Life Harvester #24: Leaf Piles, Throwing Blueberries At Yogurt, Ask a Shmuck, Miss D's Movie Madness
Life Harvester is written by Colin Hagendorf and edited by Rebecca Giordano. This is the email version of a print publication available for low-cost individual subscription via Paypal or on Patreon. Life Harvester subscriptions are free to prisoners. If you know an incarcerated person who would like to receive a newsletter every month, get in touch with me directly and I’ll take care of it.
WAKE ME UP NEXT YEAR
As the conclusion of this seemingly endless year looms, what do we have to show for it? The old frameworks I used to determine the quality of a year—overall happiness, personal growth, goals achieved—simply don’t apply this time around. Instead, I’m thinking about what I’m grateful for (virtual AA, writing letters, finding community with other trans writers, my hot Italian-American girlfriend, our dogs), offering thanks to my higher power (Peter Falk) that I and the majority of those I love the most survived this year at all, thinking of those who are gone, remembering that so much of the pain and suffering could’ve been averted if the people in power cared for us the way we care for each other, and committing to never stop fighting for a better world.
The pieces in this issue were written disparately, but seeing them together it’s clear that they share a focus on seeking out a sense of enjoyment in the mundane or even horrible aspects of life. I hope that reading this provides the same comfort to you that writing it provided me. Happy birthday to Joan Armatrading, Grace Paley, and Nicki Minaj.
OWNING UP
It’s important to admit when you’ve made mistakes, and we made a grave one in the last issue. In our exploration of the music genre Bëëf Stew, we stated that Primevil’s 1974 LP Smokin’ Bats At Compton’s was not heavy enough to warrant inclusion in the Stew Pantheon. This assessment was based on less than the first 40 seconds of the first song. Upon further listening, Primevil are, quite clearly, both heavy and dumb. They did not deserve to be slandered like this.
LEAF PILES
Autumn and winter are pile seasons. There’s salt piles, snow piles, piles of discarded Christmas trees or jack’o’lanterns, and most prominent of all for the past two months, leaf piles. At one of the parks where we take the dogs to play, there’s a leaf pile so big and dense I watched a man climb to the top of it, and then throw a rope down for his son to scale like a mountain. Becca and I live in a corner house on the crest of a small hill with a large lawn opposite us. The result is that leaves from both ends of the block tend to accumulate on our sidewalks, and I’m left with the obligation of shaping them into piles.
I think the best tool for moving large quantities of leaves across cement is probably your standard push broom. A rake, the typical instrument for leaf manipulation, makes an awful sound as its teeth scrape across the poured concrete. Or, at least that’s what I suspect, as I don’t own a rake. I broke the push broom we inherited with the house and have yet to replace it. A small household broom, it turns out, is powerless against more than a few straggling leaves.
Luckily, before I broke the push broom, I bought a leaf blower, so I have that. As a first time blower owner, I bought the absolute cheapest one available, for $18 from Home Depot. Maybe a nicer one would be better, but I won’t know until this one, which works just fine, breaks. Moving large quantities of leaves around a windy street with just a crappy leaf blower and a conventional household broom is not ideal, but like many other tasks performed with the incorrect tools, there can be an art to it that feels like it approaches grace.
I’ll save a detailed elaboration of my methods, (other pile heads and blower buffs, hit me up, let’s talk shop), but I’ll tell you this: much like eating an ice cream cone on a hot summer day, moving an enormous quantity of leaves with nothing but a blower in the wind is a task where the natural center of attention seems to be the middle, but if you’re not mindful of the edges, you’ll end up with a huge mess. The general M.O. when making a pile with just a blower and a broom, is that you move with the blower, and shape with the broom. If you think of your leaf pile as a work of art on par with an elaborate graffiti mural, you can think of the blower and the broom as nozzle sizes. You might use the blower like a Rusto Fat Cap to fill in the broad shape of the piece, but in order to put in the details that evoke it’s true essence, you’ll need to use the smaller broom, the Banana Skinny of leaf manipulation.
A good pile has two core components, the mound and the moat. You already know what the mound is, it’s where all the leaves go. But, the moat is equally important. The moat is a space of unobstructed asphalt between the mound and the sidewalk, about the width of one of your Blundstones. If your pile abuts the curb, some stragglers might blow from the top onto the sidewalk, or new leaves that fall will spill over. The moat prevents this. In order to maintain a sightly pile, your moat will require daily moat maintenance. No need to be alarmed, this task can be performed with your foot. With the tip of your boot, simply scootch any leaves in the moat to the pile, and with the side of your boot, press them in. Voila.
An important fact to remember while making a leaf pile is that the leaves just want to be with their friends. Once you get them together, they’re not really gonna split up, despite what my neighbor Dave says. I trusted Dave at first because he’s old and he always wears an ancient Dickie’s shirt from the “lawn manicure” business he worked for before he retired, so I assume he knows about leaves. He always tells me that a big gust of wind might come and blow my pile away, but even on really windy days, a leaf pile mostly stays together, because just like you and me, the leaves just wanna hang out with their friends.
This brings up the one big con to making leaf piles, which is that men will feel compelled to talk to you while you do it. I don’t mean Dave, he’s my friend. He has a blotchy old tattoo on his forearm of a banner that looks like the kind of souvenir a lot of men his age brought back from the Korean war, except one time I got close enough to read it, and you know what it said? “I Believe In Dragons. Why Don’t You?” So sick. He has a dog named Roxy the Boxer and he invited me to come shooting at his gun club. A good sort, Dave. But other men talk to you when you make a leaf pile and inevitably most of them will not be a good sort. I find that wearing headphones helps, but as anyone who has ever worn headphones in an attempt to deter men who want to talk to them already knows, this is far from foolproof.
Don’t let this be an impediment. There are magic moments when making a leaf pile on a windy corner with nothing but the cheapest leaf blower as a tool, when it seems like the wind is not only not blowing against you, but actively and deliberately helping. At these times, it feels like the boundary between woman and nature is more porous than it might be in the typical day-to-day. It’s ironic because the task is trying to contain a natural mess to fit into our conception of orderliness, but I’m telling you, that’s how it feels. I think this is probably why people like to go sailing.
Many readers will find my description of this task odious, and that’s okay. Not everyone has the temperament of a pile maven. For me, pile making is nestled right in a sweet spot alongside tackling a big sink full of dishes—daunting but ultimately finite, repetitive but not tedious, physical but not taxing, and the result is that your environment is altered in a small but noticeable way. It’s the perfect kind of tough-seeming but ultimately achievable goal that can really put the pep back in my step when I’m feeling beaten down by the world. And who isn’t these days? Maybe it won’t have the curative properties it does for me, but all I’m saying is give piles a chance.
THROWING BLUEBERRIES AT YOGURT
This is something I might categorize as a “life hack.” Every morning, I eat a bowl of yogurt with granola, and most mornings, I add blueberries. For years, my order of operations was: put the yogurt in the bowl, pour some granola on top, add a couple bloobs, mix it all around. But, at some point during quarantine, trying to entertain Becca in the widening expanse of 2020’s one endless day, I smeared the yogurt flat and then called her over. “Hey check this out.”
When she arrived, I picked up a blueberry between two fingers and threw it with as much force as a flick of my wrist could muster, straight into the field of slimy fermented milk. The result was that the blueberry really stuck in place. Imagine a meteorite crashing into a snowy meadow, or feel free to head to colinhagendorf.com/yogurthack for a short illustrative video.
I threw another blueberry, which plopped into the yogurt with a satisfying, wet thud. Becca was delighted. I handed her a blueberry. “Wanna try?”
Since then, I throw blueberries at yogurt every morning. It’s an intensely satisfying activity, simple and joyous. I hope this doesn’t come across as too twee, but there’s something so nice about building a moment of playfulness into your morning routine, a brief and semi-private respite from the responsibilities of the adult world without going full-throttle into the insipid, infantilization of wearing Steven Universe t-shirts or listening to folk punk. A perfect balance.
ASK A SHMUCK
Dear Shabby,
How do I cope with all this uncertainty? Will I ever rock again? I miss shows.
Sincerely, Antisocial Divastancing
Antisocial D,
I’ve been joking since March that punk really prepared us for so much of life during the pandemic. As the last vestiges of civil society began to melt down and the culture of US capitalism was revealed for the craven power struggle that it’s been all along, people in my social circle were saddened but unsurprised. The US has been a death cult since Day 1, so when the shit hit the fan last spring, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work redistributing resources, building mutual aid networks, establishing community fridges in our neighborhoods.
But there’s one aspect of this Historic Moment that punk left us woefully unprepared for—the solitude. The communitarian anarchism that lays the groundwork for almost all of my politics, and possibly yours as well, is collective. It’s like Emma Goldman said, “maybe partying will help.” But, what to do when we can’t party?
There was that one afternoon where everyone got together to watch some herb call out Nader from Haram and we were all glued to Instagram live. Nader was in the wrong, that much was obvious, but it became clear that the nerd was mostly mad because one time Nader hadn’t texted them back. Not only was almost everyone I know riveted as the discussion was happening, it also provided fuel to countless group chats for weeks. We don’t talk often about the social function that totally hopeless herbs play by bringing us all together to roast them. Maybe, when this is all over, there should be a holiday where we thank them for their service?
But, the events of that one magical afternoon were like a rainbow—fleeting, nearly impossible to replicate intentionally—how else can we sustain our need to socialize at a time when being together is impossible? Personally, I’ve been writing letters and talking on the phone at a rate I haven’t since high school. I also signed up to be a phone buddy with SAGE Connect, a service that sets up homos and our allies with isolated queer elders to talk on the phone with. Every Wednesday morning, I video chat with my friend Miss D, and it’s a delight. She lives in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn and keeps me up-to-date on which local businesses have been replaced with chain stores. For me, talking to Miss D is not just a fun chat with a sophisticated older woman, but a tangible way to connect with a different generation of trannies. Since we’ve started to video chat, we’ve begun to watch short films together that relate to trans history, so if you have any suggestions, let me know!
SAGE has offered their calling service for years, but during quarantine the volunteer-pool ballooned because suddenly, everyone was isolated and in need of connections, not just elders. Phone hotlines like this have existed for ages because they work. I look forward to my SAGE call every week, which means it not only provides me with a moment of connection and respite from loneliness, but also a fixed point in the future where something good will happen.
Punks are also finding ways to approximate the experience of hanging out. Some friends here in Pittsburgh have a weekly cable access-style music show called Beyond Damaged which features live sets and interviews with bands, plus plenty of footage of the hosts goofing off. It’s great, and feels like being at a show in that I usually start looking at my phone while the band is still playing, which says more about me than it does about Beyond Damaged. The truth is I don’t care about live music. I just love hanging out. Luckily, that’s an itch the interviews and the goofin’ really scratch.
Some of my most contented moments have been sitting quietly at a party listening to other people chat, and I find that podcasts can verge on feeling like I’m privy to an intimate convo. Regular readers will know that I don’t typically shill for my own work in this column, but I’ve heard from multiple people that they’ve been especially enjoying my podcast, Life Harvester Radio, in quarantine because it feels like being around friends hanging out. I’m flattered, and I can relate, because I get similar satisfaction from Nicole J. Georges’ Sagittarian Matters. Nicole chats breezily with friends about vegan food, comics, and whatever else they want. She’s funny and quick-witted (when asked by one guest, for instance, if she was afraid of getting electrocuted by her plug-in Hitachi, she quipped, “live by the sword, die by the sword”) and the guests are mostly people she’s known for years, so their conversations have the rapport of long-term friendship. I also love two comedy podcasts: Bodega Boys with Desus & Mero, and Double Threat with Julie Klausner & Tom Scharpling. I typically don’t like comedy podcasts. But, in both of these cases, the hosts are actual best friends and their chemistry is electric. There’s something so satisfying to me about hearing people really delight in each other’s company.
Is any of this as good as hanging out with your friends? Not even close. Hanging out is literally the best thing in the world. But, like, think of it like this: if you were out walking one day and fell down a sinkhole into a pit full of rats and you were trapped down there, you’d ring the sweat out of the armpits of your t-shirt or chew on your belt or whatever to survive, right? You wouldn’t think your sweat was an ice cold Ting and your belt was an ackee patty, but you’d know that if you could stay alive until you were rescued, you might be able to enjoy Ting and patties again. You get what I’m saying, Antisocial? This moment is about figuring out how to survive because there might be a generator show under a bridge we want to go to in 2022.
As for whether or not you’ll ever rock again, I’m not Walter Mercado so I can’t say anything with certainty, but I fucking hope so.
Xo, Shabby
Head to colinhagendorf.com/shmuck to submit your own question.
GUEST COLUMN: MISS D’S MOVIE MADNESS
Brooklyn native, Miss D, is a social butterfly. From drag performances at Peter Rabbit’s in the 80s, to gossiping with her friends at the LGBT Center in Chelsea, Miss D loves to get in the mix. Her favorite shade of lipstick is fire engine red, her favorite song is Shirley Bassey's “This Is My Life,” and her favorite TV show is Jerry Springer. She says “there’s something about watching those people yell at each other that releases my anxiety.” Miss D is an avid movie buff and this month she’s here to tell us about some of her favorite films.
I WANT TO LIVE! (1958, dir. Robert Wise) Susan Hayward plays San Francisco widow-slayer Barbara Graham in this dark drama. The power of Hayward’s performance of Graham’s descent from a carefree, bar-hopping, lady-of-the night, to a tortured death row inmate is devastating. A high point of the film was Graham’s courtroom betrayal by a jailhouse stool pigeon. Susan Hayward won “Best Lead Actress” at the 31st Academy Awards for her performance.
MADAME X (1966, dir. David Lowell Rich) Lana Turner plays Holly Parker, the wife of a senator (remember that guy from Dynasty? He played her husband) who accidentally kills her lover (Ricardo Montalbán) and is blackmailed by her mother-in-law (Constance Bennett) in this stylish and thrilling film. A glossy and tense drama about the love between men and women, mothers and sons. From the wardrobe, to the set design, Madame X is a feast for the eyes.