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Autumn, Mourning, and Community Chorus

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Autumnal morning mist over Lake Champlain rises and becomes clouds

Dear Reader has probably gotten used to the fact that it is no longer summer. We fought its departure for a good while, having enjoyed such a glorious August here in Vermont. We did not want it to end. But: time marches on.

The low autumnal sun blinding us both outside the post office, an acquaintance mentions how weird it got once both her parents had died. October is weird for me. My parents died a few years apart, a few days apart, in October. I don’t mourn them together, I do it separately.

I mourn not having shown my mother enough gratitude over my lifetime. The woman was not thanked enough. I understand that this is not uncommon, but it’s also not okay. A mother said to me, “Oh, we don’t expect a lot of thanks!” But hell if most don’t deserve it … the diapers alone, which to this day I believe fall mostly into the hands (so to speak) of the mothers. I wish I could sit down with Mommy and thank her for every single thing. It would take hours.

I mourn my father’s loss of eyesight years before his death. He was so brave, walking blind to choir rehearsals at night. Once he told me, regarding my politics, that I was “just not that smart.” Well, Fathah, you were just not that smart walking around blind with no indication that you were blind, in a town with elderly motorists with not-great vision of their own! The man gardened and cleaned gutters on ladders, blind. The neighbors thought we were “letting” him do this. He was unstoppable. I’d find an old family photo to mail him and remember suddenly: Wait, he can’t see. Heartbreaking.

Admittedly, I’ve never been good at dates. I tested terribly in Social Studies when it came to dates of battles or peace accords or presidential terms. My own life is a mystery to me in terms of what years I lived where and did what. Parents have it easier, I say, because they can carbon date events based on their kids. (“Tobias was a toddler, so it must have been the early 2000s…”). I don’t even try to remember my life dates any more. I check my resume for that.

But this year at least, perhaps like Dear Reader, I have my parents’ dates of death (“the other DOD”) down cold. I’m going to honor each in some way, on their days. Maybe I’ll read to Fathah from my humble book, which he was so damn proud of though he couldn’t see it, despite a nuclear orange cover. And I’ll make a long list of Mommy’s many talents, presents, and services she provided for decades — undemanding of accolades and improperly compensated for same. I will thank her. It will take hours.

And then I will move on, knowing that if I’m alive in a year I’ll do it again. I endeavor, generally, to be cheery; I feel it’s our duty not to drag others down. I’ll do things that make me happy, and hopefully others. Sing and dance and laugh and goof off. Poke the stick at the tiger. Be fey and surprising and mischievous. Do pranks. Distract others from global unrest, from the miseries of their own lives. Let others do these things for me. Why not? Life is for the living. Those of us that are still here can and must exchange good energy.

To that end: if you’ve been thinking of joining a community chorus, it’s not too late, even if they’ve had 10 rehearsals. Community choruses are very forgiving; there’s always someone who will help you catch up. No auditions!

What I love about a community chorus is it’s like a train pulling out of the station. You’re not positive you really want to do it, so you’re jogging alongside of the train as it pulls out, just in case you decide you want to get on. It starts picking up speed. You have to trot faster as you ponder the pros and cons. You’ve invested a bit of energy and time now, and you’re leaning more towards Yes – just as it’s gaining real velocity and the pressure is mounting (from the other altos, or the person who collects the money). So you decide, ah hell, I might as well see where this thing is going, and you scramble aboard the moving train. You commit.

You meet experienced travelers, along with hacks like yourself. You realize there is no way you are going to pull off 14 songs, the way rehearsal is going. You dump this metaphor.

Rehearsal gets longer. You attend additional, desperate section rehearsals in an effort to pull it together. The director culls the songs you’re really destroying as a group. There’s still some doozies, in Latin or gibberish or a capella or with crazy-weird notes. At the eleventh hour you’re scrambling to learn your parts, which means rote memorization via some quality time with YouTube. You’re practicing in the car, the bathtub, the emergency room, the Port Authority bus terminal.

On the eve of the performance, chorus members are soiling their finery in abject terror at what might go wrong – it’s show time! Then somehow … your beloved, underdog community chorus … knocks it out of the park. You switch metaphors.

It’s a grand slam. The tenors, by God, they’ve learned their part and they’re belting it out, all six of them! The announcer bellows, FREE HOT DOGS FOR THE ENTIRE STADIUM. Your audience goes berserk over the hardest piece, the one the whole chorus never dreamed it could pull off, wondering why the heck the director wouldn’t cut it. The apple comes out. The fans go wild.*

Aren’t you glad you got on that train, Slugger? Good autumn, good mourning, good music making, and good day.

*Only knowers of Shea Stadium will get this reference.

Ann Aikens hosts a radio show, “Mostly Useless Advice,” on WFVR at royaltonradio.org. Her useful 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 at annaikens.com.

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.

Found Art

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Sometimes you stumble on something pleasing. Here we find: fresh masonry.

It’s interesting to consider how many artful efforts sit unheralded in homes and yards across the Land … indeed, the Universe. Hopefully admired by at least a lucky few.

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!

Change of Seasons, Change of Heart, Change

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At the end of an idyllic college reunion weekend, a friend said three words as we watched a classmate loading his car become morose. “Transitions are hard,” she whispered.

Truer words never spoken. I wish someone had said them to me decades ago. 

Because emotions are more dealable when you know why you’re feeling them. Such as: “I’m despondent because I’m going through a transition.” Not: “I’m overreacting.” Or “I’m losing my mind for no apparent reason.” At reunion, it was this: “I had the best time this weekend. I love my funny, smart college friends. Now I have to go home.”

Transitioning seasons is a hard one for many. Some lament the end of summer, particularly the gardeners and the sun- and water- lovers. Myself, I welcome fall. Summer drags on too long for me. When the sun shines, we feel obligated to make hay. When we have a summer with little rain, that’s a lot of haymaking. Read: outdoorsy work, socializing, exercising. There’s not much time to … reflect. It feels to me like a lot of “racing around,” as my mother would put it.

Fall’s shorter days heighten our more introspective inclinations, for good or bad. I savor the colors and the smells of autumn (if not the Leafer traffic), the harvest, the stews, the cooler temps, the colder waters. Stick season delights me, while it sends others spiraling downwards.  A few weeks ago was monarch butterfly season. Then, termite season. Now: wasps-looking-to get-in-the-house season. Some geese already heading south. Boom boom boom, one after the other. Change. 

The longer you live, more change. With each season, an anniversary: we remember something – or someone – now gone. Family and friends who have died. The houses loved, with so many memories, sold. My pal I used to take to the summer fried clam shacks or the fall apple festivals now unable to leave his residence! Nieces and nephews I rarely see! Who, when small, had inventive costumes for Halloween. (One Halloween the youngest declared she would be: “a marshmallow on a stick”. And she was). Little them, all running up and down streets for tricks and treats. I’m terribly nostalgic for those times. I am gladdened when anyone says they miss when their kids were young. Then I’m not alone.

I asked a college friend, what change was hard about becoming an empty nester? Was it that the house grew quiet, that you missed your daughter’s presence, that three was now two? He said, “All of it … and just … where did 20 years go?”

There’s that – the growing up of the youth below us – sometimes as the people above us, who took care of us, now need caretaking. And when the once-capable parents die, as a sage friend put it, “It’s like losing a roof over your head that you never even knew was there.” Heck, it’s hard enough for me when friends move away. 

Nostalgia is an odd thing, defined by Merriam-Webster as “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.” The American Heritage Dictionary takes it one further: “Homesickness; esp., a severe and sometimes fatal form of melancholia, due to homesickness.” Yipes! I hope I don’t have the fatal kind. I do hate change. Except for a change of heart. That I like.

I think we’re born with a degree of nostalgia, and life circumstances make it grow more for some people.  Some of us are barely nostalgic at all (I envy you), and some are what I call “nostalgia monsters.” A scientist might call us “superstalgics”. 

A niece and I are both that. We’ll talk about things we miss, and bawl. When I suggested that we are both nostalgia monsters, she said, “I’m so nostalgic that once I rearranged my room and immediately cried because I missed the way it ‘used to be’ an hour earlier.” (One advantage to kids’ growing up: their self-awareness and humor become more sophisticated.)

I’m not sure what function nostalgia serves. It’s mostly just painful. Perhaps, in the way spiritual and artistic and carpentry gatherings connect people within a community, nostalgia connects time within ourselves. It connects our present to our past in a mostly good way. There might be some biological survival-of-the-species value in this. I don’t know. All I know is I couldn’t bear saying goodbye to my elementary school teachers at year-end and I haven’t changed a bit.

It doesn’t matter how logically superstalgics think. We can’t embrace change when our heart is throbbing with sorrow.

Back to fall. Stick season was at one time, for me, a harbinger of the noisy, wonderful family gatherings of Thanksgiving. But my family doesn’t have those any more. My mommy was the center of them, as a mother so often is. Maybe, with age, you have less to look forward to in general. For yourself. You can be happy for the pivotal events in the lives of those younger, but for you, not that much is happening. Maybe you can’t get off work for holidays, or traveling has become difficult. Maybe money is tight, and you can’t visit your people. I get it all.

So if you wax gloomy as the leaves fall, I feel your pain. I won’t say, “Let us embrace change!” any more than I’d say, “Let us wrap barbed wire around hot dogs and eat them!” But I for one can and must distract myself from nostalgia. “Life is for the living,” my sage friend says. 

I yank myself into the present. I help others as able, attend the New World Festival, the Tunbridge Fair, the Morrill Homestead Apple and Cheese Festival, consider crafting holiday gifts. I ponder the Covid-19 test called BinaxNOW and wonder if the NOW indicates urgency, or if it’s an acronym (No Organisms Within?), and whether NOW should be applied to other products, such as TortillasNOW, Old SpiceNOW, or – definitely – ImmodiumNOW. Needs an exclamation point. 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; her blog is uppervalleygirl.com.

Prize-winning entry in the Children’s Decorated Vegetables at the Tunbridge World’s Fair

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.

Another Snow Oddity

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You’ll never guess what this is, so I’ll just tell you.

Years ago, a neighbor kid was practicing casting his fishing rod out in the yard. The fishing hook got caught way up, in a dead tree branch. He got his line free by yanking hard enough to break the brittle branch. Since, a little piece of that broken branch has hung from a piece of fishing line attached to a higher branch.

I do not understand the dynamics of what happened. But I do welcome unsolved mysteries in nature. Whenever I see the broken branch twirling on the invisible fishing line, seemingly hovering in the air, it cracks me up. It really cracked me up after yesterday’s storm — the snow piled high upon it, the fishing line invisible as always. I may be the only person who knows it exists. I’m definitely the one that appreciates it most.

Another Chance to Ski Vermont

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Another solid dumping, two feet expected by 2 a.m.!
Or maybe you’re a birder. Git your binos on?
If you look closely, you will see 3 birds frozen in flight — always weird.
Oddly, this photo was not converted to B&W.
Also of note: this article in The Atlantic says crows are moving to the city.

Free eBooks and Prizes Start Monday!

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Free eBooks on the Amazon start Monday – click the $0.00 eBook on the right, not the Kindle one, to goose my algo. A REVIEW would be so welcome! Join my email list at annaikens.com and you may win a PRIZE. Great good fun.

How To Be Funny

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Years ago, after a heartbreak (the first of many), I decided to stretch myself. I learned then that, of all things, fear can boost you out of the hole. Fear trumps all other emotions – logically I guess, as a survival mechanism. 

I had worked at and frequented comedy clubs for years, so I went that route of fear: performing (not, say, cliff diving.)  After said heartbreak, I took a comedy class (lame), attempted standup (terrifying; developed periscope-like tunnel vision of audience), and somehow got into an improv group (practice sessions riotous, even though I never got to “play,” as improvers call it, on show nights, my motorcycle constantly croaking in sketchy NYC neighborhoods after shows). 

Anyway, here goes: How To Be Funny

Hang Out with Funny People

Imagine if you ate breakfast every day with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner. That was Rob Reiner’s youth. No way he (the director of the fake “rockumentary” This Is Spinal Tap) was not going to grow up to be funny.

Callbacks

This is when you refer to something mentioned earlier in your “set” – or conversation – that made people laugh the first time. Everyone loves callbacks. They’re like, “Oh, I remember that funny thing; that was funny, even funnier now, HAW, how clever!” This is not your classic callback, but close enough, and funny as hell.

Footnotes and Parenthetical Insertions

Use for unexpected laffs. The weirder the better, I find.

Sarcasm

Growing up, our parents used sarcasm to great comedic effect, especially while driving. “Yo Einstein, find a parking spot already, it’s not that complicated.” “Hey Quicksilver, the pedal on the right is for the GAS.” I later learned that my favorite aged kid is eight, because they’ve learned sarcasm but still respect authority. This doesn’t last. Well, the sarcasm does.

And my personal favorite…

The Absurd

Example: Rodentologist and author of “Raising Hamsters Right” urges owners to guide their rodents with a firm hand from the get-go. “Establishing dominance is the name of the game. Letting your hamster think it’s in charge can have disastrous effects.” (Point being: Who can train a hamster?)

Be Like My Dad

He recently had a flu shot and his shoulder hurt. I said,”You should probably be drinking a lot of water.” His reply: “I’ll probably be drinking a lot of gin.”

See Live Comedy and Improvisational Comedy

Best viewed with a group, IMHO. Get a posse and go. GREAT standup show coming up at Randolph’s Chandler in October called the Ivy League of Comedy. Go! Saw them twice and they so rocked. Anyone who knows where to find good improv locally, I’m all ears. My contact info below. Nothing is funnier than improv. You’ll LERV it.

Create a Flash Mob

While working banquet at a stranger’s wedding? Bar mitzvah?

Or, If Unmotivated…

Watch flash mobs on YouTube. The bystanders’ reactions are priceless.

Tell Disgusting True Stories

Like how when I lived in a tiny walk-up in SoHo, New York, I subsisted on take-out pizza, sushi, and bagels. Never cooked. One day after 2 years I opened my oven and an absolute waterfall of cockroaches cascaded out. (They call that The Nest.) My neighbors thought I was being murdered, from the screaming. Imagine if you passed out, and they’d scrambled all over you? This story always gets a laugh and amusing faces of disgust. Note parenthetical insertion.

Tell Flagrant Lies to Amuse Self and Friends

At a boring party? Spice it up. Haul your friend over to someone you both don’t know. Ask the person what they do for a living (very American). Acknowledge their work. Then say, “Sheila here is a rodentologist studying the rat population of minor cities. She started out as a trapeze artist, didn’t you, Sheila? It will be Sheila’s job to keep a straight face and elaborate. (Note: This is a callback in two ways: the hamster reference, plus this game is straight out of improvisational comedy.)

Watch Funny Shows/Movies

I know a cosmic person who says his secret to inner peace is meditation and watching funny movies. With his mom.

I’ve been thinking, since recent flicks “Barbie” and “Theater Camp” had me howling, that what the world needs now (besides love*) is funny, yes, funny. Come on writers and directors, crank out those comedies — highbrow, lowbrow, we don’t care. Bring it awn. Go see comedies in the theater. The shared experience crushes home viewing.

Suggested Movies: A Short and Largely Obscure List of Comedic Brilliance

Not necessarily entirely comedies, but mega-comical moments:

Bridesmaids, Go (clever ensemble piece; the Amway scene!), Wonder Boys, Mother (Albert Brooks and Debbie Reynolds GEM), After Hours (Linda Fiorentino hottt!). Barbie is worth it for the dance numbers with Ryan Gosling, a former New Mickey Mouse Club alum who can DANCE.

Mel Brooks: Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, and High Anxiety.

Forget Paris: the pigeon scene with Debra Winger

Stuber: So, so good. You won’t regret. Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista!

The Spy Who Dumped Me: the chase scene alone…Milla Kunis and Kate McKinnon

Three Woody Allen movies you may not have seen that kill: Small Time Crooks (Tracy Ullman), Hollywood Ending (absurd plot, luminescent Tea Leoni), Manhattan Murder Mystery (Diane Keaton)

Cricket On The Hearth: old-school animated Christmas movie my nieces love.

Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion (when they ask for a Business Woman’s lunch)

Pink Panther flicks (“It’s not my phaone.”)

Bill Murray: Scrooged and Caddyshack

Groundhog Day: romantic to boot!

The Royal Tenenbaums

Overboard: I’ve seen it 10 times and I do not re-watch movies.

Anchorman (I’ve never seen)

Christopher Guest: Best in Show

Napoleon Dynamite: The dance sequence, you’ll be afire

Alan Arkin (total god): Glen Gary Glenross, Little Miss Sunshine, The Russians Are Coming The Russians are Coming

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: another old nugget

Meet the Fockers (I’ll tell you a funny story if you ask at contact info below)

Shows: Maybe another column, with Dear Reader’s input? Your call. Good day.

*Nod to Burt Bacharach

Ann Aikens has released a darkly comical yet uplifting book of advice, A Young Woman’s Guide to Life: A Cautionary Tale, available on Amazon and local Vermont shops. She has written her Upper Valley Girl column since 1996. Information at annaikens.com.

Cutie pie Ginger! At top is Marshmallow; RIP our classic darling. You brought only joy.