Taz Caracal

Conservators Center

Mebane, NC 2012
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When I left work yesterday it was raining. Nothing too heavy, but more than a sprinkle. By the time I was three blocks away from werk it had turned into a wind-whipped gale that was blowing rain everywhere. The small umbrella I was trying to keep over my head snapped back and forth, leaving a thin, broken metal arm snagging onto my hair while a large section of the umbrella sagged onto my shoulder. I ducked into a small campus bus shelter, hoping the worst of the storm might blow through quickly. If anything, the storm got worse while I waited, making the rest of the walk a cold and soggy mess.

On the bus I collapsed into a seat, chilled and wet. From my satchel I pulled out my copy of A.M. Sperber's "Murrow: His Life and Times" and found that the rain had soaked through two layers of canvas and had gotten to one corner of the book. I managed to read for all of about five minutes before closing the book, putting my head in my hand and going to sleep.

I'm at the part of the book where Ed Murrow is in London as Hitler began promoting the idea of German expansion. Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, was working hard to give away parts of Europe to Hitler by way of avoiding another world war. Hitler, of course, wanted not only the nearby lands, but all of Europe to be under his control. Chamberlain, now seen as a pacifist at the wrong time, was initially given broad support by the British press as well as the British people. Like America, the British memories of World War I were still fresh in their minds. Unlike the Americans, however, the British people were too close geographically to those countries to remain isolationistic for very long. England was pulled into the war via when Hitler invaded Poland. The US waited (and waited) until Pearl Harbor.

In the months leading up to the war, Murrow knew that war was coming. Reading with my perfect 20-20 hindsight, it was clear that Chamberlain was on the wrong side of history, that appeasing Hitler was not going to work and the coming months and years were going to be difficult, horrible ones.

As a kid I remember trying to make sense of that kind of wrong-thinking history and the current world, a world where things were so different from what impassioned people were wrongly proclaiming as being right. In 1968 Alabama Governor George Wallace ran for president of the US and the TV news aired his famous segregation quote:

"In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

I had a very hard time wrapping my head around that ideology. That kind of thinking had been proven wrong! We live in a better world than that. After all, I went to a school with black kids and white kids. We went to church with black families and white families. Sure I knew our skin was a different color, but what difference did that make? Why should someone be treated differently because of that?

Two days ago North Carolinians went to the polls to vote on an amendment to the state constitution that would define marriage as something that took place between one man and one woman. Thirty other states have said yes to this idea, thereby denying married status to two people of the same sex. I had read something earlier in the year that said the majority of North Carolinians had disagreed with the amendment. This gave me hope that the state where I live was continuing its trend towards more modern thought. Then the election came and the amendment was passed, leaving me feel sickened and embarrassed to live here.

I was naive as a kid, thinking that I lived in a world where prejudice didn't still exist. However, by growing up thinking my world was past that way of thinking has helped me to live a life far less tainted by prejudice than those kids even a generation before me. That, I think, is one of the best things we can pass down to our children: the belief that the world is becoming a better place for all people.

I believe there will come a time when a future generation will look back on the discrimination that North Carolinians voted into the state constitution and think, "How could anyone think like that? That kind of thinking has been proven wrong! We live in a better world than that." I'd even like to be alive to see that day come.

Today the sun is shining. The streets have been washed clean, the grass, trees, and flowers all seem to be standing taller and stronger from the rains. May we do the same one day.

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Sleeping Lioness
March, 2012 Mebane, NC

For me, the phrase "going commando" has nothing to do with not wearing underwear and everything to do with images of eighteen year old boys in camouflage gear getting ready to be shipped over to Viet Nam by crawling under barbed wire on their knees and elbows, their rifle held out in front of them while live gunfire whizzes over their heads.

There is a reason why they have eighteen year old kids do that. It's because they can wake up the next morning and say, "Hey, that was fun! Let's do it again!"

There is also a reason why most men more than twice their age do not do that. It's because when they wake up the next morning they feel like whatever truck ran them over in the night is still backing up and running over them again (and again and again…).

However, when one's wife smells mold in the hall bathroom and reasons there is a leak under the house and one is too poor to call a plumber, one is called to do extraordinary things. Or stupid things.

This is why, instead of reading for a bit and then falling asleep on the bus ride in to werk yesterday, I was trying my dangedest to not have to crawl under the house. I failed dismally.

Back in my home state of Maryland, at least where I grew up, houses were built on top of deep holes in the ground lined with concrete. We call them "basements." For some reason, builders in North Carolina never seemed to have heard of the word "basement." Instead, they opt for the cheaper, less user-friendly "crawlspace." A crawlspace, for those of you lucky enough to not have one, is that space between the underside of your plywood flooring and the ground. If you're lucky, your crawlspace is tall enough for you to hobble into, hunched over like the old man I'm feeling like today. If not, you get to try and slither as best you can against the ground, keeping your head low to avoid being smacked by very unforgiving floor joists.

Our crawlspace starts out with enough headspace for me to stand up on my knees. As the ground slopes upward, toward the street, the space gets more and more cramped. There are no plumbing problems that I can address in the back part of the house.

Let me also add that there are no plumbing problems I can address with any confidence, period. Yesterday's events were another instance of me practicing my I-Am-Not-A-Plumber skills. As such, I did so quite badly and over many, many hours.

The main culprit was the outdoor faucet where we connect a hose to water the plants with. Located at the very front of the house. The part with the least amount of space between the ground and the plywood flooring and the joists.

To get to this spot I have to crawl along half the length of the house, make a sharp right at one of the concrete & cinderblock foundation points, and zig-zag around another such foundation point eight or so feet away. Through this section I'm having to squeeze under heating ducts and various pipes, so I have to shift myself along on my elbows and knees. Once there, the space is so tight that in order to get out I have to do this elbow and knee commando shift backwards, feet first. This always makes for a messy experience, but yesterday's addition of more water than normal just made it all that much more special.

My first time through, to diagnose the problem, I got fairly muddy. By the sixth or seventh time going back I was an absolute mess. My jeans had such a thick layer of mud down the front that I couldn't tell if I had torn an hole in the knees or if the mud was just caked on and was starting to dry and crack in places. On my fourth trip back to DIYWorld a salesclerk laughed at me. When I knew I was just going to cap off the pipe and say to h3ll with the sillcock, I also walked through GroceryWorld to buy beer. Lots of beer.

Bonn tried to be upbeat about the situation, saying how she loves to learn new things -- something that's much more easily said by someone wearing clean, dry clothes. I'm all for learning new things, but I'm more of the "Let's let an expert handle the specialty stuff, okay?" kinda guy.

Especially when it involves going all Viet Nam commando like that.

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Jacques
2011 Outside Raleighwood, NC
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Tuesday on the bus ride in to werk a friend told me about something he'd seen on the news the day before.

"They were showing a picture of the outdoors and it looked like it was raining. Only it wasn't rain. It was pollen!"

Now, I know well just how bad the pollen gets around here. But, really? Pollen that dense? Looking like rain? It sounded like the beginnings of an urban myth to me.

I didn't have allergies until we moved to North Carolina. Now, Spring means I start turning into my father. It starts with the pear trees, whose hopeful blossoms are one of the first signs that winter is truly leaving. Unfortunately, Pear tree pollen attacks my eyes, invisibly, and starts robbing me of energy while leaving headaches in its place. Then, as I'm just starting to come to terms with those symptoms, the pine trees clobber me, while dusting everything yellow.

One morning I'll walk out to the car and see there's a slight, dull sheen of greenish yellow on the windshield. Within days, our black car will seem to give off a radioactive glow each morning. Then, the glow that gets blown off on my way to the the bus stop will reappear by the time the bus drops me off again the afternoon.

Rain is a welcome event on days like these. Rain washes the pollens from the air, cleaning the world for a few hours. Afterwards, you can see wet pools of greenish yellow on the ground and in the roads. Later still, greenish yellow lines are left behind, showing the paths the runoff made. Then there are the puddles that have either evaporated or sunk into the ground, leaving behind thick clumps of pure pine pollen. I've often thought if someone ever collected all of that pollen they'd have a nasty biological weapon in their hands.

Yesterday afternoon we were in Bonn's computer room One wall of the room has two side-by-side windows that look out on the edge of the porch, the backyard lined with pine trees and the two-story barn where The Boy and his girlfriend live. Bonn looked out the window and asked, "Is it raining?"

I looked and saw what looked to be a steady, driving rain that was coming down at an almost 45 degree angle. "It sure is..." I started to say. But something wasn't right. I wasn't hearing rain on the roof and the barn roof still looked dry. There was, however, a good wind blowing.

"No," I said. "That's pollen."

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Tree On Hill
January 2012 Ft Fisher, NC
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For most of my twenties, thirties and forties I would have to stop and do some quick math whenever anyone asked me how old I was. Age was just an abstract number that held little importance for me.

Then, two years ago, I hit the last year of my forties. There was something about being that close to fifty that forced me to pay attention to it. All of my grandparents lived well into their seventies and eighties but none of them lived to be one hundred. And since I was approaching one-half of one hundred, that meant mathematically, my life was already more than half over.

There was nothing like a little bit of in-my-face mortality to remind me how little I've done with my life.

One of the things I had wanted to do since I was a kid was to write a book and be a published author. With the ticking of time running out in my head, I decided to get serious and start writing. So I wrote.

I never doubted I could write The Book. In fact, in that first year I wrote a total of four stories featuring an orphaned chimney sweep who becomes an assistant to an eccentric Professor. When I had finished shaping what had become the first of the stories, I started querying on it. To my surprise, it got some immediate response from several agents. In my imagination I thought I might even sign with an agent before that half-century birthday hit.

Well, that didn't happen. And it didn't happen this year, either. (Agent #4 and I spoke on Monday about my latest revision. We appear to have different visions of where my story should go that are likely irreconcilable.) Alas.

Still.

Many years ago Bonn bought The Boy a framed watercolor image that read, "Discipline is Remembering What You Want." I'm not sure if I'm going to shelve my chimney sweep and eccentric Professor for a while and work on something else or if I'm going to reel in the revisions and try to take them where I want them and their story to be. I do know that I'm still going to be writing and revising because it remains one of the things I want.

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Calvin
February 2012
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Last April, when Bonn and I decided to start volunteering at Conservators' Center, the first thing we agreed we wanted out of the experience was to just work with the animals and not get involved in any politics. We knew this organization, like any organization, was bound to have its share of politicking -- we just wanted no part of any of it. (I deal with enough politicking at were and have no interest in dealing with it on my days off.)

Of course, within weeks, we felt the whipping pull of the whirlpool eddies trying to draw us in. We were reliable, smart, talented, and willing to help. We said yes to some things and no to others, which seemed to stir things up as well. The more we worked there, the more we were asked to do, which was fine, providing our needs and expectations were taken into account and agreements were honored.

Long story short, Bonn is still volunteering there every Saturday. I fully support her decision and am happy she's doing what she wants and needs to do there.

As for me, I'm taking an indefinite hiatus from the place. I'll miss seeing the animals as often as I have, but I'm not willing to give my time and energy to any one or any place that will knowingly try to mislead and take advantage of my limited time and resources. (Yes, this is intentionally vague.)

It's frustrating, but I'm comfortable with my decision. My Saturdays of late have been spent sleeping in (!) and making/canning orange marmalade. I'm even thinking of entering some in this year's State Fair.

In the coming weeks/months I'll be looking into working with the county's literacy agency. In the meantime, I'll enjoy my time off.

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Jungle Cat
2011 Mebane, NC


Those who know me IRL can attest that I am typically a pretty laid back guy. It tends to take a lot to get me riled up and even then, I'm hardly the raving Irishman The Boy might have you believe.

Twice in the past year, however, I have quite unexpectedly gone full-tilt enraged. Should you be interested in finding out more, just ( click on through to the other side… )

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Soren, Asleep on the Back Porch
Outside Raleighwood, NC
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Going through my Flickr account I realized I don't have many photographs of our house. Other than the occasional "look how much snow we got!" shot, and pictures of the cats on the back porch (either sleeping or glaring at me for coming near them with that big camera lens), my house has not been a topic of photographic consideration. I should probably reconsider that.

Yesterday marked Ten Years since we moved into our home. That's the longest Bonn has lived in one place in her entire life. It's the longest I've lived anywhere since I moved out of my parents' house. It's been quite a decade for us.

When we first looked at the house we discovered that the doors leading from the screen-in back porch into the kitchen had been left unlocked. This gave us an early preview of the house and allowed us to start making a wish list of changes early on. Once we had electricity turned on to the house we started moving smaller things into the house. We spent the Saturday before moving in with a rented carpet cleaner, trying to get the stains and grime out before we could start adding our own.

We moved from an old farmhouse that came with an old metal-sided barn for storage. That barn was both a blessing and a curse, as we got into the habit of throwing very little away -- until it came time to pack it all up and move it to the new house. We loaded it all into the back of a long U-haul truck that I was able to drive to the house, but had to rely on one of the guys who was doing pre-agreed upon repair work on the place (who happened to be a former trucker) to back it down our narrow driveway and into the back yard… where we had another, smaller barn waiting to receive all of those boxes of stuff.

My lasting memory of moving in was that I took a week off from werk to work on the house. I figured a week should be enough to tear off the horrid wainscoting along the dining room wall, get the wallpaper off of the kitchen walls, get the kitchen repainted, the hallways repainted and the living room painted, and get the kitchen and the majority of the rooms organized. (I couldn't understand why the guys at werk laughed at my time assessment)

In reality, it took me a week to get the @#&%$! wallpaper off of the kitchen and dining room walls. (I swear, they must have put that fugly stuff up with superglue) On the last day of the week, I'd filled in all of the claw-teeth holes in the walls that had been scored into them by the tool we'd been assured would help get the adhesive disolving spray between the paper and the wall, thus allowing us to peel away the old wallpaper like magic. (Didn't work) Then I kicked everyone out of the house, set up all of the fans to blow air out to the back porch, and sanded down all of the walls.

Ah, the joys of homeownership.

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Arthur Tiger was not impressed that Maggie Stiefvater came to meet the wolves and not him.
Conservators' Center, August 2011 Mebane, NC
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Last year New York Times Best-selling author Maggie Steifvater blogged about being in Hungary as part of her European book tour.  While there, her European publisher arranged for her to meet a pack of wolves owned by a trainer named Zoltan.  It was a great, funny posting and was one of two thoughts I had when I read that she was going to be making an appearance at our favorite Raleigh independent book store.  The other thought was, "We have wolves at Conservators' Center.  She should come meet our wolves!"

For more photos and rambling, ( click on through to the other side... )
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Archer Binturong's Friend, Phil
May 2011 Conservators' Center, Mebane, NC
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Cynical though I may be, there are still things that give me hope in life. The story behind this photograph is one of them.

The guy in the plastic lawn chair is Phil. Years ago, he became a lifetime adopter at Conservators' Center, chosing to adopt one of the animals there, Archer Binturong. Part of the deal with adoption is that you're given additional time with your animal, to form a personal bond with him or her. You're given (and can bring) treats to feed your animal and, in that way, spend time getting to know them, and they can get to know you.

In his younger days, Archer Binturong used to excitedly climb down to greet Phil whenever Phil could come by for a visit. Sure, tasty treats ensued, but it really did go beyond that. Archer knew he had a friend in Phil, someone for whom Archer was special. It's something all of us want and need on some level, to know that we matter to someone else, that we're important. Obviously Archer was important to Phil.

While not a lot is known about binturongs, it is reported they can live up to 20 years in captivity. Archer is reaching that mark and not surprisingly, Archer has slowed down a lot. Most days, he rarely comes out of his den, preferring to sleep and keep still.

This, however, has not stopped Phil from coming to spend time with his favorite animal. When I was out early Saturday morning helping to feed some of the animals in the Small enclosure side of things, I saw Phil sitting next to Archer's enclosure, reading. It was clear Phil was settled in for the morning. When I asked if I could take his photograph he laughed and said, "Sure," at the same time apologizing for not having Archer down with him.

To me, though, this photograph wasn't about Archer. This photograph was about patience and love and the bond that can develop when people stop and take the time with someone else, be they human or animal, and then agree to a lifetime committment to that other creature. There is something magical, something that goes beyond words and settles into a warm spot, deep in the heart when this happens.

It's a rare gift, but one we all have the capacity to give and to accept.

So, thanks, Phil, for allowing me to witness this. I'll try to remember it when the world turns dark again.


(I heard later in the day that Archer finally woke up and realized that Phil was there. He slowly made his way down to see his friend of many years and spent some time with him before climbing back up to rest again. That, though, was their moment and not one that needed someone with a camera to document.)

crossposted

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Ruffian Binturong
April 2010 Conservators' Center, NC
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When I became a vegetarian back in 1979, my mother gave one of the best proclamations she ever decreeded. "Well," she said, "if you think I'm going to make anything special for you for dinner, you're crazy." I had done some baking during summer vacations, but (aside from Minute Rice, which I don't think counts) I had never cooked for myself. Fresh into my 18th year, I figured it was about time to learn how to cook.

This means when I started cooking, I didn't cook meat. In fact, until the last few years, I had never even handled meat. I've learned how to brine a turkey (for the science of it and, because, Bonn loved turkey) and grill chicken breasts for Bonn, but that's it. As our rock star daughter learned when she asked me to carve a Thanksgiving turkey back in the 90's, my mantra was "I don't butcher dead animals!"

See that adorably cute Binturong in the photo above? Yeah, well... let's just say the photos (with the possible exception of the next one) will stay cute, but the text likely won't.

For those who have read my last two entries about Conservators' Center and have an idea of where this entry is heading, I'll leave off here. For those who want to follow through, just ( click on through to the other side... )

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