Spring officially arrived earlier this morning while most of us were still asleep. By most of us I mean people here, on Pacific Daylight Time, as opposed to, say, people in Boston, who were mostly up and about doing whatever they do in Boston, or New York.
I want to be reassured by the vernal equinox, at least to the extent that the clock of the solar system is reliable as to how it parses out sunlight across the earth. I mean that in only two ways. First, it’s been a very long winter and it was only a
few days ago that our yard melted enough to reveal the remaining pieces of snow shovels that had broken off in the December blitz that left so many urban glaciers all over town. Secondly, the economy that we’re all trapped in has been like a bathysphere whose cable has been severed and we’re all falling deeper into some oceanic trench, rivets popping, wondering where the bottom is. But spring is certain. Right?
I thought I should at least mark this morning with a prayer for spring, you know, something solemn and hopeful. But then it turns out, sadly, that I lack the spiritual gravitas to pull this off. I think I can translate this painful realization in basketball terms, given that March Madness is a common point of reference this week. It’s like I just figured out that the range on my jumpshot is 12 feet, and a proper elegy to welcome the spring that would end this winter is way out at the three point arc, and the best you’d have gotten from me, from there, is a really long, clanging rebound. Sorry about that. I’m just the in-house writer at a non-profit law firm (albeit a terrific non-profit law firm). If Yeats or Emerson or Thoreau had websites I’d link.
On the brighter side, we got daffodils. Every year, my old friend and Spokane Magazine alumnus C.R. Roberts sends a box of daffodils from a flower farm on the west side. C.R. is from Tacoma and writes for the Tacoma newspaper, the News Tribune. He was not only the best man at my wedding but he was also the standby minister to marry Connie and me if we’d lost another minister. Yeah, it was that kind of wedding. We were in Fort Lauderdale, of all places, at an old hotel right off the intra-coastal, within walking distance of a Gato Barbieri concert.
Our wedding was burdened with some confusion involving the intent of another wedding party to rehearse its ceremony at the same time and place that we had booked for our official nuptials and, so, to summarize, violence was a real possibility. If this should happen to you, then you’ll want a very committed best man who, with James Bond-like cool, can transmit the prospect of serious consequences without profanity or actual bloodshed, and C.R. Roberts was that guy for me. (This was before I formed any productive relationships with lawyers). So God bless C.R.
By the way, this should answer some of the questions that have been posed over the past several months about certain details in scenes from the adventures of Benjamin and Charisse. Ben & Charisse’s serial adventure (usually) fills the Friday spot in the Word of the Day feature here in the Kitchen Table and it often begs questions about what I would actually know about the food and ambience of Waffle Houses, the sounds and insects at campgrounds in the Tarpon Springs area, and rum-soaked dialogue from water taxis in and around Fort Lauderdale. Well, hey, now you know. Although I should confess that the scenes involving firearms and very large, organic strawberries are wholly imaginary. Benny, by the way, is barely staying afloat, at last glance, after throwing himself off the back of The Bluefin to avoid being shot by Reme, who works for Solly.
Back in the world of non-fiction, it’s swell to be able to direct your attention to the article on our founder, Jim Sheehan, on page 39 of this week’s edition of the Pacific Northwest Inlander. Jim won recognition as the “Best Local Green Guru,” and the Center for Justice (thanks Inlander readers) was runner-up to SNAP in the “Best Grassroots Group” category. There’s also a fine article on the groundbreaking of the Main Market Co-op on page 22, the co-op being another Jim Sheehan-inspired project on our busy, busy block here between Browne and Division Streets. Nice going Jim. And happy spring everybody.
–Tim Connor
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