Category Archives: nature

Reasons to be Cheerful in Modern Tymes

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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.

Can’t Find Your Nuts?

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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!

The Other Frankentree

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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.

Desperately Seeking Zero Waste

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Dear Reader may find this loopy, or just annoying. But some of you can relate.

I cannot discard non-biodegradable garbage of any kind. If I go somewhere with no recycling (a Massachusetts nursing home, a Maine hotel), I throw my soda can in the garbage in disgust. Later, I secretly retrieve it, and put it in my car. Can’t help myself. 

Maybe my aversion to throwing things out began with Poverty Mentality, but definitely resourcefulness. As a child, I would decorate my dollhouse with refuse. Inspired perhaps by the TV show “Land of the Giants” – which we would re-enact with our Barbies® – I’d use a toothpaste cap as a dollhouse wastebasket; tiny sea shells as ashtrays (one in every room!); a clear marble as a crystal ball. I fished mini-detritus out of the trash at home, my imagination spinning.

Now, I discuss needless waste occasionally with a similarly obsessed colleague. Yet even she once talked me into throwing out a damaged binder clip. She said, (and it’s not the first time someone has said this to me): “It’s garbage.” I sighed. Okay. But how many mangled binder clips alone litter this earth? Face masks? Fact: plastic grocery bags and sandwich bags take 1,000 years to decompose. There is massive trash on the ocean floor. It is called “marine debris,” and Saturday September 20th is International Coastal Cleanup! Go here to find a coordinator worldwide. 

In my defense, I can discard a tattered sock (after I use it to clean something) or other rubbish no one else in their right mind would want (a scratched CD; half a shoe).

Once I asked an acquaintance about what to do with small pieces of foil. Zero-sort recycling companies typically demand that objects be 2” by 2” at minimum – or they can “break the machine.” The acquaintance suggested rolling the bits into larger pieces of foil, forming a 2 by 2” ball. Which I do to this day. I collect the bits in a jar with glee …
x-treme recycling! Picturing them in landfill makes me go berserk.

I also say, “No flower before its time.” When a vase is starting to croak, I pull only the dying flowers and leave the living. Also with grapes and such. I really push it. And while I won’t eat something that’s “going by” in its raw state, I’ll cook it. Food waste in this world of people literally starving to death is, simply, criminal. Rotting food in landfills produces methane, an even more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

I won’t knowingly use AI. The (coal-powered?) giant computers required to run it, tons of water as a coolant … no thanks. It’s hard to avoid AI now.

But I’m no saint. I use paper towels. Saran wrap. Toothpaste. Glitter is the enemy of the environment, per my SIL, so I feel terrible when I wear glitter nail polish or vintage clothing with sparkles that fall off. I discard much of the Bloomin’ Onion at the Tunbridge Fair. My favorite commute was at the Comedy Cellar when I walked downstairs and was … at work! My least favorite: Driving to Dartmouth for seven years from central VT. The li’l Stagecoach bus back then killed my back. But the car killed my carbon footprint. For life.

Happily, many Vermonters are lucky, with easy backyard composting (food scraps being banned from our landfills in 2020). At the New World Festival, the dining “plasticware” was wood. Many events have cans marked for Waste, Compost, or Recycling. Love it, if not the reprobates who ignore the signage.

A friend who often has guests saves to-go coffee cups and lids. When you leave, you get a nice, hot coffee for the road. We both re-use paper towels and zip-lock bags. Don’t worry, it doesn’t get more disgusting than that.

People who don’t care about reducing, recycling, reusing, repurposing …. what? Do not all Earthlings care about the horrors of droughts, high-powered storms, heat waves, and sand storms (in Phoenix?!)? Twelve-cylinder vehicles idling with no human in sight: what gives?

A young journalist at work recently brought her lunch salad in a plastic container that originally had food in it from the store. Re-use! I wept. Here’s another weeper.  What great American novel is this quote from? 

“These autumn days will shorten and grow cold. The leaves will shake loose from the trees and fall … this lovely world, these precious days.” Submit guesses to ann@ourherald.com. No cheating!

Let’s keep our world lovely, shall we? I close with what a nutter friend once said about the idiocy of importing bottled water from other countries. He said, “Look. Look around! We have plenty of water. Right. Here.” He also had my favorite bumper sticker: “I’m Sorry for Driving so Close in Front of You.” But I digress. 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; information at annaikens.com.

Double Whammy Double Your Fun

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Not only is the crazy NIGHT BLOOMING CEREUS throwing out 4 buds (a first…more on that later), my humble book is available on Amazon for ZERO DOLLARS thru July 31 (midnight Pacific time).

So stay tuned for NBC 2025, apparently a banner year. The next images will be more clear. And don’t hold your breath, it’s not entirely likely that all 4 buds will bloom. I’ve never had more than one.

Digital is FREE for 2 days. Also avail in PB, HC, and as an audio book. Film at eleven.

Halloween, Pagans, and Religion in General

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I know some readers ran from the building upon seeing the word religion, above. And I know it should not be discussed in polite company. But I further know that many readers – and nutters I call friends – would not consider themselves polite company. 

Ah, Halloween! A magical holiday where I grew up, a place then not as rural as Vermont, yet not the overdeveloped bastion of privilege that it sadly became. Back then, it was a lot of houses made by dads and uncles moving their families to “the country” from the Bronx and such. A lot of woods. And a heck of a lot of childhood mischief, especially on Halloween.

I recall like yesterday the thrill as we crunched through (mostly oak?) leaves in inventive costumes, dragging wands, too-long skirts, broomsticks and giant satchels, delighting in autumnal smells. The real excitement began once we were old enough to go out without parental supervision. It was invigorating as hell. Our antennae (lit. and fig.) were on high alert. We had minimal street lighting. No halogens. Dark! There was a palpable sense of danger in the air. Little to do with honoring the dead or saints on All Hallows’ Eve, or the possibly pagan roots thereof.

Melissa Kirsch suggested in the NYT that we all try not knowing everything in advance. Not spending hours comparing products before buying. Not researching the heck out of each place before going there.  Letting an adventure unfold, and inspire wonder. Doing an unscheduled, impromptu, playful thing. 

This holiday was that. We had no master plan for maximum treatage. We weren’t greedy. We were just roaming in the dark, tittering, wondering what was around every bush, house, and corner. The older kids were generally menacing on any given day. What might they do to us on this day? Attack? Plunder our treat haul? Anything but that!  

Raised Episcopalian, to my Catholic grandmother’s dismay, I later became a bit of a pagan in the original sense (not as in the polytheistic belief in multiple gods, but as in the Latin pagani: people who lived rurally, thus considered ignorant). I’m happily, rurally ignorant. Due to unexplainable events and crazy coincidences I experienced, over time I came to believe in energies and nature spirits, certainly ghosts, and in celebrating the change of seasons. Which might make me Wiccan. A modern pagan.

Dear Reader may find that nuts, but what sissy writes about religion without stating where she stands? I’m not too worried what people think of me. I go to a great church. I also believe that trees have a kind of consciousness (which has been scientifically examined), as does everything in nature. We should honor nature. We should cheer it on. I feel it would respond in kind. More oxygen. Cooling temps. Fewer storms. 

Is this paganism? Wicca? A heretical blending of “true” religion with fanciful notions? Does it matter what it’s called? I just call it energetic. Have you never nursed something or someone back to health by your own seeming sheer force of will, with or without prayer mixed in? Thoughts and desires carry energy.

As for the earth’s widely accepted Abrahamic religions, and any other I’ve read about, I find some of it silly – including in my own Christianity, which I very much enjoy right along with my less conventional beliefs. Still, I think the world would be a lot happier if more people regularly practiced some form of religion (spirituality?) without judging the others. It has been proven that people who live in groups are happiest. And I can tell you for sure that people who gather in groups to give thanks, to commune, to do good works, and sing maybe, and pray for each other and our planet, and to celebrate together, absolutely get a happiness and a peace from it. I doubt most people attend services these days because they’re afraid of eternal damnation. They go because they feel good there. Hopeful. Valued. Useful.

I’ve been in mosques, Russian Orthodox churches, JW meetings, Jewish temples and Chabad Houses, weddings of all stripes, Buddhist funerals, a Catholic Easter in Rome … and honestly, they all felt spiritual, holy, life-affirming. I’m not keen on those run solely by men (still?!?), but no one forced me to attend.

Many don’t believe in any God at all, regarding earthly suffering as proof that no loving being is In Charge. I’ve waivered myself, and understand. I don’t believe in predestination or fate; I do believe in free will and in luck — including bad luck. I don’t believe in a punishment/reward-based karma, but did when younger, and I do believe in multiple lifetimes. Is there truly no divine being of any kind? The universe is too magnificent, with too many synchronicities, for there not to be something larger than ourselves at play, way I see it.

I get your God, if it’s love-based. What I don’t get, as perhaps Dear Reader does not, is why so many consider their religion superior — in fact, the only valid one. If that were the case, you’d have to be born in a certain place to certain parents to be lucky enough not to burn in the fires of Hell (or whatever) for eternity (or whatever). To wit: all the poor slobs who weren’t born like you were just born damned. And should be punished or enslaved, in life or in death? I’m not buying it. 

Surely all religions, when not misinterpreted by maniacs with agendas, basically lead to the same place. Be kind. Stand for what’s right. Make amends. Help others, including strangers. Respect however our planet’s beauty was created; steward its health. Do good works. Spread love.

Ideas
• Try taking time off weekly, a secular sabbath of sorts, to appreciate things. I’m awed when something nice, even a cloud formation, is delivered unto me. I thank the Forces almost daily for something, however small, because my belief is that there’s no way this whole show is running itself. I think we’re co-running it with some benevolent spirit or spirits, and if we’d just quit screwing things up on our end, everything would get a lot nicer real fast. 

• If you can’t do, CHEER ON. Can’t run or perform? Go see a footrace or a play or a concert. Participants are boosted like a rocket when spectators are rooting for them! Feel the energy travel around the participants and spectators. It’s magical. My niece said that a dog got so excited as she ardently cheered on 5K runners that he “piddled.” Feel the love. Good 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 bookshops at annaikens.com; blog:  uppervalleygirl.com.

The Magic of the J

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The NBC bloom, once it get serious, curls upward into a letter “J.” Shades of the Monarch butterfly caterpillar once that is hanging upside down and readying to spin its cocoon. It also becomes a J.

Must be something about the letter J, as there are other cool things in nature like the Chambered Nautilus’ golden spiral,  a sea creature in the same class as the octopus.

If you know of another J, by all means report in as able.

The NBC Always Surprises

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The Night Blooming Cereus is ever mystical. Today I opened my window, and found this bud… way earlier than usual. Had no idea it was coming.

Then I moved some of my crap to better photograph her and found this down below:

For God’s sake, this bud is well on its way! Plus, I’ve never had more than 1 bud at one time in all these years. So…we’ll see what happens. Buds fall off. This big baby got jostled BAD the last few days as I didn’t even know it was there. I give it…a week till show time?

An Independence Day miracle, children! Will report in as able.

How to Get Your Mind Blown

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Oshe Bunny has been a lot of places, but in the path of Totality viewing was one of his top faves of all time. Because his eyeballs are glass, he was able to sneak a peek beneath his safety goggles. Because he is sentient, he wept uncontrollably when the mind-blowing corona appeared.

He was lucky enough to have fantastic Eclipse hosts in Burlington, lakeside. He cheered and bawled and cheered, and had a lot of local beezers and gluten-free, vegan Bitchin’ Sauce.