#455, Valencia Glen Park
Running around for a couple of hours playing tennis contributes to a steady state of ebullience.
#456 Sequoia Park, Monterey Park
I wrote my daughters a letter all about the chunkiness of the pozole and how happy about their birthday I felt while playing tennis.
#457 Belvedere Park, East LA
I can go wherever and do whatever I want. I feel the thrill of this privilege and also a responsibility for making the most of it while I can.
#459 Culver City West
The mural shows a grandstand of colorfully attired people cheering you on even though you do plop balls down right in the middle of the court…
#462 Darby Park, Inglewood
I might have dug down for some extra “You’re better than that, let’s prove it” type of grit…
#463 — Farnsworth Park, Altadena
Pickleball looks like playing ping pong standing on the table. How could you not like that?
#464 — Heritage Park, Valencia
“You taught me a lesson today,” said the guy I was playing tennis with yesterday.
#465 Panorama City Rec Center
“It’s ironic that I’m near the beginning of my tennis journey and you’re — you have so much experience.”
#466 Nibley Park, Glendale / Kabab Way
Los Angeles spends much of the day looking grim, but dawn continues to be rosy.
#467 North Hollywood Rec Center / NoHo Diner
I wondered if I should say anything to the other passengers, and decided that would make me just another crazy person yelling at the people who simply want to mind their own business and get where they’re going.
UPDATE: Mar Vista Rec
I used to think these courts were schleppy, but now I think of Mar Vista as a welcoming tennis habitat.
#468 El Cariso Park, Sylmar / Tacos El Vampiro
Traveling to Sylmar was my way of sailing to the edge of the world.
#469 Sunland Rec Center / Casita Tacos Al Carbon
As I’m gobbling down these far-flung tacos, I am sometimes visited by the spirit of Jonathan Gold, who savors all the flavors I simply devour.
#470 Loma Alta Park, Alta Dena / El Patron
Taking in the overall state of your fellow bus passengers is similar to being a teacher in the classroom as students are filing in except that on the bus, you must also be on the alert for dangerous lunatics.
#471 Reed Park, Santa Monica / Yagul
Usually tennis balls, when they stick in the fence, are ankle to waist high. These balls were a good ten feet up there, and they had been there a while because that screaming neon green had faded to gray.
#472 – Barrington Park / Modelo
There are a lot of people walking around in America with superior attitudes that have absolutely no basis in reality, and I regret to say that especially as a doubles partner, I am one of them.
#473 Balboa Tennis Center / Sugar Taco
I mightta been a little delirious but nothing too heat-stroke-y. I’m not gonna let things get that out of hand.
#474: Holly Park, Hawthorne / a kindness
One of my rules is I have to be a sober gopher while on the quest so as to bring back a reliable report.
#476 — Rawley Park, Gardena / Rico’s Tacos El Tio
One of the many things I like about this tennis quest is that I get to make all the rules, which means I also get to break them.
#477 Brace Canyon Park / La Bamba
The balls went bouncy, bouncy, bounce and we bounced along with them, having pure fun.
#478 Redondo Union High School (Lower Courts) / La Playita
Jumping is fun, but if you land on flat feet then you’re literally right back where you started.
#479 Loyola Marymount / Benny’s
I was under the delusion that you got some mulligans for unsporting behavior in team tennis, though this has never been the case in sports or in life, either.
#480: Van Nuys Sherman Oaks Rec Center / HomeState
I’m on a quest to play tennis on every free public tennis court in Los Angeles. This was my daughter’s idea, which is one of the many reasons why I like it. I have, over a 20-year LA tennis career, played on about two dozen different courts. And by courts, I mean the entire facility. …
The Mushroom Farmer, Book 4, Chapter 9
Treating water as precious: one of the MF’s goals. He has bathwater waiting to be sump-pumped out of his bathtub.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book 4, Chapter 8
Here’s how you grow mushrooms in a textbook. First, you pour boiling water on the textbook, for purification.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book 4, Chapter 7
It’s one of those cases where you dream a dream for so long that it takes a while to realize it is now reality.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book 4, Chapter 5
Just as Yawning Tardy No Computer Kid did a good job analyzing diction in Salvage the Bones, so too is the one single dinosaur kale plant doing a good job of unfolding broad crinkly deep green leaves.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book 4, Chapter 4
He made one yum-yum-yum dinner the first night, mushrooms in a nice sauce with bowtie pasta, like climbing Everest without the cold and climb, just the achievement.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book 4, Chapter 3
It is as though an octopus has occupied the foot of the orange tree. Here is life and intelligence of a different order, all the more alive and bright for being different.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Four, Chapter 2
To be in the presence of a ready-to-fruit Chestnut mushroom block is to feel presence of a great and wild Otherlyness.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book 4, Chapter 1
The mf is now 60 years old and he is not climbing trees willy-nilly anymore.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book 3, Chapter 14
Before the mf left, he was frantic to weed Row 6, which was choked with crabgrass. The crabgrass in particular recalled the zig-zag stitches of Frankenstein’s monster, that lonesome and vicious brute. Row 6 altogether made the mf feel the sharp-tooth wound of raising a miscreant. It was neither this nor that. Yes, nigella thrived…
The Mushroom Farmer, Book 3, Chapter 13
The chickens really liked the home-grown oats the mf and his grown-up daughter took turns flinging upon the compost heap.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book 3, Chapter 12
He would like to stick his face right up to where he has planted corn and scream, “Why won’t you grow!”
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Three, Chapter 9
The mf had plenty of opportunity to observe billowing clouds and blue-blue sky because there were no kids performing antics or sulking, and all the grown-ups were standing around dumbstruck by the emptiness.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Three, Chapter 8
The mf was still getting used to the single sunbeam glinting off the angelic-looking woman’s short blonde hair and reflecting her calmly cheerful demeanor but not her tactfully invisible angel wings and harp.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Three, Chapter 6
Ghost pumpkin seedlings looked down on the mf from vegetable heaven. They shook their first true leaves and called him names.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Three, Chapter 5
Isn’t it funny how the mf, alone among humankind, ignores the answers that are right in front of him.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Three, Chapter 4
“I do my best,” he protested. “I try hard.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “But you don’t know what you’re doing.”
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Three, Chapter 3
The first words that come to mind when reporting on the mf and his 7th period’s tofu-and-broccoli stir-fry lesson are: “OH THE JOY.”
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Three, Chapter 2
The mf thinks, “It’s okay, this will teach them that science is built on failure.” However, this is not a history of science class. It’s an ELD class, where you’re supposed to be building well-defined skills such as supporting a claim with details.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Three, Chapter 1
You could look at the side garden as a cornucopia; you could also look at it as a mess. The mf thinks of this as versatility while also worrying if he will ever be a serious farmer. I personally think it is good for him to do a bit of worrying as a sort of…
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Two, Chapter 8
The mf held onto a one percent hope that beneath the shriveling brown strips of banana tree bark, he would find the lost city of Atlantis as represented by a thriving colony of Champagne Oyster mushrooms
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Two, Chapter 7
I can see him now, the last lingering emanations of sunset fading, faded; the mf still out in the wayback of the yard, getting repeated facefuls of chicken wing while struggling to secure the temporary coop.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Two, Chapter 6
For years the raised beds have been a dismal gray dusty failure zone, inhospitable to carrot, beet, potato; acrimonious to buckwheat, oat, alfalfa.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Two, Chapter 5
With Walden, the mf has abandoned his beloved practice of looking things up and simply inserts “antiquated tool, carved from wood.” Even if he understood, he wouldn’t understand.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Two, Chapter Four
Clucky, the prettiest hen; Clucky of the golden feather necklace; Clucky the most chill bird…
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Two, Chapter 3
The penumbrae came upon the mf suddenly, along with immediate understanding they had been with him ever since he became alive. “That’s a prismatic lens flare,” the mf’s self-dispensing optometrist spoke into his ear. “Very much so,” observed the mf’s True Inner Self, the Standard-Bearing mf among the many varietals of personality inhabiting his brainpan.…
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Two, Chapter 3
Oh silly mf. He could easily be doing the dance of the fulfilled right now!
The Mushroom Farmer, Book Two, Chapter 2
The mushroom farmer is eager to discover if his chickens have survived the deluge.
The Mushroom Farmer, Book 2, Chapter 1
The broccoli seedlings he had put out for the taking were all taken, and so too were the carrots, gone-gone. Somebody else in the neighborhood now had a more verdant garden. That’s a huge light-attractor for the mf, and so is the vivid orange and blue combination of the few remaining oranges at the bottom…
The Mushroom Farmer, Chapter 22
The mf is a birthday balloon flying away and away and away, transforming from lost toy to miracle of flight to speck in sky to nothing. Come back, mf! We need you!
The Mushroom Farmer, Chapter 21
He had a renewed sense of purpose now: to make his sidewalk produce giveaway better than the neighbors’.
The Mushroom Farmer, Chapter 20
Openly hoping for a reunion with his Black Doppelganger, the mf decides to plant lettuce in the parkway. So he loads the wheelbarrow with compost from way back in the chicken coop, adds a healthy bucket of worm soil, tops it off with coconut fiber and trundles to the front of his house. “Back to…
The Mushroom Farmer, Chapter 18
Say this for the mf, he had spotted the bedraggled purple cauliflowers and delicately transplanted them into this spot where they were now not merely unbedraggled but also thriving, thriving, thRivNG on a cold peak COVID-19 pandemic Southern California winter morning of more clouds than sun; rain hanging in air barely mid-50 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Mushroom Farmer, Chapter 17
Oh, the ramshackliness. Mid-torrent, the mf had struggled mightily to erect a shelter for his drenched hens. Plan A had not panned out. The hens were so wet, they were walking chicken soup. How they felt about being so wet was, the mf inferred, perturbed. They would like not to be this wet nor so…
The Mushroom Farmer, Chapter 16
Additional fallen Canary Island date palm fronds are required for the chicken coop, where the hens got drenched overnight in a lightning storm centered a few miles to the south of the cozy bed in which the mf kept his little doggie Blip company during the thunder. Blip quivered but did not shudder, comforted as…
The Mushroom Farmer, Chapter 12
Things happen and continuing happening; for example, after further machete action upon long, long, 12-feet or longer poinsettia stalks, the mf cuts a poinsettia bouquet for Marfa. She loves and cares for flowers, it would not surprise the mf un poquito if Marfa nurtures each of the machete-cut stalks in peat moss or other starter…
The Mushroom Farmer, Chapter 11
“It’s raining,” said the mf to their friend Marfa, who was cleaning their oven. Oh Marfa: she cleaned like the wind, as neighbor Agnes had rightly declared. Marfa looked up in surprise and doubt. Mr. mf was always joking. What did he mean? But this time it really was raining. You could see the splashes…
The Mushroom Farmer, Chapter Ten
The pandemic on the day before Christmas Eve on the mf’s inner exurban sidewalk in Los Angeles is no joke. Everybody within 20 feet of each other — and no one comes any closer — says a hello that implies, Godspeed. It feels holy to say hello to your neighbors when you live in the…
The Mushroom Farmer, Chapter 9
Maybe next time, the mf would remember to till the soil before planting. Why did he forget this time? Oh, this pandemic has people in a tizzy, even people who seem not to be in a tizzy.
The Mushroom Farmer, Chapter 8
Things have happened. Big things; little things: things. For example, mushrooms have started growing. Not the golden oyster mushrooms, which the mf planted earlier in the week to much inner fanfare on dead bamboo leaves wrapped in a one-ply plastic shroud. He has checked beneath the shroud, once, inobtrustively, not to seem in a rush.…
The Mushroom Farmer, Chapter 7
He can’t possibly think that 100 pounds of fruit would feed two million hungry people indefinitely — can he?
The Mushroom Farmer, Chapter 6
The mf’s go-to ethical rule of thumb is that we don’t have to repair the entire world, but we have to do our part.
Is the mf doing his part?
The Mushroom Farmer, Chapter 5
There could be no mistaking the mf’s excitement about impregnating dead, soaking wet banana leaves with golden oyster mushroom spawn. He was all but twitching. Grinning, yes. Beaming, yes. Agog is a good way of putting it. He had covered the soggy dead bamboo leaves with a plastic sheet to help keep them moist. Now…
The Mushroom Farmer — Prelude — Kentucky is a Brooder
Sometimes she lets me scratch her neck. I get in there under the feathers and sure enough, her neck is thin but I don’t think of it as scrawny. I think of it as lifeline.