"Life is a cabaret," I thought as I drove down the snowy, windy road on my way to the hospital for some pre-surgery tests last week. I thought of Liza Minelli singing it, but really about the lyric itself. I was sleepy as I had had less than five hours sleep--I'd been up late talking very loudly to my hearing-impaired sister on the phone.
I have to have minor surgery, Paul has to have minor surgery, a tree limb fell on our house, a part of our kitchen ceiling landed on the floor (after claw-foot tub leaked through the sheet rock), and when I got to the hospital this morning they couldn't find my appointment (but then did). Awaiting an EKG, I got lost in the computer again and waited an hour.
Despite my list of woes, none of the things listed above are life-threatening or really devastating and I am not an orphaned young adult who sleeps on the floor of the church lounge at night (as one young man at the shelter must do). I am not fighting for my life in Iraq or anywhere else for that matter. Still, these comparisons do not really suffice to explain this lively cabaret feeling I'm enjoying.
A cup of tea and the crossword each morning gives me immense pleasure. Shoveling the lovely, fresh snow while the dog romped around yesterday was really wonderful. The yard was so beautiful and the red roof on our old maple sugar house stood out in relief. I dug out a chocolate cake mix I had in the cupboard and made it as a little surprise for Paul. He loves chocolate cake.
On Saturday, we had a fantastic dinner with a friend and her husband and some of their friends in a giant, rambling,old house in Brattleboro. Jen gave us the grand tour, lots of peeling paint and charm everywhere. Outside is a circular drive with globe lights atop river stone pedestals. Inside, besides two 60's style bathrooms, there is a "two-seater" wood toilet still intact. It seems to have been perhaps an orphanage or home for the tubercular or some such thing. She and Ian found many old single metal bedsteads in the attic and there are many small bedrooms off long hallways. Earlier this month she had ten friends visit and each had their own room. They made us a lavish meal of gorgonzola and honey on toasted bread, scallops and then beef bourguignon. Their tenant, who lives in an apartment above the three-car garage, made the fruit pie for dessert.
This is all more than cabaret enough for me.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Snow Rollers and Bear Sausage
Thursday night when it was so windy our chimes were ringing like crazy and clanking against the house, just after I arrived home from a brisk walk with the dog, I heard a loud crashing sound on the roof on the western side of the house. Sure enough, a big limb had fallen from the old maple tree, which the former owner couldn't bring herself to have cut down (and we couldn't either--it is so much a part of the house and its surroundings, and even its weakened state still has the most wonderful canopy of leaves that shades the house in the summer). It appeared to have bounced off the roof and most of it fell on the ground and the largest part got stuck in the crotch of the tree. Some of the branches fell on our cable line and so we lost TV, but more importantly, our phone line. Our cell phone doesn't work out here, but my neighbor's, thankfully, does and she was kind enough to let us use it.
Today, Saturday, Kim and Rick came over to survey the tree situation. They are a wonderful couple who have helped us with our roof, siding, painting, supplying firewood, etc. Once we all took a good look at the the tree, we realized it probably needs to come down. Also, Rick went on the roof and discovered some holes and a bit of damage here and there. Yikes. The maple is clearly too fragile and precariously near all kinds of utility lines. Perhaps phone or electric company will take it down for free? We'll see. Meanwhile, Kim and Rick collected up all the branches and cut up the wood on the ground with a chain saw and neatly stacked it for us.
Then they came inside with their young son, who'd been asleep in the car, and had coffee. They are a handsome couple (she looks like she could have been a Playboy bunny) and unbelievably hard-working. Kim also details cars and sells Avon. They hunt deer and bear and store the meat in freezers for the winter. Along with the produce from their garden, they are very self-sufficient. They are caretakers of a big old house in Wilmington on hundred and twenty acres and frequently see bobcats, "coydogs" (as they call them--close to coyotes, I think), and two different momma bears with cubs. This fall, Kim spotted two large bucks in the backyard. She told the kids to stay inside and went out and shot it herself and dragged it a hundred feet or so by herself. She attempted to begin to clean the carcass, but decided, once she succeeded in getting the knife in its sturdy belly and trying to remove the innards, that she needed Rick's help. We told them about the turkeys in our backyard and they said that one is allowed to shoot two a season (I think) and recommended having them deep-fried, whole. I was hard-pressed to imagine Paul shooting anything, and I do like the idea of getting one's own meat, but in the end, we are artist-sissies, I guess. They said they'd bring us some bear sausage sometime--delicious, they explained, lighter tasting than you would imagine.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Overflow
On a Tuesday night after ten in the homeless shelter, there is a small chorus of snorers who have their bedrolls laid out among the dining tables and the lounge furniture. This shelter is actually an overflow shelter, when the main one is full, and is located inside a church. One young man, who kindly helped me locate an outlet for my three-pronged cord, is wide-awake, but taking care not to bother anyone.
There is a lot of kindness and camaraderie among the clients. One man unrolled the bedding for another man who had fallen fast asleep on the carpeted floor. He put a pillow under the sleeping man's head. I spent the early hours of my shift heating up leftover food for those people who had missed dinner time.Then I and the other volunteer, a young grad student, put Girl Scout cookies out--three plates that quickly disappeared. Movies were played in the lounge area until 10 PM and then it was lights out. A few men go outside to smoke before coming back in.The women are asleep on the floor upstairs in the quieter rooms, which are used as a nursery and children's playrooms during the day. At midnight, a friend, Jo, comes in an hour early to chat with me before her 1-7AM shift begins. She and the other late-shift volunteer will begin making coffee around 4AM.
What is astonishing is the number of volunteers required to attend only this overflow facility, which is open during the colder months (November-April). The dedication of these volunteers is truly humbling. The only paid staff member, the director of the main shelter, is clearly dedicated as well and works many, many hours beyond what she is paid.
At one point, I walk into the sanctuary of the church and walk up the aisle toward a beautiful stained glass window. This church, has, like many churches, lost a lot of its congregation and is struggling to survive.They planned to sell a Tiffany stained glass window, but local and national news got a hold of the story and donations flooded in. These donations have held off the sale, for now, but not necessarily for the long-term future.
Boston Globe article about Tiffany stained glass window
There is a lot of kindness and camaraderie among the clients. One man unrolled the bedding for another man who had fallen fast asleep on the carpeted floor. He put a pillow under the sleeping man's head. I spent the early hours of my shift heating up leftover food for those people who had missed dinner time.Then I and the other volunteer, a young grad student, put Girl Scout cookies out--three plates that quickly disappeared. Movies were played in the lounge area until 10 PM and then it was lights out. A few men go outside to smoke before coming back in.The women are asleep on the floor upstairs in the quieter rooms, which are used as a nursery and children's playrooms during the day. At midnight, a friend, Jo, comes in an hour early to chat with me before her 1-7AM shift begins. She and the other late-shift volunteer will begin making coffee around 4AM.
What is astonishing is the number of volunteers required to attend only this overflow facility, which is open during the colder months (November-April). The dedication of these volunteers is truly humbling. The only paid staff member, the director of the main shelter, is clearly dedicated as well and works many, many hours beyond what she is paid.
At one point, I walk into the sanctuary of the church and walk up the aisle toward a beautiful stained glass window. This church, has, like many churches, lost a lot of its congregation and is struggling to survive.They planned to sell a Tiffany stained glass window, but local and national news got a hold of the story and donations flooded in. These donations have held off the sale, for now, but not necessarily for the long-term future.
Boston Globe article about Tiffany stained glass window
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Marriage of Art and Life
One Sunday afternoon my husband and I were looking, through a magnifying glass, at images of work by Bruegel (the elder). "Skaters before the Gates of St. George, Antwerp" is a winter skating scene and so much is going on throughout the whole engraving that it is really a delicious experience to carefully examine it. There are skaters of all classes, one gentleman is clinging to the cape of his man-servant, while other peasant-skaters sit on the edge of the ice to lace up their skates. One man has fallen and onlookers on the edge of the riverbank look on with curious, if somewhat, smirking, expressions. A little boy is in an ice sled that appears to be made from a cow or horse's jawbone. Other skaters pass under one side of the drawbridge where, on the other side, one skater has what looks like a hockey stick and another holds a flag in what appears to be some sort of race or game.
After he made coffee for us, we sat in the front room with an early morning fire going. Paul had a piece of paper on a split log, with which he was combining frottage with drawing. He drew with a fountain pen and walnut ink he made from walnuts that had dropped from the tree in our yard this fall.
Bruegel's drawing was made with pen and brown ink for "transfer on transfer paper with a stylus" as the caption explained. He drew it backwards so that the etching made from it would be right-side up.
"Looking at Bruegel's work," Paul said, "makes me see the world differently." While making coffee he had seen, through the window in our kitchen, a lone turkey under the old apple tree. A few days earlier, we had driven by the Retreat Pond in Brattleboro, now frozen over and covered with brightly painted ice huts or "bobs" and skaters, young and old. We had both agreed how "Bruegel-like" the winter scene looked to us.
When we lived in Provincetown, we referred to particular views of the sea as "de Grootian" after our friend, the painter, Pat de Groot. When, for instance, a winter sea is blue-black and dotted with white caps and seeming to merge with a darkened blue-white sky, we recognize this as exactly the kind of moment de Groot not only captures so well, but also the kind of moment one stops to reconsider precisely because of the way she has captured it.
It seems (immodestly) to me that my husband has become a better, more astute reader because of all the conversations we have had about writing. I can say with certainty that being with him these past fifteen years, and seeing the world and art through his eyes, has absolutely changed the way I see everything.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Opera and Oxytocin
On Saturday, we drove an hour away to the Opera Theater in Weston to see "The Little Prince." We took a friend's five-year-old son and another friend came with her six-year-old daughter. Distance and time are on a different scale here. Vermonters think nothing of driving an hour or more to see a play or have dinner with friends or go for a hike or snow-shoe, and so on.
We drove on dark, windy roads passing villages with nothing in them but a post office, a gas station or maybe nothing other than a small sign with the village's name. The ski-resort towns have more going on: casual and upscale restaurants, some shops, places to buy ski equipment. The amount of farmland, woods, open pasture in this state is always a pleasure to discover and rediscover. Weston is a quaint town with the original Vermont Country Store (known for their old-timey, and often expensive, merchandise and large mail-order business, but our five-year old friend fondly recalled the penny candy counter and a bow and arrow set he got there once) and a small village green with the opera house--a grand white building with Greek columns--right in the center of it. All of us struggled to follow the plot of the children's opera, after all, all the lyrics were entirely sung, but the voices were good, the costumes well-made and the orchestra was particularly talented. Our little friend was bored much of the time and kept asking if it was going to be over soon. I understood his sentiment exactly. We assuaged him, a bit, with a brownie and hot chocolate. He perked up when four hunters, trying to catch the fox, came on stage. I perked up when I saw the woman, a soprano, with a terrific sparkly blue costume, representing the water drawn up from the well that the Little Prince and the Pilot find in the desert. She really sounded, to me, like the personification of water and her lovely, haunting song didn't have any lyrics.
This afternoon, after an opening at the local museum, we went to another musical performance to hear an original score composed by our neighbor, Paul Dedell. It too had lyrics sung by an opera singer, a tenor, and also a choir--both children and adult--and musicians, mostly percussionists. I found it to be a very ambitious piece, particularly because Paul combined poems and prose about love with language from studies about the science of love. This meant that at one point the children were actually singing "Oxytocin! Oxytocin!" This is the drug found in parents tending their children and also in the children who are being tended (but not in emotionally abandoned children who grew up in Romanian orphanages--hence the chemical, biological reason these children struggle to feel attached to even the most loving adoptive parents later on).
His wife was the conductor and both got a rousing, standing ovation from the large audience. It was a show of support for this couple and their contributions to the music community as much as it was for the performance and music itself. The warm reception and affection toward the Dedell's was another hallmark of living in a community such as this one.
We drove on dark, windy roads passing villages with nothing in them but a post office, a gas station or maybe nothing other than a small sign with the village's name. The ski-resort towns have more going on: casual and upscale restaurants, some shops, places to buy ski equipment. The amount of farmland, woods, open pasture in this state is always a pleasure to discover and rediscover. Weston is a quaint town with the original Vermont Country Store (known for their old-timey, and often expensive, merchandise and large mail-order business, but our five-year old friend fondly recalled the penny candy counter and a bow and arrow set he got there once) and a small village green with the opera house--a grand white building with Greek columns--right in the center of it. All of us struggled to follow the plot of the children's opera, after all, all the lyrics were entirely sung, but the voices were good, the costumes well-made and the orchestra was particularly talented. Our little friend was bored much of the time and kept asking if it was going to be over soon. I understood his sentiment exactly. We assuaged him, a bit, with a brownie and hot chocolate. He perked up when four hunters, trying to catch the fox, came on stage. I perked up when I saw the woman, a soprano, with a terrific sparkly blue costume, representing the water drawn up from the well that the Little Prince and the Pilot find in the desert. She really sounded, to me, like the personification of water and her lovely, haunting song didn't have any lyrics.
This afternoon, after an opening at the local museum, we went to another musical performance to hear an original score composed by our neighbor, Paul Dedell. It too had lyrics sung by an opera singer, a tenor, and also a choir--both children and adult--and musicians, mostly percussionists. I found it to be a very ambitious piece, particularly because Paul combined poems and prose about love with language from studies about the science of love. This meant that at one point the children were actually singing "Oxytocin! Oxytocin!" This is the drug found in parents tending their children and also in the children who are being tended (but not in emotionally abandoned children who grew up in Romanian orphanages--hence the chemical, biological reason these children struggle to feel attached to even the most loving adoptive parents later on).
His wife was the conductor and both got a rousing, standing ovation from the large audience. It was a show of support for this couple and their contributions to the music community as much as it was for the performance and music itself. The warm reception and affection toward the Dedell's was another hallmark of living in a community such as this one.
Friday, January 15, 2010
A Snowy Carpet
It was warmer today and ice slid off the roof in sheets that thudded so loudly to the ground it startled the dog and cats. Paul was using our neighbor's roof rake to try and loosen the ice dam that has started to form at one corner of the roof. When I moved to Vermont, I thought, "Roof rake? We have a metal roof and won't need one." Ha. Little did I know about all the variations of snow and ice in these here climes.
Nokie and I took a new walk today on a narrow, flat road that runs parallel to the West River. It was so nice to be on a road that was close to a different, larger river than the one we normally walk by. The West River is larger and deeper and so less iced up than Baker Brook. There were mini-ice floes that were loosened up and spinning downstream. The white scalp of the mountainside is close-by there, just on the other side of the river, and as we were walking west there was a lovely pink-lavender light over the crest of their ridges.
I walked to the end of the road and then onto a well-worn, snowy trail into the woods and then down onto a lovely bank right next to the the river. I could have kept walking and walking it was so lovely, quiet, and inviting. The snowy bank was like a white carpet spread out just for us. But the sky was getting darker and so I looped back through the woods were I saw three small drops of blood around a pine tree. I knew some animal had gotten nabbed by another creature right there--a vole or a mouse by hawk or owl or weasel? Paul and I had seen a much gorier site once before.
One morning a couple years ago, after a thick, fluffy snow had fallen the night before, we saw a very bloody trail, the red bright against the fresh snow, as it swept across from one side of Baker Brook Road over to the other, up to the river's bank and then, looking across the river, we could see it continued on the other side. We tried to identify the animal tracks in the snow and the width of the animal being dragged. We imagined a coyote, or even mountain lion (they have been spotted some miles from here) had gotten, perhaps, a young deer. I saw such a deer, a young, vulnerable doe, standing in our driveway last week. Even the sight of our car didn't startle her. She just stood there, serenely innocent as yet to hunters and guns and maybe coyotes. But then Nokie barked from the backseat of the car and she was off, delicately bounding up the hill in between the spruce trees to our backyard and the woods beyond.
Nokie and I took a new walk today on a narrow, flat road that runs parallel to the West River. It was so nice to be on a road that was close to a different, larger river than the one we normally walk by. The West River is larger and deeper and so less iced up than Baker Brook. There were mini-ice floes that were loosened up and spinning downstream. The white scalp of the mountainside is close-by there, just on the other side of the river, and as we were walking west there was a lovely pink-lavender light over the crest of their ridges.
I walked to the end of the road and then onto a well-worn, snowy trail into the woods and then down onto a lovely bank right next to the the river. I could have kept walking and walking it was so lovely, quiet, and inviting. The snowy bank was like a white carpet spread out just for us. But the sky was getting darker and so I looped back through the woods were I saw three small drops of blood around a pine tree. I knew some animal had gotten nabbed by another creature right there--a vole or a mouse by hawk or owl or weasel? Paul and I had seen a much gorier site once before.
One morning a couple years ago, after a thick, fluffy snow had fallen the night before, we saw a very bloody trail, the red bright against the fresh snow, as it swept across from one side of Baker Brook Road over to the other, up to the river's bank and then, looking across the river, we could see it continued on the other side. We tried to identify the animal tracks in the snow and the width of the animal being dragged. We imagined a coyote, or even mountain lion (they have been spotted some miles from here) had gotten, perhaps, a young deer. I saw such a deer, a young, vulnerable doe, standing in our driveway last week. Even the sight of our car didn't startle her. She just stood there, serenely innocent as yet to hunters and guns and maybe coyotes. But then Nokie barked from the backseat of the car and she was off, delicately bounding up the hill in between the spruce trees to our backyard and the woods beyond.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
The Lazarus Effect
image: Lauren Watrous, Untitled, oil on linen, 24 x 36," 2009
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Icy Blues
The large blocks of cut-out ice had been placed in a circle.They looked like a fantastic ice installation as the large, irregular-shaped blocks were frozen to the surface of the pond. In the center of the circle was thin, cracked ice through which the dark pond could be seen. Anyone stepping inside the ice-block circle would fall through immediately. Happily, that wasn't a temptation. It was unusually cold and my fingertips were numb even through my gloves. Her daughter was delighted with the ice-sculptures and played around them and "skated" alongside them in her pink snowshoes. My friend had generously made cookies and hot chocolate, so we sat by the pond and enjoyed the snack before we all headed back down the trail.
Her daughter, with rosy cheeks and robust, lively energy, did not walk on the trail so much as push her way through the greenery alongside of it. Her mother said that underneath her blue snowsuit she was wearing red because she wanted to be a fox. So I imagined she was stalking her way toward her prey. The woods were getting colder and darker by the moment, particularly, as my friend noted, as we passed under the evergreens. The sky, to me, looked even more whitish-gray and ominous than it had before.
As if reading my gloomy thoughts, her daughter looked up at the spaces between the bare branches of trees and said, "I like the color of the sky."
"What color is it?" I said.
"Violet," she said. And through her enthusiastic perspective, I could thankfully see just what she meant.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Sooner
As Nokie and I took our daily constitutional this late afternoon, we ran into Nancy, whose house is right on the road we walk every day. Sometimes we run into her and her dog, Sooner, who is so named because she rather eat "sooner than later." Sooner, a sweet pit bull terrier, was wearing her black flannel coat and, as usual, displayed her zest for life. She began playing with a lettuce-head-sized ball of snow ice, rolling it around, pushing it down the snowy embankment and then racing after it. I always enjoy running into them and chatting with Nancy. I used to pass her often as she gardened or weeded in front of her house. We would always wave to one another, but I didn't start talking to her, really, until after her husband passed away.
One late summer day a year and a half ago, Paul and I were walking down the road. It was that time of year when the road is neither muddy, icy, snowy or dusty, but a softly compacted dirt that feels springy underfoot. Just as we passed Nancy's the house of her son and his girlfriend, who live in a house across a field from her, we saw Peter, Nancy's husband, lying by the side of road, with his head near another neighbor's driveway and his feet sticking out in the road. We saw the neighbor bending over him, looking distressed. We realized something was terribly wrong and offered to go for help. The neighbor said he'd called 911 and so we offered to try and find Nancy and perhaps see if Tim, a local doctor who lives in the neighborhood, happened to be home. I remember the ashen color of Peter's face and the sense I had, and I think Paul did too, that he was already gone. Apparently, he'd been talking to his neighbor and suddenly collapsed.
Paul and I raced to Nancy's circular driveway and went up and knocked on the door and rang the bell. No one answered. We walked home as quickly as we could and called Deb, Tim's wife, and she said he was busy at the clinic. We thought we could hear the ambulance approaching Baker Brook Road. As it turned out, Peter had died, immediately, from heart failure. He was in his late fifties and he and Nancy had been together since high school. She wasn't at home, she later told me, because she had been walking the loop, less than a half mile away from where he collapsed.
It's impossible, of course, to know how Nancy feels, grief is so private, particularly between partners. A very good friend of mine, J., died of a brain aneurysm the day before his wedding. Other than hearing the news of his death, I didn't speak to his fiancee until recently--seventeen years later. I ran into her and her young son in a cafe in Western Massachusetts. It was a strained, strange, but eventually, poignant and revealing meeting. Clearly her life since J.'s death had been shaped and formed by it nonetheless. She was still trying to break free from the shadow it cast on her life. She told me her son, born fifteen years after her J.'s death--and whose father is a man to whom she now has a co-parenting relationship with, but not a romantic one--was conceived on J.'s birthday.
J. was a dear friend and not the first person I would know to die suddenly. This is why I feel a particular compassion for Nancy, although none of my friends were my lovers or husbands of many decades as Peter was for her. But still, I do understand the sudden yanking away of someone--much sooner than could have been imagined--who is integral not just to your life, but to the sense of who you are in that life, and how it is a distinct and certainly transforming experience.
One late summer day a year and a half ago, Paul and I were walking down the road. It was that time of year when the road is neither muddy, icy, snowy or dusty, but a softly compacted dirt that feels springy underfoot. Just as we passed Nancy's the house of her son and his girlfriend, who live in a house across a field from her, we saw Peter, Nancy's husband, lying by the side of road, with his head near another neighbor's driveway and his feet sticking out in the road. We saw the neighbor bending over him, looking distressed. We realized something was terribly wrong and offered to go for help. The neighbor said he'd called 911 and so we offered to try and find Nancy and perhaps see if Tim, a local doctor who lives in the neighborhood, happened to be home. I remember the ashen color of Peter's face and the sense I had, and I think Paul did too, that he was already gone. Apparently, he'd been talking to his neighbor and suddenly collapsed.
Paul and I raced to Nancy's circular driveway and went up and knocked on the door and rang the bell. No one answered. We walked home as quickly as we could and called Deb, Tim's wife, and she said he was busy at the clinic. We thought we could hear the ambulance approaching Baker Brook Road. As it turned out, Peter had died, immediately, from heart failure. He was in his late fifties and he and Nancy had been together since high school. She wasn't at home, she later told me, because she had been walking the loop, less than a half mile away from where he collapsed.
It's impossible, of course, to know how Nancy feels, grief is so private, particularly between partners. A very good friend of mine, J., died of a brain aneurysm the day before his wedding. Other than hearing the news of his death, I didn't speak to his fiancee until recently--seventeen years later. I ran into her and her young son in a cafe in Western Massachusetts. It was a strained, strange, but eventually, poignant and revealing meeting. Clearly her life since J.'s death had been shaped and formed by it nonetheless. She was still trying to break free from the shadow it cast on her life. She told me her son, born fifteen years after her J.'s death--and whose father is a man to whom she now has a co-parenting relationship with, but not a romantic one--was conceived on J.'s birthday.
J. was a dear friend and not the first person I would know to die suddenly. This is why I feel a particular compassion for Nancy, although none of my friends were my lovers or husbands of many decades as Peter was for her. But still, I do understand the sudden yanking away of someone--much sooner than could have been imagined--who is integral not just to your life, but to the sense of who you are in that life, and how it is a distinct and certainly transforming experience.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Rescue
Each morning the same scenario is played out. Paul and I are sitting on the couch drinking tea. I am doing the crossword, Paul is reading or drawing or preparing to teach his class. From somewhere upstairs, perhaps the guest bedroom, we hear a plaintive, heartbreaking howl. A prolonged cat moan. We promptly reply by calling "Harvey! Harvey! C'mon Harvey!" And then we hear the heavy pounding of his declawed (not by us) paws on the bare wood staircase and Harvey comes bounding, frantically, urgently, into the sunroom. Sometimes he comes directly on to my lap, sometimes he goes to the window seat, or just lounges on top of the couch cushions. I think he is replaying his rescue over and over again. Each day he makes sure we really need him to be here.
Tonight we watched a very poignant, complex examination of children with Reactive Attachment Disorder. Many of the children who were in Eastern European orphanages, where caregivers were so busy they did not have time to do anything other than feed, clothe and change the diapers of babies, have this problem. It is part of Episode I: Family, Friends, Lovers of the wonderful series "This Emotional Life" that was on PBS. (We were able to download portions we missed on TV through the website.) Scientists discovered these children don't produce a particular chemical in their brain when not being touched or loved as babies and so do not produce it later on (as normally raised children do), even when receiving love and attention from their adoptive mothers. Therefore, they do not trust, or react to, affection from their parents.
Abandonment and rescue, affection and disaffection. These are things I think about a lot in relation to animals and people and it strikes me that, like most things, each of us probably exists on some fluctuating continuum, not at either end of a known spectrum. I know for certain I was loved as a child, but interestingly, the very earliest memory I have is of being left, as a baby or young toddler, in a basement laundry room on my back on some sort of table, waiting for my diaper to be changed. My mother had to run upstairs momentarily to attend to someone or something. I remember the feeling of being utterly alone, but also the comforting warmth and sound of the dryer as I lay on my back, looking up at the ceiling.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Lookout
Paul went out early this morning to take the dog out for his morning walk and also to get the Sunday New York Times. I began making the muffins and realized we needed half and half for the strong coffee Paul would be brewing in our 1950s style percolator. I love this white enamel pot, but percolating the coffee is a lost art and so I set out Paul's directions, which he retrieved from the Internet, next to the stove. I wondered, if I just sent him a psychic message to get half and half, would that work? I decided it was safer to call the general store (Vermont still has quaint country and general stores).
"Hello?" I gave her my name and asked if my husband, a small, dark-complexioned man had come in yet.
"What do you need?" The woman said in a familiar, friendly way that told me I was not the first wife to call to and squeeze one more thing onto the shopping list. After all, we live in a rural area and getting what one needs in the way of groceries usually requires careful advance planning or, at the very least, creative ingenuity. One friend keeps powdered milk in her cupboard for the occasions when she runs out of the real thing.
"Half and half. Thank you," I said, feeling a renewed appreciation for the kindness of Vermonters.
"Large or small?" she asked.
"Small," I said and repeated he was a short man with olive skin and added that he had a British accent and also would be buying the Times.
"No problem, Mrs. B.," she said.
When Paul got home he told me he wondered why the woman behind the counter had been eying him so carefully and why she said, "Good morning," several times. He understood, later, she was hoping he'd reply so she could glean his accent.
We had a long, pleasant brunch with our friends, a fire going in the dining room fireplace and a visit, once again (they have been here a lot), from the turkeys who came down from the woods to scratch for bird seed below our feeders.
When everyone left, we took our usual walk with the dog. We both drank a lot of coffee this morning and so Paul told me to be the lookout while he peed in a snowbank on the side of the road. I told him I felt like the turkey on the ridge--the turkey's always have one "lookout" who paces the ridge above our patio while the rest are below snacking on seed. Yesterday Bruce told us he saw the same behavior over at his house: one lookout turkey a distance from the others. We continued on our way and noticed, happily, despite the bitter cold, pink clouds in the crisp blue sky and the fact that at our usual hour of 3:30 PM there was more light--the slow turning toward spring.
"Hello?" I gave her my name and asked if my husband, a small, dark-complexioned man had come in yet.
"What do you need?" The woman said in a familiar, friendly way that told me I was not the first wife to call to and squeeze one more thing onto the shopping list. After all, we live in a rural area and getting what one needs in the way of groceries usually requires careful advance planning or, at the very least, creative ingenuity. One friend keeps powdered milk in her cupboard for the occasions when she runs out of the real thing.
"Half and half. Thank you," I said, feeling a renewed appreciation for the kindness of Vermonters.
"Large or small?" she asked.
"Small," I said and repeated he was a short man with olive skin and added that he had a British accent and also would be buying the Times.
"No problem, Mrs. B.," she said.
When Paul got home he told me he wondered why the woman behind the counter had been eying him so carefully and why she said, "Good morning," several times. He understood, later, she was hoping he'd reply so she could glean his accent.
We had a long, pleasant brunch with our friends, a fire going in the dining room fireplace and a visit, once again (they have been here a lot), from the turkeys who came down from the woods to scratch for bird seed below our feeders.
When everyone left, we took our usual walk with the dog. We both drank a lot of coffee this morning and so Paul told me to be the lookout while he peed in a snowbank on the side of the road. I told him I felt like the turkey on the ridge--the turkey's always have one "lookout" who paces the ridge above our patio while the rest are below snacking on seed. Yesterday Bruce told us he saw the same behavior over at his house: one lookout turkey a distance from the others. We continued on our way and noticed, happily, despite the bitter cold, pink clouds in the crisp blue sky and the fact that at our usual hour of 3:30 PM there was more light--the slow turning toward spring.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Snow labyrinth
It is after midnight and I just put an egg strata in the fridge for our brunch guests tomorrow. I aim to make blueberry muffins in the morning too. It is nice to have friends and neighbors over on these very cold winter days. It brings a humanizing warmth that is lost sometimes when it is so persistently cold and the branches are so bare. We do have snow on the ground, but it is hard-packed and the landscape needs a fresh, soft snow to transform and reawaken it. Ironically the Midwest and South have gotten much more snow than we have.Paul and I felt rather gloomy on our walk today and nothing particularly inspired us, not the light or the frozen ice-sculptures in the river.
When we got back to the house, Nokie ran, barking wildly around the side of our house. Paul ran after him and I could hear him laughing. When I got to our backyard, it was our neighbor, Bruce, making a surprise labyrinth on the slope of the hill by imprinting circles in the snow with his snowshoes. Just before Christmas, he surprised us with an ice luminaria that he set on our breezeway. We put votive candles inside and lit them on the night Megan and her boyfriend drove up from Cape Cod.
This afternoon, we asked Bruce inside for tea and I rustled up bits of this and that: some remaining smoked oyster dip and rosemary crackers, a clementine and some orange-chocolate. He is such a character and has many adventures hiking, fishing and snowshoeing on his own, once or twice running into bears. He makes sculptures out of wood, stone, wire and many found objects and things he scavenges from different places. He has been known to leave cairns, or stone and wire sculptures in the midst of remote hiking paths as a surprise for passing hikers. Once he took dozens of shoes (all mismatched ones that had washed up downriver) and placed them on a log that jutted out into the water. The Rock River flows eastward along the edge of our property, under the covered bridge, and curves around behind his house and toward town. It is a tributary of the West River, which in turn, feeds into the Connecticut River.
Bruce's snow labyrinth and his spontaneous company at tea is all we needed to perk us up and remind us, again, of this very nice life we find ourselves living in Vermont.
When we got back to the house, Nokie ran, barking wildly around the side of our house. Paul ran after him and I could hear him laughing. When I got to our backyard, it was our neighbor, Bruce, making a surprise labyrinth on the slope of the hill by imprinting circles in the snow with his snowshoes. Just before Christmas, he surprised us with an ice luminaria that he set on our breezeway. We put votive candles inside and lit them on the night Megan and her boyfriend drove up from Cape Cod.
This afternoon, we asked Bruce inside for tea and I rustled up bits of this and that: some remaining smoked oyster dip and rosemary crackers, a clementine and some orange-chocolate. He is such a character and has many adventures hiking, fishing and snowshoeing on his own, once or twice running into bears. He makes sculptures out of wood, stone, wire and many found objects and things he scavenges from different places. He has been known to leave cairns, or stone and wire sculptures in the midst of remote hiking paths as a surprise for passing hikers. Once he took dozens of shoes (all mismatched ones that had washed up downriver) and placed them on a log that jutted out into the water. The Rock River flows eastward along the edge of our property, under the covered bridge, and curves around behind his house and toward town. It is a tributary of the West River, which in turn, feeds into the Connecticut River.
Bruce's snow labyrinth and his spontaneous company at tea is all we needed to perk us up and remind us, again, of this very nice life we find ourselves living in Vermont.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Chloroforming the Cat
I've been reading Winterwise by Zephine Humphrey, a Vermont writer whose work is now out of print. Paul got this book for me from a tag sale and I'm so grateful to be reading it right now. Published in 1927, it is startling how many of her observations of daily life in Vermont over eighty years ago are still so pertinent today.
Humphrey's writes:
Winter is the supreme season of reconciliation. Stripped and austere, the earth ceases from her long activity and gives herself to the repose which waits at the end of every cycle of growth. The naked trees are reconciled with the gray sky, the brown hills with the russet fields, and when the snow falls, as today, even the white houses are merged and lost.
She also writes about talking walks through the village (Dorset, I think), cutting down the Christmas tree, visiting with neighbors, getting borrowed books delivered--wrapped in brown paper--from the New York Public Library, about the various dogs and cats that come in to her and her husband's life. It is interesting how she devotes entire chapters and long descriptive passages to these pets, but also mentions, quite frequently, how if a summer resident cannot find a home for their cat, or a barn cat seems a nuisance, the creatures are promptly dispatched via chloroform. This is a different attitude toward pets than we have today--perhaps a more practical, economical, rural-life approach. In one short chapter, a male barn cat she adopts from a neighbor, takes in and feeds, doesn't show the affection she hopes it will toward her other, female cat and he and the bottle of chloroform duly disappear.
I was amused to read how she and her husband, a painter, read reviews of the latest, most popular books of their time with skepticism and wariness as they often find the praise hasn't, in their opinion, been fairly earned. (Something Paul and I also feel today: whether it be a "bestseller" or an art exhibit that has gotten a lot of attention.) They read each evening, separately and sometimes, aloud, together. It is funny to read that Thunder on the Left (such a ridiculous title) was a favorite in 1925 and the book which they both find the most profound and resonant is Tertium Organum or The Third Canon of Thought, The Key to the Enigmas of the World.
Wikipedia (what would Zephine think of that?) says: "Peter D. Ouspensky, a Russian philosopher, invoked euclidean and noneuclidean geometry in his discussions of psychology and higher dimensions of existence." Apparently for many years he was a follower of and "has a reputation for his expositions of the early work of" Gurdjieff. Holy crap! And I'm staying up to watch reality programming like "Hoarders"!
Many of my friends and neighbors here in Vermont do not have television. Their lives are closer to Zephine's, I imagine, and sometimes I long for this. On the other hand, certain movies on Turner Classic Movies, for example, have really infused me with a sense of artistic hope and admiration for the wonderful screenwriters, directors, actors, and cinematographers of these films. I never tire of seeing Hitchcock's "Rear Window."
Last winter (and spring and part of the summer), I read Anna Karenina and it really was a deeply rewarding experience. It was often engaging and inspiring, but also hard work (constantly reading the notes in the back and slogging through Dostoevsky's own developing ideas about religion, politics and agricultural practices of Russia in the mid to late nineteenth century). I was in tremendous admiration of his ability to write so convincingly from a woman's point of view and I also was thoroughly transported to another place and time.
The world today, with television, Facebook, Twitter, Ipods and cellphones, Blackberries, and so on, (and yes, blogs), takes us farther and farther away from the work of reading a really good, (and perhaps really long) book. Zephine and Christopher's entertainment at night is reading a book and having a good discussion about it then, at breakfast the next morning, and over the course of some days. Who of us can say we do this today?
Humphrey's writes:
Winter is the supreme season of reconciliation. Stripped and austere, the earth ceases from her long activity and gives herself to the repose which waits at the end of every cycle of growth. The naked trees are reconciled with the gray sky, the brown hills with the russet fields, and when the snow falls, as today, even the white houses are merged and lost.
She also writes about talking walks through the village (Dorset, I think), cutting down the Christmas tree, visiting with neighbors, getting borrowed books delivered--wrapped in brown paper--from the New York Public Library, about the various dogs and cats that come in to her and her husband's life. It is interesting how she devotes entire chapters and long descriptive passages to these pets, but also mentions, quite frequently, how if a summer resident cannot find a home for their cat, or a barn cat seems a nuisance, the creatures are promptly dispatched via chloroform. This is a different attitude toward pets than we have today--perhaps a more practical, economical, rural-life approach. In one short chapter, a male barn cat she adopts from a neighbor, takes in and feeds, doesn't show the affection she hopes it will toward her other, female cat and he and the bottle of chloroform duly disappear.
I was amused to read how she and her husband, a painter, read reviews of the latest, most popular books of their time with skepticism and wariness as they often find the praise hasn't, in their opinion, been fairly earned. (Something Paul and I also feel today: whether it be a "bestseller" or an art exhibit that has gotten a lot of attention.) They read each evening, separately and sometimes, aloud, together. It is funny to read that Thunder on the Left (such a ridiculous title) was a favorite in 1925 and the book which they both find the most profound and resonant is Tertium Organum or The Third Canon of Thought, The Key to the Enigmas of the World.
Wikipedia (what would Zephine think of that?) says: "Peter D. Ouspensky, a Russian philosopher, invoked euclidean and noneuclidean geometry in his discussions of psychology and higher dimensions of existence." Apparently for many years he was a follower of and "has a reputation for his expositions of the early work of" Gurdjieff. Holy crap! And I'm staying up to watch reality programming like "Hoarders"!
Many of my friends and neighbors here in Vermont do not have television. Their lives are closer to Zephine's, I imagine, and sometimes I long for this. On the other hand, certain movies on Turner Classic Movies, for example, have really infused me with a sense of artistic hope and admiration for the wonderful screenwriters, directors, actors, and cinematographers of these films. I never tire of seeing Hitchcock's "Rear Window."
Last winter (and spring and part of the summer), I read Anna Karenina and it really was a deeply rewarding experience. It was often engaging and inspiring, but also hard work (constantly reading the notes in the back and slogging through Dostoevsky's own developing ideas about religion, politics and agricultural practices of Russia in the mid to late nineteenth century). I was in tremendous admiration of his ability to write so convincingly from a woman's point of view and I also was thoroughly transported to another place and time.
The world today, with television, Facebook, Twitter, Ipods and cellphones, Blackberries, and so on, (and yes, blogs), takes us farther and farther away from the work of reading a really good, (and perhaps really long) book. Zephine and Christopher's entertainment at night is reading a book and having a good discussion about it then, at breakfast the next morning, and over the course of some days. Who of us can say we do this today?
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
The Wet Shelter
I have trouble with insomnia and should, as my doctor suggested, be working rigorously toward regular waking and sleeping hours. I haven't mastered that yet and just volunteered to work one night next week at the overflow homeless shelter from 1 AM-7 AM. I was just trained this evening and am not sure I'm entirely cut out for this kind of volunteer work, but I'll find out. It helps that I'll be there with a trained, experienced volunteer and a friend. It's a "wet" shelter, meaning: drunks and drug addicts are allowed in, but not allowed to drink or do drugs on the premises.
During these economically challenging times, I have felt fortunate. One estimate said the current recession would force 1.5 million more people into homelessness. Although I lost my job last spring, my husband is doing well and we certainly have nice food and shelter. I began to think about those who don't have these basic things and wondered, other than offering a small donation to the food pantry, what I could do. There is a big gap between the thinking and the doing of things and seeing the plastic bags, each containing a sheet, blanket, maybe a sleeping bag, with the homeless clients' names written on them, made this fact quite vivid.
During these economically challenging times, I have felt fortunate. One estimate said the current recession would force 1.5 million more people into homelessness. Although I lost my job last spring, my husband is doing well and we certainly have nice food and shelter. I began to think about those who don't have these basic things and wondered, other than offering a small donation to the food pantry, what I could do. There is a big gap between the thinking and the doing of things and seeing the plastic bags, each containing a sheet, blanket, maybe a sleeping bag, with the homeless clients' names written on them, made this fact quite vivid.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Turkeys, War, and Rings
"Are you awake?" I heard Paul say through my dream this morning. I was sitting in a filthy, small cafe in some university town wondering why they didn't sweep up the dust.
"No," I said groggily. Then I was in our bedroom, looking at the peeling paint above our red bookcase.
"Come, quietly, and look out the window." He was speaking from the bathroom across the hall from our second-floor bedroom. The bathroom overlooks the backyard: the dying apple tree, overgrown spruce, the stone retaining wall above which our land slowly ascends toward the old red maple sugaring house and the woods beyond.
"Look," he said, "turkeys."
I peered out the window above the toilet and there were nine dark turkeys scratching at bird seed that had fallen from the birds feeders on the apple tree. We had seen turkey footprints while snowshoeing over the weekend, and yesterday we had heard a strange strangled cry outside and came out into the front yard in time to see a turkey, with its dark, lumbering body, slowly fly from its perch in a tree behind Judy's house, across the street and over our heads to somewhere behind our house.
There is only one other time we have seen turkeys right in our own yard and that was, funnily enough, on Thanksgiving Day of 2007. It's the kind of thing Betty, my mother-in-law, would have delighted in. She lived in a house her husband, an architect, designed overlooking a beautiful valley, Nant-y-Glyn, in Northern Wales.She has been dead for almost a decade.
"That's not right," Paul is saying. We are in our front room with the Christmas tree lit (yes it must come down soon), "the Germans shouldn't machine-gun the survivors." He is watching a movie written by Noel Coward, In Which We Serve, in which survivors on a life raft from a bombed British destroyer think back on their lives before the war.
He recognizes a particular Anglican hymn they sing in the film and watching it, it's hard not to think about his father who was a bomb diffuser (or "sapper" as they were called) during World War II. While his father was diffusing bombs, his mother was working in a telephone office in Chester, England, near the Welsh border, and was one of the fire wardens: she ran to the top floor of the building to look for incendiary bombs. On one of these occasions, while washing her hands in the bathroom sink, her engagement ring slipped from her hand and fell down the drain. When I met her, in her 80s, she spoke often of her lost ring (Paul's father, Stewart, died some fifteen years before I ever had a chance to meet him) and I always had an image, like a cartoon by R. Crumb, of a ring trapped in a pipe in the middle of a building.
Along with my own wedding and engagement ring, I wear the wedding ring Stewart bought Betty to replace the one she lost. So strange, the journey this small gold ring with a delicate diamond has made from Northern Wales to Vermont. So many criss-crossings across the Atlantic, both seen and unseen, like large dark turkeys that roost somewhere in the trees near our house. We know they are there but we rarely see them.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Why I Live Near a Little PO
Walked down to our little PO today. Other than the grange hall, where we have town meeting in alternate years, the yearly talent show and occasional town suppers, there is no other public space in our little village of Williamsville. We had a wonderful gourmet general store, with brick-oven pizza and fancy food to go, besides just milk and eggs, but to the disappointment of many, it went out of biz a couple years ago. My neighbor, Anne, remembers when the first floor of a woman's house was the PO and she was the postmistress. It is still in the same house where that woman lived, but renovated (save for the wrap-around porch) to look pretty much like a regular US post office, just smaller and perhaps more quaint on the outside. Many of the POs in Vermont look like this and given the money the USPS is losing due to e-mail, etc, it will be very sad when and if these charming outposts, which are just as important to touch base with one's community of neighbors as they are to give and send mail, go out of business for good.
I've had my run-ins with our infamously cantankerous postmistress, but we've warmed to each other, finally, over these past few years and today, when I heard Nokie (who I tied up outside as I mailed packages) barking, I told her it was Judy's dog. Everyone knew Judy. Her life remains a very sad mystery to many people. What happened to her that she ended up without heat, running water or the will or ability to care for herself? How did she end up dying alone and not being discovered for a couple weeks? Since we found her body on July 1, I get little bits and pieces of her information about her life from different people I run into here and there.
She wasn't a hoarder all her life, for example, and some people at her funeral remembered when her house was clean and she made lavish dinners and had guests over to to enjoy them. She was a traveling nurse and a psychiatric nurse at different times, and apparently was very loving to animals and generous with people--cooking meals, for example, for an elderly couple who used to live in the house on the other side of the covered bridge.
By the time we met Judy, she wouldn't let anyone into her house and we would leave eggs (when we had chickens) by the door, or she'd greet you at the door, as she did when friends attending our Guy Fawkes potluck and bonfire, brought her over a bowl of chili because she said she wasn't feeling well when I called to invite her, but that she would really appreciate some food. Paul and I were friendly with Judy but we knew to keep our distance, she had a way of entangling you in her ranting politics (she ran, unsuccessfully, for town clerk) and in her general sense of chaos that swirled around her life. I took her to the mechanics once and she was very grateful, but we heard her poor old, small white car sputter and cough and struggle to come to life many mornings.
She told me she didn't have heat, but kept warm in one room with the electric heater and her dog (he really has struggled to understand why we, unlike Judy, don't let him lie on the couch with us--he is too big! Plus we have two cats). I said, "Judy, you know you could get fuel assistance." She probably could have had oil delivered free to her house, but she had a way of not only not wanting help, but confounding, confusing and torturing those who tried to help her. She took showers for a while at a friend's house, but they had a falling out and weren't speaking at the time of Judy's death. I heard many stories like this. Also, about how she rescued many animals, including a goose for which she built a special pen when it got injured (accidentally by her, but that's another story).
We are still feeding her outside cat, a scruffy orange and white creature with a shortened tail. How he survives these winters is a mystery, but we've seen him living outside since we moved here four and a half years ago. Each morning we (usually Paul) puts food and water on the sagging porch of Judy's now-empty house. There is an old wooden bin with an opening cut into the bottom that Judy apparently set up and I added nice, cozy flannel blankets to the basket in there as well as straw stuffed in all around it.
Today at the PO, the postmistress said, "Judy really lost it in the end. Once she told me she knew everyone at town hall was speaking about her because she stood outside and listened through the window."
"Well," I said, "once she told Paul and I, very matter-of-factly, that a raccoon had gone into her kitchen and stolen some jewelery." She said as if this was very normal, as if all of us had wild animals wandering around their kitchens. We somehow gleaned that her basement was sort of open to the elements and perhaps all kinds of critters wandered in and out.
Just then I heard Nokie bark outside the PO and just after, Richard came in. He is a real character, a fantastic potter with Raku firing kilns made out of old maple syrup drums, who has lived here since the early '60s in a very old farmhouse. He is known for his eccentricity and dry, if sometimes cranky wit. He is very thin with a long, bushy mustache; he wears worn t-shirts and jeans and sweaters with moth holes in them and fraying wool at the hems.When gas prices are high, he refuses to drive any of his various beat-up vehicles and instead dons an old 40s-style leather motorcycle helmet, with the long flaps over the ears, and takes his ancient bike spinning through the bridge and into town.
"I'm sorry," I said. "Did Nokie bark at you?" I asked Richard as he opened his mailbox.
"That's okay," he said not looking at me as he pulled his mail out through the narrow opening, "I barked right back."
I've had my run-ins with our infamously cantankerous postmistress, but we've warmed to each other, finally, over these past few years and today, when I heard Nokie (who I tied up outside as I mailed packages) barking, I told her it was Judy's dog. Everyone knew Judy. Her life remains a very sad mystery to many people. What happened to her that she ended up without heat, running water or the will or ability to care for herself? How did she end up dying alone and not being discovered for a couple weeks? Since we found her body on July 1, I get little bits and pieces of her information about her life from different people I run into here and there.
She wasn't a hoarder all her life, for example, and some people at her funeral remembered when her house was clean and she made lavish dinners and had guests over to to enjoy them. She was a traveling nurse and a psychiatric nurse at different times, and apparently was very loving to animals and generous with people--cooking meals, for example, for an elderly couple who used to live in the house on the other side of the covered bridge.
By the time we met Judy, she wouldn't let anyone into her house and we would leave eggs (when we had chickens) by the door, or she'd greet you at the door, as she did when friends attending our Guy Fawkes potluck and bonfire, brought her over a bowl of chili because she said she wasn't feeling well when I called to invite her, but that she would really appreciate some food. Paul and I were friendly with Judy but we knew to keep our distance, she had a way of entangling you in her ranting politics (she ran, unsuccessfully, for town clerk) and in her general sense of chaos that swirled around her life. I took her to the mechanics once and she was very grateful, but we heard her poor old, small white car sputter and cough and struggle to come to life many mornings.
She told me she didn't have heat, but kept warm in one room with the electric heater and her dog (he really has struggled to understand why we, unlike Judy, don't let him lie on the couch with us--he is too big! Plus we have two cats). I said, "Judy, you know you could get fuel assistance." She probably could have had oil delivered free to her house, but she had a way of not only not wanting help, but confounding, confusing and torturing those who tried to help her. She took showers for a while at a friend's house, but they had a falling out and weren't speaking at the time of Judy's death. I heard many stories like this. Also, about how she rescued many animals, including a goose for which she built a special pen when it got injured (accidentally by her, but that's another story).
We are still feeding her outside cat, a scruffy orange and white creature with a shortened tail. How he survives these winters is a mystery, but we've seen him living outside since we moved here four and a half years ago. Each morning we (usually Paul) puts food and water on the sagging porch of Judy's now-empty house. There is an old wooden bin with an opening cut into the bottom that Judy apparently set up and I added nice, cozy flannel blankets to the basket in there as well as straw stuffed in all around it.
Today at the PO, the postmistress said, "Judy really lost it in the end. Once she told me she knew everyone at town hall was speaking about her because she stood outside and listened through the window."
"Well," I said, "once she told Paul and I, very matter-of-factly, that a raccoon had gone into her kitchen and stolen some jewelery." She said as if this was very normal, as if all of us had wild animals wandering around their kitchens. We somehow gleaned that her basement was sort of open to the elements and perhaps all kinds of critters wandered in and out.
Just then I heard Nokie bark outside the PO and just after, Richard came in. He is a real character, a fantastic potter with Raku firing kilns made out of old maple syrup drums, who has lived here since the early '60s in a very old farmhouse. He is known for his eccentricity and dry, if sometimes cranky wit. He is very thin with a long, bushy mustache; he wears worn t-shirts and jeans and sweaters with moth holes in them and fraying wool at the hems.When gas prices are high, he refuses to drive any of his various beat-up vehicles and instead dons an old 40s-style leather motorcycle helmet, with the long flaps over the ears, and takes his ancient bike spinning through the bridge and into town.
"I'm sorry," I said. "Did Nokie bark at you?" I asked Richard as he opened his mailbox.
"That's okay," he said not looking at me as he pulled his mail out through the narrow opening, "I barked right back."
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Some sorrow, some snowshoeing
So after the meditation and Dharma talk, I was off for a much needed coffee, a cafe mocha actually, to shrink the painfully swollen passages of my sinuses. But I was relaxed and happy when I got to Mocha Joe's and even happier to come hope to my husband, dog, two cats, the Sunday edition of the New York Times and a fire roaring in the fireplace.
Although the day was dark and getting darker as more snow clouds gathered over the valley, I convinced Paul to go snowshoeing, if only for a bit. He agreed, a wee grumpily, as we got into our hats, mitten, coats, boots, snowshoes and so on. Lucky Nokie--he cheerily charged outside in his thick ready-made fur coat. A fresh snow was falling as we headed behind our house to the edge of the woods. We snowshoed across our neighbors' backyards, which all abut a huge expanse of woods, and cut across a field and took the little path through a clearing that leads to a lovely path above the river. The woods sloped up a hill to our left and the river sat down below to our right as we headed out. It is a particularly lovely path, any time of year, and I even convinced a bright five-year old of this when we reached it after bushwhacking through the overgrowth this past summer to get there. "You're right!" he said. "This is magical!"
We ran into our neighbors, a couple, also out for a snowshoe with their dog, an Irish setter, and stopped for a chat as the snow fell and the dogs played and we all wished each other Happy New Year before going our separate ways. We followed the snowy path down to the place where one must either ascend up the hilly/mountainous incline, or go down below, across a creek and wetlands.We decided to turn around as we had had just the right amount of snowshoeing for the day and Nokie was stopping now anyway, lying down and chewing at and eating the frozen snowballs that had formed between the pads of his feet. This was his first "snowshoe" and he certainly was enjoying it. He was adopted by us this summer after being found, starved and dehydrated, next to his owner's body (our neighbor) who had been dead for two weeks. She had been a recluse and ill for sometime and we know he had not been out for a walk in several years.
Nokie leapt up from his thorough paw-cleaning and charged along the snowy path toward our house. We came down through our upper yard to the welcoming sight of the chicken-shaped whirligig swinging its wing-arms around in continuous circles and the chuffing of smoke from our chimney. Nokie raced to the backdoor--waiting for us to let him in to where it was warm and his supper soon would be served. This is, I suppose, Nokie's nirvana.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Dumples in the Snow
Four more inches of snow fell here today and we are supposed to get up to nine inches more overnight. Life in Vermont, indeed. I am in our sunroom in front of the fire with a chicken slowly cooking in broth and wine with wild rice, mushrooms, onions and clementines in the Schlemmertopf (German clay cooker).
Paul, Nokie and I didn't head out for our usual walk along Baker Brook, up Beetlestone, a long, sloping hill, and down Parish Hill until 3:30 PM. It was sunny earlier, but the sky had become overcast and gray. We complained about the cold more than usual and as we set out were already imagining the hot cup of tea and a fire when we got home. Still, we noticed, as we always do, the extraordinary and ever-changing natural ice and stone sculptures that are made by the freezing, melting and refreezing of the river. Broken shelves of snow-capped ice are piled up along the edges, and the river (which it is, really, though it is called a brook) was rushing furiously around little islands of ice and snow-covered rocks.
"Look," Paul said, as we set out past the concrete bridge, "a heart." He pointed to a snowy ice formation in the river that looked just like a big heart. Over the twelve years we lived on Cape Cod together, he collected for me many heart-shaped stones from his many hours of beachcombing.
It became windy as we walked and the trees began shaking down mini-blizzards of snow from their branches so that our lashes and eyebrows were dusted white. We plucked a little icicle from the funny whisker of our dog. He has one whisker that curls down, not up like the others, because he could not resist, despite Paul's warnings, the bacon hanging from the electric fence around our neighbor's beehives this summer. Some local beekeepers lure the bears this way just to teach them a permanent (they hope) lesson. Many a season of hard work and honey as been carried off, hive and all, into the woods by bears. Paul didn't catch Nokie in time before he heard a loud yelp. Other than the partially-singed whisker, Nokie was fine.
It was cold, white and silent on our walk and we saw no one and no cars, except two snow plows. Reaching the crest of Beetlestone Hill is always the reward. As we approached it, walking up the long, slow incline, we could see a cathedral of snowy trees lining each side of the road. At the top, a small, ancient graveyard (with a few Revolutionary soldiers buried in it) is on the right, toward the western mountains, while to the southeast, we look out over the valley and can see in the distance a circle of white on the top of a mountain, which we know to be the clearing where the Kane's post and beam house and goat farm is located. Kane is a retired petroleum executive and raises goats to be sold as meat in restaurants in New York and elsewhere. Across from the entrance to Kane's mountaintop farm is Amazing Planet, a little farm run by a young couple, where I buy fresh eggs year-round and produce in the summer and fall.
At the end of our walk, a loop less than two miles long, we came down Parish Hill and crossing the concrete bridge, Paul pointed to the strange shapes in a plowed bank of snow: angular frozen snow cubes could be seen under a blanket of fresh, soft snow.
"What do you call those?" I said.
"Dumples," Paul said, and it made me think of chicken dumplings underneath a thin layer of gravy.
Paul, Nokie and I didn't head out for our usual walk along Baker Brook, up Beetlestone, a long, sloping hill, and down Parish Hill until 3:30 PM. It was sunny earlier, but the sky had become overcast and gray. We complained about the cold more than usual and as we set out were already imagining the hot cup of tea and a fire when we got home. Still, we noticed, as we always do, the extraordinary and ever-changing natural ice and stone sculptures that are made by the freezing, melting and refreezing of the river. Broken shelves of snow-capped ice are piled up along the edges, and the river (which it is, really, though it is called a brook) was rushing furiously around little islands of ice and snow-covered rocks.
"Look," Paul said, as we set out past the concrete bridge, "a heart." He pointed to a snowy ice formation in the river that looked just like a big heart. Over the twelve years we lived on Cape Cod together, he collected for me many heart-shaped stones from his many hours of beachcombing.
It became windy as we walked and the trees began shaking down mini-blizzards of snow from their branches so that our lashes and eyebrows were dusted white. We plucked a little icicle from the funny whisker of our dog. He has one whisker that curls down, not up like the others, because he could not resist, despite Paul's warnings, the bacon hanging from the electric fence around our neighbor's beehives this summer. Some local beekeepers lure the bears this way just to teach them a permanent (they hope) lesson. Many a season of hard work and honey as been carried off, hive and all, into the woods by bears. Paul didn't catch Nokie in time before he heard a loud yelp. Other than the partially-singed whisker, Nokie was fine.
It was cold, white and silent on our walk and we saw no one and no cars, except two snow plows. Reaching the crest of Beetlestone Hill is always the reward. As we approached it, walking up the long, slow incline, we could see a cathedral of snowy trees lining each side of the road. At the top, a small, ancient graveyard (with a few Revolutionary soldiers buried in it) is on the right, toward the western mountains, while to the southeast, we look out over the valley and can see in the distance a circle of white on the top of a mountain, which we know to be the clearing where the Kane's post and beam house and goat farm is located. Kane is a retired petroleum executive and raises goats to be sold as meat in restaurants in New York and elsewhere. Across from the entrance to Kane's mountaintop farm is Amazing Planet, a little farm run by a young couple, where I buy fresh eggs year-round and produce in the summer and fall.
At the end of our walk, a loop less than two miles long, we came down Parish Hill and crossing the concrete bridge, Paul pointed to the strange shapes in a plowed bank of snow: angular frozen snow cubes could be seen under a blanket of fresh, soft snow.
"What do you call those?" I said.
"Dumples," Paul said, and it made me think of chicken dumplings underneath a thin layer of gravy.
Friday, January 1, 2010
New Year's Day in Billsville, VT
It is a sunny New Year's Day here in Billsville and I have just paused in my reading of an excellent blog by Teresa Stores, a neighbor and writer, now living with her partner and their twins in the south of France. www.strangersinthevillage.wordpress.com It is wonderful, thoroughly engaging reading and I envy them their exotic adventures near the Pyrenees.
I must savor the quiet life in the Vermont village they have left behind. I thought of them, and missed their presence at, a friend's New Year's Eve party last night. The much-talked-about blue moon couldn't be seen directly through the clouds, but it gave off a bright diffuse light that shone on the snow-covered fields. Our car's headlights lit up the snow-packed narrow River Road and the trees, heavy with snow, that hung over it. We passed the houses and barns lit with Christmas lights and I was struck, once again, how lovely Vermont is this time of year, just as one might see in a children's picture book. Many of the images from an old Vermont Magazine from the 1950s that I have in the wicker basket upstairs, are still strikingly similar today. Because the river lies in the bottom of the valley, to get to River Road, we turn off and go down from Brook Street. Houses to the the left sit higher up as the terrain begins to steepen and to the right, they sit low, on the wide plain of the river's edge. Caryl and Joe's house lies between the road and the river.
After two and half miles, we saw the cars lining their driveway and behind their lit-up house, we saw the sparks from a bonfire. Their new home, finally finished last February from a post and beam kit-house, is spacious and lovely. It was warm and welcoming inside with Joe's homemade bread--round, hearty loaves exactly as one might see in an Italian bakery; Caryl had knocked herself out making chili, chicken parmesan, salad, cheesecake. Friend's contributed: Kim's curried bean soup, Rihanna's fried plaintains with spicy mango dip; Saskia's cookies. I brought spiced nuts and smoked oyster dip. Some of the kids were outside by the fire, others were playing upstairs, excited about watching a movie on the big projector Joe had set up. The parents mingled downstairs, drinking wine. I came in before Paul and worried when, after some time, he did not join me. Lo and behold, he'd gone off the edge of the icy driveway and good ol' Ted pulled him out with a tow line. The kids ate at the long wooden table first, and while they watched the movie, we took our place at the table and feasted.
We got home at 9 PM, happily many hours before the midnight revelers hit the roads. We watched a Thin Man movie, which I remember fondly from my childhood--especially the naughty wire-haired terrier, Asta, and the silly, elegant antics of Nick and Nora Charles. Paul fell asleep, dismayed at my fondness for the film. Nokie, our half-retriever, half-shepherd (we don't know really what mix he is, but he is sixty-five pounds, with a thick reddish-gold and black coat), got up repeatedly to bark at Asta, his nose next to our now, old-fashioned small TV screen.
At midnight, I gently woke Paul so we could toast with sparkling apple cider and observe, with fascination and horror, the painful presence of Dick Clark, his face a mask of dark make-up and the after-affects of a stroke, which makes his speech and movements strained. I wondered what kind of strange vanity, or perhaps loyalty as he sees it, would make him continue his long-tradition of hosting New Year's Eve on Times Square? I wondered what friend, agent or publicist would encourage him to keep doing it? The presence of the lively and superciliously superficial Ryan Seacrest (young enough to be his grandson), his "co-host", standing next to him at the end, was too bizarre to be believed. A strange little entertainment circus.
Happily, I was set right again, when I stepped outside with the dog, who trotted down the shoveled path to the compost pile by the river. The moon's light through the clouds made the snow look like marzipan and the stark, towering trees were dark except for the neat layering of white along the top edges of their branches. Our old sugar house, which we use for storage and is set up on on the rising hill of our backyard, near the stone wall that delineates our property from a vast stretch of woods (owned by someone we have never met), was topped with a fat cake of snow. We went to bed after that and, Harvey, our fat white and black cat, who sleeps in the crook of my left arm, was carried, literally, into my sleep, where I dreamt that as I shopped, walked around a parking lot and spoke to people, he stayed nestled under my armpit.
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