grad school was another small apartment, and moving to Houston meant more of the same. Our indecision on whether to stay or not has resulted in living in an apartment for seven years now, while all our friends have moved on to cookie cutter starter homes in suburbs. [3] This in turn means we don’t have land. A seemingly obvious distinction, but one that has come to mean a great deal more to me over the last year.

Before last year, no matter how small my apartment, no matter how cramped my conditions, all I had to do was return to my parents’ home, and I could feel the closeness of the cities slip away and my personal space expand to roam over the fields and creeks and pastures of capital H Home. If Thoreau went to the wood to live deliberately, I went Home to remember, deliberately. Even separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, that place was still very real to me; a final redoubt against the world. That ended last January when my mother passed away. We had deeded the land to her caretaker several years ago, but as long as Mom was still there, that place still harbored a connection for us to childhood, family, and a sense of place in the world. I came to realize later that it meant, among other, more deeply felt impacts, that I now feel severed from that place in any real, current sense. It still exists in memory, but Mom was our last link to that place[4]. For me now, the old farmstead is strange territory. It bears a passing resemblance to the golden fields and dark whispering forests of boyhood, but Avalon has passed form the mortal world and now all that remains is tax parcel so-and-so, village of Theresa. Try as I may, I can’t find my way back to Avalon.

Winter Fields, Theresa, NY

That thought really gnawed on me over the intervening years. Connection to the land is something I’ve spent a great deal of thought on over the years, spawning, I’m sure, no small amount of vaguely pseudo-academic papers in college and grad school. Sure, there are global implications for the historical and ongoing shift from a 1:1 relationship with the land, to a mechanical solidarity in which sense of phsycial place is traded for its virtual counterpart in the vast wilds of the internet. And I could wax eloquently and pretentiously about such things ad nauseam. But to me, when I’m honest, these things are prominent in my mind for a much closer and more personal reason. Growing up on the land, on a real piece of land, is not a perspective that can be readily explained. Looking out any window and seeing your land spreading out before you, looking at a garden and having the tactile memories of rich soil between your fingers, the sense of being part of a landscape rather than a subdivided lot…you have to live it. You cannot be told about it.[5] If you have never known it, you do not miss it. If the entirety of your life has revolved around quarter-acre suburban plots, I can’t image it gnaws at you in quite the same manner. The garden is the focus of all of that. It is the point of contact that directly and intaimately links you to the earth around you. It’s the foundation where you stake your place in the landscape. When you grow a plant in a container, its roots eventually conform to the shape of the container. You can take it out and replant it, and its roots may very well spread out. But the opposite is rarely achievable. Once our perspectives broaden to the rise and fall of the land and extend to the horizon’s curve, cramming them artificial containers is about as successful. It’s all the more potent a separation when the other fundamental forces that shape a person, family, childhood, etc, are also so tied up in that lost landscape.

Birches, Theresa, NY.

So here I remain, in a sprawling suburb, no land to my name, and now derived of the last real link I had to that place. Anyone who knows me will tell you I wander a lot. I am an avid hiker and lover of the outdoors. I am driven to explore new places, to seek out the remains of the wild and go to them. But if I’m being honest with myself, I am sure some part of that is a search for what was lost; trying to find a way back to my place. The fundamental difference that continues to stymie is that, now, the land and nature are places I go TO, rather than places where I AM.

All of this is an overly long explanation for what would seem a simple obsession:

I have a garden[6].

We still have no real land, but we do have a large balcony that, because of its odd L shaped layout, is not very usable[7]. Several years ago, I began to build the basis of my current leafy empire of ~50 loyal denizens. In retrospect, the garden center print ad for $1.00 vegetables and herbs that initially piqued my curiosity on the potential for suburban balconies for container gardening may as well have been a obituary for that year's crop. Planted in small containers, left to the elements, the plants withered and died. (The spider plants, including the same mother plant that I had bought over a decade and a half ago persevered. )

In the intervening years I have gradually ramped up my efforts. I bought bigger containers, watered more often, battled mealey bugs and aphids, and learned by trial and error. I was still not getting good vegetable growth, but I had a few success stories. I learned that mint was a valiant little conqueror, launching a small scale blitzkrieg on the other herbs I planted in a shared window box. Basil apparently loves hot texas sun. Last year, even though most of my vegetables were still stunted and produced little, many of them survived the whole year. (The spider plants, as always, persevered quite nicely)

This year, given the thoughts on land and family and place that had been rattling around my head, I decided I would bring my A-game. I wasn’t going to dabble. I wasn’t going to watch casually as my plants sorted out amongst themselves which half was going to bite it. I was going to take it serious. I was going to have some vegetables.

I was going to use SCIENCE.[8]

I read things. I made larger containers. I thought about drainage. And mulch. And companion planting. And suitability for climate.

And then, I planted.

When the appreciable dust cleared, I had ~ 50 plants potted and looking (for what will likely be an incredibly brief time frame) hale and hearty. In addition to three heirloom tomato plants, I have a patio tomato plant, six varieties of peppers (jalapeno, habenero, super chili, red bell, golden bell, and banana), a zucchini, snap peas, cilantro, two species of rosemary, two species of mint, several strawberry plants, two yuccas (holdovers from previous years), sweet basil, Carolina jasmine, a host of marigolds (companions, for their anti-pest properties), tarragon, lemon balm, an aloe (rescued from the 1.99 bargain plant bin at the supermarket,etc.

Joining these are a greatly reduced but still persevering host of spider plants. The majority of last year’s plants were lost to a hard freeze (something novel for southeastern Texas. However, the roots remained, and even the aged mother spider plant has started to throw out new growth. I won’t belabor the obvious metaphors of their regrowth.

Raw Results of Plantings (pardon the mess)

One item I tried to improve this year was the size of my containers. My large vegetables (tomatoes, etc) got modified 5-gallon buckets. I drilled a series of holes in the bottom and very low sides of the bucket for drainage, and then put a base of gravel or dry carbon material (dead yucca shards, etc) as a filter at the bottom of the bucket. Using the fine mesh crates that came with the starter plants[9], I cut out circles of the mesh and added them as filters at the bottom of the bucket.

Making the bucket containers. Go, go gadget drill.

I paid more attention to soil as well, mixing some pseudo-compost (decayed organic trimmings and spent soil from last year that had been happily decaying in a modified plastic cooler), some mulch and some plain garden soil. I’m not quite up to using soilless composities of peat moss, vermiculite, etc. I need to leave some science for next year. A couple inches of cedar mulch got added to the top of the big plants’ containers to reduce soil compaction from watering and also help reduce infestation.

I mapped out on our balcony the areas that get sun, and for how many hours each. I realized I had a lot of previous years’ plants in horribly wrong locations. My lemon balm is my miner’s canary. Too much sun without water and it will wilt in a matter of an hour or so.

I need to take some proper pictures[10] , which I'll add later

So, one might rightfully say to one’s self, “Self, what did the overly-wordy and maudlin start to this post[11] have to do with this DIY segment?”. Also, “self, at what point has one read enough to comment without having to wade through more of this russian-novel-of-a-blog-update?”. The answer to both questions is simply: bear with me just one paragraph more.

So why do I need to be so obsessive about a balcony garden? Is it due in part to this sort of deeper existential conflict rising from living in a cramped apartment instead of having a connection to the land like the one I used to have? Is it a semi-conscious attempt to try to go home again? Probably, in some part. I’d like to pretend that this was my way of moving on, by starting on my own garden in my own place, but that’s not true. Life doesn’t wrap itself up like that. I’m still dangling in a sea of loose ends. On the opposite end, then, is it escapism? Is it a way of artificially escaping the present by conjuring up a sullied version of the past? I wouldn’t go that far either. If anything, it’s therapy. As this post has demonstrated, I tend to vacillate between a two general mindsets…the first is the romanticism of the past and the long reflection on deeper ties. The second is that action is the only antidote for despair[12]. I think my garden, as small and as humble as it is, has room for elements of each.

When people ask me how I’m doing, I hope it’s not too confusing a thing to say, simply, “let me tell you about my tomatoes…”.

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[1] http://inmediaresblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/15-degrees-of-deconstruction.html

[2] 50% is by no means my worst survival rate for plants)

[3] I wouldn’t feel so bad if we were the hip urban couple still living in an apartment in a trendy part of town. However, our place is in the suburbs. We never even were cool enough to sell out by moving to the suburbs from the city…we STARTED there. Sigh.

[4] While we were still welcome guests at the old house, it no longer feels like our own space, our family space.

[5] Irony!

[6] Coming from where I come from, using this terms necessitates a fairly length list of clarifications and caveats. I will say, instead, that I am using the term in its most generic sense. A proper garden is simultaneously a place, a direct connection to the land, and an enduring part of the historical landscape. My garden is not a place (the balcony is the place, the containers merely conveyances), the only connection to the ground it has is that the majority of the containers happen to be on it, and the “enduring” aspect of my garden is greatly depleted by my negligent care, the cruelty of the Texas sun, and the resulting pattern of Darwinian natural selection that accompanies them. However, since “garden” is easier than “collection of pots I keep on my large but oddly unusable balcony space”, I will continue to call it a garden, and you and I will knowingly smile and give a conspiratorial wink when we hear it, knowing the discrepancies between it and a proper garden.

[7] Any space unusable by my wife, at least to my understanding, is automatically pressed into the service of housing my various and sundry projects. I think my wife’s propensity for leaving reading materials and other odds and ends over usable surfaces , nooks, and floor space is a (potentially unconscious) reaction to this territorial expansion, given my past track record. Part of my reaction to all facets of modern life that are removed from physical skill is an ongoing determination to launch DIY project after DIY, actual skill/knowledge be damned.

[8] Science, of course, being used in very much the same way as “garden” is. That is to say, remarkably loosely.

[9] Most of my plants are starters from nurseries rather than seeds. I don’t have a good track record with seeds in containers. However, this year I am trying out some basil and tarragon. Instead of planting them directly, I took some od egg crates, doubled them up and added a sara-wrap liner, and turned them into seedling trays. We’ll see if they actually germinate.

[10] …and am kicking myself for not doing so as part of the planting process. I am still caught between the generations who simply did things without needing to share them, and the current generation for who doing things, rather than simply consuming things, is an endless novelty to be shared by whatever digital format is most readily accessible.

[11] If, by this time, you can remember that far back.

[12] With apologies to F. Kurt Cylke for stealing this excellent line form the cover of your sociology class reading material packet.

Meanwhile....pt. 1

The last couple of months have flown by without a blog post. For this I apologize. By now, know that I hear you loyal readers. I hear you cry out, your one, maybe two voices, petitioning for another long-winded blathering from the bowels of Texas. "We're too smart and witty", you say. "Please, please spout some rubbish to dull our senses a bit."

Well, I am nothing if not a servant of the people. I promise the following will have absolutely no attempts at editing or proper compositional form that might otherwise deter from its rambling potential.

December and January flew by amazingly fast. Christmas was almost idyllic . I jetted off to Manhattan to see my sister, and had an extra day to walk around a beautifully bright and crisp urbanscape. The bitter cold, bright sun, and freedom to ramble had me in pretty good spirits.(This bit is best read to the soundtrack of "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z/Alicia Keys)

I spent a good deal of time walking through Central Park. I never get tired of the Park. To speak well of it is hardly a unique sentiment, but it never fails to amaze me how such a serene conglomeration of open spaces and almost whimsical structures can coexist with a City renowned for it's grit and general-lack-of-whimsy. The genius of Olmstead and Vaux's Greensvard plan, coupled with the fervor of recent rehabilitation efforts has resulted in a what I would argue is the premier urban park in the world, with Hyde park begging to differ quite vociferously, I'm sure. I know that's a bit like saying "pizza tastes good", but the sentiment remains. (on a side note, Central Park boasts an impressive number of bird species. Even in the coldest day of the year, I counted at least three species of sparrows, the usual starlings, rock doves and crows, as well as robins, several species of gull overhead, and at least two raptors (an unidentified species of hawk, probably red-tailed, and an unidentified owl (probably barred?).


Statuary, Grand Army Plaza


Ducks and Bridge, The Pond, Central Park


View from the Bow Bridge, Central Park (antiqued)

There's really something crazy special about Manhattan during Christmas. Yes, unbridled consumerism abounds, but so does a celebration, as secular as some may find it, that transcends the almost half-hearted nondescript shopping mall Christmas decor of the suburban American wasteland. Manhattan does the same overblown Christmas hyping as done anywhere else. The difference being, of course, that...

Manhattan makes this look GOOD. and does it up BIG.

I did the usual tourist haunts, being the usual upstate NY paradox...sneering at the tourists while I went to all the tourist destinations (ironically, of course...or not.)


Skating at Rockefeller


Sacred and Profane, statuary and decor at Rockefeller


Blow, baby, blow


Times Square


Plaza at Radio City


Candles at St. Patrick's

The dose of touristy glitz, quality time in Central Park, and some wonderful restaurants was threatening to turn into a Autumn in NY-esque movie montage to the City. But honestly, it was idyllic.

We left before Christmas from Manhattan to drive up and see some family in the Catskills. Easily, one of my favorite places. Their farmstead straddles a fork of the Delaware River, barely more than a creek that far north. Rolling hills and small mountains, green valleys and winding country roads. Doesn't get much better than this. It felt a bit like being landed gentry, taking a leisurely ride up from a posh Manhattan stay to a cozy farmstead in the country. We even shot Skeet. Given that it was the first Christmas without Mom, being with family in such a fantastic setting (and with an aunt who is such a consummate hostess) really helped a lot. Sadness turned into fond memories and good times. Red wine helped.


Dawn and Shoham out for a walk


Shooting Skeet with the boys


Valley in Frost


Winter Sunset


Last light on corn fields, Delaware River Valley

As much as it was all escapism to some degree, with the worries of life still waiting to pick me up at the airport in Houston, it was the very best kind of escapism. Which of course, brings on that odd mix of happiness and guilt that is adulthood at its most refined. It was one of the best Christmases I'd had in years. Which immediately triggers the thought, "I wish we could have given Mom a Christmas like this when she was with us.".

Am I a photographer yet?

I usually move all of a given year's photos to my backup drive(s) and burn a copy for "permanent" storage on dvds at the end of the year. I am driven to do this not by a masochistic desire for eternal file shifting or "year in review" sentimentality, but simply to clear room.

I take nowhere near the amount of pictures many do, so keep that in mind. My 2009 stats were:

Pictures (including about 25-30% of duplicate edited versions):
10,074

Size on Disk:
75.5 GB



Might need to consider cutting back a little next year.

Fall-ish Color

We don't get real fall color down here on the Gulf Coast. A few tree species will reluctantly change a hue or two, but none of the blazing fall color of the Adirondacks. We do have some maples (Big-tooth, etc in places like Lost Maples State Natural Area) but they are pretty few and far between.

After 7 years of this, I decided this year THERE WOULD BE COLOR, even if I had to supersaturate pictures to bring it out. Luckily, as winter arrives, sluggish Texas trees finally give way to small burst of color.

SO here is a brief sampling of Texas fall/winter color:


Sycamores:Maples as non-dairy creamer:milk. But we have to take what we can get.


More Sycamore color against a bright blue winter sky


Sycamore close up


Bald Cypress against duckweed covered lake. It's about as close as we get to red and green Christmas colors.


More Bald Cypress, with a small bit of colored bird in the middle.


Chinese Tallow is a nasty invasive, but is one of our few colorful fallwinter trees.


I'm actually unsure what tree/vine this was from.


But to be honest, the real colros here are the browns and tans and shifting colors of the prairie. A little more subtle, but nice.


Prairie grasses with (?)scorpionfly


Winter grasses

It's frozen over....

(photo courtesy of Flick user fancy fembot, original viewable here.


Has it been 5 years already?

We got our twice-a-decade dusting of snow today. At first I was pretentiously looking down my nose at the freezing rain, sleet, and slush accumulation that these untrained heathens were calling "snow". (being from northern NY, much like the Inuit, we have 18 words for snow. At least 13 of them are usable in polite society.)

But then as the day progressed and the globs of mush turned into honest-to-goodness snowflakes, I had to grudgingly admit we were getting "real" snow. Now it wasn't a delicate dusting of powder (word 7 for those keeping track, and it wasn't quite a deluge of lake-effect (word 2), but it was reasonably large puffy flakes coming at moderate velocity. It was just a little bit short of a flurry.

Now let me tell you what a treat a 45 minute commute on major highways in shopping season in the snow with drivers who can't handle normal driving let alone loss of traction is. My assumption is that they assumed the white flakes were some manifest wrath of their respective deities, and they were doing their best to OUTRUN them, explaining the ridiculous speeds and subsequent wrecks abounding because of LESS THAN AN INCH OR SO OF SNOW. (dear Houstonians, that last capitalized bit may not convey to you the scorn that it implies to those of us who grow up with snow. Suffice to say that less than an inch barely qualifies as a "dusting". That's April weather, not proper winter snow. So inability to drive in a pleasantly cool spring dusting does not speak well for one's ability to handle snow.)

Holiday Cheer

Among the rush and bustle and blah of the over-hyped, over-sold, over-blown Christmas season, there are a few bright points...




oh, also, family, peace on earth, etc etc etc.

I is speaking goodly, or, "our friend, the noble comma".

So I have no illusions of being good at grammar, spelling, coherent communication, etc.

However, there is one formal point of grammar about which I think:

1) I'm right with a rightness that is like unto a moral absolute.
2) anyone who disagrees with me is dead wrong. And potentially a communist.

The point in question is the use of commas in a list.

I was always taught in school that when constructing a list separated by commas, that no comma was needed between the second to last item and the "and" that connects it to the last item.

For example, "Justin is awesome, strikingly handsome, erudite and humble without equal."

now there are a LOT of things wrong with that sentence, but I believe the comma use is NOT among their number.

Now before you English majors rise up in revolt, I understand that what seems to be the rest of the civilized world was taught something different. I won't speculate on ythe dastardly purposes for which your instructors felt they needed to pervert logic and have at the English language with the grammatical equivalent of a rakishly wielded cudgel. But for whatever their nefarious purposes, you were taught that the proper end of the example sentence should be as follows:

"...erudite, and humble without equal."

Note the presence of a comma after erudite. In seeming defiance of the "and" that follows it. Now I have never been one to defend any action or idea simply because it was what I was taught to think of as right. An action or idea is right or wrong (or in this case, a challenge to the fundamental liberties we hold dear..) on its own merits.

Toward that point, I offer the following rationale towards the case of omitting the final comma.

1) The commas serve as placeholders for the word "and". So instead of saying "Joe will eat carrots and lettuce and meat and cake", we place commas in the position of the first three "and"s. Therefore:

-"Joe will eat carrots, lettuce, meat and cake." translates to:
-"Joe will eat carrots (and) lettuce (and) meat and cake."
Notice that the last "and" is kept without comma.


2) using a comma before the last "and" is therefore redundant. In the example above, if we were to replace all the commas with "and", including a comma placed before the final "and", we would have redundant "and"s.

-"Joe will eat carrots, lettuce, meat, and cake" translates to
-"Joe will eat carrots (and) lettuce (and) meat (and) and cake."
(notice that the last comma duplicates the purpose of the "and" atthe end of the sentence)

Does this really matter? Well probably not. However, given the righteous indignation I get any time I broach this subject with any of you of the opposing camp, I thought I should make the case:)

As shown, the use of the final comma is redundant. I might also suggest it speaks to a wide-spread international plot against the english language, but that's somewhat harder to support.

All I can say is, "love your country, love freedom and love the proper use of commas in a list."

Anyone who disagrees is obviously on the payroll of the comma industry.