Category Archives: personal

Open wide and say Ahhhhhhhhhhh

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Photo by Thomas O'Brien

Photo by Thomas O’Brien

Got yer meteor shower info right here.  Park your lawn chair (paper toweling?) after 11 pm (pref. after midnight) or right before dawn.

Maybe you’ll see a fireball.  As luck would have it, the Perseid meteor shower is the “Fireball Champion.” Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon will show up together just as the meteor shower reaches its peak. A dim Mars and bright Jupiter will be visible right before the sun rises, above the eastern horizon.

Best viewing spot? Rural America, of course!

RIGHT IN YOR WHEELHOUSE

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wheelhouse pngWith steaming temps and standing pools of fetid water and everything dripping always, the New Bayou that is Vermont has done a number on our hair. Forced to pull mine back in a frizzy bun, I look like “Mother” in Pyscho.  Not sure what the Tunbridge World’s Fair theme is for 2013, but it could be The Year of the Insect…featuring slugs, skeeters, silverfish, giant ants, leggy fliers, and those mini-snails that destroy irises.  Spiders are building webs double-time. Even the moths seem diabolical—lurking doorside, waiting for a shot to jet in and eat your best fabric.  It’s like some TV movie from the 70s. Slug Slime Saboteur.  Revenge Of The Various Classes Of Insects.  Don’t Go In The Basement.

When I’m not obsessively checking my phone for storm updates or competing in catch-and-release firefly programs, I’m lying around lifeless, thinking deep thots to share with Dear Reader.  Thus was born Aggravation Theory.

Sure, nature occasionally goes nuts. Only, weather-wise, it does it all the time now.  I don’t believe nature is retaliating for petroleum use; it’s just aggravated. Aggravation Theory, a correlate of String Theory, says this: all matter is energetically connected and reactive to other matter. In this paradigm, violent weather is basically collateral damage; that is, when humans are constantly stressed—panicking about hiring freezes and elastic IRAs and tech menaces and global contagion and will we lose the house and can I work 24 hours a day to get the kids through college and and and and—we are vibrating at strung out, inharmonious rates. Through no fault of our own, really; anxiety is a logical place to go when overwhelmed by burdens and fears. In Aggravation Theory, anxiety makes for bad weather. Bad weather makes humans…even worse.

It reminds me of when in New York it was hot for so long that cockroaches crawled up to my 6th floor apartment. I asked the exterminator why, since I’d never seen one in five years. He replied, “It’s their nervous systems. They’re aggravated. Doesn’t hot weather make you aggravated, Sweetheart?” Modern tymes are hard tymes. They rattle our nervous systems.  As do strangers using the denigrating “Sweetheart” versus the loving one, but I digress. We’re aggravated, and I think our unchecked anxiety is making the whole planet aggravated (which, to be clear, is not proper use of the word; to “aggravate” means “to make worse.”  Really, we’re all irritated. Or exasperated. Or probably losing it.)

Seeing people on Facebook scaling mountains, giving their antique roadsters a spin, and laughing broadly on power yachts isn’t helping any.  I say get the heck out of there. Avert your eyes. Hide the people with the full and easy lives. I don’t know how to, but I’m gonna learn.

Meanwhile, grab onto what little you have control over. Court sanity. When my house is a mess, I wig. Quit walking around piles! Take 10 minutes a week to relocate crap. Chuck it! Also, as adults, we have control over what we eat. If eating a greazy burger and a bucket of macaroni salad makes me happy, that’s exactly what I’m having.

Also worth considering: Luck Theory, which states that people are at birth assigned different kinds of luck. I have bar stool luck. Denise has parking luck. Ochre has baby luck. Jose has first tennis serve luck plus checkout aisle luck. Other lucks reported: celebrity sighting luck, husband luck, sea shell finding luck, hand-me-down luck (clothing), lucky timing (general), dental scheduling luck, and spider avoidance luck. What’s yours? Use it.

I have bad travel weather luck, but I do have a built-in Nutter Locator I make good use of. If I’m lost and need directions, my Nutter Locator leads me to the craziest loon in town. I don’t get the best directions that way, but I do get the best experience. So try, much as you can, to live right in your wheelhouse. Good parking luck? Drive people places. Bad travel weather luck? Stay home.  It makes other things go smoothly when you are unaggravated. And, right now, the entire planet could use your good mood. I know I could.

Your monthly good news is a laundry invention: Shout Advanced, a reported action gel…formulated for set-in stains. You’ll weep when the load is done, “It’s a miracle, Betty. It’s a miracle.”

Good luck in the swamp, Sweethearts. Remain calm. Stay right in your wheelhouse. Catch fireflies. Spread action gel over your entire life. Good day.

It’s a Grand Old…Peace Dove?

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foj engine 2

What’s a parade without Engine 2?

I love a parade.  What’s better than a marching band? Nothing. And what’s the most important section? The drums, of course [no pix cuz I have no technology to blur the faces of the yoots in the Randolph Union High School marching band. Which would look  creepy anyway.]

 

 

foj health angels

GMC’s Health Angels.

The next best part of any parade is the nutters. These ones are the Gifford Medical Center “Health Angels.” The front of their “biker” shirts said, “Who’s Your Doctor?” and they carried placards with stuff like, “Catch it early or it could get surly,” or “Colons and Prostates: Go there.” My favorite was, “After 50, Give ’em a Squeeze.”

foj peace doves

Note olive branch.

But wait, there’s more! My church made “Peace Doves” one year for the heck of it — giant doves to be paraded about town in a promotion of peace. These birds are trotted out from time to time. While I don’t take issue with our national anthem being about war, I understand those for whom it’s a bother, and stand behind my anti-war brethren 100%. Here they are, the Peace Nutters!

Hoist Up the Father’s Day Sale

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yard sale wares

Oddly, none of these went.

While normal people were celebrating on Father’s Day, my neighbors and I held a yard sale. It was not a sanctioned event.  Nor was it particularly reverent of fathers; my own had to wait, until the rain shut down the sale, to begin the family festival of socializing, overeating, and a viewing of The Shining, a touching little film about a father.

I freely admit my portion of the yard sale was weak. There was little of value (set aside for when I learn how to sell on eBay, which will be never) next to the incomplete, broken, and useless items for sale. I also admit I enjoyed watching shoppers regard my sad offerings with knit brows, trying to make polite conversation, wondering why I had even bothered and was I indigent or just crazy. Others glanced about in an uncomfortable silence and moved quickly on.

The few desirable objects I’d included I, at first, priced too high—maybe so as not to have to part with them (mistake number one). As the day went on, I grew despondent from lack of sales and underpriced these treasures, realizing much too late that I should have just kept them as gifts for people I actually know, rather than selling them for peanuts to strangers (mistake number two).

But the entertainment was priceless.  While the big coin my neighbors were hauling in made me feel inadequate, mine was  a Feel-good Mart, with neighbors, nutters, friends, friends of friends, and a lovely new Southern neighbor all engaging in lighthearted convo, some of it with clever volleys and returns—always a delight—and some with thoughtful advice or heartfelt condolences.  I told a young couple they looked happy.  They were. Another couple and I swapped ghost stories.  True ones. Another adored my flower boxes I’d sawed and painted by hand. With reversible colors. I taught a teenager how to clean an antique typewriter; maybe one day he’ll be a writer, or the only typewriter repairman left on Earth. A madcap golf buddy showed up.  We laughed and laughed. Because my “storefront” was right on the road, it was almost a drive-through; I could have rollerskated over and taken orders carside. But I’d sold my skates before I thought of it (mistake number three).

At one point it “snowed” fluffy cottonwood seeds. When the golf buddy showed up, her cheer generated a flurry of sales. My junk was wanted! People loved it as I had, and thrilled at getting it on the cheap. It solved problems for them, saved them a trip to NH, provided a Halloween costume for 2013. Another satisfied customer.

I know my trifling sale and its collateral laffs are nothing to brag about.  I have a television. I see the “This is your life…at 50!” commercials with young-looking retired couples in vaguely nautical outfits and deck shoes shaving happily away at their nest egg, having planned well, invested well, married well, dressed well, monitored their teeth well…roaming a beach hand in hand, scanning the buffet, taking Cialis®…when, in Vermont, we’re selling our shirts to get by. But it was a fun time for All. And I didn’t have to listen to my husband of 40 years tell the same story for the 300th time to a table of yachties (at the Captain’s table, in the Mediterranean!), or tighten my Hermes scarf to protect my ears from our (private!) chopper’s (noisy!)  rotors, or turn my head politely as our other (handsome!) golfing couple (in Scotland!) sandbagged their scores. I set sail when I wanted. Dropped anchor when I wanted. Ahoy.

In closing, your good news:  Prague subways now have cars where singles can meet, dubbed “love trains” by Reuters, so you can be wookin’ pa nub in at least one wight place. The Washington Post was skeptical, considering this train car “a great way to attract unwanted advances,” but I promise you there will be at least two lucky Czechs in 2013 who find nub. Maybe they’ll retire early and linger around seaside buffets a lot in special outfits. Now that’s what I call a good day, one right after the other.

Ann Aikens can be reached at ann.aikens.7 on Facebook, or on Twitter at @uvgvt.

“Gardening Makes People Happy.”

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Eagle Street Garden – Photo by Jackie Snow.

In rural America, we hear little about urban farming.

“Gardening makes people happy,” says this urban farmer in Chicago. “I do not believe we are in a bad spot with community. People know how to be together.”   (Good news!)

This garden in Brooklyn is up in the air. Its High Priestess, the Manager of the Edible Academy at the New York Botanical Garden, talks fast in a New York way I miss.

This crunchy Cali textile artist makes lovely yarns from local plant dyes and animal wools. Looking at colors makes people feel good. It’s why we knit in a troubled world.

Every day, do something sensory that makes you feel good, even if it’s just watching upbeat clips like these. Keep it clean, people.

A YA Mystery Both Smart and Charming

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Hard Magic book coverAt the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival on May 18, Braintree author John Caruso’s textured novel Hard Magic received an Honorable Mention for Young Adult Fiction, in what organizers called “a very, very tough competition.”  A dark yet sparkly mystery comprising multifaceted characters, dialogue among kids and adults that is neither corny nor precious, and rural issues—with clues, clues, and more clues — it is written with a deft hand requiring young readers to not only pay attention, but to look up the occasional vocabulary word. Hear, hear!

A story involving magic and teen sleuths begs comparison to other YA works, but important elements separate Hard Magic from the pack. First and foremost: superior writing. Caruso is a writer’s writer. He includes brilliant metaphoric turns of phrase, a nuanced tone, and observations about rural life that delight adult readers while rendering young readers just plain lucky to have him directing his writing, for the first time, their way.  Second: it is expertly plotted (and sub-plotted), without overly descriptive passages to spoil a calculated pace that begins as lazily as a summer’s day, then barrels ahead in a race to the finish. Third, it has the intelligence to let the reader decide who’s good or bad, and why; it is more about exploring how the world works and who controls things than delivering a clichéd battle between good and evil. Fourth: it is poignant, with characters worth caring about. That’s because, Caruso says, he wanted in his book the emotional payoff of YA books he read as a young adult himself.

As for the title, one reader interpreted it this way: “Real change comes from hard magic, real work, not comic human hopes in the supernatural.” The characters must work for what they want; there is no magic fix, and the reader sees each making choices for thought-out reasons. Caruso’s teens are determined sleuths that use their smarts—they do not serendipitously stumble upon clues like my generation’s ever-lucky Nancy Drew.  The players are complex people with good and bad qualities, and vulnerabilities. Even the most cutthroat among them displays wit, style, and heart.

With a generous mix of male and female characters that pop in and out, there are delectable hints at romance, but in this book the mystery’s the thing.

Hard Magic took the author two years to write plus one year of revisions, the key to excellence in writing. A natural born novelist, Caruso (a Vermont resident since 2001), refuses to “write down to” young readers, as he puts it. His style encourages them to ask, “What is really going on here?”; “What does that phrase mean?” and—which makes it a page turner—“What happens next?”

This tale set in Vermont has something summery for everyone: intrigue, family, fireworks, spells gone awry, cookouts, contraptions, junkyards, bewitched teachers, swimming holes, enchanted flora, evil fauna, magic potions, carnivals, Vermonty characters, word games, diabolical forces, weird behavior, and the long arm of the law. The magical parts are deliciously crafted. A passing reference to a possible physical or sexual assault renders it suitable for readers over age 13, depending upon the child and parents.  Most importantly, the book fosters…reading. Imagine that.

Hard Magic is available at Bud and Bella’s Bookshop in Randolph, at The Yankee Bookshop and Shiretown Books in Woodstock, and online at createspace.com, amazon.com (print or Kindle), or barnesandnoble.com.

Get it. Read it. Love it.  coverphoto

Black Flies, Lemonade, Hope, Mayo, and More Mayo

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mayo

Wicker and mayo. Bon ete!

It’s time. Fishing. Golf. Swimming holes. Mayonnaise.

Black flies comin’. But mercifully along with rain.  It’s been so dry the liquid manure spread over the Land baked, stank, and dried up into individual molecules blowing into our cars, homes, and nostrils. While the recent re-wetting served to reconstitute (read: re-aromatize) this fertilizer, at least it is no longer visible as a wind-borne dust. Not good for tourism (You can’t be 20…on Manure Dust Mountain. Ride our Dust Chute!)

Another month, another holiday.  As complements to Mother’s and Father’s Days, I have repeatedly proposed both Maiden Aunts Day and Perpetual Bachelor’s Day (Crack open a PBR…on PBD!) So far no takers, including those behind the Hallmark and Mayan calendars but, as always, I remain hopeful. The month of May also means American Idol is over so we can stop Talking like Aussie Keith Urban—every bit as addictive as talking like a pirate on Talk Like A pirate Day (Arrrrrrrr, avast, me hearties: a Thursday this year!) The difference is Idol spans many months and causes more permanent damage in friendships.

I can’t decide if the live voting that goes with TV shows these days is fun or saddening (How are the judges doing? Are they moronic? What about their hair? Yes or no?) Between that and young computer hackers sending viruses with creepy names and Trojan horses that “drop” malicious “payloads,” we oldsters are at a total loss. Maybe psychiatrists can tell us why these kids are so bloody angry. We know why we’re so bloody baffled. The world has become odd in our lifetime. Things are just…boggling. Tech confusion! Voter fraud! Bio-terrorism! Climate havoc! Calf implants! Oceans full of garbage! Economic pandemonium! Geez, it makes you long for a kilt and a good old-fashioned plague.  With some Crusades thrown in. Wait—maybe things weren’t so great in the past. But at least we know all about them; our new horrors we don’t understand yet. If youth is wasted on the young, history is wasted on the living. We don’t learn Jack from history, seems like. We just keep piling new horrors on the old.

In a world teetering on the brink of disaster, it is more pressing than ever to think on happy things. In this unimportant column, after some head shaking at the neo-Biblical mayhem of modern tymes, we strive for laffs, lemonade from lemons, and lerv.  People want good news, like how the re-opening of the Barnard General Store has proven the existence of a benevolent God, or when NPR news informs us that the honey bees’ Spontaneous Hive Collapse (a.k.a. “Colony Collapse Disorder” or “May Disease”) suddenly dropped by 50% this year. That means more bees generating warmth in the hive, giving them the energy they require to fly (they need to be warm to fly—don’t you?), so that they can pollinate the crops that feed this crazy planet.

Let’s hope all the flora—including trees flowering madly this year due to a legit winter without last year’s weirdly hot spring—will provide our busy fuzzy friends with the pollen and nectar they so richly deserve. Worth considering from the NPR report:  a woman suggested that humans (1) plant flowers and (2) be less fussy and let some weeds grow, as bees like ‘em. Thanks, NPR lady! Givin’ us advice we dig, makin’ our lives better. Less weeding = one item crossed off the To Do list = another perfect day in paradise. And thanks, European Union, for passing legislation (for two years, anyway) banning pesticides that might be behind the bees’ demise. Good work, EU.

Scientists are talking of bringing the dinosaurs back from extinction.  While they’re an old horror we know something about, we also know they’ll just walk all over the hives and everything else, breaking stuff, setting off nukes, and who knows what with their giant feet and pea-brains.  But maybe we’ll domesticate them (humanely!) as forms of mass transit (pterodactyl plane; brontosaurus bus; sea monster water taxi) or (lovingly!) make them walk (lumber?) on giant treadmills connected to power generators. I remain hopeful. As, I am certain, do you.  Good holiday, extra mayo, and good day.

I Love Old Shit

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Just the right height, baby.And by sh** I mean “things.” I like the color of them, their materials, engineering and, occasionally, smell.

This gem I got at the FREE table at the dump.  I call it my Gentlewoman’s Plunger—small and delicate enough for Lady.

With a clogged sink of late, I’d have paid yard sale top dollar—if only to buy a usable item headed for landfill that’s not yet been in a toilet. I hope.

Here’s some more old sh** I like:

How to serve crudites, a la 1957.

Flip side of trivet. From Taiwan, by way of…Mt. Vernon!

L’il avacado beauty.