In Loving Memory of Marley

This past Sunday was my cuddly hero of a big floppy puppy's last day in this world. After 12 wonderful years on Earth, where will he go? I was taught, as I believe many of us 80's kids were taught, that all dogs go to heaven. Marley's version of heaven most likely involves his favorite activities: eating, exploring, snuggling, and sleeping. I must say, my version of heaven isn't so dissimilar from Marley's. Except that in Marley's heaven, people play maracas filled with roasted almonds, everything tastes like peanut butter and there are no pointed surfaces. Now, I don't lose it with excitement at the sound of almond hitting almond, but a few falcon butlers shaking some almond-filled maracas would certainly tickle my heavenly fancy. Plus, everyone who knows me knows of my sharp-objects-pointed-toward-my-eyeballs fear. And who doesn't like peanut butter? (Except for those with peanut allergies.) (Note the foreshadowing.) (And the parentheses.)

Fall has proven to be devastating so far, and the trees have hardly begun to shake their knees. Now, the falling leaves will only bring new meaning to losing Marley.

For a college film class, I watched a time-lapsed disintegration of a dog into the surrounding woods. The filmmaker described this act as an expression of love. At the time, I was just happy that I wasn't in the other film class that watched an extensive human autopsy, so I could kind of understand the filmmaker's desire to document his dog's return to the earth. Our act of love will be to scatter Marley's ashes with those of his loyal brother, when his time comes, on their favorite beach. (Not the one we walked them on, but the one they used to run away to, of course.)

I once drove down to a snooty country club to retrieve Marley, who'd deviously escaped with his partner in crime, Bosco. Two tennis pros hit balls across the net as Marley jumped up and intercepted. A blue-haired lady squawked, "This is my private lesson!" but they were too enamored with their silly intruder to care. Quite the charmer.

On Sunday night, I returned to the city, my eyelids exhausted by tears. Or so I thought. I got stung by one of my bees that sad day, smack dab in the middle of my forehead...which would be no biggie if I did not wake up on Monday looking like Mike Tyson's girlfriend (a term coined by Frank).

When a bee stings you, she pulls back but her stinger is barbed (!) (also, will she ever evolve?) so that the pointy poison sack detaches from her body while the stinger pumps away. Until, that is, you scrape it out with your fingernail. I did this immediately and still ended up with these horrific results:

The last time I was stung by a bee, I spent 24 hours feeling wretched in bed. I believe I have been in denial for quite some time now. I am allergic to bees.

The author of Fuzzybuzzness, allergic to bees! Such a tragedy.

2010 will be the year of the bee suit. Until then, I'll leave my little buzzers alone. Drone bodies litter the ground, and I have no desire to film their decay. Marley has transformed from a tangible being to an intangible one. 2009 winds down slowly.

Some people say photographs alter the memory to record only those specific instances. I disagree. Like the filmmaker, my photographs are an act of love, a celebration of Marley's joyful existence. They confirm my memories, rather than shape them.

When Marley got sick, I began to heartbrokenly mourn his impending loss immediately. My sister Eliza, wise beyond her 25 years, reminded me of what I wrote a few months ago:

Love the furry black poodle with the crooked teeth who wanted nothing more than to give you his paw.

Massacre of the Drones

A male drone is distinguished from a female worker bee by his bulky stature and big, dumb eyes. Compared to the girl-powered majority, he's a few crayons short of a pack. He rarely leaves the hive, gets drunk on honey he had no part in cultivating, is all but immobile and almost completely blind. Some suitor.

Around this time of year, when the temperature starts to drop and the trees start blushing, the worker bees begin a thorough decimation as methodical as it is just:

"There is, at first, no sign of menace, although the drone's worker sisters have grown increasingly testy as the nectar supply tapered off with the end of summer. The drone is, as usual, swaggering across the combs, shoving aside workers who get in his way as he heads toward the capsules of honey. But this time something is wrong. A couple of females block his path. The big fellow is surprised by this unexpected resistance. "What's going on here?" his manner says. The workers do not yield before him. Then, both females suddenly fall upon the startled drone, pummeling him, biting his fine wings, tearing at his antenna and legs, violating his macho male superiority. The carnage is underway." -The Queen Must Die, by William Longgood

The carnage is certainly underway in my hives. Drone bodies litter the ground, their googly eyes seeming to implore a desperate "WHY?" in their inertia. The air is crisp, and although the sun still beams down upon the Northeast, the workers know that winter is fast approaching. The drones, bumbling bags of sperm that they are, are no longer of use to the colony. Uselessness in a beehive is a crime punishable by death.

The massacre of the drones marks an important seasonal shift. Bountiful summer has passed, making way for autumn's last harvest before cold, dead winter stifles out all but the most hardy, adaptable life.

I've been mourning the passing of summer, the season that finds me at my happiest and most energetic, in a quiet way. After celebrating the magic of the living seasons, I now turn my attention to fall and impending winter, seasons that embody loss, death, and silence. (Do I sound too morose? Good.)

The sun has begun to sink low in the sky, casting a golden nostalgia upon every surface it touches. The shade, once an ally, has grown tired of being sought after constantly, and begins to welcome wind and dampness to its dark corners, in an attempt to fend off unwanted guests. The worker bees have begun enacting brutal revenge on their lazy brothers. The sun, the shade, the drones... the first to go in a long, long line of loss awaiting us.

Autumn is a season of change. Things are changing. What is most important, now, is to remember each day for what it is. Soon, it will lie beneath soft sheets of frost, and only memory, and love, will keep it warm.

The Boat Parade

In September 1609, a sailing Dutchman named Henry Hudson happened upon the eponymous Hudson River. It was a beautiful day, all blue skies and warm breezes.

By the time Hudson's crew rolled in, they were cold and mutinous... they'd just tried and failed to forge a route through what is essentially the North Pole. (Sadly, this route is now navigable due to climate change.)

The crew set up camp on an island the local Lenape tribe called Mannahatta, "island of many hills." (The Lenape had obviously never seen San Francisco.)

On a warm day in September, my own crew set sail on the Clearwater, a gorgeous old sailboat with a mast constructed from a single tall tree. The idea for the Clearwater was conceived by folk legend Pete Seeger and built in 1969. Today, it has a vast wooden deck, a kickass educational program, and a slew of passionate interns and volunteers.

The Clearwater composts all of their food waste at the awesome composting operation at Red Hook Community Farm. Who says nonprofits can't network with the best of 'em?

My crew and I arrived at the dock behind the Red Hook Fairway at 09:00. After a group effort to hoist up the sail, we proceeded through the Buttermilk Channel to the Battery Harbor for-- and I'm not kidding-- a boat parade for the prince of the Netherlands.

I imagine the prince in his castle declaring his desire for a full-on flotilla in NYC. "Your wish is my command, sire," his loyal servant would pronounce.

We wondered aloud: what if the prince was 3 years old and had a poopy diaper? Did he wear a crown? Was he single?

The Clearwater got in formation behind old-looking boats with whimsical names like The Peacemaker.

The prince's boat was a ginormous... we thought we spotted him in a pink tie for a fleeting moment, but machine guns (see below) deterred us from hoisting ourselves into the water and throwing ourselves at his feet like teenaged Jonas Brothers fans. Instead, we did the wave. Classy.

We proceeded to sail in incredibly close quarters around the harbor. It was more than evident that the real crew was stressed by the proximity certain unruly boats. Many flotilla vessels had either sailed from Holland or stuck their boats in containers and shipped them to New York. The small ships below are called Flying Dutchmen, which seemed enough to warrant their participation in the Dutch celebration.

It is easy to forget that this crazy city is, at its heart, a maritime wonderland. Until you take to the water, that is. Reality check 101.

The Clearwater aims to illuminate this fact. Getting to experience the city from the water provides the passenger a privileged view of the importance of healthy waterways.

If this isn't a privileged view, I don't know what is.

The Clearwater accepts volunteer educators, apprentices, and crew to join its ranks, and frequently opens itself up for public sails!

*The Supreme Court decided that streams and wetlands are exempt from protection from the Clean Water Act. Sign the petition to advocate for change! Streams and wetlands may not be grandiose as lakes and rivers, but they're just as important for a healthy ecosystem!

Up On The Roof(top Farm)

We've seen what farming on a cement baseball field looks like. This is what farming on a Brooklyn rooftop looks like:

Imagine if every single rooftop in Manhattan looked like this one. Think of the bounty! The fresh air!

Think of the views from above... a green mosaic...

This hearty kale wouldn't look so monstrous if seen from an airplane...

...although it does look monstrous in real life.

I've never seen such happy chard!

With a view like this, who wouldn't be inspired?

I do not envy those sitting in cubicles across the river, even if they are makin' bank.

Perfect serenity:

All photos were taken at Rooftop Farms in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Volunteers are welcome!

Royal Jelly

One day in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, a vendor extolled the virtues of royal jelly, the substance created by honeybees to feed their queen, to a glamorous Italian woman. My sister, incogneets, of course, watched as he demonstrated the topical application on his own face, likened royal jelly to the fountain of youth, and promised that regular use of the substance would erase years from the Italian woman's life. The vendor had found his target population for sure: foreign, with money to spend, and deeply concerned about wrinkles.

Royal jelly has been touted as a miracle substance for centuries. I've often wondered how, back in the day, anyone thought that a cactus might be edible. I feel the same way about royal jelly-- who came up with this idea of bee food as topical cream? I imagine some wacky Ancient Egyptian beekeeper discovering the queen's special stash of R.J. in the hive and smearing it all over her face. Why? We'll never know. But something stuck, because royal jelly is hawked worldwide as a miracle, from Burt's Bees products to vendors in the Mekong Delta.

Personally, it seems a bit too precious of an idea to be true: only food fit for a queen contains the secret of youth, blah blah blah. As I've mentioned many times before, the queen ain't all that. She's a baby-making machine, so her food must be pretty nourishing, but it still doesn't follow that it makes sense to smear it on the outside of one's body. Conceptually, perhaps. A conception that, like so many, falls apart in reality.

The seller had an answer for haters like me: "You can eat it too!" he explained of the 2 oz. bottle of royal jelly that cost more than the aggregate costs of my sister's six month journey through Southeast Asia. Although theoretically, eating royal jelly makes more sense to me in terms of deriving health benefits, it seems strangely naive to liken the nutritional needs of a queen bee to those of an adult human. In "Royal Jelly" by Ronald Dahl, a father forcefully feeds his underweight newborn royal jelly. (It is an incredibly creepy, yet strangely informational short story that is highly recommended reading.) The father explains to his wife:

"Practically nobody in the world can afford to buy royal jelly just for eating except maybe one or two multimillionaires. The people who buy it are the ones who make women's face creams and things like that. They're using it as a stunt. They mix a tiny pinch of it into a big jar of face cream and it's selling like hot cakes for absolutely enormous prices. They claim it takes out the wrinkles."

We are obsessed with youth! Why youth? What I mean is, why is youth so cherished, why is aging so desperately feared? Fine, aesthetics. Health. But we tend to collectively forget most of the unsexy aspects of youth, like having to go to bed at specific times, having to eat things we didn't like, puberty, braces and, later on, being broke. Plus, is there no beauty in a lined face?

All worker bees follow the same lifeline. They begin their lives as nurse bees, then become builders, architects, until finally they become foragers. Bees must go through a training period before foraging. During this period they practice flying short distances, presumably learn the waggle dance, build up their wing strength, you know, normal bee stuff. You can tell which ones are foragers-in-training outside the hive: they're the tentative little dudes (gender neutral, because all foragers are necessarily female) making circles that grow over time.

Foraging, in my opinion, is the best part for honeybees, a pleasure afforded only to the oldest folks in the hive. They get to go explore all the flowers in the hood! Healthy honeybees will forage until their bodies wear out: tattered wings, limbs missing, cockeyed, perhaps. Hopefully they die in the fields among the flowers. Otherwise they'll be carried out by their sisters and deposited as far away from the hive as possible. (Honeybees are impeccably tidy.)

Bees got it right, in my opinion: save the best for last. Imagine if we were constantly looking ahead, waiting for wisdom. We'd be excited by wrinkles and balding. We'd write songs called "Forever Old." Retirement would be like spring break in Cancun.

I might eat royal jelly if, and this is a big if, I realize, somebody convinced me that by eating it I would become a bee, like in Dahl's story, but only for one day and not in the winter. Imagine the secrets that would be revealed to me! Who is behind the hive mind?!?

The same sister, plagued with unquenchable wanderlust, loves this quote from Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible,and I believe it is an apt way to wrap up this rambling post:

"To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow."

I don't want to be obsessed with youth when I am old. I want to enjoy it now, live it, use it, celebrate it. But when it's gone, and I'm not sure that it ever really leaves, I will look in the mirror at a face marked with change, and hopefully I will smile with the knowledge that I really, truly lived the life I'd imagined.