nancynall.com » Lawng Island.
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Lawng Island.

Every day this week, my neigh­bor­hood roars from morn­ing to late after­noon with the sounds of power tools. Mow­ers, edgers, blow­ers, whif­fers, whaf­fers, that thing-that-digs-up-your-lawn-and-makes-it-look-like-geese-crapped-all-over-it, but is some­how good for it. (Oh yeah, an aer­a­tor.) My neigh­bors will be doing their sec­ond mow of the sea­son this week­end. We have yet to do our first.

It’s not that we don’t care about our lawn. We do. We just don’t care that much. Once again, we’ve found our­selves out of step with our neigh­bors.

For much of my life, I found myself liv­ing near at least one per­son who objected to lawn care as bour­geois bull­shit. You know the type: Obses­sion with a weed-free patch of grass in front of one’s house is the ulti­mate dis­trac­tion from the stuff in life that really mat­ters, and so they opt out. That “the stuff that really mat­ters” tends to be “sit­ting in front of the TV watch­ing bas­ket­ball” is only evi­dence of their supe­rior sen­si­bil­i­ties. And so they let their lawn grow long and shaggy, and some­times they glance out the front win­dow and say, “Thank God I’m a Lib­er­tar­ian, and above all this shit.”

To these peo­ple I have but one thing to say: Move to Mongo. (Mongo is a small town in north­ern Indi­ana, but in this usage it’s more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of that out­back town where civ­i­liza­tion is always kept at bay. In the 1980s and ’90s, when the city of Fort Wayne was aggres­sively annex­ing its urban­ized, unin­cor­po­rated neigh­bor­hoods, a knot of whiny indi­vid­u­al­ists could always be counted on to write tire­some let­ters to the edi­tor about the chang­ing city-limits sign. These mis­sives always con­tained some ver­sion of the line, “But Marge and I moved here five years ago to get away from the city,” as though buy­ing a three-bedroom house in a sub­di­vi­sion where vol­un­teer soy­beans still occa­sion­ally sprout in the back yard, close enough to the city lim­its to lengthen one’s com­mute by no more than eight min­utes, gave one an eter­nal claim to some sort of “coun­try” life. A col­league and I came up with “Move to Mongo” as a way to say, “If you really want to get away from it all, then get away from it all. And stop com­plain­ing”)

In mat­ters of the lawn, as in so many things, I’m a com­mit­ted mod­er­ate. You will never catch me out there fret­ting over crab­grass and dan­de­lions, but I accept that I live in a neigh­bor­hood, and neigh­bor­hoods only look as good as their crum­mi­est prop­erty, and I promise not to be that prop­erty. I will never be the nicest one, either, but I’ll do my part.

Here in the GP, we find our­selves falling closer to the lib­er­tar­ian end of the spec­trum. Peo­ple here tend their land­scap­ing with the ten­der lov­ing care of a pot­head with hydro­pon­ics. Some peo­ple here sim­ply live to put­ter in the yard. Most of our neigh­bors have auto­matic sprin­kler sys­tems, which go on at 5 a.m. with a loud, sibi­lant hiss, awak­en­ing cer­tain late-staying-up jour­nal­ists in the neigh­bor­hood, not that I am com­plain­ing. But it’s damn hard to keep up with these folks, so I don’t try. “Maintenance-free land­scap­ing” — there’s a Realtor’s phrase to steal my heart. We’ll have to get the mower out this week­end at the very lat­est, or risk becom­ing Those Peo­ple. We’ll hold up our end, keep­ing up, if not with the Jone­ses, than cer­tainly the Smiths.

Whew. This week has been less-than-good, but at least I now have new pre­scrip­tion bot­tles lit­ter­ing the cof­fee table. I’m ask­ing Kate to “bring Mommy her med­ica­tion” so that she’ll have lots of good sto­ries to tell her ther­a­pist. As soon as I can teach her to mix a daiquiri, she’ll be well on her way.

So, blog­gage:

When it comes to col­or­ful, you really can’t beat a col­or­ful lawyer. The DC Madam’s mouth­piece is a case in point:

You do a com­put­er­ized data­base news search for Sib­ley, and what you get is infor­ma­tion on his rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Arthur Van­moor, bet­ter known as the afore­men­tioned “Big Pimp­ing Pappy.”

BPP ran an escort ser­vice in Fort Laud­erdale a few years back. He got busted and deported (he’s Dutch), then sued his clients for hav­ing sex with his employ­ees. Sib­ley was his attor­ney.

It was the same tac­tic Sib­ley is using now to advise Pal­frey: The man­ager of BPP’s escort ser­vice was merely pro­vid­ing “qual­ity time with a qual­ity woman,” Sib­ley told MSNBC’s Tucker Carl­son in an on-camera inter­view in March 2006. Cus­tomers had to sign a receipt say­ing they wouldn’t engage in ille­gal sex­ual activ­ity. If they did, then they broke the law.

Sib­ley sued them for breach of con­tract.

Let’s go to the video­tape:

Carl­son: “You sound like you look down on these men. That they would some­how get the idea that just because you call an escort ser­vice . . . and have a girl in a tube top and a vinyl skirt come over to your hotel room — that some­how they got the idea sex was involved. You sound like you’re unim­pressed with their judg­ment.”

Sib­ley: “Well, Tucker, is that what the girls look like that come to your hotel room?”

Carl­son: “I don’t have girls come to my hotel room who I’m not mar­ried to.”

I don’t know about you, but when I saw that Joan Baez was get­ting some ink ear­lier this week, claim­ing mil­i­tary offi­cials refused to let her per­form for the troops, I had a few ques­tions, includ­ing:

1) Joan Baez is still per­form­ing?
2) Some­one wants her to per­form for them?
3) Peo­ple young enough to be sol­diers? Come on.

Well, it’s more com­pli­cated than that. The invi­ta­tion was extended by famous Hoosier grump John Melly-mel Cougar Mel­len­camp, to “play with him,” sug­gest­ing a role shak­ing a tam­bourine and singing backup on “Small Town,” not croon­ing “Joe Hill” in her own soprano war­ble. Whew. I was fear­ing a come­back tour.

Have a great week­end. Back, and feel­ing bet­ter I hope, next week.

Posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 9:58 am in Current events, Same ol' same ol'. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


33 responses to
“Lawng Island.”

  1. alex said on May 4th, 2007 at 11:05 am

    It really struck me last week when I started pop­ping the heads off of dan­de­lions. “Hey, wait a minute,” I thought. “These are spring peren­ni­als. What’s this unnat­ural aver­sion I have? Why am I doing this?”

    I’m in a sort of limbo-land between coun­try and sub­ur­bia where the peo­ple who make the most effort in their yards might as well not bother. For one, they sel­dom exer­cise good taste. What’s more, the Chem­Lawn crap they use makes algae grow a foot thick on top of our lake and doesn’t make the lawns look worth a damn any­way because the earth there doesn’t sup­port any­thing besides a car­pet of moss. And moss makes a fine damn lawn that’s also rel­a­tively main­te­nance free.

    Actu­ally, I could be very happy mov­ing to unspoiled Mongo except for hav­ing to put up with its inhab­i­tants, who are as uncul­ti­vated as the land itself.

  2. John said on May 4th, 2007 at 11:13 am

    “Mongo only pawn… in game of life.”

  3. vince said on May 4th, 2007 at 11:42 am

    Sec­ond mow of the sea­son?
    Heck, I just made my sec­ond mow of the week!

    But here in earthy crunchy Port­land I and two of my neigh­bors push around good old fash­ioned non-motorized mow­ers.
    They barely make a sound.
    Plus, the only pol­lu­tion they cre­ate are the clip­pings that go in the com­poster.
    (Fac­toid: gaso­line pow­ered lawn mow­ers put out more pol­lu­tion than most cars.)

    Caveat: it helps that I have a very small lawn. Takes about 20 min­utes to cut.

  4. john c said on May 4th, 2007 at 1:00 pm

    Like our hob­bled host­ess, I am a Grosse Pointe lawn mod­er­ate for the very same rea­sons. Most peo­ple keep their lawns neat. It makes the neigh­bor­hood very pleas­ant. So I’ll do my part. (I also hap­pen to live on a cor­ner lot at off a busy street, which ups the pres­sure. I just bought an edger, for exam­ple.)
    Thought I’d share a funny story along these lines. We moved here from Chicago six years ago. Friends moved at the same time (part of the same move, for my wife’s com­pany), and I can remem­ber sit­ting around the patio with Ken shar­ing beers and jok­ing about how crazy the GPers are about their lawns. (He was a mod­er­ate too, though maybe more begrudg­ing about it than me.) Two years ago they moved back to Chicago. Not long after I talked to Ken, and asked him about their new digs, in a nice Chicago sub­urb. “We love the town, and I can’t believe I’m even say­ing this, but peo­ple around here don’t know how to keep their lawns neat!”

  5. ashley said on May 4th, 2007 at 1:32 pm

    When my self-propelled John Deere died, rather than throw another $150 to fix it, I bought a neu­ton battery-powered mower. Quiet, and per­fect for our size yard. Also has an attach­ment for a string trim­mer.

    I had a reel mower in Idaho, but I like the neu­ton a lot.

  6. Kirk said on May 4th, 2007 at 2:25 pm

    Smith­son­ian did a story sev­eral years ago about lawn care and some people’s obses­sion with it. One expert rated lawns in terms of speed, as in a 5-mph lawn. A 5-mph lawn is one that looks great even when you creep past it at 5 mph. Mine is about a 20-mph lawn.

  7. brian stouder said on May 4th, 2007 at 2:35 pm

    Kirk – I would switch the met­ric to alti­tude.

    My lawn prob­a­bly looks pretty good from, say, tree-top level

  8. Kirk said on May 4th, 2007 at 3:02 pm

    Of course, then you get into the issue of dog­wood vs. sequoia. I just hope that, if I live long enough to retire, I’ll have some­thing bet­ter to do than wor­ry­ing about whether a few blades of grass are hang­ing over the edge of my dri­ve­way.

  9. Dorothy said on May 4th, 2007 at 3:36 pm

    Okay I admit it – I’m sort of bor­der­line nuts about a nice lawn. (We don’t have an edger, Kirk. I do have edger-envy, though.)We had an awful infes­ta­tion of crab grass last year, and this year I’m deter­mined to extin­guish the lit­tle bas­tard seeds before they ger­mi­nate! Twice I’ve put down crab­grass killer/fertilizer combo. And I pull weeds when I see them.

    I blame this on the lawn we had in Cincin­nati. It was a beauty, already well estab­lished and weed free when we bought it in 2002! This crap grow­ing here in the South grows side­ways! Guess it’s good I’m mov­ing so I can attain lawn per­fec­tion again.

    My hus­band said once “There’s noth­ing sex­ier than a woman sit­ting on a rid­ing mower!” He’s kind of sick that way.

  10. brian stouder said on May 4th, 2007 at 3:47 pm

    We don’t have an edger, but we USED to have a lawn-obsessed retired guy right next door. When he moved, he gave me a tool that I use once a year, and in fact used last week­end. It is a sort of straight hoe (braced for Imus jokes); the head is not bent, but in-line with the long wooden han­dle.

    When the ground is the con­sis­tency of dev­ils food cake, as it is every April, you go along with this thing right at the edge of the side­walk or dri­ve­way – in effect “floss­ing”. Takes about 20 min­utes, and then my edges look as good as any of the obsessive/compulsives in our neigh­bor­hood, for the rest of the sum­mer! (‘Course, I might take the weed-whip to the edges two or three times before Hal­loween gets here)

    But my weeds are out of con­trol!

  11. Ricardo said on May 4th, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    I enjoyed one episode of “Prairie Home Com­pan­ion” about a Los Ange­les cou­ple vis­it­ing Lake Woe­be­gone. They showed pic­tures of their lovely gar­den and lawn to every­one and added that their gar­dener did all of the work. “…you would have thought they told the Min­nesotans that some­one chewed their food for them…”.

    I think I am the only one on my block that cuts my own grass. I enjoy my time gar­den­ing. It was so warm here, I cut grass all win­ter this year. Lit­tle by lit­tle, I have been par­ing it down to add plants that need lit­tle or no water­ing. I also like to plant 50 or so sun­flow­ers along the side­walk. Save the seeds from one year to the next.

    I am try­ing to get the mes­sage out: If you believe that ille­gal imi­gra­tion is a prob­lem here, and you don’t do your own gar­den­ing, cook­ing, clean­ing, car washes and/or food pro­duc­tion, then you are the root of that prob­lem.

  12. Kirk said on May 4th, 2007 at 4:27 pm

    I remem­ber my dad hav­ing (and using) one of those edg­ing tools, Brian. Unfor­tu­nately, he didn’t show me how to use it.

  13. Dorothy said on May 4th, 2007 at 4:36 pm

    Ricardo I do all of that myself except for the food pro­duc­tion. I don’t quite know the way around that, how­ever. Does it count if I plant toma­toes and pep­pers every year?

  14. Michael said on May 4th, 2007 at 9:23 pm

    As a ded­i­cated nn​.com nut, an infre­quent con­trib­u­tor to this forum, and the imme­di­ate past National Chair of the Lib­er­tar­ian Party I must thank you for rec­og­niz­ing our mem­bers and their unique per­spec­tive on mat­ters of com­mu­nity har­mony, and self expres­sion. There are prob­a­bly only a few LP types in GP but Mongo is another story entirely!

    I hope Ricardo can get his clos­ing sen­ti­ment down to bumper sticker size. When it’s ready I’ll take 2.

  15. MarkH said on May 5th, 2007 at 8:45 am

    Ha! You peo­ple crack me up. Take heed:

    Out here in Yel­low­stone coun­try, 6000 ft., we rarely make our first cut before May 15. But even this is a bit unusual:

    05/05/07, 6:30AM MDT:28 degrees, 20-40mph NW wind and 2″ of new snow. My lawn can wait till Memo­r­ial day.

  16. nancy said on May 5th, 2007 at 9:08 am

    Michael, thanks for the shout-out. I direct you to Alicublog(although not today), where Roy reg­u­larly tracks the malfea­sance of the so-called “bull­shit Lib­er­tar­ian” fac­tion, grow­ing by the day, it seems.

  17. basset said on May 5th, 2007 at 9:44 am

    def­i­nitely some… inter­est­ing, let’s say… links off that page. like the one where the right-wingers fly over the “Mus­lims of Amer­ica” com­pound, take pic­tures, and argue about what that bas­ket­ball court REALLY is. under­ground bunker? arms stor­age? mis­shapen soc­cer field? It’s a mys­tery.

    http://​gate​sofvi​enna​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​6​/​1​2​/​b​i​r​d​s​-​e​y​e​-​v​i​e​w​-​o​f​-​j​a​m​a​a​t​-​u​l​-​f​u​q​r​a.html

  18. Ricardo said on May 5th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

    BTW, I am not his­panic, I just span­ge­lize my post name.

    My own belief is this: You call them ille­gal aliens, I call them Native Amer­i­cans. Take that Michelle Malkin!

  19. brian stouder said on May 5th, 2007 at 2:17 pm

    alicublog strikes me as a con­tin­u­ous (and opaque) inside-joke.

    Oh well – I’ve also (for exam­ple) never had a taste for wine; and blog-based whines leave me flat, too.

    (Pre­sume­ably this points up some major deficit in the refine­ment of my char­ac­ter!)

  20. nancy said on May 5th, 2007 at 8:57 pm

    If you’re not a reg­u­lar reader, Alicublog (and lots of oth­ers) can seem a lit­tle inside. It helps if you occa­sion­ally dip a toe into the other pools on the inter­net that much of this back-and-forth jab­ber­ing relates to. I sim­ply can’t keep up any­more. Alicublog’s niche is call­ing out wingnut­tia, which he does mas­ter­fully. But I wouldn’t read that shit if he didn’t link to it.

    For real inside blog base­ball, though, you have to see The Poor Man. Which is a pity, because some of his Key­board Kom­mando comix are sheer genius.

  21. Unindicted Co-conspirator said on May 5th, 2007 at 9:08 pm

    So Nancy, now we know you don’t watch “King Of The Hill”!
    Hank’s lawn obses­sion would drive you nuts!

  22. basset said on May 5th, 2007 at 11:44 pm

    “King of the Hill”?

    some kind of car­toon, that’s all I know.

    co-conspirator, surely you can come up with a bet­ter def­i­n­i­tion of someone’s place in the world than what silly-ass TV shows they do or don’t watch.

  23. Connie said on May 6th, 2007 at 7:58 am

    My retired neigh­bor lady mows her lawn two or three times a week all sea­son long. Each time in a dif­fer­ent pat­tern. Her lawn reminds me of a major league base­ball field with its pretty pat­terns.

    At our house our goal is to keep it mowed.

  24. michaelj said on May 6th, 2007 at 4:22 pm

    The Grosses don’t have Lib­er­tar­i­ans, since the demise of the Giacalone fam­ily. They have Repub­li­cans in Lib­er­tar­ian cloth­ing that want Fredo to read all your emails.

    Since the res­i­dent doyenne brought this up a few days ago, here‘s an appre­ci­a­tion of the man and the arms dis­guised as a review of the War­ren Zevon book.

    The ref­er­ence to Linda Ron­stadt inter­ested me, since I’ve always held a grudge against her for singing Poor Poor Piti­ful Me. Sorry, but that’s a quin­tes­sen­tially male song. It’s like Joan Baez muti­lat­ing The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Com­par­isons with Hem­ing­way are also pretty annoy­ing. I mean, War­ren was a tal­ented writer. Actu­ally, com­par­isons of this guy to any­body are prob­a­bly more odi­ous than most com­par­isons are odi­ous.

  25. Danny said on May 7th, 2007 at 12:41 am

    Baez did The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down? Yikes. I’m hav­ing trou­ble just think­ing about that. Reminds me though, it is time to put The Band back in my CD rota­tion. They should com­pli­ment Lit­tle Feat nicely.

  26. Danny said on May 7th, 2007 at 1:08 am

    Sarkozy, won. Zut alor! Now I can finally stop eat­ing these nasty “free­dom fries” and get back to french fries. Vive la France, vive la rev­o­lu­tion

  27. LA mary said on May 7th, 2007 at 10:50 am

    Sarkozy has been anti-Iraq war since day one, Danny. He’s right in more ways than one.

  28. Danny said on May 7th, 2007 at 11:01 am

    Don’t know much about him, but I sus­pected that. I mean, a con­ser­v­a­tive in Europe is about equal to Nancy Pelosi here. I was mainly mak­ing a joke, not get­ting all euphoric and fran­cophilic.

  29. Danny said on May 7th, 2007 at 11:23 am

    One thing I did read though was that he is against ille­gal immi­gra­tion. I guess he is right in more ways than one.

  30. LA mary said on May 7th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

    I won­der which of their for­mer colonies they want to stop peo­ple com­ing from? It’s worked out so well with Alge­ri­ans there.

  31. ashley said on May 7th, 2007 at 5:51 pm

    …and don’t for­get that Sarky’s par­ents were native Hun­gar­i­ans.

  32. witless chum said on May 8th, 2007 at 12:08 am

    Howdy, came from Roy’s about the Lileks, which I’d get more if I’d ever read a word of Lileks’. Sorry for the late com­ment.

    I’m close to the bas­ket­ball watch­ing guy on my street in Kala­ma­zoo. My thing is, I’ll mow it and I’ll rake it. I won’t do any­thing else. Dan­de­lions are wild flow­ers.

    My neigh­bors across the street spend a major­ity of their wak­ing hours out in there yard, which is addmit­tedly really nice look­ing.

    I’d missed that link from Roy’s above, some­how I didn’t note the fact that the his­tor­i­cally con­fused (he’s got the wrong Ottoman attack on Vienna) Baron was leaflet­ing peo­ple from the air. That’s kind of awe­some, if crazy peo­ple in planes can be awe­some.

  33. NotAnOgre said on May 17th, 2007 at 9:41 am

    Well, thank god for this blog! I’m glad to know I’m not the only one in the world who ISN’T obsessed over the lawn. My neigh­bors try and drive me batty and call the cops/enforcement/etc any­time they can about my yard… and the sad thing is I _DO_ mow it at least once a week. I have hon­estly seen my neigh­bor out­side mow­ing his yard DAILY.. No joke. He’s retired for many years now… but my point is, there’s many other things going on in the world to give a care about besides grass. Very enjoy­able to read, and thanks to every­one shar­ing their views about this!

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