perma-freeze culture
In Ithaca, New York, conversation invariably rolls around to the weather. This is partly due to the fact that the weather in Ithaca changes just about every 20 minutes. This metereological anamoly explains why folks walk around in bermuda shorts in the middle of winter and it also explains why 75% of Ithacans can be seen lugging around Aldi's bags. (For the benefit of out-of-towners, Aldi's is a chain of discount grocers that specializes in off- brand canned goods like Chicken of the Lake tuna, Mel Torme pineapple chunks, shit like that.) These folks carry around a change of clothing in those easily recongizable plastic sacks - mittens, parkas, carharts, sun screen lotion, hawaiian shirts, sun glasses, stuff ther're need when the next front rolls in.
The other reason people in Ithaca constantly talk about the weather is that they have nothing else to talk about. Nothing fucking happens in Ithaca to talk about. People who live in the suburbs race home from their jobs to hop on John Deere's and ride around for the next three hours mowing the grass or plowing snow (sometimes in the same day.) Folks in town just go out to bars every night and collect those little round drink tokens. Once a month they round all their tokens and get blitzed, ending up in the emergency room at the hospial to get their stomachs pumped just so they will have something to talk about. There's nothing vaguely resembling culture in Ithaca - at least, not for under $25.00. Theater tickets cost $25, music festival tickets cost $25, movie tickets cost $25 if you take a date and stop for a lae night latte . Who can afford culture in Ithaca on the money you make rolling pizza dough or scraping the remnants of black bean frajitas off a lot of dishes?
Ezra is stretching the truth. People under 25 do talk about something besides the weather in Ithaca. They talk about permaculture. Of course, nobody under 25 has ever fully explained to Ezra what permaculture means either because they don't really know what it means or they just don't feel comfortable talking about it to someone over 25. After all, anybody over 25 knows that, if anything is transitory,it's certainly the culture. This shit is being canned, reinvented, changed, cannibalized, turned inside out, every 5 minutes. Now that isn't a bad thing in and of itself. Think about this way. You grew up in the 1950's listening to Mario Lanza records. Would you want to listen to Mario Lanza records for the rest of your life? Would you want to be frozen in time, constantly reprising the hoola hoop, big tail fins, tv dinners, bouffants that look like bee hives, all of that shit? There are folks that roll around Ithaca trapped in their own private time warps. There are Jerry Garcia look a likes, '60's stoners, '70's-style radicals, Yippie wannabees, '50's conformists, Stalinist holdouts, guys who relive D-Day and collect Nazi paraphanalia, every imaginable type of time-looped specimen going back as far as you want to go. Hey, change is good. What's the story with permaculture anyhow?
Ezra started thinking about this crap driving through Trumansburg Friday morning. There was a big freak snow storm that morning that coated everything with theat cutsey Currier & Ives patina of snow. So it looked just like a post card. Ithaca and environs often resembles a post card which is why folks around here confuse appearance with reality.
Now Trumansburg is one of those picture post card types of towns that blend turn of the century architecture with 60's counterculture. The hippies all settled there back in the late 70's, grew rich, buying up property or running bistros with names like the Rongovian Embassy, the Jack in the Beanstalk Dry Cleaner's, the Cabbage Patch Auto Supply Emporium, you get the drift. In fact, this legendary bar in Trumansburg which really is named the Rongovian Embassy, just reopened after being shut down by the cumulative impact of DWI stakeouts and the death of Jerry Garcia. Dod you know that for a time nobody in Trumansburg could drive because they all had their licenses pulled? Nobody could even get to the Rongovian Embassy unless they lived downtown.
So, on this nasty, cold winter morn, here Ezra is rolling through this too cute for words gemeinschafty little town frozen in time with the 1890's brick facades, the hippie dippie bistros with hand painted signs - past tofu pup millionaires getting out of their BMW's, their pony tails just a bit on the grey side, going into the Ye Olde Coffee Bean or equally trendy homegrown coffee joint for a $3.50 AM cappuchino. Ezra couldn't even afford to rent a parking meter in this town. Fucking A. As they say. If this is what they call permaculture, give Ezra that good old fashioned mass market, out of the package, still evolving culture any old day.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:25 AM
