Category Archives: personal

Out With The Old, In With The New…Program

1 Reply
grey on grey

One shade of grey.

January’s column historically presents (hilarious!) fake predictions for the new year, contributed by the wingnuts I call friends. Not this year, due to lack of participation (read: interest) last year. Well!

We will, however, do our annual Suggested Reading column. Please submit nominees with 10 words on why; books don’t have to be prizeworthy, just something-worthy.  These may appear in the Sooperbowl issue under “Other Interests.” This year the Sooperbowl falls on Groundhog’s Day. If the groundhog emerges and sees the shadow of a wardrobe malfunction, it’s, er, halftime?

When I’m not busy being chased by snow devils, finding grocery items marked reduced to clear, or serving as a cautionary tale, I’m gathering information on the meaninglessfulness of life to share with you, dear Reader. Let’s proceed in an orderly fashion. Reduced chaos is part of the UVG 2014 New Program for All.

Snow Devils: Did you know that when you see a snow devil, you can make a wish? Same goes for sightings of blimps, salamanders, exploding light bulbs, and DHART. My lunatics invented these rules, and of course with DHART the wish is for the occupant of that medical emergency helicopter. You can make up rules, too—we need all the luck we can get. I saw a snow devil while snowshoeing and didn’t even make the wish until days later while sledding in my car on glare ice; my wish was to survive. Wish granted. See? It works! The next wish will be that it doesn’t go tens below zero again. Your car’s otherworldly sound upon starting and the radio dial’s groaning reluctance make a girl…nervous. Brutal cold does not grease the wheels of the 2014 New Program (lit. or fig.).

Reduced To Clear:  Store items discounted with these three precious words should include not only expired vitamins, discontinued products, and foodstuffs past their prime, but also those with asinine labeling like Snack Pack’s “As much CALCIUM as an 8 0z. glass of MILK” (emphasis theirs). Adults who can read don’t consider Snack Pack® a source of anything more than tasty goo; if we want to ingest or give kids calcium we’ll grab a stick of Cabot, for God’s sake. And three words for purveyors promising a Vitamin D Blowout!!! (exclamation points theirs):  count me in. With overcast wintry skies fostering deep mid-winter psychoses, northerners need all the D we can guzzle. Vigilance is part of the New Program. Vigilance!

On Serving as a Cautionary Tale:  This would be me discussing football (“So the linebacker, he receives the ball?”), slashing my enfant terrible way through moronic Facebook posts or comments, and in some of my, uh, “career” “choices.” It’s a prickly job, the archetypal role of cautionary tale, but someone’s got to do it. Besides, being the object of scorn and ridicule has its advantages. One, expectations of you are exceedingly low; if you say or do anything remotely smart, people get excited—even laudatory. Also, as a believer in the beautiful soup of our combined creatural energy, I feel we either add to or detract from this stew via our moods and actions. Your minusculest chuckle, dear Reader, elevates our collective vibration! Feeling good and making others do so is important. But as much as I strive to make people feel good or even hoot, I can only intentionally elicit so much.  If they are laughing at me behind me back, discharging a solid guttural blast at my expense, well that’s a freebie. The collective soup wins. Earth needs all the laffs she can get. Laugh at my expense, babies. Laugh it up.

The Meaninglessfulness of Life:  By this I mean that as meaningless as our lives often seem, they are full in that we have impact that half the time we don’t even know about (nod to It’s A Wonderful Life, which we forget promptly upon viewing). I’ll leave this one to Christopher Hitchens, the deceased, British-born, non-partisan equal opportunity offender, writer, philosopher, intellect, lush, and fearlessly funny professional soap boxer:

“A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called ‘meaningless’ except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one’s everyday life as if this were so.”  – Hitch-22: A Memoir

snow on ice

Snow on ice on water on…more ice?

Cosmic joke or no, grab all you can get, people. Get all you can need. Give it back tenfold via your laffs without even trying. Make up luck rules that square with your own New Program for 2014. See what happens. And by all means, report in. Good day.

Ann can be reached at uppervalleygirl@gmail.com or ann.aikens.7 on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @uvgvt or on the nuclear green thing on the upper right at www.uppervalleygirl.wordpress.com.

Coffee Helper Helps

1 Reply

coffee helperFor people with precious little time, those with dexterity issues, and anyone who likes to distance himself from paper or, at the very least, coffee filters,  it’s the perfect gift.

 

Happy Eastern Orthodox Christmas!

If You Can Report Colder Weather Than This

2 Replies

18 below…I hope you don’t have a dog to walk.

The ReelFeel® here will be 44 below by 4 AM—bad, per AccuWeather®, for kite flying, swimming, and breathing. Not to worry…it will soar to 12 below by 8 AM, when you can resume normal activities. Like hacking away at ice formations on your car, calling in sick, and going back to bed.

Santa and Me

Leave a reply

Santy Claus, Cyn and me poss. 1989…a really long time ago. This was the official shot you got in SantaLand at Macy’s Herald Square, avec “frame.” If you’ve never read David Sedaris’ Holidays on Ice, which includes his stint as an elf there, it’s a heartwarming holiday classic not to be missed.

This guy clearly wasn’t “Santa Santa” (read the book). I think he was more like “Hungover Santa” or “This Is My Lucky Day So Why Ain’t I Smiling Santa.” “Busted Femur Santa?”He may have been concentrating on the cameras or sensors in his beard.

The Home Stretch of Holiday Hell

1 Reply

snowy xmas ballYou’re almost there, people. You are almost through the holiday gauntlet.

A gauntlet is an odious form of punishment wherein the victim is forced to run between two rows (the gauntlet) of soldiers that repeatedly smite him. The victim is slowed down by various means, preventing him from running the gauntlet—God forbid—too quickly. A magical holiday metaphor for you there.

Mercifully, the figurative holiday gauntlet is more varied and less severe. There’s the endless conveyor belt of cookies, booze, and dips that make you blow up like Santy Claus. There’s forced gaiety, perhaps—in, say, the workplace. Secret Santas you want no part of. Malfunctioning decorations. Fighty fights over tree placement. Hernias, ruptured disks, rocketing cholesterol. Concerts, pageants, fundraisers, and parties demanding special gifts, attire, or baking. Aversion to pine. Aversion to sugar plums.  Aversion to family. To holiday-themed newspaper columns. 2014, take me away! Not so fast, dear Reader. Remember:  you are not allowed to run the gauntlet too quickly.

Maybe your gauntlet has your kids driving you lunatic on one side, your parents on the other. Sadly, advances in technology are exacerbating the digital divide within families, amplifying holiday tensions. The grandparents just can’t seem to grab a hold of technology a lot of the time, and the kids are so much savvier than the parents (us) that it’s annoying.

Well, what is annoying is their annoyance with us. Teenagers since the dawn of time have considered their parents moronic. Only now, because of parents’ slimmer grasp of the technology their children have been wired with, parents really are dumber than their kids. This has never before been the case.  Kids didn’t know more about farming, sewing, war, factory work, finance…anything beyond pop culture fluff. Now they are more knowledgeable about something of consequence. As a friend put it, “My rocket geek son ‘helps’ me with my blog.  He’s rolling his eyes, ‘Mom, why’d you do it that way?’ like I‘m a complete idiot. When I explain I didn’t know there was another way, this fuels his irritation—and disdain. If I ever acted like him, my parents put the hammer down. I can’t.  Because he actually knows more than I do.”

Sigh! If you’ve had your fill of insults, exploding casseroles, manuals with miniscule print in 47 languages,  watching football teams do things you gave them no clearance to, the good news is you have only a few more games and New Year’s Eve left, and that’s not even a real holiday. Some call it “Amateur’s Night,” referring to those imbibing who rarely drink, an excellent reason to stay off snowy roads. Hell, even pros like Jethro or Granny manning the wheel of a poorly maintained jalopy after a couple pops of spiked nog coming at you in the oncoming lane, that’s just no fun at all. Stay home and, whatever you do, avoid those awful New Year’s Eve shows. They are worse than Honey Boo Boo, Toddlers and Tiaras, Kardashians singly or in groups, and Mafia Plumbers’ Wives combined. The exaggerated merriment of gussied-up commentators excitedly reciting numbers backwards can kill even the slenderest hope of a new and improved year coming your way.  Give yourself a fighting chance. Don’t watch. Ring in the New Year cozying up to your pet(s) or preferred person(s). Sing Auld Lang Syne (first a poem written in 1788 by Robert Burns) softly into their ears.  It’s nice like that.

And as a countermeasure to failed New Year’s resolutions kicking off the year badly, that important media outlet, the woman’s magazine, suggests an alternative: make instead a list of what you accomplished last year.  You’ll be amazed by what you did. Although I plan on more reading/less Candy Crushing with enough conviction to announce it here publicly to complete strangers, and strange completers (you know who you are). If you must resolve, pick something you can handle.

Helpful Reminder: As the highway notification boards proclaim, DUI. YOU WILL GET ARRESTED. Only the “D” is fat, so it looks like OUI, YOU WILL GET ARRESTED. (“But non, awf-ee-sair, I had nussing to dreenk zees evening! I am Canadienne. We drive feefty in ze left lane on ze intair-state, eet’s what we dewww! Alors, your dawg—does eet baht?”)

May you have enough coal in your stocking to keep you warm, and may the last few yards of your gauntlet be kind. Good New Year, good laffs, and good Boxing Day.

I Unheart Candy Crush

Leave a reply

candy crushMy niece was playing Candy Crush Saga and wouldn’t stop to explain how it works (Warning #1), so one terrible day I downloaded it.

With a Candy Land-ish footpath, sparkly explosions (of candy!), laudatory commentary in a soothing male voice (“Dee-licious!”), and otherworldly digital music that eats your brain, this malefic tease was designed by a bad person or evil entity to cripple mankind, likely the same devil who invented off-label opiate use.

After four days on level 23, lured there by e-z prior levels, I became admittedly obsessed (“Must. Crack. The. Code.”). With a ferocity normally reserved for those avenging the injury or shaming of a family member, I was determined to subjugate 23. But I noticed that while I did not want to stop, I was not actually enjoying playing. I was grinding my teeth and sweating and nervously checking the clock (10:30…11:00…midnight, uh-oh).  I YouTubed how to to win. There were crazed nutters in there that actually purchase tools (Lollipop Hammer, Coconut Wheel, Bomb Cooler, what?)  and time to keep going in a single game, courtesy of exploitative game mechanics. Too bad you can’t buy real time. The time you wasted playing.

I finally muscled through (“Candy crushhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”) and whistled, That’s it — I’m done. Later I realized I had won on my phone. But not on my iPad, where I was still stuck on 23. So that’s where Sunday’s “extra hour of sleep” went.

Don’t do it.*  There are five HUNDRED levels and you will be trapped behind the candy curtain foreverrrr.

*Bet you didn’t know Sammy Davis. Jr. sang that theme song. Just one of many fakts you’ll learn if you don’t fritter away your life playing Candy Crush.

“Let it Snow!”

Leave a reply

first snow“But please, God, not too much. Snow tires eat gas and make it hard to hear my CDs.”

We drive a lot in rural America, so we put our snow tires on as late as we can push it. It’s kind of a game we play. So it’s best to stay off the roads during the first few blasts. Little tip fer ya there.

And yes, we still play CDs here.

Local Treasures

3 Replies

carpet of leavesOur sunny foliage season was a hit; now for the private after-show for locals. As an artist friend noted with her specialized eyeballs, late foliage affords us remnants of red and gold with the twiggy lines of trees now bald mixed in. As another put it, the leaves on the ground provide a colorfully crunchy carpet before “November’s…dirt.”

Last week’s full moon (the hunter’s moon, traveling moon, or death moon, depending upon your tribe) offered us pagans good lighting for rituals wherein we place into a (lit. or fig.) caldron our wishes for our people and this krazy planet. I put into mine: clarity, love, creativity, strength.  You?

With short days, TV and radio and film become alluring alternatives to outdoor sports. If you podcast, Billy Crystal and Graham Nash crushed on Fresh Air on 10.17, as did the rerun of an April 20th Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me’s “best of” celebrity callers episode (Melinda Gates! Jeff Bridges! A surprisingly hilarious Tony Danza! The Fonz!). Colbert’s on-air wedding for a couple gypped out of their nuptials at a (closed) national monument along with Jon Stewart’s Shutstorm 2013 made the government shut-down almost worthwhile. Randolph’s revamped Playhouse Theater, a local treasure (the oldest cinema in the state), is now rocking Gravity with national treasures Bullock and Clooney.

There’s still time to squeak in a few holes at the Woodstock Inn or Montague Golf Club…fore! While the Bethel Ethels have hung up their rackets for the season, playing tennis on Bethel’s crevice-marred town courts adds an element of chance to a gentlewoman’s game for those with a taste for danger. Terrible players like me can WIN via unforeseen benevolent bounces.

Our weirdly warm foliage aside, two weather phenoms remain certain: (1) it will always be so hot on July 4th that overdressed marching band members faint—or as the boys put it, “pass out”—and (2) it will always be so cold on Halloween you cannot see the kids’ costumes. “Welcome, er, Tundra Fairy! Is that a wing poking out of your…fairy parka?”; “I see you are an Arctic Vampire, young man. Do you take your blood neat, or with iceberg cubes?” I myself hand out Snickers and warm hardboiled eggs, unsure of the effect of chemical handwarmers upon Earth’s mighty landfills.

It’s time to trade in our garden tools for musical instruments and knitting needles. Which for some reason you can take on a plane, but not a nail clipper (pretty sure I could do more damage with a saxophone). Kimball Public Library’s knitting group provides community in Randolph as do the Knitters (Knutters!) of the Round Table at the Whippletree in Woodstock. Get some laffs while banging out colorific holiday gifts.

It’s also time to eat. Which can be counteracted by memberships at VTC, killer MOVE Fitness, or at the Woodstock Inn. For fall dining, personal faves include the Harrington House, Barnard Inn, Big Fatty’s BBQ, Cockadoodle Pizza Café, and Five Olde. My gastronomic goal is both Worthy restaurants some time soon—wanna take me on a date? Ahahaha, that’s so funny. Dating: not a local treasure of the Upper Valley.

For beer I dig Burlington’s unfiltered ale, Switchback; for cocktails a nice Bloody Caesar (Bloody Mary with clam juice) using local Silo Vodka or Vermont Gold, a maple vodka. Crockpotting demands top vegetables from your farmers’ market or the Chef’s Market. And don’t put away the grill—the only time that’s no good is when it’s 20 below. Then the meat freezes on top while the bottom cooks, sort of. Don’t ask me how I know that. For dentistry: wicked old-school kindly Dr. McDonald in Woodstock. For knockout eyeglasses: Eyes on Elm; no competition for 150 miles. Pies? On the Edge Farm on Route 12. Dana wizards the fruits of the Land from apple to sour cherry.

Your monthly Useful Information is this: glucosamine makes you gassy. Your Good News for women is: there is a product for after shaving and waxing called finipil that feels like a York Peppermint Pattie; for men, the beauty industry is catering to aging male boomers with “special formulations” “just for men” (what’s in there?). Next up in the beauty aisle: eyebrow hair relaxant, for old Scottish weird curlicue eyebrow hair growers like me. I hope. Good day.

Stand Up for Others ~ And Self

1 Reply

Apex Tech Logo gif One trait is evident in today’s Young People (hereinafter, the “YPs”).  In print at least (meaning, on Facebook), they seem to have more of a grip than we did. Better advised by parents and schools, they understand more which roads to go down—and which not to. We were kind of shooting in the dark, as I recall.  “You must have a liberal arts education!” we were told.  Sadly, I’d have been better off with a welding certificate from Apex Tech.

With their impressive grip, the YPs seem willing to protect and defend what they believe in. In prior generations, people considered it rude to speak up in polite conversation—at, say, a dinner party—regarding, say, marriage outside of one’s race or (specific!) religion.  Really, there’s nothing noble about listening to someone excoriate what you believe in, or (politely!) watching someone catch abuse. The YPs make a stand without being nasty about it.  We can be like them. Just say, “I disagree. Can we change the subject?” Or when it’s unsalvageable: “Hey wow, I forgot have a dental appointment. It starts in 10 minutes, and lasts the rest of my life.”

Sure, it’s uncomfortable to confront people, but as Rudolph the Reindeer’s father (Donder!) notes with a (Yankee?) disdain for self-indulgence, “Some things are more important than comfort. Like self-respect.”  Okay, so he says it regarding a fake nose cap he’s making his son wear to fit in.  I’m using it anyway.

Speaking of Rudolph, I have a friend with that name. He introduced himself to me years ago with, “Rudolph…as in ‘the Red-nosed Reindeer,’” a thrilling and crisp addendum. Ever since, when meeting people I imagine (silently!) what they could say to jazz it up (“White, as in the absence of color”; “Creamer, as in ‘non- dairy’”; “Joseph, as in ‘Jesus, Mary, and…’”; “Lava, as in ‘molten”; “Polly, as in “’…wanna cracker?’”) Let’s face it, in hard tymes, we can use all the laffs we can get. So if you have a name that’s a word in the English language, you might try this out for the benefit of All.

Back to protect/defend: many motorists dig those construction road signs with giant letters, “LET ‘EM WORK ~ LET’ EM LIVE.”  Succinct; clear; a trifle threatening. I’d like shirts saying that for protecting/defending. See someone getting picked on? Wear the shirt and stand around him all day. Hear an employee getting wailed on by an employer or customer? Speak up! Throw the shirt at the perp! Do something. Do it!

I have a post-menopausal acquaintance that looks younger (dammit) than I. There was a guy she liked who seemed interested but wasn’t asking her out. She told her friend that he’d better make his move because, “My clock is ticking.”  Friend’s response?  “Yeah, the big one.”  Not the biological clock, the big clock. The big clock is ticking, people. Don’t tarry. At age 32, another friend started getting cold feet about his relationship. Someone advised him to stay, suggested he was just panicking about giving up his solitary lifestyle. Two decades later, he’s glad he did. So I say if you’re (1) dilly dallying: knock it off and (2) putting up with dallying/dallying: knock it off. Speak up for yourself. Time’s a wastin’.

Now if you’re taking repeated punches from someone, the smart thing is to nip it in the bud. Let your attacker know his or her unkind behavior is being noted and that you are not falling for it—that this is not something you somehow “deserve.”  They’ll move on to other prey and, generally, it’s much more fun sticking up for someone else than for yourself. That’s why god invented bodyguards, wingmen, tailgunners, right-hand women, and riding shotgun. But remember, the pen is mightier than the shotgun.  As is a well-arched eyebrow.

Your monthly good news is that eco-protector/defender Mayor Bloomberg is crusading for New Yorkers to separate their garbage for composting. NYC plans to compost 100,000 tons of food scraps yearly, then build a plant to process this into bio-gas to generate electricity. Frisco and Seattle have already mandated same.  Right on.

I’ll leave you with this quote from John Caruso’s excellent YA novel, Hard Magic:  “They knew from then on… they could depend on each other. That was real. It was one thing to sit around a room and share information and speculate about the truth of things; it was another thing to use what you knew and go out into the world and change things for the better or, at least, keep things from getting worse.”

Get up. Stand up. Don’t give up the fight. Good day.

Come to Vermont ~ Tweed it!

Leave a reply
Learn it. Love it. Live it.

Learn it. Love it. Live it.

There is no greater fun than the 5th annual Tweed River Music Festival, happening this weekend in the middle of Vermont.

Here is a schedule/overview of the artists. Stick around for musical wizard and host Bow Thayer, whose great new line-up is on at 9 pm on Friday; his other rockin’ outfit, Perfect Trainwreck, will perform Eden in its entirety on Saturday night (a spectacle!) Ask me now and I’ll give you particulars. Find me there, and I’ll tell you what to buy at the merch tent. We’ll dance.

Come! Camp or stay at an inn, swim & fish in Silver Lake or the Tweed & White River swimming holes…skinny-dip, tube, kayak, vegetate, and ~ oh yeah ~ listen  to kicka** music outdoors in gorgeous Vermont.

Kudos to Tweed River Productions for scheduling PERFECT weather: hot enough to swim by day, cool enough for jackets by night. Hey music fans, Tweet this Tweed!