Category Archives: personal

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

If you’ve never attended an Eastern Orthodox Easter service…

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…here are images for you.

Traditional Easter foodstuffs brought to church to be blessed.

Don’t forget to get your sausage blessed!

At one point, everyone leaves the service to circle the church three times while a madman pounds on the bells in the carillon — crazy loud. Crazy good.

Tree of eggs.

XPUCTOC BOCKPECE! Looks like Zuptock Bockpeace to me, but is of course pronounced nothing like that. And no one finds it funny. At all.

Nothing spoils nature’s splendour

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Hover over photos for secret commentary.

… like garbage.

Green Up Day in Vermont is a day when the people of the Land take to the roadsides, woods, and riversides to pick up all the crap left behind — or thrown from cars — by careless losers. (No photo available.)

People of all ages out with their special green bags (and latex gloves) stumble upon points of interest as a reward. Today I saw I giant marshmallow, a tricked out tree, and a [Northern?] Magnolia. I learned that beef from grass-fed cows contains the recommended ratio of omega 6s to omega 3s (3:1), and that cows fed hay cut from the flood zone after Hurricane Irene had guts blackened by snails in the grass. Sooper ick.

If You Hate Keurig Cup Waste

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Every day is Earth Day with Ekobrew.

…and I know you do, here’s a swell little gadget by Ekobrew just in time for Green Up Day. You fill it with your own coffee (at a mighty savings) and throw nothing into landfill. Ahhh.

Tips: I got mine on eBay. Use a medium to coarse grind. The basket empties much easier if you let it dry out. It’s hard to get the full aroma with decaf, so I switched to flavoured coffees. There are videos on YouTube on its use; this guy fairly compares the rivals. I refuse to buy Keurig’s version of the device because, welllll, they certainly took their time in making it, now didn’t they?

Find out what your Vermont town is doing for Green Up Day here. Catch you by the river.

Spring Fever: Spring Sprang Sprung

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We’re all just daffy.

Vermonters are duped by none of spring’s standard heralds: the calendar, the lusty hammering of the male woodpecker, or flower bulbs emerging. The 2013 groundhog’s malfeasance in violation of the public trust was widely rebuked, his handlers penalized, justice served—and Vermont stood solidly behind that decision—but we know better. We don’t shelve our snow tires ’til deep into the month even when it’s 75 degrees mid-month.

It’s not just us enduring global weirding. Motorists in MA were doing 360s on I-91 in many inches of ice balls pouring from the sky last week, and in NY there were tree-felling microbursts. In two recent trips to the Carolinas, I failed to witness the Carolina blue skies. They were more like Carolina Pre-owned Off-White Skies, from Sears.

Carolina Off-white.

Yet the return of spring is promised by the reappearance of air freshener (canned fresh air!) named Spring Breeze. They must be canning it elsewhere because the spring breezes in my area smell exactly like the tons of fertilizer trucked into a nearby corn field. Brings tears to your eyes, and not in the puppy-sleeping-in-a-meatloaf-pan kind of way, more in the my-eyeballs-are-boinin’-up way. I hope the canned Spring Breeze smell better than ours, and than Yankee Candle’s “Country Linens,” which smells like you hosed the place down with bleach. They should call it “Country Clorox.” If there’s anything more fun than naming candle scents, nail polish colors, or ski trails, I don’t know what that is.

Tappin’ it old school.

Due to travel screwed up by the [nice people] at Expedia.com, I am behind in local news. I’m guessing mud season was a banner year for sap, and for the sapsuckers far and wide who guzzle the glorious maple nectar of the Land. It’s nice when nature smiles on you for a change, along with the elusive orb that had Vermonters asking all winter, “Where’s that big yellow thing usta be in the sky?”

Well, Spring Fever is definitely in the air. It’s pretty much Antics City as cloudy skies haven’t stopped woodpeckers from advertising for dates, squirrels from chasing each other around their condos, and children’s eyes from swapping out the blackboard for the window. Reminds me of when the Lorris twins moved to town in the 70s. The girl was a law- (and Safety Patrol-) abiding citizen; her brother anything but. On a spring day, we had for 8^th grade English one of education’s most sad combinations: a timid substitute teacher. Naturally, we seized our advantage. Someone’s bright idea was to jump out the windows and make a run for it. They should call it Spring Idiocy.

To facilitate our escape, one Lorris twin graciously offered to “create a diversion.” We weren’t sure what that meant, but it became evident when, five minutes into class while Miz Timorous struggled through roll call, said twin suddenly howled, waved his arms wildly, then sprinted out of the room. Miz Tim, terrified, sprang after him while the rest of us made a break for it out the windows. We made the two-foot drop to the grass and ran full-throttle to the tennis courts where we shrugged. “OK, we’re sprung. What now?” We had no plan, you see. We ended up back in the classroom with no authority the wiser (it was the 70s) and a nice little shenanigan under our belt.

In closing, to put a spring in my girlfriends’ steps, a longtime male friend had this to say just last week: “What’s the appeal of 35 year-olds? To me, there is nothing sexier than a woman our age that looks good.” I adore him because, I assure you, “our age” is more than a couple years above 35. They should call it “old.” Oh wait, they do.

You don’t have to take my advice—you rarely do—but consider this: roll around half-naked in the sun, huff spring breezes, feel good about your age, get the fever, have a plan, execute it, do a shenanigan, and call it a (good) day.

Vermont Spring Bumper Stickers:

Gone Muddin’

Got Mud?

My Dog for Mayor

If We Ignore The Environment, It Just May Go Away.

This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land. Now Stay on Your Land.

White Squirrel Car Wash

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McLoving rural America

When a place is known for something, people name their businesses after it. So everything in town is called the [What This Place Is Known For] Laundromat, the [What This Place Is Known For] Grill, the [What This Place Is Known For] Shoe Repair. The confusion — and occasional beauty — of that is you say to your husband, “Honey, I’m going down to the White Squirrel,” and he thinks you mean the dry cleaners, when in fact you’re meeting Sheila at the bar for a quick pop.

Brevard, NC, is known for its white squirrels, reportedly escaped from a carnival in the 1940s.

Catch you at the White Squirrel.

The Mullet is Making a Comeback

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Well, business in front when you have a SHIRT on.

The mullet goes back to the 60s. But that nascent coiff wasn’t the x-treme Kentucky Waterfall the mullet (d)evolved into. No, the Tennessee Tophat, Ape Drape, Missouri Compromise, Camaro Cut, Louisiana Purchase, Sho-long, Mississippi Mudflap, or what we in Vermont like to call the Canadian Passport reached its perfected plumage potential — fueled for take-off by Bono and MacGyver and adapted by NASCAR trendsters into the sooperhot, pants-dropping fem-mullet — in the 1980s. When fashion did things it had never done before and hopefully will never do again. Business in the front, party in the back…right on.

As People of Walmart have proven, the mullet is making a comeback.

[April Fools’.]

The Beast of the East

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They use the term loosely.

…to Vermonters means Killington ~ and that means spring skiing, baby. Some Nor’Beaster events remain, including the Pond Skim and Sunrise Easter Service, so pack your gear, Bible and bikini, and head north. I don’t know what ollies, rails or grabs are, but the Beast has them in spades for shredding.

For those who detest swinging in a chair lift at 10 below in 30 mph winds, now’s the time. White carpeting! Blue ceiling! No death cookies or Pocono Pavement! The hum of the lift!

Then…silence. Silence sometimes when you’re still on the lift because they stop it for casualties. An impatient friend jumped off once, but I prefer to sit and think up new trail names with my nieces. Like: Hell in a Handbasket, Mother-in-law, Casket, Highway to Hell, Pay the Piper, Upper Anthrax, Lower Anthrax, Undertaker, You’re Going To Hell, Ice Cream, Cupcake, and Sooperbunny.

The Fine Print

You Are Here.

When someone wipes out so bad their gear goes flying in a 10-foot radius it’s called a Yard Sale, often held by a Kickin’ Chicken. Live the lexicon.

Catch you on Sooperbunny.

Riding the Rails with a Taste for Danger

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Your ride’s here.

When you travel alone, weird things happen. Once, I wished to take a photo from the caboose of a moving train and the last car was closed, so the (service-oriented? crazed?) conductor took me back there solo. It became a possibility, at least in my mind, that this was a disgruntled government worker gonna throw me off. When you travel alone, problem is: no witnesses. You take your chances. I whistled a tune, looked him in the eye, and said thank you. Criminologists say this can work. Worth a shot.

Her name is Sal.

Good news about Amtrak: the feds have bankrolled track upgrades, shortening The Vermonter by 30 minutes with plans to add The Montrealer back in. Second, they are dumping the old engines and beater cars from the late 60s and 70s, which have amortized nicely (RIP, doors that won’t stay closed in the can!) Third, that weird, time-consuming three-point turn in Massachusetts is going away. As a friend reflected, “I have to remind myself every time that I’m not in Thailand…or Haiti.”

Because I hadn’t ridden the rails in years, I planned a big, fat, round-trip voyage from VT to NC. What a gas: the train pulling into the station! Uniformed conductors! Union Station in DC! Quaint town of Southern Pines! Dining en train with (paper) table cloths! Looking for spies in the Café Car! Bringing that nuclear cheeseburger back to you seat! Great good fun.

Climate control in the old cars was, not surprisingly, an issue. On one leg the sleeper car was positively brisk (Nutter One: “It’s miserable.”) On another, the coach car was boiling (Nutter Two: “We could do Hot Yoga in the aisle.”) But the service was consistently lovely, and despite some [wicked] late starts, we always arrived…on time. In the Sleeper Car, you can sit on one seat and put your legs up on the other—it even has its own toilet and microsink—or climb onto the upper bunk, prop yourself up on (multiple!) pillows, and watch the world unfold. Fabulous.

Yes, to the lulling chug of the train, you can watch America go by, with all her rivers, forests, factories, farms, graffiti, skylines, and sunsets as you amble around chatting up your co-travelers, read, knit, sleep—try that from behind the wheel. The Quiet Car is strictly enforced, so you can escape rowdy pinochle players and cell phone jawbaggers (not true in Business Class, but there you get free newspapers and all the soda and coffee you can guzzle, which in my case is a lot so I actually made money; you might curb intake for now because the can is definitely the old trains’ Achilles’ heel.) Unlike on a plane, if you get into trouble, you could probably hurl yourself off with some chance of survival. And with Amtrak, you can break up your trip, scheduling overnight stops at no extra ticket cost if you plan it right. On one such “layover” I had a grand time in Baltimore; on another I laughed so hard with a friend and a bottle of premium tequila in Manhattan that our pants broke.

While it wasn’t exactly balmy in North Carolina, I was glad for one last stroll down memory lane aboard the old, roomy, soon-to-be 86’d—yet nicely amortized—iron horse. Old or new, you can’t predict what will happen astride her. You could end up fingering spies or sipping beezers with a Swede with a hollow leg…you just never know. May you make such a journey yourself, complete with the lure of nutters and unknown dangers whetting your dormant taste for adventure. All Aboard! Good day.

Bon appetit!

The 1968 engine was part of the first car.

What Trenton Makes…

There’s more than 1 way to get thrown off Amtrak.

Your single sleeper.

Union Station in DC

Farewell, DC!

“Snow” in Southern Pines.

Southern…pines.

	uppervalleygirl on When Your Parents Die
	Bob Barnshaw on When Your Parents Die
	mulberryrabbit on When Your Parents Die
	Irene on When Your Parents Die
	Irene Bucior on 20 Years Later…

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