And when it does, it’s usually not that good.
[Note storm blowing in for emphasis, just in case you were deluding yourself.]
Sometimes the DOT Can Read Your Mind
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Yearly Archives: 2014
Making Hay (lit. and fig.) While the Sun Shines
With last week’s cosmic Soopermoon and unexpected low humidity, Vermonters were feeling their oats—a horsey expression referring to “hot” feeds such as oats that provide extra equine energy. Carbo-loading for ponies.
We’ve been flat-out frolicking. As we bike, swim, and tool about our gorgeous state via horse, cycle, and golf cart, we inhale gnats and drink in the astounding natural beauty of the Land. No matter our troubles, her scenic landscape’s backdrop to our drama grows, flows, and enchants mightily. The Creatures of the Land also sparkle. Musicians strum, hummingbirds hum, and stories fill out ears with delight. Campfires! Charades! Laffs!
forktender.wordpress.com
Deliriously happy, we pack on summer blubber by way of chips and macaroni salads (hot feeds), with dripping cones, toasted marshmallows and extra mayo all around. Chomping chewing gum with the ferocity of a jungle cat, I wear a bikini as a disturbing incentive to avoid the snack bar lakeside. Unsightly, but y’all don’t look that slender, either. As a friend’s father happily observed, “There are no Beautiful People at Silver Lake.” It’s Vermont. We just don’t care.
With little rain, the long and sunny days demand movement. Soopermovement. Early we rise, to tend gardens and hit balls, knowing that pacing oneself now is not an option. For soon the air will grow cold, leaves will float down the brooks, and the Tunbridge World’s Fair will be upon us. Is this year’s theme The Year of the Insect?? Giant horseflies take meaty chunks from us daily. I hope they are having a good time.
The tourists are. As they cram our roads with Corvette Clubs, motorcycle brigades, and kayak-lidded vehicles, they stuff our coffers with (hopefully) enough wampum to get us through what friend Sassy calls “the dark months.” While we lament oftentimes the physical and financial hardships of Vermont, visitors envy our visual bounty from the windows of inns and restaurants. Let us see, as they do, that the grass is in fact greener here. There’s a heck of a lot more of it.
With all our rivers, woods, and contradancing, we get physical without pricey gym memberships. Fishing and tennis are almost no-cost, and you can’t live here without knowing someone with a canoe or bike to borrow. We get our ya-ya’s out for next to 
nothing. People everywhere need to get their ya-ya’s out because life in Modern Tymes is vexing. Tech nuisances drive us batty, our free time devoured by the modern bane that is overcommunication. Which disPinterested, Twitterless, Linked Out Facebidiots like me don’t do much of, yet it’s still exhausting. Many here lack—or shun—the [devil’s!] tools needed to overcommunicate, a source of ruin. Good for them. It seems to me that the more we communicate, the more we worry. More people to worry about, I guess. More worrisome details shared. Just. More. Worrying.
I told my friend Kay I was glad in some ways I have no kids, so in our “sandwich generation” years I am open-faced, with only parents to be concerned about. Her reply:
“One thing better about parenting elders than parenting kids is that people are not competitive about their aging parents. Imagine if they were. ‘My mother got into Green Mountain Golden Years Assisted Living. It was her reach facility, but she got in! Her safeties were Maple Heritage and Mellow Manor Northeast Kingdom.’ ‘Well, my mother was sent to prison and it’s not costing me a dime. Free dental!” We could brag about who has lasted the longest without a walker. That would be like lettering in track. Blood test results as SAT scores…’My dad’s combined LDL and HDL were under 250!’ ‘Wow, you must be so proud. I’m going to make my dad take it again. Surely he can improve over last time.’ I feel a Roz Chast cartoon coming on… ”
A toast to Green Mountain splendour, hay-makers, canoe-loaners, tech-shunners, shenaniganers, parenters, summer fatties, and sooperfriends who supply laffs. Thank you all. Good day.
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If You Save Packaging Materials
Handwriting changes little over time.
…you never know what you’ll come across. Padded envelopes with the return addresses of total strangers (past lovers whose names have been forgotten? eBay sellers?), tiny unopened gifts, or — the best — cryptic notes written on wrapping paper that you just can’t decode, like this one.
Horse people are weird, but… Peter Manning?
I know it’s from Gina by the handwriting. Did it go with Peter Manning, at right? I don’t think so. What else could she have sent me that seemed absurd? Any number of things, really. Which is why I so anticipate her boxes.
Mailing random gifts is a lost art. Let’s mail a bunch right now, keep the USPS in biz. Do it.
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Suddenly: Summer!
howstuffworks.com
Winter and spring were certainly…something. Something weird. Now the corn is as high as a squirrel’s eye—if, by the time this goes to press, he’s standing on his hindquarters, which says something about how fast corn grows—and suddenly: summer! Which reminds me of a Betty Crocker product named Suddenly Salad®, which says something about marketing, the onset of delirium during lengthy marketing meetings, or the neurological effects of pollutants in cities where marketing smoothies dream this stuff up.
Googling “Where was Suddenly Salad invented,” which autofills so I’m not the first to ask, you find a list of consumer grievances about this product. The only person who seems to like it goes by the handle CrzyCatLady. Among my favorites: “This salad is way too salty! Suddenly DEHYDRATED…Thanks for nothing, Betty!” Poor Betty. Was she a real woman? Let’s look!
Of course not, sigh. The facts: A flour milling company that became General Mills invented the sadly fictitious Betty in 1921, when a contest generated so much mail—and baking questions—that the all-male advertising department had to consult the women of Gold Medal Flour. Enter the faked Betty, who “signed” letters and ended up on the radio.
Courtesy of NH Nutter
Suddenly Salads’ comments section suggests a product named Armour Treet ® (what, it’s not technically a real treat so they can’t legally spell it right?) that you can mix in with Suddenly Salad® if you have completely lost your mind. It’s like SPAM®, apparently, because when you Google Armour Treet, it autofills with “…versus SPAM” (salt pork and…mystery? NO! Shoulder of pork and ham, according to Mental Floss in a tight online synopsis. God love the Internet.)
Anyway: summer. Bicycling to a swimming hole, I ride into a blizzard of 
(poplar?) fluff. The air is filled with it. I think it’s snow. Which says something about how short our summers are or how long our winters. Get out there and enjoy it people. Five picnics from now it’ll be over.
This time of year there is fluff in the columns, fluff between our ears. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the livin’ is easy, but it’s definitely less…motivated. To wit, the annual June Hazmat Follies , in which we miss the hazardous material drop-off by one minute (“Sorry, we’re closed.”) and return the bag of toxic waste to the barn for another six months. Every year.
But hey, it’s summer. Songbirds. Six-packs (both kinds). Suddenly Salad®. Certainly Something®. Fishin’. Fireflies. Farmers’ Markets. Tomato sandwiches. River plunges, frolicsome naked moonlit swims. Tenny, golf, DEET, and all the mayo you can slather. A friend’s reaction to my recent column maligning DEET: “I have several times decided that temporary relief from biting insects is worth a lifetime of brain damage.” And this from a father of two. Summer!
Other hazards: we expose ourselves more to wild animals. Something we don’t think about until it’s too late—the crazed rabid skunk is charging 
your neighbor who is beating it with a shovel to no effect all, she just keep charging. Then there’s the red fox we’ve seen trotting about; that thing covers a lot of ground. He will gladly relieve you of your small dog or cat. And don’t forget the fisher cats. Those crazy varmints will run onto your porch, grab your pet, and run off. Vigilance!
More happily, summertime convo—like this gem overheard lakeside:
“Malcolm, don’t be rolling around in the sand. We’re leaving!”
“It’s an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency? Put it into words.”
“I can’t explain it.”
“It’s not an emergency. We’re leaving.”
Which says a lot about the lure of sand, perceived crises, and family dynamics once school’s out. Good day, good naked swims, and good summer.
Summer Bumper Sticker
Retired Teacher—Every Child Left Behind
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The Sane Need Not Apply
My neighbor Rebecca, a no-nonsense Iron Woman tuffie, once emerged from her apartment with cuts and bruises like she’d lost a round with a threshing machine. No, she said, it was the Death Race. She’d been asleep for two days.
One of Vermont’s crazier offerings, the upcoming Death Race is a twisted, punishing exercise in x-treme sport nutterness. For one thing, particpants are not told until the last minute when it will actually begin. Articles detailing it appear here and here. Its competitors mystify regular folk; they also entertain. Thank you, nutters.
I say: know when to give up. Also: barbed wire is not your friend. Good luck!
Total nutter.
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The Devil is in the DEETails
Litterbug, per greenbaywi.gov
A normally wry friend recently told me how his ex had pointed out his faults on her way out the door. This had made him especially dejected. I asked, “What faults?” and he explained. “You know, the disorganization, the forgetfulness, the keen desire to have my picture taken with political celebrities. . . .” I replied, “Those aren’t faults. Those are endearing traits, charming to those who love you.”
It’s been said that what attracts you to someone is what later drives you nuts. Likewise, qualities you have that delighted someone can devolve into vile faults demanding extirpation. But it’s a puzzle when someone who is leaving you feels obligated to express exactly why you’re not good enough. Why do that? Isn’t it bad enough they’re abandoning you? I once received a 13-page Dear Jane letter, detailing all I had done wrong. I see, I thought. Yes, it’s clear now. Thanks so much.
What became clear? My shortcomings? No. That the devil is alive and well. He enters people and makes them romance you, leave you, and tell you how you failed. The devil was in the details: in this case elaborately illustrated criticisms. The devil also invented call waiting, data mining, and other vexing details of modern life designed to make us willing to swap with him our souls, for just a few moments of blessed peace.
He also recruits Litterbugs. When I’m behind someone that throws a cigarette or Big Gulp out a car window, I become possessed. I honk, flash my lights, and make impolite gestures. I know this is wrong, and both Litterbug and I could rightfully say (nod to Flip Wilson), “The devil made me do it.”
Discussing this in church, a wry southern friend says with vehemence, “I want to know. What does a litterbug look like?” I know precisely what they look like but the words I’d use to describe one cannot be said in church. We work ourselves into a lather over it. Then, pews away, I hear a Vermonter of many years (90+?) say to her companion, “It always takes me by surprise, spring. It’s such a lovely transformation, especially after a hard winter.” That this woman could still be awed by how our area is like a different planet in spring, after nearly 100 of them, drives the devil right out of me.
Gone fishin’.
I give a wry friend a candy bar named Chocolate Interlude which she promptly renames Chocolate Intervention. Then I think how in these blasted modern tymes how they add an “e” to things (e-billing, e-commerce) and how we can add our own e’s for the heck of it, to our e-underwear and our e-moxy and our e-breath. And how a wry Vermont friend said in Connecticut, “They call these pot holes?” And how nude season is nigh, and the mighty Goliath of mud has been subjugated by gravity and slender blades of grass, and nothing but nothing smells like flowering trees.
sugarandspicedkitchen.com
Then I attend, despite this column’s deadline, the local Legislative Breakfast. Our state senators and representatives articulatewith intelligence and fairness issues that are ridiculously complex, e.g., the GMO labeling bill just passed—and how VT will be sued by corporations. That the Governor’s so-called “Food Fight Fund” is being established, smartly, with the help of non-Vermonters, is cheering. Someone half my age pays me a compliment. I spot a granny on a riding mower. Finally—get this—technology proves heartening. I choose truelove as a password and it is denied for being “too common.” That its selection as a password is too common says something huge about humankind.
Yes, there is plenty of hard evidence of the devil’s existence, including but not limited to black flies, BP, and the Disgraceful Home Printer Ink Scandal of Modern Tymes, wherein (pricey!) ink tanks mysteriously dry up and your (infernal!) printer won’t even scan without ink. Sometimes we choose between two devils, say, black flies and DEET. A Mainer I know says you can’t go fishing without it. I use it when the biters are so vicious I don’t care if it shuts down my brain, bladder, and kidneys, though I know DEET to be compressed devil in a can.
Some days, the devil’s around every corner, seems like. Yet somehow, with an overheard “lovely transformation” and a too-common password and grannies riding mowers and a posse of wry friends, we remain eHopeful. We soldier on. If you feel disheartened, I’ll give you part of my heart, that as yet unaffected as yet by DEET and other devilment. Good luck. Good day.
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You Never Know What You’ll Find
…on Green Up Day, when Vermonters comb the Land for garbage and citizens with trucks (not uncommon in Vermont) haul it off to the dump. Literally tons of garbage statewide.
I found the usual assortment of party implements plus mystery stuff. Like Spider Man underwear (size: extra extra small; they make underwear this little?) and a shoe so badly destroyed you had to wonder what happened to it (threshing machine? Two bears fought over it?) Also a sign th
at said WATCH IT GROW (watch what grow, the cubic volume of garbage? A Bud Light tree?) The kindly lady I worked with had somehow hauled a mattress into her truck, after days of rain. New Englanders are tough, man.
As I passed other Green Uppers later in my car, I gave them the same double-honk and thumbs-up out the window we’d gotten earlier. Good work, keepers of the Land!
See the refuse of Green Up Days 2013 and 2012.
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Help me! Help me!
…or “May Day!”, possibly from the French “M’aidez!” (“Help me!”). It’s not likely that captains of flaming planes and sinking ships are thinking about the first of May. But then, who knows?
While pagan America is getting its jollies skipping around a beribboned pole today, some of us are crying May Day over the decline of the English language.
That George Orwell thought English was going down the flusher some 80 years ago is a comfort. This article covers that nicely in its analysis of weird, annoying language in the workplace. The Comments reveal how workers across the Land have secretly played Corporate Jargon Bingo during meetings. Hats off, keepers of the language! And way more fun than a silly Maypole.
But we’ve only just broached this topic. Stay tuned.
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Total Eclipse of the Mud
The universe
deals people some pretty bad hands. Whether it’s a physical affliction making life a living hell, or a heart so broken you can’t inhale, it almost doesn’t matter whether it’s happening to you or someone you love. When you love someone, their pain becomes yours. As anyone who’s watched their beloved person die will tell you, at some point they wished they could trade places with their suffering person. Even though watching it unfold—and enduring its aftermath in a daze—likely hurt worse.
Now that’s a dire way to start a column, especially one you’ve come to rely upon instead for laffs, seemingly unrelated topics woven together, questionable spellings, and general disregard for propriety. You shall have that, dear Reader. But if Holy Week and Passover aren’t about death and mayhem and baffled onlookers, I don’t know what is, so try to run with this. I write on seasonal subjects and, well, here we are.
When it comes to religion, I pretty much believe all of it. M
eaning I think that people at the time believed these things were happening, and whether they did or did not occur is not important to me. What matters to me is that humans today get together to honor those that were beacons of kindness a really long time ago, to give thanks to something bigger than we, to whisper wishes for those in need, and that there’s a place you can go where you can leave your purse unattended and probably no one will go through it. Our religious affiliation is typically decided by our parents; that a single religion is The Right One is to me as perverse as the notion that Christians were born sinners whose sometimes unbaptized children languish in Hell or Limbo eternally. I don’t believe there is a Hell outside of Earth proper. We have plenty of Hell right here at home.
Whether Jesus was a son of God who performed miracles and rose from the dead is, in my opinion, anyone’s guess. But I 
believe he was a real and good man and that, as with other religious figures, some things he said and did were accurately recorded. There could well be a God, as anyone who’s seen a live moose up close, smelled a lemon blossom, or shot a hole-in-one will agree. I had to “block” an unruly scarf this week, and while the travel iron my boyfriend bought me in 1987 is adorable, it doesn’t have steam. I borrowed my neighbor’s. While blocking, I thought, “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind owning a steam iron.” An hour later at the dump I found on the FREE table a steam iron for the taking. Coincidence? Proof of God?
Or Gods! The pagans will surely have rocked Tuesday’s full moon by this column’s printing, what with the Blood Moon total eclipse. Having missed March’s Worm Moon (?) entirely, I’m paying closer attention. CNN Tech claims the moon will be red-orange like a “desert sunset”; one NASAn preferred “reddish, ugly-looking.” I’ll settle for dishwater gray, as we have been let down repeatedly by scientists promising a spectacular celestial event that turns out either a dud or obscured by clouds. Although, as with religious followers (which they kind of are), I do believe scientists think it to be true when they say it.
America, you’ve got another chance. On October 8, then April 4 and September 28 of 2015, there are three more Blood Moons visible from the entire US. Four in a row, according to effusive CNN, is “like drawing a rare lunar poker hand.” Which I didn’t read until an hour after starting this column’s first sentence. Coincidence? You decide.
One thing is certain: mud is upon us (lit. and fig.). As its mellifluous downhill oozings and the soft, sweet hum of cluster flies lull us to sleep at night, may we dream of ways to slog through mud and life with grace. God shows [its] face from time to time, seems like. If in fact real, God apparently lets us do whatever we want. Which a lot of the time is no good at all. So it’s up to us manage our relationships, communities, and planet with brains and respect. If there is a God, I do hope we haven’t been too much of a disappointment because I, for one, am trying my damnedest. And I see you out there, too, people. I see your deli slicer-sharp minds, strong hands, and big hearts at work. It hasn’t gone unnoticed. Good day.
Up Next Month Evidence of the Devil: Black flies, BP, and the Disgraceful Home Printer Ink Scandal of Modern Tymes
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There’s Just Something About a Spool
From slender filaments to giant cables, spools get the job done right. The big daddy on the left appeared down the road a piece. It made my day.
My sister-in-law, an extremely talented fiber artist, has dozens of spools. I 
have a lowly 30. If you’ve never wound a bobbin on a sewing machine before, you’re missing out. If mankind wound more bobbins, there’d be less misery and lower crime rates.
This place, El Taller (“The Studio”), in Lawrence, MA is a cool coffee shop with books and…spools. They write in your coffee. What’s better than that?
Bienvenudo, baby.
Spools stools
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uppervalleygirl 
