Category Archives: cosmic

White Flaggin’ It on the High Seas of Life

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999I 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’.

rabid coon datehookupcomWhen 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.

titanicLittle 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

How to Tell Your Guests to Conserve Water

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water disciplineWith 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.

I Know I Shouldn’t Post This

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zukeBut 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!

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

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RogersMy 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.”

rogers bwFred 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 yourogers iii 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.

And Let’s Not Forget the Amateur Craftspersons

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flugencrafter…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.

Fill Your Bag

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funnyhalloweencostumesongoogleimagesFall reminds us that life’s short and getting shorter. Maybe that’s why we all get in drag in October and stuff ourselves silly in November and pile gifts on one another in December. We’re not stupid. We know how to have fun.

The garden is put to bed. The state park is closed. The sun sets earlier and earlier. Time for reading and crafts and deep thots. Like: what to wear on Halloween? I love when kids roll old-school and you can tell what they are (astronaut, umpire, cowgirl) without having to know a (modern) cartoon or kiddie movie, and I dig adult attire that mystifies the young people (Ben Hur, say, or The Hunchback of Notre Dame…cue the Million Dollar Movie theme…on WOR-9!,) plus dual costumes you can’t buy in a store (Napoleon and Josephine; John Snow and Ygritte – “Archery Kit Not Included”; more).

Some columnists didn’t get their September column in on time and important events went uncovered. Like the New World Festival (magnifique!), the Tunbridge World’s Fair (kudos, 4-H’ers, Ambassadors, and handicapped transpo!), and a spectacular foliage season. Hopefully Dear Reader was too busy having fun to notice this humble column’s absence; New Englanders read weekly papers with listings of aws local goings-on and load their calendars accordingly. As a friend’s sage older brother commented recently on life, “It’s all experiences and relationships.” His point being, I imagine, that resumes and possessions don’t matter so much. Unless it’s a big old Heath Bar sliding into my orange plastic jack-o’-lantern. That matters. Treat, please!

One treaty experiential idea a brilliant friend had: get together with other people that like to sing for a singing weekend. If you’re like us, you’ll talk and hoot more than you sing, but you’ll have the time of your life. I offered a name for ours: Croonfest. Because of our age, a soprano quickly countered with Cronefest. An alto suggested, in an unrelated conversation, a new reality show: Keeping Up With The Kevorkians. Which is what many wish the Kardashians would do. Anyway, your weekend will go like that, with some actual singing thrown in. I highly recommend.

Is the planet in utter turmoil? Pretty much. Are we on rubbery ground economically? Maybe. But when I had connections to the “monument” industry, I’d planned to buy my tombstone, inscribed in advance except for the final date.  It was to say, perhaps with an etching of a beacon, “I remain hopeful.”  Not only because that rich irony would give the occasional visitor (and naughty graveyard shennaniganer on All Saints’ Eve) a snicker, but because I do in fact remain hopeful. You know how, even if stuck in nasty traffic, when you think of someone you love, like a pet or child or your aunts, your whole chest cavity feels good, and then you smile and your face feels good? Humans have this universal response ‘round the globe. That’s something. And so I remain hopeful.

A friend who is Dialed In to otherworldly sources had this to say: we on earth are being summoned now to let go of the past and do things a new way, with joy. That means, to me, not doing things (experiences and relationships) you don’t want to do that make you feel mostly crappy, whether for dollars or out of some sense of obligation. Actions initiated with unpleasant thoughts behind them never turn out right; the energetic impetus is all wrong. Yuh-oh, am I waxing cosmic on Dear Reader?! Well. If not on the Eve of All Saints, with its possibly pagan progenitor, the Feast of the Lemures, when then?

pirate-to-goDust off your figurative orange plastic jack-o’-lantern, polish your conceptual horn of plenty, and fill ‘em up, with the best “treats” – experiences and relationships. Is effort involved? Nice work if you can get it, I say. Don’t waste a minute on any that bring you misery, like the awful Mary Jane candies one neighbor routinely forced on us in the 60s. Throw those ones out, man. Keep the good ones. Re-gift the good ones. Good cross-dressing, and good day.

Bumper Sticker Inadvertently Suggested by Choir Director

Get Your Alto On

One Woman’s Rebellion

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Sniff awn THISSome of us have had it with people pounding on each other all over planet Earth century after century. How can this be? What gets into their heads — and stays there?

By way of passive resistance, I placed this humble dahlia on my front porch facing the symbolically violent road work going on just yards away (loud, chaotic, foul-smelling, with big machines). Dahlia shines her pink face at the mess, “Mornin’, perpetrators. Sniff awn this.”

A little Kent State-y, maybe, but sometimes a posy is the best you can do.

 

Sometimes the DOT Can Read Your Mind

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Rough RoadAnd when it does, it’s usually not that good.

[Note storm blowing in for emphasis, just in case you were deluding yourself.]

Total Eclipse of the Mud

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The universeDyed by hand! 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. Meoe treeeaning 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 moosebelieve 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?

Pink Pink Pink Pink Pink Pink Pink Pink MoonOr 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.

MudOne 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

Just With My Looks, I Could Have Won

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Despite odds and favorites, endorsements and hype, in sporting events ya just never know. In the Olympic opening ceremonies, for example, the U.S. did not medal during the Parade of Nations. Sartorial dark horses Tonga, Kazakhstan, and Andorra (a “landlocked microstate in southwestern Europe”[1]) beat the literal pants off Ireland, Germany, Italy, and the US. That’s with Ralph Lauren et al. hurling unimaginable coin and muscle at it. Better luck next time, soopertailors!

All manner of factors can throw athletes off their game. Weird uniforms, weird weather, weird slogans (Hot. Cool. You.  Huh?), old injuries, new injuries, the incessant clanging of the cowbell slopeside…not to mention Olympic pressure. I for one couldn’t do a giant slalom in front of a single, napping four-year-old. Flop sweat would soak my snowsuit, which would not be a stylin’ hipster snowsuit, but an old beater poofy one (see “weird uniforms” above). Sounds like the making of a terrific nightmare. Don’t worry, the Olympic Committees have enough on their plates with the Junior Olympics, Paralympics, the Senior Games…there will be no Doughy Unfit Sloblympics. Reality TV has that covered, if inadvertently.

The Sochi games were, in a word, fabulous. The opening ceremony was as good as Athens and Vancouver and better than Beijing or London. Kudos, komrades! The $51B price tag, higher than all prior Winter Olympics combined, was naughty but, man, artfully spent. The venues were knockout, the Caucuses backdrop spectacular. If you were lucky enough to see the nighttime bird’s-eye view of the Olympic Village on a high-def TV:  Prekrasno!

Another word: incredible. The skaters’ costumes were better than ever, due in part to advances in adhesives, faceted sparklers, and stretch netting. Velikalepno! The jumps, lifts, and spins (twizzles!): umopotressauschee. The women’s biathlon, wherein women ski uphill with guns, their buff, eurochick bodies rocking gorgeously engineered outdoor wear: totally Bond! The commentators’ near-hysterical coverage during the men’s biathlon: hilariously stirring! The medals? Elegant! Mary Carillo’s cultural vignettes? Captivating! We even dug the ads, from Cadillac’s In America, We Work Hard (“N’est-ce pas?”) to the endlessly repeated Chevy Cruze one (the pained expressions of the car music-haters never grew old) to P&G’s teary series saluting athletes’ mothers. Yo, where’s the fathers’ tribute? Pony up next time, WD-40.

Exciting. Now I hates change (less cowbell? Nyet!), but I suspect that newly added sports grabbed today’s athletes and viewers more than winter’s curling (a popular drinking sport…150 years ago?) or summer’s gymnastics stick-and-ball thing (made sense in… ancient Greece?) New winter additions such as parallel slalom, ski halfpipe, snowboardcross, chick ski jump,and luge team relay engaged the nutters of many nations both on the slopes and off. Zdorovo!

Magical. It seemed nothing could ruin the Olympics for viewers: neither the barrage of pre-game negative press, nor too-warm snow conditions (ruinous to top skiers who didn’t medal), nor worrisome developments in Ukraine, nor an Olympic ring that didn’t open (“Keep going, Vladimir…four—eet’s enough—go!”), nor Johnny Weir’s distracting accoutrements, nor even dumb push notifications and moronic newspeople announcing who’d won before we got to watch it at night. Stoic Putin never devolved into the out-of-control rootin’ tootin’ Pootin I’d hoped for, but he did crack the occasional smile as fellow Russkies went bonkers around him.

Full-on crazy. The Russians did go nuts. So did everyone else. Everyone went wild. People were yelling and texting and jumping up and down around the globe, astonished by the feats of these magnificent young gods and goddesses. Whether it was a nailbiter of a hockey game, a mindbender of a halfpipe trick, a heart attacker of a downhill ski race, an eye-shutter of a skeleton run, or a jawdropper of a figure skating routine by—gasp—a tiny teenager, the fans went wild. What’s more fun than that? All the earthly peoples clapping and crying and grinning and screaming Wow! in 6,000 different languages, including Russian (Ogo! Or if you prefer: Va-ooh!). No really: what’s better than that?

Unforgettable. Who could forget the incredible wins and losses, the moments of jubilance and of crushing defeat after years and years of training? Competitors holding hands, or throwing themselves on the ice, off the podium, into the arms of loved ones…too many to list. I just hope you saw them, along with the breathtaking closing ceremonies. With some systems, you can view the Sochi games over and over. I’ll see you tube-side…knitting and weeping, admiring the determined faces and ripped bodies of the brave, beautiful YPs of all the Lands. Good bawling, and good day.

Quote That Took The Gold

Olympic halfpipe champion Iouri “iPod” Podladtchikov on if he could have beaten Shaun White without YOLO, iPod’s insane signature rotational flip: “Yes. Just with my looks, I could have won.”