Yearly Archives: 2026

Autumn, Mourning, and Community Chorus

1 Reply
Autumnal morning mist over Lake Champlain rises and becomes clouds

Dear Reader has probably gotten used to the fact that it is no longer summer. We fought its departure for a good while, having enjoyed such a glorious August here in Vermont. We did not want it to end. But: time marches on.

The low autumnal sun blinding us both outside the post office, an acquaintance mentions how weird it got once both her parents had died. October is weird for me. My parents died a few years apart, a few days apart, in October. I don’t mourn them together, I do it separately.

I mourn not having shown my mother enough gratitude over my lifetime. The woman was not thanked enough. I understand that this is not uncommon, but it’s also not okay. A mother said to me, “Oh, we don’t expect a lot of thanks!” But hell if most don’t deserve it … the diapers alone, which to this day I believe fall mostly into the hands (so to speak) of the mothers. I wish I could sit down with Mommy and thank her for every single thing. It would take hours.

I mourn my father’s loss of eyesight years before his death. He was so brave, walking blind to choir rehearsals at night. Once he told me, regarding my politics, that I was “just not that smart.” Well, Fathah, you were just not that smart walking around blind with no indication that you were blind, in a town with elderly motorists with not-great vision of their own! The man gardened and cleaned gutters on ladders, blind. The neighbors thought we were “letting” him do this. He was unstoppable. I’d find an old family photo to mail him and remember suddenly: Wait, he can’t see. Heartbreaking.

Admittedly, I’ve never been good at dates. I tested terribly in Social Studies when it came to dates of battles or peace accords or presidential terms. My own life is a mystery to me in terms of what years I lived where and did what. Parents have it easier, I say, because they can carbon date events based on their kids. (“Tobias was a toddler, so it must have been the early 2000s…”). I don’t even try to remember my life dates any more. I check my resume for that.

But this year at least, perhaps like Dear Reader, I have my parents’ dates of death (“the other DOD”) down cold. I’m going to honor each in some way, on their days. Maybe I’ll read to Fathah from my humble book, which he was so damn proud of though he couldn’t see it, despite a nuclear orange cover. And I’ll make a long list of Mommy’s many talents, presents, and services she provided for decades — undemanding of accolades and improperly compensated for same. I will thank her. It will take hours.

And then I will move on, knowing that if I’m alive in a year I’ll do it again. I endeavor, generally, to be cheery; I feel it’s our duty not to drag others down. I’ll do things that make me happy, and hopefully others. Sing and dance and laugh and goof off. Poke the stick at the tiger. Be fey and surprising and mischievous. Do pranks. Distract others from global unrest, from the miseries of their own lives. Let others do these things for me. Why not? Life is for the living. Those of us that are still here can and must exchange good energy.

To that end: if you’ve been thinking of joining a community chorus, it’s not too late, even if they’ve had 10 rehearsals. Community choruses are very forgiving; there’s always someone who will help you catch up. No auditions!

What I love about a community chorus is it’s like a train pulling out of the station. You’re not positive you really want to do it, so you’re jogging alongside of the train as it pulls out, just in case you decide you want to get on. It starts picking up speed. You have to trot faster as you ponder the pros and cons. You’ve invested a bit of energy and time now, and you’re leaning more towards Yes – just as it’s gaining real velocity and the pressure is mounting (from the other altos, or the person who collects the money). So you decide, ah hell, I might as well see where this thing is going, and you scramble aboard the moving train. You commit.

You meet experienced travelers, along with hacks like yourself. You realize there is no way you are going to pull off 14 songs, the way rehearsal is going. You dump this metaphor.

Rehearsal gets longer. You attend additional, desperate section rehearsals in an effort to pull it together. The director culls the songs you’re really destroying as a group. There’s still some doozies, in Latin or gibberish or a capella or with crazy-weird notes. At the eleventh hour you’re scrambling to learn your parts, which means rote memorization via some quality time with YouTube. You’re practicing in the car, the bathtub, the emergency room, the Port Authority bus terminal.

On the eve of the performance, chorus members are soiling their finery in abject terror at what might go wrong – it’s show time! Then somehow … your beloved, underdog community chorus … knocks it out of the park. You switch metaphors.

It’s a grand slam. The tenors, by God, they’ve learned their part and they’re belting it out, all six of them! The announcer bellows, FREE HOT DOGS FOR THE ENTIRE STADIUM. Your audience goes berserk over the hardest piece, the one the whole chorus never dreamed it could pull off, wondering why the heck the director wouldn’t cut it. The apple comes out. The fans go wild.*

Aren’t you glad you got on that train, Slugger? Good autumn, good mourning, good music making, and good day.

*Only knowers of Shea Stadium will get this reference.

Ann Aikens hosts a radio show, “Mostly Useless Advice,” on WFVR at royaltonradio.org. Her useful book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, is available online and in Vermont shops, the audiobook on Amazon. She has written her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Find more of her writing at uppervalleygirl.com; speaking events at annaikens.com.

Reasons to be Cheerful in Modern Tymes

2 Replies

Things are ever increasingly dire, it seems, but we must not lose heart. As they say, “Joy is resistance.” And in a cosmic way of thinking, the focus of our energy is important. If we are despairing, we are energetically fueling the fireball from hell currently circling the globe.

Some say things have always been screwed up on our planet. But I say: the planet was never melting before. For one thing. And US democracy? Come on. This is unprecedented.

Yes, dire: it’s been absolutely boiling at the French tennis open and elsewhere. Less dire: what’s with Americans wearing their jammies all over the place? While getting your mail on Saturday, okay. But mowing the lawn? Flying commercial? Come on, people, let’s pull it together. There’s no need to attend a sporting event in your onesie. Tighten it up.

But I curb my grumbling, dear Reader. It’s been proven that bad moods are contagious. One glum person can bring down several others who were actually in a fine mood. So if you have to unload, unload on someone who is just as down as you? I know exactly whom to call when I want to grouse, and whom to call when I want to laugh. Let us now strive now for the latter. 

Thoughts to uplift (and separate):

They now make better underwear for all sexes. Bras, too (the Bro/Mansiere).

It’s the time when mulching still looks fresh and pretty across the Land.

Farmers markets have begun!  Music, neighborly merriment, delicacies.

Renewed interest remains in ukes, accordions, and tubas. Next up: Sousaphones. (A girl can dream, can’t she?)

Tech still has merits. If you go to the ocean, you don’t have to call your friends with the beach hours and amusingly peculiar, if tedious, list of what is not allowed — you just text a photo of the sign with that info. And Shazam the infectious song heard in a shop. Boom.

They make better makeup now, just in the years when some of us need same, all “cruelty-free” – not that we want to know just what this means. Try the “liquid matte” lipsticks. Brilliant!

During Covid, little kids seemed generally wary (due to … masked humans? … an atmosphere of doom and paranoia?). If you smiled at them, they scowled. Now I encounter kiddies being downright friendly. Do you?

Those terrible colognes that turned teenagers into human air fresheners are on the decline.

At present, there is no pandemic here. We need not “follow protocols” around masks, distancing, OCD-caliber handwashing, or donating money and time here. Let our energies shift instead to Ebola in Africa (and Hantavirus worldwide; stay tuned), with the insane dissolution of USAID and bizarre governance of the CDC likely leading to predicted 9 million+ avoidable deaths by 2030. Geez, Americans were doing so much good, and we didn’t even know it, most of us. In what other ways are we still doing good that we don’t know about, I wonder? Let’s spread that news.

‘Tis spring! We must not devolve willingly. Put up a fight, people. Let us endeavor together to think pleasant thoughts, early and often. Contact someone who might get us out of the hole with outstretched arms and a bucket of laffs. Be that person for someone else.

Let’s pray for the scientists solving contagion threats, shall we? And for nations to change behaviors around global warming. And for humanity in general to evolve and be less grabby and mean, using religion as an excuse to torture and kill. And to allow all people equal freedoms.

Consider this: today’s Modern Tymes becomes tomorrow’s Olden Tymes – let us create something now for us all to become (eventually) nostalgic about, shall we? Good day.

Ann Aikens’ comical, uplifting book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, is available online and in Vermont shops, the audiobook on Amazon.  She has written her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Find more of her writing at uppervalleygirl.com; speaking events/radio show info at annaikens.com.

Found Art

Leave a reply

Sometimes you stumble on something pleasing. Here we find: fresh masonry.

It’s interesting to consider how many artful efforts sit unheralded in homes and yards across the Land … indeed, the Universe. Hopefully admired by at least a lucky few.

Can’t Find Your Nuts?

2 Replies

Green Up Day is the classic annual event in Vermont in which the People of the Land tidy the Land ~ especially roadside and riverside ~ of all manner of detritus. Something interesting always, always appears.

This year it was this hoard of acorns, laid bare by retreating snow, that a squirrel somehow lost or forgot. I wish some of our “leaders” would find or remember their nuts.

Look down! They’re right there, for God’s sake!

🎧 Replay of Local Writerly Radio Show 🎧

Leave a reply

Here is a replay of a local Writerly radio show I guested on ~ expires at either midnight tomorrow or Tuesday. You’d think I know. Or posted this sooner.

Starts at the 5-minute mark, after musical intro:

https://royaltonradio.dreamhosters.com/podcasts/Wordstream/stream.mp3

RADIO is so much FUN, man. A good interviewer keeps you from going off the rails entirely. Thank you, Rose Terami.

Spring, Spring, Spring, Spring, SPRING

Leave a reply

Holy Moly, that was one punishing winter. Shoveling, scraping, bitter cold, biting winds, falls on ice, moods swinging like a metronome, fuel costs rising like an intercontinental ballistic missile … crazy-making. Mother Nature – and other unnamed powers – dealt us a one-way ticket to Nutterville.

Normally I feel a nostalgic sorrow at the passing of both summer and winter, for some reason. It’s as if, “I’ve become accustomed to her face.” And it will be a long while before she rolls around again.

This time I feel nothing but anticipation. Here comes spring, baby. Bulbs emerging. Skunks resurfacing. Birds romping. We’re still in a wacked-out limbo as temps vacillate as the sap runs, and we gradually adjust to the next drastically different season. That’s why a friend said she lives in New England. For the “drastic changes of season.” 

Being bounced around inspires fear: is spring really coming, or is this some elaborate ruse by forces outside our control designed to drive us insane with sheer wanting? There certainly seem to be many forces outside our control right now, and I for one don’t like it a bit. I’m taking to the streets, by the Jesus (an old Vermonty expression, that).

Speaking of whom, my pagan inclinations aside, Lent became something oddly sacred when I moved back to Vermont 20 years ago and found a great church. (I realize Dear Reader may find the latter an oxymoronic pairing of words, but I proceed.) I learned that Lent is not supposed to be about self-flagellation or self-denial, but self-reflection and a putting away, perhaps, of thoughts or behaviors that no longer serve us or others. A self-freeing. I super enjoy quiet contemplation as the last snows fly during this odd period of waiting.Importantly, the Filet-O-Fish always goes on sale now. Because of St. Pat’s (O’Fish!) or Lent (fish!), who knows, but the thing is six bucks ordinarily, so have it. 

I make lists at summer’s end, the new year, and now. This March I invented a new list, good for the older set: make a list of the high points in your life. It puts things in perspective, and keeps your bean from lingering on topics dreary, which currently abound. Try it?

Please don’t think your High Points need to be formulaic. You know, “my (1st, 2nd or 3rd…) wedding; the birth of my children; my bat mitzvah.” I had none of those, so ran with:

Being zipped into a snowsuit as a child; Grandmas teaching me things; Troop mothers panicking on the beach as we girl scouts rocketed gleefully upwards in giant surf on Fire Island; Childhood friends playing flashlight tag; high school friends administering “treatments” to each other (this when you put high-quality headphones on your friend and play them an incredible song, with no advance spoiler, e.g., “Tom Sawyer”; “Won’t Get Fooled Again; “Comfortably Numb”); flying dreams; NYC at night with various boyfriends, the city our oyster; smoking horses through the woods in Woodstock; achieving the Pacific Ocean, having driven solo across the US; blow drying my hair in a convertible on the PCH; my friend onstage winning an Oscar, mouthing thanks to his deceased mother; skinny dipping while kayaking in Vermont; my first New World Festival (Randolph); laughing so hard with nieces, nephew, or friends that we couldn’t stop, to the annoyance of All; a high school reunion that went on and on until 3 am; a college reunion that went on and on until 3 am; plunging into a fjord; pounding beezers on the porch with Mommy in all weather; being bedside when Fathah left this earth; post-funeral dancing to Fathha’s favorite, “Eagle’s Greatest Hits,” with nieces; the Eclipse (you forgot about that, right?).

Suddenly your whole life story seems like one of richness, rather than of trials. Send me your list if your like. (It will be graded, but technically this is open book.) The patterns will remind you of, say, “Right. I like water. Need water.” Or: “Music. Play more music.” Crack the code.

Tips to launch your keister into SPRING, Hell-bent for leather:

Play Royalton Free Radio WFVR ~ 96.5. Too many good shows to suggest just one (stream or replay).

Maple, maple, maple.

Do what feels good besides a handle of bourbon, though the industry could certainly use your “support” with Canada shutting down consumption due to tariff insanity. Try a Brocklebank stout? Killer.

Read a book as the last snow falls to Gabriel Fauret’s “Requiem.”

Go to Dandelion Acres, movies at the Playhouse, dance in your skivvies under the moon.

Good launch and day.

Ann Aikens is an author, columnist, speaker, and blogger. Her darkly comical book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, was published in 2023, her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Find events and bookshops at annaikens.com; her blog at uppervalleygirl.com.

The Other Frankentree

Leave a reply

The original Frankentree is a fruit tree with grafted limbs that produces multiple varieties within a species of fruit — say, pears, apples, plums, or cherries. It is colorful, comme resultat. It can be gorgeous.

The not-gorgeous Frankentree is the cell-phone-tower-disguised-as-a-tree tree. Few people have access to this creepy monster.

I recently got up close to one. It gave me the willies. The “needles” on a “branch” that had fallen off had a revolting texture, like that of a fake Christmas tree made out of recycled toxins. Plus, I was probably getting irradiated by the cell tower itself. I fled.

A Fun Thing to Start in a New Year

Leave a reply

Last year I had some lucky breaks, despite seemingly increasing Earthly mayhem. So every day, more or less, I thought of one thing that had made me feel lucky — or just happy — that day. I wrote it down on a scrap of paper and put it in this vase.

Now I get to read them all, have my mind blown, burn them, and start anew. Won’t you join me?