Frank is Emptiness

July 19th, 2018

I went for a very long walk this morning.

There are some days, but not many, when the air is so clear and the sun is so bright that all things seem too colorful, too intense to be real. The sky is too blue. The leaves are too green. Objects at a distance appear in razor sharp focus. The world outside seems suddenly overwhelming. Today was like that. It would been so easy to stay inside. I didn’t. I went out and I was immediately blown away by reality.

I walked from our house to the Pick n Save grocery store. The route is almost exactly four miles. Most of the way goes along a bike path. There is not much traffic. It’s quiet. It took me a little over an hour to get to the store.

Walking forces me to slow down, physically and spiritually. That is a good thing. When I walk, I see things. I hear things. I feel things. I am in the moment, at least for a while.

We live in a low-lying, wet area. I walked past marshes on my way. I could see the tall grasses, the cattails, and the thickets of willows along the bike trail. On the edge of the path were black-eyed-susans, goldenrod, and thistles. The air was full of the floating seeds of the cottonwoods. Blackbirds with orange piping flew past me. The wind was warm and from the south.

I had no good reason to go to the store. We already had everything we needed at home. Yesterday Karin had baked some red current/chocolate cakes. I bought some whipping cream to go with the cake. Karin was happy about that when she came home from knitting. I also bought some craft beer. That was for me.

The walk home was the same, but just a little bit warmer. I sweat a bit more. On the way home I could clearly see the stacks from the power plant on the lake shore. The two stacks were spewing steam in a northerly direction. The south wind blew through the trees and the cornfields. Oak Creek is a suburban community, but we still have a few farm fields. Every year brings a new subdivision. I watched one being built along Ryan Road on my way back home. Ripping up the land is called “development” or “progress”, but it always makes me sad.

I got home tired. Our dogs wanted me to take them out upon my arrival. Why not? I was the tired one. They weren’t. I took them out.

I drive when I must. I walk when I can. I especially like to walk at sunrise.

That is when I can know God.

 

 

 

 

July 19th, 2018

“I don’t understand.”

“No entiendo.”

Anybody could have said those words. Unfortunately, they were spoken by the woman sitting across the table from me at Voces de la Frontera on Wednesday evening. Ma (I think that is short for Maria) was struggling with the questions that I asked her from the N-400, the application for U.S. citizenship. The problem wasn’t that she did not know the answers to my questions. The problem was with the fact that she cannot, at this time, hold a conversation in English.

Ma has not yet sent in her application to become a U.S. citizen. That might be a good thing. The application process is expensive and time-consuming. I told her, repeatedly, that she needs to work on her English comprehension before she applies for citizenship. I don’t want to discourage her from becoming a citizen. On the contrary, I want her to pass the test. From the time she submits her application until the time of her interview, Ma has about six months to get up to speed with her English language skills. It can be done.

I have some experience with learning new languages. Many years ago, back in 1983, I was dating my wife, Karin. I was living in West Germany at the time (courtesy of the U.S. Army). When I was dating Karin, I soon realized that nobody among her family or friends spoke English. Karin’s English was extremely limited (she had learned the British version of English in school, and that was almost useless). I was forced by circumstances to learn German, in a hurry. It was at times confusing and frustrating. However, I learned through immersion, and I still can speak German to this day.

Over the years, I have studied other languages: Latin, Spanish, Arabic, and Hebrew. I am currently fluent in none of them. However, I did learn that all of those languages have a certain logic to them. There are clear rules concerning pronunciation, spelling, and grammar. All languages have idiosyncrasies, and exceptions to the rules. These languages play by the rules most of the time.

Then there is English, a bastard child of a language with several unruly parents. English has its tangled roots in Gaelic, Latin, German, Danish, and French. None of these languages mix well. English speakers have tried to integrate the disparate elements of these other tongues, and the result has been confusing at best. English is a bitch to learn.

Ma is trying to learn English. She is handicapped in a way. Ma is a homemaker. She doesn’t get out much, and in her house, Spanish is generally spoken. From what I can tell, she does not like to be among people where nobody speaks Spanish. This is a problem. Ma needs to be in situations where she is required to speak English, just like I was forced into situations where I had to speak German. I know that Ma can learn English well enough to pass her test, but she has to get far enough out of her comfort zone to do that.

I have been working with people to help them to pass their citizenship test for a while now. I have concluded that the interviewers do not necessarily care that much about how the applicants answer specific questions. Do they really care if the applicant knows the three branches of the federal government? Probably not. The interviewers do care that the applicant can understand the English language. They care about that a lot. I have never met a person who failed the citizenship test because they did not know the answer to some esoteric question. I have met several who failed because they didn’t understand what was going on around them.

As I said before, Ma can pass her test. I am willing to work with her to do so.

She can do it if she goes out into the world.

That will be scary.

 

July 14th, 2018

I like the Fuel Cafe. I guess I like it because it feels real. Fuel is located on Center Street in the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee. Riverwest is this kind of in-between area between the trendy east side of Milwaukee and the hood. It’s a diverse, working class neighborhood. A relatively high percentage of young people reside there. The area has a vaguely radical feel to it. It definitely not as conservative and conformist as the white bread suburbs, and it is not nearly as desolate as the ghetto.

Fuel has been on Center Street for years and years. It has two neon signs. One says, “Killer Coffee”. The other says, “Lousy Service”. Both statements are true. There is also a sign that says, “Sorry, we’re open”. I like that one.

I went to Fuel with a young woman that I know. We got there just before the coffee shop opened at 8:00 AM. There were already two bikers there, waiting to get in. The Fuel Cafe caters to bikers. The cafe has always done that. Most everything inside the cafe has a biker motif to it. Every year, during March, the coffee shop sponsors “The Frozen Snot Ride”, when bikers brave the cold of the Wisconsin winter to ride their motorcycles for no good reason. It is an impressive event.

An employee of Fuel came outside as we were waiting to come inside. He was remarkably surly.

“We don’t open for another ten minutes”, as he took a drag off his cigarette.

He continued, “I’m just opening the door to bring out the outdoor stuff.”

He went back into the cafe to drag out chairs and tables to place on the sidewalk. He slammed a stack of chairs on to the curb. Then he carried out a couple patio tables and dumped them on the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop. He did everything grudgingly, and with obvious disdain.

I said to the young woman, “I don’t think he likes his job.”

She smiled and nodded.

The two bikers waited with us for the cafe to officially open. They both rode Kawasaki’s. The guy was older, my age. His female partner was somewhat younger. She had tattoos that covered both arms and hands. She had a lip ring, and her hair was extremely short on the sides, but long on the top.

The young woman said to her, “I love your hair.”

The biker chick ran a hand across her head, and smiled. She said, “Thanks.”

Eventually, it was safe to enter the coffee shop. I walked in with the young woman. There was a girl behind the counter. I could see the disgruntled guy standing back in the kitchen.

I ordered coffee in a mug.

The girl asked, “Room for cream?”

“No”, I replied. I like my coffee black and bitter, like my mood.

The young woman looked up at the menu list, and asked for a double Milky Way.

I looked at her and asked, “You don’t want any breakfast?”

She smiled and shook her head.

I paid, and we walked away from the counter. She turned to me and said softly,

“I don’t want the angry guy spitting in my breakfast sandwich.”

“Oh.”

We got our drinks and went back outside to sit. By that time about a dozen bikers had arrived on the scene. Most of them were on Kawasaki’s, but I also saw a couple BMW’s. They all knew each other, and they also knew the two people that had come early.

The young woman said, “They are all from Minnesota.”

I looked at the license plates, and found that she was right. The woman is very observant. I was a bit surprised that she had noticed it, and I that had been oblivious to the fact. These bikers rode all the way from Minnesota, and they wound up here at the Fuel Cafe. I found that to be very interesting.

The young woman mentioned that she wanted to get a post office box. She asked me where the nearest post office was. I told her that I didn’t know. She looked up the U.S. Mail on her smart phone, and found a couple post offices in the local area.

She said, “Well, there is one not too far from here. But I don’t know where MLK Drive is.”

I replied, “Don’t go there.”

“Why not?”

“That is definitely in the hood. Martin Luther King Drive is half a mile west of here.”

“Is it as bad as 32nd and Fond du Lac?”

Then the young woman told me the twisted tale of how she had to go to the Milwaukee Transit bus terminal on 32nd and Fond du Lac in order to recover some lost property. It was apparently a stressful experience.

She told me, “It’s pretty bad when somebody yells at you and says, ‘You’re in the wrong neighborhood, Girl!’. And while I was near the Checkers, I was attacked by a flock of seagulls. Not “Flock of Seagulls” like the band. I mean real seagulls. It was like being in The Birds, the Hitchcock movie. And there was this guy circling the block, asking if I needed a ride. He was probably into sex trafficking.”

She went on, “I was holding my Exacto knife really tight while I was waiting for my bus.”

“Those are sharp.”

“Yes, they are.”

She went on, “You could just feel the hate there. I have never been in a city as segregated as this one.”

I told her, “You’re right. Milwaukee is the most segregated city in the country. Every year. We always top the poll.”

“Really?’

“Yeah, every year.”

Then she said, “I ought to own a gun, but I can’t have one.”

“What kind would you want?”

“Something that would fit in my purse.”

She asked me, “What are those guns with the things that go round? Like in the cowboy movies.”

“A revolver?”

“Yeah. What shoots faster: a revolver or the other kind?”

“I think a semi-automatic is faster.”

“That’s what I need.”

I thought and said to her, “A nine millimeter Beretta is a nice weapon. It doesn’t have much of a kick.”

The young woman looked at me intently, and said,

“Oh yeah, that’s right…you know something about guns.”

“Yeah, a little bit.”

“Maybe you could buy me one.”

“I am pretty sure that would be illegal.”

She shrugged, “You would probably be dead before anybody figured that out.”

I suggested, “Well, in this neighborhood, you could probably buy a gun in about five minutes. But you would need cash.”

She shook her head. The young woman had decided against the gun idea.

The sidewalk was crowded by this time. Most of the seats were taken. A scrawny guy holding a coffee in one hand came up to us, and he asked if he could sit at our table. We said yes. He had a purple vape device in his other hand. I noticed that he had a tattoo on his arm that looked kind of Native American.

After he sat down, I looked at his vaping thing and asked him, “So, how does that work?”

He seemed confused and asked me, “What do you mean?”

I pointed to the purple thing.

He said, “Oh, that. It has cotton in it and some electrodes, and it burns some kind of nicotine stuff.”

He went on, “I smoked for thirty-seven years. A few months ago, I had a stroke. I tried smoking after that, and when I did, my leg went numb. So, I decided to vape. This works better.”

I asked him about his tattoo.

He told us, “This is a Blackfeet design. It is about integrity and honesty. I got it when I had two years of sobriety. I’m coming up on ten years now.”

The young woman said, “That’s so cool. Can I take a picture?”

After she did, I told the guy that I had been travelling with Native Americans earlier in the year. We talked about sweat lodges. The man was familiar with AIM, and other Indian activists.

He looked at us and asked, “So, are you two brother and sister?” He was dead serious.

A long, awkward silence.

Then, from both of us, “Uhhhhhhhhhh…no.”

He kind of retreated a bit. He said to me,

“Well, it was a compliment. I mean, except for the grey hairs, you look okay.”

We talked a bit more, but everything else was anti-climactic.

The young woman and I finished our drinks. We said goodbye.

We will probably meet at Fuel again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 12th, 2018

A visit to the psych ward at the VA is always disorienting. It’s almost feels like I am walking on to a stage when I haven’t rehearsed my lines in a play. I am never sure what to say or do. I never know who I will meet in the ward, or how the person will affect me. Also, I never know how I affect the other folks who are there. I might not have any effect at all.

I got to the ward a bit late on Tuesday evening. Traffic sucked on the freeway. I walked into the place after the folks from the American Legion had already started serving pizzas and sodas to the vets in the break room. There were quite a few patients in the ward that night, and apparently many of them were hungry. The room was packed with people, most of them filling their faces with snacks. I brought a bag of grapes with me to give to the vets. The bag didn’t last very long. The vets like fresh fruit.

When I go to the VA hospital, I try to strike up a conversation with someone somehow. I have terrible people skills, so the results of my efforts are often hit or miss. I initially spoke to a guy from Sheboygen who was about my age. He was there to dry out, which is the standard reason for being in the psych ward. The man was an Air Force vet. He spent his time in the military working with payroll. He had scabs on his forehead and face. I didn’t ask him why he had those marks. That seemed to be an inappropriate question. We didn’t talk long. He left to take a piss, and that was last I saw of him.

I moved over to a table with three other guys. They were getting ready to play cards, so  the conversation didn’t amount to much at first. I spoke to one of the vets, and he told me that he had served in the Air Force security, that is, until he suffered a head injury. The man was uneasy, but he was a friendly sort.

The edgy Air Force vet asked me, “So, how long have you been here?”

He thought that I was patient like himself. This wasn’t the first time that a vet from the psych ward assumed that I was part of the club. Apparently, I look like I belong there.

Another vet at the table, a younger man, laughed and told the edgy one, “This guy isn’t a patient. I saw him walk in just a little while ago.” Then he started shuffling the cards.

Suddenly, things got loud near our table. A short, wiry, white guy was engaged in a one-sided discussion with a black patient. The wiry vet was trying to educate the black man about Martin Luther King Jr. The black vet said very little, and it was obvious that he wasn’t interested in hearing the other man’s incoherent monologue. That didn’t seem to matter. The little, loud guy kept on rambling until he finally lost interest in the subject. Then he turned to somebody else, and began to speak passionately on a totally unrelated topic.

The edgy Air Force vet decided that the nearby ruckus was his cue to leave the break room. I was left at the table with the two remaining vets, both of whom were Marines. They started playing rummy. I was tired, and I didn’t have a head for cards, so I watched them play. After a while, they talked with me.

The younger man was there for alcohol. So was the older Marine. Both of them had issues. The younger Marine had multiple DUI’s. The older guy, who was about my age, had marital problems, and he looked like he had been in a fight. He was the second patient I had seen with injuries to his face and head. The older man was also missing a front tooth. They had both been in jail at some point. Of course, I have too, but they spent a bit more time in the slammer than I did. The young man had done eighteen months in the Milwaukee County House of Correction. That had to suck.

I talked about my son, Hans, having fought in Iraq, and that he had been shot there.

Oddly enough, the young man laughed. He said, “I did two overseas tours. I didn’t get shot until I came back to Milwaukee. I got shot because I didn’t give some guy a cigarette.”

He went on, “I don’t really need to be in this ward. I didn’t need detox. They could have sent me straight to the domiciliary (halfway house). I mean, the drinking isn’t really a problem except for the DUI’s.”

That means it is a problem.

They older Marine left after a while, and I just sat and talked with the young guy. We talked about dogs and guns. We talked about our kids.

It was getting late, and I needed to go soon. The younger man looked at me with concern and said,

“Shouldn’t you be here? I mean you look tired. I am okay with staying here. Everything on the outside is being taken care of, so I can just relax.”

I told him, “Maybe I should be here. There isn’t much that’s keeping me out.”

We talked a bit about battling our demons. I suggested that the struggle is different for each individual. What works for one person may not do anything for somebody else. We all have to find our own path.

I had to go home. The young Marine needed to go to bed. We shook hands.

I am glad that we spoke.

 

 

 

July 9th, 2018

Stefan took me out for a beer on Sunday afternoon. Well, actually, it was a more than one. I had asked him if he wanted to hang out with me while Karin spent the day with her knitting buddies. We went to the Sprecher bar on the 5th Street, just north of National Avenue. Sprecher is a micro brewery that has been around since 1985. They had a variety of beers on tap. We tried a couple.

While we were together, I talked to Stefan about somebody that I am trying to help, somebody who is struggling. Stefan is a generous and helpful person, but he is usually not interested in sob stories. He is a firm believer in people taking responsibility for their lives. He didn’t think I should be doing as much for the person as I am. Stefan told me flat out that he thought I was getting played.

He might be right. It could be very true that I am being manipulated.

I don’t care.

In the course of my life, I am sure that a number of people and organizations have taken advantage of me. I also know that I have done the same with other people. If I wait until I am absolutely certain about the sincerity of a person in need, then I will most likely never do anything to help anybody. If I trust somebody, can I get hurt? Of course. However, if I refuse to trust, I will never really live. Life is about taking risks, and some of those risks will be foolish ones.

I appreciated Stefan’s candor. I really did. We trust each other enough that we can speak the truth. We can listen to each other.

I told Stefan, “I am glad that you were straight up with me. That means a lot. I was never able to be honest with my dad. Even now, I can’t so that. It’s important that you can say what you need to me.”

Stefan shrugged, “Well, that is at least one thing that got better between generations.”

 

 

July 9th, 2018

I spent most of my morning in the offices of I.C.E. on Knapp Street in downtown Milwaukee. I was there to provide moral support to Gieselheid, a older German lady who was going for her citizenship test. Freya and I were there to sit with Gieselheid until her interview started. We talked about cooking and about our families. Mostly, Freya and I were trying to distract Gieselheid, and perhaps help her to relax a bit. Gieselheid had an appointment for her test, but the appointment time didn’t really mean much. She was supposed to have her interview at 10:45, and it was nearly 11:30 before anybody called her name. The waiting room at the I.C.E. office is a Petri dish for anxiety and worry. All the people sitting there are wondering if they can pass the test and become U.S. citizens. The fact is that there are no guarantees. The test is very subjective. An examiner who had a bad night may fail a person. Another examiner who woke up in a positive mood might pass everyone she meets that day.

Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security has a couple different organizations housed in that building on Knapp Street. The examiners most likely are from USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services). The USCIS takes care of applications and exams. I.C.E does enforcement of immigration laws. Two different agencies with two very different jobs.

I had never been in that building before. I was more than a little apprehensive about even entering the place. My previous experience with I.C.E. was not pleasant. Undercover I.C.E. agents had snatched a guy last month when I was in a courthouse with an undocumented immigrant. That was unnerving. I wasn’t sure what I would see in the actual DHS offices.

The DHS building was neat and clean and bureaucratic. It didn’t feel threatening. It felt like I was sitting in the DMV, waiting to get a car registered. The guards were friendly and helpful. It was just another government facility.

I have been reading about protesters demanding the I.C.E be abolished. The slogan “Abolish I.C.E.!” sounds good, but it is an idea that has not been thought out. I.C.E., or something like it, will exist as long as we have borders. Personally, I think that borders are stupid. They are always somewhat ineffective. I remember, many years ago, seeing the Berlin Wall, and thinking that people were still able to get around it, or over it, or under it, or whatever. Borders just keep out (or in) those who are willing to play by the rules. Borders ensure that those who actually do cross are the smartest and the most ruthless.

I am convinced that there are a few people working for I.C.E. who are cruel and heartless. Maybe I am being unfair. I think that most of the I.C.E. agents who rip families apart are probably just people who leave their morality in the parking lot when they clock in for their shift. They are the people who say that “they are just doing their job”. It’s a variation on the old Nuremberg defense, when the Nazis on trial excused their behavior by saying that “they were just following orders”. It’s so easy to justify immoral acts. I know. I’ve done it.

The people working in the building on Knapp Street seemed to be decent folk. Would they arrest somebody for deportation? I don’t know. Maybe, if they had to change their job title, they would. It is hard to tell what any person will do until they are in a situation where they have to make a moral decision.

I took an undocumented immigrant to a court appearance this afternoon. He was nervous and scared. I was too, and I was born in this country. I spent a lot of time looking over my shoulder, not for my own sake, but for the safety of the man who I was escorting. We didn’t see any I.C.E. agents, and we were eager to leave the courthouse once our business was completed.

Overall, it was a good day. Gieselheid passed her test, and I know that I got a man to court and back without anybody getting arrested.

We will call it a “win”.

 

July 5th, 2018

On Monday afternoon, Karin hurried into the bedroom holding her phone up to my face.

“Look! See the picture?!”

It was an ultrasound image.

The picture had been sent by Gabi (I’ve been spelling her name incorrectly for quite a while. I have been writing it as “Gabby”). Gabi is Hans’ fiancee, and she is soon to be the mother of their first child. The photo didn’t show much. At least it didn’t to me. Thinking back, I’m not sure if Karin and I saw ultrasound images of our children prior to birth. All I could tell from Gabi’s picture was that there was a fetus in her womb. It was a new beginning for human life, and that freaked me out a little.

Hans called after that. He discussed the upcoming birth in his usual taciturn manner. He was concerned with how medical bills would get paid (as he should be). Hans told me that he really didn’t care about the gender of the child. He just wants the kid to be healthy. I think that is a good way to look at the situation. As an aside, Hans was not a healthy baby. He had a very rough start in this world, and somehow that affects him even now.

Hans called again yesterday. He spoke exclusively to Karin. However, she insisted on having him on speaker-phone, so I heard everything. Hans went on a seemingly endless rant about gun control. He was adamant that all children learn how to handle a firearm, especially his children. He asserted that the problem with guns involved ignorance. If people knew more about guns, they wouldn’t see them as an uncontrollable evil. I tend to agree with Hans on this issue. However, once he gets wound up about firearms, he just keeps going.

Karin said something to the effect that guns should not be in the hands of people that are mentally unstable.

Hans responded hesitantly, “I’m unstable sometimes.”

Karin asked him, “Well, should you have guns?”

He replied, “I know my limits.”

Hans went on, “I had flashbacks from Iraq awhile ago. I slept that night with my AR-15. I had no ammo in it. The loaded magazine was locked up in my car outside.”

I thought about that. My oldest son needs to sleep with a rifle to feel safe.

Hans and Gabi will have a baby. I am sure that baby will get a teddy bear or something like that. The baby will sometimes cling to the stuffed animal to feel safe and secure.

His or her father may need to embrace the cold steel barrel of an AR-15 in order to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 4th, 2018

I walked our daughter’s border collie down our street early this morning. Every house on the road was displaying an American flag. Every house except for our own. We never fly a flag. We don’t even own a flag.

This might prompt the question: “Why?”

The main reason for us not flying Old Glory is pure contrariness on my part. When everybody else is all pumped up with patriotic fervor, I feel the need to dissent. I usually take the opposing viewpoint in any situation.

I suppose that having a German national for a wife makes us less interested in flag-waving. The Germans generally don’t wave flags with much enthusiasm. That sort of thing went out of style for them back in 1945.

Another reason is the fact that the American flag means nothing to me. I feel no animosity for it. I would never burn one. On the other hand, I have no devotion to it either. For most people, the flag is highly-charged emotional symbol.  To me, it’s a piece of cloth. It’s kind of pretty, but then most flags are.

I have a Catholic Worker friend, Brian Terrell. He once made the comment to me that national flags are gang symbols. There is some truth to that. A flag represents a specific tribe. Flags often make me think of the novel “Lord of the Flies”. Or maybe the lyrics from the Peter Gabriel song “Games Without Frontiers”:

“Andre has a red flag, Chiang Ching’s is blue
They all have hills to fly them on except for Lin Tai Yu
Dressing up in costumes, playing silly games
Hiding out in tree-tops shouting out rude names.”

It all feels so profoundly juvenile.

It’s kind of strange. I graduated from West Point, and served as an Army officer for six years after that. Our oldest son fought in Iraq. By rights, I should be the guy with the biggest and bestest flag on the block. I’m the guy who should be nearly bursting with pride on Independence Day.

But I’m not.

Why?

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 3rd, 2018

Yesterday, we were on Highway 794 heading north toward downtown Milwaukee. I was driving. Karin was crocheting. Karin doesn’t mind driving, but she prefers to do handwork in the car. Since this is the case, I am generally in the driver’s seat.

During the previous day, Karin had been busy with her dye pots. She uses a propane cooker on the patio to simmer various types of chemical solutions. She used to do that sort of thing on our kitchen stove. It was an activity which may have initially fooled a person into thinking that there was food cooking. However, even a whiff of the fumes coming from the pots made it clear that there was nothing edible involved in this process. It is far better that Karin does her work outside.

While we were driving, I asked Karin, “Are you counting?”

(Anybody who knows a knitter/crocheter understands why I asked that question. Interrupting a knitter who is busy counting stitches is always a bad move. Trust me on this.)

Karin was finishing a row. She stopped and asked what I wanted.

I told her that I wanted to understand what she had been doing yesterday. I knew that she was working with an indigo dye, but I really didn’t comprehend the method involved. All I knew for sure was that there were all sorts of paraphernalia scattered  over the patio and throughout much of the house: measuring cups and spoons, thermometers, litmus paper, rubber gloves, pieces of cloth and/or entire garments, containers of chemicals, roots, leaves, and flowers. While she was working, there was a hardly an empty horizontal surface anywhere in the building. Dyeing requires a lot of stuff, and I don’t know what all this stuff is.

I asked, “So, the liquid in the big pot on the patio was indigo dye, right?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you heat it up?”

“The pH has to be right for the dye to take. It has to be pretty alkaline. A pH of eleven is best for the dye to hold fast to the material. Well, for wool a pH of nine is better because a pH of eleven damages the fiber, but for cotton, eleven works well.”

“The indigo won’t stick to the cloth on its own?”

“The indigo won’t stick without the addition of a color reducer.”

“Why would you want to use a color reducer? Why would you want to reduce the color?”

“The color reducer makes the indigo water-soluble. It isn’t water-soluble on its own.”

“But won’t a color reducer make the indigo less blue?”

“In the water, you want the color to be a yellowish-green. Once you soak the cloth in the liquid, and you pull it out again, it hits the open air and turns bright blue.”

Karin smiled, “It’s like magic.”

Indeed.

I married an alchemist. Dyeing fiber is more of an art than it is a science. It’s a little like cooking. Karin has a certain procedure to follow, but the results are consistently inconsistent. That appears to be part of her attraction to dyeing. There are all sorts of variables, many of them unknown. Every time she dyes some fiber, there are differences with the types of dyes and the types of materials to be dyed. It is almost impossible for Karin to replicate a dye lot, just as it is almost impossible for a yarn manufacturer to exactly reproduce the same color in a batch of material. For Karin, every dyeing attempt is a new adventure. Unlike the medieval alchemists, who sought to convert lead into gold or to find the philosopher’s stone, Karin seeks the perfect color. The old alchemists never turned lead into gold. Karin will never find the perfect color, but she will find colors that she likes.

There is more to the process. There is always more to it.

Karin uses alum to help fix the colors in the materials. Alum is aluminum sulfate or maybe aluminum acetate. It’s a chemical base. She uses chemicals to “scour” the fiber (remove oils from wool and pectin from cotton) in order to make the fiber absorb the dye in a consistent way.

Karin uses a synthetic type of indigo. Generally, she prefers to dye with natural colors. Golden rod makes for a bright yellow. Walnuts create a deep brown.

I asked her, “What about red? Will the blood root make a bright red? (I had sent her blood root back from southern Illinois).”

“If you use it right, it will. I might ferment it.”

“Why?”

“If it is fermented, the material absorbs and holds it better.”

“Oh.”

There is hardly a plant in the local area that Karin not attempted to use as a dye: choke cherries, St. John’s wort, the flowers of day lilies. It’s endless. That fact appeals to Karin.

Acids can tweak the color from the dyes. Karin sometimes uses vinegar to turn a red to purple, or maybe ammonia to change that red to pink or orange. Often, she does not know beforehand what the effect of the acid will be. That is also part of the fun.

She is experimenting with eco-printing. That will require an entire essay of its own.

 

 

 

 

June 30th, 2018

It’s been a long week, a very long week.

Karin and I are working hard to help a loved one re-enter society after a nearly eight month stretch in jail. We knew that this would be difficult. We had no illusions about that. I am not complaining (well, maybe I am). If the situation is challenging for Karin and myself, it is absolutely overwhelming for the young woman who is coming back into a world that doesn’t give a damn about her.

There is so much for everyone to do. The young woman needs so many things, and she needs most of them right away. She needs housing, transportation, work, medical care, and love. Mostly, she needs love.

Love is hard. This young woman is teaching me about what love truly is. It’s a bitch. It really is. Love requires sacrifice and honesty and compassion. Love, if it means anything, costs something. That “something” includes time, money, energy, and trust. It involves faith and courage, because there are no guarantees of material success. It’s a total crap shoot. If a person truly does something out of love, then they do it without any thought of repayment. There may be no “feel good” pay back. A person does it simply because it must be done.

In the course of this week, we have met with a probation officer. We have gone to a homeless shelter. We have been to the DMV and a sober living house, and I can’t even remember where else we have all been. The week’s activities are becoming a blur. We have made no plans for each day, because each day has been a whole new world. That is just how all this works.

I wonder how it is for somebody who gets out of jail, but has nobody to help. How does a person without support start a new life all alone? Is that person set up to fail?

A few people have offered to help us with our work. I am ever so grateful for that. A few people have told us that they will “raise us up in their prayers”, which sometimes translates to “okay, I don’t really have to get my hands dirty”. I know I sound cynical, but I might be right about this, at least once in a while. I actually do believe in the power of prayer. I just think that it should also manifest itself in a tangible way.

God, this is such a mess. It is also a grand adventure. Things might work out great. It might all end is disaster. I know that. We all know that. But we are going to try anyway. We are going to live and love and ride this crazy roller coaster.

Because it is the right thing to do.