END OF A PROFOUNDLY STRANGE ERA

Our curious and semi-reclusive neighbor, owner of a small herd of goats, amateur pipe organist, and proprietor of Our Creator School of Surviving Skills (among many other businesses) has apparently been evicted from his property.

I came home from work today to find the road adjacent to ours blocked off by a police car, and a HazMat truck, along with several other official vehicles, lining the road. I snagged my camera and came outside to join my neighbors and a gaggle of onlookers from the nearby tattoo shop as they watched the proceedings from a rise overlooking the property. It had been snowing off and on all day, with more snow in the forecast later that night, and the sky had the heavy quality it takes on before a storm. The wind was up, and I had left my hat and gloves inside in my hurry.

Rumors that the property had been sold have been circulating in our neighborhood since we arrived in mid-2006. "He should be gone any day now," our landlord told us when we toured the house.

"I heard he hasn't paid his taxes in years, and the city auctioned off his property," one neighbor told us.

"He's armed to the teeth in there," another neighbor said. "He threatened to shoot my dog."

Despite the unsavory rumors circulating about him, we never had any trouble with the Goat Man. We waved when we saw him, pointed out goats that had escaped, listened through our open windows to his organ music in the summer, and sometimes wandered into the kitchen at 1:30 a.m. to find him welding something in the far corner of his yard.

For us, he was a harmless curiosity. But for our neighbors, who have their property values to think of, and for the city, which is missing out on some serious revenue for a prime piece of real estate, he was a menace and a nuisance.

I arrived on the scene just in time to see a tow truck haul away a large silver bus, which I previously thought had been permanently immobilized. After that, an Animal Services officer retrieved a large white cat from the house. The coup de grace was the removal of the goats (not pictured - my camera ran out of batteries and my fingers were numb), which were loaded into a livestock trailer.

Our neighbors were in a celebratory mood. The woman who owns the once-threatened dog chatted with the police officer stationed in the corner of the yard nearest her house, the young couple across the street smiled in anticipation of no longer smelling the goats, and our downstairs neighbor called our landlord to share the good news.

Jeremy and I were feeling a bit more melancholy and wistful about the goats' departure. As I said, we've never minded them. In fact, I liked watching them on summer mornings as I drank my tea, and I looked forward with an anarchic glee to shocking new house guests with the view from our kitchen window. In a way, I knew the goats better than some of my human neighbors, so I'll miss them now that they're gone.

I suppose the goats really will be better off once they're moved to a farm where they'll have more room to graze and roam. And I suppose the city and our neighbors will be better off with someone more stable and conventional living next door. Still, I can't help feeling that our neighborhood has become a bit more gentrified and a bit less singular with the departure of the Goat Man and his herd.

GRATUITOUS HEDGEHOG VIDEO

Just Renfield, hanging out and being a scaredy-hedge.

And engaging in his favorite pastime, "tubing."

WE LOVE THE MOON!

A view of last night's lunar eclipse, from our porch:

I read today that the next lunar eclipse visible in North America will be in 2010. That made me wish my good old Canon Rebel G had been working, because I could have used my nice zoom lens and tripod to get some better pictures. Unfortunately, it was out of batteries, so I had to use our digital workhorse instead. The pictures are blurry, but you get the idea. Hooray celestial bodies!

EMO MEETS PUNK

I was on the local university campus today for a meeting, and as I was going along the walkway above one of the older dormitories, I saw a curious bit of graffiti. Someone had spray painted the word "ennui" in large, green, cursive letters on the side of the building.

Now, my town has it's share of peculiar graffiti, from the pure art that adorns the underside of bridges to the seemingly innocuous and singularly neo-hippie "Yoni" that shows up on the sides of local businesses. But ennui? Doesn't the act of tagging a building run counter to the very nature of ennui? How listless and disinterested can you be if you're willing to engage in that classic act of rebellion? Ennui involves lying a-bed, reading small volumes of poetry and contemplating the meaningless nature of life, not committing misdemeanors.

So I'm left to ponder: was this a particularly clever joke perpetrated by a drunk English major, or a classic case of college emo kids trying to show off a vocabulary that they haven't fully grasped yet? I want to believe it's the former, but my past experiences with the residents of this particular dorm lead me to fear it's the latter.

SMALL LUXURIES

I've haven't been having the best week, despite Valentine's Day and some unseasonably nice, global-warming induced weather. I'm taking the rest of the afternoon off to indulge in some small pleasures. Of course, most of these are food-related, because non-food related material pleasures such as mud baths and hot-air balloon rides are cost-prohibitive.

CHOCOLATE-COVERED STRAWBERRIES

Last night, we had our friend Cory over for a Nosferatu/Shadow of the Vampire double feature, wine, and dessert. Since Cory took charge of dessert on our last movie night, I decided to make some chocolate-covered strawberries.

These are too delicious for words, and surprisingly easy to make. You will need:

* 1 lb. strawberries

* 1 bag chocolate chips (I splurged and got Ghiradelli)

* oven and small saucepan

* wax paper or tin foil

If you have a double boiler, more power to you. If not, you can do what I did and heat the chocolate chips in a small saucepan at the lowest heat setting your oven allows. Allow the chocolate to melt. Wash the strawberries in cold water and dry them before dipping them into the chocolate. Water and chocolate do not mix. After you have a thin coating of chocolate on the strawberries, set them on a sheet of wax paper to cool. If you're cheap and a no-good cook like me, I've found that tin foil works nearly as well as wax paper for this purpose.

FUN WITH GRENADINE

The other week, Jeremy decided he wanted to make a Roy Rogers, a classic soda shop drink involving Coca-Cola and that sticky, cherry-flavored syrup of the gods, grenadine. Since we also had some Sprite hanging around in our refrigerator, I decided to make a Shirley Temple (also involving grenadine) for myself.

What followed was a powerful demonstration of the importance of taste to sense-memory. As soon as I took a sip of my Shirley Temple, I was four years old, sitting with my grandfather in an empty restaurant in the middle of the day, drinking the same concoction out of a tiny red cocktail straw and waiting for my mother to come back from somewhere. I felt incredibly sad, but I don't know if that was because adult me remembered that my grandfather died almost eight years ago, or because four-year-old me had been sad while we were waiting for my mother to return.

Jeremy and Cory had similar, but less depressing, reactions. Each of us remembered some small, otherwise unimportant corner of our childhood, when we had tasted one of these drinks.

Being young and precious as we are, we quickly progressed to developing alcoholic versions of both drinks. We mixed rum into the Roy Rogers, and re-christened it the John Barrymore. The Shirley Temple became the Drew Barrymore after the application of a small amount of vodka. Now all we have to do is wait another twenty years to make drinks and see if we can remember that night in our kitchen.

HIGH TEA

My dear old dad, who works for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, made a trip to India several months ago, and sent us some super nice teas for Christmas. (You can see a very cool multimedia presentation on the trip here, and read one of my favorite in a series of articles he wrote here.)

We were thrilled, but sadly unprepared for the boxes of loose-leaf tea. We already had a kettle, since Jeremy and I long since abandoned our coffee machine in favor of a French press. What we needed was a teapot for infusing the tea, and a strainer so we could drink it without getting a mouthful of leaves.

We found a very simple teapot at The Lazy Susan, a kitchen consignment shop on Haywood Road in West Asheville, and the rest of our supplies at World Market. The first pot of tea we made was a life changing experience. I'm afraid our brief foray into the world of good tea may have ruined me on American teabags the same way visiting Europe ruined me forever on American coffee. One one hand, I've found the equation for the perfect morning: nice tea + local honey + organic milk = Heaven. On the downside, it's going to be hard to go back to plain old orange pekoe after tasting the Platonic ideal of tea.

But, like everything else on my list, nice tea wouldn't be a luxury if it were in plentiful supply. As soon as you can have luxuries any day of the week, you stop enjoying them.

I HEART COLIN MELOY

I found out last week that Colin Meloy, the frontman for one of my favorites bands ever, The Decemberists, is going to be playing in town this coming April 11th. The Decemberists haven't played here since 2005, when they hit dizzying heights of success in the indie rock world. I don't know if the show will be quite the same without Chris Funk maneuvering a paper mache whale head through the audience, or Jenny Conlee on the accordion, but we'll take what we can get.

Jeremy and I will be taking my little sister Rachel to the show, since she'll be 16 by April and old enough to get into The Orange Peel that night. Shhh. . . don't tell her, though. It's a super secret birthday surprise (no, she doesn't read the blog).

A LETTER TO SEN. JOHN EDWARDS

At the suggestion of my local Obama support organization, I wrote a letter to former Senator John Edwards asking him to endorse Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sen. Edwards dropped out of the race just last week and has yet to endorse either Clinton or Obama.

Since it's the eve of the Democratic primaries in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington, and the Virgin Islands, and there are many more states yet to come, I'd like to share my letter to Sen. Edwards with you:

Dear Senator Edwards,

As one of your former constituents and a resident of North Carolina, I would like to ask you to endorse Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for president.

I last had occasion to write to you in 2002, in the weeks leading up to the Iraq war, when two of my friends and I delivered a petition to your Asheville office requesting that you withdraw your support for the resolution authorizing military force in Iraq. Your staff received us cordially and listened to our concerns, but in the end, our small collection of signatures was not enough to make much of an impression next to the Bush administration’s campaign of disinformation.

I understand that since then you, like so many of my friends and family members, have come to recognize the mistake we made in invading Iraq – the terrible loss of life and waste of resources – as well as the necessity of bringing home our troops before the situation spirals further out of control. I respect you greatly for acknowledging that we need to dramatically alter our approach to Iraq and international relations in general.

With your voice for withdrawal from Iraq no longer a part of the Democratic race, we need a candidate who is equally committed to bringing home our troops. I realize Senator Obama’s plan for withdrawal would not bring our troops home as rapidly as your own, but I believe that he has thoroughly considered the logistics and ramifications of withdrawal, and is as committed to bringing our troops home and stabilizing the region as yourself. His ability to recognize the Bush administration’s unfounded accusations about weapons of mass destruction as what they were from the beginning, along with the realistic plan for withdrawal he has laid out give me confidence that he has the judgment necessary to lead our nation in foreign affairs.

I am not scandalized by Senator Obama’s pronouncement that he would speak to the leaders of enemy nations. Yes, his stance goes against Washington’s common wisdom, but that same common wisdom has ensnared us in an unwinnable war abroad. We cannot live and thrive in the world by hiding our heads in fear of those outside our borders. We will never convince our enemies of our point of view unless we face them, and we will never understand why they remain our enemies unless we speak to them. I believe Senator Obama has the courage and strength to represent our country faithfully and well, even to those who have set themselves against us.

Since I last wrote to you, I have gone from a being single college student to a married woman and primary breadwinner for my household. Although I have been a part of the workforce since I was 16, I now work both a full and part time job to support our family. My husband also works approximately 30 hours per week in addition to attending school full time in pursuit of a teaching degree. Despite this, we still live paycheck to paycheck. Health care costs eat up nearly 16% of my monthly income, and wages have not kept up with the price of housing in our small, metropolitan area. After working for over two years for his current employer, my husband makes only $7.50 per hour. Yet, we are lucky compared to our coworkers who have been caught up in the sub-prime mortgage disaster, our two very dear friends who are on the verge of losing their family-owned house painting business because of our faltering economy, or our friends who have no health care coverage whatsoever.

I write about these things because I know you care deeply about the middle class. I know you want to eliminate poverty and make our country a place of opportunity for everyone. Senator Obama’s promise to repeal tax cuts for the wealthy few, and restore sanity and fiscal responsibility to our budget tells me that he holds the same priorities. So does his commitment to creating new jobs, making health care affordable for everyone, and improving our educational system.

When I fear that none of us will find a way to make life better for our families and our world, I think of what Senator Obama means for me, my country, and the world, and I begin to feel the hope that his campaign speaks about. “Hope” is not just a catchphrase for me. It is an emotion that no political candidate or cause has ever made me feel before. Please, help me hold onto it.

* * *

If you'd like to send a letter to Sen. Edwards, too, you can visit the "contact us" page on his web site here, and send an electronic message.

You can also mail a letter to:
John Edwards for President
410 Market Street
Suite 400
Chapel Hill, NC 27516

Or call/fax him:
Phone: (919) 636-3131
Fax: (919) 967-3644

If you're a Democrat and are wondering when your state's primary will be held, click here for a nifty little chart from The New York Times.