Trans/plant/portation

I’ve seen more wineries in the last week than in all of the previous weeks I’ve been in Walla Walla. It wasn’t a lack of interest in drinking wine, really, so much as a lack of interest in standing around feeling like a fraud who knows nothing about wine. And I’m pretty sure that I know more than nothing about it—I know some of the vintages out there, I know which are my favorites, like Malbec and Pinot Noir, and which I can’t even pretend to drink, like Riesling. I even know I like California styled Pinots better than French style ones, but my intermediate knowledge pretty much ends there. For living in a winery town, I’m betting I fall in the bottom third of the resident population, somewhere above Bud Light with Lime drinker, but well, well below somineler. I’m a second or third floor tenant in the wine-consuming office tower.

So it was with a jaundiced eye—get it, cirrhosis of the liver after drinking too much—that I traipsed out to a few wineries with our friend Jody, of the beer boot fame. When I say a “few,” I mean 12. One dozen wineries in one week. There was no, unfortunately for us, baker’s dozen “bonus” winery. I suppose we could have gone to more, but Jody’s wine shipper boxes had filled up and she became loathe to entertain the notion of buying a quarter of 100 bottles. Twenty-four bottles she was fine with, but twenty-five was just right out, apparently. I appreciate a woman with good boundaries.

The wine buying experience, for me at least, is a strange combination of luxury and annoyance, pleasure and pretension. I can’t think of anything else that comes close, except playing a round of golf after vying for a decent tee time. At least I think that experience is comparable, I’ve only done the latter once, when I was 15. My point is that while I like wine, I don’t necessarily like it standing next to strangers who are also there to taste wine and who are incontrovertibly better at getting the wine pourer’s attention than I am. So I wind up standing around with an empty glass, obviously not looking Seattleish enough to convince the staff that I’m ready to buy a case of their best red table wine. This leaves me wanting for something to distract me, like pretending to see the Winery Dogs of Walla Walla book for the first time ever, or clearing out my glass with the perfect tiny dab of water.

It reminds me a wee bit of high school in that jockeying for position to be cool enough way, that complete concern about one’s image that is really about insecurity and being frightened the wrong person will notice one’s lack of coolness. Because then it will be broadcast to all of one’s peers, and then one is simply Done For. I keep waiting for the moment when the Porsche-driving older guy with his rather young friends will turn to me and laugh in my face. It hasn’t happened yet, but I think I’ve dodged a bullet or two.

One winery on the Oregon side of the Walla Walla Valley line absolutely ignored Susanne and me several months ago, starting from one iota after they realized that we were locals. It was the snub at the dance; I could see the other patrons laughing it up, throwing their heads back, tiny tastes of wine rattling in their glasses, calling in orders for two and three cases, while I stood at the bar on the other side of the room, wondering how to make the quietest exit. As revenge, I tell people not to bother going to Zerba winery.

Walking through the wine industry with Jody, however, I had the best strategy. The girl can talk some wine. With her as the main distraction, we didn’t have any trouble making it through the flights of bottles. They could smell the money on her; it smoldered in her pocket and wafted to their wine-selling noses. Everywhere we went—L’Ecole and Cougar Crest, K, Spring Valley, Trust, I mean everywhere—she marched right in and started asking questions, started tasting, started exclaiming. There was no shrinking to this flower, and they ate it up.

I witnessed a number of excited exchanges and disagreements about wine. Whether there was a cherry on the finish, whether this beat the 2007 Dom. du Vieux Telegraphe Chateauneuf-du-Pape (note: it did not. Very little beats the 2007 Dom. du Vieux Telegraphe Chateauneuf-du-Pape, according to Jody). These were conversations 40 feet over my head. But who cared, I was getting pours! I tasted and spit, savoring when I could and moving on quickly when the wine didn’t suit me. Jody would become more and more excitable over the course of the day, until we all noted that we could use a nap.

I realized that walking into a winery with insecurity was like mounting a stallion cloaked in one’s own sense of fear. Neither experience would go well from that point. I didn’t need to worry about my class status in the winery, nor what I was projecting, I just needed to engage with the staff and enjoy the experience.

This is why having visitors from out of town is a good thing. Jody was just keeping it real.

Wagon Man!

Walla Walla has been quite the setting for our little 2-person play on adaptation, struggle, ego, relationships, and personality. Living between a house of students who practiced the Save Ferris version of Come On Eileen for a whole academic year with nary any improvement in tempo or pitch was not something we’ll soon forget. Meeting the “wagon man” as he carefully jettisoned his recycling across the alley from our kitchen window will stick with us for a long time. And who doesn’t remember the bathtub water raining in our kitchen for a 3-month period, star of the film I directed, Holy Shit, It’s Raining in My Kitchen? Good times, all.

But our time in The Liar House is drawing to a close now. The nicked-up doors and baseboards, mushy plaster walls, cobweb-infested basement with illegal bedroom, we’re saying goodbye to them all. We’re only sorry we never found the electrical panel so we could meet properly.

But goodbye, hidden, invisible electrical panel! Goodbye, leaky main water valve! Goodbye, broken dryer the maintenance guy said wasn’t his responsibility! Goodbye, strange plots of bare dirt that the lawnmower guy insisted on spraying for weeds! Goodbye, ducks fornicating on our lawn! Goodbye, many, many students who walked across the same lawn, every day, multiple times a day, to and from class! Goodbye, strange cat who walked into our living room last spring! Goodbye, never shoveled street, even after 30 inches of snow came down from the sky and buried us inside! Goodbye, weirdly reappearing hornet’s nests that keep freaking me out! Goodbye to all of you!

Hello, road trip! And someday, HELLO dishwasher!

Back in DC, the local NBC affiliate’s weatherman would take bets as to the first snowfall of the year; whoever came closest without going over (thank you, Price Is Right, for that little construct) would get a visit from the local celeb, who would shovel their walkway with a special golden shovel. To call it absurd would be a bit of an understatement.

Out here in Walla Walla, the betting is on when we’ll get our first 90-degree day. I don’t really see this as comparable to snow in DC, because 90 + days are a plenty in the um, desert, but snow days, last year’s winter notwithstanding, are actually fairly uncommon in DC. Looking for the 100 + point seems like the closer approximation to me. But fine, the Union-Bulletin is looking for 90-degrees as its benchmark. I’m not sure what the award is—maybe a free 10-minute lawn watering? A golden chalice with some ice cubes and lemonade? We don’t have a local television station, so there’s really no weather-forecasting person to bring anything to the winner. Like other things in WW, the glory is in just being right. That way there’s no real expenditure associated with the contest.

The heat and cold have been struggling over the last couple of weeks, and we even had a thunderstorm here a couple of nights ago, during the college’s “Naked Beer Mile” event. I don’t suppose it stopped anyone from trotting around the quad naked, but certainly, I was not going to head over there to witness their fortitude-slash-stupidity. We learned last year to keep our shades drawn that evening.

The tradition is this: the cross-country team, obviously a group of exhibitionists and nudists, sponsors a run around the quad on campus at midnight on the day after classes end in the spring. We hadn’t been forewarned about this last year until a few hours beforehand, and as we live on the edge of campus, heard shouts of “naked” from some students who, through the loudness and slurredness of their communication, seemed fairly intoxicated. Ah, college. I had friends who pushed a refrigerator out of a second story window, so I suppose this is par for the course, and less environmentally troublesome.

What is particularly amusing, once one gets past the communal birthday-suits-are-the-most-aerodynamic thing, is the email that went out in advance of the Mile this year, with some advice for participants:

In preparation for the big event, we would just like to take a second to play the grandma role and remind you of a few ground rules. First, if you are traveling from off campus, you should be wearing clothes when you arrive and when you leave. Your neighbors and especially the authorities do not appreciate public nudity. Second, do not enter any academic buildings, residence halls, or the library, no matter how tempted you are to do so. Finally, please do not set off any fireworks. Seriously. This quickly catches the attention of the police, and it’s in everyone’s best interest to keep their presence to a minimum.

This email amuses me to no end, because:

1. I can’t see any grandma offering any of this advice to young adults who were preparing to run around in their skivvies.
2. I can’t believe people need to be reminded to wear clothing in public.
3. I might have reversed the sentiment of the phrase “your neighbors and especially the authorities.” In our house, it’s “the authorities and especially your neighbors” who don’t appreciate your naked bodies skirting across the lawn on the way to campus.
4. (Really 3a) I can’t believe the email author had to give a reason why public nakedness is wrong.
5. Students really are tempted to go to the library au naturelle? Seriously? Mightn’t you be seeing these librarians again? You want them to be able to recall that image of you as they’re checking out your books or arguing over fines you owe? Seriously?
6. I just can’t imagine that fireworks and alcohol are a good combination, especially when there’s not even the barrier of cotton shorts or t-shirts, much less serving as an SOS flare for your activity.

Yes, I was once in college. And I poured orange paint on Penn State’s Nittany Lions as a prank. But darn it, I did it with my clothes on.

Of course her goggles and irises match!

I mostly bit my tongue when 30 inches of snow fell onto our house during the winter of 2009 and after which no plows visited our neighborhood. Scratch that, no plow, as in singular, moved any snow. Susanne and I understood a little bit better why people in this corner of the state and country act like they don’t need government, because hello, government isn’t, or wasn’t, there for us.

Fine, I get it. One doesn’t feel the pulse of the Capitol this far away, which means, one doesn’t have any reason to think that any government worker in the entire 2.6 million-person force actually cares about the average human walking around in this country. That such an idea couldn’t possibly be true doesn’t stop folks from generalizing what the U. S. government is and what it does. So they generalize. And then do it some more.

Sensing a problem here? At some point, our assumptions about government intent and capability take us off the rails entirely as we try to get our 50-train car over the river with no bridge.

Over time, we’ve gone from “alert your police to suspicious behavior” in the wake of 9/11 and the anthrax-mailing assclown to “pass laws so we can carry our guns into church” because apparently we’re now better at policing than the police. Osmosis? Or maybe strapping explosive metal to your thigh infuses your quadriceps with law enforcement knowledge and then that is carried up to your brain so that you know at any given moment who to shoot and who to leave alone. Damn those police academies for keeping us in the dark.

Well, wherever there’s confusion and hysteria, there’s someone looking to make a few bucks. I was ignorant of a lot of this until the other night, while watching a rerun of NCIS, I saw a commercial for a 72-hour disaster response kit. A what? I went back with my DVR. Yes. I’d understood correctly. Flashing images of the Katrina hurricane, the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, and the Chili earthquake, a deep-voiced, threatening voiceover told me that government wasn’t there for any of these people, and I should not sit around waiting for 1. a natural disaster nor 2. the government to bail me out. Bail me out? Wait a New Jersey minute.

Bailout is from seafaring, as in bailing water out of a sinking boat. It’s taken on a negative connotation because it’s used when the Feds have given money to a struggling company or industry. And the negativity has branched out to the struggling entity. So don’t call me a bailoutee in waiting! I haven’t asked for anything! I’m . . . I’m . . . I’m buying this nonsense, aren’t I? Of course it’s fine to expect that at least the national guard will roll in if half of Walla Walla blows away in a dust storm, leaving only Walla. That’s not a sign of weakness, that’s a sign that I’m an individual and not an institution, that’s all. Sheesh, for a minute there. . . well, I don’t want to think about it.

Okay, so this ad is comparing the non-Katrina response, the Haiti and Chilean earthquakes and saying they’re equally devastating, and suggesting the next one is around the corner and buying their $100 worth of plastic-wrapped product will what, be like having soldiers bringing me clean drinking water and tending to my wounds? Will it pull me out from a crumbled building? Is it like a Roomba on steroids with self-extending grappling hook? I had to laugh at the ludicrousness of this. I laughed, and yet my chuckles were laced with nervousness. Someone will buy this. Of course many someones will buy it. We bought Pet Rocks. We bought Snuggies. We bought ShamWOW!s. We’re Americans, darn it! We buy what we feel like buying! If I’m not spending money on insurance against Armageddon, I’m not a patriot!

I went online to see what was in these kits, anyway. And I was astonished to see how many different Web sites are hawking this schlock. Go on. Google it. 72 disaster kit, that’s what I typed. Open another tab and check it out, I’ll wait.

See? Holy preparedness, Robin! There is a lot of selling of crappy stuff! Light sticks, freeze-dried food, first aid kits, water pouches—I’m sorry, pouches? What’s wrong with water in bottles? Does it have to be so militaristic? I’d rather just put a case of Evian in the basement, okay?

I can buy pre-packaged kits or I can learn how to make my own from one of what, a dozen or so Web sites that have painstakingly put such content together. I’ll be good for 72 hours!

Doing the math, I see that that’s three days. Three days, really? Seriously? And then what? The earthquake ravaged buildings are renovated? The landslides are packed back onto the mountain? The flood waters recede like the hot air at the end of a car wash?

Oh. The government comes into town. The do-nothing, help-nobody government. We want to condescend enough to suggest we’ll need to sort out ourselves for up to three days, but then, we want our government to come to our rescue.

Let me know when any of this starts making sense. Maybe I’ll strap a banana to my thigh and walk into a church with it. That seems less kooky.

I went to the 2009 Walla Walla Balloon Stampede, having never made first contact with the hot air behemoths, and I wasn’t disappointed. The evolved quickly, from reams of lifeless fabric spread on the ground to fat and bright living beings, puffing with hot air and then quietly lifting off into the air. One by one they drifted up, their engines roaring in short bursts until the humans with two feet on the ground can barely discern what color they are. And everyone watching seemed a little in awe of the balloon beings, but perhaps we were just still fuzzy from getting up so early.

This year I woke up pre-dawn to get ready for more balloon stampede viewingship, but was disheartened when my fellow watcher texted me to say it was sprinkling outside. Sprinking, I thought, so what? I pulled up the Web site for the event and saw that indeed, the launch would occur “weather permitting.”

What does weather permitting mean, I asked my friend. Baseball weather or football weather? As a sports enthusiast who has dabbled in both, I know that there is a big difference. Only Charlie Brown plays in a downpour, but I can recall football games in Alexandria in which we had to crunch through a crusted-over ice field in January, with the coach bellowing at us, “We came to play!” I’ll just note here that this coach had been a linebacker for the Detroit Lions in the mid-80s, so clearly, he knew all about hard work and winning.

We decided to forge ahead, crossing our fingers that some random precipitation wouldn’t mean disaster for our less dense friends of the parachute-fiber variety. At 6AM sharp, we drove to the fairgrounds.

Parking was too easy. If the launch were set for 6:30, more people should be here by now, I figured. We came across one older couple walking toward us, back to their car. They looked deflated [sic].

“They canceled because of the rain,” she told us, looking fairly dry. Perhaps she’d dodged every drizzle drop on her way across the field.

We turned around and saw four more senior citizens, who informed me that they’d followed us here, figuring we would lead them to the balloons. This is funny ha ha and funny strange for a few reasons, including:

1. There’s nothing about us to signal to other drivers that we’re interested in this event, like a neon sign over the car reading “Balloon Freaks,” a bumper sticker saying, “I brake for balloons,” or a personalized license plate.
2. The balloon launch was at the Walla Walla Fairgrounds, which are pretty large in a town that’s pretty small. There’s really no need to tail another car on the off chance that they’ll lead you to a very well marked place in the city.
3. Someone was more clueless than we were.

Faced with having woken up especially early and wanting to make the best out of the morning, we headed over to the Elk’s Lodge. While this may at first seem completely arbitrary, let me just note that hey, I’ve mentioned it before in this blog, and I have a curiosity about it, but more importantly, the Elk’s Lodge has been hosting Ed’s Diner since Ed’s had a fire last winter. It’s nice of the Elks to give the staff the capacity to stay employed while the structure is being renovated, and Ed’s makes a helluva good greasy spoon breakfast. It’s just a shame that the life-size statue of Elvis didn’t survive the fire, because I’m sure the Elks wouldn’t mind having his presence in the middle of their ballroom.

And what a ballroom it was. We walked in needing a second wind and hoping to find it on the other side of made-to-order eggs. I looked around and wondered to myself just how many people had had their wedding receptions here. All of the tables were empty save one in the far corner that had something like a dozen older men I presumed were Lodge members. I have to imagine that all of these groups—the Elks, the Masons, the Rotaryians, or whatever they’re called—are having trouble finding new members because all of these people were eligible for AARP.

We may have been the second table of the morning, but apparently I underestimated how many other disgruntled balloon watchers were following us, because within five minutes, 50 other people arrived at the makeshift diner-in-an-old-man-lodge. Seriously, there was one waiter and 18 tables with hungry patrons. Some people looked like they were considering bum rushing the fake elk next to the front door, hoping to find French toast inside like one stores candy in a pinata. Fortuitous for us, we’d already placed our order with the cook in the back before the mob took over the space. I enjoyed my mushroom omelet but my friend walked across the room to get some ketchup, and I waved down a fellow customer who was helping himself to the fresh pot of coffee at the waiter’s station. Hey, we Walla Wallans have some initiative, especially when it comes to our caffeine consumption.

All in all, it was an adventure. We took turns with our individual elk photo ops, and I went back to bed. Maybe next year.

Nearing the end of our initial stint in Wallyworld, I feel it only appropriate to take stock of what lessons I’ve learned thus far, as part of what I’ve tried to do while living here—otherwise known as how to carry on when lots of things in one’s life have gone awry. Through a torn ACL and meniscus, the free-fall of the world’s strongest economy, 30-some-odd inches of snow, for which our passengers tires were completely insufficient, and the sudden adjustment that accompanied moving from a town in which 70 percent of the residents were registered Democrats to a town that went 57 percent for McCain in the last election, I’ve tried to keep up, somehow, with my new reality. And along the way I’ve picked up a few things that I promise to take with me as we start our road trip and half-year sabbatical. These are, in no particular order:

1. There is nothing that being in a hurry makes better, except possibly catching a ferry. I spent a lot of time in DC rushing around, and now I wonder why.
2. Listservs just aren’t as good for meting out advice as real people. Sure, I appreciate the community list, but asking my local pharmacist who they recommend for something, even when it’s unrelated to pharmacy, helps get me information they feel attached to, and thus, it becomes better information. This is how I found the second dry cleaners in Walla Walla. For the record, there are two dry cleaners in Walla Walla. The first was cheap but a bit brusque, if anyone cares to know such things.
3. It’s not what you do, it’s who you are. This was a hard one for me. Career was very important to me before we moved; it was something I worked hard for, found accomplishment in, and that I could appeal to when I asked the question “why.” I also quite enjoyed the salary I eventually made, but again, I worked damn hard for that salary, including working at 3AM on a Saturday for a company vice president who was just about completely incompetent, and having a report thrown at me because the president didn’t like how much it had cost to produce. Fast forward to today and I’ve now been out of a job for 19 months. As long as I was focused on what I didn’t have, I tasted my own bile with the level of frustration I felt. But in the meantime, I’ve mentored people who really needed someone to listen to them and encourage them, I’ve helped out a mom with her newborn when she needed a sitter, I’ve tried to help people just this side of lonely make new connections to others, and I’m currently working on shining a spotlight on the emerging Walla Walla food culture/community, and I think those are all good things. None of them has made me a penny, and in a way, that’s very liberating. My sense of self has shifted from me inside an office to me beyond an office.
4. Sometimes you just need a nice glass of wine at the end of the day. Or if wine isn’t your thing, iced tea. Or some other refreshment, so long as there’s a moment to decompress from the day’s activities. And if chocolate could accompany this moment, all the better. But remember, we have to breathe before we take the next step.
5. When faced with an opportunity to do something unknown vs. already experienced, go for the unknown. I suppose this is another way to say nothing ventured, nothing gained, but damn, that phrase is old and worn out. We could have stayed in DC and not come to Walla Walla, sure. And Susanne would still be teaching as a part-time instructor and I would still be working for the government. And I would not have found the time yet to get to my writing. This would all have amounted to limbo as humans live it. So even if this writing thing is a pipe dream, I’m glad to be doing it, and not a week goes by that I don’t hear at least once that what I’ve written has meant something important for someone. All because I arranged pixels on a screen. That is really touching to me.
6. The more you make your life about learning Important Things, the less you’ll really know. Another hard one for me, since I’ve been all about the learning and growing my whole life. But I see now that I’m not less of a person for not knowing rocket science. The beauty of this position is that I can learn constantly, just by being aware and being principled. This drives me to keep picking up other people’s stories, because I can’t live everyone else’s lives. So the next best thing is hearing them, asking questions and paying attention. I aim to walk a whole lot of miles in other people’s shoes and spend less time fretting about what I don’t know.
7. Having a sit-down supper most nights is a great excuse for talking. I know, this means I need to close my laptop. I’m okay with that, because on any given night, it could be cheese grits with asparagus and seared pork chops, or curried chicken over rice, or smashed red potatoes with roast chicken and wilted garlic spinach. And I wouldn’t want any of those things to get in between the keys. I also like recapping the day and enjoying another person’s company while having tasty treats.

These weren’t the lessons I sought out when we moved here, but these are the ones I’ve run into. And I recognize that the edge of interesting and trite is razor-thin, so if anyone has puked on themselves reading this, my sincerest apologies. But at the end of the analysis, these have turned out to be important to me. It’s not that they weren’t important before August 20, 2008, but they were just hard to hear through the din. I would genuinely love hearing other folks’ life lessons, so feel free to add them in the comments to this post.

Reflecting on all of the intersections within Walla Walla, I can’t recall a single NO LEFT TURN sign. Not by the Bi Mart, south side of town. Not at any point on Isaacs Road, which is a straight shot east into the Blue Mountains and which is littered with fast food shacks, auto parts stores, car washes, and oodles of plain gray parking lots. Not in the small downtown, even though every other city I’ve tromped through has boasted at least one stubbornly red sign.

It’s a small thing, I know, but it takes on a bit more meaning once one ventures into a large city with any kind of traffic issue. One finds oneself in a strange place and on the wrong street, and once the first battle with orientation is settled, realizes that the quickest way back to the tiny quadrant one does know is forbade by the local powers in charge. And then one is faced with a decision: break the law and feign innocence, or try to find another way over to the relief zone.

In DC, drivers could find themselves hitting a series of NO LEFT TURN signs, their frustration building quickly as they creep along, stuck behind other tourists, bicycle messengers, and a lot of men in suits with big briefcases.  And here the visitors thought government was trying to go paper-free. Little do they know that those are more likely the private sector guys. There are 50,000 practicing attorneys in Washington, DC.

In DC, defensive driving means watching out for all the Lexus owners texting while driving, the cars with fake paper license plates in the rear windows that add the important note, “STOLEN,” and the truly clueless in RVs. Who the hell RVs to a major city? Sometimes I would stand on a corner and laugh while they circled the block, trying to find parking. I wasn’t trying to be mean, it was just such a great pastime. Twice in DC my car was hit while I was idling at a red light: once from a guy who slid into me on black ice, and once when a driver in front of me backed up, trying to make room for a turning tour bus. These things just don’t happen in Wallyworld.

In Walla Walla, defensive driving means looking out for small children who’ve broken free of a parent’s grasp, slowing down for momma and baby ducks, and watching the red light runners, which I’ll get to later. These things tend not to happen in DC, although there is a street over by the army hospital with a goose crossing sign, and the two days I was on that road, I did in fact have to stop for crossing geese. It was almost as if they waited for my car just so they could cross, which I’ll note is the logic most pedestrians in the city, use too.

I’ve been made aware of the split between this corner of the United States and the world inside the Beltway that ensnares everything in the District. It has come in the form of massive snowfall. And it has come in the total lack of snowplowing afterward. It’s shown its face in the 5-minutes-to-anywhere nature of the city confines, a distinct difference from DC, in which most things are at least 35 minutes away, no matter how one travels. 2,800 miles away from the Capitol’s epicenter, how government really functions is invisible to people, who have en masse decided to decide that everyone in government has their worst interests at heart. And I try to explain as gently as possible that the government is just like every other office they’ve worked in, with all of those personalities working against and with each other for 8 hours a day.

These discrepancies remind me that we fear what we do not know. I’m not a subscriber to the “if we educate, we’ll have world peace,” because I’m far too cynical to believe that bigotry, oppression, and anger are only the result of ignorance. People have stakes. People earnestly believe their group (read: race, nation, state) has stakes that are threatened by some of other group. I could no sooner “educate” Rush Limbaugh and inspire him to be a bleeding heart liberal than I could teach a worm to fly, and I say this feeling pretty certain that even Rush doesn’t believe half the crap he spews out into his microphone. But Rush has a stake in his persona, and like everything else, if he’s not being increasingly conservative, he risks becoming irrelevant. And so he spews.

In the same way, people dig their heels in about what they think government represents, who they think it represents. It’s been a long time since I heard anyone say they feel personally supported by the Federal government, even as they drive on interstate highways, take their kids to the public library, call 911 when their kitchen’s on fire, or go to their child’s high school graduation. Instead when they make the pilgrimage to DC they get caught with one-way streets and NO LEFT TURN signs and it signals to them that they’re unwanted, when all it really means is there are way too many cars on the roads in the city and someone is trying something to make the system keep working.

Walla Walla is a place where people run red lights all the time. I was astonished when I saw the first runner, because I’d been conditioned out of it from all the ticketing cameras that have grown into the East Coast traffic system like kudzu, and because I’m such a law-abider, my exception that of speeding. I never saw a speed limit that 7 more miles an hour didn’t make better. But going through a red light, to me, was just jaw-dropping, in the same way that any minimally suicidal tendency is, like intentionally gaining 500 pounds, or BASE jumping.

But maybe it says something about the garden variety Walla Wallan. As if the rules don’t apply out here. Or that my neighbors and fellow car drivers won’t mind. It’s just one light. It’s just today. It’s just that it’s 3AM. It’s just that I see other people do it all the time.

In this kind of context, what else can the government represent but an angry nanny, an everything-is-rules custodian who seeks to end pleasure and red light running, out of spite? I shouldn’t be surprised at the level of distrust, I suppose.

I wonder what 20 months in Walla Walla has done to change my perspective, what new kinds of things I’ll see as we drive back across the country, and what I’ll miss that I wouldn’t have before. I am the guy who wants to discover the hidden world in the sidewalk crack, a focus on fascination that I’ve carried with me since I was 3. I want to start seeing where we come together because I am damn tired of seeing how far apart we are. I want people in DC and Walla Walla to know that they are closer than they think: in both towns I was a regular customer of several businesses, laughing with them about inanity. Both towns boast big, tree-covered parks. Both towns struggle with caring for their elderly, face cutbacks to their education budget, struggle with aging and fading infrastructure. We could learn a lot from each other.

I am not looking forward to being told I can’t make a left turn. But I won’t blame anybody about it, either. I’ll try to take the laissez faire attitude of the Northwest to the Type A personality of DC. I’m a peace ambassador.

I’ve written about the Census here and there, in part because the idea of really being able to count everyone in a country as big as this is next to impossible, and I’m extremely curious about the actual logistics involved in knocking on every single household’s door. I’ve worked with the Census before, though not in the enumerating capacity. It’s one thing to sit in a meeting in a run-down basement conference room on Census’ campus, the distant but distinct sound of water dripping through pipes like a kind of static behind the droning conversation about boring (but politically loaded) words like imputation, matching algorithms, and so on, the voices starting to sound like the tuba-speak of adults in the Peanuts comic. Wa waaah wa waht waaaaah waa.

The reality of walking around a neighborhood must be different, if only for the absence of GS-11 level and above staff. It’s just a temporary employee with a badge and a clipboard, and oh, reliable transportation. They are really insistent about the reliable transportation, having asked me, at this point, no fewer than five times if I have it. I would get a tattoo of my VIN on my forehead if I thought it would silence the question, but that’s no good over the phone.

So the Census has asked me to be an enumerator for them, meaning, walk around and knock on doors. I said okay, sure, I’ll take the $11.75 an hour, happy to have a job offer from anyone after 19 months of no real income. The $30 for doing the reading at the Roadshow last week was great because it was money from writing, but one dinner in downtown Walla Walla and I was back to having $5 in my wallet. (Still, it was great to take Susanne out to dinner again, I’ve missed that little grace.)

I reminded them about my amazing aluminum steed, so very reliable, and confirmed that I do not speak a lick of Spanish. If I were dropped out of a time machine—hot tub or otherwise—into 1984, the one thing I would change would be to sign up for Spanish, not French, classes. I mean, French is useful for reading Derrida and Lacan, and possibly for my citizenship test for Canada, should I some day apply, but wow, that’s about it in this lifetime.

Between my lack of Spanish and the Census’ map of the area’s initial response rates to the census form, I am betting I’ll be asked to go to Waitsburg, two towns east of Wallyworld. I don’t think I’ll be knocking on doors near the prison, but who knows?

Waitsburg is the cute town with the anti-abortion protesters, the very ones that I flipped off last winter for holding up pictures of completely inviable fetuses. They were not what I saw as an appropriate welcoming committee.

That said, I know I can be an impartial counter. I am cheery and I have nice penmanship. I may try to see if different facial hair styles has an effect on people’s response to me, because hey, you never know. Maybe they’ll cover this in training. I’ll find out tomorrow, when I show them my passport and press my fingers into their background checking machine. I suppose I’ll come up in the system, since I used to work for Social Security. It’ll be like deja vu, surely, only this time my background check and training will come on the other side of the country, in a Mormon-owned building. So sure, it’s just like the same thing as the west side of Baltimore. I could see the Wire from my window.

So this job, temporary though it may be, shall be interesting. More interesting than basement conference room, more interesting than watching yet another NCIS or SVU episode while I try to focus on writing a new story. Less interesting than writing a new story, but, and this is a big but, great fodder for an as-yet unthought idea for a new story. And I’m all about the new stories.

Waitsburg, here I come. I promise to keep my middle fingers to myself.

Walla Walla was a blur of activity this weekend, what with a memorial for the lovely Mary Hanna, who passed away last month and whose illness I wrote about a couple of times, the short-lived attempt to hunt wild turkeys, and a party on Friday night, which was the setting upon which I agreed to wake before dawn to watch someone shoot at birds. But Saturday night wasn’t the terminus of our weekend plans. Sunday brought with it the Tranny Roadshow, also previously mentioned in this blog.

I was happy to provide an interview to the local paper. Well, I was happy and not a little trepidatious. A lot trepidatious, but who’s measuring? Turns out that the article was pretty well done, even if the editor did miss a typo in the first paragraph.

I prepped food for an after-party event at our house, and wandered over to the venue for the sound check an hour before the start time. Meeting the lead organizer as I walked in, he told me that they’d just had the fastest sound check ever and they were done already, two minutes in. And now I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Ooh, new transpeople. I should talk to them. And then I remembered.

My experience with a lot of transfolk is that when we get into large enough groups, it starts feeling like it’s and after school special of Who’s Too Cool for School? Everyone gets dressed in extremely hip ways—they’re wearing ironic clothing, like shirts with religious overtones, or they’re sporting working class wear, like gas attendant jumpsuits or trucker hats, or they’re Goth, or something that makes it very clear they are not here for a wine tour. The next aspect of WTCfS is that everyone knows each other but not you, so for me, I get stuck standing a little outside their conversation circle, trying to find an in or at least hear what they’re discussing, but this is difficult for all of the inside jokes that I have previously not been privy. The only other option here is not an attractive one: I can try to jump in and say something, but I risk either being completely ignored, which makes me feel like a braces-wearing, pimply 8th grader all over again (and puberty twice is really enough), or I may get the quick, “uh huh,” said with a condescending jerk of the head before their previous line of conversation resumes. There is a very low chance that they may find me charming enough to step aside seven inches so that I’m not stuck outside the circle like some uninvited electron.

Trust me, these things have happened to me. I had been so excited for them to come to little Walla Walla, and I figured it would be a show some people in town really needed to see, but looking at the troupe I was worried, like I’d been sitting down with the Union-Bulletin reporter. Why should they have my best interest at heart? I wasn’t a hip, urban transman from DC anymore. I was some guy with neckwear from a tiny city in the middle of nowhere.

Okay, way to make it be all about me, I told myself, thus ensuring it was all about me, at least for the time it took my dendrites to send that message across my synapses. Just relax. Ask how their trip has been so far.

We made a little small talk. Some of the performers introduced themselves. They seemed friendly enough, if not way, way cooler than me. I watched as people made their way into the room, finding seats and getting comfortable. I wasn’t nervous to read in the slightest, but I was aware that I’d been alotted 10–12 minutes. I didn’t want to read too fast, but I didn’t want to go over my time, either.

Two older ladies sat right in the front, smiling broadly. I’d said in the article that the show was reminiscent of old Vaudeville. Were they here thinking they’d get Benny Goodman and Laurel and Hardy? Oh, crap.

A man came in with his mother, who appeared to be in her 70s. He asked Susanne, the faculty adviser for the event, if he could get coffee and bring it in here. She said sure. He looked uncomfortable through the whole show, but his mom had a blast.

Then there was an older couple who looked like two hippies from back in the day, him still sporting a long ponytail of now-white hair, she in a flowing flowery blouse. Directly behind them was The Knitter, who I recognize now from bleeding heart liberal events I’ve attended all over North America. There is always a knitter, as if there’s an underground knitting community who scour the notices about local events so that at least one of them will be in attendance at each. Because we have to remember that knitting is important. Or something. I suppose I do admire someone who can watch the stage and not drop a stitch. That’s real multitasking.

Red Durkin, comedienne extraordinaire

The show began, with a comedienne, who made us all laugh, repeatedly, the whole time she was on stage, which is what is supposed to happen, so I gather. I’ve watched enough unfunny comics to wonder why the industry isn’t afraid we consumers will sue them for false advertising. But she was the real deal.

Second performer picked up a guitar and sang, self-created songs except for one Sarah Harmer cover, which he did well.

My turn. The “local performer.” I approached the stage, which uh, didn’t have a step, even though it was at least 26 inches off the floor. I was certain I would wipe out before I’d even made it up there.

I was not graceful, but I made it. Ha! I was triumphant. My knees were intact, sturdy, even. I remembered I was supposed to read something. Good thing it was in my hand.

“This is a story about Becky and Bertha,” I said, “who were the names of my breasts when I still had breasts, that is.”

And we were off to the races. I got a lot of laughs and even a guffaw or two. I might have sped up toward the end a little, still worrying about my time limit, as if Jim Lehrer were there to call time.

The rest of the show was fun, with another musician—she broke out a ukelele—a juggler, a couple of spoken word performers. The audience gave us more applause, and suddenly, we were done, sans big bows from the troupe, which I thought was a little unorthodox. But what about this wasn’t orthodox?

I dashed home while Susanne helped them pack up their things, as it was my job to set out the spread for the party. They weren’t ready for our hospitality, but they were happy for it, and we met up with a few students who had brought them to campus. The conversation was great, we focused on what we had in common, and I worried no longer that I didn’t fit in. It was a long, long breath of fresh air. And it made me want to make Walla Walla a more diverse place.

Tiffany Cain and David Christensen represent a new generation of restaurant owners in Walla Walla. I’ve been curious about the people behind the newer eateries in downtown, so I decided to ask a few of them to give interviews about their lives as business owners, gourmands, and as part of a revitalized, local food community here. Taking over the Colville Street Patisserie in 2008, Cain and Christensen quietly began updating the items in the shop, giving the windows a new look, and making the place their own. David previously was the pastry chef at Whitehouse Crawford and Tiffany was the owner of The Weinhard Cafe east of town, in Dayton. I sat down with them last week to talk about their adventures in cooking, or more precisely, baking. French style.

EM: Talk about how you found your way into the kitchen.

DC: I started cooking just to feed myself. I’ve had a lot of fast food jobs, since I was 14. Diners, French fry stands, other places. Then I moved to Walla Walla. Cooking was something I turned out to enjoy. My mom cooked a lot when we were kids. It was all pretty good. She definitely made an effort to teach each of us how to do it.

TC: It was really a calculated move for me. I don’t like offices. I first started out baking. My mom was really strict with our diets, so I really was excited about making desserts! So that’s how I learned to cook. I just really love being around food.

EM: Tell us the difference between a patisserie and a bakery.

DC: A patisserie is a pastry shop. The emphasis is more on dessert, whether it be cookies, tarts, baked goods that aren’t breads. They definitely have a French technique, but my spin is that there’s no point in just replication.

EM: What is your typical baking day like?

TC: The sobbing starts.

DC: I try to get here at 4:30. Start the ovens, start with things that aren’t yeasted, like the macaroons, the paris brist, then the things like croissants go in around 7. By the afternoon we’re making ice creams and doing assembly for things like the individual tarts, mousse, and other fillings.

EM: I kind of want to know how much butter you go through.

DC: You want to know?

EM: Yes.

DC: It’s 24–30 pounds of butter for the croissants, and 30–50 pounds for everything else.

EM: Where do you go for inspiration?

DC: Part of it is just having a fairly good understanding of what the classics are and how I can duplicate the spirit of it with a twist. Like the chocolate filled congolais. That’s not how it is classically made.

TC: It makes sense, though. Mounds bar.

EM: Maybe you could put an almond in the middle, too.

TC: He was able to do things like this when he was a sous chef at Whitehouse Crawford.

EM: Tell us what you’re going to bring to the case this summer that we haven’t seen before.

DC: More big, fruity desserts. Crunchy, more crumbly pastry shells. More melon, some other fruits.We’ve also been thinking about a fancy but low-brow s’mores idea, with homemade marshmallows and the macaroon cookie. And we use the blow torch, like for the crème brulée.

EM: Oh?

TC: We had some lemon marshmallows left over one day and we heated them with the blow torch, melting the outside but leaving the middle solid. And we tried them and said, oh wow, that’s good!

EM: What flavors or ingredients are you most excited about using?

DC: This time of year I’m really excited about strawberries. I’m really tired of using apples all winter. Welcome Table Farm has an early berry coming out soon. So does Klicker’s. Actually they have strawberries all summer long.

TC: I think we’re also excited to be making all of the gelato out of local milk from Pure Eire.

DC: They’re the only grass fed raw and fresh pasteurized milk producer around here.

TC: We can’t use the raw milk for the gelato. It’s flash pasteurized. And it’s really good.

EM: I see people bring their goods into the shop. Talk about the environment here for food producers, growers, and restauranteurs.

TC: It’s really changed in the time I’ve been here, about 15 years. The farmer’s market downtown was really small. Now there are lots of young couples in their 30s who own little farms. That’s really changed in the last 5 years here. You don’t have to look hard for them because it’s obvious they’re here. So 15 years ago people moved here or moved back. Back then there was My Grandmother’s Garden, that’s always been here, and they had herbs and other produce. Now there are a lot of places to go, and a nice camaraderie of owners here.

EM: What would you tell others who are interested in doing what you do?

TC: Idiots! No, no. If you want fame but not fortune, do it.

DC: Go find a place you like, bug them until they let you work, for free if you have to. You don’t have to go to culinary school to get started.

TC: Yes, find out if you like it before you make an investment.

DC: It’s good to familiarize yourself with how kitchens and restaurants work.

TC: I’m always a fan of the shortcut.

EM: As long as there’s chocolate inside.

TC: Yes!

The Colville Street Patisserie is located at the corner of Alder and Colville Streets. For hours, check their Web site.