We’re serious about the Night Blooming Cereus.
Night Blooming Cereus Tracker III
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Yearly Archives: 2015
Night Blooming Cereus Tracker II
It grows over night. I’m going to start calling it “he.”
He starts off nice and straight. Asparagus-like.
Next day, yuh oh…grown even more, and curling. I don’t think that’s supposed to happen.
Note he’s dangling by a thread. Whatever you do, the donor says, don’t knock it off. It’s not me I’m worried about, it’s the night cleaning guy. I need some sort of protective barrier.
Here is your promised ruler:
He’s getting flossier.Graceful. Like an undersea plant. Go, Night Blooming Cereus! You can flower in a world gone mad.
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Night Blooming Cereus Tracker
Never seen/heard of one? You’re in for a treat.
The NBC blooms once a year for one night only, with a blossom as big as your head. Its scent precedes it.
People have parties. They can plan them because it takes 2 weeks for the thing to flower once the bud appears.
You have to have the young plant 3-4 years before it will bloom. This little baby is right on time. It’s in my office and I was going to move it home so I could enjoy it allll niiiight, but its donor said, “No! It likes where it is.” Guess I’m pulling an all-nighter at work on that evening.
She also told me other details, but I’ll let you watch for yourself, on this here tracker. This is smaller than it appears. I’ll get a ruler for ya.
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White Flaggin’ It on the High Seas of Life
I knew when my credit card bill was $666 that June would be a weird one. When flooding left debris resembling an exploded Swiss Family Robinson’s house all over the state and friends e-mailed about escaped prisoners on the lam, some Vermonters wanted to hunker down with Game of Thrones indoors. But… summer. It’s short in VT. Out you go.
I went to Burlington’s Discover Jazz festival. Personal favorite: Aaron Goldberg trio. Brilliant musical wizardry (Harvard smarty pianist! New Zealander bassist! Floridian drummer! Hot Brazilian influence!). Try his The Now CD, first tasting Trocando em Miudos (initially seems like he’s tuning) and Lambada de Serpente on YouTube. Smokin’.
When cops and sirens abound (the escapees), distraction proves key. In world gone mad, it’s time in to look after numero uno. Pop into a pond or brook and feel the love. Stagger vigilance (ticks, poison ivy, rabid coons, escapees) with laffs (a comedy at one of America’s 80 remaining the drive-in theaters?).
I had a boss once with the lethal combination of wildly vacillating mood swings and the most beautiful face money could buy. Only young employees could endure her diabolical stunts; our team of four’s outlet was, you guessed it, laffs. Email was brand new then and as I struggled with her computerized calendar I’d think, “Wow, everyone’s working really hard; it’s so quiet in here.” Stifled snickers would betray that the girls were all in fact emailing each other, not working at all. It was the right move. When in Hell, manufacture Heaven.
Some events are so terrible you cannot distract yourself. Then you can do one thing: ask for help. From friends, fam, and whomever you call God. You’ll get help. As a local spiritual expert maintains, “Prayer helps even when you don’t believe in it.” That means prayer for yourself or prayers from others (think: It’s a Wonderful Life). In one particularly bad period after 9-11, I was losing it in California. I prayed (read: pridelessly begged the universe). One friend wrote, “Do you want me and [her 4 year-old] to fly out and drive you back in a truck?” Another phoned, Do you want me and [our childhood friend, each with two kids] to just come out there and get you?” I was so galvinized with hope by these kind offers from busy helper-mothers 2,000 miles away that I was able to pull it together and move to Vermont without their (further) help. It was the right move.
Little fact for you: SOS does not actually stand for anything (those krazy Germans!). It is, however, easily remembered even when you are wigging out, and it’s the only 9-element signal in Morse code, thus instantly recognizable because no other symbol uses more than 8 elements. Number nine? Three blasts signifying the international distress call? 999 is the number for the Coast Guard? That devilish 666 reversed! There is God in asking for help. Fuzzy numerology.
New England is a tough place (weather, money, weird Puritan legacies) and we must navigate carefully. You are the captain of your ship. Hoist up you mainsail and your jib (the helper sail!), patch any holes, keep your rudder free of barnacles and giant squid, choose well when and where to drop anchor (Vermont?) and, for God’s sake, when surrounded by the enemy or your ship is going down, send out your distress signal and hoist the little white flag that says, “I. Give. Up.” Some helper-mariner will see it, cruise in, and get you the heck out of there. Let him. It’ll be the right move. Good day.
Provocative Autofill of the Month:
When “Things You’re Not Supposed To…” is entered, Google autofills with:
-Eat with braces
-Do
-Refrigerate
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How to Tell Your Guests to Conserve Water
With wells, you never know what’ll happen. I’ve known more than one family that has had to carry buckets of water inside from a brook for various purposes, including toilet use. No fun at all, esp. in winter.
This summer, groundwater levels are not a problem. But when they are, my friend’s father’s advisory, printed and mounted at every sink, conveys the message with a distinctive and poetic economy of words.
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I Know I Shouldn’t Post This
But really, it was Mother Nature’s (God’s?) own work, you see, and I feel it gives us all something to aspire to in this, the gardening season. I mean it’s positively glowing.
Contributed by: Friend X whose co-worker brought it into the office last year.
Tend well thy gardens, fair maidens. All this could be yours, and more!
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Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
My contemporaries and I found Mr. Rogers hokey. Whether it was the sweater or our age or a distaste for puppetry, we didn’t watch. In college, we bandied about the word “special” with great sarcasm, the invoking of “specialness” ensuring snickers. Yet when the anniversary of Mr. Rogers’ testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications
occurred on May 1 and its video made the rounds, his words regarding just that – specialness – had a profound effect upon me that has lasted all month.
Here was a guy who was just, essentially, good. Not only inherently good, he did good. You can be good without doing any particular good, but he was and did — without flash or cloying sentimentality or maudlin pity for those less fortunate. He really felt, I think, that all men are created equal. He talked and walked it without raising his voice.
He recounted, in the 1969 hearing, how when the money ran out, viewers of (then young) PBS from all over said, “We’ve got to have more of this neighborhood expression of care.” He addressed the no-nonsense Senator John Pastore from Rhode Island (formerly the Governor of Rhode Island and the first Italian American elected governor or Senator), urging that non-violent children’s programming was critically important. That “it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger … much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire.”
Fred Rogers humbly explained to the gruff toughie senator (whose mother had supported 5 children as a seamstress when his father died and who was unfamiliar with Mr. Rogers Neighborhood): “This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, ‘You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you, just the way you are.’” As I watched this gentle man telling a senator over 40 years ago something so simple, arguing for funding to continue spreading his message, I realized what I’d been missing all along in my youthful superiority complex.
In a world consumed by the accumulation of wealth and fine objects, there is a lot to be said just for just being a decent guy. I don’t know if they still give it out, but years ago my friend’s young son in Randolph received an award at school for being a good person. I bawled at the news, overcome that this quality was considered worth honoring, and proud of the boy. I don’t think Mr. Rogers likely made a lot of money. If he did, he didn’t spend it on his clothes; he probably gave a lot of it away. He probably didn’t live in a fancy house or drive a fancy car; most Presbyterian ministers don’t.
Who is more influential, ultimately: a gorgeous actor or accomplished businessperson or a hot heiress or a leathers-rocking NASCAR stud…or an unassuming man who let millions of children know – back when people didn’t say such things to children very often – that it’s okay to feel lonely or angry or scared; it’s what you do with it that matters? And more importantly, that they mattered. Who’s contributing more to planet earth? I guess it depends on who’s judging. My money’s on Rogers.
For me, it’s become, increasingly, quite enough for people to be and do good. We don’t need a sports car or a big title or awards of any kind. I’m happy competing with my friend to see who can immerse self in the river the latest in October. I’m not disparaging those who achieve great things. I’ve known persons who’ve won an Oscar and the French Open and I’ve held Hannah Kearney’s gold medal in my hand; I’m awed by all three. But I’m equally in awe of helpers. Inner city teachers. Nurses. People with disabled children who fight for them and do their best to give them lives with meaning. And people who are good at anything at all. Making a grilled cheese sandwich. Cultivating a flower garden. Fishing. And nutters who amass Certificates … for, like, Evelyn Wood’s Speed Reading. Rock on.
Neighbor, please take today to think about your value. The way you make strangers snort at the grocery store. The trash you
collected on Green Up Day. The pet you chose from a shelter. The estranged friend you wrote even when it was awkward because so much time had gone by, but you knew he was in a hard situation. I’m not sure what I’ve done with my life. I do endeavor, in general, to make people feel good. And to remind them, while their difficulty, or their friend’s, may have little or no upside, how Mr. Rogers once said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
I think you’re special. There’s no person in the whole world like you and I like you, just the way you are. Good day.
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And Let’s Not Forget the Amateur Craftspersons
…whose work brings untold joy to All, including this piece lovingly crafted by an amateur New Hampshire Flügenkrafter in good standing.
What, pray tell, is flügen? Go here.
Learn it. Love it. Live it.
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God Love the Gentle Craftspersons
Crafting deep into the night, with needle nose and epoxy and colored threads…all so we can give someone a nice gift. I sleep easy at night picturing them at work, like the Brownies that he
lped the cobbler.
Cut Out Copy I happened upon at a festival. Along with magical collage art, she makes wicked cool jewelry like rings from antique typewriter keys. Dear to a writer’s heart! Also, pendants in bottle caps: sooper aws. Barbee’s got a great vibe and that’s where I want my $ going; it’s flügen.
Then you’ve got April’s Maple. April, in the Northeast Kingdom, is also the bomb. The Maple bomb. Look at these little crunchins 
you can put on your cereal or whatever. I spoon them directly into my mouth. Wash ’em down with maple cotton candy.
The 3 Sisters made my favorite necklace of all time forever. 
They don’t make these any more (Cut Out Copy makes similar) but they do retro license plate and hotel key art.
The last but not least, a beloved friend, stitches a portrait of your home out of materials you supply. Brilliant!
Keep awn craftin’, crafters. As the drummer mouths during the 60s flashback in This Is Spinal Tap, “We. Love. You.”
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Waxing Cosmic: Living the Flügen Lifestyle
One year my SIL (or was it that venerable source of info, the Women’s Magazine?) suggested that, instead of making New Year’s resolutions, her family list their accomplishments from the prior year. Normally, humans fret about what we didn’t do instead of acknowledging what we did do. It’s not too late to tally what you did in 2014.
This year, my SIL suggested picking a word for what they’d all focus on in 2015. I won’t tell you theirs, but my word was: FLÜGEN. Flügen is a delectable concept that can and must be spread in dire Modern Tymes.
But first, a digression. Like many, I’m fascinated by energy—its sources, conservation, and best use. I hate wasted energy, and I prize efficiency. One lean winter, horribly, this meant freezing my guests right out of my house. But mostly it means that I think of life (and death) in terms of energy. Everything from pebbles to peonies to polar vortices has its own particular energy, people included. Language has energy. Music. Wind. Rivers. Starlight. Coffee beans. This whole place is wildly energetic.
At events where everyone is dancing — the New World Festival, the Dead, a wedding – I often wonder if all that celebratory energy being generated is going somewhere that it’s used for some purpose, on this plane or another. I imagine a relay system, where the energy is transmitted far away to where it’s needed, to an orphanage or a war hospital or a marital dispute. I like to think it’s not just floating up uselessly into the ethers. That would be a waste.
One form of energy quite within our power is our thoughts. They came from other energy (from divine inspiration, random neural firings, Wheaties, who knows) and have untold power. Most things you see started with a thought. People survive horrific circumstances by choosing useful thoughts and banishing others. I sometimes wonder if when I felt so broke that I wouldn’t raise the thermostat: if only I’d spent that energy, that money, and warmed the house up, I’d have felt more hopeful and lighter thoughts might have brought better things (people, situations?) my way. I feel for workers in hard tymes now, with school closings and business failures. Maybe if they can mobilize hopeful thoughts, send out that kind of energy, new options will appear. Maybe the rest of us can send a buoyant energy their way. Maybe via joyful dancing or icy swimming —and writing the occasional check—we can hurry those options along.
Anyway, at Christmas one niece kept saying flügen for unknown reasons, so we made variations on it (flugenschluffer, meisterflugen). Weeks pass. I’m Googling flügen (umlaut?), so I can send my nieces my own (unsolicited) Word of the Year. The Urban Dictionary (somewhat sloppily) says: “FLÜGEN was created in 2004. FLÜGEN is what you make of it, it’s a relaxed lifestyle, basically just going with life and enjoying it. FLÜGEN …can be anything and everything you want it to be. Some say it’s not a word, but a lifestyle … the beauty of FLÜGEN is that you can decide for yourself.” Interesting. Make what you want of it. Good deal.
For reasons I won’t go into, because they are unknown, a friend and I call each other variations on viscomte or vicscount, and comtessa or contessa, making an absolute mess of English, French and Italian to no good end. Usually these are alliterative titles, like Viscomte de Verisimilitude or Viscount of Villainy; Contessa di Chronic Fatigue or Comtesse de Corpuscle. But one day he called me Comtessa Von Flügen and, well, I haven’t felt the same since. Words carry energy; I now associate myself with the flügen “lifestyle.” I feel flügeny. Flugenesque things have been happening. And get this: people not married by my (advanced) age have had, as a consort put it, “a fairly comprehensive dating experience.” Meaning, in part, we’ve seen wicked bad road. But I’m feeling oddly lucky. Flügen springs eternal, apparently. I’m putting romance in the flügenhopper.
So try thinking differently. Try not catastrophizing in your mind. What if things magically fell into place? If you got a break? Spring is the perfect time – as the vortex weakens, the sap runs, Snowdrops emerge … the wheels of flügen are greased. I intend to summon all manner of ease in my new flügen lifestyle, and wish for you the same. Meanwhile, please know I’m grateful for your deep thots, your crazy words, and this vehicle to spread them intergalactically. Thank you for reading, and relaying as you do to where needed. It’s not too late to list your accomplishments, select your Word of the Year, make yourself royal for unknown reasons, and/or convert to the flügen way. Report in as able. Good day.
Provocative Google Autofill of the Month:
When WHAT IS YOUR…is entered, Google autofills with:
-Name
-Spirit animal
-Name in French
-Greatest weakness
uppervalleygirl 
