Seems plain enough, but I love it. In one simple statement, he explains a lifelong fascination with nature.

You see, though Edwin theorized that woodchucks must get their fluids from plant juices, dew and rain, he didn’t *know.* He wasn’t sure. And so, reported Rick Telander in an old article I found yesterday, “he was going to keep watching woodchucks.”

It was so perfect that it forced me to research more on Mr. Teale, who died in 1980.

I found more greatness at Naturewriting.com. It explained his background, how he was born in Joliet, Illinois but spent formative years at his grandparents’ farm in northern Indiana. “Lone Oak” was the place’s name.

I’ll let them take it from here:

“Between his grandfather’s farm and the Indiana dunes grew a field of rye. One summer afternoon, when he was six or seven, Edwin crawled into the dense stalks on his hands and knees. He hollowed out a cave in the rye and lay very still. All day he watched the activities of the creatures around him–ants, beetles, flies, toads, and snakes. He used his imagination to picture life as it appeared to them. He discovered a whole new world, a world unnoticed by most people. He wrote, “Returning home that evening was like landing from a distant voyage of discovery”

That, among a million other experiences, is what I want for Veda.

We will watch woodchucks, kiddo. You’ve got my word on it.

And I’ll admit it’s true. This weekend it was especially true, since Friday was the day Veda turned one and a half years old. I wanted us to celebrate, since half-birthdays are still pretty significant milestones when you’ve only had a handful of the regular kind, and besides, I knew we were going down to Indianapolis for our sister-in-law Niki’s baby shower.

Unfortunately I forgot to schedule a party or anything. But it turned out okay, because no matter what I had planned it probably wouldn’t have been as fun for Veda as:

Going to the Indiana State Fair with Grandpa Kline
Feeding donkeys
Dancing with her cousins, who were crazy about her
Swimming in the baby pool at Aunt Katie’s
Crunching through early-fallen leaves
Dining at Yat’s, her dad’s favorite lunch place
Hunting for toys and treasures at Goodwill

…And a bunch of other fun stuff she actually did end up getting to do this weekend. So it worked out perfectly, and she and I got to drive back up to Winona Lake this afternoon while Penny stayed behind for the shower.

Which left me a little time to put together a video of all my *other* videos, showing just how much fun the little one had on her very first-and-a-half birthday.

Penny and I got this new Brother HL-2170w printer to replace our old inkjet that had been melted by the space heater, and we liked it a lot. (Not the meltage, but the new printer. It’s fast, prints well — if only in black and white — and because it can do its thing wirelessly, I don’t have to look at it. It squats over in another room near the office.)

My affection for the Brother was dimmed mightily yesterday, when it refused to print any more pages until it got a new toner cartridge. The prints didn’t go gray, or splotchy, or anything — just an error message and no more printouts.

Now, the guy at Staples had said this would happen, and soon, so I’d bought an extra toner cartridge already. But still. We’ve had this thing about nine weeks, and printed *maybe* a hundred sheets of paper with it. And the new cartridge was something like $40.

When I opened the box to replace my “starter cartridge,” I saw why it’s so expensive. This little jobber is no plastic pouch of ink; no sir. It’s got a roller, some levers, little plastic gears and tiny clear portholes on each end of the assembly. Can it really be necessary to replace all that just to get some more ink in the printer?

The waste of it bothered me. Here I was going to pull out a mechanism probably more advanced and with more moving parts than the Model T, after it had served its purpose for slightly longer than I can stand on one leg.

“Oh well,” I figured. “At least I can take it back to Staples so Brother can reuse it.”

But most people won’t go to the trouble, I don’t bet. And thus thousands, if not millions, of these TN-330 cartridges, which were carefully designed, precision manufactured and most likely shipped across the Pacific before hopping on an 18-wheeler to make it all the way to the Staples that would sell them, would swiftly be chucked into landfills.

Mottainai.

That’s the Japanese word that springs to mind, and it loosely translates as “a sense of regret concerning waste when the intrinsic value of an object or resource is not properly utilized.”

In English, less elegantly but no less emphatically, we might say, “Ah, sheesh. What a %$&#’n waste.”

And you’d think that Brother Industries Ltd., headquartered in Nagoya, would get that. Maybe they do. There’s an economic reality to selling hundred-dollar printers, and part of that reality these days appears to be that you have to shortchange your customers on an essential part of the product just to keep your prices competitive.

Plus, who knows? Maybe it really is a “scam” to get you to buy more $40 cartridges so that the narrow profit (or even a loss?) on the printer itself is offset. I’m not sure I’m quite that cynical just yet.

But thanks to thochad, the commenter ranked “Most Helpful” on Amazon.com’s page for this product, I don’t have to personally suffer this egregious mottainai.

“There is a clear plastic circle at each end of the toner cartridge. The printer shines a light through to see how full the toner is. Simply cover one of them with a piece of opaque tape, and the printer will think that the toner is full. I’ve already gotten 1500+ pages out of the starter toner that was “empty” at 983, with no difference in printed quality.”

I haven’t tried it yet, but I don’t doubt it will work. Countless other commenters chimed in with success stories.

Still, though. Why did they do it that way? Does the low-toner window-light-thingy preserve the printer’s internal workings? Am I (are we, thochad and his comrades and I) prematurely wearing out our HL-2170s by forcing them to print with depleted toner?

Or are we just getting hundreds of extra uses out of an item that wasn’t really used up at all?

And lastly, do you even care? Or is this post just another example of the dreaded Moe-Tai-Nigh?

I hope not. I’ve tried to use the model numbers specifically so that maybe other people searching for answers (or just more toner) could have a better chance of finding this page. But even if they don’t, thochad has ‘em covered.

Ever think you’d see the day that the internet would help you *avoid* wasting time and money?

With pictures, even.

This was a special weekend (in Summer, aren’t they all?) because we celebrated my 33rd birthday. (Technically it’s my 34th, counting the very first one on July 19, 1977, but we generally leave that one out of the official tally.)

We piled in the car to come down to Indy early, on Friday, and spent the afternoon at the pool with Veda. Despite being unable to swim, she’s great company there, and never at a loss for playmates. (I didn’t get any pictures of that, though, since the camera was stashed out of soggy harm’s way.)

Then Mom came over to Katie’s house (where we were staying) with homemade Gardenburgers and we had a nice dinner. I’m reporting the facts of the weekend in order as best I can remember them, in hopes of either filling in the blanks with more interesting insights later or, at least, being able to look back on this post *much* later, like in December, and remember what a hot summer weekend feels like.

After dinner came presents, and Mom got me her usual… undershirts and Mike & Ike candy, in addition this time to fun stuff like kites and a shirt that says “Distorted Sound of Rock N Roll.” She got Katie some stuff too (her birthday’s just three days before mine), but I don’t remember it as clearly as I’d like, because I’m a self-absorbed jerk. Apparently.

Oh wait! Katie got lots of brightly colored ruffly tops and dresses and stuff. She was thrilled. We wore hats – silly birthday tiara things. I remember now.

Saturday was different from the usual. Veda was up early, probably on account of sleeping in a strange place, and I figured that Katie and Penny would love to sleep in while Mom, on the other hand, was likely already up. Plus I missed Vince, who was staying with Mom so that Katie’s crazy cat wouldn’t pluck out her own fur in a fit of dog-induced anxiety.

Cats.

So Veda and I headed over to Mom’s for a visit. It’s fun surprising your Mom at 7:30 in the morning with her granddaughter. Surprising your dog is a nice bonus.

And the light from the skylight in my old bedroom (now Veda’s room) made for a strangely intense-looking baby in my arms.

Our days these days are divided into sections: Early Morning (pre-Mama), Breakfast, Morning (there’s usually a walk for Vince; sometimes I get to come along), Nap, Lunch, Afternoon Activity, Nap, Dinner, Evening Play, then Bedtime at 7 or so. After that Pen and I can do whatever we want as long as somebody’s here to listen for Veda, and if that someone is us (almost always), that whatever we want to do is relatively quiet. (I usually work, which is quiet and stationary indeed.)

We try to pack a lot into those stretches between naps during the day. That’s our time to go places, run errands, check out stuff. On Saturday we checked out the new 100 Acres Art & Nature Park at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

There I anticipated very little splashing, so the big camera came along, and we got lots of fun photos of different scenic stuff. There was “Team Building (Align),” two massive rings suspended over a patch of grass. During the summer solstice (missed by three measly weeks!) the rings’ shadows overlap perfectly. On July 10th, they just amaze little redheads named Veda.

There was “Park of the Laments,” a huge square within a square, connected by an underground tunnel, that the artist Alfredo Jaar intended as a refuge for “purging global atrocities.” That said, I’m pretty sure Veda missed the point. But she did enjoy running around in it.

And the first picture above was from all of us on one of the 15 parts in “Bench Around the Lake,” a series of sitting/looking/playing spots that encircle the 35-acre lake on the grounds. Wowseph.

Even the visitor pavilion was scenic. Very much so.

Then it was back to Katie’s for lunch and projects, like replacing the lights outside her garage, troubleshooting a faulty sensor in her house alarm and landscaping in front and back. Followed by more swimming, strolling, drying and showering.

Then, a date. Mom watched Veda while Penny and I went out with Katie and her new beau, and with three, count ‘em, three destinations (Santorini Greek Kitchen, New Day Meadery and The Brass Ring, all neat and all in the grittily charming Fountain Square neighborhood of Indianapolis), I got to break in the new foursquare social media/traveling around app that my friend Ryan hipped me to.

On Sunday Veda was up extra early (midnight, as a matter of fact, and Penny brought her to bed with us to ensure that *nobody* slept soundly that night), but at 6 she was up for good and another visit to Mom’s was in order.

So we played with my Mom, and let Veda’s mom snooze until 9.

That left enough time in the morning to finish up Katie’s garage lights (I didn’t know photocell-sensor things could go bad with time, but bad they went) and the yard projects Penny and Katie had started.

THEN it was up to Fishers for some baby shopping with our sister in law Niki. Penny’s mom wanted to get her something nice in person, rather than just bringing a gift to the shower. (I abstained from the Babies R Us adventure, and instead dropped them off and took the car to go read books in a nearby Barnes & Noble. Also ended up stranding them all outside the baby store, since my phone somehow lost all service inside the bookstore and I never got any of their pleas for pick-up. Thanks, AT&T!)

And then, finally, we hit the road for home. It had been a full three days, and pretty different from other birthday outings.

Everything’s Veda-centric now. But I’m not sure I – or we – would have it any other way. And at the end, even though it’s a lot more work to do all this stuff with a 17-month-old (as of today!), and sometimes it kind of wipes you out…

It’s more fun too. And it makes you look forward to the next adventure.

My mother’s mother, with her granddaughter Katie – 1980

My mom, with her granddaughter Veda – 2010

“You did a good job!” my mom said to Veda, after the little one had slid down the slide all by herself. In an instant I was little myself, hearing that same friendly compliment. It felt good, just like it always did. I’d forgotten.

I mentioned it to Penny later, and she laughed. “My mom did that to me the other day too!” It happened when her mom – now “Grandma” – was chasing our niece Gianna across the room, and caught up to her just after Gianna had taken a toy from one of the other grandkids.

“Hey, hey, Gianna,” Grandma smiled. “Don’t be mean… That’s not nice.”

It’s a funny bit of circular logic, but it makes perfect sense to a kid. Gianna understood, if only for that moment, that being mean isn’t nice, and that you shouldn’t do it.

And Penny remembered, in just that moment, being taught the same thing, in the same soft voice, by the same woman all those years before.

You hear your mom say these things to your kid and it’s like a time warp. That voice! Those words! It all comes rushing back to you. Honestly, when my mom said, “You did a good job,” with that special emphasis on the “j” for some reason, just like always, I felt a little spark of pride in myself. Just like always.

It makes me think of the in-the-middleness I wrote about before. I wish there were some gorgeous Sanskrit word for that principle, and maybe there is, but for now I just keep coming back to that awkward hyphenated phrase.

We are In The Middle. It’s like a water brigade, you know? The buckets are passed from hand to hand, continuing the flow and quenching the fire. It seems to stretch on forever.

And all down the line, it’s mothers. They selflessly — joyously! — hand down all that was given to them, passing it along to the next person.

I’m sure Veda will one day hear Penny say some Penelopianism to another little bean, and feel that same rush of recognition that we felt the other day.

*****

But what’s in the bucket? What is it that a mother gives her child, time and time again?

I decided to ask some of Penny’s friends and family. “What kind of mother is she?” I emailed them, wondering what words they’d send in response. “How would you describe what Penny is for Veda?”

It was beautiful. They said she was “selfless and strong, gentle and giddy.” “Caring, patient, and protective” said her brother.

Her friend Leonie called her “the most beautiful kind of mama there is: loving, thought*full, conscious, passionate, tender, whole, and doing her best…”

Veda’s Grandma Kline described her as “diligent and nurturing!” – in gigantic, boldface letters in my inbox. Penny’s friend Brooke – who was also our doula, so she’s followed this story since the beginning – wrote a wonderful story about what she’d seen Penny accomplish over the past year and three months, and said Veda “knows in her core she is loved.”

“You’re an awesome mom,” Brooke said.

And she is. Her sister Lauren said she was “vibrant and fun, encouraging and self-assured.” She’s selfless and caring and sharing, said my Mom, and her friend Christine responded, “Compassionate, attentive, fun, funny, silly, giving, forgiving, gentle, wise, loving. Fantastic! Incredible! Inspiring. And so much more.”

She’s all the things I could want for my daughter’s mama. So today I thanked her again for being so wonderful, and gave her a picture I made of all the nice things her friends had said. (I’ll have to add “thoughtful” and “determined,” which were in the fantastic letter her friend Gwen sent last night, along with the gorgeous raves from her friend Melanie, all about Penny’s “unending drive to find her best, truest, most authentic self” and to instill that same drive in Veda.

Melanie said,

“And if you provide only the tiniest sliver of that light  to Veda (and of course, as her mother, you know that you provide so much more than slivers… you are whole galaxies of light to your daughter), I am certain that you provide Veda with all the sunshine and moonlight and courage and strength and just out and out goodness she needs to be the best possible Veda she can be… today and tomorrow and always forever.

You are a great mother, Penny, because you are a great person, a whole and complete person, modest yet strong, and always always reaching to be better.”

And she’s right. So I guess that’s what’s in the buckets that mothers – and Grandmas, and sisters, and brothers, and friends – pass along. Thanks to all of you, and Happy Mother’s Day.

And I listened to that tape all the time, every chance I got, favoring especially the drum intro to Paradise City and the wha-wha-wha-ing guitars on Welcome to the Jungle. Slash was my hero.

The rest of the songs kind of scared and confused me, being mainly about the seamy underbelly of the Los Angeles bar and music scene, but I understood that they were “cool,” whatever they were about, so I tried my best to just nod along with them. (“Sweet Child o’ Mine” was kind of wussy, but I never fast-forwarded through it.)

“Mr. Brownstone,” though, perplexed me completely. Right there at the end of Side A, Axl sings all these lyrics about how they’ve been “dancing with Mr. Brownstone.”

“He’s been knocking,” apparently, and “he won’t leave [Axl] alone.”

No, no, no-ooo-whoa! He won’t leave him alone.

In retrospect, it’s a pretty obvious drug reference – the whole thing, really. But I’m a ten-year-old. I’m playing this on my boombox on the curb of my mom’s driveway as I shoot baskets in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Indiana. I don’t know anything about heroin. (Fortunately.)

And by the time I found out what it was, and that it had nifty nicknames and everything, I’d forgotten all about that battered and stretched-out cassette tape.

So to me, the whole song stayed a mystery for probably 20 years, during which time I would occasionally wonder why Guns N’ Roses would sing a song about being courted by an older gay man who only went by his last name. Did they consider it flattering? Did Mr. Brownstone buy all the band’s drinks or something?

I don’t know for sure when I eventually put it together. But this morning I mentioned this long-held confusion to Penny, who rolled her eyes but had an additional, more puzzling question: “Why is it somehow cooler to be addicted to heroin than to go dancing with some older guy?”

That one may take me another 20 years to answer.