Lord Byron's Birthday Week

Week Four, January 2008

Over the years I have noticed that weird things always seem to happen on the poet Lord Byron’s birthday. This year stock markets all over the world did a major melt down. My retirement fund is now barely sufficient to load my Starbucks card and pick up a bag of cat food. Ah well, life goes on.

Byron Birthday happenings in prior years included the birth of the CIA, the Roe v. Wade decision, the introduction of the Apple Macintosh at the 1984 Super Bowl, and KMart declaring bankruptcy in 2002. In addition to Lord Byron, 22 January was the birthday of Grigori Rasputin, D. W. Griffith - also the death-day of England’s Queen Victoria, American President Lyndon B. Johnson, and actor Telly Savalas. And, sad to say, this week the death of brilliant actor Heath Ledger.

I read somewhere that the last major tsunami to hit the west coast of America occurred on 22 January 1788 - the day Byron was born. It wiped out many coastal villages, killing hundreds of people and sweeping miles of sandy real-estate into the Pacific. How the exact date is known puzzles me - there were not a whole lot of people running around with day timers on the Olympic Peninsula back in 1788. Another Byron’s birthday mystery.

This week I offer an excerpt from “Darkness” by Lord Byron (in keeping with this week’s gloomy mood):

“And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look’d up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash’d their teeth and howl’d . . .”

The poem was written in July of 1816 - a year known as “The Year Without a Summer”, when the eruption of Mount Tambora plunged the entire planet into a volcanic winter. And we think we have weather problems!

The International Byron Society has sent word of a fund-raiser to restore/preserve the western facade of Newstead Abbey in Nottingham, England, Byron’s family seat (though my Apple has refused to read the attachment so I cannot forward the link). It has been an uphill battle keeping that half-ruined structure together. A number of years ago a coal mining operation threatened to snake a network of tunnels under the fragile twelfth-century building. Byronists all over the world raised a hue and cry - digging halted before it began. The power of the pen!

I am proud to say I did my small part to get the word out (Byron would have taken full credit for stopping the machines but I am a much more modest individual). Inspired by Byron’s poem “Darkness”, I wrote a poem called “Dark Dawn” in which I imagined how Byron might have reacted to the destruction of Newstead Abbey. I will reprint it following this week’s Office Plant Care Lowdown (so that you won’t have to read it to get to the plant care, “Dark Dawn” being one extremely long poem).

Byron’s Birthday Office Plant Care Lowdown: I cannot think of a more Byronic office plant than the ficus benjamina (also known as “weeping fig” - though usually it is the plantlady who ends up weeping) - gorgeous, moody, high-maintenance, classy and ultimately doomed.

The trick to these prima donnas is to recognize that their root systems are delicate threadlike antennae responding almost instantly to each change in their environment. Move the tree to vacuum and it drops leaves. Speak harshly and it drops leaves. Open a window and it will drop leaves (they hate drafts and heat vents.). To sum up, if they are displeased in any way they will drop buckets of leaves on your floor. Actually they do a bit of that year ‘round just for the hell of it. They are semi-deciduous - which is a fancy way of saying they shed like flea-bitten cocker spaniels.

If the leaf-drop color is yellow things are probably okay - that is either normal shedding or the tree is telling you it is a bit on the dry side. Water it. If the dropping leaves are green, however, it means trouble in the roots - the tree is telling you its roots are drowning/rotting/having-a-bad-root-day. In this case green is not good. (Note that this leaf color communication system holds true only for ficus benjamina - all other ficus types have their own body language. Ficus do this to drive you insane.)

You can prune ficus benjaminas at any time of year to keep them tidy . In fact it seems to be one of the few things they actually enjoy. It is better to prune lightly more often than to chop it radically when you suddenly notice branches lifting the ceiling tile. If you prune this tree hard it will send up wild shoots in all directions. Not a good look.

Fertilizing: easy does it is the rule. Feed once a month but only in Spring and Summer using half what it says on the package. If they get too much fertilizer they will drop leaves (surprise, surprise).

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!

And now to the optional, extra-credit poem:

DARK DAWN

From the peaceful slumber of Eternity
I woke into a nightmare world.
A century and more my weary spirit
Had reposed within the healing halls
Of Death’s sweet palace, prisoner
No more to mortal cares and chaos.
When thunder like a million planets grinding
From their ordered orbits rent my sleep,

And I awoke upon a silent, ravaged hill.
The rotten stumps of ancient oaks
Like broken tombstones slumped
Beneath a shroud of brown and withered
Ferns, the sky a raven’s wing, the pallid sun
A corpse light rising from a vast depression
Stretching far beyond the limits of my view.
The only living thing a cloud of iridescent

Insects whirling at the crater’s rim.
The depths were sheathed in shadow, yet
I knew whatever I’d been roused from death
To witness waited there within the maw
Of that abyss. So, as the feeble light increased,
Seeping slowly like a fetid fog into the pit,
I followed it. The earth was rubble underfoot
As if an antique temple had been toppled

By horrific quake or cataclysm, stones
Like skulls upon the weed-grown path.
What noble place was this, brought down
To such profound destruction, as a carcass
Worried by a pack of famished dogs until the bones
Beneath the flashing teeth are cracked to jagged
Fragments, losing all resemblance to that light hart
That lately graced the forest with its bounding life.

With trembling spirit I descended deeper still,
A Dante into Hell without a guide to steer
My course or tell what scene of horror spread
Before my gaze. Alone and wary I descended
Into that black wilderness. Then deep
Beneath my feet I heard the ghosts of vast
Machines, worm gears grinding in the stygian
Streams of ancient coal seams, blind, voracious
As some monster of the Earth’s primordial infancy,
A mindless juggernaught devouring, devouring.

My soul then knew despair. For there
Upon the edge of that great gaping maw
I saw a fractured slab of stone, a poem carved
And but a single name. A stone I’d set a life before
To mark the grave of Boatswain, faithful friend.
When this forsaken piece of land was still my own,
My heart, my Newstead Abbey. So beloved
From when I stepped, a tender boy in rented coach,
To weedy yard to be a lord of dust and devilry.

It stood above a reedy lake, its gardens wild
With golden gorse, the stately oaks of Sherwood
Sold for Byron debts. But to the boy I was
It was a fairy castle in the purity of morning
Light, its broken walls enchanted battlements,
A child’s fantasy realm, my kingdom. Flawed,
As every human artistry is flawed, yet
The dearer for a sweet fragility, a beauty

In decay. To the last day of my troubled life,
When exiled far from native soil, Newstead
Was the lodestone of my soul, a well of peace
Within the chaos of existence. In truth,
The only one true home I ever knew. And now,
After near a thousand years, now for the sake
Of man’s base greed, for a few sad lumps of coal
The lake, the house, the gardens --- gone.
Gone into the abyss. Why bring me back,
Thought I, to break my heart upon this stone?

What had I done to bring this horror on?
Or was it after all impersonal, indifference,
Neglect - demons human-spawned. No
God I could believe in brought such beauty down
To punish faults as petty as my own. No,
What I looked upon was man’s damnation
Of his own best nature - a suicide of spirit,
A cancer nurtured on a meal of shame.

It was a dream. I stood within the welcome shade
Cast by morning sun through the transept’s
Filigree. The silver lake was wreathed in mist.
And Newstead Abbey stood tranquil and whole,
As it has ever been within my mind. A dream.
And not a dream - a warning, the mind’s reminder
Of how close we stand to the crumbling rim,

A hell hand-crafted to our own design,
Creation and destruction ever vying
For the upper hand, a fragile balance
In our power to defend or topple. And lacking
Constant vigilance, comes real this my nightmare.
###

The Blessing of Invisibility

Week Three, January 2008

My blog mission statement and pledge: A few weeks ago, glowing with New Year’s enthusiasm, I jumped right into this blog-writing lark before I actually clarified what I expected to get out of the experience. Now, less glowy and more practical, I set down my expectations: first, having a blog will spur me to write regularly - to that end I will post at least once a week (probably on friday). Second, having an “assignment” each week will (I hope) force me to be more observant of my environment so that I will not drift thoughtlessly through my workday activities. I shall be a mindful plantlady not a zombie carrying a water bucket.

The content is bound to vary depending on what is happening during my weekly plantlady travels through Geekatopia (a semi-fantastical land populated with IT-types, software engineers, investment bankers, executives of every stripe and coloration, coffee house conspirators, CPAs, stock brokers, attorneys, and emergency room technicians, to list a partial cast). Each post will open with a poem and close with an office plant care tip. I additionally pledge to enjoy myself and share my observations honestly and freely with my internet friends.


Commute Haiku:

Rain-hued car rides
into the blind, boiling storm -
lights off, tires singing.


This week in Latte Land we have not missed much in the way of weather. We have had torrential rain, sloppy snow, followed by sheet ice and blinding sunshine. To seal the mood good and proper, the stock market discovered a sink hole, back-flipping into the abyss with nary a wave good-bye. Small wonder an especially virulent winter respiratory virus is making its rounds on my route - providing the discouraged populous with an excellent excuse to stay home, duvet pulled tightly to trembling chins. That kind of week.

A perfect week to be glad I am invisible - out of the line of fire, out of sight out of mind, out to lunch, out of range, down and out. Harry Potter has his cloak of invisibility - I have my plantlady uniform. Unseen, I make my way through a turbulent world, at one with all the other “invisibles” - the delivery drivers, maids and maintenance workers, security guys, copier repair people, coffee and vending service folks, fire extinguisher inspectors, caterers, shredder operators and dozens of other busy people. We are the white cells coursing through the corporate circulatory system cleaning, repairing, feeding - keeping the economic organism fit and feisty. (Yuk - creepy image - brings to mind the machines in “Matrix” - but accurate.) We invisibles are only noticed when we do not show up - when something breaks, runs out, or dies. Then our absence calls out loud and clear.

This invisible life is certainly not for those who live to command the spotlight - not the life for a Donald Trump or a Britney Spears. But I find my plantlady anonymity affords me a marvelous sense of freedom and objectivity. I can observe without getting caught in the grinding gears of the workplace. (I think it was Raymond Carver who said that the perfect job for a writer is that of janitor - I would add plant care technician.) Things falling apart in the office? Bottom line bleeding out all over the floor? As sympathetic as I may be, I am still free to walk out of your office once I have tended the plants - walk out of the stress and strain, shedding the tendrils of misery like water off a yellow slicker.

By the way, the first person to know your business is in trouble is often the plantlady. I have been seeing warning signs for months - long before the market tanked. Here is a hint: when the plants outnumber the people, things are not going well. When your bank cancels its plant service the bank is having trouble with cash flow (you know who you are).


Office Plant Care Tip: A word about coping with your plant’s seasonal affective disorder. Yes, they get SAD. Winter takes its toll on plants as well as people. Keep in mind that their metabolisms are in sleep mode until spring which leaves them vulnerable to many harsh office realities such as poor lighting and drying heat vents. You will water your plants less in winter when they are not actively growing but they are still apt to dehydrate if the heat is blowing on them - so try to increase the humidity by putting in a humidifier or setting a vase full of water near your plant. Pebble trays and misting are other options that can help. (Ficus trees can get especially irritable in the dark of the year, dropping leaves all over the floor - those beauties deserve an entire blog all to themselves!)

Obama and the Year 1964

Week Two, January 2008


Morning Haiku:

Three yellow street lights
punctuate the asphalt strip -
pallid winter suns.

This morning the coffee shop is buzzing with talk of Clinton and Obama, of caucuses and primaries. There is a preponderance of Democrats - not that Republicans don’t like their morning coffee; it is just that they seem less likely to blow a fiver on a double-tall decaf latte. This is after all Starbucks.

Letting the conversations wash over me, I am inexplicably transported back forty years to the Panhandle of Texas. The year was 1964. The wide Texas sky glowed tangerine as my three companions and I pulled up to the drive-in theater ticket booth. We were escaping the confines of Amarillo Air Force Base for a well earned girls’ night out. No one deserved to cut loose more than we did that evening. We hadn’t been off base since the beginning of our technical training right after Christmas.

Airman Ridley had borrowed a big blue Chevy from one of her multitudinous shirttail relatives so that the four of us could go together to a screening of “Giant”. The car looked like it might fall apart any minute but we were so excited to be driving past the base guard post it might as well have been a limo.

I had met my three bunk mates on our first day of basic training at Lackland Air Force Base the second week of November, but two months later I felt I had known them all my life. Shared misery will do that. Airman Haley and Airman Samuelson (Sam) were from Mississippi, Airman Ridley from Oklahoma, and I from Washington State. Our barracks room was equipped with two sets of bunks and little else. We struggled through field training, chow hall food, leaky gas masks, white glove inspections, heat exhaustion, frozen toes, and formation marches in dust storms - but basic training became a nightmare beyond anything we could have imagined when two weeks after enlistment our Commander in Chief was gunned down in Dallas. Kennedy was dead and we were captives on an air force base in turmoil.

The world changed in an instant and with it our situation. The base was locked down, our training flight confined to barracks as the whole country went into shock. We were leaderless. It is hard to convey what that meant to us at the time. To many Americans Kennedy represented hope for a saner civilization, a brighter future. There was a kind of awe and reverence attached to the office of the presidency that has since been lost amid scandals and criminal behavior. So many good things died that day in Dallas. Innocence being one.

My bunk mates and I enlisted for many of the same reasons - taking to heart President Kennedy’s entreaty that we consider what we could do for our country. Of course we women were not subject to the draft as our male counterparts were but the U.S. was at war (whether we approved of that action or not) and we hoped that by serving we might make a difference - maybe better our lives and those of our fellow citizens.

As African Americans, my bunk mates had a reason to join the military in addition to those we shared - military service offered them the promise of equal opportunity in a country that was still segregated to a great degree, especially in the South. Of course I had heard of segregation but I, a young white woman from the Northwest, was woefully ignorant of the challenges my new friends took for granted. I was about to be educated.

In the aftermath of the assassination, stress on base was thick as red Texas mud. Several women in our flight tried to commit suicide, many others couldn’t stop crying. At night I would hear them sobbing through the thin walls that separated our rooms. By the end of basic training half of our flight had been discharged and sent home. We had the dubious distinction of being the worst flight ever to have been processed through Lackland - a fifty percent washout rate. The record may still stand.

I am convinced that Haley, Sam, Ridley and I survived by holding each other together. We were as terrified and heartsick as our fellow trainees but we had each other to cling to, sharing tears and hugs when things got rough. Sisters couldn’t have been closer than we became over those turbulent months.

At the end of basic training we were amazed at our luck when we were shipped together to Amarillo Air Force Base for tech school. The barracks at Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle wasn’t any better than the one we shared at Lackland - a creaky leftover from World War II. Every morning New Mexico blew between cracks in the walls - come afternoon it was Oklahoma grit sifting its way over the window sills and into our foot lockers. When we weren’t studying we were cleaning, though how we ever passed inspection I will never know.

Then the blizzard of the decade hit. We awoke that day to snow drifts piled against the doors and half way up to the second floor windows. A dozen men from across base shoveled us out in time for supper but training was suspended for weeks while the winds howled and ice flew. We ironed our uniforms while catching coverage of the blizzard on the break room black and white. I thought things couldn’t get worse until a week after the melt-off when an outbreak of German measles confined us once again to barracks. I spent three days covered with itchy spots in the base infirmary, the up side being I got to sleep in a real bed for a while.

At that point we wondered if we would finish training before the end of the war. Still, eventually the snows melted and the measles spots faded. We plowed through our studies at a fast and furious clip, making up for lost time. Graduation was a weekend away when our class finally got liberty to go into Amarillo for a night on the town.

Ridley was at the wheel since it was her cousin’s Chevy. Haley rode shotgun, Sam and I sat in the back. We wore our dress blue uniforms as the newspaper ad said the theater gave military discounts to people in uniform. Being trainees we were not rolling in money. I imagined I could already taste those juicy hot dogs as the car stopped beside the ticket window. This was going to be great! I hadn’t enjoyed an evening at the movies with friends in what seemed like eons. And “Giant”! Shot right there in Amarillo, staring the biggest actors of the era. James Dean! What could be better than that?
“Four, please,” said Ridley to the ticket agent as she handed him our money.
He pointed to a small sign on the window which began “We reserve the right . . . “
“’fraid not,” he said, ignoring the bills.
“What did he say?” I asked Sam.
“Shhh. Never you mind,” she said, patting my arm.
Ridley handed our money over to Haley and put the car in gear.
“Sir,” said Ridley to the man. “Can we turn around up ahead, please? There’s cars waiting behind us.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said. He leaned out of the window and looked toward me. “Honey, you can come on in and watch from the refreshment stand if ya want.”
“What’s he talking about, Ridley?”
She turned to us. “Sorry,” she said. “I must have missed that part of the ad.”
I still did not understand what the problem was.
“It’s whites only,” whispered Haley from the front seat. “Sweetie, we could come back for you later if you want to see the film.”
Ridley cut a u-turn in the gravel drive.
“Haley’s right, we can go somewhere else and come back for you,” she said.
“You’ve got to be kidding! Of course I don’t want to see it without you guys! “
“Never mind,” said Sam. “Let’s get out of here.”

No one spoke on the drive back to base. I could not get my head around what had just happened - and how could the three of them so quietly accepted the situation? Weren’t they angry? For my part I was sick with shame to belong to the same race as the little twerp who had turned us away. If it had been up to me . . .

Four years later when riots erupted all across the country and whole neighborhoods were burning - when Martin Luther King was killed - I began to understand the looks my bunk mates exchanged that evening as we drove away from the theater. The anger was there all right, waiting for the right time.

After graduation we each shipped out to different bases and though we wrote from time to time eventually we lost touch as our country churned with change. Now, forty years later, an African American man is a viable candidate for president - for Commander in Chief. I’ll bet Ridley, Sam, and Haley - wherever they are - are getting a kick out that. I know I am. To this day I have not seen “Giant” but come election time I think I will rent a copy and pop a big batch of popcorn. Better late than never.


This Week’s Office Plant Care Tip: Pay attention to your plant!

“My plant is dying!” exclaimed one of my plant care clients. Well, I thought, that pretty much sums up the condition of all living things - still, I knew what she was getting at. Her plant had some brown leaves and that worried her.

Brown leaves can mean many things depending on the plant. It can indicate poor health but usually it does not. (As it turned out, my client’s plant was just fine.) Plants, being living creatures, change constantly, sprouting new leaves as they shed old tired leaves. It is what plants do - we in the plant care industry call that “job security”.

My client was doing something I commend - she was observing her plant. She noted its condition and expressed an interest in finding out what was happening to it. Even if you have a plant care service your observations can be very helpful - remember, your plant technician sees your plant only minutes a month, while you share office space with it forty-plus hours a week!

So, take a good look at your plant on a frequent basis. Plants communicate in graphic ways - yellow leaves, brown leaves, wilted leaves all are saying something to you. Feel the soil for moisture. Dry? Wet? Note the condition of the leaves - clean and shiny or dull and wrinkled? Eventually you will get a feel for what is going on in your plant’s life.
By the way, the main reason people who talk to their plants tend have “green thumbs” is that by doing so they are connecting with the plant at some level - paying attention. (Of course you risk looking like an idiot but you will have pretty plants. Here is an idea: one of my clients has her Bluetooth in her ear when she talks to her plant - that way if someone catches her she can always claim she is taking an important call.)

HAVE AN OFFICE PLANT QUESTION? ASK SEASTAR.

Week One, January 2008

RAIN TOWN LOWDOWN

A Plantlady’s Life in Geekatopia

Week One, January 2008

Morning Haiku:

Driving across the dark
bridge into an opening year -
trucks filled with yesterday.

Starbucks at 6:30 a.m. - One Microsofty sleeps in a brown velvet chair beside the fireplace, his laptop slipping toward the fake Oriental carpet. Blond Pointy-toes reaches across my tall Awake tea to grab the headlines while her latte steams. She does not see me here thinking into my Apple. I am invisible in plantlady uniform, blending into the furniture, observing the ebb and flow of those stoking up for a rainy trudge to their cramped cubicles at the end of the street.

The coffee shop is the first stop on my route, my route which is my ‘hood four days a week, ten hours a day - for over twenty years now! Initially, all those ages ago this job was intended to be a temporary gig until I found a real job but ... these things happen to us all, don’t they?

My route is the home of Microsoft, of Starbucks, of Amazon.com, and of Costco - and any number of hopeful smaller companies gearing up to be the next big success story. This is the busy land in which I ply my trade, watering and dusting and loving tropical plants five thousand miles from the nearest tropic shore. Here I shuttle between black buildings through pouring rain to tend the sad and lonely palms, water dripping off my hair onto pristine travertine floors.

Today’s Office Plant Care Tip: Remember that the plant next to your desk is not a “house plant”. It lives in a much more hostile environment - an environment your are not able to control as easily as that of your own home. Your office plant contends (as you do) with bad lighting and unforgiving heating/air-conditioning systems. Give the poor thing as much light as you possibly can at this dark time of year!

If you can’t have the overhead lights on while you are at work (because of monitor glare?), then turn them on when you leave work and let them stay on overnight (I’m serious). Your plant needs at least eight hours of light, twenty-four-seven to be healthy. Fluorescent lights are cheap to run but every life is a priceless gift! That plant is cleaning your air and adding precious humidity to your environment - you owe it some consideration - big-time.