A Farewell

So here it is June 30, and one half of 2020 is over in another nine hours as I start to type this.

And where are we? Heck, forget "we." Where am I?

I have now been home since March 12, or 110 days. 110 days. I have been working throughout that entire time, so there has been no financial disruption, but 110 days since I last set foot in my office is mind-boggling. In some ways, this reminds me of 15 years ago, when I was preparing for and then undergoing tandem stem cell transplants; I spent a lot of time at home and not in my office (which I would give up later that summer). A difference is that in 2005, what I went through was  personal, and in 2020 we are all going through a deadly pandemic.

Another difference is that in 2005,  I was the one who chose to step away and close my law practice. I chose. I was in control. I have no illusions as to control in this pandemic. There is none. I don't know when I will be allowed to return to my office, even if I were to go in after hours, wearing a mask, not touching anything except the door handles. (Looking at the failure in this country to control COVID-19, I sometimes wonder if instead of "when," I should be writing "if.")

And down the hallway at Symphony Annex North? Warren and his colleagues around the world are watching orchestra after orchestra postpone or scrap their seasons. Each daily briefing from the League of American Orchestras brings another wave of announcements. Major orchestras are furloughing their salaried musicians, furloughing their staff, reexamining how to proceed safely and sensibly in this new world. Warren, his Music Director, and other partners are discussing daily the possible trajectories for our upcoming season. 

In the midst of all this upheaval, I learned that about 20 months ago, Jerry Luedders died. 

Now, if I am just learning that Jerry died, clearly this is not someone I was in close touch with over the years. He and I last communicated by email maybe five, maybe ten years ago after I had stumbled across some reference that made me suddenly think "so where is Jerry these days?" and track him down. We had a friendly "glad to touch base" exchange and that was it. 

I learned he died in a similar fashion. While editing grant material for Warren, the material referenced a saxophone instructor and I suddenly thought of Jerry and went looking for him online. 

And that's when and how I found Jerry had died.

Jerry was the incoming Director of the School of Music at Lewis and Clark College in the fall of 1977, when I was there for the last three quarters of my undergraduate degree. We met because he was directing the Wind Ensemble (band) that fall while the director was on leave, and I joined the ensemble for one quarter because I realized that this would be my last chance ever to play tuba. As it turns out, I was the only tubaist on campus, so he was glad to have me We hit it off immediately as two newcomers, as two outsiders, as two strangers who connected over those other two commonalities. He had just come from Minnesota, I had just arrived from Chicago, and we were at a small, pristine, preppy college before the word "preppy" had even come into vogue. 

Jerry was witty, and deeply knowledgeable about music, and a gifted conductor. He was also a world-class classical saxophonist (which is not an oxymoron). He was openly gay at a time when many people were still in the the closet and his off campus wear ran the gamut from "business casual" to "Let-me-remind-you-who-I-am-and-proud-of-it" leathers. He threw parties at his house high in the Portland Hills, he tooled up and down the hills of Terwilliger Boulevard in a Volvo PV 544, and it was not unheard of for me to be walking on campus and hear him shouting my name. My favorite time was when he ran up behind me yelling "April, you are such a slob!" and grabbed me in a hug. (It was one of the many days I wore a mechanic's shirt, battered jeans, and worn out shoes. Compared to Jerry and most of my fellow students, I was a slob. I would have passed easily and fit in better at Reed College across the river, but Reed had a 6-quarter graduation requirement for transferees, and I didn't want to spend another year in college.)  In the spring of that year, my last quarter, he begged me to come join the orchestra's low brass section for a performance of the overture of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. 

How could I say no? That turned out to be the last time I played tuba, and I am forever grateful it was with Jerry on the podium.

I have taken to walking a local labyrinth many mornings (you can read my reflections on that here) and there are days where I think of those dear to me who have died and gone before me. I often murmur a name, followed by "blessed be their memory," a variation of a common Jewish statement of mourning. 

Jerry Luedders, blessed be your memory. 

Jerry Luedders, 1943-2018

A Look at the Gardens

Back in late April, I shared that our vegetable garden, the one I call the "kitchen garden," had been cleared and tilled by Warren, and was just waiting for planting. It looked like this then:

What I have not shared, because my posting has been, ahem, irregular at best, is that we added a second garden, the Hej (pronounced "hedge") garden. The Hej garden actually sits on our backyard neighbors' parcel. The owner before the current ones was an avid gardener, a certified Master Gardener, and she had established a thriving vegetable garden in the far back corner of the yard, just where it butts up to the little dogleg on Warren's parcel. It has been tilled but not planted for several seasons, as our current neighbors have many, many demands on their time and a garden just wasn't one of them. So I proposed that we take over the garden, they can have some of the vegetables grown on it (making me a sharecropper no matter how I look at it), and there we go. 

The Hej garden is our zucchini garden, because our kitchen garden does not have enough space for zucchini. It has been planted twice, because the first planting of 20 zucchini seeds resulted in five coming up.

Five.

You could toss a coin, call "heads," and get better results than that.

About three weeks ago, I tore out everything but those five zucchini and planted it over again, this time marking the seeds (which I doubled and tripled) with spoons:

And today, I was in the garden at 6:30 a.m., transplanting the zucchinis that came up in twos and threes to the spaces where there were still not results, marking the transplants and their former companions with the spoons upside down:

It's been a lot of work. This garden also contains  five extra tomato plants we had from my over-ordering tomatoes this year; they are along the fence on the left side of this photo. 

The kitchen garden and I likewise got off to a rocky start, but we have smoothed out our most of our differences. How rocky? Lettuce that didn't come up, parsley that didn't come up, marigolds (border) that didn't come up. You get the picture. So there was some extensive replanting in that garden as well. 

But just a day into summer, and it is looking good:

Bit by bit, it is coming along. Tomatoes are starting to form:

Indigo Rose

Early Girls

My very favorite feature is the ceramic partial border in the kitchen garden. As I continue to sort through stuff in my house, some of the stuff is headed west to my sons out there. Sam declined any of his childhood pottery attempts; Ben and Alise took a few. I couldn't just toss my children's offerings over the years, so I put them in the garden instead. 

The border

A ripply plant impression plant by Ben

A skull by Sam

I smile every time I walk by, seeing my children's art springing to life in the garden.

Observations About May Money

This pandemic and our grocery spending (because that is about the ONLY spending I am doing these days) continue to be...what? Fascinating? Mind boggling? Head scratching? All of these?

Yeah, all of these. 

After sailing through April with food expenditures well below the monthly $180.00 target I had set months ago, May costs went back up over that. May food costs were $218.52; household (non-food) expenditures were $23.43. The grand total? $242.36. 

That brings our monthly average year-to-date to $221.69.

And, once again, we did not eat out. Ohio has started reopening, and restaurants that can accommodate the mandatory distances are opening, but I have not yet been cleared by my oncologist to go beyond the boundaries of my home for all practical purposes. 

In preparing to write this post, especially in light of last month's revelations about my "twitch," I looked back at the three (yes, three) receipts for groceries in May. Some (a significant portion) of the expenditures consisted of stocking up on food items we routinely use such as coconut oil (my current jar is down to about a week's left), olive oil, and decaf instant coffee (I make chocolate mochas with it at home; I cannot drink caffeinated coffee). Those three items alone came to $14.77. Butter was on sale at Kroger and we spent $6.00 to get three pounds of unsalted as I was running low on it from the stocking up I did last December. (I use the unsalted in baking and there has been a lot of baking lately. A. Lot.) 

And let's talk about the steep rise in the cost of meat. Fortunately, we are not huge meat eaters. I cringe for family and friends who are. Around here, meat is more expensive and, of course, scarcer. So when I looked to order chicken thighs, the store's first response was it had none. By the time we picked up the order the next day, thighs were available, at a higher cost because these were boneless and skinless (the only type available).

So I get why the May expenses were higher. I also suspect that June will drop off precipitously as we eat our way through the items on hand. And maybe this will be the 2020 pattern: high, low, high, low. The good news going forward is that now that I am aware of my twitch, I am much more conscientious about what we order. Placing the second online order in May was stressful as I wrestled with making sure the items were needs and not twitches. (Once I placed the order, the stress dissolved.) When I am allowed back in a grocery, I hope to carry that awareness with me. 

On the gardening front, we are still weeks away from tomatoes. Many of the tomato plants are setting blooms and I am hoping that I will have one by month's end. Time will tell. The zucchini is not cooperating in germinating; I will be replanting that entire garden. (I now have a second garden, courtesy of our backyard neighbors, who have a great plot they never use. Basically, I am sharecropping zucchini this year.) Lettuce is coming along slowly; maybe in a few more weeks we will have lettuce. 

These were hard times before the Minneapolis killing tore even deeper fissures into our country. Our Legal Clinic, which is serving clients remotely, is already seeing its numbers rising and we know the tsunami of evictions and debt-related matters is on its way. I am dealing with personal issues as well, ranging from my health to accepting that I will not be able to travel to the Pacific Northwest this year. As the likelihood of the NW family contingent coming here is also nil, this will be first year since 2013 I have not seen Ramona and company in person. I get it, but it is still a disappointment. So the fact that I managed Tuesday to knock the entire stack of our everyday bowls off the shelf onto the counter and kitchen floor, shattering every last one, seemed somehow a fitting note.

Here's to a better June.