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.