Which Character Would You Be In the WIzard of Oz?

Shackleton's fifth grade class presented it last night. When I found out they were putting it on I told him he ought to be a flying monkey." He said, "Why does everybody say that?"

Actually, he was eventually cast as the coroner. You remember: (sing it in your best Munchkin voice!) "As coroner I must aver I thoroughly examined her, and she's not merely dead, she's really quite sincerely dead."

Shack had curlicue sideburns and wore a hat with a wide brim and a long brown coat. It was too dark in the theater to take pictures - we actually got to use the town theater (which had upholstered chairs and air conditioning, more than making up for the poor photo situation). Here he is having a post-performance creemee:

I think he stole the show, but that's just me, and his teacher, and his former teacher and, like, ten other people talking.

There's actually a web page of memorable quotations from the Wizard of Oz. (Oh, internet, you have anticipated my every musing!). My favorite:

Auntie Em: Now you go feed those hogs before they worry themselves into anemia!

I am afraid there would only be one role for me in the show and you've probably guessed it..



Definitely, Glinda.

That's my motto! (We've got another blog post coming with helpful tips on how to tell good people from bad people in movies and stories, stay tuned!)
How about you? Where would the casting director put you?

Hummingbird Hijinks! World's Dullest Wildlife Video Right Here!

Not only dull, but also inept. If you endure it you'll find that it ends when I saw I am only pausing, but don't worry, you didn't miss anything. Maisy appears offstage with her (really annoying) narration.



Sooo, it is a beautiful day here in Vermont. I was administering mildew killers of various sorts to the deck in the early hours and have many other outdoor tasks to do, but I just had to stop and take in all this hummingbird action. It was almost scary. They were practically strafing me. OK, so they weigh as much as a penny but close up they are disconcertingly bee-like.

On that note, I must extract Shack from the basement where he has been playing Skyrim on XBox since it arrived three days ago. I dragged him up long enough to eat a peanut butter sandwich a few minutes ago and he was bouncing off the walls because he had achieved "so much iron." Apparently that's an achievement in Skyrim. It was a little chilling. (Remember what happened to Gollum?)

If you decide to brave the video, keep your eyes open for the clever method I employed to fasten the bird feeder hanger to the deck post.

Bon weekend, tout le monde!

Friday Night Family Fun

All of us together back at the Last House for the first time in a couple of weeks. Shackleton just came down stairs and asked for $10 for a Minecraft upgrade. Whusband, sensing a teachable moment, offers cash if Shack will read three Aesop's fables aloud. Much groaning from Shack.

Whusband administers high culture like an innoculation and it is generally received that way by the kids. The Understudy says classical music will always remind her of being cold and hungry because Whusband plays it for hours while I'm at work. He also refuses to turn up the heat and the kids hardly ever like the food he has on offer. (As soon as I walk in the door, crank up the thermostat and boil spaghetti).

The first fable on the programme tonight involves a "soldier out collecting faggots." I bite my tongue. Shack laughs. Whusband tells him that he is being vulgar. The next features "a vain girl wearing dimity at a carnival." (I kind of missed the instructive kicker on both of them and missed the third one altogether.) I am pretty sure the morals of the stories were wasted on Shack too, but he was still snickering about the soldier when he asked me how much money I have in my Paypal account.

I am going to look up "dimity." It rings a bell from some long-ago read Thomas Hardy novel. Mayor of Casterbridge? Maybe time to read that again. Then I will get Shack his Minecraft upgrade.

A dimity bustle, 1881

So you don't die of curiosity: "Dimity is a lightweight, sheer cotton fabric having at least two warp threads thrown into relief to form fine cords. It is a cloth commonly employed for bed upholstery and curtains, and usually white, though sometimes a pattern is printed on it in colors. It is stout in texture, and woven in raised patterns. Originally dimity was made of silk or wool, but since the 18th century it has been woven almost exclusively of cotton.")

Things could be worse. I don't have to wear dimity or a bustle for starters and we're going to the indoor water park tomorrow.

Bon weekend tout le monde!

Easter on the Edge

"I saw your ham in the road," the trooper said. "I was worried it was something else... When I saw your truck..."

The EMTs continued to swab blood off Whusband's hands. The inside of an ambulance at night is very bright. This makes sense, of course, but I have never been inside an ambulance before and had never stopped to think about what they are like.

"Oh really?" Whusband said with a strange joviality born of being the cause of so much trouble, and of being tended to by uniformed strangers.

"Do you have proof of insurance" The trooper asks. He is of young and of rather slight stature, but he has the hat and all. This inquiry is not a bad sign, I think in my lawyerly way. If the injuries had been worse, this kind of thing would have had to wait - but it's only a few cuts from that shattered windshield. Amazing when you see the truck.

The swabbing stops while Whusband peels apart wallet-worn bits of paper with his bloody fingers. The best he can do is an insurance card from 2007. (He has current insurance, but no card). This is a ticketable offense, the trooper notes, although, perhaps because of the ham (and all it signifies) he is disposed to let this go, if a copy can be faxed to the barracks ASAP. This is arranged.

Neither of the kids could be enticed to accompany Whusband to go to the grocery store last night and no one else was on the road as he caromed across the lanes and over the guardrail. Thank God - and that feels like it doesn't cover it. The Four Runner, our "good car" is totaled but no one was hurt, except for WHusband whose injuries were limited to the band-aidable variety.

After the ambulance men and the trooper were done, and the smashed car hauled away on the wrecker, we walked down through the country darkness to the lay-by where I left the ancient Camry. On the way, I picked up a grape fruit that had rolled from the Four Runner's cargo area about a quarter mile down the hill which Whushand had driven down a thousand times but last night failed to navigate. Did a tire come off? We're still not sure what happened.

I know this, though: that unlikely grapefruit is sitting in the fruit bowl in the kitchen and Whusband and the Understudy are sitting at the dining room table looking at the pictures the Understudy just took of him with her iPad. Incarnation. Ex-carnation. I am gladder than I can say we didn't have to confront the latter too terribly directly this Easter. Amen and Amen.

Today at the Old Farm and a Couple Shackletonisms

A day off today found me at the Last House. I emerged around 9 AM to buy eggs and bread and found a lovely October light hitting the barn. So.

Re: Shackleton

Just now, I was cleaning the kitchen when Shack got in my path. I squeezed his head like I do sometimes and said something like "Knowledge - get in there and stay!" He didn't have time to blink before he scurried away and said "Foreign objects - eject from ears! Eject!"

Sometime a few months ago when Maisy was barking or whimpering or something I barked back at her a little. Shack came running down the stairs - looking genuinely worried. "Don't do that! You don't know what you might be saying in dog language!"

That's my boy.

A Post for a Hot Night

Uggh. One day back from Seattle and Iiiiimmm Meltinggggg! The only place in the country with decent weather at the moment was Seattle. Hmm. Still, it's nice to be home. Flying into Burlington yesterday, I saw little Vermont with new and grateful eyes.

Anywho - since it is hot and I am feeling all-in here's a little video I took as we were dieseling away from Skagway, Alaska last week. Also featured is Shack, who is acting like a nut and modeling his Russian army hat, which we had procured at the Russian American store in Skagway. The hat was the hit of the trip. I am hoping that somewhere under that hat he will keep the images of the scenery he saw in Alaska...
































`

Hon, Where's My Terry Cloth Romper?

"Oh God! I meant to throw that out before you could wear it again."

It serves James Bond right that he has been immortalized wearing this garment. Not that I don't love Bond, and all, but I mean - really. Shack and I settled down in front of Goldfinger this morning (Saturday, and all). The scene where Bond zippers himself into this attractive robins-egg blue one-piecer, with full wedgie functionality, opens with Bond having sun tan lotion applied to his back by one "Dink" (a girl, despite the name). In case you've forgotten, Dink is run off when Bond's CIA contact, Felix, appears poolside. Run off with a slap on her bottom before her blond head gets all confused by the "man talk" that Bond tells her is imminent.

I actually stopped at this point to explain to Shack, who was watching with great interest, that this kind of thing is not done anymore. "Why?" He looked very confused. I think my explanation about the 60s being a long time ago, the evils of sexism etc. didn't clear things up for him. But then there's Bond's "towelling playsuit" and that's some consolation.

Some dedicated fashion blogger has a long explanation about this here, and a few more pictures of Sean Connery having been steered very wrong, sartorially speaking. FYI.

So, I Just Came In from Walking the Dog...

and there was my 13-year-old daughter, coming out of the bathroom, with a spray bottle of window cleaner and a rag.

Me: "Were you cleaning?"

(I had left no instructions to this effect and it has never happened spontaneously before).

Her: "Yes."

Me: "Why?"

Her: "I went and got my make up [I had spotted the case open on the living room floor] and when I picked up my nail polish it smelled like anus. So I cleaned the nail polish bottle. Then, I picked up the case, and it smelled like anus, along with everything around it. So I cleaned it...

And then I died a little inside."

I loved that.


...

While we're on the topic, sort of...

A few months ago, Shackleton was ravening to become a Cub Scout. A notice had come home from school about an organizational meeting. Of course. Cub Scouts. You're 9. Why not?

It was fall and dark came early. A group of us potential cub scout parents, none of whom knew one another, filled out a form and then sat in a strangely unconvivial silence around the school cafeteria tables listening to the man who was spearheading the Cub Scout effort. There was no pack at our school, he explained, though Cub Scouts were big in both the neighboring towns. He was willing to change that for boys in his son's grade. (Someone else would have to handle kids in the other grades.) He had been more or less forced into this, he said, by his young son and his wife, on account of the fact that his older son had achieved Eagle Scout. The Eagle Scout had come up through the ranks from Cub Scout to Eagle Scout. He told us about Eagle Scouts and the high proportion, for instance, of U.S. Presidents and FBI agents who had once been Eagle Scouts - of course all of them had once been Cub Scouts. He had a fact sheet on this to hand out.

Now,I have known one or two Eagle Scouts and they were perfectly lovely and Scouting has worked great good for many people, I know, but FBI agent is really not what we're going for here. The thing that I am most proud about for my own kids is that they are not mean to other children or animals and that they say funny things. (See above).

We went with Karate lessons and guitar for Shack.

Have You Heard the One About A Horse Who Goes Into A Bar?

I have a new teenager in my house. The developments have been predictable. (Me: "You're not wearing that to school!") Luckily, so far at least our senses of humor have not diverged. Also a plus is that the Understudy has become the family IT department (Me: "Can you set this up to print wirelessly?") and also an internet gold miner. Here's a link to her Tumblr blog, which is a lot of fun. She found this joke out there and I asked her to send it on to me for re-blogging purposes. We both laughed at this one:


A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks “Why the long face?”.

The horse does not respond because it is a horse. It can neither speak nor understand
English. It is confused by its surroundings and gallops out of the bar, knocking
over a few tables.

heh heh heh.

So Here's the Situation

ORLANDO - I come to you today from a dated (au courant around the same time as Miami Vice) but pleasant "villa" in darkest Florida. Well, actually it has been very sunny here, which is sort of the point. Kids and I had long planned a vacation and family visit (my Mom and sister live here) and we have had that - despite the (long expected but still horrible) death of Mom's husband the day before we arrived. So, an odd sort of crisis/vacation. We are back to Vermont on Weds and I, for one, will be ready to go.

As usual, traveling far from home and visiting with family, especially under these conditions, has me thinking many deep thoughts. Luckily for you, however, I only have about twenty minutes left on the Internet before I have to pay another $9.95 for another day of access. Since we are leaving here early tomorrow -- to retrieve my mother from my sister's house and return her to her own -- and though I have spent a month's pay down here in the last three days you might think it strange that I am balking at another $9.95, but reality is beginning to reassert itself.

So, I'll limit myself to illuminating today's picture for you. It is Shackleton, naturally, a couple of days ago at the end of a long line to ride the world's dullest roller coaster at Universal Studios theme park (never again!) His reading skills are clearly coming along because he's the one who noticed during the hour that we stood in line for the roller coaster that this sign leads weary Seussical travelers to "Gas Food." We've had a fair bit of that on our travels this last week and a half. More later. Thanks for your continued interest.

Shackleton Speaks Volume IX

Preparation for Martin Luther King Day started a little early in Shackleton's fourth grade class. One of the homework assignments this week to read a page about the "I Have a Dream Speech" and then to answer a few questions. All reading assignments for Shackleton are like pulling teeth, so I had to read (i.e., "drag") him through it. The whole thing was only about four paragraphs and the questions weren't hard: E.g., "What was Martin Luther King's dream for America?" "Why did it make sense for him to give his speech at the Lincoln Memorial?" The last question was, "Do you have a dream about what would make your world a better place?"

"Well?" I asked, ready to suggest the usual - world peace, curing cancer, what have you. Shackleton didn't hesitate.

"Slaves." He said.

The Rest of That Poem

Just following up on that last post. I couldn't resist working a little more on the verse I started last weekend. I am putting it here so I won't lose it (since I seem to burn through a laptop every year or so)... I may even come back and revise.

Shack and I are engaged in a daily struggle to get him to read poems, write a poem, memorize a poem and make a poem poster. We have til Jan 17 to get this done. Maybe I'll send him into school with this one when it's all over.


I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as TV.

A poem just sits – it has no go
And doesn’t come with audio.

What’s worse - poems must be read
To get the pictures in your head.

There’s no flash, no flicker, no bluish light
Just tracks of black in lots of white.

Give certain types a pen and page
And they’ll torment kids from age to age.

And God Bless Us, Everyone, Especially Adam Gopnik

The dining room at the Last House 12.25.10- Christmas Dinner, Done and Dusted. Half an apple pie remained...

Another Sunday night draws to a close and we have survived Christmas. Ours was nice at the Last House, thanks, snowy and cold as befits our latitude (see previous posts and comments if you have a moment). Kids = happy. Food = good. Company = fine. I hope yours was also lovely.

So, part of my long Christmas weekend involved catching up on The New Yorker. Issues of the New Yorker come at me the way those assembly-line chocolates once came at Lucille Ball... I love it, but there always seem to be a backlog - a few lurking under newspapers on the footstool, or in with the bills on the dining room table. And since I mostly read it in bed, it takes me a long time to work through each issue. (I am forever finding crumpled issues on the wall side of the bed, where they have slipped after I have lost consciousness. They rest there in the dust [slut's wool, they used to call it] until I get around to changing sheets, which can sometimes be a fair stretch).

I found one of these neglected issues the other day and read a lot of it in snatches between cooking, cleaning and wrapping. I believe the issue of August 30. It included a critic at large piece by Adam Gopnik about Winston Churchill and books about Winston Churchill. Q.v.

This was doubly enticing for me because I have always felt a certain something for Winston Churchill and, if you have been following along, you know I have included Adam Gopnik in my personal (short) list of brushes with greatness.

On the Churchill connection, Winston died the day before I was born - or basically the day I was born because of the time difference between the U.K. and the U.S. east coast. I have known this all my life because my mother dutifully filled in the blank in my baby book (which I started poring over as soon as I could read) that asked for the day's headlines on the date of my birth (January 25, 1965). "Churchill Dead!" Perhaps not the most auspicious day in the world's calendar. When I learned as a kid about the Buddhist theory of reincarnation and rebirth of the Dalai Lama I have to admit it crossed my mind. But, nah...

As I got older my admiration for Churchill grew with every quotation I read. In my 20s I actually posted on my desk the bit about:

"We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

My job at the time (writing for an alumni magazine in placid upstate New York) wasn't much like defending civilization from Nazi hordes, but, young as I was, I saw corollaries - and it was just so stirring! When I finally got to England a couple of years ago, I made it a point to get to Blenheim Palace, ancestral home of the Dukes of Marlborough (Churchill's ancestors) and Sir Winston's birthplace.

The friend who brought me to Blenheim also bought us Roy Jenkins' book about Churchill. I read a lot of it (OK - I didn't finish it, yet, but I have explained about that). There was a bit that I read there that I have thought about many times since: something Winston said early in his political career. Gopnik must have been struck by the same bit because he recorded it in his article:

Churchill, on a visit to a poor neighborhood in Manchester, [said], with his odd and signature mixture of real empathy and inherited condescension, “Fancy living in one of these streets—never seeing anything beautiful—never eating anything savoury—never saying anything clever! ”

I suppose that reveals a lot about Churchill's character as a young man and doesn't reflect so well on him today, but I know exactly what he meant and I agreed absolutely. How awful to be trapped someplace (geographically and socially) where the blindly uninquisitive reign. (Aside: That's why liberal arts education - education not in furtherance of anything, necessarily, beyond personal acquisition of knowledge - needs to be defended like England was defended against the Nazis.)

As I read on in Gopnik's article I was repeatedly gobsmacked by Gopnik's own brilliant writing. I mean, The New Yorker sent the right Critic-at-Large to review the reviwers of Churchill E.g.:

Revisionism, the itch of historians to say something new about something already known, has nicked Churchill without really drawing blood.

To be born both at the top of the tree and out on a limb is an odd combination, and that double heritage accounts for a lot of what happened to him later.


It may seem mysterious that jingoism should appeal so overwhelmingly to the working classes, easily trumping apparently obvious differences in interests between them and the economic imperialists. Why should conquering Burma be of significance to a Cockney? But imperialism is the cosmopolitanism of the people, the lever by which the unempowered come to believe that their acts have world-historical meaning.

Well. All I can say is, wow.

When I interviewed A.G. back in a former life, I remember him telling me that he had learned from another New Yorker writer, the late Whitney Balliet, to give the reader something extra at the end of an article, something more. (I am paraphrasing and may not have that exactly right) but I thought I got a lot of something more here. See what you think.

OK. Back to work tomorrow so I must get to bed! Here's my poor version of a little something extra for any stoppers-by here: a few shots of our Christmas weekend (sledding today).



Whusband drags an old deck chair to the sledding hill behind the Last House. The bluish speck is Shackleton...







Ta for now!


Oh - and one last thing. I just got an email this weekend from the BBC saying I had been granted a ticket to see David Sedaris read at Broadcasting House on January 16. I am taking a poll. Should I pull the kids out of school and take time off from work to go to London for a trip that would include January 16? I mean, there's other stuff we could do too...

The Snow Divide

The U.S., at least these days, people can choose their climate. Has there ever been a time or place where it was so easy for so many to suit themselves? We've got every climate available anywhere on the planet here in the U.S. and no government authority can step between an American and his or her choice of weather.

What this choice boils down to is, in one way or another, snow. Where do you stand on the snow question? Do you want lots? Some? None at all? Are you a case of "It's nice to visit but I wouldn't want to live there?"

It came to me recently, lying in bed in my Vermont home in the small hours of the morning, wondering for the umpteenth time what the snow situation would be when it was time for work and school in the morning, that my own family has basically been riven by the snow question. Snow is a wedge issue for us and it has driven us, in a literal sense and figuratively as well, far, far apart.

I live in the same climate, basically, in which I arrived back in the 1960s. I was born in Albany, New York, grew up entirely in upstate New York (suburbs of Syracuse followed by suburbs of Schenectady) like many a General Electric Brat before and since. When I got old enough to choose a place to go to college, I picked upstate New York (Binghamton). Then I chose again and picked Montreal. I caroomed for a few years like a pinball through the Champlain valley between the Albany area and Montreal and then settled, after finishing my education, over the line in Vermont. And here I have stayed. My own children were born here. Our flag is planted in snowy Vermont.

I, however, am only one of three children. My older sister, I'll call her Bea, lives now in Florida. She has been living in the south, (Texas before Florida), for about the same amount of time that I have been in Vermont - 15 years or so. My younger brother, "Duke," went off to Texas for law school when he was 21. He pulled a stint in Louisiana, working for a judge, and a couple of years in Virginia but has been back in Texas for more than ten years and is there to stay. My mother, who was herself born and raised in upstate New York - a place she hopscotched across in the cities along the Erie canal for her whole adult life - decamped from Schenectady more than 10 years ago. First stop, Atlanta. Next stop and apparent final destination, the west Coast of Florida.

Only my father and I of the original set of five remain in the northeast. He still works for GE and he and his wife and their two dogs are installed where they have been for more than 10 years in a little village in Albany county. They live now not 15 miles from the college he arrived at as an 18-year-old, fresh off his family's central New York dairy farm. If he has his way, they aren't going anywhere. At least not any time soon.

As you can imagine, we rarely all get together in one place. When a few of us are gathered, however, the talk inevitably turns to climate. My father and I (he less obnoxiously so than I) regard the north as the birthplace of valor, the country of worth. We aren't leaving except feet first in a box. How do they live without four seasons? We ask one another, collusively. My Dad told me once that when he was growing up in Oswego County, New York, (a place infamous for gigantic lake-effect snows -- the kind the bring TV crews from New York City every couple of years to stand with their microphones and parkas before mountains of snow) that he was taught in high school to pity American southerners. It was an official part of the civics curriculum. The south, he learned, was enervated by that heat. Their climate was to blame for their backward nature. He would never say so now, but I think he took that to heart.

My Texan brother is as down on the rust-belt state economic gestalt as he is on the weather up here. When he reappears in New York sometimes he'll own that it is "pretty" but he goes no further. During his visits north, every time he thumps over a pot hole or sees re-bar poking through a bridge abutment, or the talk turns to income taxes, he feels his discernment has been rewarded. Northerners are the left behind. He is no longer one of them.

My Florida relatives are a bit more nuanced. My mother would like to get out of Florida for the summers, but she informs me, after every phone conversation winter weather report, that she doesn't miss the snow. "I don't miss it." Hmmm. I wonder to myself. I have my suspicions. No one wants to drive through the dark in a sideways snow storm - me most of all - but if you were raised ice skating in a city park every day as a kid, can it be true that you don't miss winter? What about the sunny days after it snows? I don't ask her about that. It might sound like I didn't believe her.

As for my sister, cracks in her Florida devotion are showing. After years of singing the praises of Florida weather, beaches, entertainments etc. she lets slip from time to time that she is pining for a little cold air and a little northeastern blue state tolerance and east coast pointy headedness into the mix. (She's a teacher and all that tax cutting is getting to her). She is in her late 40s and now looking down the road to retirement - a road that might lead north.

I don't know, however, if she could take it now. Your blood gets thin down there. I will confess that as my 40s move on, I have wondered whether she and I might not wind up one day as seasonal housemates. I mean, a little sun in January wouldn't kill me.

An Insomniac and her Dog

Maisy occupies the geographic center of my bed, forcing me to sleep with my head at one corner and my feet at the opposite corner - like a bar sinister on a family crest. Tonight, I mean, this morning, I gave up trying to sleep and switched on the light. My plan: read a couple of stories from my new library book, return to sleep.

After a story and a half, I put the book down and, as I considered whether I was really sufficiently sleepy to quit reading, I looked at Maisy.

She had rolled onto her back, achieving a gentle c-curve, like an eyebrow. Though I couldn't see her face, which was obscured by my leg under two comforters, I knew from the bit I could see, (pink stomach and forepaws), that her head was lolling, ears flipped to the smooth side, nose pointing nearly at the foot board. I couldn't see her rear legs either but knew that in this posture, they must be splayed in the relaxed and undignified way of the sleeping terrier. Her right fore paw flopped down at the joint. Her left fore paw, however, was sticking straight in the air - a raised hand.

"Yes Maisy?" I asked inwardly. "Do you have a question?"

"Not a question so much as a comment."

"All right. And what is that?"

"I know you already know this, but, I just have to say, you are for me the Sun the Moon and the Stars. I worship you. There's pretty much nothing I wouldn't do to be with you."

"I know, my dear. And believe me, it touches me."

"Like, you know that famous dog, the one that built a monument to in Edinburgh?"

"I think his name was 'Greyfriars Bobby'."

"That's it. He's the one that sat on his dead master's grave for six years, til he died there himself?"

"That's the story."

"I'd do that for you - just so you know."

"I know you would." (I don't let on that as the actuaries have it, she is not likely to outlive me - her sentiment is so fine). "Now how about letting me get back to sleep."

"Anything for you. Good night again."

"Goodnight. Do you think you could move to the edge of the bed."

"Anything for you... but that."

Shackleton Speaks VI

Shack and I went up to the middle school just after dark today to wait for the Understudy to return from her field hockey game in the wilds of Montpelier. It is cold here in northern Vermont tonight and very clear. The taxpayers of the school district object to seeing lights on in or about the school at night with the result that it was very dark as we waited for the team bus. The stars were twinkling over the parking lot.

"Make a wish," I said to Shackleton. (He's nine now).

He did, and I did. Then he asked me what I had wished for. I said I couldn't tell him or it wouldn't come true.

"Did any of your wishes ever come true?" he asked.

I told him I couldn't exactly remember, but I thought so.

"Cool." He said. "It's like a lottery ticket, but it's free and it's in the sky."

Let's Hear it for New York!

How are you spending your heat wave?

My grand plan for this week - one that I hatched in my bed in the early morning hours of winter days months ago - was to use this week for a multi-day bike tour of the Erie Canal bike path: my own personal shake-down cruise.

Welllll. As things transpired...

The Understudy had been willing to wager that I would not make my bike trip, which obnoxious of her (whereever does she get it?).

Suffice it to say that Shackleton and I are here, not far from the Erie Canal Bikeway, at my Dad and Stepmother's house near Albany (where else do we ever go?)

O.K. So the Understudy was mostly right with her forecast, but partly wrong since I brought my bike along (not my vintage English roadsters but something more modern that resembles a shark, in its way). And for each of the last three mornings I have taken my shark with its 21 gears and its bum-saving seat out for a spin. An hour the first two mornings, on roads around Dad's house, and two hours yesterday - actually along a section of the Canal Bike Path. Given the heat (96 degrees yesterday) I was more or less compelled by health and safety considerations to finish up these rides by 9 AM. (That, and the fact that I had reached the limits of my endurance - no way could I have ridden that bike for a whole day).

The section I rode yesterday could have been marked Memory Lane, well known to me as it was from my ever receding childhood, adolescence and early 20s.

In some shoe box somewhere there is a picture of me on this stretch of path astride my new red Ross 10-speed in a "Virginia is for Lovers" poly blend T-Shirt, flare jeans and Tom McCann sneakers. I am sporting a hair cut that could have been achieved by cutting around the bottom of a mixing bowl Oh, 2003 where have you gone? (kidding! this was darkest 1977). I went by the little league field where my brother once got his jaw broken by a bad hop, and the GE lab where my father has toiled for decades, making possible the house where I have been luxuriating in AC, bathing in a big whirlpool tub and watching the Netherlands push past Uruguay in giant HD splendor. (No wonder we never go anyplace else).

Here's some of what I saw on these trips: (Taking picture with my camera phone provided cover for my need to hop off the shark and pant).



An old school building...



Where once we came for field trips...



Lock 7 on the Mohawk River

Pathetically short as my little bike tours have been I have been inspired to ride a lot more this summer. It was really great to feel a little sore and get the old metabolism moving. Oh, and have I mentioned how I had no misgivings at all about loafing at the parental palace all day after an hour's work in the mornings? It's so freeing to have accomplished a bit of exercise first thing - like buying an indulgence.

Shackleton, however, has spent his days here a little lonely, without the Understudy (though he refuses to admit it). He mostly spent yesterday in the kid zone (read, "basement") making videos of the local toys (camera was taped to "truck man") and watching TV. I took pity on him and joined him for a little TV around dinnertime. We watchd a PBS show which included a section about kids bowling.

"Let's go bowling!"

Great. Wii bowling has a lot to recommend it - like no bowling ball and high likelihood of high scores, but real bowling meant leaving the house and it was time for that. Also, downtown Albany has a throw-back alley that I went to once for a charity bowling event 20 years ago. Here was a chance not only for bowling, but for a cultural experience for a Vermont boy.

Suffice it to say we had a great time at the Playdium. (See today's banner). It is in a racially mixed neighborhood - something we don't have much of in northern New England. It was mobbed with people of all ages and colors and there was a snack bar and a regular bar and insufficient air conditioning. We worked up a sweat. The scoring equipment featured little videos that mocked us for throwing gutter balls. A good time was had by all. Well, maybe not so much by the two young guys who got the alley next to me and Shack. They listed their bowling names as Ice-T and T-Rex and I think my presence dampened their good time. (Middle-aged broad who looks like she might be a teacher or some otherwise unwelcome entity). I noticed that despite their quasi gangster appearance and youth, they bowled really bad, like, worse than me and looked kind of gay doing it. More than a little gay. It's good to get out and see the world!



Back to VT at noon today. No AC awaits once we get back there. Oh dear.

A Bad Wife, But a Good Collector

I have been distracted, which is one of the reasons the old blog has languished lately.

The distractions have been the usual ones: getting and spending, mostly.

Recent purchases included a vintage tupperware pitcher and two vinyl albums of the Lichfield Cathedral Choir from the mid 1980s. I spent one dollar and twenty nine cents procuring these items at "ReSource" (f/k/a Recylce North). I bought them on Whusband's birthday and presented him the records as a birthday present. I think he would be impervious to the vintage grooviness of the Tupperware. At his age it would just look like something he put in the back of a cabinet and forgot about. The presentation of the records was partly to make up for the fact that I kind of forgot his birthday that morning. The penny dropped at around noon. Ooops.

This isn't quite as bad as it sounds. Whusband actually prefers gifts from me that cost very little. Other people are welcome to spend wildly on him, if they choose to do so. (Surprisingly, not many have made this choice). But when it is me doing the buying, since it all comes out of the common pot, he wants only the tiniest spoonfuls dipped out. Which brings us to a related topic.

Every time a box comes in the mail with my name on it, or I turn up with a bargain from an auction or an antique store, he carries on like I am Leona Helmsley or Zsa Zsa Gabor. You can tell how far off he is by one look at my closet, and my person, which has been allowed to slide into ruin in a way no big spending woman would ever allow. I make these points when we are enjoying one of these periodic discussions. He has to agree there is no arguing about my clothes or my state of semi-collapse.

On Whusband's birthday, I also bought him some of his favorite bagels, although I forgot to mention the gift aspect of their presence in the house. I told him this morning, when he got his first bite of the last one. "Happy Birthday!"

I bought those bagels in Burlington. I made a special trip because it was his birthday. The bagel shop happens to be across the street from the erstwhile Recycle North (see above), so I couldn't avoid a little junk shopping en route. The owner of the bagel place makes Montreal bagels that are even better than the Montreal bagels from Montreal. It is not easy for me to get these bagels because the shop closes its doors at 1 PM (its Montreal mother-ship is nearly 24 hours, but I digress). When we lived in Burlington, Whusband would always chat up the Bagel maker/shop owner. They talked about Montreal, which is really home for both of them. Whusband shared with me that the baker had a rough trade, so to speak. The hours of a bagel entrepreneur are killing - the store closes at 1 PM because the baker is working by around 4 AM. Also, people hired to work in bagel shops often prove, are you sitting down? unreliable.

Visiting the bagel shop on Friday to get the (alleged) birthday bagels, I saw the poor baker. I haven't seen him in a couple years and the strain is showing. I have been thinking all weekend that a bagel makes a good servant, but a bad master.

This brings us, in a fashion, to yesterday. Sunday and an auction Sunday to boot.

Reader, they were selling three vintage English roadsters, fresh from a barn in Stowe. I ask you, what was I supposed to do? I let the 1960 three speed get away. It was up over $150 when I backed off. But the other two? I wasn't leaving without them. (See above and all over for the pictures).

The total auction damages, with a partial set of Enoch Wood "Castles" dinnerware, was $200 and change (well, a lot of change, but under $300 - under I say...)



Let me add (before you sign up for Whusband's side of the spending discussion) that the GFP (great fiction project) where I spend a lot of mental time and energy involves 1912 English road bike, very like the ones I bought yesterday. VERY LIKE!

Plus, although while it's true that we have two classic English 3-speeds already, (1969 Raleigh Sport that is the Understudy's main ride, and a 1973 BSA, which is her back up) these new additions are single speed: plain, pure. And one is from the 1920s and the other is a men's bike. Men's bikes are more expensive and hard to find and Shackleton is going to get it when he's big enough to ride it. So, oh, and they are ART. Industrial Art. See the pictures.

Let me add here that those Lichfield Cathedral Choir albums are in very good shape - one would think they had hardly been played. And only a few of the tracks are the dissonant modern works that choir directors feel obliged to administer to their captive congregation. I am sure Whusband will have years of enjoyment from them. They were worth every penny of the 70 cents that I spent on them and an excellent value like everything else I buy.

Hello, A Ghost Story, and Another Top Tip

It's a quiet Saturday night here in the Last House and everyone else is in bed. Whusband built a fire in the remains of the pressed aluminum "fire pit" which has now lost all three of its shaky legs and its lid. The children spent a gratifyingly low-tech evening watching the sparks fly upward, telling ghost stories, making s'mores, and running after fire flies.

The Understudy told a chilling tale about a the daughter of a wealthy family who went with her mother to an expensive antique shop where the mother "paid retail" for a beautiful doll. The doll's hand was posed with two fingers raised. The daughter of the house decided right away that she did not like the doll and put it in the basement. That very night, however, the girl heard someone moving slowly around downstairs, then coming up the stairs, and then in her own room. It was the doll! And it was mad! It jumped on the girl and killed her! The next day, the doll was holding up three fingers. The mother immediately took the doll back to the antique store and asked for a refund.

I confess that my campfire experience was shortened by my desire to get back to the movie about Temple Grandin that I had recorded on the DVR. Temple G. the autistic cattle expert who has become so famous. I heard her interviewed on Fresh Air when this movie came out (on HBO) and was really fascinated to hear her talk about her life and her work. If you can find that interview as a Podcast it would be worth your while to listen.

The movie was genuinely compelling and a very nice piece of work. (What drove me to the computer just now was my feeling of gratitude and admiration for the creative people who brought it off and got it into my living room.) Claire Danes, as Temple Grandin, was brilliant. So, that's my top tip. I see from the movie's web site that it's out on DVD now. Have I ever steered you wrong?

Bon weekend tout le monde.

Jiggety Jog.

Home again. My own little Vermont family seems to have managed to avoid a complete collapse in my absence, which is a good thing of course. I missed them, but I'll admit I was very preoccupied down in Texas with the nephew/Niblet. I had a real pang when I had to walk away from him, sleeping peacefully in his bassinet. His anxious mother has told me she doesn't think they will be traveling with him for a long time (read "years") to come - germs on airplanes etc.

Sigh. I have been thinking of the new little family hourly since my return. The hackneyed phrase "24/7" gets thrown around a lot and usually is an exaggeration of the demands it is meant to describe. Not so with newborns.

Shackleton Speaks VIII

On my return I found a school paper, a spelling test, recently completed by Shackleton. It had a smiley face on it in red, rather incongruous considering it was marked with a grade of 4 percent. That's right. F O U R percent. Whusband largely blamed the messy handwriting which made it impossible for the teacher to really see which letters had been included.

Me: "Shack, neatness counts. You have really got to try harder or we're taking away privileges."

Shack: "Like what?"

Me: "Like something you really enjoy - like X-Box."

Shack (instantly): "I don't really enjoy X-Box. I really enjoy studying hard."