Sustainable Nonprofits

PND - News - Report Identifies Characteristics of Sustainable Nonprofits

Ah, organizational LEADERSHIP, that elusive and shape-shifting thing. I became a fund-raiser with the aim of eventually running a not-for-profit of the cause of my choice. Now, at this twenty year mark in my career, I sometimes wonder if I have an obligation to step up to the leadership for which I prepared myself.

But then my toddler falls off his hobby horse or rams a rubber truck onto my toes, or needs a poopy diaper changed, or starts to pull a bookshelf over on himself, and I forget everything else but him now.

So now is probably not a good time for me to step up anywhere other than as Mama. Phew, because I don't really want to any more, after seeing how difficult the work is.

swapbot 5 atcs

somethingblue 5 atcs swapbot

This private swap is for a profile surprise. The swapper wishes she spoke French (Montreal maps), enjoys local items (birch bark), enjoy cupcakes cherries (Sharpie sketches) with Modpodge & school glue.

turning into

Turning into a family has been a tremendously deep process. Every second of each day this child is growing closer to us and farther from previous caregivers and his birth mother. My new, more-than-fulltime job is caregiver to Yosef, who reminds me of the Sultan's elephant, my child's outsized sense of himself totally supported and enhanced by our family attachments. Literally so, he grips my hands and fingers as we walk around the property every day. He likes to climb up and down small obstacles like the concerete blocks of the crumbling barn foundation, and the sturdy piles of logs to be bucked, or cedar posts. My son is in control of what he does and how he proceeds through his day. I rarely say no to him, preferring to exist at his service for those hours. When he needs steadying or help, Yosef reaches his open-palmed hand out toward me without even looking, so confident is he that I am there.

Turning into our driveway after a trip to Lake Placid or Plattsburgh, Yosi squeals with delight. He makes the sound to express his joy at three sights: home, papa and mama.

Unrelatedly, today I read an interesting NYT article about great old houses in not-so-great locations, like our stately 1832 riverfront farmhouse ten feet from a state highway. I'll stay close to the road, thanks. In the event of being snowed in or other disaster, we're as safe as one can be in the Adirondacks right here close to the main road.

your slip is showing

I just greeted friends who stopped to offer get something for us in the city. When they left I glanced at myself in the mirror and saw that I had a dead cluster fly in the hairs at the top of my head.

A Confluence of Marthas 2009 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

A Confluence of Marthas 082108 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Stay tuned for details for the 2nd annual Martha meeting.

my secret clubhouse

To belong, one must have been a teenage girl
and currently is an oenephile.
Recipe sharing, bosom baring,
A tip of the hat to how we say 'twat'.
Crested Hens are rare breed chicks,
Whose signal consanguinity is lack of dicks.

taking

These uckers have no souls.

two strange dogs

Our local e-news includes this note today, Mother's Day 2009:

<TWO BLACK DOGS IN THE ELK PASTURE

Sunday afternoon, two black dogs about Lab size were seen in the Elk pasture. It looks like they are in a fairly deep hole in the middle of the field. This hole is about 50 yards from Stickney Bridge Road and opposite Santo Lane.>

Around a year ago I saw two strange dogs in my own pasture. They were so remarkable that they might have been angels, my son's spiritual guardians coming to stare at our bitter cold farm in the USA, where their royal African child would live. The two dogs matched: boxy in shape and liver-spotted piebald in color. When I noticed them I was near the northern corner of our fenced-in area, and the dogs were moving out of the woods along the fence edge. They stopped when we saw each other, me facing them and the dogs perpendicular to the river. With my bent to imagine great import to anything, I snagged on the idea of angels visiting on behalf of my son-to-be. I thought or prayed good will in the rosy spotted dogs' direction, hoping to communicate hope and peace. I felt scrutinized by them and judged myself unworthy because of my many flaws and faults that must have been evident across the shimmering air to the two dogs, the way dogs can hear things humans can't.

RFP -- close but no cigar

There is an interesting Request for Proposals for outdoor classroom programs in National Wildlife Refuge areas. I am surprised to note that there are no national wildlife refuges in the Adirondacks. I wonder why? We have tons of wild animals and outdoor education programs. However, I doubt the scope of the RFP includes establishing a new refuge.

wildlife protection

Hi there. You might enjoy this little true story: some wildlife protection people in our area said we should go ahead and kill some foxes that were using our henhouse as a grocery store. We have a small farm here in the mountains, complete with chickens that roam the yard. The past few years we have had foxes, coyotes, owls and other exciting north american predators eating our birds. I really wanted the killing to stop, but couldn't stand the idea of killing the predators. So I called the local wildlife protection group to ask for their help. They came by with traps and gave us all sorts of advice for weeks. Day after day the foxes and others outsmarted us and continued snatching hens. Eventually my flock was down by more than half, and I was pretty upset...the fox did not always kill cleanly, and we were out of business as egg producers.

Those earnest wildlife people gave up on us in less than a month, and said they could understand if we needed to shoot the foxes, etc. I never did kill any, not for lack of trying; Beloved did.

not for squeamish

Is it only a year ago since my Beloved killed his first hog? I was nurse to his surgeon that cold day. Wow, it has only been one year since that milestone. We got so proficient with that ultimate task. I picture a slightly overgrown market hog, maybe 200 or 250 pounds, hanging elephantinely by one elegant rear hoof from a cross beam in our barn, not even swaying, it's so heavy. The carcass is dirty as a pasture-raised pig will be dirty. At the neck, a vertical dark red slash where, post-rifle shot, the farmer forced in the sharp sticking knife, then twisted mercifully, severing the vein. Closer viewing of the great head shows the tiny bullet hole between the eyes. You know, I can't remember if there is usually a dried trickle of blood there or not. I also have never fully watched the sticking part. The slit neck has bled copiously and still oozes by the time we let the carcass down off the chain.

Black Indians and Others

Just discovered this dvd series by and about Native Americans. We watched "Our Spirits Don't Speak English: Indian Boarding School" last night and I am going to borrow the rest from the lie-berry. Thanks as always to the Clinton Essex Franklin County Library System (CEFLS) online browsing and ordering.

On another note, I have been day dreaming about a NYC trip. Spouse to come along, and maybe baby, but maybe not. Or maybe I will be by myself. The train ride is scenic and serene, the Hudson ice frozen and glittering or maybe it is limpid and undulating under sailboats. I check into the Smith Club, which for those in the know is actually the Williams Club off Madison near enough to Grand Central & Penn Station, both. They have a quiet paneled dining room and a small patio. Or maybe I will stay at the chain hotel on W37 in Little Korea that I used to visit for work, where there is a rooftop bar at the feet of the Empire State Building.

A good day in Saranac Lake and Lake Placid. We enjoyed the 2009 ice castle and then went to a festival on the frozen Mirror Lake, where friends of ours were playing in a heated outdoor stage. (Stone Man Blues Band.)

kisses

100_3458, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

R.I.P. Cruiser

100_3300, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Our dear old dog Cruiser passed away in my arms in our kitchen in late January. He is the best dog I ever knew or hope to know.

Y smiling with his package

Y smiling with his package, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Christmastime 2008. I suppose I could say "parcel" or "box." I think this was a box from Aunt Mars and Uncle Frank.

Look at my boy's cherubic face. As you see, Yosi is standing easily, pulling himself along around rooms holding onto furniture and walls. He has two teef! I am so proud of him! It's great to be a family.

shower guests

shower for Yosef Spear autumn 2008, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

This fall Julie Robinson Robards organized a group of our dear friends and held a baby shower for Yosef. The baby and I received all sorts of gifts, including a story quilt made by Bethany Krawiec (in photo, second from left.) Here are some members of the Crested Hens and the Upper Jay Women's Temperance League at Yosi's shower at Barb's house. L-R: J R Robards, Bethany Krawiec, Amy Fennelly, Wendy Block, Martha Spear, Barb Smith, Nan Amstutz, Sylvia Norton, Ellen Metcalf, Martha Gallagher, Jan Bosland, Susan Lacy and Elly Preston. Photo by Mary Valley (thanks, Mary!) and photos of Yosef provided by the orphanage.

making the leap

making the leap, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Soon the last of these great beasts will leave our farmette, and we will have a non-barn-chores winter. Although somehow we still have 15+ hens, so maybe we will still have eggs... I do love having those fresh eggs.

birthday cake pre-smash

before, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Here is a portrait of our son Yosi with his first birthday cake, red velvet flavor, held at a rakish angle by me, the Mama. In minutes Yosi was elbow deep in red chocolate cake and bouncing full of sugar. Yay!

Cake by Paul Johnson
Photos by Greg Pedrick and Wendy Block
Party guests / "Aunties": Anita, Katrina & Rebecca Newell, Susan Lacy & Jim Bernard, Wendy & Greg, mom & dad, Cruiser

Yosi's first birthday

Friends joined us to sing "Happy Birthday," eat cake and sip tea. Here are before and after photos of Yosi with his first cake. Mama chose her own favorite flavor, red velvet, and naturally did nto consider how this might look smashed on Baby's tray. This scene sparked jokes about "Baby's first cannibalism" and "Baby's first organ meats." Mama & Co. have tasteless senses of humor.

Happy Thanksgiving

family, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Here we are in Rhode Island at John's Mom's house for Thanksgiving 2008. (left to right: Marti "Aunt Mars" O'Brien, Lisa "Auntie Poo" Spear, Martha "Mama" Spear, John "Papa" Spear)

families are forever

100_3379, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Our dear sweet Yosi, all a-grin in his new winter hat from Ninou in France. Thank you, Ninou!

happy memories

Sessions House spring 89, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Here is a photo from my college album. This was my second residence; my first was an ultra modern building across the street. The cars look so old! I wonder if Sessions is still haunted.

quivering moth

quivering moth sketch, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

From a time long, long ago, far, far away -- two months ago when I had time to ponder and draw.

Yosef Spear Halloween 2008

Yosef Spear Halloween 2008, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

At daycare Yosi was a pumpkin, and at home he was a chicken for Halloween. We are pretty sure he knows he is our little boy, not a farm product.

which is the real chicken?

100_3376, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Many thanks to Auntie Poo for the Hallowe'en costume for Yosi.

Mama and Baby with new favorite toy

100_3324, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

A good friend gave Yosi this doll with lovely brown skin. When he first saw the doll Yosi was entranced and happy. I imagine that he somehow misses all the beautiful shades of brown skin in Ethiopia. We try to give him as many reflections of himself as possible, with characters in books, images on the wall, dolls and toys.

Grandpa and Yosi

100_3340, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Grandpa Sam Spear visited in October 2008 and got a laugh out of his new grandson.

husband and son

Facebook | John Spear's Photos - Yosef and Ethiopia
The two most important people in my life, one of whom is airborne and gleeful, the other of whom is very strong.

Cruiser and Yosi

Cruiser and Yosi, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Cruiser and Yosi settling into a moment on the living room rug this morning. Yosi is getting ready to crawl.

new parenthood

Being a new parent is like being the baseball as it is hit out of the park. Last night we had Junior in bed between us all night. The parent who is usually up and down all night (me) found this arrangement quite good, and my rest was better than it has been. The parent who usually sleeps through most of the night and then has baby duty for several uninterrupted hours in the morning (Beloved) found it not so restful a night, but we both loved having our son with us in and out of sleep and cuddling and snuggling. I think we will do this regularly, especially as the cold sets in.

Here is a photo of John's grandmother meeting Yosef for the first time -- pure joy.

Cruiser and Yosi

100_3265, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Cruiser the dog has finally begun to accept that if he wants any attention at all any more, it is going to have to come via the little interloper. And so a warm relationship begins.

Mom and Dad meet Yosef

Mom and Dad meet Yosef, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

What else is there to say?

Cityfile: Using Brain Expands Waistline

Cityfile: Using Brain Expands Waistline
Eureka! That explains it!

Kaldi's Coffee, Addis Ababa

Kaldi's Coffee, Addis Ababa - Lonely Planet Travel Guide
Here is where we will have a few cups of coffee the week after next. I can't wait :-)

A confluence of Marthas

MARTHA ALLEN: A confluence of Marthas - Lake Placid News
Here is a news story about an event I organized a couple of weeks ago. What fun! I know that once we get home with our boy, there won't be time for frivolity like this any more.

Yosef's gifts

martha spear 016, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Some of the bounty of hand-me-downs, thrift shop finds and other gifts for our son Yosef. Click on my Flickr to see more and views of the baby room in process: purplicious!

Rock hard abs

Rock hard abs « Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?

Home

100_2928, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

This is what our beloved new son will learn to call home. Photo taken during the winter of 2007.

Martha

Martha, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

A very long time ago...

our motto painting

our motto painting, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Years ago John and I came across this lovely painting (Millet? Courbet? I can't remember...) The art struck us and is a favorite ever since. Some day we will have a nice large print of this framed in our house.

en plein air sketches

en plein air ATCs #2 -- loungin' & nursin', originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Here is one of four ATCs (artist trading cards) for swapbot, mailed 8/1/08. Teh theme is "en plein air". These sketches were done with Sharpie. Click through for the other three drawings.

recycled cracker box

crackers, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Here are scans of three recycled grocery box postcards I did for SWAPBOT.

The top one is called "you are getting very cracker."
The middle one is "the iris and the sun."
The bottom one is "cracker rocket."

Fun!

having the decorator in

Art school makes me want to do something like this.

we are in Adirondack Life magazine!

Read about our farm here. There are also some splendid photos by Nancy Battaglia that we hope to post soon.

Martha news

Dear Friends & Colleagues,

With pleasure I write to tell you that I have started a new job as regional major gifts officer with the American Red Cross, serving the Adirondack region. I have also begun to grow a consulting practice here in the Lake Placid region. These past five happy years as development director for North Country School & Camp Treetops have been the most professionally rewarding period of my twenty years as a fund-raiser. Indeed this has been the job of a lifetime!

My change from a full-time to part-time development career is to accommodate our family-to-be and the demands of farming. As many of you know, we are adopting Yosef, a baby boy from Ethiopia, and, if there are no surprises in our paths, he will be in our arms this autumn. You can keep up with our news and our farm by looking at the websites listed below.

Please forgive the mass email format, accept my warm greetings and keep in touch!

Best regards,

Martha

Www.AdirondackPork.com
Www.MarthaSpear.blogspot.COM

God laughs at people who make plans

Hello, all. I doubt anyone can help me with this, but thought you might enjoy our latest farm FUBAR. We had thoughtfully planned to downsize our pig population with the baby coming, and were even thinking of having no hogs at all through the fearsome Adirondack winter. (The fox and barred owl have downsized our flock of chickens for us.)

But pigs are large and smart and don't have natural predators where we are. Two weeks ago we were getting ready to do a harvest (which means taping fairy wings to the grown six-month-old piggies, taking them to heaven and turning them into chops & bacon & ham). One of these plump little piggies, on harvest morning, started having a litter of piglets!

"Oh my goodness, that was a close call," we said to yourselves as we continued loading the other plump beasties onto the trailer... As it all unfolded, six of the eleven pigs we thought were ready for harvest were instead quite pregnant and ready to drop their litters, all within one week. None of these young girls were tame (we only tame & name the ones we intend to breed.) We had no nurseries set up. We had no idea they were pregnant! What a fiasco. We are the most ignorant, bumbling farmers.

So now, instead of downsizing our farm, we have 50 new piglets running around, six new mommas who are not tame, and holy moly, what a summer!

How on earth are we going to find an experienced, organic, humane and spiritual hog farmer to farm-sit for our sixty beasties while we go spend three weeks in Ethiopia receiving our first child?

God laughs at those who make plans.

Jay e-news

This morning we helped friends harvest their grass-raised chickens. It was wet, challenging, warm, squishy work. We had a good time, got a lot done and will eat some delicious chicken soon.

I love living in a place where we post on our town bulletin board as follows: We are looking for a used rooster, must be sociable. We will take chicks & hens off your hands. I still hope to find a used wooden yoke for carrying two water buckets at a time. For trade or cash.

baby shower wish list - airline miles

We are thinking of our baby shower gifts wish list. The biggest thing we need is help getting ourselves to, lodged in & then the three of us home from Ethiopia. We have asked our church to help us and they will.

Now I ask you to join in the fun and consider helping us also. Have some airline miles you can donate? I don't know how it works or how many we need other than "a lot." John will find out and we will post more details. Thank you.

EAT FOOD swap

Here is a swapbot journal for a swap called "Eat Food," suggested by Michael Pollan's line "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."


Tuesday, June 3, 2008

I decided to start this project with my pets. For almost all their lives my cats and dog have eaten commercial pet food. Now I can do differently, and sustainably, because our farm produces protein that we do not eat, in the form of pork liver, hearts, tongues & other organ meat. Instead of composting that meat, I am slow-cooking some of it with macaroni and oatmeal. In the morning when it is cooled I will chop some up and feed the animals with that. Not the pigs or chickens but the cats & dog.

The liver smells surprisingly delicious. I was afraid it would stink, but it is very nice. One of our cats snuggles on my lap as I type here, not knowing that the delicious smell will be in her belly at breakfast.

Why are you doing this challenge?

Because I live on a farm that my spouse and I started and we grow a lot of our own food. I feel like I am one of the good-guys and yet I still crave processed food and unwittingly consume stuff that I know must harm the earth. This is just a way to measure how I really eat.

Wednesday, June 4

Slow-cooked some dried beans with a handful of bacon ends from our hogs. I plan to make refried beans that I can freeze in small packets to be vegetarian protein for my meals. I can cook meat for John and we can share the vegetables and whatever else – pilaf, pasta, salad. We pretty much only buy meat from fellow small farmers in the Adirondacks. By now we are so used to the natural stuff that supermarket meat has little appeal.

What was it like to shop for food? Did it increase or decrease your food spending?

Earlier today I did a big shop and spent far more than I wish I needed to. Our most costly items are not even edible: laundry detergent, cat litter. I bought salad in a bag because I cannot resist it, although I have read Barbara Kingsolver’s book and I understand that I don’t have a right to salad that is not blooming in my own yard. I bought lots of fresh fruit and vegetables because I love them, but I feel guilty about it for the same reason – nothing like that is blooming in the Adirondacks now. Citrus and bananas certainly don’t even grow here at any time of year. I bought chocolate because there is no need to explain why.

Thursday, June 5 -- For dinner tonight I ate at a girlfriends’ potluck. I brought food that I had made from scratch: bacon-wrapped water chestnuts with peanut butter, apple hash with potatoes, and shredded pork. The pork was my own, naturally. The hash had organic apple, local asparagus & squash, imported rice and west coast organic blue potatoes. The water chestnuts came out of a can and I have no idea where they came from other than the grocery store. Girlfriends brought 1980s salad (spinach and strawberries,) store-bought turkey and quinoa with oranges, and various dips, nibbles & treats. Good wines that crossed an ocean. Chocolate cake made from scratch. Coffee from who knows where.

I cleaned out the leftovers making apple hash so tomorrow will be new cooking.

Friday, June 6

Processed food report: this morning since we were out of half-and-half I consumed some artificial flavored coffee creamer that is based on a corn by-product. It was delicious and guilt-inducing. I can’t believe I like this stuff.

In this summer heat I have been drinking lots of ice tea and juice. Although I do make my juice from frozen concentrate, it is just store brand and probably is not organic. Lunch was cherries & banana salad sweetened with refined sugar. I think the fruit must be imported, but no artificial ingredients in this meal.

Saturday, June 7

This morning for breakfast I will eat yogurt (store bought) with flax seeds, wheat germ & home-canned fruit, maybe marmalade made by my friend Nancy or grape jelly made by me. The oranges were not local but the grapes are.

How did "eating food" make you feel; did you notice any changes in your digestion, your skin, your mood?

Actually I feel like I haven’t really changed how I eat this week! I did intend to make my own yogurt and eat that for breakfast rather than the store-bought kind, and I haven’t yet. We ate some refried beans that I made from scratch and you can guess how that affected my digestion. My skin has been clearer than usual but that is most likely due to where I am in my cycle and the fact that I am getting more sun now that the days are warmer. My mood is happy, but things are generally going very well in our lives right now, so happy makes sense.

Sunday, June 8

Today was the first farmer’s market of the summer season. Last year we were the only regular meat vendor; this year there are four! We think we started a trend, or maybe we just got in on the ground floor. At any rate, we already have lots of regular customers, so the other meat vendors just watched as we sold our wares. Everyone was very cordial. I hope that they build up their clientele soon. We only sell at the one market and there are perhaps a dozen more at different locations, so we certainly do not have a monopoly.

Monday, June 9

We have very little box food left. I have not been replenishing those formerly-staples as we use them. Today I went grocery shopping and bought a gallon of whole milk to make my own yogurt with. Also a lot of fruit. The line, “eat food, not too much, mostly plants” rings in my head, but I must have my dairy.

Got bitten badly by the evil little North Country blackflies and I have huge sore red bumps on my neck and scalp. So much for clear skin.

Tuesday, June 10

Ate yogurt with blueberries and grains this morning. The blueberries came from Florida. I am ashamed to say that for lunch-on-the-go I succumbed to an old favorite and got a baloney sandwich from a deli, with chips on the side. It was so yummy… Ate tuna salad later, recognizing that this stuff from a can probably harms the environment. I did not make the pickles that flavored the salad, but I did make the bread.

Wednesday, June 11

Feeling very pressured with work today. Couldn’t eat breakfast; felt too stressed. Around eleven I got massively hungry and ate a whole bag of red seedless grapes. (Forgive me, Cesar Chavez. Oh wait, that strife is over with now, isn’t it?) Then ate great swathes of St André cheese on my homemade (slightly stale) bread later in the afternoon. Took my hubbin out for dinner and ate a lovely Ceasar salad and an even lovelier burger. I am not doing so well with this “mostly plants” idea, even though I think of myself as a mostly a veg and fruit-eater. Isn’t it odd that I haven’t eaten any eggs during the time of this swap? Every day twice a day I collect eggs from under the warm hens, and wash the eggs in well water, and store them in recycled cartons in the fridge. Must eat some of my own delicious free range eggs! Good thing this swap is not about eating local or I would have only eggs, maple syrup and meat for every meal!

Thursday, June 12

Well, here is the end of my swap journey. I realized that I eat a lot more junk and processed food than I think I do. My kitchen triumphs were the pet food and refried beans. I ate way too much junk food. My husband eats what I put in front of him, so yes, he did participate. He said YUM.

tilling

This morning, unusually, I was up before John, awakened by the rooster crowing forlornly if not irritably in the locked-up-tight chicken coop. I kissed him (John, not the rooster), set an alarm for him, and went out in the mist to the animals. The birdies were very pleased to be let out into the fresh green mountain morning. I will just keep every sense attuned to the sound of that fox.

Then as I was about to take off my clogs and go inside for coffee, I heard the distinctive highway sound of an approaching small tractor. Yes, it was Ralphie, our friend who will plow for us for an hourly fee that must barely cover his gas. I was delighted to see him coming--he had said he would but not when--I turned around and ran out to the garden where I had left last year's soaker hose & plastic mulch to moulder under dried plant wreckage & dirt. I hauled that stuff out of the earth and shoved it under the unused pig shed, which took a good fifteen minutes of heavy muddy work. Ralph mutely began to move the enormous compost piles that we have been collecting. I greeted a surprised and nervous little brown garden snake, glared at the chickens who were thinking about flying out of their relatively safe yard to investigate. I hope no birds get preyed upon today and the garden snake doesn't get chopped up.

The garden will look like a perfectly frosted chocolate crumb sheet cake when Ralph is done with it. I must get in there, mark rows, plant & then begin the drudgery of weeding. We will grow such good stuff! Next winter we will eat garden produce all year long, thanks to my newfound skills as a home canner.

Meanwhile in our bedroom in the yellow house, John still slept. I hoped he would wake up curious about the tractor sound but it could just as easily be our neighbors (& Ralphie's ex-in-laws) doing something with one of their machines. So when I was done with the procrastinated plastic-removal I went inside the quiet house, stripped off my filthy muddy clothes & went to check on my beloved. He is so very tired at the end of the school year. He wants to nap when he can. Outside we hear a steady passage of drivers on the way to work; let him sleep in for once. I dress, pet John and reset his alarm clock.

All this before I have my coffee!

Now I'm snug on the couch with laptop, cat & dog. There is a pleasant hum & rattle of Ralph at work. John still sleeps -- oh, there was the rim shot of a toilet seat being opened. Sound waves of songbirds are vying with chickens for territorial rights. The river is high from a week of good rain, the trees are dark with foliage. Everything is damp and lush and ready to grow. Outside for the first time in days, the rooster now crows with brio on behalf of his flock of hens. The sounds float into the misty mountain air. I don't know about other roosters, but ours crow any time they are awake and feeling big.

fox + hens

Now that I am working from home I keep my ears tuned to the sounds of farm animals. Chickens have a particular distress sound, and--rarely--a pain sound. Or at least I construe it that way... Those distress and pain sounds launch me into the air and out the door as fast as my feet will take me.

Yesterday at dusk I was in my studio tinkering and heard the distress and pain sounds, and the rooster's alarm. I ran outside to find one bird down and the fox sliding away with another in its mouth. I shouted, waved, the piles of snow white feathers in the grass making me feel sad and guilty for exposing these birds to my learn-by-doing experiment in farming. There by a clump of irises was the white bird we call Ed Koch, crumpled and heaving. I ran to her, and she lurched toward me on the grass, perhaps her legs were broken -- suffering. My thoughtless innocent dependable hen was suffering. Her beady eye was intent, probably seeing me as another predator or maybe as her deliverer. I said, "Here, let me help you!" and I picked her up by her tender slim neck and swung her sharply. The neck bones crunkled like loose knuckles, and she was dead. I laid her down by the hen coop, loose flesh and white feathers and very little blood. But blood = suffering.

Why couldn't the fox just kill and take? Why does the fox leave a woeful dying mess behind? At least the birds of prey pounce and depart with no waste left behind. I was washing dishes the evening before last, again at dusk, and gazing out the window into the garden where a lone hen poked and scratched. Suddenly a bird shot out of the sky, hit the ground with a burst of feathers, one moment of scuffle, and the hen and bird were gone. I cried out for my husband: "John! Something's at the hens!" We ran to the garden together and examined the feathers that remained. A barred owl, he thought.

Yesterday evening's fox had run around the corner of the house with the second bird in its mouth, crying feebly. I chased, and we came to a standoff by the road. I thought the fox had succeeded in killing this bird and I was prepared to let it take the meal away to its kits, but the fox was more cautious than I and dropped the bird, tufts of feathers loose in the grass, and ran across the highway into the bushes alongside the river.

The second bird was more dead, perhaps dead and just twitching, but I couldn't be passive in that moment and I wrung her neck, too, just to be sure. Once again that narrow, liquidy tube of warm bones in my hands like prayer beads and cooked pasta in a velvet sock. Ahhh... when did I become capable of this?

I realized that I was shocked when I found myself carrying the second dead bird by its broken neck instead of upside down by its sturdy feet. I took the carcass across the road to the river verge, crying, "Here fox!" and threw the bird into the weeds where I thought the fox would find it. its dead wings fluttered in the air as if it were alive. One bird to compost, one bird to feed foxes.

That fox is honey-colored, fat and fluffy, not at all cute, very quick and shy yet bold. It knows our farm is a dependable source of fresh chicken. I have imagined shooting it. Our neighbors say, "If you're going to have a farm, you have to have a gun." And they are right -- there have been a handful of times when a sick or injured animal must be put down and those neighbors' .22 followed by a knife in the throat is the only merciful, ethical set of tools to address the needs of that moment.

If I get a gun I will have to practice and become very good. I have no anger toward the predators. I don't want to punish them, only stop them from owning my farm as their hunting grounds.

plein air blog post

Greetings from Upper Jay. I will be your farmer today. Please consider the animals in our story today: fox, hen, bluebird, pig. I am trying to decide how I feel about one of us killing the fox. Today we lost two chickens to a fox.

This is a truly remarkable day, one that ought to be recorded. So a snapshot: at the moment my sturdy beloved is strolling in from afternoon chores. Rain is steady and light, the good soaking we have needed and the Rockwell Kent light we have craved. Last night there was a light frost.

Just after dawn we were awoken by a chicken protesting. I am glad she alerted us before she painlessly died from a broken neck in the fox's jaws. We leaped out of bed, looked out the window. There was a fox, beige and honey colored, smaller then our yellow Lab, a rusty hen limp in its jaws. John & I ran outside, we faced down the fox with our red hen in its face. I figured out later when I cleaned up the bird bodies & feathers that the hens must not have felt a thing. There was no blood, just a very floppy neck and a spew of feathers here & there. I was sure my favorite barred rock, our only one of that breed, was gone due to feather fluff, but John found her later in the day, so she survived the attack. At least two dead birds, if not more. Initially we thought it had been four birds. I am glad it is fewer; there is such a high demand for our eggs.

Beloved walks in from among the fruit trees, under pouffs of golden, pinkish, lilac buds. He hefts his empty pitchfork into its slot on the barn wall. He is aggrieved, under seige. We found our best sow dead this afternoon, no reason why, no blood, no thrashing or extruded body parts. Perhaps she ate a bit of glass from the old midden the pigs are excavating in the pasture. Perhaps she had a heart attack.

So today has been quite an animal day. One healthy, productive, sociable sow dead, the first time something like this has happened to us. She's just laid out there in the straw, facing the wall, as if in a deep comfortable sleep. The carcass will become bear bait in exchange for use of the hunter's large equipment to remove her. I feel sad.

The same-day fox should be shot, said our friend and my beloved agreed. I protested with crossed arms. Beloved glanced at my posture and changed tack, from hellyeah to considering. Hunter told us of another friend and farm-ish competition who had killed a looting fox, had the thing taxidermied in a pose, with a wad of chicken feathers in its mouth, put on display in his living room. These are men I admire greatly. I have a lot to learn and they have a lot to teach.

We are living in the Adirondack State Park, which is maintained by somewhat artificial means. There are very few bears, moose or foxes. Few porcupines, pheasants, wild turkeys, deer, wild birds of prey. Each animal has evolved in relation to certain prey and that prey's food chain. The damage that humans have done to the East coast in a geologic instant has wrecked so much. Old people here recall colder, fiercer times when there were far more animals.

Romantic idealistic farmer, I. How can I justify killing a predator animal? We live in a gigantic, forested state park and a big healthy fox doing its foxy thing can only be a good thing for our ecosystem. More foxes and other predators could be delicately influencing the balance toward more moose, bluebirds, trout and other wildlife. Why should we just just shoot the fox -- surely we can spare a few hens and I would like to think that the fox does not hurt them!

***

Mid-July update -- the fox and its buddies have killed more than half our flock and prowls fearlessly through the barnyard at all hours of day. Beloved has tried to shoot it dozens of times but as this is the first time Beloved has hunted anything and he has no inborn sniper talent, he has not hit the fox yet. The borrowed .22 rests in the barn, ready.

recent American military history food fight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-yldqNkGfo

This video is just splendid. I contemplated, cackled and sat somberly, all within the span of a few minutes. Here's hoping you enjoy it too. Via Neatorama.

natural organic eggs

natural organic eggs, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Today, Leap Day 2008, we have an abundance of eggs at Yellow House Farm in Upper Jay, New York. The eggs are sorted into four groups: brown, leghorn white, auracana cream and blue/green. I could also separate them by size. The variation is part of their charm. Totally natural organic chicken eggs. We have a flock of about 28 hens and one rooster named Teach. We get 12-24 eggs per day this time of year. Our birdies do right by us and we do right by them.

Here is a link to a photo of our egg makers.

Kiehl's

Kiehl's is a brand of lip balm and lotion (and many other cosmetics,) that I adore. I'm as loyal to their brand as I am to L.L.Bean and Scott's tissue. Good value, good quality. Only Kiehl's has changed since being bought by Loreal. The customer service is not as personal. I have been
ordering the same lip balm for five years and recently called to order some more, and the person sent me a size smaller than I usually bought. I hadn't even thought to confirm the size.

I used to go into the Kiehl's original store when I worked on the Lower East Side around the millenium. I loved the history of the building and its neighborhood, Peter Stuyvesant's pear tree & all that. So enjoyed browsing with others in the homespun rarified atmosphere, always good music, beautiful people, staff in white coats. Samples galore, generous and satisfying. No matter how expensive the unguent, a handful of scented glycerine soaps, and a few tubes of this & that took the edge off the price. But online one only gets thin plastic envelopes of creams and such. No more soaps or vials or little bottles.

That's my consumer report for the day.

Cascade Pass Rt 73 Lake Placid

Cascade Pass Rt 73 Lake Placid, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

I've posted some photos from this morning's drive to work. Quite safe at 25 mph. The photos do not capture the deep silence, the fresh still air, the creaking trees and little wind devils.

listening to Phish

I woke this morning from a dream where I finally had the baby, and was just getting used to her/it with my beloved, and the baby dream was snatched away, and I awoke crying into another dream, still dreaming. I truly awoke dry-eyed and pondering. My beloved & I made love twice today.

The moon is waning at about 97%, the hens are laying fruitfully, and we're sex monsters. My beloved says the moon has nothing to do with it, well, with female body tides, yes. And that's what farm life is all about: female body tides.

a bonanza swapbot day

a bonanza swapbot day, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Here is an official photo of the great generous pile of swapbot packages that arrived in today's mail. Thank you to all! I have opened the swaps and I am in bliss with folded maps, doodads, trinkets, pigs & chickens, homemade luxuries... Wow. Some days swapbot makes one's day.

SWAPBOT rhyme, rune + riddance

Cruiser, stove & sniffed thing, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Cruiser, the aging yellow lab, sniffs the riddance prepared & sealed by Colorfizz. In moments the riddance is among those glowing coals, burned up to black ash.

hockey giggles

As the wife of an ice hockey rock star & sister-in-law of a Bruins maniac, I have developed a keen appreciation for hockey humor.

Rosie the Riveter

Operating a hand drill at Vultee-Nashville, woman is working on a "Vengeance" dive bomber, Tennessee (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

Boing Boing posted this photograph today, making my day. I always enjoy iconic images of people of color, particularly women.

Today I shoveled out the chicken coop. This is the sort of chore my hubbin does daily without breaking a sweat or making comment, but I am not as brawny as he is.

Chickens + DH

One of my SWAPBOT partners asked me to post some chicken pix, so here are two plus a bonus picture of DH.

Crested Hens

Here in Upper Jay resides a group of silly, artistic, flamboyant, oenophile women called the Crested Hens, of whom I am one. We have lunch together about once a month and give each other gifts for birthdays or no reason at all. Here are scans of my gifts to the Hens this month. The chicken images are from a book called "Extraordinary Chickens" by S. Green-Armytage.

splendid absurdity!

From Neatorama, a musician of the body. And French, too ( I think.) Reminds me somehow of that strange, glorious movie, the Triplets of Belleville, which my husband slept through.

M-m-m-m-Martha! Marvelous Martha!

Sesame Street classic that naturally appealed to me then as well as now. Hoppy New Year.

a sad day -- Benazir Bhutto

Today human history took a turn toward evil. Benazir Bhutto is no more. Her good works will live on. I wonder if she would have died had she not popped out of the vehicle's hatch to wave. In such a chaotic fraught environment as that rally must have been, they will likely not catch the assassin, if there is one alive. I am truly sad.

SWAP-BOT - Words of Encouragement

Happy Holidays to everyone. Mod-Podge rocks. Here are scans of two little crafty pieces I did as part of a swap. It is hard to see in this small scan, but the music behind the images is Mozart. On one disc I used cord from my mother's sewing box. The discs are recycled cardboard, about 9x6 (forgot to measure.) They are signed & dedicated on the back.

I really enjoyed sitting with this project for a few days. My swap partners are in my thoughts & prayers. I, too, am in need ot words of encouragement. This project bouyed me a bit.

Best regards,

Martha

a favorite hymn

This morning in church I was fidgety and distracted. I was sitting the pew next to my beloved, worrying, unable to clear my mind of chattering thoughts. Within minutes of the service starting I felt like it was mystically geared to help me today. That's a good feeling.

The responsive reading rang a bell in my agitated head; the reader was an elderly woman who spoke slowly and rhythmically. The congregation murmured aloud, "Let us quiet down and listen; listen to the words, listen to the music, listen to the silence." Then we sang this hymn, "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent." The words & music really struck home.

I don't feel particularly holier or calmer now at home, but I do feel blessed.

two pig mommas + 20 babies

two pig mommas + 20 babies, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

A pleasant view in our barn, spring 07.

annual newsletter 2007

December 2007

Dear Family & Friends,

Happy holidays, warm wishes and friendly greetings from our cozy living room in the Adirondacks, where the woodstove is glowing rosy with wood we hove, and the holiday cards are stacked up like cedar shakes. As we write each card & address each envelope we think of you, and thinking of you brings back happy memories. Please enjoy this holiday newsletter from John & Martha, and stay in touch.

FARM – the literally biggest news is that John and friends built a 30 by 60 foot log barn by hand with local wood. The new barn is home to a 600-pound heritage breed boar, five sows, and assorted younger pigs, around 40 right now. In another outbuilding we have 40 egg-laying hens and one rooster named Teach after the David Mamet character. I have dusted off the gardening skills my parents taught me and learned how to can from my sister Liza. Yellow House Farm sells and barters pork, chicken & eggs. You can look us up on the internet. Our little cold-climate farm is growing. Next year we hope to – gasp – turn a profit of at least $1.

JOBS – we are both employed at the Lake Placid boarding schools that hired us from NYC. John is Assistant Head of School at National Sports Academy where he teaches English, does college counseling, and leads the faculty & administration. He is helping the organization go through a strategic planning process. I am director of development at North Country School & Camp Treetops where I am helping that institution get on a firm financial footing in its 80-somethingth year. We very much like our niche in independent schools.

HOUSE & HOME – We painted our big old farmhouse house yellow, to the disapproval of some old timers who said, “It’s been white for near on 200 years.” We have also been told our house has never flooded, which is believable as it is the oldest structure in our town and sits just 50 feet from the Ausable River, which does flood in a most terrifying way in the spring thaws. We love our house and enjoy it being a local landmark. In this part of the Adirondacks there are always athletes on the road bicycling, roller-skiing, running, and we have heard them say, “Here we are at the yellow house.” We have also heard passersby say, “Holy crap, that’s a real pig pen!”

On another note, much to our mutual surprise, John and I have tumbled into a protestant church community, and we like it a lot. John has been appointed to the board and I have started playing with the hand bell choir. We are still dyed-in-the-wool liberals, and, providentially, so is this faith community that decries homophobia, racism, sexism, classism and other forms of oppression. That said, we love to go to church on Sundays. Afterwards John likes to socialize and network, while I prefer to go right home and have a Sunday snooze…we are different that way.

VOLUNTEERING – John is a firefighter and treasurer of our hamlet’s fire department. I am trustee and secretary to the town library and volunteer for two local arts groups. This year I started a writers’ collective (a la Takoma Park, Northampton, Williamsburg Bklyn & other groups) in our town. I will have mailed your holiday card by the time our group has its culminating performance on December 15th at the Upper Jay Recovery Lounge.

FUN – We have a big elderly yellow lab named Cruiser and three adopted stray cats who keep the house mouse-free. John has developed a passion for crossword puzzles. I am still a voracious reader. We both devour the weekly New Yorker magazine. We have made many good friends up here in the wilderness and are never lonely. The scenery is always gorgeous and ever-changing and keeps us enthralled.

And yes, the pigs consume our attention.

Best wishes for you & yours in 2008 and beyond.

Warm regards from Martha, John & many animals!

a favorite restaurant

Diner under the Williamsburg
Bridge in Brooklyn.

When my beloved & I first moved in together we had a loft apartment 1/2 block from this restaurant. The view to the southwest from our windows included the majestic World Trade Center. I hand-wrote many a blog entry while eating & drinking at Diner, often outside and gazing at the WTC.

my new favorite thing

Swap-Bot

What a special early Christmas weekend. John's family came to visit us from the Boston area and we had Christmas and my birthday, complete with turkey dinner that they provided and John cooked, tree-trimming, a cake with candles and some anemic caroling for the benefit of Nana on the phone. It was all memorable and wonderful, although we were disappointed that Nana couldn't come.

This morning someone came by and offered to buy Rhonda the plow truck. John asked them to come back later, which they did, and negotiated a fair price. I am sad to see her go, especially with another nor'easter dropping a ton of snow. Uncle Frank has given us his old snow blower, which John will drive to Massachusetts to pick up, and will see Nana at the same time. And I have another cold. This one's in my chest as well as head.

It will all work out.

from a note to my oldest friend

Dear Friend,

Here in the Adirondacks we got a little snowstorm overnight, and the spring birds that have migrated this far are making all their normal noises even though the ground is white. Our chickens are pecking around outside looking for bugs and other tasty bits. Last week one of the chickens pecked a baby mouse to death and ate it. The pigs are all comfortable in their sweet hay beds, and they don’t mind the cold — to them 32 degrees Fahrenheit is sixty degrees warmer than winter, and they’re content. The piglets are romping around in their yard digging up old horseshoes and bits of metal, glass and ceramic mysteries. It is so interesting to live on an ancient farmstead. John’s tromping in from chores now, so I will sign off.

Love, M

observation - the tits test

On days like today when I wear something that [does not conceal / shows off] my bosom, I am very conscious of men’s glances. It is amazing how many men who usually are fine can’t help themselves. A tit glance before their eyes meet mine, and then no shame at all in their faces.

NCPR News Archive

NCPR News Archive
What a day. It started earlier than usual for me, as I have to do chores myself now that John’s back is injured. Poor man, he is in so much pain he finally decided to go to the hospital where our doctor has an office. More on that later. So I did chores, and he went and got wood shavings to put down over the areas where the animals to the bathroom. I scraped and shoveled and mucked, hardest work of my life, and I am getting stronger every day. My stamina is growing, too. It’s not so bad after the work is done but it sure sucks while doing it. I know I ought to be grateful to John for doing all the barn chores for weeks at a time. Now that 100% of the job is mine, for however short a time, I am amazed and overwhelmed and secretly very proud.

Came indoors to have a cup of coffee and cool off before showering & heading to work, and saw the river had turned into a bucking bronco of racing rapids, ice cakes & logs. Quite dramatic. I did shower and while I was in the water I heard the fire department pager go off and the word “jam”. Ice jam! I hadn’t seen one of those yet. The river was absolutely rolling and heaving, the ice cakes as big as a car or truck. It was terribly exciting. Very little traffic except for emergency vehicles and cops moving slowly by with their lights on, everyone watching the water and the ice. It was raining lightly. (Now at 4:30 in the afternoon the sun is out.) John couldn’t help the fire department because he was on his way to the hospital to deal with his excruciating back pain, so I (perhaps) over-dramatically decided to stay home from work in case the flood rose to the house or the barn. I was imagining shooting the pigs and then there would be no more barn chores. Our back field did flood, right up to the bonfire mound, which is at the edge of the pigs’ paddock. The river did rise to nearly road-level, but only stayed that high for half an hour or so before some ice jam broke somewhere, and it left ice cakes behind. Today I learned that ice jams grow and crack up, they form on the river here and there, and in between are long stretches of normal-looking water.

beloved neighbors & heroic problem-solver

What a Tuesday. John hurt his back and was out of commission for a third day, in worse pain than the other two days combined. The temperature remained above freezing and the “deep pack” in the barn was very thawed, stenchy and dangerous. This condition has been bothering me and when it was clear John would be doing no shoveling today, much less go to work, I panicked. I called beloved neighbors and received reassurances that they would be over soon with big machine + big muscles. I convinced John to let himself stay home from work, got him a chiropractor and massage appointment, set him up with his favorite beverage (Diet cola), food (chips & salsa,) music (Monsterbuck) + NYT Sunday paper bits, and went out to do the hardest physical labor I think I have ever done in my life. With hours of heroic help from neighbors and two men from my school, we got the barn clean. The animals seem so much happier. It’s hard to know if they are or not. John called me his heroic problem-solver.

It is daylight savings time, so still bright dusk at almost 6:30. I hear John moving about upstairs. He’s got to do the fire department treasurer’s report, and then go to a meeting. I will continue to sit here in my quiet exhausted state. Aching back, sense of major accomplishment. I went out to the barn just a while ago to check on them, and all remains well. The animals truly seem happier. I can only imagine what it was like for them living on top of their own suddenly melted mess, eating from a trough while their feet were in their mess.

John shuffles by and reminds me that I still need to water the pigs. Now that he’s accepted his limitations he’s a model patient + happy delegator. We’ll see how long I remain a model wife.

I did not go tot work today; took a sick day sort of, to deal with this all. Feeling somewhat guilty about that: should I have been traditionally responsible and gone to the office, or should I have done what I did: stayed home and gotten help to solve what I perceived as a terrible crisis? Woulda coulda shoulda. What’s done is done.

Pig water. Dinner for self & hubbin. Bring in firewood. Wash dishes. Move laundry through cycle. Straighten up from the day. Triage tomorrow’s tasks. This reminds me of what I imagine child-rearing will be like. Always some demand.

Water done. nearly seven and still light, hallelujah. When did I turn into this rough and strong farm person? (Grin.) When did I turn into a person who is happy to go to church? I am so far from perfect—am a deeply flawed person—but I have moments of joy just from living my life. My ridiculous, unexpected life.

pig cannibalism

It is minus eleven degrees at dusk, nearly six o'clock. I just came in from chores. When I entered the barn all seemed calm. I had already fed the big pigs and the hens and was pouring the sows' grain when I noticed a bloody mess in the deep straw in the back of their stall. It was a half-eaten piglet, the black-and-white banded one. I couldn't believe it. I shouted in horror, then climbed over the fence and gently nudged Gal, the mama, so I could go into the stall and get the carcass. The piglet's front half was entirely gone, and when I picked it up (little legs not much thicker than my gloved fingers, little feet between my fingers) I saw bits of bone & offal in the straw. The others had emptied out the body. There was no skull or front legs or feet. The dead pig's black and white mid-section was deflated, like a scooped-out piece of fruit. The animals did not bother me as I took the carcass out, and when I left the piglets scampered in and started rooting in the straw for any remaining bits of their sibling's corpse. Ugh. Ick. I laid the body and bits on top of a pile of manure in a blue bucket. The sows kept on munching their grain.

Just the other day I read in a pamphlet about slaughtering pigs that they don't care if you kill their pig-friend right next to them--they just go for the warm tasty blood.

That's at least $60 down the drain, or more precisely, into the compost. Gal had eleven or twelve babies and three remain. It is so very cold, and we are so very new to pig-farming. We've probably made 100 mistakes. I blame myself for not helping enough in the barn. Although of course the pig was probably crushed and then eaten; Ham and Gal are by choice sharing that space meant for one sow and her litter.

cold

Note to beloved siblings...

It’s booger-freezin’ cold here today! The river is frozen solid and is utterly quiet, not even creaking. There are miniature glaciers forming along the roadside cliffs where in the warm weather there are damp mossy springs. In the winter that dampness grows & grows, like frozen billowing smoke, and gets to be all sorts of colors from the minerals in the rock. More notably, the growing pillows of ice flow into the road and have to be scraped away by big machines. I would love to catch this on slow motion film. I wish you could see it. Anyway, big storm coming our way. Enjoy your weather-channel view of it. Love, M

humorous video about PMS

spoof of post-War instructional/propaganda videos

A Place In Our Hearts

I have an essay printed in this book:

A place in our hearts: Roland Park Country School

Five years ago this was my daily view: the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn, New York. We lived on the Brooklyn side. That's my fire escape in the upper left hand corner, and a great pale dilapidated opera house on the right.

Here is a poem I sketched out during those years.



Urban Soundscapes

1.
That first day in the city
Me fresh from forest living
A tired and lonely night
July, no air conditioning
The tuneful humming bridge and parties,
Traffic, commerce
Did marry into jazz.
And later to learn Ornette Coleman hung
His hat here, composed and played.
In my panic, culture shock I did hear that jazz
If only for a hyper monkey typewriter moment

2.
Flat on my back on the silver roof
Six stories up, level of bridge roadway
Higher still, beyond bridge elbows, Chrysler and Empire State
Clouds ride against the plastic bubble surface
Covering our spiky city sky
They make no sound, but like a calliope
They are ornate decoration, the carousel horses

3.
I notice that jackhammers
on the bridge do sound
like wailing cicadas
locusts in reflective orange and gold
hard hat highway persons
six stories up in traffic.

4.
A camp wedding memory: Loons on our lake before dawn
concert of humanlike voices, echoes
notes of dog and splashing bonfire.
In Brooklyn, Williamsburg, this is sirens
Back and forth across the bridge
European bing-bong siren
Up and down Broadway.

5.
The museum of dead police cars and taxicabs
Has no known translation into music.
The lumberyard forklift back up beep
Insane, monotonous, ignorable.
The garage specializes in fancy car alarms,
Puerto Rican and Dominican flags.
They test alarms and horns in permutation,
Flexing their muscles, roaring their engines
Day and night, territorial,
Like the lake joke, what is the plume
behind a fast-moving speedboat—
Testosterone.

my grandma when she was happy

Williams, Janet McCormack various undated, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Here are some scanned photos of my grandmother, Janet McCormack Williams, from the late 1920s and/or early 1930s. The pictures may have been taken in Great Britain, where she lived as a young adult until my American grandfather, Kenneth Richard Williams sept her off her feet and away from the Blitz to Alexandria, Virginia.

Boing Boing

Boing Boing: I am in thy library, executing a grammatical procedure of great destructive force against thy lexicon.

This cat-themed joke series makes me snort with laughter. It also affirms my deep belief that cats are representatives of an alien life force outside our galaxy.

MollyGood re Bush & Rumsfeld

MollyGood Viewer - 110806%20bush%20rumsfeld / MollyGood

Saddam Hussein Sentenced to Death by Hanging - New York Times

Hussein Is Sentenced to Death by Hanging - New York Times

I find this very saddening. Yet another death.

licious

Celebrity gossip juicy celebrity rumors Hollywood gossip blog from Perez Hilton

cubes toy

cubes.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)

Blogger Help : How do I post pictures?

Blogger Help : How do I post pictures?

I am trying to post a photograph or two here, but am too deeply conflicted between Gen X and Boomer instincts to understand the "help" page.

American Buffalo at Upper Jay Upholstery

Adirondack Theater

REVIEWS

Thrillingly good. I’m so proud and excited that local folks have produced a show so professional, raw and strong. The actors, (my neighbors), are transformed within their seedy, intriguing set. The audience becomes the walls and roof of the rickety junk shop setting as we respond to the emotional storms of the play. Leave kids at home, don’t be late, and bring a few extra bucks or a bottle to donate to Recovery Lounge, c/o any staff or the bartender who gives you a free drink.

Two Together: Gay Marriage

Article submission for Press Republican’s JILL Magazine
500 words
April 15, 2006


Today at breakfast at the local bakery I asked one couple, “Why did you get married?” Their grown children, who became a family when the couple fell in love, urged them to. I asked another couple, whose teenage son was with them, “Why did you get married?” They didn’t see why they shouldn’t: they loved each other, owned property together, were planning to start a family and be together for the rest of their lives, and there was family health insurance available to them only if they were married. Both couples have been together for many years and are happy as can be. They’re also different than you might be imagining: the couple whose grown children urged them to marry are lesbians, and the couple with the teenage son and family health insurance are gay men.

I think it is perfectly fine for people to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or any variation thereof. But there is more to this than “it’s ok to be gay.” Why would two people of the same gender want to get married? First, because they love each other and want to commit to each other for life. On another level, gay people might want to get married as a step toward civil rights and equality. Yet another reason is that there are financial and legal benefits to getting married, as my husband and I learned as soon as we signed that license and started building equity. Being married makes lots of things easier for loving—or not so loving—partners. As one friend put it, “Marriages have been arranged to prevent war, accumulate wealth, unite families, get a green card, etc.”

Some people contemplate gay marriage and get stuck on the first word, “gay”. Some of my queer friends were irked when I asked them to think about marriage in the context of their own lives. One person asked why they would want to subject themselves to the likelihood of a painful and expensive divorce, since so many marriages end that way. Another said that their church is fine with them being gay as long as they don’t act on it and don’t have a partner; if they showed up in church with a beloved of the same sex, they would not be welcome any more. Sometimes things change: it used to be illegal for people of different races to marry, but those laws were changed as society evolved. Other social differences remain an obstacle to people marrying, like religious faith or economic position.

Some people think that the idea of gay marriage threatens the institution of marriage. This seems rather like pointing the finger away from the guilty party. In most places only heterosexual people can get married, and the divorce rate is terribly high, so aren’t straight people already doing a good enough job of ruining marriage? What difference would another 10% of the population make to an already wobbly institution?

Being married, to me, means making a lifelong commitment of love, partnership, and sexual monogamy. I chose to make this commitment with a person of the opposite gender. But what if the person I grew to love and cherish was another woman, and we decided to make this traditional commitment to each other? Why would that be so wrong?

Thank You: By A Fire Department Auxiliary Member

Thank You: By A Fire Department Auxiliary Member
For Plattsburgh Press Republican JILL Magazine
March 2006

Within a year of our moving to the Adirondacks, our new next-door-neighbors convinced my spouse to join the volunteer fire department. After several fires and emergencies, I volunteered for the Auxiliary, which is mostly female family members and friends of fire fighters.

Our firefighters put their lives at risk for the people in the community. They leap out of bed as faithfully as dogs whether snow, sleet or dark of night. They help people when conditions are worst. Our town’s firefighters are heroes. The auxiliary helps run the services and social side of the fire department. When there’s a disaster, the auxiliary provides hot meals and a warm smile at the fire house. We show up at fires with cold drinks for workers and a kind helping hand where needed. We host a holiday party where every town child receives a gift and gets a photo with special guest Santa Claus. It’s a family and community institution, and I love being a part of it.

Sunday in February, just after dawn the pager went off: structure fire. My spouse kissed me and launched out of bed. I moved more slowly. On my bleary way to the fire I stopped at the firehouse to prepare drinks for the firefighters. At Stewart’s I requested and received an immediate donation of coffee supplies. (Thanks.) When I arrived at the firehouse I identified myself and showed my membership pin, offered drinks,. Then my next-door neighbor’s oldest son appeared and was delighted to get a cup of hot coffee and a pat on the back. This was one of his first fires.

At the top of the steep dirt mountain road was the cluster of flashing machinery and lights and hoses snaking along the frozen ground. Another neighbor approached to wave me off, and broke into a grin when he saw it was me. I wandered through the hectic, noisy scene. The closer I got to the actual fire, as I met gazes and shook hands, the faces changed from my neighbors’ friendly mugs to stern and serious strangers…who are by and large SO handsome! And I am married to the finest one.

I left the heavy thermoses of hot coffee and cold water on the broad metal step of an idling fire truck. The commander accepted my offering graciously and I felt I had done a good job. As soon as I could I left. Didn’t want to see the fire or know too much about it. Someone else’s pain.

Now I've draped my beloved husband’s filthy fire gear near the woodstove to dry. His heavy tan and fluorescent jacket was encrusted with snow crystals when he took it off. His pants, of equally heavy fabric with reflective stripes, are drier but slick with soot. The big rubber boots will air out. His ominous helmet I've got resting prone on the fireproof platform surrounding our stove. A facemask and netting to cover the hair are hanging over the top of the black iron fireplace tools. Ice crystals are heavy there, too. Sweat and water and maybe tears.

seven things meme

seven things meme


1. seven things to do before I die
- climb as many mountains as I can, starting in the Adirondacks of New York State
- visit my parents' tombstones
- tell my husband and loved ones that I love them
- publish more
- make more art
- forgive those who trespass against me
- be a good partner to John


2. seven things I can't do
- anything requiring that a real live penis be part of my body
- undo mistakes
- kiss my parents on the cheek
- be sure that I haven't commited mortal sins and am thus doomed to hell for eternity
- get pregnant
- be as thin and fit as I would like
- be perfect

3. seven things that attract me to blogging
- I'm a compulsive writer.
- I don't really blog that much,
- I like to look at junkfood websites like boingboing and perezhilton,
- and otherwise I work a lot.
...and as Janine wrote,
- people reading/liking my writing/ideas/voice
- reading interesting people
- exposure to myriad ideas/information

4. seven things I say most often
- thank you
- is this a good time?
- I love you
- [deep sigh]
- hello
- good bye
- yes

5. seven books that I love
- Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
- Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
- 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- A Garden Primer by Barbara Damrosch
- Dorothy Parker collected essays
- anything by John McPhee, Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, Ogden Nash, John Irving (until that last one)
- Persistent Desire

6. seven movies I watched again and again
- All About Eve
- Animal House
- Fame
- An Officer and A Gentleman
- Phliadelphia Story
- Little Darlings
- Princess Bride


7. seven people I am tagging to do this meme
- Lisa Poo
- Liza
- Tom P
- Bev
- Marti
- John Beloved
- Harri Ann

Adirondack Writers Dec 05 essay context memoir

God, how I love hanging laundry outside in the Adirondacks, with the mountains framing the view of golden meadows, green trees, blue sky and rolling river. Tonight it may freeze and maple sap may run, but right now is balmy, sunny bliss. After hanging laundry the chuckling frogs out back seem to beckon me. I summon the dog and we set out along the thorny edge of the field toward the wetland at the back of our property.

Spring at our place means the AuSable River roaring out front, the low parts of the meadow flooded out back. The reeds and grasses are still dead and dry from winter and they shush against my denim legs as I stride eastward. When I reach the water’s edge I sit on a hummock and listen to the frogs croak and cluck, thriving in their rich ecosystem. I can’t see any froggies, just the placid swollen water and its world of grasses submerged in sapphire light. Just a few weeks ago this was all frozen, flat and white. We walked along, admiring the stillness and the hardy shrubs. Now it is a maze of tussocks, spiky plants and ripples as invisible things touch the surface of the water. I glance upstream, into the sun, as my dog huffs and chuffs in the grasses behind me. There is a small thing floating in the water, a shape like this: So small and yet it gives the glassy surface movement. It drifts ever so slowly toward me, and I realize that it is a frog. Then I see others in the distance, aligned toward me, it seems, but of course they are facing the precious sun.


I think of my family: my beloved, taking a nap in the house. My sister and her husband and children, enjoying their own southern, earlier springtime in the country. My brother and wife and their soon-to-be firstborn, cozy in a suburban townhouse even farther south. My mother, whose lifetime of springs is now ended. In heaven are there flooded creeks and chirruping frogs?

I yearn to see a frog up close in the water and so steel myself for an icy cold immersion. I am clumsy and squeamish in the way that city-bred folks can be, but I have a stout heart and a yen for adventure. In I wade, and find the water velvety cool. My skin is protected from mud and ticklish mysteries by thick socks, jeans and sneakers. I laugh for joy: spring! Some day soon my beloved’s and my children will wade in this very swamp, will know it far more intimately that I in this still, sweet afternoon.

The floating frogs vanish when I approached. I am aware of not only my body but also my cold shadow, the ripples my steps cause as I walk deeper, and the cluttered sounds of my playing dog. Across the meadow floats the sound of chickens calling to each other and my neighbors’ children playing tag.
My beloved and I hope to adopt a baby soon. Most everyone asks if we’re going overseas. No, we say, there are enough kids in this country needing families—and there are, but few newborns, and that’s what I want: an infant to start with. I want to wander my land with my own child and discover life again.
I grieve that I will never be able to share this and so many other joys with my Mom. She had been so brutally ill for years that I yearned for her passing even while I knew that it would cause a sadness unrivalled in me since my Dad died. That was when I was 20, Mom 45 and Dad 54. Dad was out for a mid-summer bike ride and a drunk driver ran him down. With Dad there was no time for last words. I think I progressed very far in granting Mom the forgiveness any child owes its parent. I hope she forgave me as much as she could.
When my Dad died I experienced the typical stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, with shock being the pungent soup in which everything swam. The flavor of my mother’s death is relief. During the last 17 years, she was suffering and dying. Last year when she gave up living independently I helped my sister and brother pack up her house, where we had grown up. I chose to pack up her bedroom. She was nearly bed-ridden and as the range of her physical body shrank she drew close to her all her most precious totems: journals she wrote after Dad died, Bibles of various translations embroidered with her hand-written annotations, animal bones, seed pods, art and needlework of a size and heft she could hold in her frail, curled hand. Now I, who lived farthest away, decided what intimate things she would keep with her in her new room at my sister’s house.
I wanted to retrieve a pink jade necklace that I had given Mom right after I graduated from college. She had long since ceased wearing jewelry. She had rarely if ever worn this necklace and instead had draped it upon a small Henry-Mooreish-ish sculpture on her bureau, like a lei on a Buddha. As time passed and I moved farther into my adulthood, Mom acquired other necklaces and layered them on top of the pink one, decorated the treasures with doodads and trinkets, until the thing was a mound of glistening snaky intrigue. Now I took that assemblage apart and reclaimed my old necklace, then examined the handsfuls of strung beads and gewgaws that my mother had gathered together. I took what I wanted and left the rest for others to discover.
In her top dresser drawer I found an envelope addressed in her hand to me. Business-sized, white, plain, with printed info and my Mom’s handwriting when it was vigorous. I looked inside and recoiled from it. I never chose to discuss that envelope with Mom in the year that remained to her. I guess the subject remained in the taboo area like so many things we couldn’t talk about: Race, specifically African American. Anyone of whom she had a bad opinion and no respect. She forgot things. She said one thing and did another.
I understand it is important to forgive and say all that needs saying, so nothing is left undone or unsaid when the person finally passes away. I tried very hard to forgive her and said the words out loud to her many times. She many times replied that she forgave me, too. There was a time years ago when I churlishly thought, “What has she to forgive me for?” But that was before I began to understand how strongly she felt about the abortion I chose to have when I was twenty.

Safe in the north woods I see a frog, one who has seemingly decided to let me approach. Maybe it is a sentry or sacrifice. Or maybe it is a female wanting fertilization, as our chickens will squat submissively before us thinking we’re her rooster. I stop and rest my hand on my damp thighs. Delicate little grey thing, with golden eyes above the waterline. The frog could easily sit in a teaspoon. I coo to it, praise its little beauty. I am awed by its sturdiness and delicacy there in the water, this creature of season. No matter the snow and ice of the last month or the parched whistle of summer to come—this frog floats in a perfect hour.
Out in the swollen wetland I lean closer ever-so-slowly until I can reach out a trembling pale finger and touch its tiny webbed foot. The frog lets me stroke it, and I gently tug the underwater grass it clutches so its body angles to me. With one outstretched fingertip I stroke the tiny frog’s silky green-mottled skin. The frog darts away, legs scissoring into complete concealment inside the submerged grass thicket.
Farther downstream more frogs are making a racket, clucking and splashing. I don’t hear the frogs we call spring peepers; perhaps they are for nighttime only. I wade easily through the slow stream toward dozens of frogs on the surface, bobbing and skimming. The dog canters alongside on the dry field edge. Ahead at a wide bend in the placid water one small clutch of frogs is thrashing and splashing. I near them cautiously, as bodies, shadow and ripples send little beasts into camouflage. The knot of struggling frogs stays flopping in the same spot on the pond surface. They must be mating and I must see! But the tangle of rubbery legs and jaws sinks and flits away before I can get close enough to decipher their activity.

Much of my mom’s last year was spent at various medical facilities. The rest of the time she lived at my sister and brother-in-law’s home in a rural mid-Atlantic town. My sister and her large young family were well intentioned but had no idea what a demand that caring for such an ill person would be on their time. The new situation was an appalling culture shock to my mother, who was used to being Queen Bee of her dim, brocaded urban bungalow and its dusty silences. They did the best they could, but it was not easy for anyone. Mom even spent a few days in a municipal nursing home. I tracked her down there by phone maybe six weeks ago. She was hard to reach—it takes persistence in those places, and politeness and a respect for the busy routine of nursing home staff. After three or so calls a staffer said, “Here she is,” and put the phone to Mom’s ear.
“Hi, Mom, it’s Martha,” I said in a cheery, warm voice as usual.
“Uh-huh!” she said faintly.
Mom was usually so articulate and keenly verbal.
“Hi, Mom, it’s Martha. Are you ok?”
“Uh-huh, unh-unh.”
“Are you ok, Mom?”
“Unh-unh.”
“Can you ask for help, Mom? Do you need my help?”
“Uh-uh, uh-uh!”
“Do you need me to help you get help?”
“Uh-huh! Uh-huh!”
I promised to stay on the phone with her and took my cell phone in hand, hoping for service in the remote Adirondack hamlet where I live. Glory be, yes.
“Mom, I’m going to call the nurse’s station now and I’ll stay on the phone with you until you get help. I love you.”
“Uh-huh.” I could sense relief from her, and relaxation as she rested from her exhausting effort to communicate. She had been out of it before but never this badly. At least she was in a wheelchair right at the station, rather than in her room, where her condition might have gone unobserved. On the cell phone I told the receptionist and then nursing station staff, “my mother is having a stroke or something right there in front of you and she can’t get your attention. I’m on the phone with her on the other line. Please help.” Finally someone spoke to me and her voice changed from my left to my right ear. The nurse hung up and I called back to confirm, and knew all was well. Later my sister asked if I thought our mother might have been faking it. In fact, I believed Mom but I wouldn’t have put it past her to induce feeling that badly so she could go back to the familiar and safe hospital and its 24-hour a day care and not so many people of a certain lesser class.
Complicated person, my mother. Her death has not brought any clarity to my spouse’s and my adoption process, the certification perhaps here-ever-after stalled pending a fire safety inspection of our 170-year-old farmhouse and its twenty-first century woodstove. Another procrastination, that envelope from Mom’s bureau with its official seal, my mother’s curly handwriting and a scribbled splotch of yellow highlighter.
Later in the days of packing Mom’s personal things I found a card in her Rolodex with the same odd yellow highlighter splotch, although this time the neon and ballpoint drawing of a smiling face were clearly the work of a small child. The address was to a memorial plot in the heartland where she bought a remembrance for my unborn child. Maybe if I could have children now she would have let this slide, or if we had adopted before she died.
It was my decision and I regret it only minimally. My life would have been so much different. I chose a life I could foresee happily, without a child at twenty. Now I am approaching 40, want a child so badly and cannot now have one of my own because my body won’t allow it. I cannot say what would have been had I chosen differently.

Thigh deep in meltwater I feel no sadness at the painful past and unknown future, only wonder and joy in the present. The chattering frogs have given me all the forgiveness I need at this moment. In the net of sunken reeds are cloudy blue blooms—frogs’ eggs in giant clusters like dotted thunderheads in the stream, hanging of the edges of submerged reeds like underwater hydrangeas. I gaze in delight at this final show, which I never would have seen if I hadn’t risked venturing out into the flooded channel. Each egg cluster is the size of a grapefruit, pale grey-blue, made up of thousands of black seeds embedded in flowerheads of clear shining protective globules, the black nuclei of which become visible when I gently lift their stalks to the surface. Here are the frogs’ progeny, unguarded and incubating in the sun-warmed water.
My own children are somewhere now, too, eggs and sperm in two people, and we live our lives until the moment we join and become a family. Living up here on our wee farm in the wilderness soothes a torn soul like mine. I have prayed and sworn to forgive my mother, but maybe I didn’t try hard enough to earn her forgiveness. I have hidden her envelope from myself, but I can see it—pale rectangular wing on the tablecloth near a basket of brown eggs.

plumbing

Last night after John washed Cruiser in the bathtub upstairs, our kitchen ceiling started dripping (under the bathtub, naturally.) We’ve had that tub worked on before, so we figured maybe the plumber would guarantee his work and it won’t cost so much this time. John drilled a few holes in the ceiling to let the water out and eventually it stopped. “Don’t use the tub,” he commanded. Duh. Then this morning—AFTER John went to work—I was using the upstairs sink and heard a growling noise, and then when I went down to the kitchen for coffee, lo and behold there is a full on shower happening in the kitchen. I called the plumber who was out of course, I called our excellent neighbors who came right over and spent an hour helping me arrange garbage cans and towels and figuring out where to shut off which water. Jeez Louise. Now the ceiling is sagging, the drywall is like pudding and who knows what John will find when he gets home from work. I left for work when the water finally slowed to a drip. #&@*%! At least Cruiser is clean. Merry Christmas! Last year you may remember that the day before Christmas Eve our septic system backed up. Strange sort of karmic gift this house gives us. I am starting to have a regular feeling that I wish we had a newly-built house. I don’t want to move because I love our neighbors and community, but the house, as gorgeous as it is...we don’t earn enough money to keep that house in the style to which it is accustomed!

Death Lessons

Two years ago my beloved and I and our cats moved to the North Country from a big city so we could live simply and learn how to raise some of our own food. We bought an ancient farm and have been slowly reviving it, with a lusty garden in our first year and “chigs and pickens” in this, our second year of country life. We plan to fence in our modest acreage and raise beef cattle next year.

I work at a farm-school and so receive lots of thoughtful guidance about what to do as we start our small farm. Plus we get helpful commentary from neighbors: the lady selling fire department raffle tickets at the hardware store, the man on a bicycle who stops at our flat section of Route 9N to fix a tire. The books our town librarian checks out for us give her plenty of knowledge about this couple of newcomers: “Raising Poultry for Food” and “Everything You Need To Know About Pigs” and “Build It Yourself”.

Today we slaughtered our first chickens. They were genetically selected for meat production, with enormous breasts and chunky wings and thighs, and soft white feathers easily plucked, supported on sturdy ungraceful yellow legs. They waddled like heavy toddlers. The birds spent their days outdoors in spring and summer weather, slept in a hand-made coop, enjoyed limitless corn and bug-snatching and playing in the grass during their brief lives. We wanted them to live well, be happy and have painless deaths before we ate them.

My husband laid each uncomplaining chicken’s slender white neck on the smooth cut surface of a log and beheaded it in one clean stroke of a sharp axe. Immediately pressing the neckstump against the grass to absorb the briefly pumping blood, he held the heavy jerking body as the last electrical impulses of life churned through it—no undignified running around with heads cut off. When each warm feathered body was motionless, my husband took the animal by its legs and dunked it in a vat of steaming water to loosen the feathers. The work of plucking, gutting, cleaning and packing the meat went quickly. I wrinkled my nose at the stink of hot wet feathers, murmured thanks to the birds who were next to die, snoozing inside cat carriers under a blanket in the back of our truck.

The heritage breed egg-laying birds who remain in our hen yard are maturing into soft, multicolored, clucking creatures. When they are “spent”, as my farming friend calls it, we will kill them, too, and take meat from their bodies. Soon we will butcher our pigs, playful buddies full of life who come running when I approach, who sink to their knees in grunting ecstasy when I scratch their flanks and who gleefully recycle all our food waste.

This afternoon my dear cat died and I miss her very much. She lived by the sword, a vigorous killer of birds, mice and moles, full of zest for climbing trees and love for her human companions. We knew that by letting her run free outside we were exposing her to risks like cars and coyotes, but we chose to accept those risks in order to give her the fierce pleasures of country life. She was happy until the instant she ceased to exist. My husband dug a deep hole in the center of our garden and, sobbing, I laid my cat to rest next to her favorite toy, a coyote foot discarded from the taxidermist. Why today was her day to die I cannot say. I think of the white chickens to whom I murmured thanks for their lives this morning, and the purring cat into whose warm black fur I murmured sweet nothings every day I knew her, and I feel grief and ambivalence and a sense of mystery.

Here in the North Country I am learning about death, life and love.

Mother's Day

Fifteen minutes ago, thigh deep in meltwater, I felt a kinship with frogs. I’d spent a couple hours at my friend Lauren’s house with her family celebrating Owen’s third birthday. Sunshine, mountain vistas, early spring earth unbound. As always the topic of my spouse and our adoption process came up, and I felt wonder at the sunlit children in Lauren’s kitchen, the small sugary hands and faces absorbing candy after the piñata broke in the field. When I talk about adoption with folks, most everyone asks if we’re going overseas. No, we say, there are enough kids in this country needing families—and there are, but few newborns, and that’s what I want: an infant. I can’t have a baby of my own and I want to have that experience. Then in the future maybe we could adopt a sibling group, older kid with their baggage; but for now, an infant. We’ve been going through the home study process for about nine months now, and hope to be certified by this summer. Then, we’ll see how it goes. I have faith that all will work out somehow.

I left Lauren’s before the birthday cupcakes were served because I wanted a little time in the warm sun on my small front porch. This is the first afternoon warm enough for sitting outside. Each time I sit and read or write I know my days doing this are numbered. As a new mom I won’t be able to relax and read a novel for hours, or obsess over a poem while consuming a cocktail. I know this all will change and so I appreciate it consciously. Lauren’s husband brought out the cupcakes so I could bring a couple home for my spouse and me. The children had selected five colors of icing for the chocolate cupcakes: red, orange, yellow, green, purple. The cupcakes were arranged on a tray with their colors forming diagonal stripes.

I came home and hung up some laundry outside, another first-time-this-year seasonal pleasure. Tonight it may freeze and the maple sap may run, but right now is balmy, sunny bliss. After hanging laundry I intended to come sit on the porch to write this essay about Mothers’ Day, but the chuckling frogs out back seemed to beckon me. I summoned the dog and we set out along the thorny edge of the field toward the wetland at the back of our property.

My beloved and I bought this large old farmstead two years ago knowing that I would never be able to get pregnant and knowing that we planned to fill the place with our children and family. My sister—who is also my best friend—has four kids and lives in a happy mayhem in rural PA with her husband and our mother, who is too sick to live alone any more. Our family will be different than theirs in some ways—we love books and don’t watch TV, while they hunt and have three TVs. If only Pennsylvania and the Adirondacks were connected by a short street. We would create our own town of love.

Spring at our place means the AuSable River roaring out front, the low parts of the meadow flooded out back. The grass is still dead and dry from winter and it shushed as I strode eastward toward the wet area. I sat on a hummock at the water’s edge and listened to the frogs croaking, clucking, thriving. I couldn’t see any. Just the placid water and its world of grasses submerged. Just a few weeks ago this was all frozen, flat and white. We walked along, admiring the stillness and the hardy shrubs. Now it is a maze of tussocks, spiky plants and ripples as invisible things touch the surface of the water. I glanced upstream, into the sun, as my dog huffed and chuffed in the grasses behind me. There was a small thing floating in the water, a shape like this: So small and yet it gave the glassy surface movement. It drifted ever so slowly toward me, and I realized that it was a frog. Then I could see others in the distance, aligned toward me, it seemed, but of course they were facing the precious sun.

I yearned to see a frog up close in the water and so steeled myself for icy cold. I am clumsy and squeamish in the way that city-bred folks can be, but I have a stout heart and a yen for adventure. In I waded, and found the water velvety cool. My skin was protected from mud and ticklish mysteries by thick socks, jeans and sneakers. I laughed for joy: spring! My new home in the country! Some day soon my children will wade in this very swamp, will know it far more intimately that I in this still, sweet afternoon.

The floating frogs vanished when I approached. I was aware of not only my body but also my cold shadow, the ripples my steps caused as I walked deeper, and the cluttered sounds of my playing dog. He is a yellow lab and one would think he’d leap into water, but he’s fussy and not brave. He is also devoted to me, and as the psychic apron string that binds us stretched further he finally plunged in after me.

Soon I saw a frog, one who had seemingly decided to let me approach. Maybe it was a sentry or sacrifice. I stopped and rested my hand on my damp thighs so I could see it better. Delicate little grey thing, with golden eyes above the waterline. The frog could easily have sat in a teaspoon. I cooed to it, praised its little beauty. I was awed by its sturdiness and delicacy there in the water, this creature of season. No matter the snow and ice of the last month or the parched whistle of summer to come—this frog floated in a perfect hour.

I leaned closer ever-so-slowly until I could reach out a trembling pale finger and touch its tiny webbed foot. The frog let me stroke it, and I gently tugged the underwater grass it clutched so its body angled toward me. It was relaxed and aware of me. I stroked its silky skin. But then the frog darted away, legs scissoring into the submerged grass blades. It was gone.

Farther downstream more frogs were making a racket, clucking and splashing. I didn’t hear the frogs we call peepers; perhaps they are for nighttime only. Dozens of frogs on the surface, bobbing and skimming, and one small clutch of them thrashing and splashing. I approached cautiously—body, shadow and ripples sending little frogs into hiding. The knot of struggling frogs remained. I thought they must be mating and wanted to see. Perhaps they were, but the tangle of legs and jaws sank and flitted away before I could get close enough to decipher their activity.

The dog paddled in a long snuffly arc from the grassy bank to my soaked legs, touched his nose to my hand, and swam back to shore. He clambered out and floofed face-first into the dry grass, pushing his snout through the reeds and propelling himself by his hind legs. Drying himself off or scratching, I guess. I made for the bank, knowing that soon I would be too cold to enjoy myself. Behind me the cagey frogs began to cackle.

Then in the net of sunken reeds I saw cloudy blue blooms—frogs’ eggs in giant clusters like dotted thunderheads in the stream. I gazed in delight at this final show, which I never would have seen if I hadn’t ventured out into the flooded channel. Each egg cluster was the size of an orange, pale grey-blue, made up of thousands of black seeds embedded in clear shining protective globules that became visible when I gently lifted them to the surface. I had seen perhaps a hundred celebrating frogs, and here were their progeny, unguarded and incubating in the sun-warmed water.

My own children are somewhere now, too, eggs and sperm in two people, and I play gleefully while they live their lives until the moment we join and become a family.

Iranian funk music

Google Search: "Iranian funk music"

Lately I have been finding new music to listen to by going to Google and typing in "countryname funk band." In this way I've found Ten Mile Tide, an Irish funk band, and Amp Fiddler, admired by a Japanese funk band. This morning I felt like listening to Iranian music, but Google gets no results from either that or "Iranian funk music," nor "Iranian funk."

Community Radio Licence Application Form
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
Page 1. Community Radio Licence Application Form Page 2. Public Version 1.0 30th July 2004. - 2 - A. Please read the Notes of Guidance ...

The above is Google's one result from the search term, "Iranian funk." There used to be a pretty hip, Westernizing youth culture there, around the time of the last Shah and shortly thereafter. I was friends with a brother and sister who emigrated from post-Ayatollah Khomeini Iran to the U.S. They lived with us for a short time. The girl and I exchanged small gifts, and I still have hers today, a tiny cherished heirloom. With her brother we played endless games of volleyball. This we all knew, and through it came American English for them and a little Persian sensibility for me.

We lost touch as young adults. I gravely offended them the day of my father's funeral. The Iranian family assumed they were going to stay with us and help and have a joint grieving session, but instead I told them coldly to leave. I always feel pained that our relationship ended on such a note. My mother didn't want to see them, wasn't even in the same room. I was twenty. In my family's grief we briefly considered that the CIA might have had something to do with my father's death, punishment for helping Iranians or maybe he knew too much.

Living in today's world is so changed in many ways toward the visions of 1984 and Brave New World. We are getting increasingly Bladerunner-ish. So I will go back to the computer and type into Goggle "Persian funk." Since I use Mozilla Firefox for most of my web-related stuff, it has these handy tabs so I can open in succession webpages with the search term. In this way I find an album called "Invisible Borders," which I call up on my Dell Musicmatch Jukebox and listen to while I search for and find nearly no Iraqi funk music. And then I try Arabic funk. Bonanza! Try it yourself by searching for "COUNTRYNAME music." See what you find.

Black Paper Silver Ink

Black Paper Silver Ink

Discovering that completing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days meant writing 1,666 words per day only added to the hair-tearing. It's not that I've never written 1,666 words in a day before, but it's a question of whether I can keep it up everyday for a whole month. However, since I'm in this already, I'll wing it. I believe I can write that much if I don't stop to consider how bad the dialogue sounds or how the story just plain doesn't make sense.

I am in writing mode.

what did I tell you?

After a month of increasingly bad pain in my left wrist, I went to the doctor today. It is possible that I have a fractured wrist. The only things I can think of that would have caused this are my various hilarious bumps and crashes while enjoying a few hours of cross-country skiing during the past two months.

I kept telling folks that I couldn't try skiing because I was bound to break a bone.

pizza on Valentine's Night

What kind of place is this where a drunken wife cannot get pizza on Valentine's Night? Deep sigh.

Baltimore Skies

The New York Times > National > Baltimore Streets Meaner, but Message Is Mixed

Yes, it is sad that Baltimore's crime rate is rising again. What really caught my eye about this article is the photo showing the orange night. I remember in the early 70s when the sodium lamps were installed, and the end of the old incandescent street lights on their small-scale decorative iron poles. The colored night skies of cities has always bothered me. I feel grateful and appreciative of the black and spangled skies here. The first starry sky I remember noting was my first week at Hampshire College in 1983. Long time ago.

My friend Susie has just pulled in. We're going to have a cocktail. Very young Johnny Cash on the stereo.

local press about John's first fire

John's first fire

Saturday, February 5, 2005

John’s firefighter uniform hangs dripping in the basement near the cat boxes. This morning was his first fire, a “fully-engaged structure fire.” The call came at about 6:45—we were awake instantly because it is unusual for the Upper Jay tones to sound. At first I thought the dispatcher said “awful fire,” but pragmatic John said it was “possible fire” and was probably a false alarm, being near Ward Lumber. But no, in moments a second call came through, the dispatcher seeming excited, saying, “Second call, structure fire confirmed, Upper Jay and Jay firefighters report immediately…” John got dressed and left, taking my cell phone with him because he needed to be in Lake Placid for his under-the-table refereeing job in a few hours, and would need me to come pick him up. I clattered around the house, waking up for real, groggy and excited, talking to myself and the dog, the cats. I wanted to go see the fire, wanted to be there when John needed to be picked up, wanted to go back to sleep, wanted him to be home all at once. I started the car to warm it up and got dressed, brewed coffee. During these twenty minutes the dispatcher called Wilmington, Au Sable Forks and Keene fire departments and the ambulance from Au Sable Forks. Big fire, serious danger. I told Cruiser I would be back, put boots and coat in the now-warm car and took off toward Jay. Cold morning, everything glittery and salt-soaked. Little snow depth but much snow coverage, the river still frozen and white. Clear sky. As I rounded the river bend near the Stones’ house, that halfway point where I have ridden my bike and then soaked my sweating head in the cold river, the sky over Jay began to come into view, with a slow pink-stained handkerchief of cloud or smoke over the hills.

I pressed on, cruising at 80. The fields and houses and river dwindled by and off to the right, far across the river I saw a plume of pale smoke above the trees. It rose in cloudy, tight billows until a certain layer of atmosphere, when it flattened out and streamed northward with the air currents. I knew that pale smoke meant steam—water applied; black smoke would be worse. I felt a pang for the family, hoped no one was hurt, wondered what John was doing. I drove into Jay, braking down to a reasonable 40 as the car rose up the gentle hill, passed familiar summertime landmarks—the Jay Green, the rapids of the Au Sable River underneath the one-lane bridge. I noted that the new covered bridge was completely clad in golden fresh wood. Once they have built their large truck-suitable bridge, nothing will replace the innocence of that covered crossing over the swimming holes. But I digress.

After Ward Lumber on the Glen Road I saw flashing lights, ominous and iconic. I wanted John. A tall, androgynous older woman flagged me to a stop at the corner and I explained I was a firefighter’s wife, he needed to be picked up for work. She told me to park between this and that red truck and not to exit my vehicle, ma’am. So, eager to please and cowed, I pulled in and sat, anxious, sipping my hazelnut decaf. Three men were conferring on the road ahead of me. One of them separated and came toward the car; amiably I rolled down the passenger side window. He leaned his forearms on the edge and we chatted. I assumed he was an official and explained my presence. He didn’t know John. Finally he said he wasn’t a fire department person, was just a neighbor watching. He recommended I go talk to that man in the gray jacket. So I did, once again explaining—wife, pick up, confused, where should I go? The man in gray said I should just walk on up to the fire. So I did, heart pounding, conscious of my posture, not wanting to be ejected nor to get in the way, nor to embarrass my husband.

The day was clear and cold, everything sort of faintly hazed by salt in the air or a thin tinge of smoke. There were no sirens, no noise. I turned off the paved road onto someone’s two-track driveway, longer than I had expected. Fat beige hoses wavered along the ruts, as thick as my thigh. A rivulet of water trickled away from the fire. I avoided both water and hoses, concentrated on keeping my balance on the frozen hump in the middle of the drive, my black Sorel boots a warm cushion.

There were fire trucks, utility vans, the enormous pick-up trucks that men here drive as a badge of membership in the North Country. Dozens of firefighters in their dirty yellowish uniforms, their classic hats and black stripes, somber faces. The smoke climbed like a fierce thing, huge and silent. I heard the crackling of the fire before I saw it. No voices, but the humming of motors left running, the spew of exhaust fumes a distraction in my peripheral vision. The crispy snow was flecked with black ash and tiny holes.

I moved forward cautiously, and was glad to be ignored. The firefighters were moving in teams, some with hoses, some with tools, some taking a rest near trucks, some standing in a distant, alert group like athletes in the box waiting for their turn on the field. My age-old fear of large machines lurched out and then sank again as I walked between rumbling fire trucks. Then voices and shouts and the fire, orange and reaching out from a broken window, reminding me oddly of an air conditioner. I stood for a while, my back against the grill of a fire engine, heart thumping, droplets of liquid tapping my face. Two girls whose faces I know from summertime wandered past me, looking at me as if I were an authority or an interloper, I couldn’t tell which. I didn’t smile—not a smiling occasion.

All I could see of the volunteers was their backs, uniformly drab and strong. I stepped forward to get a closer view and saw the sadness of the house, not a large house, just a home, enormous with flames and leaking wisps of smoke from shingles and siding. Striding from around the side came a set of firemen, with one in a distinctive black top—and the square-jawed face beneath the helmet was my own beloved, grim and serious and heroic.

John and the Upper Jay fire leader (Captain? Chief?) passed me unseeing, intent in discussion, planning their next move, I imagined. I feared I might lose sight of John again, and realized that probably he was too engrossed and this fire too big for him to leave to ref a hockey game. I wondered how I could be helpful. When he and his colleagues stopped walking and stood to watch the action, I crept up behind John and touched his sooty hot palm with my hand. He turned and looked down and was happy to see me. We loped off together toward the utility truck, and he gave me back my cell phone, asking me to find a way to contact his ref boss. I love John in a crisis, always cool-headed and looking ahead a few steps. He wears the black with reflective stripes because he is one of the “inside men,” those who are smaller (John says—in better shape, I say,) and have been trained to go inside the burning building to search for victims and survivors. He said that the family was fine, no one was in the building, but it was a terrible tragedy because they had just lost a child. I later learned that it was an adult child, but still.

This area is so sparsely populated that there is a network closer than six degrees between all of us. I made ten or so unsuccessful calls to directory assistance asking for the phone number for the Olympic Arena, then to Lake Placid friends to ask them to look—no one answered. Then I had the bright idea to call the LP fire house, because John had mentioned that his ref supervisor is also a fire fighter. The friendly man who answered knew what I was talking about and knew the person John needed to reach. He said he would find Butch, the ref boss, and offered to call me back and let me know. I felt infinitely soothed by this fatherliness, neighborliness, masculinity.

(I have learned so much since moving up here about accepting the archetypal masculine and feminine roles that my mother has talked about forever that I have objected to forever. Well, now I am here in a wild and rough place, where there isn’t much wiggle room for liberal ideas in a place where you could die any day from cold or bears or logs crushing you.)

After getting the message to John’s ref boss I knew I had no business at the scene, so I left as slinkily as I came, hoping no one would notice me. I drove home much more slowly, and stopped at the Upper Jay firehouse expecting the Ladies Auxiliary to be there making coffee and sandwiches, but there was no one there at all. I was conscious again of overcoming my objection to the idea of “Ladies Auxiliary,” because in that moment I knew exactly what the term meant and how important the function is for both hard-working fire-fighters and their anxious spouses, and for the traumatized, displaced families. John came home about four hours later, reeking of smoke, arm muscles pumped up, veins bulging. He took a quick shower and I cooked him a hero’s breakfast of five eggs and two diced hot dogs with pepper jack cheese, and then he was off to ref hockey for eight hours. He is a dynamo.

a reason for owning cross country skis

The elder generation of my family can't quite understand why John and I own skis. Mom and Sally are tolerant, but I can detect that they think I have taken up a luxury sport. I have tried to explain how it is living in such a cold climate, where if you don't get outside you will die of depression. If you want to walk, you have to manage walking in snow, which has many characters: snow can be crunchy and deep, squeaky and rigid, light and slippery, melty and weak. It can support you, trip you, drag at you, numb you. The salty roads are fine to walk on but not so beautiful as the woods, and of course not so safe as trails. And why restrict yourself to roads when the land is so gorgeous? You need something other than shoes to get around. Hence skis and snowshoes are common.

Today gives me the perfect reason for owning cross-country skis. I took the day off from work, having spent a long weekend in NYC for meetings (which was splendidly fun and successful.) It was a gorgeous, sunny day. The river is solidly frozen and covered with a sheet of snow. There are pawprints and skis tracks everywhere. I needed to get to the library for a volunteer task, and John has our only working car today, so I skied down the river to the library.

Holiday Classic

BKHoliday

This might be the most clever holiday email thingie I've ever received. A classic. I hope I offend no one.

The End of The World

This is a classic.

The New York Times > Opinion > Puzzles: Beat the Clock

The New York Times > Opinion > Puzzles: Beat the Clock

Every New Year the NYT puts out the best super-puzzle I have ever seen. This one is no exception. Enjoy!

not a luddite

I've bought a Treo 600 and boy, do I like it. Palm, phone and camera all in one. I am just beginning to learn how useful it is. Techie, not I, but fond of handy gadgets, yes.

Arafat & Othello

The New York Times > AP > International > Arafat's Health Worsens; Doctors Sent to Compound

A not unflattering picture of Yasir Arafat on the front page of the NYT electronic edition. He seems to be contemplating global leadership when in fact he's just been poisoned by an operative in an international conspiracy.

The U.S.A. certainly seems to be fracturing into bits. Even the coasts are no longer dependably Democratic. An explosion of registered Republicans is leaking out on all sides. Who knows where Alaska, Hawaii and the others will land. We have forfeited our post-WWII good position.

So, vote.com. Play the game Othello. Watch as Republican strongholds do the Bush Push from Ohio eastward to the Atlantic, through West Virginia and Virginia.

Declare Yourself - Register to Vote

Declare Yourself - Register to Vote

Lots going on here. I think every day of writing in the ol' blog, but I don't write. This morning, for example as I was driving to work, there was fog all along the valley. The road follows the river west and upstream. Fog in pale pastel colors: lavender, blue, pink, orange--the dog in the back of the car, listening to Talking Heads or some such...

Stay tuned.

tomatoes and maples

Picking tomatoes in my garden. Bending, kneeling, reaching between the tangled vines and leaves, plucking, persuading the fruits to pop clear of their hats. Cruiser snuffling along between the rows, gobbling tomatoes that have fallen to the dirt. Toppled tomato cages, overheavy and dragged down by squash vines, yet offering clusters of tomatoes that promise to become red. A balance between autumn temperatures and sun summer warmth. The maples in the distance, reddening in bursts--here is one, there is one. A burgundy-colored maple leaf slips along the grass to my foot.

pleasures

Balmy, bright, breezy Sunday afternoon, standing barefoot outside in the grass, hanging damp laundry on the line, gazing across the field at my neighbors. My favorite red wine to follow.

Overcast brisk Monday morning, barefoot in the grass, quickly unclipping cold, dry laundry from the line, folding crisp t-shirts and pants down the front of my body, the wind flicking my nightgown around my calves, trying to avoid being seen by drivers on the road. Coffee waiting inside.

View from the bottom of our street, May 2001.

View from the bottom of our street, May 2001. Sketched by Martha Clare Pritchard, soon to be Martha Pritchard Spear.

Today is the third anniversary of September 11, and the first where I feel mostly normal. I ate granola and drank coffee with John this morning, pureed tomatoes and mulched perennials, read a novel and napped. As I ran errands in the car I composed the first lines of sonnets in my head: "The late summer crickets' high-pitched keening," "Rugged field laid flat for winter, coming," "Sweet belly of a mountain, maple red," ...

I have not been wallowing in memories as I did the past two years. I have had no flashbacks. It has receded. I've reread my journal from that time, a scattered and not-quite immediate remembering. I post some of it here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

September 11, 2001



Tuesday morning was a gorgeous a late-summer day in New York City. I got up, drank coffee, showered, dressed like the minor executive I am, and went outside to wait for the bus to my new job. The bus stop is in front of our apartment house in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We live on Broadway, leading down to the East River.

Very often when I go outside I glance down to my right where the East River separates us in Brooklyn from the island of Manhattan, which is the place most non-New Yorkers think of when they say "New York." Ever since John and I moved here I have enjoyed the site of the twin Towers, so secure and strong, a symbol of being in New York. I have sketched them and remarked upon them in letters to friends and family. Those two Towers and other landmarks like our Williamsburg Bridge and the Empire State Building, and Brooklyn Bridge, even the Statue of Liberty visible ½ block away convince me every time I see them that yes, I do live in New York.

Tuesday morning I didn't take note of the Towers because I was interested in reading something in my New Yorker magazine, and the bus was rounding the corner. Soon I was on the bus and riding the few miles to my office. I missed my last chance to see the twin Towers as they were.

The neighborhood where I work is called Fort Greene. It is a residential neighborhood, brownstones and playgrounds and stores and restaurants. When I got to the office, early as usual, another early arriver said that there was a fire in the World Trade Center. I thought he was joking, and went outside to look. High in the sky there was a noticeable and strange plume of smoke floating past. There was a fast-rising urgency of people and sirens. I went back inside and called my husband John. He works in Manhattan at 6th Avenue and 27th Street, in a midtown neighborhood called Chelsea. He had not heard yet. We spoke briefly and hung up so he could go outside to see.

We had a radio in the our little Fort Greene office and everyone gathered around it to listen. The announcers didn't really know what was going on! A plane had hit the trade center—-unbelievable. I read later in the NYT that a local announcer joked about it being kamikaze pilot. Another plane has hit, oh God, and something has happened at the Pentagon in Washington, too—-it must be terrorists.

Usually outside at this time of day are young African-American youths playing basketball in the two City Park courts across the street. It's a big park, and I don't even know the name of it. Dekalb at Adelphi and Carlton. At my Venetian blind-shaded, sunlit desk I swallowed herb tea and tried to get some news online from CNN or the New York Times, sources I thought I could trust more than a nervous talk radio host. The websites were slow to come up from all the zillions of other people trying to access them, and when they did they showed photos of those two dear Towers smoking and blazing like in a disaster movie. I could hardly believe it. Then I tried to start my workday, but I really couldn't concentrate. A young woman arrived late to work, crying.

I called John again, and he told me what he saw standing at the corner of 6th, the flaming smoking Towers. I kept trying to believe that I could go about my regular day, but when I heard my husband's shocked voice I finally gave up. I told the Executive Director's young assistant I was leaving, left the office and walked down the block to Fort Greene Park, which has a big hill overlooking the city. And there were the enormous top thirds of the Towers, the wrecked and whole upper floors like the tines of a grey comb only three miles away, hazy with smoke on the otherwise gorgeous pristine sunny day, black smoke and orange-red fire, so large and close. Glittering things fell away from the burning, pieces of building or I don't like to think what else. Helicopters circled, a fighter jet zipped by far overhead. At first there were only a few people there on the hillside, but more and more came, and we all watched and crowded around those of us who had radios. Sirens were everywhere, ambulances, fire trucks and police on their way to the scene. I clasped my hands and prayed, but I felt little comfort in that—-how could my weak prayers save those people the pain of fire?

And then the left-hand tower Tower simply collapsed, slowly at first, collapsed, compressed straight downward, as if a giant hand was pressing it down, recycling a can or bottle. The rumbling roar came to us up on that leafy green hill, and everyone moaned and or screamed or was silent.

I can think now about who was there: our Executive Director's Assistant, whom I had told I was stepping out; the receptionist, who would end up getting fired for coming to watch; the girl who had been crying since she got to work; others from another department; the mostly African-American strangers on the hillside. Although there is a large hospital nearby there was no one in scrubs.

The right-hand Tower stayed up, the one with the broadcasting antenna on top, still blazing and smoking. A huge mushroom of dark ash and smoke billowed, sinister black and gray like you see on TV when a volcano erupts. All those people, I thought. It all happened so fast. How could can they be getting out, how many people were on the fire stairs of that building evacuating when their building it collapsed? I felt almost nothing, just stood there praying because there wasn't anything else I wanted to do. Some other people from my office arrived. We stood and watched the remaining Tower burn, listened to the various radios, talked quietly, tried to reach loved ones on cell phones. The minutes dragged by as slowly as minutes sometimes do, when you are in misery.

I left before the second Tower collapsed, not wanting to know any more and feeling an obligation to my job. As I walked back through the park I saw things of normal life, a group of people in matching t-shirts under a tree, getting ready to perhaps play softball,. A woman and a child in the playground. The woman watched me eagerly as I approached down the hill, and I thought she might want me to tell her what I saw.

I said, "Don't you want your daughter to see?"

"We were up there watching," said the woman, gesturing at her little daughter, "but she just wanted to come swing on the swings."

I nodded, and then the woman said, "I am from Israel. We have this all the time. And now I feel for you Americans." She and I stared at each other, a long moment of deep communion, and I put my hands over my heart, and she nodded, and I left.

The vision of the collapsing Tower, and the billowing explosions of smoke replays silently in my mind. Too much to believe, too much to accept. I was willing to think I had hallucinated it, it was only a dream. I wanted it not to be real. Somehow a giant movie screen had been placed across the vision of all of us up on that hill; it was Hollywood, some strange brutal experiment in mass entertainment, not a real thing. New York is larger than life that way; I see things in daily life here that I’ve only ever seen on TV or in movies. I wanted to believe almost anything but that it was real.

When I got back into the office only a few people were still there. Almost everyone else, but only I among the senior staff had gone to the hill to see for themselves. The radio was still on, describing what I had just seen. I didn't want to hear and went up to my desk outside the executive director’s office. She was on the phone behind her closed, glass door. I tapped on the door to let her know I was back, and then sat down at my desk and put my head in my hands. I would have begun to cry then, except she came out shouting. "This is unbelievable of everybody, how unprofessional, how could you just leave and not tell anyone where you were going, what are you all, some kind of voyeurs? This is none of your business!" She went on and on, spewing at me. I nodded and nodded, said, "Yes, I understand. I understand. I did tell so-and-so that I was going, but then she came herself." I told myself that my boss's her behavior wasn't about me nor really directed at me, it was just her way of coping with the unimaginable. Maybe her sister is in that Tower, I told myself. Maybe she is in shock. Everyone has their own ways of dealing with trauma. Then the executive director went downstairs, still shouting, and had it out with the receptionist, who had also gone up to the hill. To the receptionist's credit, when I saw her on the hill I asked who was covering the front desk and she said So-and-So was. But that wasn't enough for our executive director. I guess the receptionist had been on probation for a while, and this was a last straw.

"Pack your bags!" shouted the executive director.

"Are you firing me?" screamed the receptionist.

"Yes, I guess I am," said the E.D. I just shut my ears and made like a worker bee. I guess our former receptionist will never forget this day for several reasons. The receptionist continued shouting at my boss the E.D., who came quietly back upstairs and went back into her office.

Things all around became very quiet except for the radio and the endless sirens outside. I tried again to work and found myself reading the same sentence over and over again. The other women trickled back in, the crying woman, too. They said they had watched the second Tower collapse. I knew that I and all of us were in shock and dealing with it in our various ways. I felt myself flickering from sensibility to irrationality. I wanted to go to sleep. I wanted to go back to the hill and watch. I wanted to blink and have it be a dream. I wanted to go home and cuddle my cat Naomi. I wanted to hold my husband.

John and I talked briefly--some of his staff was missing, perhaps stuck on the subway, perhaps caught in traffic, perhaps just outside watching. He was responsible for about 30 people, and his coping method was to keep everyone close in the office and let them watch TV. The news was saying you couldn't get out of or into Manhattan, and I was afraid that John couldn't come home that night and I would have to be alone. At the same time I felt so selfish because so many others would never see their dear ones again.

Very quickly I got a bunch of emails from people worried about us in NY, including one from my mom through one of her tenants. Mom was terrified that we were hurt. I replied that we were fine, if shocked and frightened. I got an email from my friend Trish in Maryland near Washington, DC saying what she'd heard about the Pentagon and possibly other places there being bombed. I called my downstairs neighbor who worked at a bookstore in the bottom of the World Trade Center, and he answered the phone, said it was his day off and he was fine, told me that tons of people were standing outside our building our apartment on Broadway watching the scene. I checked my voicemail at home and found a hysterical message from Mom, and I realized belatedly that it wasn't just me who was possibly affected from our family: my brother Tom lives in Virginia and works for the federal government in Washington. I called Mom and we spoke briefly—she was fine by then. I asked for Tom's office number, but I couldn't get through. I began to be afraid for him.

And then, like the Tower collapsing, I lost my ability to remain professional and dispassionate. I felt a black cloud of depression sinking over me, as if my vision was narrowing down to a tunnel and my entire being was drying up and shrinking. I just sat there at my desk, listened as the young women talked about what they had seen, nodded and smiled and tried to be professional, set a good example, but inside I was just dust. All I could think about was my brother Tom and those people in the World Trade Center. I forced myself to be calm and kept telling myself Tom was fine, of course he's fine; he didn't work at the Pentagon. But in those moments we didn't know anything for sure because it was all happening so fast. And Tom can be such a hothead--I wondered if he had perhaps seen the plane crash into the Pentagon as he was driving to work, and had jumped out of his car to go help, or worse.

The hours passed quickly, and soon it was after lunchtime. My boss, the executive director who had screamed reprimanded me and fired the receptionist as her first reaction to the tragedy, calmed down and began to tell people they could go home if they knew someone who might be in the World Trade Center. "I can't go home," said her assistant, "I live in lower Manhattan." Another woman whose cousin worked in the buildings said she didn't want to leave, she just wanted to work, but then she did leave. I tried to stay, but couldn't stop thinking of Tom, and at about one p.m. I told the E.D. I was going to depart leave. "I hope your brother's ok," she said gently.

I went out and waited for the bus under the BQE. Hundreds of people were walking up the normally pedestrian-free roadway. I later learned that people from Manhattan were evacuated and walked away from the disaster across the three bridges right there: the famous Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, and the Williamsburg Bridge, which is right outside John's and my apartment. All those solemn, exhausted-looking people pouring by as I stood waiting for my bus were survivors of the attack. Some of them had breathing masks on, but none were dusty. I thought about biological warfare, and my mind went blank again. The bus didn't come, and someone told me that all buses were being commandeered to take cops and emergency workers into Manhattan. So I walked home, not such a long walk. Everyone I saw was solemn and quiet. We looked in each other's faces, which is something New Yorkers do not usually do. It was surreal, the terrible pouring black smoke across the river and in the sky, and the stubbornly beautiful day so much bigger than even this calamity. Cops were directing traffic; people were scrambling, cars and trucks honking, people saying they had to get here or there. "I have to make a delivery," roared one truck driver to a policeman who wasn't letting him through to downtown Brooklyn. "This is an emergency, you're blocking traffic," replied the cop.

About an hour of fast, sweaty, crowded walking later I was almost home, from African-American Fort Greene to Hassidic/hipster Williamsburg. There were men with guns guarding the Navy yard, a huge complex on the water a few blocks from our house. When I finally got home to our beautiful, sunny loft, a fifth floor walk-up, I threw down my bag and went out onto to the fire escape. "Our bridge," as John and I think of it, was packed with people all walking in the same direction: out of Manhattan. If they were shouting on the bridge I couldn't hear. A very few vehicles roared in, a random-seeming assortment of fire trucks, ambulances, sedans, buses. Normally that bridge is a river of transportation.

I came inside, changed out of my work clothes, opened up a beer and watched TV for hours and hours. John called frequently to tell me he was ok, and I told him people were walking across the bridge so I knew he could get home. He arrived later and we hugged and kissed, grateful beyond belief for our lives. We stared together out the front windows at the great smoking mess of lower Manhattan where those beautiful gleaming Towers had stood until that morning.

Sunday, September 16, 2001

The week has gone by with us trying to adhere to our routines of work and errands and regular life. We watch TV obsessively, read every paper, and chat with friends and family on the phone. Friday President Bush declared a day of mourning, although it was not organized at least in my neighborhood. I went with two other women to the Presbyterian Church at Lafayette and something, which was silently open for prayer. We sat in the ear-ringing intensity among two dozen scattered strangers, all races, lots of whites and blacks together. I looked for a kneeler and braved dusty pants to kneel on the hardwood floor at our pew to pray.

My faith in God that has been rock steady through every tragedy of my life, even Dad's death, has been tested: that moment of the tower collapsing, my whole soul rising slower than the speed of light to will it not to be, through the power God is supposed to have. I have trouble believing that my prayers make any difference, yet some moist-eyed time passed while I kneeled in thought to God. When I was walking from the Presbyterian Church I went for Italian food, pasta puttanesca. For the rest of the day I felt so much lightened and refreshed. The good feeling lasted into the next day.

John and I and everyone we know are depressed. The city is not the same, although as I write this on Sunday, September 16, 2001, the third monthiversary of our marriage, there are children playing and shrieking outside, the train whooshes by on the bridge, and there are normal signs of life: traffic, the regular amount of sirens. Certain things have been notably different, like the stench of burning that wafted over us several times this week as the wind changed. I knew I was breathing people's dust and ashes. Today is the first clear day since it happened, the smoke finally under control. The skyline is different.

Wednesday, September 19, 2001

I am consumed with thoughts of death. I partly think I am or we are dying. We're both abusing and indulging ourselves. Anyone could have been in the WTC at those moments. Everybody knows of someone who is affected, who was there. There are layers of people's experience: mine is having seen in person from a distance both towers burning and one collapse. John saw both burning but neither collapse. Another person maybe first saw it in person after it fell down, a different trauma yet. Layers of witness to Armageddon. We're all depressed and sad.

Joe calls, drops off xtine & Don's long-promised hand-me-down microwave. I whine and ask him to carry it up, he snarks back, "What, can't you even walk down the stairs?" I quickly do, braless, distracted, but at least clean.

Today I closed a cookbook I opened on Monday, collected the candles I burned in the windows Tuesday night. Women shout outside. Could be more than 5,000 lives lost, more than 5,000 injured, tens of thousands of direct family & loved ones. I am living in a geography of grief. African-American funerals dot the mornings of my walk down Dekalb to work. Breathing my chain-smoking and the breath of death, ashes and chemicals and rotting human flesh, some burned. What is that shouting outside? I don't want to know. Every siren is heightened; every bang and screech makes my heart flutter and brings quick sweats. Every traffic-induced ripple of the floor and building has an added ominous-ness. I twitch with nervous energy.

This weekend is the first day of autumn. Next Tuesday is supposed to be Election Day in New York State. The mayoral race--who will back out between now and then? All campaigning has stopped. Margarita Lopez sent JLS a dear friend letter saying "...in light of recent tragic events..." The shouting people outside cheer and clap, must be playful noise, nothing to be anxious about.

I yearn for more great change. I've destroyed our two big comfy black cotton sheets in the process [and shrouded our fire escape in black]. Next could be packing up all the tchotchkes, letting the plants die. Seems like my beloved old cat Naomi's eating less; even she is reacting to the tragedy. A hysterical siren flails by, up Bedford toward the north side. Is it going onto the bridge? Several blocks of the neighborhood will know soon enough. I ache from smoking and not eating. There's incense to soothe and please my aural passages, fresh cool water. Another cigarette.

On September 11, 2001, these were the locations of my home and office relative to the World Trade Center. From "NYC Cycling Map."

This week I thoroughly groomed a horse, including hoof-picking, for the first time in my life. It was intimate and sensual. The horse, Dandi, munched at her grain and let me stroke her all over with the two brushes. Her belly was particularly delightful, a warm furry gray globe I could have curled up in.

I've also set up my studio. THIS is a huge excitement for me. My own room just for "pwah-jex". Dozens of little cubicles labeled intriguingly: "things to fix," "papier-mâché," "wood," "decoupage," "IJ." IJ stands for Interesting Junque. Sally brought that word into my life when I was a wee girl and Sally would show up with grocery bags full of mathems--gifts of items that are new to you--and IJ.

It is good to settle in. My dreams have been about finding just the right light for the vast collection of houseplants I don't have. Winter approaches, and I have a nest, a den.

Burke's Backyard Archives 2002 - Dairy GoatsFirst Barn Chores All Summer

Wearing last year's gloves, and the stench of last year's rutting billy goat is now soaked into my hands. Heady stuff, dizzying odor. I mucked the donkeys' stall this morning. I'm out of shape in regard to mucking. By the first two shovelsful of poo and wet hay I was dripping sweat. It doesn't help that it's humid and warm. Donkey poo has less of a pleasant odor than some other barnyard poo, or maybe it's just that I'm out of practice. I did enjoy our first minutes together when Rachel and I were the only ones there and I was dispensing carrot bits. The goats liked me but not the carrots, except one doe who ate them happily. Maybe it is fresh billy goat kid musk I have on my hands. The babies have horns like the first joints of little thumbs, and I scratched behind those wee horns.

I love yard sales, garage sales, tag sales, thrift shops, clearance sales and boxes marked "free." I love a bargain and love things with provenance. Recently I bought a big box at a barn sale. The box contains all the horse tack that the barn owner's great-grandpa used to run this farm: bridle, harness for a plow, various straps and buckles, all of it ancient and ugly. I was so enchanted by the romance of this, a decrepit farm down the road from me, and here in the trunk of my car went part of its economic engine. My husband groaned and said, "That will stay in that box forever, now." Stubbornly I insisted that I would clean it up with Murphy's Oil Soap and maybe make an art piece out of it. I did spread it all out on the floor of our garage and take photographs. Nevertheless, back in the box it went and still remains.

Two honeys at Baltimore's Hon Festival, 2003

Confessions of a Recovering Child Fundamentalist

...actually, I always questioned things to the point that I got in trouble with my Sunday School and Vacation Bible School teachers...

Note to my beloved and only brother, ex-Marine, owner of indeterminate politics, one from whose mouth terms like "baby-killer" and "queer pervert" have issued (admittedly, half a lifetime ago.):

Dear T:

I am struggling with something that I think you can help me understand. John's Uncle and Aunt (hosts of our wedding) are coming to visit soon. We are pretty close and I love, trust and respect them. Uncle F sent me an email recently that said simply, "Vote for Bush." Now, he knows what kind of person I am and what my values are. "Why?" I responded. "Because he is the best candidate," wrote Uncle F. I fussed and fumed and eventually wrote back, "I must respectfully disagree." We haven't discussed it further.

So I have become worried about their visit. I am concerned that I will want to haggle with Uncle F--why on earth do you think Bush is the best candidate, yadda yadda yadda. I totally can't understand why anyone would want to vote for President Bush, and I also recognize that 1/2 or more of the country will vote for him. I do not understand it and would like to. People with Bush stickers on their cars seem like alien pod people to me.

What good is there about President Bush? How to address all the well-known bad--false representation leading to ill-planned war in Iraq, bigotry, cronyism, undermining basic constitutional principles--like separation of church and state--that have been part of what caused this country to be as strong and powerful as it has been, etc.

~~~~~~~~~full moon, hormones in nuclear fission mode~~~~~~~~~~~

Email to the membership services department of the GOP upon reading a NYT article about their convention staging:

Dear Folks,

As a former NYC resident and survivor of September 11, 2001, I find it disgusting that you all would use the site as a visual and emotional backdrop for the Republican convention. I am forever changed by that day, have flashbacks, nearly faint at certain smells, weep when discussing it, have nightmares and I know that I am among thousands if not tens of thousands of people who feel the same way. That day, and all that occurred thereafter in our neighborhoods, is not yet a political tool! Maybe December 7th is ok to use, or D-Day, but not 9/11, at least not for me.

It seems heartless, tasteless and not savvy, as did President Bush when he stood in flight uniform on the deck of an aircraft carrier with a banner that said "Mission Accomplished."

My new favorite musicians are Sheila Chandra, Afro Celt Sound System and Brooklyn Funk Essentials. Internet streaming radio is just grand!

The New York Times > Arts > Art & Design > Art Review: Caution: Angry Artists at Work

John got up early and I slept in this morning, bolstered on one side by Cruiser and on the other by two cats. Heaven.

A blue heron has taken up a stance on rocks in the Au Sable river near our house. I never see it on the same rock, but it always looks the same, like a sculpture. Maybe it is a joke.

Late August and the leaves are turning. Nights have been in the forties. This summer we never once went swimming in the famous Jay swimming hole, although we did once go swimming in a spot near us. We haven't had a bonfire or slept outside in a tent. So much rain and so much chill, and so much to do all summer. We have been very busy.

John has learned a new word for me: mouse potato. Courtesy of the NYT magazine this past Sunday.

Proust Questionnaire

Your most marked characteristic? duality, as in graceful and clumsy
The quality you most like in a man? gentleness
The quality you most like in a woman? strength
What do you most value in your friends? love, compassion, loyalty, discretion
What is your principle defect? being judgmental
What is your favorite occupation? puttering, reading, napping
What is your idea of earthly happiness? having endless creative and physical energy in an environment of peace and contentment
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? losing freedoms
What would you like to be? someone who leaves many legacies of good work
In what country would you like to live? USA
What is your favorite color? red
What is your favorite flower? lily of the valley
What is your favorite bird? bluebird
Who are your favorite prose writers? Edith Wharton, Annie Proulx, Margaret Atwood, Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Gene Stratton Porter
Who are your favorite poets? Ogden Nash, Emily Dickinson, various sonneteers
Who is your favorite hero of fiction? Aslan
Who is your favorite heroine of fiction? Girl of the Limberlost
Who are your favorite composers? Aaron Copland, Meshell Ndegeocello and many in between
Who are your favorite painters? My mother and father, Mary Cassatt, Alice Neel, Botero
Who are your heroes in real life? Rosa Parks, Kevin Jennings, Ruth Lilly, all reasonably competent waitresses, my husband
Who are your favorite heroines of history? Harriet Tubman, suffragettes, women in the Bible
What are your favorite names? Elizabeth, Thomas, John, Meagan, Maggie, Samantha, Cameron, David, Grace
What is it you most dislike? fear and pain
What historical figures do you most despise? Idi Amin, Chinese Cultural Revolution functionaries and others like them
What event in military history do you most admire? the 1978 Camp David Peace Accords brokered by US President Jimmy Carter between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat
What reform do you most admire? repeal of prohibition
What natural gift would you most like to possess? athleticism
How would you like to die? with all my affairs in order, peacefully, if not on my own terms then instantaneously via gunshot, beheading or other means
Who would you have liked to be? a pioneer in the American West in the 1700s, partnered lesbian woman passing as a man
Your favorite virtue?* generosity
What is your present state of mind? calm and focused
To what faults do you feel most indulgent? sweet tooth, sloth, gossip
What is your motto? bless yer heart

*Virtue, Faith, Honesty, Gratitude, Perseverance, Forgiveness, Patience, Courage, Respect, Generosity, Discipline, Compassion, Humility

Chilly August morning. That's an impossibility in Baltimore, where I come from. Winter is right around the corner. I feel like Persephone, above ground and in the light now but thinking ahead to my nuptial duties in Hades.

Ah, the end of two weeks of vacation. I did a whole lot of nothing. Actually, that's not quite true. Main accomplishments: weeding garden, putting up pounds and pounds of zucchini (shredded, breaded, cubed,) harvesting herbs and hanging them up to dry in kitchen and dining room windows, weeding and mulching the perennial bed. I wrote cards and letters to a bunch of people, read books and novels.

The most interesting and evocative book I read during this vacation was Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. This book brought me right back to the late 70s when my father was a missionary and he was helping folks, notably an Iranian family of four, to achieve political asylum or otherwise immigrate to the U.S. under the auspices of the Christian church. I remember some of my girlfriend Mahnaz's stories of the revolution and her escape--stories which by now are certainly edited through my own political filter and the length of time it has been since I heard those stories--but what stays with me is Mahnaz, then 15 (and I twelve), saying she had been in class at school, masked gunmen came in and machine-gunned the classroom. Mahnaz's teacher was killed and her classmates fell all around her. She fell too, underneath the body of her girl cousin. The cousin was killed but Mahnaz lived, without physical injury.

Mahnaz and her brother R and their mother P came to the U.S. a year or so after their father Mahmoud, who was blind. Mahmoud's blindness was the result of a motorcycle accident in Tehran in the early 70s. He had become an outcast and for whatever reasons he came to the U.S. and lived with us. Who knows what twisty paths led a wounded Iranian to a Christian household in Baltimore. When Mahmoud's wife and children arrived, a year or so later, I remember hearing that P, his wife would have divorced him if they had stayed in Iran.

They had a loud, bickering relationship, which couldn't have been made an easier by culture shock. Neither Mahnaz nor her mother wore the chador, but when we went to their mosque in Washington, DC we all put it on. That day--I was 13--a Moroccan sheik, a member of a Moroccan Air Force group that my father was escorting somewhere, asked me to be his first wife. Mahnaz was sitting next to me on the schoolbus which my father was driving. She ducked her head. I was too young to feel embarrassed, and felt I should be polite. I told the man I would have to ask my father. The man said he would let me have stereos, TV's, and help him pick his other wives. Later Mahnaz said this offer was a great honor. Now I don't know. We were young girls and these men were knowledgeable about war and terrorism. Soon the Ayatollah Khomeini took U.S. people hostage and all that stuff happened, and Jimmy Carter, the President we could feel comfortable with, was trashed in his re-election bid by Ronald Reagan.

I turned 15 just after that election, and the 30-ish man I adored came to my high school production of "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" with my parents, and asked them if, when I turned 16, he could date me. And that's another story which I may never tell.

The Washington I see on the news is now vastly different from the airy, green and marble place I knew when I was a child. It is much different from the place I lived as an adult in the 90s. Bollards, Jersey barriers, Constitution Avenue blocked off, the White House surrounded by armaments... I wish my father were alive today to give me his opinion on all this. He would have understood the Muslim fundamentalist movement in a way I never will.

Once, riding in the front seat of my parents' car (1965 Dodge Dart Swinger, reddish-orange body and black vinyl top,) I sat between Mehdi and my father. Mehdi was 16 and wearing shorts. His legs were very hairy and his knees were square. We were friendly, or at least, Mehdi was friendly for an angry Iranian boy who was stranded in the U.S. I don't know his circumstances. We were talking about what was happening in Iran. "Would you fight?" I asked. Certainly. Would you kill? Yes. Would you kill me? Yes. He was controlled, calm and serious. I don't remember if my father said anything.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now it is almost four p.m. and raining. Beef stew is simmering in the oven. I am sipping red wine, John is downstairs in the living room listening to the soundtrack of O Brother Where Art Thou. Soon I must prepare several coolers full of lemonade, ice tea, water for the Saturday evening JEMS concert, and defrost the collection of homemade cookies that has accrued from previous weeks' concerts. Because of the rain it will be inside the Au Sable Forks community center, which is a drag. The Jay green is much more fun.

Hours-old alpaca with her wobbly legs. Her herdmates are looking on with as much curiosity as an alpaca can muster. Courtesy of Jay Ward, Au Sable Valley Alpacas.

John & Martha with Jay Ward's alpaca Starlight and her new baby Peaches-n-Cream, whom we helped birth that morning.

We watched the bicycle portion of the Ironman race on Sunday, July 27th, 2004. The riders passed our front yard. There's Cruiser watching john take the picture. We yelled, "Good job! Looking strong! You're a rock star! Bravo!"
I notice looking at this photo that I grew quite noticeably fat when we first moved here.
There's my old rocking chair, a gift from xtine Demaio & Don Rice upon their moving West from Brooklyn, and the busted Adirondack chair that John patched back together and painted in purple, pink and rose.

Zoooooooooooommmmm...

John shakes the noisemaker as bikers approach our property. Good camera makes the bikers look stationery--they were definitely not.

Dear All,

The 2004 Ironman Lake Placid was yesterday, and we participated all day long (with a long nap in the middle.) You can find official race coverage at http://vnews.ironmanlive.com/. Click "post race coverage" and then the most interesting options are "photos" and "video and audio."

The bike portion of the race goes in front of our house, so we were out there are 8:30 a.m. to cheer on the first rider, and went inside at about 2:30 for a nap. Cheering is tiring! We shook a gallon maple syrup bottle with pennies in it for the greatest noise effect, shouted, clapped and called out to them. Lots of the riders smiled, waved, gave the thumbs up, said things we couldn't understand because they were going so fast (the Doppler effect?) Cruiser snoozed the whole time. On the riders' second lap around many were really delighted that we were still there. "See you next year!" some of them shouted. In the minutes where there were no riders we were quiet and realized what a soft, pretty day it was, the only noise being the gently rushing river. When riders came by we heard our neighbors making noise all up and down the valley: drum beats and shouts carried for miles, and I'm sure folks heard us, too.

John had gone into Lake Placid at 6 a.m. to see the swimming start of the race, and we returned there at about 8:00 p.m. to see the end of the running marathon. What endurance these folks have. I was most moved by the families who waited near the finish line for their loved one, who slowed to grab a baby, or the hands of their children, or their dog's leash, or their partner and ran as a joyful group through the cheering stands and across the line, where they were met by volunteers, medical staff and often more of their families and friends. The official pics show that one Ironman dropped to his knees and proposed to his girlfriend, who accepted. Wow, he carried the ring all those miles?

Starlight Births A Cria

At noon today John and I arrived at Jay Ward's alpaca barn to get our instructions for care and feeding of the animals while he and his family are on vacation next week. We have been part of the alpaca-sitting team before, but this time there are new animals and new routines. Jay wasn't there yet, so we browsed around his airy, new, pleasant barn, greeting the skittish alpacas and talking to the chickens. I picked up one golden hen and petted her.Home

Jay's two little daughters, Mollie and Lucy, are responsible for the alpacas' care, which is a good advertisement for how gentle and easy the alpacas are. Jay keeps them in pairs or trios, and the little groups share a stall which lets out into the meadow that rolls down to a wide bend of the Au Sable River. In the right-hand corner stall were two lady alpacas. One of them, a brown-and-white named Starlight who Jay had described as one of the most desirable because of the color of her fur, was lying in the straw and dust in front of a fan, accompanied by a standing alpaca, her friend, and a handful of clucking murmuring hens. I flickeringly remembered Jay mentioning a pregnant female in his "help care for alpacas while we're on vacation" email. Sure enough, her sides were swollen in that rounded diamond shape I have gotten to know through a year of peripheral contact with pregnant goats and sheep. She was breathing hard, and quickly I realized it probably wasn't from the heat of the day.

The animals had recently been shorn, and their bodies were willowy, especially their long, giraffe-like necks. The pregnant female's neck was creamy and her head and face were a mixture of brown and cream--Jay later referred to this coloration as "pinto." Her topknot was as fluffy and soft as all the others' were, and her eyes large and calm and cool. I watched her waist contracting and glanced at her butt, where her unshaven brown mop of a tail was raised, rather than relaxed as the others' were. Then I saw her vulva, pink-rose-red vertical lips opening like petals from her distended bum.

"I think she's getting ready to give birth," I remarked to John. He seemed skeptical until I picked up her tail and showed him her vulva. He quickly left the barn to find Julie, Jay's wife, and let her know. Things happened very quickly then. In a blink the baby's snout had emerged an inch from the alpaca's bum, and its nostrils were quivering and snorting. Instant life! Clear liquid dripped steadily from the alpaca's bottom--her water had broken.

In two minutes Jay arrived with their two girls (Lucy the youngest in a white bike helmet, flowered top and yellow rubber muck boots, brown-haired Mollie in a purple jumper and blue rubber muck boots.) I can only imagine how Jay felt, knowing how valuable these animals are and two virtual strangers in his barn watching Starlight go into labor. He was animated and the girls were full of questions.

"What's happening? Is she alright? What should we do? What's that?" They were not grossed out but curious and caring. I suggested saying Thank you God for this miracle, and immediately felt sanctimonious, but that's how moved I was.

Soon Jay shooed us out and we talked in the sun. He knew a lot about how this was supposed to happen--two front feet should emerge very soon, he said. But when we adults returned to the barn there was still the snout, and Starlight had plainly stopped having contractions. Jay put on short blue latex gloves and I asked if he needed lube.

"I shouldn't need it," he said, "but I don't know. This is actually the first time I've been here for a birth. It's always happened in the middle of the night."

Right then I felt that it was ok for us to stay and observe, because I knew we could help. John joined Jay in the stall and hugged Starlight while Jay gently felt around the baby's emerging head. The mother squeaked and whined, and the two men stood back from her. Jay said she should be lying down. The baby's head was fully out now, and it began hooting. The mother bent her graceful neck to peer at this noisy thing projecting from her butt, and turned in circles like a cat slowly chasing its tail. Jay began to become concerned and pulled out his cell phone to call the vet who gave him phone advice, then called one of his fellow alpaca breeders, Cal Coolidge, who quickly arrived to lend a hand. Lucy and Mollie slipped in and out, not sure if they wanted to watch. The baby, called a "cria," shook its head and one long ear flopped free, and one leg emerged. Jay changed into shoulder gloves and knelt in the dust to help the mother. Her contractions were weak and infrequent, but she did not seem too distressed. Jay realized that the cria's other front leg was folded back, and he spent ten or fifteen minutes trying to ease this leg forward. Other kids joined the quiet observers--two tow-headed brothers. All four children were as much interested in Cruiser, who I had tied to a tree outside, as they were in the birth. One of the hens was making a racket and Mollie said, "She knows something's happening."

Just as Jay's concern was edging toward fear, he asked Cal to speak again with the vet. And as Cal greeted the vet, Jay got the cria's second front leg out. In a couple of minutes he had pulled while the mother pushed and the baby was out on the stall floor, and we were all glowing with relief and pride.

The cria was whole and healthy, strong enough to begin flopping around trying to stand immediately. Its wet body quickly became matted with straw and dust, and as quickly the filth dried and fell off. Cal Coolidge pulled off some of the membrane. The mother watched and nosed her baby. Neighbors began to arrive, and Jay's wife and mother-in-law. We were quietly celebratory.

From our arrival to everyone's joyful congratulations was 45 minutes. We will go back later today to get our instructions for alpaca-sitting.

The day before yesterday I saw a red salamander on a rock behind my office building. I was walking the dog, Cruiser, in a shady spot that is verdant with vinca vine and other pleasant ground covers, and glanced at the boulders that mark the corner of our building. There was an orangey-red smear, which I thought might be bubble gum dropped from the balcony above, or a broken balloon, or a toy. I peered closer, and saw the salamander shape, so my mind zoomed in on toy. I like toys. I peered closer, and saw layers of fine detail that continued to emerge as I got closer. Delicate spots, points of yellow outlined in green. Tiny transparent toes, wrinkles of an armpit where the arm was set forward and the toes on the rearward-facing arm curled under. Such detail--it couldn't be a toy. It was completely motionless, its tail curved gently, a beautifully rendered salamander in a caricature of a salamander pose. I gently touched its nearly transparent tail and the salamander jerked. Alive, definitely. As quickly the creature froze again, hoping to fool me. But I have opposable thumbs and cannot be so easily fooled. Ever so lightly I stroked its little tail, no thicker than a piece of cooked spaghetti. It edged away from me, but didn't flee. I didn't want to disturb it more so I moved back away from it and went on with the dog.

This made me want to spend time writing like Annie Dillard in "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek."

One year ago today we woke up in a cabin at Cobble Mountain Lodge in Lake PLacid, bundled ourselves, three cats and one small Nuyorican dog into the Pathfinder and drove to our lawyer's office to sign papers and hand over one big check to buy this house. Then we drove back here and in an hour the hired guys from Brooklyn turned into the driveway with their huge rented truck and unloaded all our belongings into this big beautiful house. Most of what we owned was in cardboard boxes that they placed in the garage, several rows of stacks of boxes higher than my head. How did we arrive here with all that stuff when we had lived in a cramped apartment? My mother and Sally loaded us up with mathems, and in the coming weeks it was like opening presents to unpack some of the boxes and see what we had been given.

A week later Liza, Dave and the kids visited for a week, helping us settle in.

Email to friends and family...

Hi, Ladies,

We had a great weekend and I know you each would have enjoyed sharing it with us. The weather has been gorgeous, even when it rains.

Yesterday morning we arrived at the Whiteface United Methodist Church annual auction and bbq. It was so much fun we stayed til the bitter end--we were there about five hours. Things were going for such reasonable prices--it was a deal for the bidders and not so much of a fund-raiser for the church, but we all had fun and that's what matters most, I guess. Plus they probably earned a couple new members (us.) I was the chief bidder in our family and also a proud driver-up of bids that I subsequently lost--as a professional fund-raiser and dedicated community volunteer I felt it was my duty to raise the prices. I won several bottles of wine, eight passes for a raft ride at Au Sable Chasm (which we'll save for when you all visit,) dinner for two at a new restaurant, a cat mirror that looks exactly like something my mother would give me, a free night at a nice b&b, a one-person tent that a local character took with him on the Appalachian Trail, a delicate old cut glass sugar & creamer and some assorted junk. John sat there, unmoved by any of the goods, until a set of three simple wooden chairs that had been reupholstered by our neighbor came up for auction, plus two pillows to match. Then John sprang into action, and the chairs were his. We don't know where they'll go but they sure look nice. He also won a $25 certificate from our oil company, for which he paid $20. Hey, it's $5 off. We bid on but lost a rustic curio cabinet, an heirloom cedar chest, and a few other things. All in all it was a great bargain and the church thinks they made $2,000 or $3,000, most of which was NOT from us.

Then we came home, unwound and went off to the Jay Town Green for the Saturday night concert series for which we are the refreshments volunteers. As soon as we pulled up it started to pour rain, but as the band was set up inside the gazebo they decided to stick it out. So we and a dozen other die-hards stood around in the pouring rain chatting for 45 minutes until, as forecast by one farmer-artist fellow, the sky cleared from the north. The concert began and people came out of the trees, it seemed. There were probably 50 folks, including a bunch of children. Speaking of children, I am enduring fierce desires to have a child. John says if I go through one more cycle without changing my mind then he'll know it's for real and not just hormonal. (It's been months now.) And then, as he says, "We'll get one."

Last night it rained again, and we were awakened by the Essex County fire-ambulance pager that John now carries glued to his person. It goes off in the middle of the night when it rains. I suppose I will get used to it quickly, but for now it is a disturbing, surreal interruption: first a series of tones which have meaning--last night's tones included a tune in a minor key--and then the calm deep voice of the dispatcher. "Essex County Emergency system activated for Wilmington, two car incident reported on Route 86 in the Notch, one rollover, one entrapment. All Wilmington units respond." John didn't wake up. I petted his hair and listened for the second call, which usually follows the first. Sure enough, in a minute or two the tones rang again, and the dispatcher repeated his announcement and added, "One person reported unconscious, but breathing. Repeat: one person reported unconscious, but breathing." So stark, so professional. John doesn't have to respond to anything that is not a fire in Upper Jay unless they call for backup. The backup system is why we hear all fire and ambulance calls for the county. If there's a huge wreck on the Northway, for example, then John might have to back up the VFD in a town 50 miles away across six mountains. I am fast gaining respect for our local community that does all this stuff as volunteers.

This morning we woke up lazily but soon John was out on the road running. He ran for two hours, arriving home just as I came back from the farmer's market with blueberries, maple sugar and a bunch of cool stuff from a garage sale including the most fetching pair of gold sparkly pointy harem slippers with a yellow pompom on the tips (25 cents.) It's good to be a grown woman with odd sartorial taste and absurdly small feet. I noticed a Jeep Grand Cherokee for sale at a neighbor's house, which we later test drove, and a second yard sale at which I got a treadmill for John when the winter sets in and he can't run up mountains any more. The treadmill is now in our basement. I tried it. If I wear three bras I might be able to use it comfortably.

Now John's on the front porch drinking a Bud and reading the paper. I am not typing up a fund-raising plan for the SPCA, nor entering town library archives acquisitions into a database, but writing to you. In a half hour I will freshen up and take off for Lake Placid where I am meeting a friend for supper. She's a member of a group into which I've been scooped up, called Adirondack Women For a Good Time (AWFGT.) There are six of us, all (except me) lesbians in their 40s-60s who like to eat meat, drink cocktails, talk loudly about all sorts of things and get preferential treatment at restaurants because we are characters. I guess I fit in somehow.

Our kitchen garden is a luxurious profusion of edibles plus an equal amount of sturdy weeds. Flowers are everywhere, from the acres of daisies and purple/pink wildflowers in our field to the bright bursts of pink and white cleomes around the garden border. Our river cairns have withstood several rainstorms and get added to every time one or the other of us goes wading. The Nissan is parked by the road with a FOR SALE sign in it, and the Taurus is doing just fine as an only car. The cats are stoned on catnip, Cruiser the dog is gently covering the entire house with golden hairs, and blackfly season is over. I am sublimely content.

I think of you often with love, and hope to see you soon.

John has just been inducted into the Upper Jay volunteer Fire Department and is undergoing several months of training. He's received his beeper. Last night it rained, and the first call came through at suppertime. He didn't have to go, as he is fire department, not ambulance, and it wasn't in Upper Jay. In the middle of the night, two o'clock-ish, three calls came through in quick succession. First the almost pleasant alert tones, then a slight crackle before the dispatcher's deep, calm voice. "We have received word of a car and motorcycle collision on Route 73 between Keene and Keene Valley." "...a rollover on Route 73..." and a third call saying they needed a driver and attendant. The first two calls were repeated. It was very intense and disturbing and exciting. We'll get used to this soon, I hope, and it won't blast us out of sleep. Perhaps there is a certain tone for the Upper Jay fire department and John and I will learn to recognize that.

Cairn on the Au Sable River in Upper Jay, NY by Martha and John Spear, June 21, 2004 

Yesterday afternoon I arrived at a yard sale, and a woman who was leaving called out to me, "Get ready to Jew!"

I was startled--wasn't sure if I'd heard her correctly. "Sorry?" I said over the roof of my car.

"Get ready to Jew her down!" said the woman with no lessening of friendliness or volume, gesturing toward the barn where the sale was being held.

I know what that phrase means but have never actually heard it used except when I was being educated about how some terms are offensive and why not to say them. While smiling at my fellow shopper and thinking ahead to the cheap bounties awaiting, I also wanted to respond appropriately to this stunner of language. I could be strident, I could distinguish myself as an outsider, I could lie and say, "I'm a Jew!" or I could be respectful and gentle. I chose the latter.

"Huh. What does that mean?" I asked, shutting the car door and coming around to the driveway. It was a perfect day--sunny, clear, breezy, warm.

The woman replied, "Oh, you know, she's--the prices are high and she won't..." She was carrying two full plastic bags.

"Ah," I said, as if the lightbulb of comprehension had just lit up over my head. "Bargaining, haggling, negotiating!"

By this time the woman was either in a hurry to depart or annoyed by my probing, or taken aback my human thesaurus behavior, or all three. We parted with bright good wishes and I went on to the sale, which was, in fact, full of great stuff at high prices, and I did, in fact, have to bargain hard to get what I wanted for the price I was willing to pay.

I have been thinking about this exchange ever since. Often my new ADK friends tell me I'm 'urban,' whatever that means. Does this urban-ness include an awareness of ethnic and other slurs based on stereotypes? Maybe it's because I have lived in some of the USA's greatest cities and thus have lived with such wide varieties of people. Maybe it's just because I love words and have developed a heightened sensitivity to language. Maybe it's because I am passionate about social justice and equality for all.

But I thought no less of my fellow shopper because she used the term "Jew her down" when she meant "need to bargain to get a reasonable price." What I thought was that she has had a more limited experience in life than other people I know; perhaps she does not know any Jews, perhaps she has never connected the term with the religion and culture. It is so easy to miss that kind of thing when you're just talking, enjoying the day. For me, it takes practice and discipline to not say offensive things, just because they're woven into my language. It's even worse when I don't know that something is offensive.

What I really wanted out of that afternoon was to have a fun time at yard sales, so I went on and did just that. However, I've been thinking a lot about this exchange and I wonder if I can help be a catalyst to get people thinking and talking about the power (both good and bad) of language.

My dog and I browsed the sale, which was very large, for an hour. I came to the seller with my collection of stuff and she quoted me a figure. I wanted to pay half that and after hemming and hawing, putting a few things back, pointing out a few flaws in merchandise, I came away with what I really wanted and she happily pocketed the dollars I was willing to spend.

I am a co-dependent finch killer. This morning as I was preparing to leave for work, Smidgen announced that she had caught a bird. This may be her first avian kill. I love Smidge so much and was truly proud of her. She has short legs and a big head, bug eyes and a marvelously personable nature, due in part to her sickness as a kitten, and the fact that she was hand-fed and reared by caring volunteers. She spends hours sitting in the window well nearest the bird feeder outside our kitchen window, watching the action, occasionally kneading her paws in the dirt out of pleasure.

So I followed my usual routine--backed the car out of the garage, put it in park so I could shut the garage door, and was about to call for Smidgen to put her in for the day, when I saw her crouched at the corner of the building. I went over to greet her and she let out a long, sustained MEOW, a wild proud sound. There between her front paws was a tiny female finch--grey with yellow feathers--heart still beating. I praised Smidgen, and she began to toss the bird and bat it around. When the bird landed on the grass it tried to move its wings. In these moments I felt some anxiety and conflict (my beloved Smidge having fun and being a cat versus kindness to all creatures.) I settled that and overcame a lifetime of squeamishness by grasping the big stick we use to stir the fire in the burn barrel, and bonking the bird once, breaking its back. Its head immediately began to twitch in a death way, and within seconds it was utterly still. This did not diminish Smidgen's pleasure in playing with it.

I left her outside to enjoy her kill. John will be home early today. He says, "I think the correct way to put it is Smidge caught a bird and you killed it." Aaggghhh...

Monday, May 17th, 2004

I stopped by the barn on my way in this morning, looking for Cruiser. I didn't find him, but found instead SIX baby goats! They are enchanting. Several are bouncing around on springs, and two are weak and shaky. One of the weak ones was curled up in a shady spot, shivering, so I went in, picked it up and laid it on some shavings in the sun next to the other weak one. Very quickly it stopped shaking and in several minutes had stood up and was bleating. It also peed on its sibling, because although it could stand it didn't walk anywhere.

I went out into the yard and petted the ladies, who still look enormous. They were reclining in the sun, munching hay, looking worn out.

The babies are about the size of Papi, some more muscular than others. Their fur is silky soft--all shades of brown, tan and cream. Their ears are floppy like their mothers'. They sound like the lambs but different--more high-pitched and funnier.

Tuesday, May 18th, 2004

Regular barn chores morning. Three of the kids are not nursing from their mama's teats and have to be bottle-fed. One of our senior students volunteered to milk the mama goat. We opened up the gate and the goat pranced out, leapt right up into the milking stall. Rachel slid the bars around the goat's neck, someone else poured some grain in the trough, and the senior settled into milking the contended, munching goat.

He let me help. "It's like toothpaste," he said, meaning that I was supposed to squeeze from the top down in a rolling motion. This came not at all naturally. I think my hands would cramp before I got used to doing this for more than a few squeezes. The goats teats were warm, firm, resilient, and the thin milk came out easily. She ignored me.

Friday of a long week, the end of two long weeks following the board meeting and two events in NYC. I have been tired but am coming back. Today my boss took me out for lunch, very nice. As we were driving back to school we passed a work-site on the side of the road with one of those large mobile electric alert signs. The message on the sign was "GAY MECHANIC WORKING." I burst out laughing and wasn't sure I had really seen what I thought I saw, but my boss had seen it too. Funniest thing! I wonder if that will make it into the paper.

Came back to work and walked Cruiser, who is now staying with us indefinitely. On my walk I found a fallen birds nest made of mostly horsehair. Charlotte the obese 600-pound heritage breed sow is in a paddock by herself lately. She was lying in the sun--I wasn't sure she was breathing. I cooed and clucked and called her name, and she sighed and grunted, so I went in and scratched and petted her for a file. Poor, depressed Charlotte. She has a particular strong odor that I find quite pleasant outdoors, a musk. It doesn't translate well into my office, though.

This evening we are going for a boat ride with Mark and having supper together at his house. I am planning to build a bottle tree and Mark is excited to help me find the perfect driftwood log under the serene waters of Lake Saranac.

Tonight there is a ring around the moon, an aura or halo. It is huge. Raise your hands above your shoulders like you are giving praise to God. Then spread your arms a little. That's how wide the aura looks from where we are. I can't tell if it is in space, "millions of miles away," as John said, or just in our atmosphere, a parting of clouds. In either case, the luminous perfect circle seems immediately above our heads, just as the aurora borealis did last fall.

It snowed and sleeted today. The planties in the cold frame are still growing nonetheless. In the afternoon the weather was gorgeous, windy and clear and fresh.

I've put my father's photograph in our living room. It's the first time since he died (that I remember) that I've had his photo on display. It is very nice to see him smiling at me as I walk by. I never thought of a photo as having such power, nor did I think the sight of my long-dead father's face could give me comfort and joy. John says he is glad to see my Dad's face up there.

Today at my first visit to a chiropractor in Lake Placid he went through the regular series of medical questions: he asked if I had children. No. Had I ever been pregnant? Yes. "Oh," he said quite kindly and sympathetically, "you lost it." It was not a question. I now know the language to use up here about that particular personal/political thing.

Quote of the day: "Peepers and mud... You're rich!" --Bunny LeClair, neighbor

Things that happened in the last 24 hours:

I hung laundry out to dry, then there was a thunderstorm; the temperature got up to the 70s: all these things for the first time since last fall.

John got the Pathfinder stuck in the mud. He drove out back to the field to get some large tree stumps for around our fire pit. He felt the Nissan fall into a sink hole and tried to power out of it but couldn't. A neighbor with a Jeep and a winch got the truck out.

I started a cold frame of vegetables, flowers and herbs.

We learned that our orange cat Bean has more than once been caught in our neighbor's skunk trap, which would explain Bean's occasional overnights.

I made an 81st birthday card for Nana, John's grandmother, and a thank you card for Mark, our postmaster who took us on a boating trip on Saranac Lake last week.

We watched "Winged Migration," which is tremendous.

Note to the creator of Shitbegone toilet paper (www.shitbegone.com)

Dear Jed,

I lived in Williamsburg, Bklyn when Shitbegone first snuck onto the shelves of local minimarts (1999? 2000?) I got my first rolls at the bodega across the street from Iona bar, corner of Grand and Bedford. The Spanish-speaking proprietors were confused by my laughter when I saw the product. I sent my mother, who has a colostomy, a roll and she adored it. Having a colostomy, she had no need to consume the toilet paper, and she still proudly displays it as her own personal poo joke. Back in Williamsburg I, and presumably others, kept buying the rolls until the bodegas no longer stocked them. "No, we don't carry that any more," they said, as if they had discovered a cruel joke had been played upon them. In a way, I guess it had.

Now I live on a farm in the Adirondacks where people don't have senses of humor like they do in NYC. Here there is a lot of shit from animals that weigh as much as taxis, and peoples' septic tanks--including mine--back up, producing more shit. From my point of view this means even more need for Shitbegone toilet paper.

I display my last roll of Shitbegone in my country kitchen, along with an empty carton of Homo Milk from Quebec. No one of our new local friends yet has reacted. Perhaps they are blind, or they think my taste is beneath comment.

Would love to know when your website upgrade and new merchandise are ready. Thanks for creating a classic.

Martha

At lunch today Rachel and Rebekah were saying how Selden birthed two lambs this morning. At that moment John Doan came to the table with a plate heaped with a large, dark hunk of meat and bone. “There’s lamb up there if you want it,” he said. I thought that the lamb on his plate was one of the ones Selden birthed this morning. I thought she caught the lamb, gave it to the kitchen, and here it was on John's plate. I nearly threw up. Folks teased me for a second but then said the lamb was from another source. Even so, I had to leave the table. This is akin to when my neighbor said he was selling his sled, and I saw a flexible flyer in my mind’s eye. I went to his basement to see the sled and there was a behemoth snow machine that holds two people, has a cooler and a stereo…