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Let Yer Little Light Shine "They don't transplant well." Version
2.0 That's why I'm pitching a book, by the way. Essays, too. I'm pimping myself all over Creation, in fact. The good news is, I finally had an agent bite on a query and ask to see the manuscript. The bad news is, the business has a silly name and no one answers my emails, so maybe he's a flake. At least the manuscript is almost done, so yay for me. I'm on a roll here, folks. [UPDATE: Whoa now, finally got an email and the agency's legit! Just big and busy, that's all. It still has a silly name but that's the last time you'll hear that from me.] Why, I even had a message from Robin Williams (she of The Little Mac OS X Book fame), whom I'm now invited to meet for coffee the next time I'm in Santa Fe. She must have an agent, yes? Hmm. There's a publisher of course, Peachpit Press. A few years back I made a great impression there by getting huffy over a rejection. You don't suppose they remember, do you? :-) My
bad, or maybe good  Above you'll see a 5-month-old image of the entrance to the place we rent here in Taos. It's a very fine apartment that we like it a lot, the only drawback being its designers' lack of empathy for green without dead white guy on it. I call the architectural style "Chicago Southwestern " (nyuck-nyuck), but the other day I took matters into my own hands and brought it down to earth. This was my wife's idea, actually, like almost everything else we've done to humanize the joint. Check out the shot below: The table, the chairs, the pots, the cat, the "cowboy prayer flags," all those are her contributions. I found the hubcap in a ditch and brought it home to hang on the fence. Now that I think of it, that's how she got the cat. We've never hung him up, though there may yet come a time. Besides the lousy feng shuei and anti-Taos lack of funk, the problem with the entrance is that it faces south and anything planted there will surely die. You might as well plant pansies on a griddle as set them out in front, but the spot cries out for something. What I did was lay down wooden beams to make a space, then follow up on my wife's thought to try some native plants. After all, it almost never rains out on the mesa where there's horizon-to-horizon sagebrush, and I've never seen a dead one.  Farmer
John  When I climbed back in the truck, I sat for a moment, reluctant to leave the peaceful surroundings and drive back to town. The old Ford must have read my mind, because when I did turn the ignition key, nothing happened! Not even a click or a clunk, and all the dash lights were dead. Uh-oh... and AAA won't do you any good out there. Take another look at that picture and see if you can spot any cell phone towers. Fortunately I know a thing or two about automotive electrics: If everything is dead, there's something the matter with the ground. Sure enough, a little judicious pounding on the battery's negative terminal with the end of a wrench dislodged enough corrosion for the system to hum back to life, and off I went. Back at the apartment, I quickly dug 4 shallow holes (the only kind remotely feasible) and planted the bushes. The next day I answered a classified ad for "free horse manure" and thought I'd died and gone to heaven: Not only could I take as much as I wanted, but it was already half-composted from last winter and I could go get some without any further ado. I picked up a fine Rubbermaid garbage can at Wal-Mart on the way and filled it up in no time at all. There's just something about free horse poop that sends me into ecstasy. Why, I was so happy, I didn't mind that the can fell down and spilled all over the inside of my truck on the way home. After slathering what was left all over my sagebrush, I hosed everything down and went to bed very satisfied. Rarely, if ever, has anything accomplished on this computer had the same effect, I have to say.  I've since been told that transplanted sagebrush has a hard time surviving, but composted horse manure has amazing restorative power, so I'm not worried. Come to think of it, it's hard to tell from looking whether sagebrush is alive or dead anyway, which may explain why I think I've never seen any corpses. It sure makes a difference in the way our apartment feels, and it smells good too, so who cares? And that's why the news was late last week. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go wash my hands. Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr (creator of Fotofeed's daily image from New Mexico) is looking out for number one now. His latest idea is to bury a handful of dollar coins under horse manure and water well.
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