Category Archives: rural

If There’s One Thing You Can Count On

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AYE, ‘TIS SPRING!

Except for a portion in the middle, our entire lifetime is about nonstop change. When you’re growing up, it’s all change always; in the middle, while others around you change, things can stay the same for you for a long stretch (enter career burnout); then, without warning, you’re over the crest and there’s a mess of other changes. Some are okay. Most are no good at all.

Some folks are flexible with change. I’m not one of them. I’m accepting in minor ways (flight delays), but not in major ones (wanting children to stay the same age forever). I recently visited my hometown library. It was exactly the same (good) except for more computers (okay) and people gabbing at top volume (bad).  The librarian was loud. A tutor was yelling. A woman pitched a fit with her belongings, unpacking and repacking them noisily. I was frothing and dying to bray at the lot of them, “That’s why God invented Starbucks, you crazy ruders. This is a library!” but I didn’t. New Yorkers blast each other but I’ve been Vermontized (good), so now I can’t (bad).

I couldn’t stand it when The River and WEBK went country years ago; I’m still angry.  WEBK had this stoner-sounding DJ who’d play the Hot Breakfast—a slamming live version of a song—while we non-farmers drove to work.  One day it was Van Halen’s “Feel Your Love Tonight”, a song I’ve never thought about twice. The content is fratty, but oh, the live harmonies!

The River was a truly great radio station and KCRW, fun. I like how country music shuts my brain down but not how it takes over other stations. Country didn’t change for decades (good), but it’s changed a lot in recent years (bad), as have its award shows (sooper bad). Between that, our loss of privacy via creepy surveillance, technological advances we can’t keep pace with, and now—get this—brides-to-be dieting via nasal feeding tubes, the seventh sign of the apocalypse cannot be far off. The seventh sign is reportedly silence, so you’re safe at my hometown library.

Yes, you’ve definitely topped the hill and are skidding down the descending side when (1) noise gets to you and (2) you’re in Shaw’s asking “Who is this ‘Katy Perry’?” with the teen checkers eyeballing you like a squawking, wing-flapping pterodactyl. I can deal with that. What’s vexing is celebrities getting younger. Is he shaving yet? Is kissing legal at her age? Who are these people?

I like Adele, because she cusses and sports her luscious heft without apology. But geez, can’t anyone have a last name any more? Is it a sign of unimportance? There’s someone named, simply, Fantasia? Isn’t that like being called Song of the South? I’m naming my kid Dumbo.  Dumbo’s gonna be huge. I hope it’s a boy.

We went to a multiplex near Manhattan and no one was there (bad). No one’s going to movies! Easy to miss this new development in Vermont, where sparsely-attended movies are common. But in Westchester County, the cultured pearl of NYC suburbia?! Where are her ill-mannered youth threatening to sue each other in the parking lot? Gone to the screening rooms in their McMansions?  (Good!)

As for the McAutomization of Planet Earth, with billers urging us to Go Green because they care deeply [about cutting costs], let’s just automate the crap out of everything.  Have one employee doing it all, with endless recorded “customer service” loops (“Press 666 for a Horseman of the Apocalypse to ride to your house and finish you off.”)

The Olympics are coming. Brace yourself: the athletes are different. Who are these children? Forget the former Olympians (washed up at…25?) pastured out to commentary and well-wishing; where’s Peggy Fleming? That’s who’s supposed to be at the podium, people. Help me out. Switch the channel to Lawrence Welk. I mean Dick Clark. I mean Don Cornelius. I mean that show with the host. The young guy.

If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s change. Terrible, terrible change.  It’s smart to save yourself a ton of grousing and just adapt. After Hurricane Irene pounded my garden last August, I’m white flaggin’ it for a more surefire hobby. A hammock-based activity, perhaps. Like any bad habit, I’ll have to nurture it to make it grow. But that, dear Reader, is a topic for another—and good—day.

Mad as a March Hare, Mad as a Hatter

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“Dwarf Hare” by Capt. McGee, 2012, crayon and Sharpie® on paper

The March Hare is not a randomly named character in Alice in Wonderland. “Mad as a March hare” is an English expression referring to the peculiar behavior of hares during mating season when, among other odd activities, disinterested females use their forelegs to box off amorous males. I didn’t know any of this an American child and, further, thought “mad” meant “angry”.  Why was the Mad Hatter angry?
He wasn’t, of course. “Mad” means “nutty” to the English, and “mad as a hatter” comes from when mercury was used to process hat felt. Hat factory workers eventually got mercury poisoning and went “mad.” Those crazy Brits. They have another word for everything.

What’s making me mad is climate change. It’s not just those irrepressible mental images of crumbling, far-away polar ice in Al Gore’s documentary giving me a rash; it’s how at least one season every year is now whacked out. So far: a truncated, nearly snowless winter. That snow is gone. Even the mud is almost gone. Golf courses are opening and people are smacking balls—no doubt to the distracting aroma of liquid manure, as farmers have gotten clearance to spread the vile potion earlier this year.
A friend mentioned a column I wrote 15 years ago about those Vermont homes you see with mass quantities of cut wood outside, inducing jealousy with their display of cozy security and relative wealth. She recalled that column as being about “wood envy”, which is much funnier than what I actually wrote. Our conversational point being that even ordinary people didn’t use up their wood this winter.
What’s been good for home-heaters has been bad for the ski industry. Which affected our tourism industry; no one comes to Vermont for MUD. Our sugaring season was totally screwy, and now Sugar on Snow parties are being conducted with antiquated Sno-Cone® machines retrieved from attics. Hey, we have Sugar on Snow parties in March, snow or no snow. It’s what we do. The show must go on.
For those of us whose preferred season is winter and whose favorite spice is bacon, an early onset spring is a drag. I for one am hardly ready for gardening, golf, or mosquitoes. And I’m definitely not ready for salads. When temps hit the 80s last week (in March?), many were McLovin’ it, scampering about in terry rompers yelling “This is great!” I’m thinking: “This is creepy.”  My ‘hood smelled like a hot sheet of baking septic. Which says something about the “mud” liberally spread chez nous by Irene.
Like some of you, I’m just not ready, man.  I miss my long winter’s naps and digging into a good book under a heavy blanket. Snowshoes in the corner now seem quaint relics better suited as decorative wall hanging purposes than tools of fun.  But you know March: mad as a hatter and out like a lion. After some torrid days, it’s back to that limbo when you’ve got the WINTER box of clothes cozied up next to the SUMMER box until…Mother Nature makes up her bloomin’ mind. It’s an excellent time of year to get sick. And to kill seedlings left on the porch at night by mistake.
Might as well run with it; we can fight the weather no more than we can the passage of time. Pretty soon mother mooses, pregnant with the next round, will be giving their yearlings the hoof and those bewildered sons will roam the Land wreaking havoc.   Mother humans will be handing their babies to the last Republican standing (“Here, take this!” Snap.) With shorts season thrust unexpectedly upon us ahead of schedule, we must quickly trade in our doughy thighs, Ben and Jerry’s “camel’s hump in front”,   and pastry bottoms for firm haunches, ripped abs, and glutes of concrete.
Sounds like a lot of work. Wellll, the alternative is sporting thick swags of mottled goobermeat in our bathing suits two months earlier than usual.  So shelve the bacon and break out your juicers, kayaks, and athletic supports. It’s maddening but we’ll adjust. With felt hat on head and racket in hand and crazy, glowing Village of the Damned eyeballs rolling in our heads, we’ll sally forth in an energetic manner as if this were all a perfectly normal—and good—day.

It Takes Courage

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COURAGE

March means National Peanut Month, National Craft Month, National Frozen Food Month, and National Nutrition Month–which conflicts with both the frozen foods and St. Patrick’s Day but OK on the peanuts. For other special days, you’ve got Earth Day, National Clam on the Half Shell Day (shared with Bunsen Burner Day) and of course the Ides of March.

February was Oscar month, when highly paid actrons laud each other at a microphone for their “courage” and “bravery” onstage, and the incredible “choices” made in their “important work.” One of my friends won’t watch the Oscars, saying that “Courage is living with Stage IV cancer…important work is building houses in Haiti.”

I agree, but I also think courage is recycling your Bowel Prep Kit at the dump.

Mama You Ain’t Lived

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I EAT IT WITH A FORK AND KNIFE

…till you done ate a Fried Twinkie.  All molten goo on the inside/re-heated donut on the outside, with a dusting of powdered sugar on top…the South has risen. At least until the chapter-elevening Hostess quits [baking?] them at the [laboratory?]  Get your order in now at the Square Biscuit in Northfield, VT.

Those Three Precious Words

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YOU CAN MAKE “LERV” FROM RECYCLED MATERIALS…          IF YOU’RE PATHETIC.

I’m a miser. I used to think this a terrible word, until I met a friend who described her father as such, with love. Some of my most generous friends are misers. My miserliness stems in part from a poverty mentality, and in part from recycling sickness—a deranged preoccupation with minimal waste. Waste of effort, time, heating oil, coin, anything.

In childhood, I’d save odd bits and refashion them into, say, a spool-and-coaster coffee table for my dollhouse. A cricket cage from diner toothpicks and modeling clay. Seemed normal. I’ve always composted, used soap down to slivers, and stockpiled boxes and packaging materials. It didn’t become a sickness until later, when on vacation I’ll find myself crazily unable to throw out plastic or glass.  I’ll force myself to put a jar in the waste basket. Retrieve it. Wash it. Pack it, and haul it home.  Some consider this normal behavior. But precious few.

Paper I don’t sweat as much because it biodegrades. A colleague once said, “I don’t drink for a month to kid myself that I’m not an alcoholic.”  Throwing out paper makes me feel a rung above the real recychos. But no way I can chuck a magazine, even recycle it. Recycling is a dirty business. Magazines go to my local hospital for maximum usage. Judging by the high-end glossies in the waiting room, I’m not alone. It’s like a library in there.

Now I don’t transport them by horse and buggy, I burn fossil fuels and rubber driving the magazines (“Driving Ms. Magazine”).  I maniacally calculate the best use for other unwanted items and distribute them, at a ridiculous expenditure of thought, time, and gasoline, to the precisely appropriate recipient. The repository can be a person, a consignment shop, a non-profit thrift store, or the free section at the dump.  In that order. A fine pair of pants, for example, cannot go to consignment to be sold at a low price; they must go to a person I know who will value them.  Last place: that global bin thing where, at least if no one buys them, they are shredded into mattress stuffing or something. Zero waste isn’t my goal, but pretty bloody close.

Miserliness. On old sitcoms, there were housewives obsessed with bargains. That is I. If it’s on sale for a dollar off, I’m interested. If there’s also a dollar-off-now coupon on it, I’m in. Doesn’t matter what it is. But because I’m alone, I don’t consume much. So I have to redistribute all the bargains. Trot out the horse and buggy.

Food’s another area of lunacy.  From my waitressing years, watching buckets of meals go into dumpsters, I can’t bear wasting food. One of my favorite buys is the ham salad that delis make from unsliceably thin ham ends that would otherwise be tossed. Once informed that expiration dates on foods err far to the side of caution, I learned to dig markdowns. I’ll buy anything with a $2 OFF sticker, freeze it, and eventually get around to cooking it, knowing it was on its last legs. In the Vermont vernacular, so aren’t I.

My TV is from the dump. You cannot adjust the volume with the remote.  It eats videotapes, which I buy at yard sales. Why do I keep this? It’s madness. Speaking of which.

I was telling a friend about my hand-me-down lawnmower that often wouldn’t start. I’d pull the cord until my arm turned black, cuss, and borrow the neighbor’s. Friend offered me a push mower. “I have five,” he explained with a shrug, “I had a yard sale problem.”  Compulsive bargain-hunting, that. Two maple syrup dispensers (I never make pancakes), a luggage rack (I never have guests), and three round table cloths (I own no round tables) later, I too kicked the habit.

And so the three magical words I honor this Valentine’s Day, a disappointing “holiday” detested by many, are of course not i love you. They are:  reduced to clear. There’s no way I’m ignoring an item marked with those three beauties, unless it’s something so bizarre I don’t know anyone who’d use it.  Which doesn’t leave a whole hell of a lot.  Gummy Geritol®? Gefilte fish off season? Very specific ointments? If I don’t need it, at 75% off I’m perty sure I know someone who does. Catch you in the candy aisle on February 16. Good recycling, good stockpiling, good redistribution, good “holiday”… and good day.

Sooper Cake for a Sooper Bowl

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IT’S SOOPER

“What is it?” I asked a no-nonsense farm woman at the grocery store.  She glanced briefly. “A helmet.”

Two friends thought it was Louisiana. Which is nowhere near Indiana, New York, or New England. Maybe the mold was left over from Sooper Bowl XLIV–or the prior year’s Mardi Gras.

Or perhaps this baked good was outsourced to Indonesia where they don’t play football. I thought the (edible?) XLVI circle thing should be orient-ated 45 degrees counter-clockwise, but my sources tell me it’s good.  So if you lose your helmet, technically, you could wear this.

Entirely Possible Predictions for 2012

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BALLS

It’s one time of year everyone keenly anticipates—no, not Ice Dancers Interpret the Music of STYX, the Sooper Bowl, ski season, or even Oscar® season—rather, the various news outlets’ Predictions for the New Year. The below makes me think we should go deeper into the future next time…get your wheels turning for 2013 submissions.

Predictions about 2011 from a 1911 Ladies Home Journal (at http://imgur.com/bwUWM) included:  horses, rats, and mice will become extinct; coal will not be used for cooking; Nicaragua will ask to be part of the Union, Americans will be taller by 4”, autos will be cheaper than horses…plus prophetic visions of the escalator, “air ships”, medical imaging, and global wireless telephone “and telegraph” circuits, pneumatic tubes delivering goods directly the homes of the wealthy (= the Internet + UPS?), and “peas as large as beets.” We’re behind on that one.

For 2012…here you go. All submitted by friends.

From California

None this year. Bunch of laggards. You’re out of work; I know you have time.

From Florida

Lady Gaga garners the VP nomination for the Republican Party.

From Kansas

Radio stations start playing silence because it is better than current popular music.

From Massachusetts

Rick Perry comes out. (This submitted before he, er, pulled out.)

From Missouri

After a warm winter resulting in lower heating bills, American citizens begin burning more coal (by cooking???) to speed up global warming.

Greece breaks off from the Euro in order to devalue the drachma and restart its economy via tourism. Doesn’t work – no one wants to vacation in a country of starving people. Or do they?

From New Hampshire

Angelina and Brad become surrogates for Jennifer Aniston’s baby. Angelina will carry the egg(s) to term and deliver the baby(ies) on a remote Pacific island, then hand [them] over to Jennifer at LAX.

Tom Brady will get a tattoo of three green gummy bears.

“I will break up Colin Firth’s marriage.”

From New York

Mitt Romney will win the Republican nomination and do a victory lap with a dog attached to the top of his car “in an airtight kennel.”

Apple will introduce the iPhone 666® which calls whomever you’re thinking about. Which can be problematic.

Medical science will determine that post-menopausal women are predisposed to weight gain so that when old ladies fall down we have something to land on so we don’t break our keisters; insurance rates drop for plus-size women over 50.

Occupy Wall Street morphs into Occupy Arby’s nationwide.

A new Weight Watchers app delivers repeated high-voltage zaps if you approach stressors, including people, that make you overeat.

Government officials will be picked as in jury draws—via computer from a local population.  History proves that no matter whom we elect, the economy and public education stink, unemployment is high, no one can afford a mortgage, our great-grandchildren will be paying down the national debt, and gasoline prices will rise. Might as well “elect” a neighbor whose house you can TP instead of someone you can’t even talk to.

From North Carolina

In a collective pot shot at the Tea Party, at the 2012 Republican Convention the Republican Party is re-named the Beer & Cheese Party for its roots in Racine, Wisconsin.

From Pennsylvania

The Republican Party is shaken when Mitt and Newt profess their love for each other, then head to the Andes to raise alpacas.

From Texas

As more young women start dressing like Lady Gaga, prom dresses will be made of meat.

From Corporate America

Many will utilize value-added deliverables, organically, as they leverage synergistic solutions.

From Vermont

Due to extreme variations in temperatures, Vermonters will open their pools this winter, converting them back and forth from swimming pools to skating rinks as temps dictate.

Rap music will disappear while rock band reunion tours become increasingly ridiculous with older bands in tighter leather leggings and plunginger necklines with bigger, more-dyed hair and arthritically large—though delicately manicured—hands. And that’s just the men.

The ozone layer will recover so that Italy no longer goes tropical five months of the year.

And my personal favorites:

  1.  I predict Mitt Romney will get the Republican nomination.  I predict Ron Paul will run as an Independent. I predict Barack Obama will serve another term. His term will end when the world ends on December 21 of this year.
  2. Our computer passwords will never expire. That is, until the world ends on December 21 of this year.
  3. Eaton’s Sugar House will begin serving fondue.

Good day, and good year.

Sent from my Dixie Cup on a string

It’s a Wonderful Tree

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The Mitten Tree

Many hands made light work…of the Mitten Tree at my bank. Mentioned prior in Mitzvah Patrol.

God love the knitters. And the Solid Gold Dancers that make us woodchucks miss big city life with good reason in any season.