Another Shorty

I was mowing the lawn today and it occurred to me that it would have been cool to be born into a family called "Tiplady" (I saw someone with this name on TV recently) or maybe "Scrimshander."  No luck there I'm afraid.  I do wonder how that first Tiplady got his name?  I mean, it's hardly "Townsend" or "Johnson" or "Weaver" or something with a boringly obvious derivation.  There's got to be a great story back there somewhere.
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Also, as I was listening to my lawn mowing musical accompaniment, I got thinking about how I am probably the only 40-something Yankee in the country who has "Lula Walls" on my iTunes exercise mix.  (No comments, please, on the efficacy of my exercise regime).  It always gives me a lift.  Here's a video (pretty much minus any video content) but with the great music.  Maybe do a few stretches while you listen!



Cheerio!

P.S.  I decided I had to look into this "Tiplady" thing and our friend the Internet, as ever, didn't let me down.  Here's a fascinating little look at the possibilities for how this old Yorkshire name was derived.  If you don't have time, the author's best guess is that it referenced a lady bar keeper.

It's Been Really Nice Here Lately

A recent sunrise at the Last House

The weather has been so nice - you'd think we were in California or something.  This long weekend has seen me taking to the woods twice - once, briefly, with Shack

Behind the school in Stowe

and then this morning for a longer,much rockier hike with the faithful Maisy.

Note the ruined cellar hole.

 I only ever have my crumby cell phone camera with me but here are a couple of snaps just FYI.

In reading news, I am continuing on my tear through the works of W. Somerset Maugham.  I seem to be bookmarking every other page - he writes such wonderful sentences.  It's a wonder of our world today that you can download Maugham's best works for free on your Kindle or other e-reader.  Happy Labor Day.

Made Ya Look!

Just stopping by the old blog to wave at you.  Hello.  Also, I found this lovely picture of the Infanta (today's banner) when she was a genuine infant and felt like sharing.

Since you were good enough to stop round and admire her, here's a little something for YOU!  One of those rare Gertrude Stein jokes that every one covets.
(Actually, a good one if you are the kind of person who knows at least three things about Gertrude Stein).
Click on through. See you around the interwebs!

Quick! Don Your Platform Boots, Doctor!

 Went with lovely English visitors to the sedate and civilized Shelburne Museum this week.  We had three kids along, aged 6 to 11.  After a long walk through the grounds we made our way into the Robots, Time Machines and Steam Punk exhibition where they were showing a Flash Gordon film (among all kinds of other steamy punky stuff).

The film was a revelation in its way.  Apparently, the Hollywood designers of Saturday morning serials back in the 1930s and 40s had a fondness for fetish wear.  (It all adds up, doesn't it?) 

Note above Dr. Zarkov's scientist shorty shorts and the boots that would probably be over-the-top for Elton John.  Each kid burst out laughing when the Roman/Martian bad guys appeared (showing lots of leg) and when the "space ships" battled from the end of their strings.

There was other fun stuff too, such as:

and

Back to school in less than a week. I think I am as sorry about it as the kids are. Sigh.

I see that Netflix has made these Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serials available to subscribers.  Today's top tip, check one out if you don't blush easily and if your ribs are in good shape.

Guerilla Mouse Attack Survival Story, And Another Tip

I paid $4.95 at 10 last night to watch The Artist on pay per view. (That's the silent film about the affair between two actors on opposite sides of the talkies divide that won the best picture Oscar this year). At around 11, as I was trying to catch my breath, so full of admiration was I, Maisy hopped up and started barking at the curtain. I knew this meant she had seen a mouse. The new house has a mouse issue. It's a regular Tom and Jerry situation. In my little office there, I found a pile of dog food neatly piled beneath a corner of a bookcase, not twelve inches from my chair. I opened the door to the porch one night and a mouse ran away from the front door. That is a bold mouse. I mean, yes, he ran away, but he was obviously planning on coming through the front door.

All right - I did't actually see the mouse that interrupted The Artist or I might not have survived to write about it here. It was more a psychological attack, as far as it went. But since it was late and I couldn't risk being physically attacked by the mouse, as the mother of school-aged children, I fled to bed with a plan to get the DVD from Netflix or something eventually. I am sure you will be cheered to know that this frightening tale has a happy ending. When I turned the TV on this AM, incredibly, The Artist was still on and it at exactly the point in the movie where I had retreated to my bedroom. LOVED it. What fetching stars! What beautiful photography! The cars! A terrier! We were late for Shack's guitar lesson but he and I were transfixed. See it if you can.

Notes from Twitter

I figured out yesterday how to do a "hastag" topic on Twitter. My proposal was for "#cutofftitles"
E.g., "The Davinci Cod, The Sound and the Fur, The Good Ear, Papa's Got a Bra" You get the idea. In doesn't seem to have caught on - the theory is anybody can jump in on these topics. I am still hoping for a few more contributors so if you have a good cut off title, please share. Bon weekend!

Sore Backs, Sunrise, Sunset

We have dragged the washer and dryer (the ones that sat in the barn of the Last House for twelve years) up three flights of stairs here at the new house, plugged them in (this was harder than it sounds since a new standard in dryer plugs came into being during these 12 years); we have just fetched the Understudy's new mattress and box spring from the lowest-end of big box stores (tied to the top of the van, natch) and hauled them up the same three flights. And that is that. No more. Next time I move it is going to be feet first and in a box that someone else is carrying.




In other news, we attended two graduations this week. Shack finished fifth grade and elementary school (yes, there is a ceremony for that these days). The Understudy finished eighth grade and will be starting high school next year. Cue ceremony. This is a once in a lifetime congruence in our little family, with both kids moving on to the next level at school. Sigh. They will be participating in a neighborhood production of Fiddler on the Roof next week. Everytime I hear "Sunrise, Sunset" I burst into tears.

On a lighter note, school, the learning part of it at least, has basically been over for a week. Today, the Understudy and her class took a bus to an amusement park two hours away. She returned home at 7:30 PM sun burnt and cranky. Shack and his classmates had a picnic and then swam the afternoon away at the local indoor swimming pool. My favorite moment of the day came when I picked him up from the elementary school, for the last time ever.

Me: How was swimming?

Shack: It was great! I invented a new game, "handcuffed swimming,"

Sometimes I wish he would never change.

If you have kids and haven't cried about it lately, here's one for you.



Bon weekend.

Twittering Away

Whew. Well I am glad I got that (see the last post) off my chest. The world seems not to have noticed, as usual. Hardly surprising, given this weenie little platform I'm on but, in the immortal worlds of Jessie J., around here, we just want to make the world dance. Well. Whatever.

I have made a few happy discoveries on Twitter, as previously noted, and this being a lazy sort of Sunday (more furniture moving in store tomorrow, never fear) I wanted to share a few Twitter riches.

One of the guys I follow - a Vermonter whom I haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting - introduced me to a the "#terriblesequels" space on Twitter. Here are a few of my favorites:

Tapeworms of Dune

To Stuff a Mockingbird

I contributed (or attempted to contribute - I am not sure if they showed up):

The Child Support Order of J. Alfred Prufrock, Megabus from Byzantium and
The Son of the Bridges of Madison County (I didn't like that book - that's the joke). If you don't like one that I also tried, Abbott and Costello at the Bridges of Madison County, Mothra v. The Bridges of Madison County and on like that for awhile. It was fun.

Another funny thread got going this morning. It was called #bloombergmovietitles and my Twitter friend suggested "The Wizard of No More than 16 Ozs" which I thought was pretty funny. There was other good stuff to. Unfortunately I am learning the hard way that some tweets are ephemeral. The thread is now, apparently, gone. I found this while searching for it though, "Mayor Bloomberg will be the first man to go down in history in favor of smaller cup sizes."

So, the internet isn't all bad after all. Hope you all had a nice weekend.

February Is Better Than January

At least today. We had some fresh snow - just a dusting to cover the ice and the icy snow, and then some sun. Winter's perfect combination. The sun is different now, gathering a little strength. I dragged Shackleton out to the hill behind the farm house for a little flexible flying. Here's the most epic run yet - all the way from the back of the barn to the bottom of the field where the stream runs!



In other (utterly unrelated) news, I rented "The Haunting" from Netflix a week or two ago and sat down to watch it last night. I remembered seeing it as a teenager, and it made an impression. As I was racking my brain at my Netflix queue one day it popped back into my mind. No wonder I remembered it. It was directed by Robert Wise from a story by Shirley Jackson (none of this would have registered on me at 16). As the opening credits rolled I caught one that noted "Claire Bloom's Wardrobe by Mary Quant."

What a promising start, I thought. It is a fun movie - despite the frantic performance by Julie Harris, but she had a hard part to play - all coming apart at the seams and frustrated spinster and all.

Claire looked really cool in a black turtle neck, gold necklace, pegged pants and heels:





The creepy statue was a weak point. It looked like papier mache. The scary house was otherwise pretty effective - at least as photographed by Wise.

You can see why I tagged this post as "nothing really." Thanks for stopping by, though.

Not Dead Yet...

In case you were wondering. Still upright and breathing if not blogging or reading blogs much. There's that pesky big project still dogging me! I wanted to stop in today just to wiggle my toes at anybody who dared (or chanced) in here to lift the sheet. It's not pretty but no putrefaction yet...

For the kind souls who held up their hands as potential book critics, I am revising away. Since it will cost about $50 for each copy of the manuscript I'm only going to print a few and maybe try to circulate them to more than one reader.

January is doing its thing around here. Today's banner is not, alas, a recent picture. We have had a few blue sky days but nothing as good as this lately. Lots of freezing rain and up and down temperatures that have turned all the snow that got compacted in driveways and parking lots into smooth ice... More treacherous as one ages.

Here's one little Shackletonism that I have been meaning to record. (A reward, I hope, for those who got this far). We were driving to the town dump when Adele's new release, "Set Fire to the Rain" came on the radio. You know I'm a fan, so I turned it up. Shack shouted from the back.

"You couldn't set fire to the rain unless it had some gas or something in it! And do you know how many people you would kill if you did set fire to the rain? Including yourself? Do you know how much property damage you would cause?"

(Well, it was funny at the time).

A few days earlier the song from the new Twilight movie came on - the chorus is "I Will Love You for A Thousand Years" (That might be the title too. Whatever). Anyway, Shack shouted out after a time or two through the chorus.

"A thousand years and that's it. Then we are through. It's a thousand years and not one minute more!"

Fabulous or Frightening?

I bought this on ebay.

I can explain.

I met a guy recently who impressed me tremendously. He's a naturalist from the state of Delaware who retired in Vermont some 20 years ago. He's 86 years old and he looks like 30 years younger. I mean, strong legs, straight back, clear eyes - hearing that is way better than mine. When we met he told me he and his wife had been out every night for the last six nights, mostly listening to classical music or going to wine tastings and the like.

It came up in our conversation that he had written and illustrated a few books of natural history while he was still working. He explained that he used something called "scratchboard" to illustrate these books. I didn't know anything about scratchboard and he explained. It's pretty much like it sounds - you scratch away the image from a board and the board can than be used to make prints.

So..... Fast forward a few weeks and somehow, while searching for paintings of Terriers I saw this kitten. I am not sure how that happened, but you know how the Internet is.

I don't know if what I have here the actual scratchboard or a print. I don't want to break it out of the frame and it hardly matters to me. I was just lured in by the "scratchboard" part of the description - and the eyes. This item was created by an artist called Helen Anderson and the ebay seller was trying to gin up interest by noting that Ms. Anderson had an auction record of $750. (My price, $9.99 and I was the only bidder.) Can you believe it?

So, here is an addition to the collection who now gazes up at my cracked ceiling with his little open mouth and wee paw fetchingly placed on, what is that? A ball? Whatever.

Frankly, I can't decide whether I like it or should be embarrassed. OK, I like it, but I think that means I should be embarrassed. What do you think?

Shackleton speaks:

At dinner tonight, while he was refusing to eat the broken hamburger that his father was trying to sell as "sloppy Joes" Shack said, "If I were a monster, I would eat all of the human being except the head. Who wants hair with their human?"

Another excellent question.

Bad Blogger

Just stopping in on a Sunday PM to say I know I have been lame, remiss, what have you, about getting fresh stuff in here. Work has heated up unpleasantly - in August! And there's the usual family stuff to attend to. I have managed a couple of bike rides and the Ustudy and I took the picture above on one of our periodic photo shoots. I took the picture and she ran it through instagram - destined to be a visual cliche of 2011 but isn't it cool? Hope the summers of any stoppers-in are going well.

This Actually Happened...

The other night I opened the medicine cabinet to get my toothbrush off the built-in little holder behind the mirror. The medicine cabinet probably dates to about 1960 (based on the approximate date of the salmon-colored bath fixtures) - soooo, the toothbrush holder has a bit of a rust issue ...

Anyway, I hang my toothbrush there because Whusband is unlikely to open the medicine cabinet when he is looking for a toothbrush. He is a notorious non-respecter of toothbrush property rights. That is, if he sees a toothbrush, he will use it.
So.
I know. You don't have to say it.

Anyway, I opened to the medicine cabinet to get my toothbrush late that night and found an earwig curled around the back of it, resting in the rust. Boy, an earwig can skedaddle when you take away his toothbrush!

What do you think I did next? Wrong if you guessed, "ran and got a picture for the blog!" (Sorry).

What would you have done?

I'll tell you next time.

Video of My Dog Trying to Get a Cookie Out of a Wastebasket

I was going to write a paean to America the beautiful - but I'll spare us all that. (And that is the last time the word "paean" will ever appear here. Promise). See, I sense that the internet is impatient with my boring, self-regarding content. I hear that. So here's a little clip of my dog trying to get the remainder of a "Chips Ahoy" cookie out of a wastebasket.

A little set up: The fun began with Maisy approaching the wastebasket like a commando, inching forward on her elbows and stomach. Then she started to growl and bark, staring intently at the can. I thought there must be a mouse or something behind it. Nope. Chips Ahoy - partial.

I helped a sister out by putting the can on its side. Still, it was a puzzle for her.

Enjoy. (PS She got the cookie in the end). Happy 4th.

"Confirmed in Antwerp..."

I just read that phrase out on the internet, at the beginning of some longer comment to a blog post. The comment had nothing to do, as near as I could tell, with the content of the post. Maybe it was a kind of artistic statement? Maybe misfiled? Whatever. I just loved it, though - hinting as it does at some important, busy life - some artist. some contemporary eminence. A long way from where I sit, alas, and probably not a phrase likely ever to be said following my name - but there it is. Isn't it poetry?

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In other non news, I have been thinking for a while about those great pop-culture metaphorical places: "Chinatown" (I mean in the sense it was used in the movie of the same name - I know that there are many literal Chinatowns), Margaritaville, Hotel California. What would I call the metaphorical place I currently inhabit? How about you? Looking forward to getting a couple of answers here.

Mirror, Mirror... and a Junk-Free Memorial Day Weekend

Is anyone else out there bothered by the high reflectivity of his or her computer screen? I mean, until the LCDS light up on my laptop it's as bad as having a great horking mirror 18 inches from my face? (Mirror avoidance = peace).

Also I just "invested" in a iPod touch and was dismayed to see it produces the same effect. I was waiting for Shackleton to return from a field trip yesterday and decided to use my new iPod to watch an episode of The Office on Netflix. If I refocused my eyeballs at any given moment, there was my own face, hovering ghostly and malevolently over a tiny Steve Carrell.

I sense a marketing opportunity here... Is there some film that we could put on these screens so they wouldn't force us to look at ourselves looking at our screens?

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In other news, my name is Woolfoot and I am junkaholic. It's been two months since my last auction or visit to an antique store.

As you know, it's Memorial Day weekend and I live in Vermont, where almost everyone is white. In case you haven't heard, White People in general, especially rural white people like most of us here in Vermont, like to pull their stuff out of their houses and onto their lawns and try to sell it during the summer. They like to get off to a big start on Memorial Day weekend.

I drove 60 miles today around our little state and, hand to heart, I saw a yard sale at least every two miles on average. I did not stop at one.

OK, OK, I'll admit I walked into the auction house where I have spent so much time and money in my past life. (They had a sign by the road that said "flea market.") I came late - people were packing - and I left immediately. Really, my stopping in was just a little auld lang syne (I own a blue-and-white jumbo coffee mug from about 1890 with the words to auld lang syne transferprinted on the saucer - FYI). Temptation had vanished. The fever has passed. Why?

I have been wondering about that myself and I have a few ideas.

First, my daydream of opening an antique store ran aground when I set up an antiques booth early last fall at a big event. That booth was work! Miserable, hard work. Not fun, as I had vaguely hoped, nor profitable, as I had argued with Whusband. Also, I just looked around my house one day, and my studio, and the outbuildings on our farm and saw that every available nook, cranny and bit of wall space was occupied - not to mention the drawers and cupboards and I thought: enough! Finally, if you have been following along, you know I pulled together a "Blook" this spring, that is a book made up of old blog posts -- and there I saw how much time and energy I have spent in the last few years accumulating things I don't need and really can't afford and then writing about it. Again, why?

OK, collecting was fun. While it lasted. But I think I am over it. I have a pin, one shaped like and anchor and covered with rhinestones, (from a box lot last year at auction last year). I think I will put it on in recognition of my new-found sobriety.