Garlic is everywhere.

In the yard in Houston, Texas, small white flowers sprouted in the spring. “Wild garlic,” my neighbor said. I pulled some up to find a tiny onionish bulb. Not much garlic there. For the newly planted flowerbeds in front, I visited the nursery and purchased tall purple flowers with grassy leaves. “Ornamental garlic,” my neighbor said. I bent to spell the blooms. Definitely garlic there. Out back in Dallas, tall shoots shot up sprouting clusters of little white flowers that broke open to scatter bulb-like seeds. “Garden garlic,” my neighbor said. “Some grandma had a garden here before they built your house.” I pulled up plump garlic bulbs packed with individual cloves. Definitely garlic here.

It seems garlic is everywhere.

The relative of the onion has been around a great while.

When the pyramids of Egypt were built some 5,000 years ago, garlic was being grown outside and used inside. Just ask the archaeologists. Hippocrates, the Greek physician and Father of Western Medicine, was writing scripts for garlic 2,500 years ago. Just ask your doctor. Garlic was given to athletes racing in the first Olympic games. Just ask a trainer. Spreading around the globe, the hardy little plant developed a devoted following. Just ask your neighbor. Garlic was used to ward off bad stuff and encourage good stuff. Ask your neighbor again. It was and is a common remedy for everything from the common cold to snake bite. Ask your doctor again. And, always, it was and is a wonderful flavor enhancer for foods and a most friendly accompanist to cooks and chefs plying their creative trade the world round. Just go to dinner anywhere.

The world has an insatiable appetite for garlic.

To which, the farmers have responded.

China leads the way as the #1 producer of the world’s garlic. Next in line, piling their market wagons with the tasty, tantalizing and tempting little relative of the onion, are: India, South Korea, Egypt, Russia, Burma, Ethiopia, the United States, Bangladesh and Ukraine. As you can see, the varied and vital diversity of the lands represented evidence the wide and welcome acceptance of garlic.

Chemically, there are sulfur compounds in the garlic cloves, which, when crushed (and everyone knows you must crush the garlic to release its flavors), liberate to the surrounding environs compounds of a startlingly pungent and persistently odiferous aspect, which is much desired for the associated culinary manifestations, but has the bothersome habit of traveling through the body to exit the pores of the skin and to be exhaled with the breath from the lungs. More directly stated, garlic can be evident to a somewhat unpleasant extent in the diner’s sweat and breath the following day. A small price, most would say, but one to be aware of, especially if you have a scheduled meeting with the head of company the next day. In counterpoint, it can be noted that the wafting later-effects of garlic consumption are reported to dissuade mosquitoes from landing upon and biting the skin of the consumer. This is one garlic testament I have personally heard and observed in discussions with garlic consumpters.

Coincidence is an amazing thing, tempting one to think things may not be as coincidental as they appear.

After deciding to write a testimony to garlic, I stumbled across this statement: “Much of the garlic consumption in the United States is centered in Gilroy, California, which calls itself the ‘garlic capital of the world.’” Opening another window on the computer, I found the route to a wedding in California. Clicking on the destination map, I saw the city of Gilroy on the road from the airport to the wedding. We will be driving through the garlic capitol of the world.

Coincidence?

I think not.

Confirmation?

Absolutely.

Where there is garlic in plenty, good restaurants will follow in turn.

Spread the table, prepare the feast, and open the doors.

And, please, oh please, don’t spare the garlic.

Bon appetit.

Grandpa Jim

“Terra Incognito” is by definition “an unknown or explored place.”

A fuller explication of the term might be: “An isolated, inhospitable, difficult-to-reach, and not-particulary-entertaining-when-you-manage-somehow-to-get-there piece of real estate generally reserved on first appearance for those who have lost their way and subsequently sought by brave souls aware of the legendary location and desiring the special adventure of standing on the most inaccessible landing spot on terra firma.”

Bouvet Island is that spot.

If you study a map of the Southern Hemisphere and you put your finger on a dot in the middle of the great Southern Ocean, about as far away as you can get from any land, roughly equidistant from the tip of South America, the tip of Africa and the top of Antarctica, just there — in the middle of nowhere, and you transport yourself to stand on the bow of a vessel plying those treacherous waters, and you raise your binoculars and focus hard at a distant spec on the horizon as it grows into a cold piling of white glaciated ice and black volcanic rock, where it lifts its ragged head above the frothy caps of the frigid waves, you will have spotted the last lonely island.

For the planet bound, Bouvet Island is the last of terra incognito.

Beyond Bouvet, there are only the stars.

Few sailors have ever sited Bouvet Island. For a long time, none were able to make a landing. From the garbled maritime reports, a very few focused adventurers managed to circumnavigate its waters. The Norwegians were arguably the first to wash ashore. In any event, Norway had the most credible claim of first siting, stepping onto and claiming sovereignty over the mysterious island. With only small argument, the other adventurous souls said, “Let it be yours.” The island is today a dependent territory of Harald the 5^th of Norway.

Temperatures on the Isle of Bouvet seldom inch above freezing. The nights are colder and lonelier. There are no trees, no grass and no land animals. At times, lichen and moss appear through the snow, before the smallish plants return to their hiding places. Certain seafaring birds and visiting seals have acquired a passing fondness for the place.

In recent years, Norway constructed a weather station on the island. Even with assistance from the navy, few people make it ashore. The island is a monstrously difficult place to reach, land and stand upon.

Beyond its administrative duties to the Norwegian monarch, Bouvet is largely a check on the checklists of those few of us who have gone everywhere they can get to and have the remaining monetary resources and physical stamina to seek Neverland, the most difficult place surrounded by water on our globe.

An “island” is “a piece of land surrounded by water.” Bouvet is that. “Island” is a strict geographic definition. See all the water around. Bouvet is an island.

A “continent” is. . . . Well, there has never been a particularly lucid or telling definition of a continent. All land on our planet meets the definition of island. The continents of North and South America are connected and form one Americas island. Europe, Asia and Africa are all connected and form one huge island with no single name. Australia and Antarctica are continents and islands – the only two of the continents to be their own islands. As you may observe, there is no geographic explanation of what, on Earth, constitutes a continent?

In such circumstances, it can be helpful to turn to a poet.

In bed, near death but not dying, the English poet John Donne penned his “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions.” Emerging from the surrounding words in the midst of “Meditation XVII” are the following oft-quoted lines:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

“Island” is a land-made definition.

“Continent,” as the poet has seen, is a man-made definition.

Geography can determine an island. An island is entire of itself. Not so a man or a woman. No matter how isolated we may think we are, we will never be entire of ourselves. Only an island can be truly isolated.

Geography cannot determine a continent. Each man and woman is a piece of the main, a part of the continent. This is the start of the poet’s definition.

Continent is humanity within the reach of its boundaries and the cup of its lands. Only men and women can name their continent, because only they will ring the bells when diminished. Only residents are less for loss of a part of the whole. The connections and interactions of the living determine the width and breath of the continent. Continent is a man-made definition, and that is good.

Bouvet will never be more than an island, because no bell will ever toll on Bouvet for a loss of its parts.

Be sure that in time, it will toll for thee.

You are a piece of a continent.

You are part of the main.

No man is an island.

You are part,

Of a,

Continent.

And, that is good.

Grandpa Jim

Fall has arrived.

Autumn, harvest or fall, the season it is a changin’.

In the old days of the Up North of my childhood and early adult years, fall meant sweaters, warm wools, pullovers and jackets to curl ‘round the ears as we shivered from the dropping temperatures and kicked aside the brittle leaves drifting in piles at our feet.

In Texas, things are different — as they so often seem. In its ways, this is the Down South. Fall in my part of Texas is a gentle change, a perceptible, if only slightly but very welcome, drop from the soaring digits of summer. Fall’s entrance is a morning like this morning with a cool North wind lifting my ball cap on an early walk. The sun today will trace an even journey with the night, an equinox of equal day and night. The sun’s light will warm the rolling lands to only 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31 degrees Celsius), not the 95 F (35 C) the celestial globe touched for an hour yesterday. The time it is a changin’.

The day before yesterday, I drove the rolling lands of Tejas. If you were a “friend” to the Caddo Indians of East Texas, you were “Tejas.” The word is Native American, not Spanish. It was the greeting to a friend: I see you and I welcome you. Long before the Europeans arrived, there was Tejas.  After the diseases of the new ones decimated the tribes and left the hills empty and the valleys waiting, the land extended its welcome. Tejas became Texas.

I drove the long line of highway under the Texas sun and thought how this looked so like Texas – hot. It did. For all the greens of the surrounding prairies and the approaching trees on the East Texas horizon, it all just looked hot. Not bad hot. Not that. More friendly hot. I could feel the warmth and the welcome of the vistas and the views. I laughed. The land was so Texas. So, Tejas.

After the meeting in the far town, I drove back to the birthday party of my granddaughter. On the way, we passed a college football stadium surrounded by a sea of colored T-shirts. No sweaters or jackets here. I thought, “This is fall in Texas.”

I remembered Uncle Joe and the picture he’d sent of the last of the corn harvest:

In the Iowa of my Up North, the corn harvest would only be beginning, if yet, and the farmers would be hoping to capture the ears before the ice and snow froze the kernels in place until the melt of spring.

For Joe, the corn is complete, that harvest done.

Uncle Joe was saying he’d start picking the cotton next. You wear cotton in Iowa. You don’t see the white puffs dotting the distant fields, waiting for their autumnal harvest:

My mind reminded me: “This is fall in Texas.”

Uncle Joe also sent along this picture with a bow of color above evening greens, road-side arrows pointing the path around a bend:

In the fading light, it almost looked cool, but it didn’t look like fall.

Then, I remembered again, “This is fall in Texas.”

It is different down here.

Goodnight and Good Day — wherever you may be.

Enjoy the sunset and the day tomorrow — whatever your fall may bring.

Tejas,

Grandpa Jim

Which river is the longest of the long rivers?

Of the rivers of the world, the four longest, in descending order, are reported to be: #1) the Nile River in Africa at 4,132 or 4,258 miles (6,650 or 6,853 kilometers), depending on the source of the information and the river itself; #2) the Amazon in South America at 3,976 or 4,345 miles (6,400 or 6,992 kilometers) – clearly, these first two streams are neck-to-neck in a horse race to be number one (I’ll let you make the call); #3) the Yangtze in China at 3,917 or 3,988 miles (6,300 or 6,418 kilometers), numbers that could vie for number two on the list, if not number one (measuring long rivers is apparently not an easy thing); and #4) the Mississippi in the United States at 3,902 miles (6,275 kilometers), close to number three but not quite there.

After these follow a long listing of other long rivers, none close to the top four, where only a few hundred miles or less may separate the leaders from each other.

Each of the mighty four is, in its own right, noteworthy and has been, in its own ways, the subject of quotation.

I grew up not far from the upper reaches of the Mississippi. My first college was on a bluff carved high above the waters of the river, and my dormitory room on the top floor was considered the highest point in the State of Iowa. The city was Dubuque, founded by French fur traders and the far-traveling Father Julien Dubuque. The town is reputed to be the oldest European settlement west of the Mississippi, because the village began and still resides on the west bank. I had family who for a time lived near and made their living from fishing the river, and as a boy I peered over and into the spring-fed basins at the monster fish they pulled from its depths. The bluffs and by-ways of the Mississippi harbor the fantastic memories of my childhood and afforded me in later years a comforting home and base for travel. It is a river whose banks and towns I am close to.

As Mark Twain once said:

“The Mississippi River towns are comely, clean, well built, and pleasing to the eye, and cheering in spirit. The Mississippi Valley is reposeful as a dreamland, nothing worldly about it . . . nothing to hang a fret or worry upon.”

I have not visited the other great rivers. The Nile, The Amazon and The Yangtze wait in their own manner and at their own pace. From my years of reading stories and viewing pictures, I know much has changed along their banks, as it has along my own. Dams ands dikes have come and gone. Cities have sprouted, expanded and become fantastic. Men and women have grown old and left us.

My Grandpa Harry was a great lover of the river.

Children have been born.

When I was little, no more than a toddler, Grandpa would drive me along the bluffs of the Mississippi. I would reach up over the edge of the car window and stare fearful down at the far drops and out over the new and mysterious waterland.

The rivers of our Earth carry themselves to their length and smile in their wave and ripple at our passing attempt to alter their course.

I may never see the other great rivers, but I have in my own seen something of them.

The view of a great river is a scene of the heart alive in the memories of those who follow its course.

A Master Pilot of the River, Mark Twain was right: “There is nothing there to hang a fret or worry upon.”

Of that, I am forever grateful and amazed.

Grandpa Jim

Today, September 11, 2014, is thirteen years since the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, colleagues were visiting from Washington D.C. We had finished our morning meeting when someone stuck their head through the door and said, “There’s been a plane accident in New York. The plane crashed into the World Trade Center.” We walked into the hall and stopped at the door of an office with a TV against the far wall. As we watched, a second plane struck the other tower of the World Trade Center. I remember being confused and saying, “That’s no accident.”

It was not.

2,763 people died in New York: 2,606 on the ground from the collision, fire and collapse of the Twin Towers, 127 passengers and 20 crew aboard the two planes, and the 10 hijackers, 5 to each plane. 189 people died at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.: 125 at the Pentagon, 53 passengers and 6 crew in the single plane, and 5 hijackers. 44 people died in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania when the passengers and crew, talking to each other and over their cell phones, charged the hijackers who rolled and crashed the plane short of its destination, the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.: 33 passengers, 7 crew and 4 hijackers died in that field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

It was not an accident.

None of them were accidents.

On September 11, 2001, 2,997 people died.

Many of the dead in New York have not been and never will be identified.

I am still confused.

I think this is a thing that cannot be understood.

I think this is a thing that can only be remembered and not forgotten.

I know I cannot forget.

There are only a few things in my life I can go back to and see clearly again.

That TV and second plane striking I can see as if I just stopped and looked through the door.

Written words do not work well here.

I think only prayers do,

For healing and

For life.

Grandpa Jim

“I need a book,” I said loudly, sitting at my computer.

“Try Amazon,” my wife’s voice echoed from the other room.

“This is amazing,” I said to the air. “They’ve got a lot more than books here. It’s like magic.”

“Abracadabra” is a word magicians use to make appear what wasn’t there before. The word itself is thought to have the power to wrought change and alter reality.

Amazon was first incorporated as “Cadabra.” It is a curiously appropriate appellation for the world’s first great Internet shopping experience. Like many new tech businesses, Cadabra began in a small place — in this case, a garage. The founder, Jeff Bezos, was convinced product sales over the Internet was the wave of the future. The company began simply as a small online bookstore . . . but not for long.

Whisking through the air, the magician’s wand of the entrepreneur was out and working. Product sales exploded and expanded into new and varied lines and lands. The garage collapsed and was swallowed by a virtual black hole of shopping extravaganza. Consumers were drawn in droves to fall and float through the drop-down windows and among the pictured pop-up halls of proffered and prolific merchandising.

Mr. Bezos, ever the visionary, saw the flood gates of retail hysteria opening and quickly renamed the company “Amazon” after the mighty river with the largest flow of water on our globe. From A to Z, on the digital Amazon, every product of the planet could bob and bounce in enticing and exciting array. A new age had dawned.

And, it could be copied. Jeff Bezos saw that. He was among the first. Certainly, he was riding the crest of the first wave. He had the advantage. And, he had the new name, the brand: Amazon. Abracadabra. It was magic at work.

All good things will be imitated.

Ali Baba was a poor woodcutter. His brother had the money. But, Ali Baba had a good ear and a keen sense of timing. One day in the woods, he listened quietly from his place of hiding as forty thieves described and detailed a wondrous cave of treasures. Then, one thief whispered the magic words that would open the door to riches: “open sesame.” The rest is perhaps the most famous and well known of the tales of the Arabian Nights.

Jack Ma was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. Like Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma developed a fascination for the internet and its potential, and like Jeff, Jack was a visionary.

On a business trip to San Francisco, Mr. Ma was sitting in a coffee shop thinking of a name for a new company. He asked the waitress, “Do you know about Alibaba?” “Of course,” she answered, “Alibaba and the 40 thieves.” On the street, he stopped and asked 30 people. They all knew. In Jack Ma’s own words, “They all knew about Alibaba. Alibaba – open sesame.” The new company was founded in an apartment. The registered name was, of course, Alibaba.

Today, Alibaba is, by many accounts, the biggest group of e-commerce businesses in the world. Sales are reported to exceed those of its major competitors combined, including the flagship online retailer Amazon.

Operating primarily in the People’s Republic of China, the Alibaba web portals feature and feat nearly a billion products to a curious and clamoring public. Over 60% of the parcels delivered in China have Alibaba somewhere and somehow on the return address.

By all accounts, Jack Ma has discovered the secret to unlock the cave of treasures.

“open sesame,” Jack whispers.

Mr. Ma, as others before him, has learned something of the magic of words.

“Abra cadabra,” Jeff Bezos quietly intones, before falling back to sleep with “Amazon” on his mind and in his head.

All good things should be copied.

Let Ali Baba lead the way.

Everyone knows the name.

Alibaba — open sesame.

Grandpa Jim

The days are getting shorter. The sun is rising later. When I open my eyes, my ears are abraded by the jar of the cell phone alarm. No light shines through yonder door. It is dark outside, and it is difficult not to roll over and wait for spring to rise. But, that would be another six months or so, and there is important stuff to do, I think.

My favorite days of the year are those of the long light: spring and summer. On March 20, 2014, vern equinoxed. Vern is not a plumber from New Jersey. Vern is my shorthand for “vernal,” which means of or pertaining to spring. March 20^th was the first day of spring (vern) because the daylight equaled the nightdark (equinox). On that day, I was ecstatic and jumped from my bed silencing the cell before it could mar the ever brightening day. I love the sun.

Now, my elation has turned to deflation. I see the light fading and spy the autumnal equinox on the horizon. On that day of equal night, September 23, 2014, my sun will begin its dive to the south and the dark will again crowd forward into the day.

I enjoy the change of seasons. I enjoy the cooler days. I enjoy the approaching Holidays. I do. I really do. But, I miss the sun.

To brighten my gloomerie, I asked my wife what song she was thinking of — to hear what would pop into her head. I needed a lift.

Her answer was immediate: “Oh, Crunchy West.”

“That’s no song,” I said.

“Yes, it is,” she answered. “My little nephew wrote it. He was trying to spell ‘Oh, Country West.”

The little nephew was 5 when he penned the tune. Now, he’s 28. He has older twin sisters. The second was married last Saturday. The other, the older by seven minutes, was married four months ago. I thought, “Mom and Dad are now a poorer, happier couple.” I smiled. It was working. I remembered when the twins were born. The parents had been told to expect a single baby. They were surprised with two girls. Last Saturday was a second delightful wedding. Dad told us, between tears, how he’d spent two months in the hospital beside the littlest, youngest twin when the doctors said she wouldn’t make it. That tiny baby girl was now a beautiful, radiant, healthy bride. I smiled again.

“Why ‘Crunchy?’” I asked my wife.

“The little guy liked crunchy cereal,” she answered.

Three days before the wedding, our newest grandson was born in the same city as the wedding. The timing was perfect. Our first stop was to visit and hold the little guy. He has the longest fingers and a serious stare that evaluated me between opening eyes. I smiled remembering the look. His two-year-old brother seemed a bit concerned as he crunched chips at the Mexican place we’d picked for lunch. So, I took the older brother running and exploring and yelling through the restaurant while parents and wife and baby sat staring googly-eyed. Sometimes, it’s fun just to be kids. We both smiled when the staff asked if we might leave. It was a good lunch.

“There is no song ‘Oh, Country West,” I told my wife. “I just checked the Internet.”

“I know,” she answered. “It’s “Oh, Crunchy West.”

I smiled.

Why is she always right?

And, it’s not just this time of the year.

I smiled again and looked forward to the equinox.

Grandpa Jim

Where have all the jobs gone?

In the paper this morning, there was a listing of the top 10 jobs that are on the decline. Today is Labor Day in the US, our annual holiday at the end of summer when we celebrate the workers that make our world go and keep the economy strong. Many countries have similar days to celebrate their workers and the jobs they do.

Nothing stays the same. Labor and jobs and work have changed greatly since 1887 when President Grover Cleveland formally established the US Labor Day as the first Monday in September. Change is to be expected. Jobs rise and fall with new products and technologies, with new demands and wants, and with the fading and waning of old attachments. Such is the nature of the human economic condition.

We need fewer mail carriers (#1 decline), because there is less mail to carry. More travels electronically. I love the scene in the original 1947 movie “Miracle on 34^th Street” when Santa Claus is on trial because he can’t exist and the workers in the New York mailroom decide to deliver the children’s letters to prove that Santa must exist. The US Postal Service and its mail carriers pile the bags into the courtroom. Lifting his relieved head through the mounds of letters, the judge pounds the gavel and announces to the cheering citizens outside and the world that “Santa Claus does exist!” I believe and have ever since. Have no fear, Santa will continue, but the mail carriers have no such compelling argument.

It was 1955. Pete Seeger had just read a long novel about Russia. Across the pages, young Cossack men ride off to join the army. Drifting back to the songwriter is their youthful tune about flowers, young girls, marriage and becoming soldiers. Something timeless, sad and true floated in that air. Pete grabbed his notebook and scribbled “long time passing” and “When will we ever learn?” A new song emerged in his head. When the young Seeger shared the lyrics at a local college, a student, Joe Hickerson, added two final verses about graveyards and the flowers rising above the graves. The lines circled back to the blooms at their beginning.

Let me share the verses that circled back to me as I read of the losses this Labor Day:

“Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?

“Young girls have picked them everyone

“Where have all the young girls gone, long time passing”

“Gone for husbands everyone

“Where have all the husbands gone, long time passing?

“Gone for soldiers everyone

“Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?

“Gone to graveyards, everyone

“Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?”

“Gone to flowers, everyone

“Oh, when will they ever learn?

“Oh, when will they ever learn?”

I have a brother-in-law who returned from Vietnam. Many young men did not. After that, he settled down and became a mail carrier. I have always thought he sought the quiet of the day and the peace of the walk. He is a good husband and father, and he and my sister are approaching retirement. His job has remained. It was, I think, his safe haven after the storm.

Other jobs are on the list, but his was the one that struck me most. I realized it wasn’t the job that had mattered in his life, it was what he brought back and how he used those experiences. For such men, there will always be work, family and a future. For the others, I will take the long walk up the hill and kneel near the flowers.

Where have all the young men gone, long time passing?

When will we ever learn?

When will we ever learn?

Grandpa Jim