Vermont's Golden Nights?

I need your help with a little market research for a new product I am thinking of developing. Well, OK, it's not so much a new product as one that has yet to be branded and exploited. Let me know what you think. It would be helpful if you happened to be in, say, Australia at the moment, or anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere. That is, I would particularly value opinions from those quarters.

I have noticed lately, especially since we changed the clocks last weekend, that we have a lot of darkness here in Vermont. It's fair to say, in fact, that we have been plunged into darkness. The sun comes up around 11 AM and sets at about 1:30 PM, or thereabouts.

I was driving through a dark misty afternoon this week, shortly after lunch, trying to make out the nearly invisible fog line at the road's edge, and thinking, "Gar, it sure is dark here." Then I thought, "I wonder how people in sunny places are coping with all that light they're getting now. I wonder if all that sunshine gets on their nerves."

I think you probably see where this is heading.

There must be lots of people who would love to have just a bit of a cold and pitch-black-5-PM in their unrelievedly sunny homes. I mean, how do all those transplanted northerners stand it this time of year in Arizona, or Los Angeles? And wouldn't northern daytime darkness have a certain mystery and cachet in the tropics - or the antipodes?

So, why not box it up and sell it?

The Pros: Postage would be minimal, even for a very large box of Vermont darkness. Oppressive as the dark can be around here, it actually weighs - are you holding onto something sturdy? - nothing at all!

Ease of manufacturing? Duh. Labor costs? I think I could handle taping the boxes closed and getting them to the post office. (And cashing the checks and processing the credit cards!)

I think the fact that I am in Vermont, which is, as our State marketing people will tell you, a valuable brand in itself offers me a tremendous business adavantage. Put the Vermont seal of quality, or even just the word "Vermont" on your product and you have announced to the world: "this is the best you can get". Ice cream, wool clothes, flower seeds, honey - precede the product name with "Vermont" and people in Japan will reach for their credit cards so fast that those near them risk injury. (Remember the high-end dog that Bart ordered in that Simpson's episode when he got his own credit card? The crate was marked, "The Vermont Collie.")

Soooo. Big, big upside.

The Cons

I know what you're saying now. "Sure, it's brilliant but you will need a really cool box.

The box is, I grant you, a hurdle.

Also, as an attorney, I am aware that there might be some risk of consumer disappointment if the Vermont darkness were in any way, uhm, mishandled.

I think I could deal with this, however, with a discrete, yet bulletproof disclaimer - one that provides the corporation with legal protection without spoiling the cool box. (If the tobacco people can do it, so can I.) By way of a rough draft:

Caution! Do not open your box of Genuine Vermont Brand Darkness (TM)under conditions involving ANY ambient light. The box should be unsealed only in areas of complete darkness. If you also ordered Genuine Vermont Brand Cold Air (TM), be certain to open your box in a cold room, such as a walk-in freezer. Caution! Before creating conditions of darkness and cold, remove hazards that might make it risky to move around in the dark. Also be certain that you have a way to get back out again. Vermont Environments Envoy, LLC, [just a provisional name - I'll need to convene a few focus groups] will not be held responsible for injuries caused by stumbling in the darkness or getting locked in a freezer.

BE SURE TO CLOSE THE BOX BEFORE LEAVING YOUR DARK, COLD ROOM.

Contents are guaranteed to have been boxed in Vermont and to have contained, at time of shipping, genuine Vermont Dark and Cold. Opening the box in conditions involving light, or heat, (if you have ordered Vermont Brand Cold Air (TM)), voids the warranty. Settling may have occurred during shipping.


Just a draft, of course.

Thoughts?

What do you think for a price point?

Should various sizes be made available?

Hey - and what about expanding the product line in December with Vermont Brand Ice and Snow? Hmmm.

Shipping would be more difficult... But Rome wasn't built in a day.

Have I mentioned that I will be in Florida for two weeks in February? I'll pack some northern dark and cold for my mother and sister, who both live down there now. I am sure they're missing it already. They'll be dying for it by February.

Tra La La - Snap Snap Snap

One for the Christmas Card?


Frosty morning in Stowe

Did I mention about my new laptop? I was momentarily neglectful of the last one at Dulles Airport a few weeks ago and it was fatal. Well, the home owner's insurance came through and I have a new one, less good, but new.

One nice feature of the new computer is that I can pop my photo card into a little slot in the side and have all the pictures/videos sucked right in here. This is good because I seem also to have lost the specialized USB cord that I previously used for this task. (People at work say I remind them of Lucille Ball - of the Desi era - because of these kinds of mishaps).

November is famously a zero in this part of the world. Too late for foliage, too soon for snow: the innkeeper's call it, glumly, "stick season."

It has its consolations, though, and here are a few pictures I have taken over the last couple of days and weeks.


Sunrise from next to the milk house


Afternoon on the Jay Peak Golf Course


Does this say "asylum" to you? Cause that's what it was (and still is in one little corner). These days it is officially the Vermont State Office Complex in Waterbury, where I work. It wasn't created to house bureaucrats, but the mad, the poor, the halt and the lame. The bureaucrats have it now and a few of us are fascinated by the history of the place, though people seem not to talk too much about it.

And Something about this little stretch of building just says, "19th Century Mad House" to me.




A view into Quebec - the higher elevations have winter now and we're next.

OK - time to pack up and get ready for the week ahead. Thanks for stopping by.

Nature's Last Green is Gold...

Today's goal: one last time around the lawn on the mower for 2009. I had to stop work, though, when the sun started slanting low and lit up the winter wheat (the green field in the picture in today's banner) to such a stunning green. Then the kids came out when they saw I had the camera, and the dog started running around, so we had one of our periodic farm photo shoots.



Also, I made black bean soup, which tastes pretty good. So, that's a wrap on Saturday.





This is a classy blog, with classy post titles alluding to classy poems. So, here's my inspiration for today, by that great Vermonter, Robert Frost:

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

No, it doesn't last so be sure to get the camera out. I hope your weekend is golden.

Vermont Life

Every weekend I make a vow to myself to get up early and go for a walk with the dog on the (now) quiet slopes of Jay Peak, our local mountain. I try to manage things so that I am out of the house before any one else is awake or else I get drafted into feeding people or helping on the computer or refereeing computer time blan blah blah. Today, I made such a racket in my preparations (looking for my glasses, my coat etc) that everyone was up before I could make my escape, and it was raining. I went anyway.

I told myself that I would at least show up at the mountain, go uphill a couple of hundred yards to get my heart rate up, then, having made an effort, I could go home with a clear conscience. So, with low expectations, Maisy and I hit the slopes and started hiking. I was listening to This American Life on my iPod, a fascinating piece on "Frenemies" (q.v.). Well, and here's the point, we had a great time. The "Frenemies" show was fascinating and was strangely in keeping with the atmosphere on the mountain. The scenery was, of course, beautiful. The sun was in and out of the clouds and the trees, ahhh, the trees, and the rocks and the ferns. I think that mountain is my favorite place on earth. I have never had a bad day there, not even a bad experience. Note to self. Hike more. What would my new cosmopolitain alter ego make of this? (see the last post.) She would not touch a hiking boot with a gondola pole - in fact, she wouldn' touch a gondola pole. One or two people who drop around here from time to time would no doubt feel the same. I am reconciled to my little internal contradictions, though. I love the city and the country. Let a thousand flowers bloom, I say. Here are some pictures I took along the way, and if will load, a little piece of video saw you can see what I saw. Bon weekend.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Summer was cold and soggy here on the US/Canadian border, but September has been beautiful. I managed to take the camera out a few times lately to record the fabulousness of it all.




Today, behind the Last House. Fun on the tire swing.


The flying pig was an auction find. I added him to the broken down manure spreader behind the barn, ooops, I mean, "in the sculpture garden." Move over Marcel Duchamp.


Barn roof with bird.



What could Monet have accomplished if he'd had a digital camera?



Jay Peak, waiting for snow.

The Best Advice You Ever Had...

My candidates:

"Do what you want to do, or do what you should do, but don't do nothing."

"Take Latin."

"Drive slow in parking lots."

What about you?

I have been semi-busy this weekend, trying to take that first bit of advice. I did watch a couple of episodes of Spongebob just now, and believe me when I tell you that isn't what I wanted to do, nor what I should have done.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Also, I have been thinking of one way to solve the state tax revenue problem. Place a confiscatory tax on "creemees." Everyone in Vermont, probably all of New England, eats bucketfuls of this stuff all summer. I don't think they're allowed to sell it as "soft ice cream" because I am not sure a cow ever had anything to do with it. It is good though. And we are all hooked.

Thanks to the few people who still may be stopping by here. The old blog has languished of late. I haven't done as much reading of others as I like to do either. I will try and catch up later this week. Best wishes for a wonderful week.

Happy Friday, Again; McDonald's, The Metro, Mennonites

The sun was out on my long drive home tonight, after two days of rain. The sky was blue with cottonball white clouds hurrying by. There was a fresh breeze that moved the leaves without turning them the wrong way around.

I had to stop at the drug store next to McDonald's in Morrisville to get some lip balm. (Why chapped lips in June?). The important part of the previous sentence is "next to McDonald's". It was dinner time. Yet, I resisted the lure of a filet'o fish, strawberry shake and fries. "Away from me Filet 'O Fish Satan!" I thought. (I didn't actually say this out loud, you'll be relieved to know). And I pushed that evil filet'o fish away, and bought my lip balm and continued my trip north, fishless, fryless, shakeless. A small victory for self control.

Now, (this next bit seems like a digression but hold on to the end) remember the "imagist poets" from 10th grade English class? Here's a quick refresher:

so much depends
upon a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

--William Carlos Williams

and

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

--Ezra Pound

Nice, easy sledding in English for once (even if a bit bewildering at 16).

I was thinking of the imagists as I rounded the first corner after leaving the drug store -- maybe because there is a Mennonite bakery straight ahead at the traffic light called "The Red Hen".



It was closing time at the Red Hen, apparently, because a pretty, young Mennonite woman was locking the front door. The thing about the Mennonite women, or at least whatever group of them have settled around here, is that they dress like they are on their way to Sunday school, in the Great Plains somewhere, in about 1878: long dresses, aprons, hair pulled up tight under a white cap at the back of their heads, you get the picture. The red light lasted long enough for me to see the store keeper pull the door closed, crank the key over hard in the lock, and then to hop into her black Volkswagen Jetta.

Is there not an imagist poem in there somewhere? Would you write it and send it on?
Maybe I'll do one too.

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While we're on the subject, we drive by a big Mennonite farm in Hyde Park, Vermont almost every day. My kids are always craning to see the little girls who live there, since they look like they walked off the set of Little House on the Prairie.

There is a wooden sign in the front yard of the farm house with a message that gets changed from time to time. This winter, for a long time, it said "The Earth Will Be Burned Up." Hmmm. I don't suppose there's any disagreement about that. The question really is when and exactly why. We'll leave that discussion for someone else's blog. The sign was changed this spring to "Jesus Knows Your Thoughts". Recently, however, another sign has been added to the lawn. It is hand painted and stands right behind the religious warning. It says, "Fresh Brown Organic Eggs." Invariably, I think, well, I can't remember what I was thinking (probably, "we're late" or "I'm going too fast for this curve") but, Lord knows, now I am thinking of "fresh, brown organic eggs." Perhaps this is a bit of thought-craft by a clever Mennonite...?

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I am supposed to be cleaning the kitchen/weeding the garden/preventing the children from burning themselves over the remains of the charcoal that cooked tonight's hamburgers as they melt marshmallows. My mom is coming for a 10 day visit on Tuesday and believe me when I tell you we are not ready... People who have been living in refugee camps in Africa might prefer their present accommodations to what we have on offer at the moment. So, I am not sure when I can get back to writing here and visiting my usual haunts but I will eventually. Meanwhile, I hope anyone who managed to read this far has a happy weekend.

Shackleton Speaks III & Stumbling Into Windsor Castle And the Synod of Dort

No time for a proper blog post this last little while but I have been mentally composing something unusual, possibly awful. Perhaps it will see the light of day here. Perhaps not. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, I just wanted to pop in and say "hello" and also record (before I forget again) a couple of Shackletonisms.

Most of today was spent in the usual springtime Saturday way, first to piano lessons, then grocery store, then library. When we stopped at the library it was near closing time and if we had gone in it could only have been for a mad dash for a DVD for tonight. Also, Shackleton does not like to browse in the library. He thinks of it as a kind of shopping for me and his sister and is bored by it very quickly. So, today, I just parked out in front, handed him the books we had to return and told him to drop them in the bin. (Translator's Note: For any UK visitors, in the U.S. "bin" is not synonymous with "garbage"). It was only a few steps to the car but I couldn't see him. It took him longer to get back then it should have. I asked him what took so long and he said, "I was pretending I was Superman and had to save some people."

OK, maybe that's not a complete rib-binder but I thought it was funny.

Since it is Memorial Day Weekend it is also, unofficially, lawn sale Saturday here in northern Vermont. We shopped one lawn sale because a promising bike was parked in front - too expensive. Mostly, however, we just drove by the signs and rubbernecked at the goods on their plywood-cum-sawhorse tables. (As a Black comedian I heard once accurately observed, White people love to haul their stuff out of the house on weekends and sell it in their yards).

One sign promised a lawn sale and "free kittens".

"Hey look, free kittens," I said.

"They're probably really ugly" said Shackleton.

In Other News and a Propos of Nothing In Particular

I stumbled into the Wikipedia article on the English Civil War the other day. From thence to the Synod of Dort, then to a description of appropriate formal wear for Royal occasions, to a history of Windsor Castle, the usual hodge podge of link following. These two images of Windsor Castle illustrate the article of that name and I was so taken by them I wanted to share them here. Here ya go.




Don't you want to visit/live there? (circle one). I do. Happy Memorial Day.

The Sun Coming Up in March

Just this morning, a few minutes ago...



And yesterday, about 7 AM - the sun was off to the right and a rainbow of sorts appeared in this cloud.

March has its consolations.

A Little Cecil Beaton Update:

For those of you who might be in London sometime in the next couple of weeks, the famous Chris Beetles Gallery is having a Cecil Beaton retrospective (in conjunction with Sothebys) for about a month starting on April 22. I take it that means a whole bunch of his photos are going on the block in May. For those of you who will be in London this spring with a wad of cash, take note.

Sunday, Muddy Sunday

I think I'll get the lifejackets out of the barn. There's a puddle by the mailbox that is menacing. Like the tarn in "The Fall of the House of Usher". (I remember I had to look up "tarn" back in high school or college or whenever it was that we read that story. I am happy in the age of the internet that I can save you the trouble). The kids are pleased, however, with all puddles including the one that has spread across the front field and qualifies, temporarily, as a pond. (See the pictures). The Understudy came inside just now with one of Maisy's dogtags that has emerged from the melt. The snow is giving up its secrets, and its trash.

There is fresh snow in the forecast for tomorrow, however. March is like a war between the seasons here in Vermont. Today's battle went to Spring, as will the war, eventually. In the meantime, the trenches are full of mud.

Between the Storms

I left work an hour and a half early yesterday, not quite slinking off. I made sure the Powers That Be knew I was reachable by cell phone, etc. but the snow was falling fast, and in that sifting way that means it is going to snow for a long time and that it is cold. (If you live where it snows, you know what I mean). The ride home took two hours (usually an hour and twenty minutes) and every car that went by in the opposite lane boiled up a blinding cloud of snow (I guess I was doing the same to them). I was coiled like a spring when I finally made it to the driveway.

Mom (in Florida) fowarded me an email today titled, "Why I live in Florida." It included this amusing bit of video (Youtube embedding won't work so you have to click, sorry.)

Yes, we of the north have hard life. (And a sense of humor, Thank You Know Who). But we have our rewards too. Another storm is closing in as I blog, but we got a little sun this afternoon. I ran outside with the little happy snappy to show you all (and Mom) "Why I Live in Vermont."












Happy Solstice!

Baby, It's Cold Inside

The first few big heating bills have arrived and WHusband has spent the weekend ranting against comfortable indoor temperatures. The thermostat has been set to Stun for a a full 24 hours. Even for us crusty old northerners, 60 degrees (F) is barely sufficient to sustain life. It reminds me of when I was a kid and Jimmy Carter was president and we were all instructed to freeze in the dark.

For a few years I had a sister-in-law who had been been born in Pakistan and raised in Houston. She was cold even when she visited Vermont in July. She came here for at least one Christmas. We bought her long underwear (Merry Christmas from your poor relations!) and turned up the heat a notch. She was lovely, but her blood was like water. Hmmm. Note to self. Don't freeze the company.

The weekend has been quiet and nearly devoid of Christmas preparations. Hmm. Note to self. Get ready for Christmas!

Shackleton and the Understudy were just complaining that we didn't do anything today. This is not true, strictly speaking. I went to the grocery store. I vacuumed. We all watched TV. The kids played I Spy Spooky Mansion. So, OK, we didn't get a Christmas tree. Maisy and I did a brief walkabout on our land here at the Last House at 4 PM, which is nearly night just at the moment. I did a post in April called "Everything's Gone Green." Well, this one could be "Everything's Gone Brown."

Here's some of what we saw.



The last bit of green I could find in the woods...

Some little creature braved the ice, which is new today.

I think a witch lives near here, hey, I don't mean me!