True Dirt

a tree grows in oakland

I have been very happy here at T.D. blogulating about my garden in what I assumed was near total obscurity, giving vent to my botanically related passions, and whiling away some boring hours in my virtual garden when I couldn't be in the real one. Then along comes the New York Time Magazine....

Long story short: two Sundays ago (5-16-04) a piece I wrote for the magazine appeared in the back page Lives column. The magazine's story editor, who must have engaged in some serious web sleuthing to find me, wanted something for their landscape architecture "special"; she particularly was interested in my adventures with The Tree Guy. I had four days to come up with the column. So began "A Tree Grows in Oakland" (which, unfortunately due to the NYT's business model, you can only read the first few lines of at their online archives--unless you want to pay for the rest of the 900 words).

The day after the NYT magazine appears I get a call from an Oakland city councilmember's staffer about my column. It seems they are fighting the City's tree ordinance and would I like to participate in some way. Would I. (I'll report on the meeting at City Hall later this week.)

Of course I also get calls and e-mail from friends, current and long-lost, including an ex-girlfriend of an ex-boyfriend--and an ex-boyfriend of a friend, etc. etc. Wondering if there could be more than one Briggs Nisbet in the world. I suspect not.

That's all very nice I think. Now I haven't totally wasted my life blogging about things that nobody ever reads (approximately my mother's opinion), and writing things that will never be published because I won't submit them anywhere. It only takes one NYT Magazine column and I'm A Writer.

So, life goes on, two weeks pass, and me and X (my partner and fellow blogulator) are visiting our friends Martha (an actual published novelist) and Rich of T.D. fame, and I see the Sunday NYT Magazine lying on their kitchen table. (Here I have to confess we don't actually get the Sunday Times--just the weekly). And it's open to the Letters page and under "A Tree Grows in Oakland" are two letters--from two actual readers. I am stunned. Lo and behold one of my letters is "pro" and the other is "con."

I read with fascination the "con" letter and here, Dear Reader, I must end and you must wait until the next entry to hear the rest of this story because it must lead, inevitably, to one of my rare rants....

Posted by briggs at May 31, 2004 6:20 PM