The Orchardist (which is the title of the book) and The Gardener (who is me)

A place to show her children: and you belong to the earth, and the earth is hard. - Amanda Coplin, The Orchardist

"In our society growing food yourself has become the most radical of acts. It is truly the only effective protest that one can do to overturn the corporate powers that be. By the process of directly working in harmony with nature, we do the one thing most essential to change the world-we change ourselves.” Some guy named Jules Darvaes said that. And then Pinterest lost its collective mind. Ooh, gardens are radical, and not even the Ninja Turtles way. Cool, cool. Wait. But then what's this?

1.  The prophet said to plant a garden, so that's what we'll do.
   For God has given rich brown soil, the rain and sunshine too.
   And if we plant the seeds just right and tend them carefully,
   Before we know, good things will grow to feed our family.
2. 2. We'll plant the seeds to fill our needs, then plant a few to spare,
   And show we love our neighbors with the harvest that we share.
   Oh, won't you plant a garden, too, and share the many joys
   A garden brings in health and love to happy girls and boys!

It says here in this LDS Primary song that growing gardens is showing obedience. So which is it? When we garden are we sticking it to the man who in this case is the industrial farming complex or are we literally following "The Man" AKA The Prophet who, if you are familiar with another LDS hymn, is to be praised? Is growing food for yourself only a rebellious expression if done while being tattooed and do plants only grow better if they're sworn at and spilled wine upon? Or is adhering to a religious leader's advice its own form of radicalism? Is the dirt under my fingernails a sign of blind obedience or is each pepper a little molotov cocktail? OK, when we're dealing with the habaneros I get that it is a very very fine line.

I think there might be a discussion in here somewhere. What if there's a blog post in here in which I can make bad garden puns? Oh boy. Who knew that a garden would be such fertile soil for political debate? 

I've been in and around gardens for my whole life. My grandpa's was famous in his small rural town of Taylor, Utah. My earliest memories of his house are of sitting next to a bucket and snapping beans and shelling peas. I remember making canoes out of the pea pods and floating them down the irrigation ditch. Eating watermelon on the lawn and playing with cousins until after dark.

Now my kids scour my mom's garden for strawberries. My youngest has earned the nickname "The Strawberry Whisperer" because she manages to find sweet berries well after the rest of us have given up and thought the patch to be empty. Also maybe she talks to strawberries? I don't know. She's the youngest. Sometimes we forget about her, Maggie Simpson style. There is a legend of my sister as a baby hating the feel of grass but loving strawberries, resulting in her crawling out to the patch and crying the entire way.

One year in junior high I lost all of my school books. Every one of them. I still don't know what happened. Sometimes we would sled on them during winter, but that seemed fine. I can't imagine that having anything to do with it. Anyway, it cost $80 to replace them. I had to work it off in my mom's garden at a rate of one dollar an hour. She still says it was the best garden she ever had. Now she pays migrant workers the same rate (JK!) (I think!).

Whatever the source of labor, that garden still provides all of the essential vegetables to make her famous salsa, which is actually the famous salsa of my sister's ex-boyfriend's mom, which is also my son's only source of vegetables. It provides so many bottles of green beans, which I hated as a kid but now love. Who knew that all of this time my mom was actually participating in the overthrow of tyranny? Were the seeds of my eventual political rebellion planted even then? Did I begin to fend for the working man while myself toiling for unfair wages? 

One time, after the corn had been harvested and the yellowed stalks still stood, I regarded them as enemy ninja warriors. With a broomstick as my samurai sword I struck them all down. While regarding the aftermath I looked up at the house to see my mom, aunt, and older cousin all looking through the window and laughing. I was at least 16. And I'd really gotten into it. Did I feel the burn of scorn while striking down my oppressors? Maybe I did. Did it stop me? You tell me. Have you tried to oppress me lately? I thought so.

My own garden started very humbly. I built raised boxes myself. And we experimented. The first year we only had enough soil to fill our smallest box. By the time we moved, though, it was pretty good! A small orchard consisting of two plum trees, a honeycrisp apple, a nectarine, peach, and rainier and bing cherry trees rounded it out nicely. I liked that house, and was sad to leave it. I loved that garden, though. Seeing the peach tree heavy with not-yet-ripe peaches was the hardest part.

Since moving we started over. This garden was my hardest task yet. What was once a weed patch filled with unworkable soil and massive rocks is now a rather tidy little food factory.

We turned a literal trash pile into an herb garden.

Crab grass into a garlic patch, and a sandbox into a locale for quiet introspection about dragons.

He did not expect her to be happy—how that word lost meaning as the years progressed—but he only wished her to be unafraid, and able to experience small joys.

When I go for runs, or walk around the neighborhood, I have a pretty good idea of whose garden is there because they heard a Primary song, and who is gardening in quiet rebellion. The obedient gardeners have a start. They got some gumption when it was still spring, and cool. They designated a corner of their yard, churned it into dirt, and planted some stuff, sure. But when it's hot out and the weeds have such onerous personalities that you start to name them and befriend them before destroying them - for as Ender Wiggin once said, "In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him." - they stay indoors and turn the AC up and the Netflix upper.

What if there's something more to this? What if, when we think of trying to fix the world's ills, we think of our little corner of the Earth as a garden. And we say to that little patch of land, "This is where I make my stand. This is where I will work." We can't fight every weed, and if we try to it leads to madness (I know because it's part of my actual job), but we can fight this one. I can nurture this plant. I can't ensure that the tomatoes and peppers and eggplants and tomatillos and cucumbers will make it, but I can make sure they get a shot. Because they are under my watch. 

And that was the point of children, thought Caroline Middey: to bind us to the earth and to the present, to distract us from death. A distraction dressed as a blessing: but dressed so well, and so truly, that it became a blessing. Or maybe it was the other way around: a blessing first, before a distraction.

But what if we are only working this corner of the Earth because we've been told to? What if it's because our church or school or college degree demands it? Do we work when it's hot out? Do we see the wilting plant surrounded by weeds and mourn for it and get out there and help? Or do we do the work when we feel like it. When the weather is just right and the kids are bothering us and we need some time outside anyway.

This is an honest question I've been thinking about a lot. I know myself well enough to know that when I'm supposed to do something out of obligation, I drag my feet. I resent it. I don't like it when people from my church call me and ask if I visited the neighbors who I've been assigned to by someone who probably actually doesn't know my name and certainly doesn't know the first thing about me. Are my neighbors hurting? Maybe. Could they use my help? Almost certainly. Do I visit them? Oh good heavens no.

But the stuff I've decided to do on my own I put my entire soul into. If you're reading this and have volunteered with me maybe you're thinking "that's all his soul's got?" Sorry, I'm afraid it is. (Also thanks for reading and let me say that I respect you a lot) All I can say is in the just over a year since I started actively volunteering I've gotten more personal satisfaction out of it than in a lifetime of obligated service.

How like the orchard she was. Because of her slowness and the attitude in which she held herself -seemingly deferent, quiet- it appeared even a harsh word would smite her. But it would not. She was like an egg encased in iron. She was the dream of the place that bore her, and she did not even know it.

In Amanda Coplin's The Orchardist,  Talmadge works land in the Pacific Northwest. By the time we meet him he's managed his orchard for 40 years and is a master. He walks the land every day and sells his fruit at the market. At one point it was him and his sister, but her mysterious disappearance haunts him. Maybe it's because of this that he decides to help the two very young pregnant girls who he first notices after they steal his fruit.

The Orchardist is the kind of slow-moving story that feels fast. The orchard sounds like a beautiful place, and the people who come in and out of it are interesting and lovely. Talmadge helps other people in the same way he works on his orchard. With patience. He doesn't know people like he knows apricot trees, and he makes mistakes as he certainly must have done in his orchard and how we all do in our gardens. But like a good gardener, he learns from them and doesn't repeat them.

The story that unfolds is tragic, but when you sign up to help people who have been through terrible things, it often can be. It's also, in the end, worth it. When Talmadge takes risks, he does it because he feels he has to. He rebels. Maybe he learned that in the orchard.

Tell Me All Your Thoughts on Thor, Cause I'd Really Like to Meet Her

For years I've watched as the American graphic novels sections have shrunk in bookstores and libraries as more and more space has been allocated for manga and it makes me mad. I don't have anything against manga except that I hate how everything about it, from its crappy little paperback size to the art that angers my eyes such that I feel my glasses prescription getting even worse somehow. Honestly, the fact that you read it backwards is so far down the list in grievances I only bring it up because what's up with that?

I don't care if it exists, and if you like it I don't think it's a personality flaw or anything (though I would not rule it out as a cause for suspicion). I try not to be one of those people who get angry that something they don't care about is popular. There's a real danger in thinking that because your friend group is into something, it should be the only thing.

Like when fans of a certain TV show assume that if anything else has better ratings it's because the system was rigged against them. All of my friends like my show, and everyone I know on social media do too, how could the other one win? If that kind of reasoning worked, Game of Thrones would be the most popular show on TV right now because it's literally all I hear about ever. It's not even in the top ten for cable shows. Walking Dead, WWE Raw, and something called Fixer Upper; all have way more viewers. Even The Talking Dead has better ratings. And that's not even talking about the juggernauts that are The Big Bang Theory, Dancing with the Stars, and Empire.

But who talks about Empire? Not me. Not anyone I know. Empire must not be good because my friends don't like it. I see zero Empire memes on Facebook OR Instagram. If Empire were a political candidate, it would win by a landslide and white people would be reminded, again, that it doesn't matter how noisy and entitled we act, and how much we assume that this world is still made just for us, there are millions of people who see the world way differently. Hmm. Interesting. I wonder if there are any parallels to this today?


Here's the thing, even without the TV shows, it's just such a good time to be reading comics. I just read the first book in the new run of Archie, and holy crap, you guys. Archie is good. It's funny and modern and self-aware. There are some super weird, one-off books like Archie vs. Predator and Afterlife with Archie (Archie vs. zombies!)!! that are also great.
Anyway, in recent years I've been pleased to see American comics reclaiming their shelf space. At my library, for example, the graphic novel section has steadily increased alongside the popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and to a lesser extent the DC one, whatever they call it. Comics are everywhere. Walking Dead is, I hear, a popular show. We've got a Preacher show now, and Powers, and a bunch of great TV shows about people who dress up in bright colors and fight crime and actually do all kinds of other things. We can't get enough of it.

The Jughead books are being taken over by the writer of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, which I've mentioned before but is deeply satisfying and hilarious.

That writer is Ryan North, who some of you may know from the webcomic Dinosaur Comics which makes me laugh a lot.

That's not what I wanted to talk about, though. It was just an example. Like, comics are so good right now that even Archie is killing it. Indie comics are good. Like Lumberjanes. Check out Lumberjanes, you guys. It's what you get if you cross My Little Pony's obsession with friendship with the overall aesthetic of roller derby. Cool, tough girls at a haunted girl scout camp who fight monsters! Gleeful violence! Great visuals!

This list can go on and on. Check out Delilah Dirk! Disney is making a movie about her. People call her the girl Indiana Jones but I haven't seen any Indiana Jones with moves like this.

There's more! American Born Chinese, Zita the Spacegirl, Cleopatra in Space, Lady Killer (about a 50s housewife who is also an assassin), there's probably a jillion more. I am but one man!

But you guys, that's not even what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about is Thor.

OK, do me a favor. Go find the Thor: God of Thunder run by Aaron Ribic. I've never been a Thor guy. Even as a kid I thought he was ridiculous. If you're not a Thor guy you'll like this. My wife was not a Thor guy and now she totally is. After that run, where we learn a lot about Thor and his early days before the hammer, and his later days in the future, and when past Thor annoys present Thor and future Thor is annoyed by both of them, we get to the real good stuff.

Thor isn't worthy to hold the hammer anymore. We don't know why, but guys, there's always gotta be a Thor. So someone else picks up the hammer. And she rules. And we start to see why American comics resonate. Why there are things like secret identities. 

The story we're always fed about secret identities is that the good guy does it to protect his family. Spiderman is tough, but Aunt May and Mary Jane aren't. If people knew who he was (which is the worst kept secret in the Marvel universe) they would go after these vulnerable people to punish him. While I get this, I also get why wearing a mask has power beyond it.

When Batman puts on the mask and the bad gruff voice he gets to forget that he's (spoiler) Bruce Wayne. He puts on a persona and is someone else for a little bit. Spiderman is confident and witty while he beats up villains, but he's a shy, bookish nerd out of costume. When Thor, whose identity we eventually learn but I don't want to spoil, becomes Thor she gets to right wrongs she's seen her whole life. She fixes old grudges. She knocks off some heads of some bad guys who have caused problems for her in the past.

Why do people dress up for Halloween? Or comic-con? Or Game of Thrones hipster parties? Because we all want a minute to be someone different. It's why some people drink and why other people (like me) simulate this drunkenness by staying up too late and getting to where I can't stop laughing about things that aren't funny.

This isn't a new question, but it's still an interesting one. What if we could wear a mask and have the power to do the things we've always wanted to do? Would you become a hero or a monster or something in between? If nobody knew who you were, how would you wield that power?

OK, let's say that you already do wield that power, but you may or may not know already. 

Online harassers use the power of anonymity and the abundance of personal information online to ruin lives. Predators target vulnerable groups, specifically victims of sexual assault and abuse, and use online personas to seduce them in the guise of being understanding and "there for them". Rapists pretend to be college students, or a certain religion, or whatever someone really wants to see while swiping on Tinder.

You guys, and usually when I'm writing here on the world wide web I include all of humanity in "you guys," so I'm not just talking to men, but in this case when I say you guys I mean you guys. You. Guys. This is the space where we can have the most impact, among other dudes. I can go into feminist spaces all day and tell them what they already know and derive a certain amount of recognition and satisfaction, because that kind of talk is welcome there. But I'm not fixing anything. I'm not changing any minds. The people who need to hear this are the ones who frequent those spaces only to harass.

 If you're somehow within the reach of my voice and you've gotten this far into my blog and haven't blocked me already because of my Facebook you need to listen: if you're using anonymity on the internet to threaten, or harass, or demean people who are vulnerable and oppressed, cut that out. We don't need you. As a society. You're done.

This war you think you're fighting? You've lost. For every post you vomit into the world about how Mad Max is anti-men because Furiosa is a better shot than Max, there are two sequels proposed. You started a boycott against Star Wars because it somehow represents P.C. culture? Frozen makes you mad because Elsa doesn't get a boyfriend? Oof, I guess they can't hear you because they're too busy listening to cash registers ding. A woman on the internet thinks it's dumb that a warrior woman would leave literally all of her vital organs exposed on the battlefield in the pursuit of fashion and that threatens what, your lifestyle? You wear that. Metal thongs aren't comfortable, I'm told, but I'm sure willing to let you find out for us. 

Those message boards that you frequent where it sounds like everyone agrees with you and there's a handful of crazies out there who need to get shouted down by your big man voice? Yesterday my daughter was telling me about how in her fourth grade class the girls won at tug-of-war and the boys said it wasn't fair. Why not? They couldn't come up with a reason other than if the girls were winning then something must be unfair.

And here's the thing. When we find out who Thor is we realize oh yeah. She's real mad. She remembers everything. And now she's got the hammer. You guys (again, here I mean you guys) you do not want to be on the business end of that hammer. 

Anonymous heroes abound, you guys (I'm back to the royal 'you guys' like how Sloth uses it in The Goonies). One of the most amazing things about the last couple years of my life has been seeing people do amazing things without needing recognition. Me, I need recognition, I thrive on it. I need to work on this. I could learn a thing or to from Thor. That's a weird sentence to write.