Come to Vermont ~ Tweed it!

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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!

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.

Some Like it Hot…ter ‘n Hell

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ddicks

Hot & sweet with a tropical twist, like the label says.

There’s hot, there’s sooper hot, and then there’s just too bloody hot. Dirty Dick’s Hot Pepper Sauce is sooper hot.  I didn’t know that when I soaked a cracker in it.  Hoo!  I then made Dirty Dick’s Mayo (for mini ham sandwiches on crackers), Dirty Dick’s Tomato Bisque, Dirty Dick’s Home Fries, a Dirty Dick’s Bloody Mary, and a Dirty Dick’s Vanilla Ice Cream Cone. Why not? It’s won awards incl. a first place Screaming Mimi award at the 2013 NYC Hot Sauce Expo. Everyone loves a winner.

The label graphic appears to be of a flaming, drunk pig. A serving suggestion? Just marinate the little feller in some some Dirty Dick’s, add a splash of hooch, and spark up the grill!

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!

Margaret and Helen Rip it Out Over Texas

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ap449714672600

Wendy Davis, D-Ft. Worth
Eric Gay/AP

This gem was written before articulate State Senator Wendy Davis pulled it off. I can’t leave it up long (you’ll see why), but I post because Margaret and Helen are a riot (if they exist) and in honor of today’s good news from Texas. Apologies to my Republican friends for Helen’s, um, approach. And shame on those who tried to tinker with the official time on the vote records.

The actual full story is astonishing in every way.

For those agreeing with single mother, Harvard grad, and champion of low-income women Wendy Davis, the outcome is a fresh breeze of good air. Thank you, Miz Davis. Thank you.

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.