I just returned from five days on the farm. I cleared fallen limbs and branches, started painting the stage and ate more meat than any man (or woman for that matter) should.

The weather couldn’t have been nicer if I’d made it myself. Every day was rain-free. The few clouds were more picturesque than threatening.

I watched my first bull testing, a process so graphic everyone should be made to watch it. The smells…musky bull, earth, shit, and something else I won’t even try to describe though it’s the most palpable…more intuitive than sense-oriented. Loud, angry, frightened bulls don’t moo. They scream, honk, howl. They kick and thrust and fall onto their front knees drooling, their enormous mouths flinging spit and snot and occasionally blood in every direction while their heads are held in place by giant metal bars.

I saw a day-old calf, still wet and wobbly. 104 pounds. (I don’t care how big the mom is, that’s gotta be uncomfortable.)

The meadow and the pasture are starting to bud and bloom. It’s invigorating, physically and emotionally. Every time I leave there I wonder when I’ll be able to go back. (I wonder if I would appreciate it as much had I’d grown up there.)

People in “the country” know a lot about their world. More than the people I daily see. Black walnut trees (and how the taste is different from English walnuts), and multiflora rose (apparently invasive and a total nuisance), and garlic chives (growing wild everywhere in clumps and patches).

This wedding is going to be amazing.

100 days to go. Someone asked me the other day why, after all this time, did I feel it was time to ask Penny to marry me. I’m a person who likes specifics. I prefer the rational to the emotional (though anyone who’s seen me watch sports on TV would argue otherwise).

The only answer I can give in full sincerity is that it just felt right. After thinking and weighing (the options…not myself) and wondering and worrying…it simply felt right.

The old cliché is true; when you know you know. And I knew. And fortunately, so did Penny.

Penny and I went up to Richland Center, WI (thank you so much to grampa Ursin, Lois, Allen and Kristi). The clean air and open spaces almost hypnotized us. And Cody and Ebony are the sweetest dogs ever.

We may have finally found our band. Uncle John was kind enough to send us a demo tape, and we liked what we heard. The disc contained acoustic versions of Ain't No Sunshine, I'll Be Around and Hootchie Cootchie Man. The singer's voice was strong and soulful; what more can anyone ask for?

This has nothing to do with the wedding, but I saw the headline and counldn't help but laugh.

Cubs Buy Pagan Contract

Pagan? That could have been me. I thought only the Devil and Newt Gingrich made contracts like this. (Badum boom..tsshhh)

A billboard in an alley in Roger's Park just off Clark Street.

 

Pictures from "family Christmas." (Who knew I would ever write those words in reference to myself?)


 

The old boat house.

 

Stariway to...The lake behind Jim and Molly's house.

 

The beginning of the New Year is always a good time to reflect, and, more importantly, look ahead. (Frankly, though I recognize the arbitrariness of the date, it is nonetheless a legitimate marker of time; like a birthday, or pitchers and catchers arriving at spring training.)

I ask myself: Did I work hard enough this year? (I think I worked hard in many ways, but there’s room for improvement.)

Did I spend enough time writing this year? (I don’t think I did, though I made some progress, completed some projects and made some good connections.)

Am I a better person? (Uh….)

Money is still a concern, though for a short time this past summer I was as financially comfortable as I’d been in a long time. Things are a little tighter now, especially with the additional expenses we’ve acquired. (Our rent went up by over $150 bucks, but that’s more than compensated for by the fact of our dramatically increased space – from 550 sq. ft. to over 1600, coupled with the fact that we just feel more comfortable here. I can’t say enough about having a little personal space, some “elbow room.”)

We bought a car. And insurance.

And, of course, there’s the wedding.

Questions are constant - about myself, about the larger world (seriously now…what the fuck are these idiots doing? And how did they get in charge of most of the countries in the world…especially this one. But that’s a topic for another blog). But for the first time in my life I have no questions about what love is.

I used to think love was conditional. And who wouldn’t think that? Look at the examples: Fifty percent divorce rates. Infidelity reportedly higher than ever. (Women cheat? Who knew?). The You Suck as a Person Industry thriving. (Self-improvement books, plastic surgery, the bastards at the pharmaceutical companies.)

I was lucky in a lot of ways. I can never appreciate enough the amazing example that my parents set for me.

But if I learned nothing else this year, I learned that love is, by it’s very nature, completely unconditional. (Duh!) I’m not going to try and define love, that would be egotistical, woefully inadequate no matter how long, and probably sort of ridiculous, because anyone who knows what love is also knows that the reason everyone writes about it and sings about and talks about it and dreams about it is because its indefinable. If you collected all the artistic works of human history (ballet, sculpture, painting, film, writing, theatre and on and on) that concerned themselves with the idea of love, you would still only be scratching the surface.

I have a lot of concerns (fears?), but not about love.

In more ways than I can (or should) say, Penny is my savior. She’s my messiah, my muse.

I love going up to Michigan.

The drive is like decompression; arrival is like landing.

We climb into our pod (aka our Toyota Matrix, aka "Neo") close the doors and we’re off, shuffling through half-a-dozen CDs (carefully hand-selected). With one stop for gas etc., (all off-ramp gas station/bathroom/foodmart/rest areas feel eerily similar) we arrive in under four hours.

I stretch mightily, shaking off the vaguely catatonic hypnosis from the road (driving is so much like sleepwalking).

Inhale.

I love the way Penny and I talk during the trip. We share space so well, a lucky combination of disposition, circumstance (man, we’ve had some small apartments) and pheromones.

The route feels like time travel. We leave our tightly packed neighborhood - rows of statuesque three flats between squat and sturdy six and eight unit condoplexes. We turn onto what is, for southbound traffic, the beginning of Lake Shore Drive.

The City eventually gives way to some of the most industrial parts of the Midwest. Gary, Indiana still smells like what a lot of the rust belt communities experienced before the advent of clean air standards: Ash, sulphur, sewage, god-know-what else strong enough to make you stick your face in your shirt.

Indiana becomes Michigan, and the hills and trees look manicured, even when leafless. They have the craziest things out there, things from centuries ago, like vineyards, orchards, farms - with very large animals!

Completing our journey back in time, after 180 miles of pavement, the road evaporates, becoming dirt, then gravel.

Inhale.

 

Penny and I spent our first Christmas eve eve as betrothed walking through the Lincoln Park zoo and checking out the zoo lights display. Neither of us had been before. It's actually really cool, and nicely done.
 

From Uncle Jim.

Yes, well that does bring up a conundrum for the eccentric confronted with a new problem, and lacking the determinism of a well worn rut. Of course true eccentrics always travel in ruts, but sooner or later, there comes a fork. Do you turn your loved one into jewelry, or call a taxidermist? Compress their carbon into a crystal, or stretch their skin over an heroic form? Diamonds offer perfect molecular order, but taxidermy has possibilities that plastic surgeons can only dream of. Consider the Jack-a-lope.

And consider the room: is it right for a discreet head mount, a showier shoulder mount, or, as favored by Mediterranean cultures, the whole body mount? The latter offers many more creative choices as one can pose one’s loved one in action. Perhaps on the stair climber, or cooking breakfast, or flopped out on the couch watching a game.

A mind is a terrible thing.

Jim

From my spiritual guru "Uncle" Art (aka Rabbi Lavender):

What will people think of next! Jewish tradition would be dead-set (sorry, couldn’t resist) against this. For one, Jewish tradition is unanimous that the cadaver should be

1) buried whole and untouched
2) as soon as possible after death, usually the very next day (except for Shabbat and holidays)

I think most of us want to believe that we will somehow live on after death. In Jewish tradition we live on in the memories that people have of us, and the good works we have done while we are alive.

Thinking that one’s remains can be turned into a diamond, which according to DeBeers and Ian Fleming are forever, strikes me as an exercise in vanity. So on behalf of Jewish tradition , I thusly proclaim it to be an act not only of vanity, but futility.

I love this time of year. I know, I know...secularist, Jew, liberal...and I still like Christmas time. Well, I guess I didn't get the memo about the "war against Christmas."  

And the plot thickens.

Robert wrote to me and said, "This is from a buddy of mine who is G.I.A. certified, holds a degree in geology from Skidmore, and who's family has owned a very successful jewelry business on Jewelers Row for years. If he says this is bullshit, it’s bullshit.”

While discussing this at work (yes, it has consumed my entire life over the last 72 hours or so) someone brought up the religious implications and we all wondered what different faiths (and sects within those faiths) might have to say about it. I couldn’t help but wonder what this might mean for people who believe in eternal souls…having your “spirit” captured in a rock, like those bad guys at the beginning of Superman II. I’m thinking about going into the cremation diamond business. Maybe I could call it General Zod and Co.

Robert's friend's conclusion was, "What a crock!!"

Curiouser and curiouser.

In one of my recent conversations at work about our upcoming wedding, the topic turned to rings, then diamonds. Someone mentioned that they were going to be turned into a diamond after they died, then made into a necklace so that their dearest (whomever that may turn out to be) could wear her next to their heart.

I was skeptical, then amused, disgusted, fascinated, then sketpical again.

I know they can make artifical diamonds, but from people?

A series of emails began (and continues) among my well informed and very imaginitive friends and relatives. This is why I love them so.

My initial thought was the same (or nearly) as [Jim's]; this has to be a scam. Not one to leave well enough alone (and fueled by a fit of post-work insomnia) I did a little research, most of which will bore everyone. (Except for maybe Jim...and that's one of the things (among many) I appreciate about him.)

Here's the link on the LifeGem site about the process.

For those who don't want to read all of the (admittedly, vague) info, here's the most important part. "After extensive research and development, [whatever that means] we have discovered how to extract the carbon from existing cremated remains." "Once captured, this carbon is heated to extremely high temperatures under special conditions. While removing the existing ash, this process converts your loved one’s carbon to graphite."

Like I said, vague.

Another thing that makes me leery is that it says, "LifeGem diamonds are individually inspected, graded, and identified by world-renowned gemologists trained by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA)."

A careful read here indicates not that they are GIA certified, but that they are "identified" (whatever that means) by gemologists "trained by GIA," which is not the same as being certified by GIA itself.

Searches for "cremation diamonds" and "cremation" on the GIA site turned up nothing.

From Corporate Information Officer magazine titled, “Diamonds (and Grandma) are Forever"
"Carbon leaves the body in the form of carbon dioxide during the cremation process, says Mark Bouffard, a LifeGem spokesman. But a patented process that manipulates the oxygen level in the cremation oven allows the carbon to remain.”

According to wikipedia:
LifeGem claims to use a "carbon curing" container to collect the human remains halfway through the cremation process. The carbon is supposedly converted to graphite after purification, from which point it is sent to a diamond synthesis facility. As of spring 2003 the task of synthesis was given exclusively to Lucent Diamonds of Colorado. The diamonds were made via the thermal gradient method by a team of Russian scientists using iron alloys as a flux at pressures of 5.0–6.0 GPa and temperatures of 1,600–2,000 °C. The entire process, from cremation to finished stone, is said to take about six months.

The wikipedia article also states:
It is important to note that, at present, there is no nondestructive method of testing the origin of carbon used in diamond synthesis: It has yet to be independently verified that LifeGem products (patent pending) are indeed composed—either in part or in whole—of human remains, or if the carbon is from another source.

Interesting tidbits:

Apparently, they originally created the process from pigs. I guess you can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear after all.

A Yahoo! search for"cremation diamonds" returned 183,000 hits.

Lifegem is a member of the Cremation Association of North America (CANA).

From About.com:
Getting the Carbon:
Carbon released during cremation is captured as a dark powder, then heated to produce graphite. The graphite is sent to a lab where it is synthesized into fancy colored diamonds. (I guess if the diamond thing doesn't work for you, you can always use the graphite and make someone into a gross of #2 pencils.)
Skeptical?
LifeGem says it has an open door policy, allowing you to inspect many aspects of their tracking system. The system follows all remains throughout the entire process, from cremation to faceting. They also offer a more advanced type of system that uses special markers to track remains.
Diamonds From Pets?
Yes, the company will produce diamonds from your pet's remains.
Diamond Quality
LifeGem says that its overall quality target is to produce gems at the VVS clarity level (very, very slightly included; very, very slightly imperfect).

So there you have it.

The general consensus among those I emailed is that this process runs from weird to creepy to just plain "sick." Though one friend of mine said she would turn her family into a tiara.

Good luck with that.