Chronicles Continued

Saw at a ‘farm’ in Virginia, one of those lovely quaint, labor intensive fences built of twigs and branches.  Always loved the idea.  This property is lined on one side by a rock-piled- carefully laid, stone wall. Well, part of a wall, someone has helped themselves to about 30 feet of it, closest to the road.  Working in the garden I borrowed a hand saw and took down to the ground two groupings of way-past-dead rhododendrons.  That left me with 20 or more long, curvy branches, begging to be made into a wall at the missing part of the stone wall.  And so that is what I did.

After Sarah leaves, there is 15 minutes left on the clock until closing time, 11 bodies still on chairs in the room and the #60 up on the board.  As I am holding #71 I start to think about ”Wanna Borrow a Jack”* when I hear my name called.  I walk to the front of the room, take my place in one of the two chairs behind the curtain, the one in front of the camera seemed the most logical, but as I go to sit, Mr. Plump-shiny-face-head-and-dough-boy neck says I must not sit there, but in the one directly in his line of vision.  I do as I am told. He asks me everything he already knows, my name, address, birth date, and by now I am also so ‘cooked’ I have no memory of whatever else he required.  I’m certain I look to ill to travel or be recorded, but he tells me to now switch chairs for my picture.  I can only imagine how I will look, but really don’t care.  He takes picture #1.  Asks if I want another.  Figure that is a hint.  Pick my head up and take another. It is in all probability a wait of 5 seconds before he hands me a plasticized credit card sized driver’s license.  I look down at it.  In big, blazon lettering across the front is the word: Temporary.  I look at him with incredulity, “What’s this”?  His reply:  “Oh we’ll mail you the permanent one”.  What is this I ask.  No Answer.  It’s closing time.  I figured I must have really p@*%^d Miss-un-nice-lady-off and she is having me pay her dues.  At home I look on the internet and this is the reason for a temp PA D L:

To further mitigate the risk for fraud, including identity theft, PennDOT issues temporary driver’s licenses and photo identification cards, which are valid for 15 days, to individuals who have never held a Pennsylvania driver’s license or photo ID, i.e. new drivers, new photo ID card holders and new residents. During that 15-day period, PennDOT utilizes state-of-the-art facial recognition technology to validate the individual’s photograph does not match another photograph in our database under a different name(s). The temporary DL/photo ID card looks the same as the current DL/photo ID card, except the blue and yellow banners are gray, the word ” temporary” is printed in red across the front and the expiry date is outlined in red. The product can be used by any business to validate name, age, address, etc., just as a permanent DL/Photo ID card.
In addition, PennDOT also uses facial recognition for the same purpose when an individual has their photo taken for their driver’s license/identification card renewal. While Pennsylvania driver’s licenses/photo ID cards have contained the same digital photo and demographic data since 1994, facial recognition takes the digital photo captured at the photo center and establishes an algorithm based on an individual’s facial features. It utilizes this algorithm to compare an individuals photo to all the other photos in PennDOT’s database. Facial recognition identifies similar photos as possible matches and PennDOT reviews the possible matches to determine if potential fraud has occurred. If PennDOT determines there needs to be a further investigation, then and only then, does PennDOT turn it over to the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) for further investigation. Although facial recognition utilizes “biometrics” in its broadest sense, it does not uniquely identify a person like other biometric measures, i.e. fingerprints and DNA. 
Begs the question:  why not use Fingerprints

* by J.P McEvoy from the book ‘Charlie Would Have Loved This.

Wearily plopped down in a chair at a long table to wait my picture turn.  If there had been a casting call for the part, whatever it was, she would have been picked immediately on sight with her short-cut-dyed-brownish-black bob, white ruffled blouse, rubenesque figure.  She was seated perpendicular to me, at the table’s end.  Asked her what number she held and she said it was  #59 and had she’d been sitting there since #20 was up on the board.  She lived nearby but she was cooked.  Thus began the sharing of the story of her charmed life.  She had grown up in the nearby town, the most beautiful in the state, in her opinion.  She had married an army man and together they had lived in Europe and various other states [She elaborated in detail and positive antidotes]  They’d had a good life. He was now dead, rest his soul, some ten years. She moved back here then to be near her sister.  She works at a diner, a waitress, four days a week and loves every minute of it; loves her customers, the town, and oh, yeah she is dating a nice man.  ‘Don’t want to marry him, we go for dinner, for rides, he is a nice man.  That’s all I’ll say’.  Come to find out it is someone she dated when she was 17.  [She is now 60+] At last #59 appears on the board and away she waltzes to tell the man behind the desk a thing or two about her long wait and the man who went before her, but came after.  Ten minutes pass,  she bursts out from behind the curtain, dancing down the aisle between the rows of chairs, shouting to the mostly amused crowd of 11 that she is done for another four years.  She wishes me well, and as she is sailing by, I say “I will come to visit your town, and stop at the dinner, but who do I ask for?”  “Sarah” she tosses over her shoulder and disappears out the door.

Not even quite sure what happened.  But here in PA getting a new DMV license is an all day affair.  Apparently about 4 years ago, the state privatized part of the process.  God forbid you need to register your car title.  That is so confusing, car companies charge extra.  Compared to experiences in other states, this was a nightmare only one is awake and driving.  First, find a town where the ‘camera center’ is open on the day you want to go.  The ‘camera center’ is a building you go to with a card you received in the mail – every 4 years to get a new picture taken, with said card and then apparently your license is renewed.  At some of these, they issue D L’s.  According to my insurance company the large town, an hour away, was open on Tuesday and issued D L’s  Upon arrival discovered ‘camera center’ open, but not D L division.  A  nice man, employed by the DMV  asked me if I wanted to drive further south – now 90 minutes from home, there one would be open. Knowing next to nothing about the state, I asked for something north.  Was directed  NW to another ‘camera center’.  I showed up, I thought, with the necessary list of requirements.  Except my ‘necessary list’ wasn’t quite right.  Had the NY State license. Check. Birth certificate, no, had passport, sort of check. SS card.  Check. [Must remove from folder.]  Mail with my name at my address.  1 piece. Check. 2nd piece? No but I have rental agreement and electric bill. Not good enough because… I will spare you the reasons.  By now I was feeling less than well.  Office only accepts checks or MO and my check has my new mailing address on it, which for security is a PO Box.  Un-nice lady did not like that, crossed it roughly out and said “Write in your street address’!  She took her time.  Finally she returns all the papers and says I am to go back to ‘start’ pick a number and wait for picture to be taken.  #71.  They are currently at 50 and the office closes in 25 minutes.  And that is when I met Sarah!

Am sitting in the kitchen, having just finished my monthly ‘book work’, the sun is out following another bout of rain, it is mid afternoon,   Outside the window, is a bird house on a pole and two other feeders hanging off the lip of the roof at the edge of the porch.  Two days ago, I found a quality glass feeder for hummingbirds, someone had purchased,  made the correct non-red solution and hung it up.  To my surprise there have been hummingbirds coming to drink.  While watching that, a sweet small bird, half the size of a robin and taupe in color has been trying to perhaps catch my attention, as the standard feeders are empty.  My mother said she never fed birds in the summer because there was plenty for them to gather.  However, we are all habitual and in the past there has been a variety of seeds in the feeders.  i am debating with myself whether to fill them – as they do make such a mess, this small bird apparently thinks it would be a grand idea.  He may also be the bird whose nest I exposed in one of my pruning sessions.  She may think I owe her.

1.  The difference between an electric screw and a wood screw.  i hung two of the three light fixtures.  Due to the residue of the power outages everywhere, no electrician was available to come and hang my fixtures.  It had been 30 years since i did one, but some things really never change.  At the coffee shop, when I asked if they knew an electrician, the reply was ‘you mean one that will call you back?’  So, in the solidarity of neighbor-to-neighbor, one of mine came this am at 7:30 to hang the one that was seemingly complicated.  It did require 45 minutes of his time.  I also might have left him with the vague notion that I’m widowed.  Learned that the last time Ii lived in the country: there is help for widows, for divorces, not so much.
2. The nice man delivering my package in the rain, is my postman.  Both times he was in his gray car, not his little white swiss truck and he doesn’t wear a uniform.  How was I to know.
3. Poison ivy is everywhere and left to its own devices, it is lethal.  My hand became alarmingly fat – every time i looked down at it, it seemed to be someone else’s hand attached to the end of my arm.  I visited the pharmacy and he assured me it was due to poison ivy/oak.  Gave me the standard Benadryl and cortisone creme.  Today, when in the garden, had a closer look.  The growing vines are not old, wild roses….please my faith-believing friends, explain to me what the good of that variety of growth is.  This means i can never garden without gloves and that is too bad,  because the soil on one’s hands is good.  There are healthy components to the soil for women.  The vines of the ivy spread out underground and one misadventure you are toast.  I am fortunate that it wasn’t more than one hand.

Never before would I have thought this,  but after living in a one bedroom apartment in a large city, I have come to see a house as extravagant.  There is so much room in the bathroom, I could have 5 others in there with me.  A basement.  An Attic.  A kitchen large enough to feed a family of four in.  And all these other rooms.  Do people who live in houses realize how lucky they are?  How much space they have under their roof?  How entitled they are just by the space available to them?  Give it a thought.

Upon awaking, the sun was shinning.  Shinning. I was concerned that I had been transported to the Pacific Northwest these past days, so much rain!  And my house is in a pine grove and pine trees can fall over.  So the sun was a most welcome sight.  There is a theory that highly efficient people do what is most important to them first thing in the morning.  Clearly this is what is important to me: 1.  A load of wash and hung it outside to dry.  There is no smell like the smell of outside-air-dried laundry.  2.  Took an IKEA blue bag and gathered a bag full of twigs and small branches for starting the fireplace fires.  Note to self:  next time after hanging up the washing, put on the garden gloves.  But I didn’t.   Went inside grabbed the new garden shears and went to work on the errant growing vines and plants.  I have never lived so undomesticated as this house is.  It sits on the plateau of hill and there is acreage.  There is no formal garden, but there is a lovely large lilac bush which i trimmed last year, and see that I will reap the benefit of that soon!  For the rest, it is grass and wild growth.  I have decided not to try to tame it, but to work with letting grow what like it here.  in addition, nearly every evening I see a family of deer and I have no interest in broadening their palate.  Last evening as dusk was falling, watched a white-tailed rabbit scamper away from the house.  So with trusty  tool in hand, I went at it.  Pruned the apple tree, as far as I could sans ladder; cut down every growth of whatever it is that has thorns and bending branches.  It might be a rose, a type of berry, but at this point in the season, there is no blossom and so it is history.  While busy with this chore, I began to wonder if there was poison oak/ivy here as I am hyper-allergic.  I did see a plant that could be poison oak.  But there were also plants that could be sumac.  I don’t have experience with sumac.  The plants  I saw I told myself were small trees.  After clipping for some time, without gloves my hands began to itch from the thorns on the branches.  [Also unfortunately exposed a bird’s nest] and so I came in and washed down.  I knew where the kit was for anti-poison ivy/oak and I had worn long sleeves and pants and boots.  But I took an extra precaution,  I stripped down and put everything in the washing machine.  Showered.  Washed my hair and put on new clothes  The only residue is some sort of swollen part of my left hand, but we’ll see what that looks like in the morning.   In the meantime, I have divine smelling wash,  cut back bushes and a huge stock of kindling.

After 13 hours of straight physical labor, I reminded myself how gloriously exhausting physical labor is. As I had electricity I could listen to Keb Mo sing. ‘Government Cheese’ . ‘All She Wants to do is Dance’. ‘Don’t Shave Your Legs..’.  When I wasn’t listening to KM was listening to the course material for Permaculture that I am signed on to study this month. The hour-long discourse was about the Hun dynasty and the Loess Plateau.  This land was used and abused for way too long,  but has been brought back to fruition in a 10 year period. The results are amazing and the idea of Permaculture – ‘permanent agriculture is that we can work with the land and have a mutually respectful and  profitable relationship man to land.  Hence my wanting to get rid of the lawn.  What a silly concept:   pay for seeds, fertilize and do everything possible to get it to grow and then cut it all off – sometimes weekly. There has to be something smarter, more efficient and more mutually beneficial.

As the 14^th hour was rounding the clock, I marveled that it was possible to keep up with the job. I was pleased that my physical stamina allowed for this. I ended the day with the longest  hottest shower, climbed into my king size bed with new linens and fell asleep.