C'est Moi, La Flaneuse

I went walking yesterday after Jeopardy ended. That means not only that I am incipient old fart but also that it was 7:30 pm before I got out the door. This time of year here in Vermont that means the light is going fast.

I almost didn't go because darkness was falling and because I'm lazy. As usual, however, my minimal exertion was richly repaid.  It was such a fine experience I thought about it again today, while I was out on another walk which was also nice but not so crowded with unexpected pleasures.  I thought I should go home and write about my nice walk last night for the record.

It's not much really so feel free to leave now if you are easily bored.

More on this is a minute...

Still here? Here's how it went.

I walked down my driveway to the dirt road on which we live and from there onto the paved road which is only three houses away. The paved road is not heavily traveled so it is pleasant for walking.

The houses in our neighborhood are all different, having been added piecemeal over about the last 150 years. A derelict apple orchard was repurposed as building lots for several of them and the apple trees are still here, though not tended.  I grabbed a small sour apple as I passed the first house on the paved road and took two bites.  It was good but I didn't want to risk bowel trouble so I stopped there.  I then remembered a pledge I made to myself earlier this summer to pick some wild flowers and August tis the season for wildflowers. I wanted to pick them because this summer I bought (for one dollar at Goodwill) a little flower press.

Wildflowers, of course, grow in profusion on the roadside. I grabbed a few as a I passed, aiming for varied colors and shapes. I don't know the names of the things I picked.  There were some little daisy-like things, a purplish number that I believe might be a cornflower, buttercups (I think, they were smaller than the buttercups I remember from childhood), and those orange bell-shaped flowers that grow on something like a small bush...  People of New England, you know what I mean.

I carried these as I walked toward the red barn that was my turn-around point.  When I got to the barn (actually just short of there as night was getting more serious), I turned and faced the mountains - well, significant hills - that make a wall at the end of this particular road, about two miles distant.

It had rained during the day and as dusk gathered there were pools and tatters of mist in half a dozen places on the dark green hillsides. Mists also swirled around the hilltops.  I hadn't noticed the mists til just that moment.  They were very beautiful and a lovely surprise.

The Japanese have a word for this - my kids give me grief about the fact that I say this, "The Japanese have a word..." every time I see such mists.  I can't remember their word. I will look it up later.

I listen to music while I walk.  I can't remember what was on, Squeeze, I think, when a jogger and her giant white dog came up behind me. I was picking another apple at that moment, thinking fine thoughts of our misty hills and trying to remember the Japanese word, when the dog woofed. Having been caught picking an apple (they are wild, but still) I started. I took a bite and, finding it corrupted, threw it out and had no courage to pick another with a witness.

The jogger was a fellow fattie, though much younger than me. She gave me a kind, rather embarrassed smile as she wobbled by.  The dog - who hadn't scared me a bit really, he was clearly a gentle giant - was on a leash. As they passed, the dog kept looking back at me, slowing his owner.

After the jogger had gotten about twenty yards ahead of me, the dog just sat down in the middle of the road as if to say. "I've had enough of this f---ery. Why aren't we on the couch where we belong? I want to stay with that apple picking broad."  The jogger, embarrassed, patted the dog's head. She then gave him a stiff pull on the leash and started jogging again. He was defeated and trotted along behind her like a furry ball and chain.

To her credit, the runner kept at it til she was out of sight. It was uphill so I was impressed.  No doubt she waited to go jogging until the road was likely clear of observers and, then, damn, there I was.

I walked past the old barn that comes up just before our dirt road. It is weathered and brown but has a shiny new tin roof.  It is a barn for a Vermont Life photo shoot.  I felt I cut a romantic figure, walking past it with my bunch of wild flowers in my hand.

I put the flowers in the press as soon as I got back into our dining room. I felt sort of bad about pressing them - something so 'pit and the pendulum' about tightening the screws.  I'll take a picture when they're done in two weeks. I will want to remember this.

FitBit and Wild Bats

More on this is a minute...

I suppose that would be in contrast to tame bats?

Anyway, just stopping by on a Saturday morning to wave hello and to join the chorus of those extolling (or lamenting a little) the Fitbit.  David Sedaris wrote about his Fitbit experience here.http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/30/stepping-out-3

It's basically a pedometer with a wireless internet connection that tracks your activity.  I bought one, the lower-end model that attaches to clothing or can be carried in a bag, soon after reading about DS's experience.  I was, apparently, late to the game, however.  My secretary was there at my unboxing.  She yelled "You got a Fitbit?!"  My colleague in the next cube had, I learned then, been wearing one for months.  (She's a perfectly maintained individual, I might add).

My Fitbit has become in the last few weeks the Dragon Mother I never had.  It reports daily on my movements.  It makes happy faces when I am walking and sick faces when I am not.  The goal is 10,000 steps a day.  To get to that, I find that I need to take a proper walk, at least one, sometime during the day.

I think I have noticed at least a little health benefit.  I have more breath on uphill climbs, but the greater one has been the walking in weathers and conditions that I would have otherwise avoided.  My best walks so far have been in near dark and or in slight drizzle.  The wildflower situation here in Vermont is, at the moment, spectacular. And the Queen Ann's Lace and Goldenrod and all that, as well as all the green of the ferns and leaves, never looks better than in the wet and the gloaming.

Last night, it was nearly 8 PM before I got out of the house and that basically means "dark" at this time of year.  It was a proper summer night, though, with several neighbors entertaining outdoors, with porch lights lit, murmured conversations, campfire-scented air.  I saw the big moon reflected off the spine of a metal barn roof, the hills around the valley where we live silhouetted against a dark blue sky, and bats.  Lots of bats.  This was really good because we have been worried about bat populations here lately. They flapped around overhead in that mad bat fashion, as could only be traced by an autistic kid with an etch a sketch.

What a treat.  Thank you Ma FitBit.

And that was the second time this week where my Fitbit paid such a dividend.  The other day, when I dropped off Shackleton for his cross country practice in a mountainy-neighborhood on the other side of town, I walked instead of getting back into the car to run errands.  I had my iPhone with me and snapped a few pictures.  One is at the top of this post.  (File under, "otherwise I would have missed this").  Here are a couple of others.

Apparently you have to leave your couch to see these things.

An Open Letter to Fred Armisen - Vermont Calling!

Dear Fred,

We were all so excited here in Vermont to see you last night at the Unitarian Church in Burlington (of all places!).  

 Really, your show was excellent and (I'll say it),  I was a bit thrilled that I got to ask you a question during the Q&A.  

Sorry if I took liberties, like, where you didn't actually call on me, but you made eye contact while my hand was up so...   

My question, by the way, was whether you "should maybe move to Vermont." (Awkward phrasing.  Sorry).  But it was a real question, not an applause line (or not just an applause line).

About your answer... You said something about how with your personal ban on sugar you couldn't face the ice cream situation here   

It was the second time you brought up your sugar restriction during the show.   My friends and I were commenting after the show, BTW, that you were looking very well, if thin in that (celebrity) way associated with people who have restricted diets and can get expensive (vegan, usually) food.  I chalked your answer up to the fact that you are perseverating about the sugar thing and that, expert though you are at improvisation, some things just require a little thought.  

Now that you have had a night to think it over, and have actually woken up, at least once, in Vermont, I expect that you have been pondering my question.  (I hope it didn't keep you up or give you trouble unwinding last night. I would hate that!)  A couple things I felt I should pass on to you as you reflect on your Vermont situation, or current lack thereof.

1.   Lots of famous people live in Vermont,  E.g. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (he's dead now, but he lived here for a long time), Julia Roberts (not sure if she actually lived here, but she visited a lot for a while, or so I have heard), David Mamet (he wrote something once about how he got help on his Vermont taxes, not sure what he's up to these days), Harvey Keitel (I think he's got a house around here. I heard once that he used to go to this restaurant that I like in Stowe), Michael J. Fox (I don't think he's still around, but he definitely did live here for awhile). You get the picture.  Soviet dissidents, playwrights, international film stars. At home in Vermont. Also, Phish.  (I met one of the guys from the band once and he was super nice). Also, either Ben or Jerry.  I can't remember which one left for Arizona.

2.     It's easy to get from VT to NYC.  You can take Jetblue, at least if you don't have a private jet timeshare or whatever.  Maybe you don't want to be, or become, the kind of person who has a private jet timeshare.  While I'm here giving you advice, I'll add that. 

For my part, I like to go to New York now and again and this has been made a lot easier by Megabus service from Burlington.  Megabus, if you didn't know, is a place to see some real This American Life stuff, including drug dealers on a budget.  I actually prefer to drive down to the train station in Albany, New York and ride Megabus into NYC then take the train back up (both leave from the Rensselaer station).  One tip. Don't lean against the headrests on Megabus.   

While we're on the subject of drugs, do not be misled by the person who shouted out last night that we "smoke a lot of weed!" here.  Nonsense. Opiates have become more popular.  Also, we ski. (If you're a skiing type of person [read, "middle class" who hasn't squandered money on drug]s).  Other orders snowmobile and ice fish.] 

3.     If you like Portland, You'll Love Vermont.  You didn't want to compare Burlington to Portland but kind of got stuck there last night, didn't you? I hope you would agree that one of the best things abut "Portlandia" is that it is not a "real" place altogether, but a stand-in for a lot of real places/emotional states.  E.g., "Chinatown" (like, from the movie), The Hotel California, Your Own Private Idaho, Margaritaville, etc.  I don't mean that "Portlandia" is like those places, of course, only that it is also partly metaphorical.  (I was in London visiting friends in September and met people who were trying to bring back organic agriculture on canal boats in the Thames - like, container gardening on these skinny boats. "Londonia?"  I think so).

4.     The License Plates. A pleasant green, no nonsense. 

   In short, I think once you have had some time to let the seed that I so cleverly planted germinate to reflect, you will see that you have a future here in Vermont, like other sensible, occasionally brilliant, famous people before you.  I actually wouldn't recommend downtown Burlington because part of living here in Vermont is keeping it real and Burlington it is just getting to be too much like Burlingtonia. Of course, it is a nice place to visit, as you have now seen. 

Really, we all loved the show and we're so glad you came. Hoping to catch you at grocery store around here sometime soon.

          Your fan,
           Kim




     

Snow Giddiness

I was surprised when I parted the curtains just after six this morning to find snow all over everything. It looked like this:


My son is twelve and I am pleased to report he had the appropriate enthusiasm for the first grass-covering snow of the season.  We pulled out the sled and the next thing you know I was throwing church to the wind and making a movie trailer.  I am lucky that my son has a sense of humor.  The value-added part of this is that it's almost like a real movie trailer (and I thought it was funny).

So, It's, Like, All Magical Here and Everything...

I took my fifteen-year-old daughter and her friend to their yoga class this evening.  I skipped the yoga and went for my umptybazillionth walk on the Stowe, Vermont recreation path.  If the Weather today around here had asked a magic mirror (or anyone else, for that matter), "who is the fairest of them all?" The answer would have been, "You are, you rare Vermont weather, you."

The sun was setting when I started out and Leprechauns and elves were skittering over the stripily-shadowed path. I almost got impaled by a unicorn - almost, but not quite, phew.  Unfortunately, all these creatures slipped away before I could take their pictures with my crumby little ipod camera.  Here are a few shots I got of things that were standing still.

Streetlight in Vermont

I was just sitting here at the Last House, minding my own business, watching American Pickers with Shackleton, when I looked out the window.  One of the oddities of our old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere is that we have a streetlight just outside.  Whusband planted these Walnut trees a couple of years ago and the best thing about them so far is the shadows they cast in the snow.  Bedtime!

A Little Romance...

Stick season is upon us here on the Canadian Border. I was looking back at some of the pictures I took this summer (sigh) and found this one of a road on Shelburne Farms, once the home place of the Vanderbilts. If you haven't been, you should come up here and have your heart broken by the place.

You might want to wait til next summer at this point, though.

Cheers.

The Consolations of November

When chill November’s surly blast
Made fields and forests bare.
Robert Burns, "Man was made to Mourn."

Around here, it is basically agreed that November pretty much sucks. Well, the hunters, and they are legion, would disagree but I don't hang out with them, unless you count my brother, who spends more than I earn in a year on hunting this-that-and the-other around the world but, never mind about him. I am here today to talk about November. Stay on task, Woolfoot! Surly blasts, bare forests and fields, Vermont is, apparently, a lot like Scotland in November as per Bobby Burns.

The two biggest industries in our state are tourism and dairy farming, not necessarily in that order. November sucks (there's that word again) for both of them. The cows are still in the fields when the days are sunny, as it was today, but soon Bossy and Betty will be shooed into the barn for the duration. The tourists also disappear: leaf season is over and ski season has not yet begun. These weeks are known by hotel keepers as "stick season" and not many people will drive from New York or Boston and pay good money to see the sticks of Vermont. Also, we have just turned the clocks back and are now plunged into darkness just after lunch, or so it seems. So, around here, November is the red-headed step child of the calendar (about as popular as his scouring and soggy, red-chapped hands sister, March).

But - you knew this was coming - November has its bright spots. Happily, today was one of them. The light was thin, but it broke through whispy clouds and gave the day a special light, a kind of atmospheric Mona Lisa smile.

Also, as you can see from the "before" (summer)




and "after" (today)




pictures of the Corn Maze just off the Stowe Rec. Path, that Maze is waaaaay easier (and cheaper) now than it was in August. I defy anyone to get lost out there. And the farmer is no longer demanding $6.00 per head to give it a whirl.

Feelin' Harvesty

Today's banner is Maisy standing in a field behind the Last House. I took that picture just yesterday, when it was positively, freakishly, summer-like here on the border. Before her lies a wee smidgen of America. The country ends just a little beyond that blue bit of farm equipment you see down there. Thereafter, it is Canada. The corn from that field was harvested just this week.

We (Whusband and I) don't do any actual farming. Suburban Schenectady and the South Side of Milwaukee (where Whusband and I come from, respectively) were not good places to learn farming. My father grew up on a farm, however, and that farm was and is one of my favorite places of all time which is why I wanted one of my own when I grew up - although I certainly didn't want to work like a farmer. So, we rent our land here to Jack Lazor of Butterworks Farm.

Jack and his wife Ann (lovely, both) are world famous in the circle of Vermont organic farmers (this is adapted from WHusbdand's observation that many Canadians are World Famous in Canada). And while we can't claim any credit for Jack and Ann's work, we do enjoy our window seat on what they accomplish here each year. One year we had sunflowers in the field in front of the house and they were, briefly, beautiful. Of course they turned into ghoulish black late in life and that was less attractive. In any case, it is especially nice as Thanksgiving approaches to have followed along on a full growing season and to witness close up the actual harvest of food. The stubbly fields are rather reassuring this year, with mortgage backed securities and other strange, ghostly forms of wealth vanishing into the mists from which they seem to have come. Here, we are back to where it all began. Food coming up and out of the ground and going into a barn.

Jack came shortly after I snapped this picture of his wagons, hitched them to his pickup truck and them down to his farm, in nearby Westfield. It will go into his cows and reappear as his famous Organic yogurt. (Those if you in NYC can get it at Dean & Deluca. Martha Stewart once featured his Jersey Cream on her show. Like I said, world famous). He'll also sell some, I think, for a pretty premium since it is all organic.

At the risk of sounding like a 19th century windbag, I have to say that all this talk reminds me of a poem. Can't think which one... Oh yes. To Autumn by Keats - here are my favorite four lines.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Gawd, but those trophy photos in my last post are ugly. Sorry about that. Standards are slipping. I am mentally pledging to smarten up. See you at the health food store.

What's That Wet, Cracking Sound?

No, not the fallen branches underfoot in the woods this time of year - something else...



Oh, it's the first of October and that sound must be the hearts of those millions of northeasterners who have decamped to Florida and Texas and Arizona and similarly horrifying places over the last couple of decades.


Places with climates congenial to achy joints, and also to man-sized reptiles and hand-sized biting insects.



Places famous for poisonous snakes and developers; flat, flat places with shallow-rooted vegetation that does not change color in the fall.



If I had been born in another century, and on the other side of the sea, I think I would have been the sister who stayed: Bridie, alone, by the peat fire in the cottage. The letters would come back full of the marvels of New York and Boston and Milwaukee and Toronto and I would look at the green grass and the mist and think, "I still would not trade."



My brother in Dallas will ask again this winter, when I am complaining about making no money, and driving over an ice-coated road through the dark in a sideways snow storm, why I don't move to a real place? My sister in Florida will tell me in February about 82 degrees and no humidity.



But they don't have Fall, a proper Fall, in Texas or Florida and I couldn't bear to give it up. Nor spring for that matter. And while we're on the subject, winter is hard here, but it has its rewards (bright days, hunkering down during a quiet snow storm, snowshoeing and skiing through a world altogether different from what it will be six months later) and our Summers are like gold. And in the Fall, of course, at least for a few weeks, just about every place you look is so beautiful... Maybe that sound is my own heart breaking for sight of it.

More Outdoor Contemporary Art; The Union Jack Flies Over Vermont

Hey Woolfoot. What did you do today?

Glad you asked. It was Sunday, and an auction day. Luckily, the Understudy was invited to a birthday party in Morrisville. Westfield, home of my beloved Degre Auction House, is en route to Morrisville. Great. Cover for at least partial auction attendance. (Whusband disapproves, why?) The party didn't start til noon and the auction got rolling at 10 AM. The Understudy didn't get word of the plan to "swing by" the auction til she was in the car, and belted in.

Do we have to?!

Yes!


The Understudy 20 minutes into the bidding this morning

By the way, two weeks ago I took Shackleton the auction. He attended voluntarily and had a great time, urging me to bid on all kinds of stuff. He wound up with some old trophies we both loved. Here is his artist's rendition of the auctioneer, done as a live study.



He actually announced, when we got home, that we had a great day at the auction. Note to self, bring Shackleton to the next auction and let the Understudy stay home.

I left a bid on a box of Jackie Kennedy-era ladies gloves at 11:30, the only bidding I managed, and hied it down to the Birthday party. After depositing the Understudy with her friends at the ice skating rink I was off to Stowe, where I hoped to catch at least part of the English Car Show. This event seems to be growing year by year.



Unfortunately, most of the MGs and Triumphs and Jaguars and what have you that I saw were driving down the Mountain Road on their way out of town. Just a few tents coming down and the odd car remained at the show by the time I arrived:


Hey, that's a Rolls Royce, isn't it? No, no, the one up-top, by the tents, not the Mini down below.



It wasn't time to get the Understudy from the party yet, so I walked along the lower section of the Stowe Rec Path. I know, I know, I'm sorry for taking you back to the Rec Path. Maybe someone will have to fine me before I'll really stop blogging about it and photographing it.

Thing is, this is a part of the path I don't usually get to because I think of it as crowded, ending in the village as it does. Well, it wasn't crowded this afternoon and, I soon learned, the Contemporary Art Show that I wrote about a few posts back has straggled off the site of the Helen Day Art Center in the village and many pieces are now on display on this section of the path. So, I wasn't just walking, I was visiting an exhibit. Some of the art was fabulous. This teapot I just loved. I am going to find the artist and send her fan mail.









Isn't that cool - (the wrapped tree-trunks). Derivative of Christo, I suppose, but I liked it. The artist calls it "Chippendale." There was a sign nearby that said the trees would not be harmed by having their trunks wrapped in vinyl for a time. No, just kidding. I made that up. I am sure people are wondering about that, though. This is still Vermont, and Stowe, no less. The trees matter a lot, especially the trees along the Rec Path.

This one, (below) was the only real clunker I saw. Remember that Simpson's Episode where Marge discovers she's actually a great painter? She enters an art show and wins? I recall that one of the other entries in that show was a painting of a unicorn standing on a hill over a smoky, dirty city. A single tear runs down the unicorn's cheek and a thought bubble above his head asks, "Why"? This mini graveyard, with the names and dates of conflicts fought "in the name of religion", goes in the crying unicorn category as far as I am concerned.



By the way, we got the gloves. Ten bucks for 32 pairs - beautifully kept by some woman all the way through the Cold War, all pinned together, perfectly pressed. The Understudy got a pair and so did her friend. She didn't complain about that.

Happy Library Book Sale Season!

It's trite and banal, but nevertheless true,that all the Big Holidays have been corrupted by commercialism and, by the time one is my age, (43), freighted with emotional baggage. New Year's Day has been my personal favorite for the last few years since no one expects that you are going to do much of anything that day (except recover from the bigger holidays and maybe clean house). I hadn't really thought much about the failure of the regular holidays to generate much genuine happiness in me until I started thinking about how happy I felt the other day when I noticed the Friends of the Stowe Library "book sale" sign back on Main Street. Oh, hooo-rray!

OK - I recognize that a book sale appeals to what I might have to call my character flaws - books (as objects, since I can always get things I want to read out of the library), treasure hunting, bargain shopping. But it's just so fun to shop these sales. I am not even going to try to resist.

In recognition of the little thrill of joy this stirred in me, I have declared a personal holiday season; akin to the 12 days of Christmas; the Vermont Library Summer Book Sale Season. No one else I know shares my keen interest, so this is not a group holiday (at least not yet). My budget for indulging this holiday season will be less than $40. The Season extends here in Vermont from the second week of July to the first week of August.

Stowe is selling books on the porch and in the gazebo and in a tent from July 8 to August 14. Most books are $1 or $2 but you can get a bag of kids books for $3.00. Stowe has my favorite book sale. You never know what you will find on those tables - the population of Stowe, as I have noted here before, is an interesting one and the books that appear at the book sale reflect this. Last year I bought about 10 books. I kept some and sold some. (One on Cyprus fetched $50 on Ebay...). I got a calendar from around 1910 decorated with all kinds of art nouveau pictures and featuring the art treasures of the Schleswig (sp?)-Holstein area of Germany. Stowe, however, isn't the only game in town, so to speak. Every little Vermont village and burg has a library and most of them offload their discards and unusable donations at a sale held in July. The libraries use the money to buy new stuff so it's all good. The Stowe Library web site says the sale netted the library $10,000 last year.

My second favorite sale is at the Waterbury library. I spent a happy lunch hour on the back porch there this week and picked up a few little gems (all for home use, by the way). I had to stop buying because I was on foot and had to schlep the books about 3/4 of a mile back to the office. I couldn't carry all the ones I had picked out so I was forced to leave a few behind. Here are a few of the treasures I snagged this last week on the library porches. I photographed only a few to give you a sense of the range of what I found. I don't go for the newish bestsellers, though there are lots of those. Total expenditure in the realm of $20 so far.

Re: the first picture: when Kid 1 was a baby Wooolfoot Husband insisted we find and buy a copy of Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. Out of touch with the 21st century as he sometimes is, he was dumbfounded to learn it was out of print. He ordered a "turtle back" version, which is a paper back that has been cardboardized. Not a handsome book. He has tried on a couple of occasions to persuade the kids that this book would be a positive party for them if they would read it or allow him to read it to them. Still, when I spotted this nice big new-looking hard cover (kids have not been biting for at least a generation, it appears) and the great 1960s illustrations, I had to buy it. I doubt the kids will develop an interest now but who knows...



This one just screamed "buy me!" at the Waterbury sale ($2). It's a beautiful reproduction of the famous "Tres Riches Heures de la Duc de Berry" a/k/a Belles Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry. This one was printed in 1974 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The real book is there, at the Cloisters, a place I have always meant to visit. And, as you can see (I hope you are sitting down) this book included a slip cover, and all those engravings for Cripes sake! A beauty. It must weigh four pounds. Quality. I considered leaving it on my desk but it came home with me so I could show Woolfoot Husband. I bought him a 1960s cookbook (not photographed) of famous recipes from great restaurants around the world. It was signed by the author and numbered. I looked at Addall Used Books and found that everybody's copy seems to be one of these 5,000 - but still, it was cool.




We have been visiting with our horsey friends again and Kid 1 is clamoring to recommence riding lessons. As an object, this little leather book had a certain appeal. A pocket guide that has been in some pockets. Kid 1 was happy to get it (although she was happier about the brand-new-looking paperback about Kit, the American Girl, that I picked up for 50 cents at the same time).



The Modern Library has always been appealing to me. Nice little hardcovers and I love their Art Deco Prometheus trademark. And Edgar Allan Poe - and a beautiful dust jacket. What better way to spend $2? I'll actually read some of this one.



Great '50s artwork on the dust jacket here caught my eye and we are forever wondering on our various walks and hikes around northern Vermont what kind of animal left a track (or a poo - I mean "spore" - copiously illustrated here [not photographed, thank goodness). I gave it to Kid 2 who can't read it but who is always happy to get anything.

The Light in February

Kids and I just arrived back at the Last House after a day, or at least a long afternoon, in the Newport Metropolitan area. (That's a joke. Newport is the local shire town but it's a wee little place). The weather is clear and cold - it must be lurking at about zero. But, this time of year, we always get beautiful sunsets. Here are some pictures I ran out and took a few minutes ago so you can see what I mean.

Halloween on the Border Hops - Who Knew?

For the first time in all our years in the last house we did our trick or treating in the little village of North Troy - in which we live. If it has a claim to fame, other than sitting on the Canadian border and being a Port of Entry, it is as as rough sort of workingman's town. I suppose that's better than the neighboring town of Richford, over the mountain. A client of mine once told me that some of his Canadian friends think of Richford as the Tiajuana of Vermont. Funny, but kinda true.

Wanting to avoid gangs of vandals and cretins that I sometimes believe dominate the local population, we usually go somewhere else for trick or treat. This proved impractical this year so our kids and some of their friends in the villageall went out last night for the North Troy Halloween experience.

The local gas station/restaurant/convenience store had a way-station of coffee, donuts, cider and play doh and treats for the kids (the proprieters were dressed as Robin Hood and Maid Marion). The firemen were giving out glowing safety bracelets and candy and also manning all the streets to serve as crossing guards. The place was literally jumping. I have never seen so much activity in this little village. A couple of gay couples located here years ago (I tip my hat - I wish they'd persuade some friends to move in) their houses are the nicest in town. The garden at one of these places was like a movie set. Queer Eye for North Troy? I guess this wouldn't be universally supported but I'm all for it.

One of the parents we went with last night told me that lots of VT towns around here have banned trick or treating and ours, which is compact and has a (barely) surviving center is one of the few places to go so lots of people come from neighboring towns. People were mostly friendly and well behaved. It had a Norman Rockwell quality for the most part. A nice surprise. Happy Halloween.