On Urban Foraging and Climbing Trees

I live on the scruffy west side of Providence. In contrast to the pristine, historic, white, afflutent, artsy, and intellectual east side—the one with the high rents—my neighborhood sports dilapidated houses and yards, gutters full of broken glass, curbs with mattresses on them. Laundry hangs from windows. Kids ride bikes and macho guys walk their pit bulls to show off. Someone’s always blasting rap or Mariachi music. One of the things I love about my neighborhood is how ethnically mixed it is. Families are Lao, or African America, or Afro-Hispanic, from the DR. There are punk white DIY kids and older Italian folks who remember the neighborhood back from when it was nice. A two-story, once-nice house on my street has a handwritten poster hanging on the fence, blue marker on yellow posterboard: “For Sale, $65,000.” I guess that’s one way to get around a realtor. The commonality in the neighborhood is that everyone’s struggling to make ends meet. That includes me.

Like a lot of folks these days, I’m feeling financially insecure, and somewhat food insecure. It’s not that I go hungry; I eat well, but I worry. It’s late summer and I’m continuing an experiment I started last year: how much food can I put up for the winter, preferably without going to the grocery story, ideally without buying it? In addition to growing my garden, shopping for bargains at the farmer’s market, and taking leftover odds and ends, I’ve been urban foraging.



Lately, I’ve been scoping out fruit. Wild elderberries by the swamp in the park, weedy crabapples, abandoned trees someone once planted with care, trees with small ornamental fruit that no one wants. It’s amazing how few people notice or care about all the food that’s going to waste around them. One of the best ways to find these is to look on the ground for dropped fruit. If the fruit is falling, chances are it’s ripe. Lately, too, I’ve been asking permission to pick. So far, the response has been the same: slight bafflement, followed by cordial permission. I picked half a bag of beautiful pink ornamental apples over on the snazzy east side, only to see the same variety of apples being offered for sale at the farmer’s market the following week. I don’t know what was more satisfying: seeing them for sale, or knowing I have four bags of amazing, insanely, naturally-pink applesauce in my freezer. I wonder if they actually sell those apples at the market, and if so, to whom.

When I walk my neighborhood, I not only see fruit trees. I see gardens. In the yards of broken bottles and cans, where the weeds are growing up, I see the potential urban farms, places that could be cultivated and used to grow healthy vegetables for people to eat. One of these days I’d like to find a way to make my living teaching folks to grow their own food. I often think this would be a better use of my teaching skills than being in the classroom, with students who feel disconnected from the natural world and, all too often, don’t care that much about learning anyway. Once in a while, there’s a house where the yard is all burgeoning garden. These are invariably the houses of immigrants—Hispanic or Lao, who care deeply about their small properties and have transformed them into some semblance of a subtropical paradise. The Lao family down the street from me not only has a beautiful yard decked out with impatiens; they also grow taro, Asian pears, and rows and rows of chili peppers in five-gallon buckets. I’d love to know how they put them all to use. But for the most part, no one notices or cares much about the unused potential urban gardening space all around them. At times, I’m painfully aware at how out of tune my values are with most of the people around me—and I don’t just mean in my neighborhood. I mean in our consumerist American culture as a whole. Urban foraging? What’s that? Why would you bother with it when you could just go buy some mass-produced, pesticide-laden applesauce at Stop N Shop?

A couple of weeks ago, I found a pear tree as I was driving home. It was easy to remember where it was: across the street from an abandoned house painted with bright horizontal orange and yellow stripes all the way around. This was not some scrawny thing with five pears, like the one I also found on the east side and watched all summer last summer. This tree must be at least 25 years old. It’s huge, and absolutely filled with small, perfectly-formed pears, rusky green on one side and softly russet on the other. This tree is also in someone’s yard. The pears have been falling and as a result the yard, and rooftop, are often filled with pigeons. I watched the situation as I drove by again and again. Pigeons on roof. Pears on ground. Surely, the residents of the house were not thrilled about the pigeon-roost situation. Surely no one would mind if I relieved them of some of this pigeon food.

This evening, I set out to find the answer. Carrying my biggest, heavy-duty tote bag, I walked down to the house in question. I felt some anxiety: in this neighborhood, you never know who will answer the door. It could be a thug drug dealer with a gun in his pants—and I mean a white guy—there seem to be a lot of these types around. Or a renter who doesn’t get it and doesn’t care. Or, like the woman downstairs from me, someone who speaks very little English. I reasoned that it didn’t matter: the goal was to get permission from someone. I walked along, rehearsing what I would say in English and Spanish. Excuse me, would you mind if I picked these pears? Me llamo Ana. Vivo alla en Raymond Street. Puedo tomar las peras? Tomar, I reminded myself, meaning to take. This is the word for catching a fish, so surely it must also be the word for picking? Anyway, the meaning would be clear. Don’t forget and use tocar, I told myself, or you’ll just be asking to touch the pears, and that would be weird.

Having arrived at the tree, I rang both bells out front and knocked on the back door. No response. Should I just start picking a few? I looked around. The yard also sported a beautiful grape arbor in back. Clearly, someone here had once been an attentive gardener. Finally, a voice drifted through the evening air. “Can I help you?” I looked around, lost. At last I located the voice. An older woman peered out from the second-story window. I suddenly felt self-conscious about the fact that I was brazenly traipsing through her yard.



“Would you mind if I picked some of these pears?” I called up. I readied my but-the-piegones-are-attracted-to-them rejoinder in case she refused.

“Sure.”

“Thank you very much!” It never hurts to be polite to folks, especially if you’re asking for something strange.

How you going to reach them?” It’s true: I’m short, and most of the pears were pretty high up.

“I’ll climb on up,” I assured her.

“Well, be careful!”

I was touched by this maternal warning. “Is this your house?”

“Yes,”

“What about the grapes, could I pick some of those?”

“I have someone for those.”

“Oh, ok. Thank you very much!” I began pulling at the lowest branches, trying to bring the fruit closer to where I could get it. A few minutes passed.

“The pears, they’re sweet.” This time the voice belonged to a kindly-looking grey-haired man in the same window.

“Do you know what kind they are?” I called up.

“I didn’t hear you. I have trouble hearing.”

“Do you know what variety they are?” I attempted again. One of the other things about being small is that my voice gets lost easily in ambient noise.

“I didn’t hear you.”

“Do you know what VARIETY they are?” I tried again.

He shook his head and put his hand to his hear. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Nevermind.” I waved him off cheerfully. “Thank you.”

“You want grapes?”

“She said she had someone for those.”

“Eh?”

“She said she had someone for those,”

“Eh? You want grapes?”

“Sure!” I said, spreading my arms in what I hoped was a casual and offer-accepting gesture.

“I’m sorry I haven’t got any bananas!” He smiled agreeably. I wondered...were these two the original proprietors of the garden, no longer able to keep up with it? Like the other people I’ve talked to, in the end, were these folks just glad, if a little surprised, to see someone using their fruit? I reminded myself to take only some of the grapes, in case there really was someone else with a claim on them.

Now I commenced to picking. Some of the pears I could reach, but I couldn’t help thinking that I should be taller if I’m going to be an urban forager. I need one of those poles that apple-pickers use. The thought of walking through the neighborhood sporting an apple-picking pole made me laugh. But so did the warning against climbing the tree.



This is because I’m a farm kid and a tree climber from way back. No one cared when I was a kid. I climbed every kind of tree I could find. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that the suggestion of climbing a tree invariably arouses suspicion, especially in urban areas. In college, a woman warned me that I might get a disease from the tree I was happily perched in. Dutch elm disease, perhaps? What an embarrassing doctor visit that would make. Doctor, I think I’ve contracted bark beetles.

At any rate, as a kid I formulated my own simple set of tree-climbing principles, and they have served me well over the years. I used to think I could make some money teaching tree-climbing to city kids. It still seems like a good idea, but liability would make this impossible, I suppose. Speaking of which, I am not endorsing the following. Someone could read this and sue me after they break their neck. So, don’t try this at home. But here are a few simple principles I follow for climbing trees..in the event that you find yourself in one with no idea what to do. Oh, and wear jeans. You’ll get terribly scraped up in shorts.

1. Look for the ladder. Each species of tree has its own particular branch pattern. Pine trees, for instance, spiral around in an almost perfect staircase—if you can get around the needles. Hickory trees have a straight trunk and a symmetrical ladder up. Look for the big limbs and plan how you’ll get there before you start. Often, the hardest part is getting up onto that first branch. That was the case here. This pear tree had had its lower limbs pruned. But I grew up climbing pear trees that my dad assiduously pruned—and he went pretty high up. I knew I could make it.

2. Don’t put all your weight on any one limb, especially on the way up. Make sure that if one of the limbs gave way, you are already hanging onto something else. I’ve really never had to put this rule to the test, but it seems like a good idea.

3. Putting your weight on a dead limb is stupid. At least test it first. One of the advantages to being small is that I’m also light. In this case, there were a few dead and brittle limbs in the tree, clustered in with live ones. I made it up just fine, although one of the dead branches did break out when I rested too much weight on it.

Up high, the pears were cluster in beautiful bunches, not too hard to reach if one can balance well on a limb while reaching as far out as possible....which I can. For this adventure, I mentally added a fourth rule:

4. A heavy bag of fruit can seriously unbalance you. Be careful. Don’t try to climb down with it. Tie the handles together and drop it when you’re done.

So I balanced and reached, at times dropping more pears than I got into the bag. I picked which ones to go for carefully, thanking the tree and asking which pears wanted to be picked. Yes, I talk to trees. I always have. Not out loud—people will think you’re nuts if you do that. Either this makes sense to you or it doesn’t, in which case you already think I’m nuts anyway. Some of the pears didn’t want to be picked and I tried to leave them. Some wanted to go together with their siblings in the bunch. I felt bad when I dropped one of these. I went for the russet ones, but these were farthest out on the branches. I’ve been dealing with some pretty heavy-duty exhaustion lately, but picking the pears, I felt invigorated. Greedy and giddy, I wanted to get as many as possible, but I reminded myself that I didn’t have to pick them all. There was no way I could have done this anyway.

Finally, I had half a bag full. It’s a huge bag, so half is a lot. It was getting later, and something in me signaled that it was time to stop. Tying the bag handles, I carefully dropped it out of the tree with a thunk, then climbed down after it. This brings me to Rule 5: When coming down, it helps to take the same route you did going up. At some point you’ll have to jump. Gauge the distance and go for it.

Yes, I landed unhurt.

Inside the grape arbor were bunches and bunches of grapes. Too many to comtemplate. Another time, perhaps. I picked three bunches and called up to the window “Thank you!” But no one seemed to hear me as I left. I don’t have the energy to core all of the pears, so I’m thinking of pearsauce, like applesauce, or pear butter. Thanks to these two folks who let me pick them. Maybe I’ll bring a jar on by when I’m done.

The Other L Word Follow Up

Yesterday, in the bathroom at the AWP Writers' Conference, I overheard a woman talking to herself in the stall next to me. "Ladies who pee on the toilet seat aren't ladies," she declared. "They're big fat pigs." This last part of the sentence was delivered with slow deliberation, as though she were deciding on precisely the right word to describe women who have committed the unspeakable act of imprecise urination.

A number of people responded to my previous blog entry about the word "lady" with vehement disagreement. Perhaps, in fact, this word can be redeemed for a younger generation. After all, gen Xers did effect a lukewarm reclamation of the world "girl" (though I would argue that it's still problematic). But for this woman, a generation older than I am (I looked when she came out), the word "lady" is inextricably--and apparently for her, unproblematically--linked to the idea of well-controlled female behavior. The misogyny of the statement is as stunning as the speech act itself: a public/private declaration meant, no doubt, to deliver the voice of judgement from a safely anonymous locale. I would argue, again, that this is the function of the word, at least in certain contexts.

Oh yes, and she splashed water on me while we were washing our hands at the seat. Thanks, lady.

The Other L-Word

The word “lady” has always made me cringe. “You are a wonderful lady,” my mom recently posted on my Facebook page. Lady. It’s the new pink, the other L-word. My mom’s post may have been well-intentioned—purveyors of the word “lady” will always lead you to believe that they are well-intentioned—but somehow this word is deeply unsettling. Maybe it’s my age, but “lady” brings up images women in lavender polyester pantsuits. Women I am surely far, far too young to be. But there’s more to it than that. Lady is a has a weirdly feminized, semi-covert sexual overtone. I have yet to hear it in a context that doesn’t make it sound like, well, like a creepy euphemism.

Granted, I have some particular baggage around this one. In 1988 or 89, my mom and dad were standing in the hallway. My parents, who fought for years and were on the verge of a divorce, were having one of those confrontations kids are never supposed to hear.

“Tell me you love me,” my mom was demanding angrily.
“Lois—“ my dad choked out ”—I think you’re a very nice lady.”

How my mom could have come away from this exchange without a permanent vandetta against the other L-word, I will never know. Even at 15, it made my skin crawl. After years of listening to them fight, I understood that this was the best my dad could do. But—lady? Why couldn’t he have said “You’re a very nice person”? Why the creepy lavender-pantsuit word? Ladies are people, aren’t they?

Actually, no. After my mom’s post, I thought hard about my instinctive cringe whenever this word appears. It’s not just about the memory. It’s about all the contexts in which I’ve ever heard it used. Guy on the make: “Hi, ladies!” College basketball coach: “Let’s go, ladies!” The more I thought about about the word lady, the other L-word, the more I realized that it is the shadow-self of actual L-word, the one straight women are taught to dread. But the use is similar. It draws attention to the fact that you are not merely a person operating in the world. Like the queer L-word, it reminds you, if you are female, that you are operating under a system of Rules and Regulations.

And you, poor dear, are probably out of bounds.

Originally, Lady was a title indicating one’s position in the upper class. Most of us could never aspire to being Ladies. But at least the distinction was clear. The rules were clear. The wealth and privilege attached to the position were clear. These days, the actual meaning of "lady"--as I was realizing--is far murkier and, despite its apparent wholesomeness, pretty darn ominous. Maybe this is what makes me balk. These days, the term "lady" is as plastic and frought as Barbie herself.

Perhaps the most prevalent and long-standing use of the term in modern parlance is as term used to modify the behavior of pre-teen girls. You know, the old “sit like a lady” shtick. Tellingly , this is often paired with “little,” as in “you were a lovely little lady at Rose’s birthday party.” Basically, it is a way of getting pre-teen girls to tone it down.

Apparently, if you are eight and you sit with your knees apart, it is not a sign that you are growing into a confident person who is not afraid to take up space in the world. No, if you are eight and sit with your knees apart, it is a sign to men that you want to have sex. Even if you never think of sex and barely know what it is. Men might get the wrong idea after all, and eight year old girls cannot allow this to happen.

This usage works in tandem with the 50s idea of the nice girl. Nice girls (ladies) are polite. They are neat and clean. They are modest. They do not talk loudly. They do not give voice to strong or disagreeable opinions. And they certainly do not sit in positions that cause men to think inappropriate thoughts. At any rate, allowing your eight year old to sit with her knees apart will surely indicate that she is a soon-to-be-hooker and you are her aspiring parent-pimp. This behavior must be reigned in immediately. Like all female restrictions, it is for her own good. How can girls best be policed in this context? By making them aspire to be some glamorous grownup creature who does not actually exist. Someone who wears a lavender pantsuit, perhaps. Ok, these people exist. But their gender manifestations are a construct, folks--and a pretty disturbing one at that.

Then there is the term “lady” applied to grown women. My dad, an attorney, still refers to certain of his colleagues in 2009 as “lady lawyers,” as though this is somehow a notable, suprising, and perhaps slightly suspicious fact. You have to watch those lady lawyers—you never know what they are doing with the Law in the powder room.

And used disparagingly, the straight L-word, like its queer counterpart, will serve to remind you that you are a female acting far too aggressive. The standard application of this one is something like: “Lady, I don’t know what you want, but I can’t help you,” or “Hey lady! Get out of the way.” This time the term is employed by men to put you back in your place. You know, the nice place on the chair in the corner where you don’t say anything, do not occupy space, and certainly do not make demands. See above.

Recently, there has been a semi-reclamation of the term “lady.” I think it derives from women’s sports. Since we (well, some of us) have become aware that the term “girls’” in front of a team name is not really appropriate for college-aged women, the word “ladies” has become an alternative. My favorite instance of this is the “Lady Reds,” for the women’s teams at the college where I used to teach. (The “Reds” referred to the school’s mascot, a Native American. One wonders where to start with this one.) At any rate, as if “Reds” were not offensive enough, the women’s teams were—proudly!— the “Lady Reds.”

Just as with the lady lawyers, the fact that the Lady Reds need a gendered adjective is itself a telling indication of second-class citizenship. The term is (supposedly) meant to be positive, the driving force being that "ladies" in this case are female athletes who can kick the ass of the other team, then shower up and look fabulous in makeup and high heels. In other words, these are athletes who can still be feminine. They are most assuredly not that shadowy no-no L-word, the one with butchy stereotypes attached. “Ladies!” This use proclaims, “we are athletes and we are straight! Come over and read Cosmo after practice!”

I know what you’re thinking. If we can reclaim “girl,” why not “lady”? Perhaps re-spelling it? Laidee? Maybe not. Laydie? Um, no. Laddie? I feel like I've seen that one before. It’s going to take a lot to rid this one of its creepy overtones, its constant reminder of that you, dear female human trying to operate in the world, have gender expectations to fulfill. Until then, if you want to give me a compliment, telling me I’m a nice person would be fine.

Why We Love to Hate Michael Jackson

Why We Love to Hate Michael Jackson

Am I the only one who's grown weary of the incessant Michael Jackson jokes on late-night tv? After his raging but brief popularity in the mid-80s, Michael has become the public figure everyone, it seems, loves to hate. Whether it's Michael the too-white black man, Michael the kook, or Michael the child molester, everything from Michael's physical appearance to his private behavior is fodder for the public grist mill. But why? Why is it Michael, even after his recent acquittal, can't seem to buy a break? And why, after so many months and years, hasn't Michael-bashing gone out of fashion? After all, there are lots of kooks in Hollywood, and more than a few of them have faced legal allegations. Why on earth should we care so much about him?

The real reason Michael Jackson is so widely reviled is the same reason the boy who plays with Barbies is tormented on the playground: Jackson refuses to conform to cultural notions of who he ought to be. For one thing, Jackson's pale skin refuses to play the game by conforming to fixed categories of race. Whether, as has often been asserted, Jackson has vitiglio (a skin disease that causes loss of pigmentation) or whether he has bleached his skin, there's no doubt that Michael has become lighter over the years. The young Michael, the kid of the Jackson 5, was definitively black and, like the rest of his family, fit well into American ideas about race, about what constitutes the Successful Black. The Successful Black was (and still is) one who entertains whites, either through sports, music, or tv. But what about the black kid who metamorphoses into someone white? What does that do to racial categories and their attendant expectations? Michael, because he's famous, doesn't just pass. He destabilizes the categories of race entirely, shows them up for what they are: falsely constructed categories based on that slipperiest of criteria, appearance. Why else would so much energy have been expended on whether or not Michael's transformation is a result of deliberate cosmetic treatments or is "not his fault"?

Consider the assumptions at work here. If Jackson's light skin and many plastic surgeries *are* deliberate, then we can "blame" him--but for what? Implicitly, for his ability and willingness to transgress racial boundaries. How many people would sneer at a white person who, afflicted by skin-darkening disease, took steps to keep from looking Black? It wouldn't even make the news. But how many would sneer at a white who deliberately became Black, as John Gibbons did in the 50s to test the notion of separate but equal? As we recently saw in New Orleans, there is still widespread racial inequality in America, despite the pablum about equality that so many people (mostly self-accepting whites) love to believe. But if our ideas about race are firmly planted on a banana peel, what then? What if all those black, inner-city residents could one day become white? More horrifying still to most white Americans, what if white privilege suddenly went away? What if we were forced to face the music of our longstanding participation in a socially unjust system? Michael raises these and other unconscious cultural anxieties, which, I submit, is part of the reason he continues to be much more popular among African Americans than among whites.

As if his refusal to act out racial stereotypes weren't bad enough, Michael also refuses to perform gender correctly. Maybe we could handle his transformations of appearance--his lightening skin and famous plastic surgeries--if he at least acted macho. But Michael, soft-voiced and lavishly dressed, professing his love for children, could not be more antithetical to American notions of masculinity. Whatever the reason, whether he's transgendered or simply unusual, Michael's performance of gender looks more stereotypically female than male. Michael the black-white power-lifter? We could handle that. Heck, the American public could even handle Ru Paul, albeit briefly. But Paul looks black, acts black, and makes no bones about cross-dressing in high, fabulous style. We revile Michael because his status is far more ambiguous. He deconstructs notions of race and of gender simultaneously, acting more like a Virtuous White Female than her historical foil, the Scary Black Male. What's more, unlike Ru Paul, Michael does it all without saying so explicitly. This makes him impossible to categorize in the same way that Ru Paul is categorized--the high-fashion cross-dresser being a by-now-familiar, if only tepidly accepted, American icon.

Then there are Jackson's interactions with children: multiple child molestation charges and the infamous baby-dangling episode, not to mention the now nearly-forgotten paternity suits of the early and mid-80s. Don't get me wrong, here: I don't condone child molestation or abuse in any form. I have no idea whether Michael is guilty some or any of the charges leveled at him over the years. But I do know that his unconventional attitudes toward children, not to mention his own deliberately-cultivated childish demeanor, violates yet another set of cultural norms. Michael refuses to acknowledge the firm dividing line between adult and child. Never mind that in other cultures, adults are not regarded as threats to children, and the dividing line between serious adult and inner child is a more organic one. To Americans, anyway, black adult male=potential sexual predator; white female girl=perpetual slasher-film victim. Since Michael is supposed to be the former, but presents himself more like the latter, is it any wonder that he's been the target of so many lawsuits and jibes? Would we really raise an eyebrow if Michael were a white woman who allowed unrelated children to sleep over in her bed? Wouldn't that make Michael more like Mia Farrow than John Wayne Gacy?

Moreover, it's interesting to note that the charges against Michael have gotten weirder as his skin has gotten lighter. In the 1980s he was being accused of fathering children out of wedlock and then abandoning them, a charge frequently levelled at black men. More recently, the child-molestation charges and baby-dangling episode have made the news night after tedious night. It doesn't seem to matter that the charges were dubious at best, or that he didn't actually drop the baby. In the narrow American psyche, anyone that "weird" must be a threat to children.

Michael's unconventional presentation of adulthood also hits another cultural nerve, though: the one that says being an adult requires sacrificing the "irresponsibility" of childhood to the venal duties of adulthood. Sure, Jim Baker's amusement park may have raised eyebrows and become the brunt of jokes, but at least he did it for profit and not for the thrill of riding the roller coaster. Our discomfort with Michael's personal amusement park, his famously-lavish perpetual childhood, plays into deep-rooted convictions that hard work and suffering are essential for both spiritual redemption and the realization of the American Dream. The fact that Michael doesn't "have" to face up to adulthood, doesn't "have" to sacrifice his inner child on the altar of economic necessity, evokes a deep, smoldering rage among many Americans. Why should someone who refuses to conform to the rules of Blackness, the restrictions of masculinity, and the drudgery of adulthood be able to "get away with it" all on such a lavish scale?

In this sense the cultural rage toward Michael Jackson parallels the lingering rage toward OJ. Nevermind that Michael hasn't been accused of murder or brutality or domestic violence, that the alleged crimes are hardly parallel. Both are rich black men who have been able to "get away with" (supposed) crimes that would have sent any poor black man to his death. While OJ's death sentence might well have been delivered by the courts, Michael's would more likely have come in a dark alley at the hands of a homophobic attacker. Maybe that's why the late-night jokes about both of them refuse to go away. Prevented from doing real physical harm to Michael, the American public has to settle for the unsatisfying spectacle of public skewering.

But what if we were to embrace Michael's nonconformity as a sign of inner strength rather than weakness? If we were to adopt him as a model of how to resist reductive stereotyping, how to remake harmful attitudes about blackness, gender, and adulthood? Isn't Michael's insistence on being himself a hallmark of a true American? Instead our resentments continue to fester, a fact that reveals more about our own cultural anxieties than about Michael himself. Perhaps we should turn this critical gaze inward, on our own prejudices. To those with nothing but derision for Michael-the-weirdo, my answer is this: America, heal thyself.