The Fair! The Fair!

Kid 1 and Kid 2 and I went off to the Orleans County Fair today, the opening day of the Big Event. The fair takes place every August in nearby Barton, Vermont. It's a real agricultural fair, though it also includes all the rest of the income-generating fair claptrap as well, naturally. Because it's still small, and out of the way, and run by local people, it has some genuine charm. I didn't even so much mind the bail jumpers, ex-cons, and assorted traveling folk who man the rip-off skill games and barely-bolted together thrill rides. The animals and the farmy stuff (tractor pulls - ox pulls, we saw both) were the high points. Today's banner is a table-full of wee bobble heads that were on offer just south of the usual fried dough/cotton candy/funnel cake/ Italian sausage gauntlet. We looked at the bobble heards, I photographed them, Kid 1 demonstrated the bobble head action (see the video below) and then we moved on. Here's some more of what we saw today. Kid 2, and Snowball. Look at the faces of these cows. Surprised by beauty... And how bout this guy? More dignity than a cage can contain. We had lunch at this little stand that was down by the barns. I have seen it here in previous years. The burgers were good and served by a high school kid from the local Christian school. (The stand is a fundraiser for the school). He was very sweet - obviously just learning the hamburger selling routine. This stand is called "Mem and Pep" which gives me a chance to do a little Vermont cultural interpretation for you people from away. French Canadians call their grandparents "Memere" and "Pepere" - sometimes shortened to Meme (two syllables, i.e., muh-may) and Pepe and sometimes Mem and Pep. Needless to say there are beaucoup Vermonters in this part of the state who are descended from French Canadians. There are still a lot of middle aged people around here who spoke French at home growing up. The people from whom we bought the Last House, the Bouchards, were an example of this. Even a few generations down the line, when the Vermont kids don't know any French "Mem" and "Pep" survives. This nice kid explained to the guy behind me in line that they hadn't figured out how to turn out the fryolator. It was the first day of the fair, afterall. We spent a few minutes in the grandstand, a wooden structure that looks like it was built a hundred years ago of kindling wood. Smoking is strictly prohibited in the grandstand and this is an excellent thing. One cigarette butt and, one could imagine, poof - spectator barbecue. I was so impressed to see the way the guys handled their tractors. The ox pull was even more amazing. Could you get oxen into a yoke, march them into the ring, back them up to a sled and get them to pull it? I know I couldn't. These rural competencies don't get the respect they deserve. The tractor pull was loud though, too loud for Kid 1 Colorful locals, and their tractors and RVs, much on display. We ate one bag of cotton candy (kids did - I can't face it); I did have piece of fried dough and Kid 2 and I had a maple creemie (Vermont soft ice cream) at the Maple Sugar house. Once a year for fair food... Today's admission allowed unlimited access to the rides but, having told the Kids yesterday that I didn't trust the safety of these travelling midways, and because they were generally freaked out by the hawkers of the games and the scary tatooed people, loud music etc. they wouldn't get on anything but the merry-go-round. This is uncharacteristic, especially of Kid 1, but I wasn't going to complain. I wasn't riding on anything, Lord knows. Just before we left for the day we had a little encounter with the Hurdy Gurdy Man. I always wondered what a "hurdy gurdy man" was. I think the only place I have ever heard of one is in that trippy '60s song by Donovan. The orangutans on the back of this gentleman's little car waved an American flag (mechanical orangutans, I hasten to add). Doesn't he look like a nice man? What a face. He offered Kid 1 and Kid 2 each a five dollar bill... But, oooops, can you believe it? They weren't real money! Is a county fair a place for this kind of chicanery? It turns out the back was printed with some semi-cryptic religious message, compliments of the Hurdy Gurdy Man. Kid 1 said this fake fiver was the best thing about the whole fair. And, a last look at the fair gimcracks of 2008:

Natural Wonders of Vermont Photographed Today - Big and Small

This morning, a walk in the woods...




I learned just now that these ghostly little plants are not a fungus, but a regular plant:
Indian Pipe is a unique herbaceous plant, easily spotted by it's waxy-white color. Sometimes it can be pinkish colored. Indian Pipe lacks chlorophyll and thus does not use photosynthesis. Without the need to capture sunlight with leaves, Indian Pipe is morphologically reduced, having no branches and vestigial leaves that are reduced to membranous fleshy scales. It is a perennial plant which can reach 20cm in height. Blooms first appear in mid July and continue into late August. The number of flower parts may vary but there is only a single flower on each stem. The flowers droop down towards the ground at first later becoming erect as the fruit matures. The fruit contains extremely small seeds.

And in the evening, cloudscapes...

Dramatic Skies Over Vermont; and Is My Dog A Druid?

Never fear, I am mentally stockpiling Blog Posts of Substance, but no time now for gassing on at length about anything in particular. Just a couple of pictures.

We have had rain, rain, rain, here on the Vermont/Quebec border. Inbetween downpours, we have periods of clearing that feature great, towering thunderheads sharing the sky with wispy cotton-candy tear-aways. I haven't had my camera handy when I have noticed them previously, but tonight after dinner I snapped this one, with WHusband, in his new mosquito repellent Lawrence-of-Arabia headgear, in the distance. We have had better clouds than this lately but these were still pretty nice.



No red skies tonight, indicating "a sailor's delight" - i.e., good weather the next day. (Back in law school a friend -- one of the smartest women I have ever known -- tried to persuade me that the saying was, "red sky at night, sailor take fright." Physics degree or no, she was wrong. We all know it's "red sky at morning, sailor take warning," and that a red sky at night is a sailor's delight but I digress). More rain is in the forecast for tomorrow.

One thing that makes our farm a good place for actual farming is that it has almost no stones on it. A river, the Missisquoi, runs through our back field and I think the whole place was a lake bottom during the last Ice Age. (We rent the land to our friendly local organic entrepreneur for a little more than a dollar a year - the only farming our family does is in a weedy garden, unless you count lawn mowing; we do lots of that).

A few stones turn up here and there, however. Most came from a stony load of manure our farmer brought a few years back. Whusband found these in an area of grass that we mow and made this little stack, which always puts me in mind of a wee Celtic deity. Maisy was demonstrating a strange interest in these this evening and it makes me wonder if she has druidical tendencies. Hmm. We can't possibly have a pagan dog.



Funny, one day my good little seven-year-old Catholic School boy called me into the backyard to see this little construction - all completely his own work and his idea. Did someone say pagan?



The flowers and leaves look like an offering.

This temple or altar or whatever was well-constructed and it stood on the roadway down to the back fields until the farmer knocked it over with some piece of farm equipment. I could tell that he had really tried to avoid it, however. It survived many passes of the tractor and the cutter bar before it went down. He is an organic farmer, after all, and therefore no doubt the next thing to a druid. I'd better keep him away from Maisy.

Home to an Empty House and a Book Sale Shocker!

I suppose one day it will be sad to come home and find no husband or kids but that day is not today.



I see from the caller ID that they took a call at 10:30 this morning from our friends from Oxford (UK) who are visiting their place in the vicinity of the Last House for the month of August. We knew they were coming and we have all been looking forward to seeing them. I surmise an invitation was delivered and my lot left in a hurry to accept; disregarding my entreaties/warnings/threats delivered as a I left for work this morning that the toys be off the floor and laundry put away before I got home. Toys everywhere. Laundry wet in the washer and unfolded in a heap on the other wing chair. I am, however, leaving everything as is. If they were here, I would be forced into action and correction. As is, I can rest among the mess. I woke up at 4:45 this AM and thought, why not just stay up? You know how that goes. You just feel awake and there are so many things to do. You know you will pay later in the day, but the place is quiet and you have it to yourself. I had some bills to pay and I wanted to view that DVD I owe back to the library. It also turned out that someone had bought one of my ebay books so I had a package to prepare. I traded emails with my friend Annmarie, who also has two kids and who was also up and an ungodly hour to enjoy a productive pre-dawn.

I didn't write the checks I swore to myself I would do first thing; I did, however, wash the kitchen floor on my hands and knees by 5 AM; even before I had coffee. Then I watched Raise the Red Lantern on my computer with the headphones. I liked it, though feeling the press of time, I had to speed through a little bit at the last. It's a regular wallow in pre-communist China, beautifully photographed and costumed and putting me in the mood for the major dose of all things Chinese we are all going to get at the end of the week.

Then, everyone got up. I showered and dressed; delivered cereal and warnings about a messy house, and went off to work (forgetting to put Raise the Red Lantern and the other DVD that was due today back into the car, naturally).

So, I thought I would grab a quick snooze now, sans famille. But can you believe that even as I type this they have all just pulled up to the door? (Not visiting with the Brits but just at the grocery store and library.)

Oy.

So, here's the book sale shocker. I stopped again at the library sale in Stowe on the way home today and got two more books. Nothing too special. The librarian told me as I was paying (I know her from the gym) that when this sale is over on August 14, the books go to be recycled i.e., trashed. I thought they put them in the basement for another year. Really, a shonda as my Yiddishe friends would say.

A Summer Sunday; Book Sale-ing Update

A wet weekend draws to a close here on the Vermont/Quebec border. It wasn't a total washout, though. Maisy and I took a wet walk on the flanks of Jay Peak on Saturday morning. (See today's banner for the one picture I got of her where she was standing still). Today she and I hit the Newport Bike path, and, though we got rained on, we also had the tree-lined path to ourselves. Oh, the ferns! This wet summer has given them a lease on life that they haven't seen since the late Cretaceous period. I didn't have my camera with me today on the bike path walk (it was impromptu walk.) but the ferns there, along side the path (a former railroad bed) were gorgeous. Here's a picture I took on the mountain yesterday AM:


On Friday afternoon on heading home from work, I managed to get back to the book sales at the Waterbury and Stowe Public libraries (my two favorites). Library book sale season (about which I wrote a few posts back) has only another 10 days or so to run and then it won't be back for another year. Hmmm. Maybe I need to work on a seasonal carol. Look for that in an upcoming post.

Book Sales - This Week's Acquisitions

To begin with today we have the autobiography of the American artist Cecilia Beaux called Background with Figures. It looked interesting, and when I checked on the internet after getting it home, I saw that it might be a little valuable ($50 range). Beaux was a great late 19th century artist, often compared with Singer Sargent. I looked through the book and researched it on the Internet. Then I put it on Ebay. Sort of declasse, I know, but I can't justify buying all these odd bits if I don't catch and release a few.



This is her self-portrait (as it appears in the book)



This one below is really special (and also on Ebay now). It’s a first edition of Great Horse Stories Truth and Fiction (Double Day & Company Inc. 1946, Garden City, New York). It has 82 illustrations by Paul Desmond Brown, the great horse artist (think of the Brooks Bros. equestrian image in the 50s and you're thinking Paul Brown) but what really makes it great is that it includes on the endpapers a pencil sketch of a horse’s head and a handwritten dedication/inscription by Brown and his signature appears on the title page.



Oddly enough, I know about Brown because a few years ago, applying my "it called to me test" at the auction, I bought a nice drawing of a horse and rider going over a fence. It was clearly signed, and, at that point I learned all about Brown. I kept the picture over my desk for quite awhile then needed plane ticket money - which it fetched. The inscription in this book makes me think he might have had a girlfriend around here in the 50s, and maybe left a few drawings behind in Vermont.



Catch and release was in order. School tuition bills are already coming...

These next two are just beautiful (and not valuable - although I think they should be). They came off the discarded kids books trolley at the Waterbury library.

Swimmy is a Leo Lionni classic and this is, I believe, the 1963 first edition. It is in great shape but no dust jacket so not worth flogging (as you can tell, I checked). Also, I have at this late date, developed an admiration and affection for these 60s kids books. I put this in the touchy-feely hippy approved category that really never much spoke to me - until recently. I love the paintings that illustrate this.





And I think this last one is my favorite. Birds in Their Homes from 1946. It is so beautifully illustrated with color lithographs on every other page. Very 40s.



Also, like my blue and white China, not valuable in a monetary sense but this one is a keeper. I learned some things from it myself and I hope my grandchildren will too one day. And check out the illustrations! A dollar well-spent.

Have You Met the High Dorfer?

I like to bring my recent discoveries to the Last House and share them around. I was reading a back issue of the New York Review of Books just now and the article (can’t think what it was about now) was illustrated by this amazing painting of St. George and the Dragon. Despite the title, the main subject seems to be this intense and overwhelming green forest. It was painted by an artist named Albrecht Altdorfer in 1510. The Wikimedia image above doesn't look nearly as vibrant as the NYRB version but it was the best I can do until I get to Munich to get my own photo. (And let's not hold our breath for that). This painting evoked for me the feeling that my own walks through the Vermont forests bring. (No dragons or knights here but I have been worried a lot lately about bears and even catamounts - and it is so very Green here right now).

I suppose Albrecht Altdorfer is someone I should have heard of by now. Hmm. I wonder how that name translates. I don’t know German but I know “Alt” means “high”; [N.B. - Click on the comments below to find out how I was wrong about this translation. Don't believe everything you read on the internet.] so, “high dorfer”… I should be able to remember that.

Anyway, in about 30 seconds online I learned that he was born in 1480 in Germany near a Regensberg and that he was a contemporary of that more famous “Albrecht,” Albrecht Durer. I also learned that the High Dorfer is regarded as a pioneer of landscape in art. I guess we can all see why.

And look at this amazing image – like a movie poster from a super-heated medieval (OK, early northern Renaissance) imagination.



The Battle of Alexander by Albrecht Altdorfer (1529) Wood, 158,4 x 120,3 cm Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Consider the blue and white...

At the risk of boring rigid those who have no interest in blue and white china I am continuing on that theme today. Before you flee (and at the risk of sounding like a pretentious ass), give me a paragraph to argue that there is something really profound about our plates and cups. How about this: these old bits of porcelain and clay distill civilization in a place setting, or even in a creamer.

First, there's the technology to consider - developed by the Chinese and the Dutch and brought to the world by them and by the English. The potters were like alchemists. They figured out which clays, which glazes which ingredients and processes would turn dirt into art. They saved our ancestors from wooden utensils and all that goes with a life where you have to eat out of a wooden bowl with a wooden spoon. Where there is porcelain, or even ironstone, can manners, enlightenment and learning be far behind?

And, as I said here when we were discussing teacups back in April, the art involved in fashioning and decorating these things over the centuries, the thousands of artists and artisans, known and unknown, who have turned their hands to them makes them worthy of our regard.

OK - if you still aren't going for that then at least admit they are pretty, or easy on the eyes.

Above are a couple of new acquisitions from the auction this weekend. It is the time-honored blue willow pattern. There is so much blue willow out there that it must seem to those who have manufactured it over the last 200 years that entire continents can rest on it. It was actually invented in England, by an English potter and engraver for Mintons. The Chinese copied it! These pieces are both marked "Japan" and I think they date from the teens or 20s.

They aren't perfect, which brings me to another point: when it comes to these servicable old pieces, perfection is overrated.

I have been told that no collector wants any piece of pottery with the slightest flaw, but they aren't counting me as a collector. Below are a trio of saucers I picked up at my favorite antique store, M. Lewis in Waterbury, Vermont. They are Wedgewood in the Ferrara pattern. M. Lewis had just these three little saucers. Each one is chipped. The color was so deep and dark, and, as far as I was concerned the chips added to the sense of age that they convey. At $5 apiece I was happy to bring them home. I have them in my most prominent display location in the house.



On this pont of perfection, the Japanese have this useful notion of wabi-sabi, which I have always understood to mean the flaws in beautiful things that somehow make them more beautiful. Checking the definition now I am informed this is crude Western translation. I found this fuller explanation of the concept just now:

Westerners tend to associate wabi sabi with physical characteristics - imperfection, crudeness, an aged and weathered look, etc. Although wabi sabi may encompass these qualities, these characteristics are neither sufficient nor adequate to convey the essence of the concept. Wabi sabi is not rigidly attached to a list of physical traits. Rather, it is a profound aesthetic consciousness that transcends appearance. It can be felt but rarely verbalized, much less defined. Defining wabi sabi in physical terms is like explaining the taste of a piece of chocolate by its shape and color to someone who has never tasted it. As long as one focuses on the physical, one is doomed to see only the back side of the brocade, while its real beauty remains hidden. In order to see its true essence, one must look beyond the apparent, one must look within.

Well, Grasshoppa, this is a deep blog post, isn't it? Anyway these little chips and dings don't make the plates better, but they make them "real" - objects with a history of function and this makes them in their way even more beautiful. (You can read more on the wabi-sabi web page from whence the above was culled.)

Here are a couple other recent auction acquisitions. The bowl is Dutch; turn of the century and stained and chipped. The pattern is called "Abbey." It looks great. I have it sitting on a dinner plate, genuine flow blue, where the cobalt ran during the firing resulting in this fuzzy image, not merely transfer printed. It is much stained, chipped and utensil marked and dates from the 1840s.








Finally, and let's have no juvenile snickering at this, but here's my collection of porcelain balls. Hey - I said no snickering! I picked them up about a year ago at the Christmas Tree Shoppe. I've written about that place before. It has not much to do with Christmas Trees, but it is a liquidator of all kinds of merchandise, some of it decent quality, most of it kind of dodgy, but cheap. These were a dollar each, made in China like everything else, naturally. But at least dishes made in China have a history. Not that I was thinking about this when the kids and I scooped up these. They liked them too and I could not resist. This little collection has been sitting in a clear glass bowl from the high-end Vermont glass maker, Simon Pearce, at the center of our dining room table for more than a year. Every time a guest says something nice about them I tell how cheap they were.

Maybe a hundred years from now some other middle-aged broad will have scored them from an auction and will be sitting around thinking kind thoughts of the person who must have bought them to decorate her table so long ago...