Hey, Hilary from Ohio,<\/p>\n
As you know, after you all deserted us for your richer much sexier lives as college students, we parents coalesced into a grieving support group to reminisce about our lost youth, and attempt to overcome our despair with shared food and strong spirits. Last Saturday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tear-dabbing meeting was at Jen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s house, and here<\/a> are a few photos. <\/p>\n Both your mom and dad cornered and then blanketed me with stories about you. They told me how much you like your new life, the problems created by overactive roommates, and your abandoning of your chant and clap classes for, of all things, science courses. What up wit dat? Your Little Richard imitation in the protest video demonstrated how perfectly suited you are for C&C Classes (formerly called Humming & Holding Hands). They also told me of your initial intent to double major in Environmental Science and Psychology, or was it Environmental Psychology and Daily Drama? <\/p>\n But you weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the only topics. We also talked religion, politics and about roadkill.<\/p>\n Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Adam: <\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153At Jen’s recent turn at our chronic, traveling party, held at her new house, we were discussing someone hitting a deer in the area (deer and driver both survived), and I owned up to braking hard for birds in the road and swerving to avoid frogs. I’m a vegetarian pacifist who at home takes bugs back outside (though I’ll cop to some admittedly harsh tendencies towards homo sapiens, anyway), and I once wrote a short poem about roadkill. These pathetic, squashed remains used to traumatize me, though one can be desensitized to most anything (just ask Dubya), and as I passed yet another mangled rodent one day, rather than wallow in piteous revulsion as was once my wont, I had an intellectual satori and phrased a ditty about why it happens, and how not caring portends the death of more than just hapless rodents, marsupials and ungulates.<\/p>\n Dead squirrel. Roadkill. Legs up. Might be the wrong time to say this, but we left Jen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s late and stuffed. <\/p>\n We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all doing pretty well, here, in Acton. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re excited that Matthew is coming home for the summer (though we rented his room out to a Chechen separatist taking classes at Lesley College, and will have to house him in the damp basement), and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re hoping Diane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s back is strong enough to permit her to join me when we haul him and all his goods out of Philly May 8th. When are you coming home?<\/p>\n Besides work work, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been tackling house projects. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m installing new windows, painting the bedrooms, tiling the kitchen floor, tilling the garden, cleaning out the barn, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve hired the same colorful crew who roofed Adam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s house (those guys’ gauges would\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve made Robby whimper) to do ours, and maybe a local company to pave our driveway. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the big ticket item we may not be able to afford, especially since we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re paying Goose and Matt to paint our house. I know, you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t imagine Matt engaged in that kind of slave labor, but remember he and Goose and Robby did a terrific job on the Grojean\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s garage roof three summers ago.<\/p>\n I also had the nettlesome hedges that border our driveway and the street trimmed. In the old days, when they were shorter, that was an easy homeowner job. But now that they provide cover for our peeling house cutting them back requires using a ladder like a Pogo Stick. Climb up, snip, climb down, move the ladder, climb up, snip, climb down, and so it goes. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about a day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s job and Goose did them last, two summers ago. I should have hired him again, but I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wait, and when I found a flyer in my mail box for this landscaping service that advertised everything from sprinkler systems to creating genetically altered rodent resistant broccoli strains, I decided to hire the Vietnamese owner. I figured a crew of guys sliding along zip wires with buzz saws finishing my hedges in the time it takes me to take a bath. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why I felt justified in haggling for a cheaper price. <\/p>\n But Tranh showed up two weeks late with a pair of hedge clippers, an electric trimmer that wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t start, and a yellow step ladder. At mid-day, using my Craftsman trimmer, but mostly his hand held clippers, he was nowhere near done. Sympathetic me, I almost stopped my kitchen tiling to help him work. Instead I opted to give him lunch from Idylwidle. That got him through the afternoon, at which point with all his tools scattered on the ground, and all the trimmings piled on our driveway, he hightailed it home promising to return the next day. <\/p>\n Contrary to Diane’s convictions, he did come back, but not the next day. He arrived in the rain and borrowed a pair of my gloves to cleanup the driveway. Yesterday he came back again, this time with his wife and son, but only to retrieve his tools and assure me he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d return another time.<\/p>\n Yesterday, we dropped into Cambridge to see Mike Daisey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Invincible Summer\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at the American Repertory Theater . Maybe you read about the high school students who walked out<\/a> on his performance last Saturday. Though attendance was sparse, his performance was quite moving. The saddest thing to me is thinking of those kids who couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tolerate a few four letter words. I wonder how they feel about the School of the Americas.<\/p>\n Write again,<\/p>\n Michael<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hey, Hilary from Ohio, As you know, after you all deserted us for your richer much sexier lives as college students, we parents coalesced into a grieving support group to reminisce about our lost youth, and attempt to overcome our … Continue reading
\nCondemned by the chains of evolution.
\nAdaptive response, random flight,
\ndefense against the near-ballistic
\nstoop of raptors.
\nBut not against SUV\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.
\nMindless iron momentum does not waver
\nfor a rodent\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hesitant panic.
\nNor return to countenance its demise.
\nBoth can learn from this.
\nMust. ”<\/p>\n