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Friday, July 17, 2015

Treemail

The other day, my friend Howard sent me a link to an article about how the city of Melbourne, Australia has assigned ID numbers and email addresses to every tree within city limits. Though residents are meant to use these to report broken branches and other arboreal hazards, instead they are writing love letters to their favorite trees.

When You Give a Tree an Email Address from The Atlantic
Trees Returning Emails from Broadsheet Melbourne

My tree

This makes me happier than I can even begin to express. If you ever needed proof (and who doesn't, these days?) that the world is a miraculous place and that people are caring and genuine and creative and curious, this is it. Not only are Melburnians professing their love for and posing questions to their most beloved trees, but the trees (via some very patient, good-humored employees of the city) are actually writing back. How could you not want to run outside and throw your arms around the first spindly sapling or ancient, knotted oak that you see?

Aglow in the warmth of my sudden and unexpected pride for humanity, it occurred to me that I might be able to find my tree--a lone, stalwart spotted gum inside the looped walking path in Royal Park. I spent hours under the sweet-smelling canopy of this tree, reading and writing and playing guitar, missing home, never wanting to go home again. What if I could find it--pick it out of a map of more than 70,000 trees--and let it know what it meant to me? I think that would make it very happy.

So I found it. First with Google Maps...

...then with the Melbourne Urban Forest Visual.

(And if your heart doesn't just spill all over the floor at the words "Email this tree," you should have some tests done to make sure you have a heart.)

Naturally, after locating my favorite tree in the world, I felt a bit of anxiety as to how I would go about initiating contact with it. You see, I've never emailed a tree before and I wanted to make a good impression. At some point during the excitement, I realized that I would probably spend the rest of my day--which I had specifically set aside to tackle the more pressing issues in my life--writing and rewriting a letter to a tree. As soon as I unearth my list of reasons why I will die alone, I'll be sure to add this to it.

It took me a few days, but I wrote it. Tomorrow morning I'll read it again--after all, one's first email to a tree is nothing to take lightly--and when I'm satisfied that my spotted gum will appreciate the sentiments I will click "Email this tree."

I hope my words will mean something.

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Wait, We Just Had a World Cup?

I know soccer isn't for everyone. While being forced to watch a Sounders game with me a couple years ago, my friend Scott declared the sport "ass-numbingly dull" and proceeded to groan every time the ball would switch directions after not being scored. Some games are less exciting than others. I get it. I do. But after the US women won the World Cup this past weekend in Vancouver, I received excited phone calls and texts from six different people who ordinarily have as little to do with soccer as they possibly can. This game broke scoring records and viewership records. It's going to inspire a whole new generation of empowered female athletes. It's a big deal.

And so, I bring you my ten favorite story lines/moments of and about this year's tournament.

10. Helen Mirren narrates a recap of the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, set to Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends.

9. A dog after my own heart.

8. Nigeria fights back twice to tie heavily favored Sweden. (I am also a sucker for a good underdog. And the Nigerian fans. So adorable.)

7. President Obama's phone call to the US women after their victory. My favorite part in the video was when he asked, "And Carli Lloyd, what have you been eating?" Coolest president ever.

6. This delightful, amazing video clip in which Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers defend women's sports. I love when Amy finishes with, "And no more tweeting, Benoit. You're too dumb."

5. When the US women fell to Japan on penalties in the 2011 World Cup final, Japanese midfielder Aya Miyama made a point of seeking out every American player she could find and hugging them while her teammates shrieked and leapt in celebration in the middle of the field. Her country had just won the World Cup for the first time in its history, and right on the heels of the tragic tsunami. This year, when the US defeated Japan in the rematch, American midfielder Shannon Boxx found Miyama and returned the favor.

4. Carli Lloyd, Abby Wambach, Megan Rapinoe, 'Nuff said.

3. This recap of Carli Lloyd's breathtaking third goal of the final. I have no clue what they're saying, but, incredibly, I know exactly what they're saying. It's glorious. (Oh, and the goal's not too shabby either.)

2. The overwhelming fan support for England's Laura Bassett after giving up a game-winning own goal in the dying moments of the semifinal match against Japan. I cried when I watched her, inconsolable, after the final whistle blew. I cried when, in her first interview after the game, she said she wished no one knew her name. And I cried during the player procession of the third-place game against Germany, when fans waved "Proud of Bassett" posters high above their heads. Her one mistake ended England's storybook run at the World Cup, but she will still be welcomed home as a hero. Sometimes people are pretty great.

1. Oh yeah: WE WON!

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

A Jumble

Some recent thoughts:

1. I think I have fleas.

2. It is 972 degrees in my house.

3. I was in an alarming mood one day a couple weeks ago and chose to spend my evening watching YouTube videos of soccer players dying on the pitch. Even more horrifying (if you can believe that there could be something more horrifying) was the fact that I had only typed "soccer player" into the YouTube search bar when the autofill finished with "dies on field."

4. I am currently in a cafe, and the man at the table next to me is in the midst of a full-on business crisis. He has been on the phone with numerous people (he is now taking a call from Betsy), frantically trying to get a hold of Sharon. This Sharon is quite elusive, let me tell you. Even the magic words, "This is an emergency, Kyle, have her call me" don't seem to produce the desired effect. He is now pacing worriedly through Teen Non-Fiction and I'm pretty sure I just saw him turn down the Romance aisle on purpose. Ooh, something is happening in court. Or on court. He could very well mean a tennis court. Or a racquetball court. I have no idea. And there is a man on the other side of the cafe who looks like Walter White from Breaking Bad.

5. I don't need experience to be an "Experienced Naturopath," do I? Or I could be a "Line Cook II" at the Gold Mountain Golf Course in Bremerton. No! I could be an instructor with Dizzy's Tumblebus! That sounds exciting and dangerous.

6. I just found a Craigslist ad for a restaurant in Ballard looking for a prep cook with no experience necessary. On the right-hand side of the page, where they post the caveats of the job, they list "contract job," "internship," "non-profit organization," and, most puzzling and delightful of all, "telecommuting okay."

7. It took me a full 20 minutes, much of which was spent staring at the bookshelf next to me, to realize that the Religion section has been replaced with Humor. I saw a Dave Barry book and rather than think, "Huh, I wonder if someone misshelved this," I thought, "I didn't know he wrote religion." Even seeing the titles "SRSLY, WTF?" and "The Zombie Survival Guide" did nothing to tip me off. I like to think that some minuscule part of my brain registered that something was amiss, but it certainly didn't tell me. t think it was eventually the Archie comics, on the top shelf, that naturally drew my gaze upward to the giant "HUMOR" sign above the shelving unit. Oh my god, and the comfy chairs are gone! What is happening to this place?

Poetry Corner Whenever-I-Feel-Like-It

The Order of the Day

Billy Collins

A morning after a week of rain
and the sun shot down through the branches
into the tall, bare windows.

The brindled cat rolled over on his back,
and I could hear you in the kitchen
grinding coffee beans into a powder.

Everything seemed especially vivid
because I knew we were all going to die,
first the cat, then you, then me,

then somewhat later the liquefied sun
was the order I was envisioning.
But then again, you never really know.

The cat had a fiercely healthy look,
his coat so bristling and electric
I wondered what you had been feeding him

and what you had been feeding me
as I turned a corner
and beheld you out there on the sunny deck

lost in exercise, running in place,
knees lifted high, skin glistening--
and that toothy, immortal-looking smile of yours.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Poetry Corner Whenever-I-Feel-Like-It

My choice for this week's Poetry Corner Whenever-I-Damn-Well-Please is not a poem per se, but an excerpt from The World to Come by Dara Horn. I find it rhythmic and gorgeous and heartbreaking--everything I love in a poem. And who's to say it's not?

"There is a moment that has happened over and over again, in every place children have ever slept, on every dark night for the past ten thousand years, that almost everyone who was once a child will forever remember. It happens when you are being tucked into bed, on a dark and frightening night when the sounds of the nighttime outside our drowned out only by the far more frightening sounds in your head. You have already gone to bed, have tried to go to bed, but because of whatever sounds you hear in your head you have failed to go to bed, and someone much older than you, someone so old that you cannot even imagine yourself ever becoming that old, has come to sit beside you and make sure you fall asleep. But the moment that everyone who was once a child will remember is not the story the unfathomably old person tells you, or the lullaby he sings for you, but rather the moment right after the story or song has ended. You are lying there with your eyes closed, not sleeping just yet but noticing that the sounds inside your head seem to have vanished, and you know, through closed eyes, that the person beside you thinks that you are asleep and is simply watching you. In that fraction of an instant between when that person stops singing and when that person decides to rise from the bed and disappear--a tiny rehearsal, though you do not yet know it, of what will eventually happen for good--time holds still, and you can feel, through your closed eyes, how that person, watching your still, small face in the darkness, has suddenly realized that you are the reason his life matters. And Sara would give her right leg and her left just to live through that moment one more time" (118).

And a second excerpt from the same book, thrown in for good measure:

"Of course, beyond the cave stood an entire world of years. Indigo years, yellow years, orange years, years that blossomed like roses and years that froze like snow and years that dissolved like sand, weeks that rooted themselves and grew and rose and towered out of the earth, and months and months of hard pebble days that bit into sensitive soles and callused them for good. There were times Sara could never have dreamed of--looming pink cliffs of seasons that had to be scaled on their faces or climbed on treacherous paths, roaring iridescent cataracts of entire decades thrown over the edge, vague yellow dunes of sleeping hours, sudden eclipses of nightmares. A few weeks were hard shining apples, or thick bread. One year, her first, was pure white milk. And there were tiny instants, fractions of a second--glances, touches, kisses, sounds, words--that flooded over the time around them, raging, surging with churning currents, and washing entire years away" (246).