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…

A gorgeously sunny but frigid day. Spent much time planning our garden and thinking about eating our own produce throughout the winter. Also have in mind plenty of flowers and herbs, both perennial and annual. The gardens' success will depend on a few things: our ability to till the soil, the qualities of the soil (former pasture, so we assume it's good,) the hardiness of the plants in this silly climate and against the prevailing southeast wind that comes up our valley, and the black flies. I am afraid of the black flies. Is it possible that they are the scourge everyone says they are? I dread them. I plan to drape a sunhat with gauze and be out there gardening despite the little munchers. I will go through the novice gardener's trial of weeding - am I killing a treasure and saving a piece of trash?

What else is planted on our land? We saw it in early spring and again in mid-summer. There are vast stands of lilacs, hundred-year-old lilacs. There are a few clumps of plants that were clearly placed intentionally but I have no idea what they are now. There was a huge swath of yellow flowers planted inside one of the barn foundations, and some tiger lilies. Trees -- ancient maples, a handful of fruit trees, a fir and a bunch of shade trees I can't name.

Read a comparison the other day that is much better than "apples and oranges": "cheese and chalk." Unless one wants to compare like things. Then it would be "Gouda and Gruyere."

This evening we're going to see "The Sound of Music" at the local high school. Paul J has some leadership role in producing it.

Note to friends in response to today's New York Times article that Ruth Simmons, President of Brown University is leading the institution through a process to examine its history of involvement with slavery:

This is so beautiful! Years ago I met a distant relative whose great-great-grandparents were owned by my great-great-grandparents. I was already deeply involved in social justice work, but that chance meeting brought it home like a frying pan to my forehead. I wonder how many of us would have the bravery and humility to do personally what Brown's trustees and Ruth Simmons (former Smith president, I might add) have the courage to lead Brown through.

These days I might grumble and groan at my tight financial situation, but I also know that every advantage I've had throughout my life is STILL, despite my father's early disinheritance, due in part to a legacy of the resources built up by slaves.

Emails to a friend who is in the hospital:

Dear T,

As S may have told you, John and I have Cruiser for the weekend. Last night I picked him (Cruiser) up and he hopped confidently into the backseat of my car. At first he kind of slouched his butt against the door, and then soon lay down for a snooze. I stopped at the Stewart's to get some Budweiser because Roger is coming over today to work on reunion things with me, and as I left the car Cruiser gazed through the windshield at me with his great droopy dark eyes. My heart feels warm just thinking about it. I love that he knows who I am and trusts me.

Anyway, I brought him home and he was cautious at first, not sure of John, who it turns out was not sure of Cruiser. Somehow John had gotten the impression that Cruiser is a mean scary dog. I talk about C often so I don't know where John got that idea. Cruiser walked around the first floor sniffing things. I'd like to think his nose is sensitive enough to recognize your smell even though you've only been here a few times. Thank goodness for my poor housekeeping! I told him I was so glad he was here but wished it was his mom instead.

I made supper and Cruiser observed. John was on the couch watching TV. Two of our three cats made cautious forays into Cruiser's space, and he was absolutely charming to them. He dropped his head, was as still as he could be, his big nose quivering, his tail wagging ever so gently. One cat--Smidgen--actually touched noses with Cruiser the first hour he was here. Then they assumed détente. Cats upstairs, Cruiser downstairs, with cats making hourly rounds to sniff the air, display their fur and look wide-eyed, hurt, at John and me.

After supper John and I settled together on the couch for TV, and I invited Cruiser to join us. He leapt up quite gracefully for such a big beast, and at first was not interested in sitting on John, only me. He was as delicate as he could be but it is hard when you have big floppy paws and the humans are entangled together under an afghan. Soon, though, with John's caresses, Cruiser settled down onto both of us and was a big happy moosh.

Later I was cleaning up and getting ready for bed, and when I went in to the living room John and Cruiser were reclining together like two odalisques, totally absorbed in a hockey game. Or maybe John was absorbed and Cruiser was sleeping.

You are correct, of course--C hasn't braved the stairs. I have informed him that if he does come upstairs he may sleep in the bed with us, and I think the cats are hatching a secret nuclear weapon to prevent that from happening.

This morning John saw what he thinks is a wolf on the frozen river out front. Do you think we could have a wolf here? Maybe it was just a big fluffy coyote. Either way, I still haven't seen any coyotes myself and want to.

I'm off to the NCSPCA board meeting where I might see S. John is going to go for a long walk with Cruiser.

Big hug.







Dear T,

Well, it didn't take long for Cruiser to brave the stairs. This afternoon after our walk (which followed his and John's walk) I came up for a nap and with a little coaxing and sweet-talking Cruiser followed me up the stairs. He was perfectly coordinated about it. He required little encouragement to jump into bed and lie in my arms. He was only still for a moment before scootching around to say, "SCRATCH MY BELLY." Lick lick, snuffle snuffle, SCRATCH MY BELLY. Pretend to doze. SCRATCH ME! Moan, groan. PET ME! So much for the human nap. I told John things will never be the same between Cruiser and me again. We've lain together.

Our yard is now filling up with large poopies and messy spots where Cruiser has treated his face like a snow plow or rolled around in the fresh snow. He is a delight to have around.

He is also fine about going down the stairs. Maybe that is my contribution to your and Cruiser's quality of life. When you come home, he can do stairs.

Big hug,











Dear T,

There is so much life outside our house, all sorts of yawps and gurgles and hoots and honks. Some things I recognize--turkeys gobbling. Other things are mysterious--an intense babyish yipping in the hill behind our field. The river sound is getting louder. Earth smells like it might be coming back to life. Tonight there is a high-pitched rapid barking that echoes off the various hills and cliffs so the entire sky is filled with this sound. It's kind of ominous.

Yesterday evening John and I were relaxing at sunset and Cruiser was nosing around in the yard. John on the porch came into Cruiser's vision and Cruiser charged at him, all four paws off the ground. He must have flown six feet--Cruiser, that is. John was unfazed. Cruiser landed and came up to John all waggling and pushing his head against John's thigh.

This morning I dropped Cruiser and his water dish off at H and S's house. Ned, their black lab that is part helicopter, was overjoyed to see his buddy Cruiser, who seemed very happy, too, but did not bounce so high. I don't think S will let Cruiser visit us again--I think she thinks we spoiled him during our 48 hour lovefest. Perhaps you can put in a good word for us.

All sorts of dogs have taken to coming to the east end offices now that Cruiser is not there. Your giant box of biscuits is nearing its end--we'll have to get some more. Witherbee, Amy's gleaming grey puppy made his first appearance today in the company of Gannett, who is a daily mooch. Both boys sat politely and accepted a treat from me while I was on the phone with someone important. It's always fun when a serious conversation is interrupted by a WOOF! If the person is an alum they always sigh and say how they miss the place, and if it is someone else they say how they wished they worked in a place like this.

Here is my favorite poem:
Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,
Is those things arms or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, Octopus;
If I were thou, I'd call me Us.

By Ogden Nash.

Tomorrow morning I've got barn chores at NCS and John begins his alpaca-sitting duty at a local farm. Did you know that alpacas spit, and each beastie costs about $10,000? I probably told you that already. They only eat as much as a dog, they poop no more than a goat and always in the same neat little pile. Still, $10,000 for a large spitting mammal with only bottom teeth. I have yet to determine how you make a profit off them, but in the spirit of neighborliness we'll scrape their dainty poos into the wheelbarrow while the farmer is on vacation, feed their companion auracana chickens and take a few warm blue eggs, and bide our time. Who knows, maybe we'll become the next alpaca millionaires.

Thanks again for calling today. Sorry I was not in the spirit of chatting. Talk to you again soon, I hope. I'll be in Montréal at the NAIS conference from Weds. through Sat. but will try to email and will be thinking of you.

Oh, bliss -- warmth! I don't know the temperature, but it feels like summer. Went walking out in the field, across the ice of frozen stream and wetland, Cruiser at my side, Tsu's dog. Tsu is in the hospital sick with a suddenly revealed cancer. And Roger has just turned into our driveway. Is that Roger or someone else? Country life, new friends, warm sunny day. Ha!

Posted originally at www.toddp.com with photos.

Last night Todd, Ashley, a bunch of NCS students, my husband John and I all convened at the Saranac Lake Ice Palace. What a magical place! Magical is a trite word to describe a three-storey glimmering translucent witty frozen artistic sculptural architectural community marvel. I can speak only for myself, and I was suffused with joy. John gloried over discovering a tiny fish frozen in a block of ice the size of a Coleman cooler, and we all guffawed when someone pointed out the large words and arrow, writ in ice: FISH ---->

The ice could have been resin, it was so perfectly clear in spots, but the humid cold was proof of ice. Ah, how lovely.

You can check it out at http://www.saranaclake.com/carny.shtml Scroll down mid-page to see a slide show of construction.

Our solid H20 experience was preceded by a cozy hour in front of Mark's fireplace drinking hot cocoa and telling tall tales, and earlier in the afternoon a feast of kitchen-sink lasagna at John and my house, and the afternoon kicked off with Todd performing exploratory surgery on John and my computer network. As it turns out, shoelaces are not such effective UBS connectors.

I should probably post the above story in my own weblog but Todd has more readers and he hasn't told his own ice palace story yet, so let this be his introduction.

And today is a glorious, sunny Sunday!

Last night I fell down the basement stairs. John was down there fixing a window and from his point of view it happened in slow motion. I slipped, went "whoop!" then bump bump bump, he cried out, I said I'm ok! I'm ok! bump bump bump I'm ok! bump bump I'm ok! The whole way down I was crying out, "I'm ok!" He said he had three urges to go to my aid--but each time I said I was ok he paused. It happened in a flurry from my point of view. At the bottom I glimpsed a sturdy post and grabbed for it, thus ending my tumble and possibly saving me from serious injury. All the same, I sat there stunned, my butt, wrist and calf throbbing. John came to me and hugged me. I rested my head on his shoulder for a long moment.

This morning I am so sore.

The other night he woke me from a shrieking nightmare--I was dreaming that he decided he had never loved me, and I was enraged as well as grief-stricken. John woke me, pulled me into his arms, and said, "I have always loved you, I love you now and I will always love you."

What could be better than this relationship?

Transitioning into my office job this morning

By Martha Spear



Hay bales are heavy
Heavy bales hoisting
Makes me sweat, which is good, but—
Hay bales fall hard, I fall hard when tripping
Over hay bales
And cows are large, too large for tipping
But they sense weakness,
Trip me when they want the hay
So the bale and I flail in the stall
Amongst straw and frozen balls of poop
And the cows are happy munchers
Meaning no harm, even supplying
Sloppy kisses—they’d never hurt me.
Chores done, sweat drying, itches multiplying
There is hay in my bra.

Kerry v. Dean now. I remember the first Clinton campaign, the only campaign I was close enough to to think back on with personal fondness. I suppose people who cared for Kerrey or Tsongas, their staff and volunteers were upset as Clinton pulled out ahead. That didn't faze me at all--I was focused on two issues: keep abortion safe and legal, and make queer people visible. Clinton helped do both. Kerrey and Tsongas and the others who I forget now would have. It wasn't the individual candidate that mattered to me then, it was the issues. And I was so much younger then, so much less knowledgeable. I can't imagine now being a single-issue voter.

So Dean against Kerry. It doesn't matter to me except that I want to feel some affinity with the White House. I tried to write President Bush a letter the other day, but my email got lost in an Internet error and even though I pressed the "back" button it was gone. Oh well. What I was trying to say was that I considered voting for him because no one but he could clean up the mess he's made in Iraq and elsewhere. Everything else is done by committee, Senate, House, local, whatever. But this foreign policy, this world-ending Bible-prophecy-fulfilling stuff is at the hands of the deeply religious people like Bush. He and his father and Saddam Hussein.

Years ago, during that heady, wild 1991 year in fact, I remember a woman telling me that she had worked for a man high up in government. She had a highly classified job, she said, that gave her views she wished she'd never had. It made her a mess for the rest of her life, she said. She learned that the entire planet was run by twelve or so men. In the U.S. it didn't matter who held what office, really, she said. It was certain personalities and groups. I don't remember the details but do remember how believable she was.

Whoever wins this election, so be it. I will cast my vote because even though right now I feel totally disenfranchised from Federal government I know deep in my heart that every vote counts.

Am just back from a brisk hike into the woods behind our land. Is it mountain, is it hill? I am not sure. It is steep and I have not yet reached the top. When I first began exploring the land it was thick with trees, deeply rutted with what had clearly once been a single wagon road. There were also a few newer ATV trails. John and I liked the old footpath best. Now, since the loggers have been through it, there are twenty foot wide gouges from the gigantic, ungentle skidder. The vistas are huge--I saw Whiteface and other mountains I had not seen from that vantage point before. On the earth are crumbled, shredded tree bits. The earth itself is pale brown in places, gray in others--crumbly, frozen, glossed with thick ice from dammed rivulets. I strive not to be judgmental and to take this in with an open mind. This change in landscape is the result of local economy and generations-old skills. As a neighbor, Paul J., said, the cleared forest will become home to many birds as the shrubs and bracken can grow with more light and rain. The deciduous trees will dominate the scene and in fall will be even more spectacular.

It was a hard walk up because so steep and rutted. I took my time, pausing often to look around at animal tracks, wood shapes, snow light, ice rills. I composed poetry in my head, thinking that loggers and forest animals care not for views. But maybe those loggers pause, too, and gaze out at the awesome mountains with appreciation and humility.

The frozen streams were most beautiful. They looked in places so smooth that I could have sat and slid down the mountainside on my butt, but one quick slip on the trail and I remember that ice is HARD.

Came home, let Papi in--he had waited in the garage rather than come with me on a minus two degree walk--and then went across the road to stand on the Au Sable River. Heard pops and bubbles of water under ice. Am in love with my surroundings.

Today I went to the memorial service for Anne Trachtenberg Hughes, a neighbor and would-have-been friend and colleague. I only met her two weekends ago, which because of my recent business trip to DC feels like last weekend. She was a fund-raiser and board member, was incoming chair of the local SPCA, the board of which I am joining, partly because I met her and she gave me confidence in her leadership.

I'd been impressed by her happy home, filled with books and art and dogs. Her husband, Tom Hughes, is publisher of Adirondack Life magazine. Today at the service his grief and exhaustion were painful to observe but also somehow freeing--I had been mourning her as if I knew her, and seeing him relieved me of the burden of grief. Her lover and the church packed full of people grieve her. I would grieve John, or he me, if it had been either of us.

She slid off the road on black ice and died of massive head injuries. Because they had plans to marry in May on their twentieth anniversary, they were married in the hospital while she lay in the coma. Now he can say, "my wife died."

At the wake / reception I met a handful of strong women. That was a boon. The death of one strong woman opens my life to others.

The last time I was shocked and saddened so by the death of a person I did not know was when Ron Brown, Democratic Party bigwig who died in the 1990s, died in a plane wreck.

Happy New Year! The best quote of the holiday occurred today as Liza, Samantha, Cameron and I crossed the border from NY into Québec on our way to Montréal. Cameron, who was tremendously excited, burst out, "I can't believe I'm chewing GUM in CANADA!"