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.

Giddy London

An English Car show held in Stowe, Vermont called the British Invasion is on this weekend. Lots of wee MGs were tooling down Main Street this evening and Union Jacks are fluttering from the light poles and at every retail establishment.

I have also been struggling with my Great Fiction Project (henceforth "GFP") some of which takes place in England of yesteryear. I have been researching various elements of daily life in the provinces and in the capital. I like that part. I have always loved reading about any kind of English history. I never have known why. It makes me wonder about reincarnation.



As a result, old England is on my mind and on my computer. I found a great website I wanted to share. "Twentieth Century London" is an Internet archive of objects and information from a dozen London-based museums all regarding life in London during, you guessed it, the 20th Century. (Some of us remember large swaths of that century and it was not without interest). The site has lots of great images (see above and below) and historical odds and ends. There's a cool feature for kids, a kind of animated London story book, and a London quiz (I got 8 out of 10 - and would have had 9 out of 10 if I had been paying closer attention, it was that easy).



I'll let you know how it goes (the British Invasion - maybe more later on the GFP).

Points for anyone who can tell me the name of the song, and the artist, from whom I filched the title of this post. I might even send you a bit of tat if you guess it right.

Friday Fun With Free Association

The kids are, of course, back in school. The Understudy is in sixth grade now and her "language arts" (formerly known as "English") teacher recommended a Scrabble-type game called "Bananagrams." The Understudy told me about it yesterday and, since it was pay day and sunny and I was in an oddly generous mood, I went to the sweet little toy shop in Stowe and, (you may want to buckle on a helmet here if you're prone to fainting), I paid retail for it ($17 and change).

Well, I guess now that we have played it a few times it may be worth it. It has the beauty of simplicity. Essentially, the game is just a little banana-shaped bag of tiles with letters on them. The goal is to make words out of them. There is no board and no scoring, you just have to use up the tiles in your hand to win. Oh, the pleasures of middle age. (This is what we're doing for fun on a Friday night).

As if this wasn't thrilling and reward enough on its own, the name of the game (for those with short attention spans, it's "Bananagrams") put me in mind of that great old Saturday Night Live skit, the Land Shark.

Comedy doesn't generally age very well, and something this stupid really shouldn't be funny, and yet... So, for those of you of a certain age, here they are again for your viewing pleasure: Gilda Radner and Lorraine Newman as the victims of the Land Shark - the cleverest species of them all (as per a Richard Dreyfusesque John Belushi).

Land Shark | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

Sorry about the commercial they shoved into this video. It's worth sitting through it if only to see our dearly beloved Gilda again.

Have a nice weekend. I am off to challenge Whusband for Bgrams supremacy.

Toff or Tart?

“I saw you talking to the captain just now”
“Yes?”
“An unapproachable old bastard. He’ll talk only to the toffs.” The word had an antique flavour: this time his dictionary had certainly failed him.
“I wouldn’t call myself a toff.”
“You mustn’t mind me saying that. Toff has a special sense for me. I divide the world into two parts – the toffs and the tarts. The toffs can do without the tarts, but the tarts can’t do without the toffs. I’m a tart.”
“What exactly is your idea of a tart? It seems to be a bit special too.”
“The toffs have a settled job or a good income. They have a stake somehwhere like you have in your hotel. The tarts – well, we pick a living here and there – in saloon bars. We keep ours ears open and our eyes skinned.”
“You live on your wits, is that it?”
“Or we die on them often enough.”
“And the toffs – haven’t they any wits?”
“They don’t need wits. They have reason, intelligence, character. We tarts – we sometimes go too fast for our own good.”
“And the other passengers – are the tarts or toffs?”
“I can’t make out Mr Fenandez. He might be either. And the chemist chap, he’s given us no opportunity to judge. But Mr. Smith – he’s a real toff if ever there was one.
“You sound as though you admire the toffs.”
“We’d all like to be toffs, and aren’t there moments –admit it old man – when you envy the tarts? Sometimes when you don’t want to sit down with your accountant and see too far ahead?”
“Yes, I suppose there are moments like that.”
“You think to yourself ‘We have the responsibility, but they have all the fun.’”
“I hope you’ll find some fun where you are going. It’s a country of tarts all right – from the President downwards.
“That’s one danger more for me. A tart can spot a tart. Perhaps I’ll have to play a toff and put them off their guard.”

Graham Greene, The Comedians (1966)


I bought The Comedians at a library book sale this summer. Here's a neat summary of the story from Wikipedia:

The Comedians is a novel by Graham Greene, first published in 1966. Set in Haiti under the rule of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his secret police, the Tonton Macoute, The Comedians tells the story of a tired hotel owner, Brown, and his increasing fatalism as he watches Haiti descend into barbarism. The story begins as three men: Brown, Smith the innocent American, and Major H. O. Jones the confidence man meet on a ship bound for Haiti. Brown, Smith, and Jones, their names suggesting a curious facelessness, are the “comedians” of Greene’s title. Complications include Brown’s friendship with a rebel leader, politically charged hotel guests, the manipulations of a British arms dealer, and an affair with Martha Pineda, the wife of a South American ambassador. The setting for much of the novel, the Hotel Trianon, was inspired by the Hotel Oloffson in central Port-au-Prince.

The novel was made into a motion picture in 1967 with Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Alec Guinness, Peter Ustinov, James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, David Niven and Lillian Gish.

I have been reading it in fits and starts (I have a bunch of books going these last few weeks) and now I seem to have mislaid it. This passage, however, a critical bit of dialog between the aforementioned "tired hotel owner, Brown, and the confidence man Jones, has been stuck in my head since I read it last month.

Could you read it without wondering which you were: toff or tart? I think I am, in essence, a tart, but doing a reasonable imitation most of the time of a toff. (Under Jones' definition, of course).

How about you?

(Thanks Amazon.com for the cover and the chance to look inside this book. The toff pictured above came from http://www.terracedhouses.co.uk/ and that tart from www.adultcostumeshop.com.au).

The Rough, The Smooth, This Weekend

We are back from the Woolfoot tour of the family haunts in old New York state. It was a looong drive back to the Last House. We made the drive on Thursday evening because I had to work Friday. We live almost an hour and a half from my office, and it wasn't easy after all that driving to get home to climb back in the car first thing Friday morning and head out again.

I was feeling a little sorry for myself because I practically live in my car when, at a stop sign in Stowe, Vermont, a small car passed me going the other direction with an enormous St. Bernard hanging its head out of the passenger window. If dogs could smile, that dog was smiling. This cheered me up and got me thinking about how we've got to take the rough with the smooth. Driving all the time stinks, but once in a while you get a St. Bernard hanging out of a Corolla, and that helps.

Other rough/smooth aspects of this weekend.

Thinking about the fact that my brother in Dallas is getting married at the end of the year. Smooth.

Checking Hotwire and everyplace else to find out how much it will cost to buy plane tickets from Burlington to Dallas. Rough.

Playing with the Wii game system we got just before our trip. Smooth.

Facing body mass index measurement that Wii Phit gave me yesterday. Rough. Very rough. The Wii more or less called me names.

Looking forward to having the air conditioner I got from my ex-stepfather while I was on my trip. Smooth.

Installing said air conditioner in the bedroom window during this torrid weekend. Rough, and sweaty.

The fact that that the air conditioner doesn't really work. Rougher.

Friend and her daughter visiting for lunch today. Smooth.

Whusband's menu choice of slow-cook stew and having to wash a million dishes in torrid weather. Rough.

All four of us hanging around the house all day on a Sunday. Rough and smooth in nearly equal measures.

OK - Must go and practice some reading with Shackleton. Best wishes for a smooth Monday.

Visiting the Family

This post comes to you from my Dad's home office near my natal city of Albany, New York. Later today, he and I and the Understudy and Shackleton will head west on the New York State Thruway to "the Farm" (there is only one in our family); the Farm where my father and his 11 brothers and sisters grew up.

My aunt took over the house after my grandfather's death about 10 years ago and two more of my uncles still live in adjacent properties. One of them is still a dairy farmer. The other, with his wife, built an off-the-grid cabin in the woods on a corner of the Farm property. (During the 70s this same couple also converted a school bus into a house and went back and forth to Oregon a few times, so you get the picture).

Dad is the eldest of the 12. This picture above is all of them, with my grandparents. The grandparents were both born and raised in Indiana and were responsible for the completely mid-western tone of the place. This snapshot, in a format which has been repeated many times at weddings and anniversaries and family reunions down the years, was taken around 1970. A few of us older grandchildren are there in the front. I'm the little kid in the terribly short dress or long shirt or something, stamping my foot. My cousin Phil is next to me. My hand is being held by my beautiful Aunt Susie, the only one of the 12 not still present in this earthly abode (breast cancer at 50).

I could go on and on, as is sometimes my way, about this place and these people. Just a few details this morning for your sake and mine and for Shackleton's - who just came downstairs and wants to play Club Penguin:

When I was little, all the aunts and uncles were coming and going from the Farm all the time, and the youngest two girls were teenagers. There was something happening with somebody every minute of the day. There were always new kittens somewhere (generally hidden from us if possible); there was a big chest-freezer off the kitchen that always had many half gallons of ice cream in it; there was a big TV in the living room where a person could watch Monster Movie Matinee; there was a tractor that my grandfather let the grandchildren drive; there was a pony or three in the barn. There was a pond. There was perfect darkness in the front yard on summer nights, ideal for hide and seek, and a hay mow which was also fabulous for that purpose, that is if you dared to play hide and seek in the dark places of the Farm.

The aunts and uncles all had ghost stories to tell about the place, mostly centering on the bedrooms upstairs. The house was on the route of the Underground Railroad and a black man in chains was sometimes seen along with a small black boy. The boy was suspected of contending with one of my uncles one night to steal the covers off his bed. UFOs had been seen in the field across from the house. For this reason, when I stayed overnight there, I learned from my youngest aunt (nine years older than me) to put a magic shield over my bed. This is done by laying flat on your bed, waving your arm overhead and saying "magic shield protect me." It worked too.

My own kids have been to the Farm only a handful of times. It's a long way from northern Vermont. But they are looking forward to returning today for a visit. My aunt in residence there is one of my favorites. She has a way of laughing where she doesn't make any noise but her shoulders move up and down quickly. She calls a grocery bag a "sack" and the word "always" comes out "oise". (midwestern usages, I think). Her greatness is further revealed by the fact that she informed me (without my asking) that I didn't need to bring any kid provisions for our stay because she has 18 boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese (bought at Costco some time ago - it's my kids' favorite food and appropriately junky in keeping with the family tradition). She also recently bought a Wii that is set up in the kitchen. She does the bowling game there in the evenings with her off-the-grid brother and sister in law who are not, thankfully, so far off the grid they can't come down to the Farm house and play Wii games. We can hardly wait to go play, too.

Family Fun for a Sunday

Is everybody on vacation? I have been hopping around the old bloggish neighborhood and hardly anyone is home. We are home but busy, mostly setting up this NEW COMPUTER. In an uncharacteristic splurge, Whusband acquired a snazzy Dell Laptop that does everything. I think it will even regrout the tub. I don't know yet how to make it do any of its tricks, but that's OK. Having a keyboard with all the letters still attached is a luxury.

Soon the aforementioned husband will come back in here and wrest control of the laptop away from me so time today only for a quick hello. I have also been wanting to post, since I saw it months ago at Belgian Waffling (see the sidebar) this amazing little YouTube video. Suitable for family viewing and guaranteed to cheer you up if you need cheering.