Brooklyn (Grow Chard)

This week, and perhaps only this week, we're having our minor Bay winter. Hoofing down Broadway in a shiver, listening to this song (hit play 6 for the recommended soundtrack to this post), I could be back in Brooklyn.




You're supposed to love New York, but I never could, even though I spent formative years 1-3 and 22-24 there. The cold concrete is enough to blast and wilt a sunny California girl, like frost does basil. With more money and brashness I might have enjoyed it, but instead I was a tad disabled--and, as a result, only marginally employable--and the towers fell as soon as I arrived.

But I didn't live in The City. I lived in Brooklyn. Brooklyn I liked. It shares a lot of good qualities with Oakland: The Town vs The City, the teeming diversity, the "land" name. (Of course Oakland is softer--and in all the right places, I would argue. Less harassment, better weather, more vegetarian food.)

I had always liked the idea of Brooklyn, the "No Sleep 'Til..." and the "Tims for my hooligans in..." It was the original habitat of my white-bearded college Yiddish professor, and the place where John Travolta wolfed down two slices of pizza folded lengthwise in Saturday Night Fever.

We lived on a cool row house block in Boerum Hill, which was not yet the glamorous neighborhood it has become, although the clashes of gentrification were already thick in the air. The brownstone whose upstairs we occupied was classic East Coast historic/grimy. We shared it with a sad family and there was no door to shut between their part of the house and ours.

We joined the Park Slope Food Coop, where shopping for fine cheese at low prices was a joy, and working the cash register once a month ranged from tolerable to sort of fun. There were ATMs nearby that operated in Yiddish and I was fascinated by the young Hasid mothers with their wigs and babies on their hips, pushing overloaded shopping carts.

The late, great record store Beat Street was on Fulton. It was mecca for Crim. He entered his first dj battles there, and made pals with the staff, Scoob and Finesse and Pebbles. Somehow Beat Street was just a few blocks from our place, as were the new Smith Street restaurants that taunted our brokeness, and the miracle bodega that could produce any grocery item at any hour, and, my own mecca, the community garden.

I learned to garden in Brooklyn, which makes no sense, unless considered from the "Rose in Spanish Harlem" sort of angle, of yearning to grow something in the cracks of the concrete. It wasn't a garden to which anyone was particularly devoted, but that was fine with me, because it meant I could expand my empire of chard and Brandywines one abandoned plot at a time. I nurtured my raised beds with obsessive care; I got the soil so friable it became legend among the neighborhood cats. But the hard truth is that community gardening often sucks, at least in Brooklyn. The Brandywines all got smashed in the night. Gardening made me appreciate private property.

The downstairs teenage neighbor and his friend Jerrell were a Dean Street pair straight out of a Lethem novel: the Jewish kid from the row house, the black kid from Gowanus Projects. The dirty yellow walls of the brownstone were preferable to Gowanus; when a visitor was at the door and no one had ordered pizza, it had to be Jerrell. And he wasn't shy about buzzing that bell for a looong time if his chum didn't appear. We would see the top of his head from our window four floors up and sing our jingle:

It's Jerrell!
It's Jerrell!
Who's ringin the bell?
Well, it's Jerrell!

The song grew lots of verses and variations that I've since forgotten. For hardass Brooklyn kids, both guys were sweethearts. When I brought them to the community garden, they tasted some mint and politely considered it as a gum alternative.

At the end of our stint, Crim worked at Book Court, on Court Street, where Jonathan authors were known to show up and browse, all writerly and unshaven. Court had a great bagel place too. And the pizza. Oh, the Brooklyn pizza: giving so much and asking so little. We survived two sticky summers (one without AC) and one blizzard, which made the streets quiet and magical. I had expected a more chaotic effect from a word like that.

The thing is, you can picture a place as a whole, with a line connecting the Yiddish ATMs to Beat Street (presumably with the Beastie Boys as midpoint). But when you're actually there, the divisions are hardened. I couldn't have lived in Brooklyn for keeps. Still, on a winter's day like this one, I could go for a plain slice.

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I Will Do Anything to Be Part of the Blogoaksphere

I never meant to be a holdout. College Grads in Urban Areas Without Cellphones is a sorry club. I imagine a bunch of tweedy middle-aged men with Objections. What's a perky twentysomething (fifty-nine days left on that claim) doing with those old sods?

It was an accident, I assure you, not some statement of principle. It wasn't that I didn't want a cellphone. I just never wanted one. Like, not paying-money-every-month want. I'm a part-time receptionist. I can't buy things just because.

Now when it comes out that I'm not carrying, I have to go all explainy, and hear expressions of astonishment, and perhaps even get congratulated on my contrarian pluck. All of which is possibly worse than shelling out monthly and being all *reachable*. And I'm wide open to accusations of dinosaurism. You're not on Facebook. And you don't have a cell. Oh my God: and you have CHICKENS. They start building a Theory. They think I have Objections.

So let me be clear: I'm totally going to get a cellphone one day. I daydream about it, even. My phone will do every damn thing those Japanese phones do now--for less! Print cash, perform voodoo hexes, all that. See, because I'm going to leapfrog. That's how sophisticated I am.

However, technology for its own sake does irritate me. I don't want a bunch of neato shit that's only going to drain and distract. Yes, I have a plog. That does not mean I want to Twitter. I plog because I like to write (do I vainly hope this is apparent?), not because I'm a connectivity whore. So leave me and my hens alone.

Was what I was saying. But then Crim became part of the Blogoaksphere. His wunderkind, Oakland Streets, won the warm embrace of linkage from every other cool Oakland blog. That had the incidental effect of creating readership--a whizbang concept I hadn't considered. Here was a connectivity I could get behind! I realized that I would do anything to be part of the Blogoaksphere.

At an Oscar ceremony a few years back, Steve Martin introduced Gael García Bernal (you know, the muchacho guapo from Y tu mamá también) by saying: "I would do anything to look like this guy. Except, of course, eat right and exercise."

So Clebilicious will do anything to be part of the Blogoaksphere. Except, of course, be more accessible and stick to a topic.

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Dear King of the South: Okay, I'll Do It

Dear T.I.,

It has come to my attention that you want to have sex with me. Not me specifically, of course, but me generally. Do I miscontrue? Your intentions seem clear.

You began with gentle teasing:

Go and tell a n***** no, with a ass so fat,
Why you wanna go and do that love, huh?

You plied me with lilting pimp talk and I thought, why would I want to go and do that? Why decline your advances while in possession of an ass so fat? And thank you, by the way, for commending its fatness--not its bubbliness or its roundness, but its very fatness. This successful entreaty gave you the upper hand, and you played it naughtily:

I wanna kiss you everywhere between yo knees and waist
Hear the sounds that you making, get yo knees to shake

Well! I...I was rather flustered...and...But certainly not! I rebutted forcefully that I was not interested and had a very nice boyfriend, thank you.

Can't help but notice how you glowing, I can see in yo face
Now I just wonder if he know he close to being replaced

The gall! No. No. No. I would not have you. I found you abhorrent! As it became clear I wouldn't be taken in by the usual pimpy patter, you changed tack:

Compliment you on your intellect and treat you wit respect

(The change was momentary.)

Give you sex till you sweat, tongue kissing on yo neck
It's been awhile since she got it like this I bet

My mind was pacified by the bone thrown it, leaving my loins free to hear the offer. You watched the melting of my resolve with satisfaction. You cocked your head, and with a squinty stare, moved to close the deal:

How you keep saying no when yo panties so wet?

It was a legitimate question--and yet, I kept saying no. I had a nice enough life. Why throw it all away? I watched American Gangster and you looked a bit young and scrawny. I would be taller in heels and you would be married in any case.

I didn't hear from you for a while and considered myself out of danger. Little did I know you were just giving your seduction mission a fallow period, single-minded man that you are. In that period, you researched. You obtained my bank records and credit reports. You monitored my Firefox-window shopping. A new strategy took shape. And when the moment was ripe, you hit me with it, hard:

Stacks on deck
'Tron on ice
And we can pop bottles all night
Baby you could have whatever you like

I could have. Whatever I liked. Weak knees and wet panties were only the beginning! And it was the way you said it, pressing the "ever," drawing out the "like," engaging the full Southern sine curve of your voice and pouring out every drop of charisma. You played dirty again too:

Late night sex so wet you're so tight
I'll gas up the jet for you tonight
Baby you could go where ever you like

Which brings me to the point. I write today to say, T.I.: I submit. Call me.

Yours cordially,
Cleb

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Bon Anniversaire, Clebilicieux!

This week, Clebilicious turns two. Easy as it is for a little plog like this one to fade into oblivion, I think a Moment is called for.

So...we did it! Another year of non-deletion! Thank you, cher reader.

As a little b-day treat for the 'Licious, I'm updating the 'Best Of' feature at right. (It's a treat in that it makes the plog feel good about itself.) And I'm looking for suggestions from Clebketeers like yourself. So if there was a post that perhaps made some meager dent in the boredom of your workday--or to put it in the confident terms of a now-veteran plogger, that you enjoyed--do leave a comment and let me know.

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Harvest Pr0n: Happy Thanksgiving!

Mad peaches in August.




Late summer came the big heirlooms.























Pumpkins and pie from the school garden.

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Butch is the New Black

I had a few minutes before my ass needed to land at the reception desk chair and the sandwich I'd brought was mostly bread and cheese, so I went to buy a V8. (At the donut shop--this act of purity always fills me with pride.)

Two guys were set to cross 17th at Franklin alongside me (but don't worry, this won't be a harassment story). One was in a wheelchair. The light was on red hand, but the walking guy's feet were getting antsy and creeping streetward. The sitting one reprimanded: You can't jaywalk! Now that you're elected it would be like a scandal. I did a double take and realized that the walking guy wasn't a guy at all. It was the Town's new city councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan!

If Janet Napolitano comes in as Homeland Security Secretary, it will be an unprecedented national vindication of butchness, parallel to Kaplan's local victory. When Tina Fey declared in her famous "bitch is the new black" diatribe last spring that "bitches get stuff done," surely this is what she had in mind. Not that dithering, needy Hillary Clinton.

In a shining example of butches get stuff done, Napolitano rode her horse across the Arizona/Mexico border to better understand the immigration issue. Incidentally, I have a newfound affinity for horse people, a category that includes author Jane Smiley, my aunt in Texas and that other lovable Southwest guv and rumored Obama cabinetman Bill Richardson.

My affinity for lesbians I hope is assumed. (Not that Napolitano is gay or anything. She's just butchy and "single." You know, like Missy Elliot.) Because that's what we need in the pro-gay movement. It's easy enough for gals like me to buddy up to gay guys; we'll always have one big thing in common. And straight men do love them some lesbian. But we're only going to get to the land of equality and understanding if we learn to reach across the aisle. So get to know someone who enjoys the opposite body parts you do, today!

By the way, did you catch Tracy Morgan's delicious rejoinder on the heels of Fey's BITNB riff? After ample reassurances of I love you Tina you know you my girl, he said:

"Bitch may be the new black. But black is the new president, bitch."

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Ximena: Love, Loss and Cheek Feathers

By Ximena the Hen

Guest Plogger

Not long ago, I was in an egg. I broke out, let my feathers dry and joined a swirl of other chicks in claustrophobic spaces. I ended up in the gentle hands of a lady human. She called me Ximena and put me on a postal scale and recorded that I weighed 1.5 ounces. I spent my chickhood in a plush box with my broodermate, Winona, who had no cheek feathers.

It was a simple time. I was content to peck at the feed, sip water and swallow it with my head back, careen across the brooder box, and then collapse in a nap. But Winona often treated me unkindly. Once I became sick and in my weakness Winona threatened to peck me to death. And she would have, had not the lady human erected a six-inch fence of hardware cloth between us. I lived through my illness, grew stronger and came to see Winona as fundamentally good-hearted, if awfully pushy. It was just the two of us in a twenty-inch square box, so we became very close. Together we grew our first feathers; they poked awkwardly through our fluffy chick down.

At two weeks old, we were permitted a trip outside. It was glorious. How to describe that first ray of warm sun on my back? The green blades of grass in my beak, the freedom to run--how bright and beautiful it all was! In the backyard we met Camilla. She was a towering figure, a red hen ten times our size. When she came near, we were confined to a wire cage for our safety.

Right away, I admired her. I began to dream of being a big, brassy hen myself one day. On later occasions, Camilla would cluck with me a little, telling her secrets. She too had grown up in a box indoors, with a broodermate named Hennessy. Camilla said she had been tiny just like me! But after two years of squawking and laying eggs and attacking the garden together, Hennessy had become ill and recently died. Camilla believed that we little ones were supposed to bring the coop new life after this loss. I could not really understand this. Also puzzling was the fact that Camilla was just as eager to peck and chase us as initiate us into the world of grown hens.

In time, Winona and I moved out of our box in the human house into a small hutch in the backyard. We were still too small for the coop; Camilla wouldn't have it. Still, we got to see a lot of the big red hen. I think Camilla took a real shine to me. She taught me hen things, like eating bits of bread or tomato out of the hand of the lady human. We called her "Comes Bearing Treats," which I thought was funny. Winona was still full of sass and when we all three roamed the patio in the evenings, she would try to challenge Camilla. This always made me laugh because Camilla was twice her size. But pound for pound, Winona was the scrappiest chicken in town.

Winona started a fun tradition when we lived in the hutch. The hutch was elevated a few feet off the ground and it had a little wooden walkway from the door to the patio below. Whenever Comes Bearing Treats opened the door, we ignored that walkway and flew halfway across the yard! We were wild!

There were certain things about myself I had to learn to accept as I feathered out. Well, mainly one thing: my cheek feathers. You see, I'm an Araucana, an "exotic" South American breed. I look very different in the face from other chickens. Winona called me Mutton Chops and The Bearded Lady, which hurt my feelings. I am also unable to see much of anything in my peripheral field. But Comes Bearing Treats told me my cheek feathers were adorable and my chickie godmother, Comes Bearing Snails, agreed.

One night, a terrible thing happened. I heard sneaking sounds on the hutch roof and then squawks and screams from the coop. Winona and I pressed close to each other, shivering with fear. The light of day found Camilla's body lying on the coop floor, ravaged by a brutal beast. A hungry raccoon had broken in like a thief in the night. For a few days after that, we had to live inside the human house again.

I was so sad for Camilla. She had just lost her friend when she lost her own life too. More tragic still, she had fallen gravely ill and made a stunning recovery just before the raccoon attack. I was also afraid. I could have been killed too.

That was the first harsh blow of my young life, but it would not be the last. Soon after Camilla died, we were allowed to move into the coop (which now had safety retrofits) and Winona began acting strange. She had grown to be much larger than me as we neared henhood, and she seemed meaner even than usual. Every morning, she would lift her head and unleash an awful sound, nothing like the earthy clucks and squawks I'd heard from Camilla and had begun practicing myself. Something in my nascent hen soul told me to fear my old broodermate.

Comes Bearing Treats seemed to be of the same mind. I was fond of my human. When CBT sat in her lounger, I hopped onto her lap or perched on the chair's arm and we sunned together. Now she seemed to know something about Winona that I didn't. She stopped saying "Winona" and said "Wyclef" instead. Only now can I understand what Winona was and always would be: a rooster.

Not long after the morning noises began, Comes Bearing Treats and The Other One took us on a terrible journey. I remember little of it because I was angry and confused. For a moment, I was on a farm faraway and heard the calls of many chickens: roosters, baby chicks and young pullets like myself. I went there in a cage with my old broodermate, but I came home with strangers. One of them was a White Rock pullet, smaller than me, but fiesty. The other was a pipsqueak Maran, and I'm sorry to say, I took my anger out on this little one. I pecked her. I chased her. I regret that now.

I got along just fine with Betsy, the White Rock. She was a no-frills, sensible sort of bird, and I could appreciate that. I was ready to be "No Drama Ximena." With Marianne, it was more complicated. She made a godawful racket when we went to roost. Peeping without ceasing. Betsy always had to come squeeze between us to keep me from pecking Mari. My despair was still raw. Winona had been my flock. I had a lot of big feelings I didn't know what to do with at that time, and poor Marianne bore the brunt.

In time, Marianne matured and Betsy helped me come around and we became a flock, roaming the patio as one. Betsy and Mari joined the proud tradition of going airborne out of the coop when the door was open. That reminds me of Winona. And I taught the new girls to eat bits of bread and tomatoes from the hands of Comes Bearing Treats. I felt comfortable around CBT, who (I now understood) had raised me from a ball of fluff to the proud hen I was becoming.

But the new girls feared her! They ran in terror when she tried to pick them up. I felt bad for them, because they must have come from a place very different from the backyard. They had never known any human like I knew Comes Bearing Treats and Comes Bearing Snails and The Other One. I try to show them the way by flying up onto CBT's lap. Betsy and Marianne are learning to come nearer and sit with us sometimes. When I encourage the others, CBT calls me her "hen cosigner." Whatever that means!

Hearing my story, do you believe that six months ago, I was in an egg? I have seen so much of the world since I broke that shell, its beauty and its pain. But there is one thing I have yet to do. It is my fondest ambition: to lay an egg. .

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