Desert Ramblings

Today was our last class for the Cochise County Master Gardener's course. After 40 more hours I'll be a full-fledged MG.

The 100-question test, which was a week-long take-home test, was not easy. "It was meant to make you familiar with the manual" explained Rob, the primary instructor. The test took me five nights to complete, averaging three hours a night. It took me that long because I wanted to make sure I had the correct answers documented.

As it turned out, three questions were disputable and a few more were questionable. We graded our own test. The student next to me admitted that she didn't even finish the test, so how did she score higher than me?!

The highest score was a 93. I scored 83. My neighbor scored 87.

Graduation is on 5 June, the same day the hiking club is heading out for a week-long car camp in the White Mountains. We get our diplomas and orange polo shirts then and after our fifty volunteer hours are complete, we get our plastic nameplates. From here on out we must continue to take 25 educational hours a year, which is doable if I attend every monthly meeting for 12 hours, and the annual High Desert Gardening conference in February for another 16 hours (and $150!) Staying a MG won't be cheap...

So now I no longer have a fun excuse to drive into town on Wednesdays, where after class I'd visit Lowe's garden shop, browse the latest DVDs at Hastings, or sit at the library for hours surfing the internet. Some days I even bought lunch at Taco Bell, ordering two bean burritos for $1.93 (But even that has increased to $2.15 with Taco Bell's "new" menu of higher prices.)

Now the class is over. What now? Continue taking more UA courses, that is! I will get my schedule next month.

***

I've been gardening every morning faithfully for several hours every day. I am keeping busy and it makes the time fly. I was going in and out from the back yard yesterday when at 10:12am ABC interupted the showing of "The View" (the hosts were discussing Senators Obama and Clinton and the run-off to the Democratic Nomination) when the BREAKING NEWS concerning Senator Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts flashed across the screen. He had been rushed to the hospital last Sunday from his home off Cape Cod from a seizure, which doctors at the Boston Medical Center determined was caused by a left-lobed malignant brain tumor, a glioma, one of the rarest but most fatal kind of brain tumor. Patients wit gliomas normally live no more than 18 months after diagnosis.

Ohmygod I thought as I stopped in my tracks to hear the BREAKING NEWS. Senator Ted Kennedy has an aggressive, malignant brain tumor? He could die within 18 months? NO WAY! The Kennedys have been a part of my life since the beginning; it was the assassination of President John F Kennedy in November 1963 that is one of my earliest childhood memories. I was too young really to know what was going on, but what I do remember quite vividly is my mother holding me tight in the downstairs bathroom of our two-story house in Highland, IN and crying hysterically. The maternal hug was a rarity for me as a child, and thus something that I remember like a traumatic event. She was hugging me close and crying uncontrollably and all I could do was stay calm in her hug.

And then a few years later there were the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr on 4 April 1968 and Senator Bobby Kennedy, the youngest of the three Kennedy boys, on 5 June 1968 and I remember thinking why so many good people were getting assassinated and making the front cover of Time Magazine. It was the height of the Civil Rights Era and Vietnam frustrating the American people, events that have forever shaped my attitudes about rights for all and the necessary evil--and human suffering--of war.

I've witnessed Senator Ted Kennedy many times on C-SPAN debate a topic, be it No Child Left Behind (which is not popular with most educators in Arizona) , Health Insurance, Social Security or the Patriot Act. Watching him push a certain bill, get angry at Bush administration conservatives, or show outrage over the Iraq War to the point of "getting red in the face" were all classic Kennedy. Argue what one may say about the Kennedys, they were all very passionate about social change.

But I will never understand how he managed to survive his political career after the July 19, 1969 incident off Chappaquiddick Island, when he drove his Oldsmobile off a bridge and let his female campaign worker, Mary Jo Kepchne, drown. He didn't report the incident to police for several hours, his family ties kept his record clean but of course all the questions about drinking and driving and having an adulterous affair with a campaign worker certainly kept the topic alive all these years.

His family name and connections saved him. But that was 39 years ago and Ted Kennedy has been a Congressional senator since 1962, the longest-serving senator now in Congress. He is 76 years old now and faces his most intense battle yet, the battle for his life.

As a Congressman Kennedy will get the best medical care available to anyone, name the health care provided to all Congressmen for life. Despite the bleak outcome, he will be treated well.

Still, the end of an era is approaching. Other American icons of my childhood have passed on before Ted Kennedy that were just as dramatic for me: Lucille Bell, President Nixon, Johnny Carson, Peter Jennings. There were many others, mostly writers and politicians, who have died, but none were more dramatic than the ones here. These icons of Americana were never meant to die; they were to live on eternally.

Lucille Ball died the week Eric was born, and I was at home with him on Maternity leave when Ball first had a stroke and a week later a massive heart attack that claimed her life. (Or was it a heart attack and then a stroke?)

The news of Ted Kennedy's brain tumor shocked me enough to call Kevin at work to let him know that his own state senator was now suffering from something he most likely will not survive.

The news yesterday left me in a bleak mood all day. After a long night studying for my CCMG test at the library, I drove home late, with only the waning full moon rising over the San Pedro Valley and the lights of Naco, Mexico and the silhouette of San Jose Peak shining before me. It's that night-time view of Naco and the mountains of northern Chihuahua that always ellicit an exaggerated sigh as I drive past, that fleeting five-second view of the lighted valley before the village lights disappear behind the dark gestalts of roadside desert broom and mesquite.

I wanted to pull over along the road shoulder to photograph the view, and approached the Mesquite Inn off Highway 92. It was just my luck --again!!!--to see five USBP vans parked in the lot, with uniformed agents talking to several illegal immigrants. It was not the proper place to pull over and take out my Canon, so once again I drove off, with the waning full moon on hold for another month. One of these days I will park along the road and capture that view of the rising moon over Mexico and keep that image forever in a photograph. It's one of many views that make me grateful to live in such a beautiful place.

***

The price for regular unleaded is now selling for $3.59 in town, up another four cents from yesterday. The price for a barrel of crude sold for $126.52 ten days ago, it's now over $133!!!
Traveling anywhere is getting too expensive, and trading in my van for a Japanese hybrid is sounding more and more attractive...the 2009 Honda hybrids will average over 45mpg and sell for around $22,000. The Dodge Grand Caravan with its measely 20mpg couldn't compete with that! The more expensive gasoline gets, the less I like my van.

***

On a good note, the Anatolian shepherd-mix dog at the Sierra Vista animal shelter has been adopted! He had been there for at least a month, as I always check on the dogs when I drop off my aluminum cans there. He was a large, friendly dog with a heart-warming whimper. At least now I can rest assured that one good dog has found a forever home.

http://regulus2.azstarnet.com/comments/index.php?id=239994
http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2008/05/21/inside-a-senators-brain/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/kennedy.htm