Notes from Another America

How long, would you say, can the corpse of a mosquito adhere to the inside of the windshield of a mini van?

At least a month or two? I won't keep you in suspense. (You know I am horrible at that). I'll tell you that the remains of two mosquitoes have been clinging to the inside of my windshield since at least July.

They are just below eye level, and I don't always notice them. The light has to be just so. On Tuesday this week, in the late afternoon, as I and the kids were driving down the heartbreakingly beautiful Route 22 A along the western edge of Vermont, I noticed them dangling there still. I resented that they were intruding on the view of farm fields and distant Adirondacks, but I didn't brush them away. I was sort of fascinated that, what with the defroster and all, that has been pressed back into service a lot lately, what with the FROST and all, that they hadn't fallen to bits. Maybe this would make a nice little contest, like our annual "ice out" raffles in Vermont, where people bet on the day when an object placed in the middle of a frozen pond or lake will drop through into the water?

Or maybe not.

All that by way of telling that I have been traveling this week, and further afield than usual. My brother and his fiancee decided about three weeks ago to move their wedding date from the end of the year to late October. (Speculation running wild, if quietly, among us all for possible reasons for the date change. ahem.) Plane tickets were purchased, but there seems no good (cheap) way to fly to Dallas from the northeast. The trip thus began with a drive from Vermont to Albany, NY as a base camp near the Albany airport. The journey was completed the following day when our wee, crammed jet touched down at DFW.

About my brother: he is my only brother and two and a half years younger than me. He left our native northeast when he was 21 to go to law school in deepest, darkest most Baptist Texas, at Baylor University. After he finished (uh, at number one in his class, btw, which is why I can come to you now from a large house in a swish Dallas neighborhood - the house pictured here is not his, but it is in his neighborhood).

His house, I am pleased to say, was built in the 1950s and is positively historic down here. Lots of these post-war houses, despite being perfectly congenial and serviceable and attractive, had been viewed during the boom years as impediments to be scraped away so that better, bigger, [specious, horrifying] mansions could stand in their place. His house is quite charming, although one room [billiards] is decorated [by a former bachelor] with the heads of Cape Buffalo, various long horned grass-eating creatures from afar, and a garage with a Ferrari for every decade of his life).



I guess that makes him sound like a complete jerk, which he is not. He actually doesn't like spending money (He told me this himself, once, which made me wonder if we are really siblings). He has restrained himself to these few indulgences (cars, guns, hunting). He, has, however, adopted the mores of Texas to a considerable extent and he moves among the Texans of Dallas as one of them. Compare and ontrast: my indulgences (the part-time government lawyer in Vermont) are blogging and an occasional filet o'fish.

I have been down here half a dozen times now and I am always sort of fascinated at how different these seem to be from the ones I am used to in the upper right hand corner of the country.

I had a secretary once who was born and raised in Austin, Texas and she assured me that Dallas is not really Texas. Who am I to argue? I can believe that it Dallas is an enclave of outworlders, like my brother and my new Russian-born-and-raised sister-in-law. I can also say without exaggerating that it is true, nevertheless, that the Texas cliche of bigness appears to be observed in Dallas.



Thankfully, owing to a certain natural personal restraint of both the bride and groom, the wedding was very low-key and the reception a cheerful sort of gathering for 45 or so people at a local hotel - the kind of thing that could be put together with two weeks notice. I attended the reception with my camera (picture-taking being my contribution to this hastily organized event). I was a bit like a Wild Kingdom photographer as alien, in my shapeless outfit and Dansko clogs, in Dallas as Jim and Marlin Perkins were at any African waterhole.

My sister-in-law's friends arrived in gowns that reached the floor and heels that would make it possible for them to change the light bulbs at Madison Square Garden. Dresses clung and, other than me, there were no fatties in evidence. Hair colors were becoming, if not altogether, uh, "convincing." The kids and I looked around and even the Understudy (who is only 11) was very clear that we were not in Vermont anymore.

Travel is broadening. I am glad we got to come here and see how the other half, or three quarters or whatever the US population balance is these days, lives. My brother took Shackleton to his office and showed him the Texas School Book Depository on the way home (assasination tourism - we don't have that in Vermont).

Odd thing is that Shack has declared his intention to move to Texas when he grows up. He didn't mention whether the warm temperatures or the women who fawned over him on this trip have had any part in that decision...

We are back to Vermont, Lord willing and the creek don't rise, tomorrow.

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.

Art Appreciation Moment

It's 7 AM on Friday before Columbus Day/Canadian Thanksgiving and no time to be blogging (School! Work!) but I sat down to check email and update my iPod and couldn't resist putting this banner on my blog. You may be surprised to learn that it isn't actually the view from our house. It comes from Laurence Olivier's famous 1948 film version of Hamlet. I just learned over at Wikipedia that it won the 1948 Academy Award for best film. Sixty years on it is still fabulous.

We watched this film in 8th Grade after the "Hamlet unit" and I never forgot it, though I hadn't seen it again until the other day when I popped it into the DVD (from Criterion Collection) into the player to see on the new LCD TV.

Needless to say, I loved the way the film looks - the atmosphere in every scene is haunting. I had to get a couple of screen shots for posterity. Today's banner comes from the opening scene, when the Castle guards at Elsinore first see the (creepy) ghost of Hamlet's father.

Maybe I should have saved this for Halloween?

I think I am now, at last, old enough to really appreciate poor Hamlet's problem. "Oh yeah," I found myself thinking. "He has been put into an impossible position by circumstances, and his family, and maybe God himself, and finds that he is required to be steely and brave, when he is not so sure he can be either." I feel for Hamlet now. Isn't childbirth a bit like this? At least that first one? (Ladies?) Or maybe battlefield experiences, or maybe courtroom experiences? Poor guy. Poor us.



Bon weekend.

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.

I Have Lived for Art...

I haven't really, but I like the idea.

I like the idea that instead of spending my days in an unkempt living room in an old house in the middle of nowhere, trying to keep my feet warm in grey wool socks, I might still have a chance to spend them at a small cafe table in Italy, existing on very small cups of very strong coffee.

Instead of a faded T-shirt and pants with an elastic waistband, I will wear a small black dress. I will replace my skewed four-year-old thick glasses, (apparently inspired by the safety glasses of 1960s NASA engineers), with enormous round sunglasses. I will cover my carefully arranged hair with a silk scarf, loosely tied, to keep the wind from tousling my curls too much (and also because I know the scarf looks fetching as it flutters, and because it sets off my diamond earrings so nicely).

In this other life, I will be able to navigate cobblestones and dodge paparazzi in three-inch red high heels. My lightweight trench coat will be tightly cinched around my sylph's waist. I will drive a tiny 1963 Fiat two-seater to meet my agent, Giancarlo, at my publisher's office in the old city. I will sometimes feel bad about keeping Giancarlo waiting, as I always do, and in such a state of constant anxiety. I will tell him he must stop smoking, and he will blame me every time for his failure to quit. Oh Giancarlo! In one breath you threaten to leave me forever, I am such a torment, but in the next breath you say you couldn't possibly and beg forgiveness. I might forgive you. I might.


Oh. That was a fun and a bit therapeutic. Maybe I won't stop for a Filet o'Fish on the way to pick up the kids afterall.


As you can see I am having a useless sort of a day. Periodically, the desire to create a T-Shirt overwhelms me and I spend a happy hour or so putting one together. Today, my inspiration was this slight mistranslation of a famous line from Tosca which often repeats in my head. Here's my version on a T-shirt.

I have lived for art. I have lived for love. by woolfoot
Create personalized t-shirts at zazzle.com

In the original Italian, the line is: Vissi d'Arte, Vissi D'amore.

It is much better that way, isn't it? But no one in Vermont would know what I was trying to tell them. Maybe it would be better that way...

Well, next time I have an idle hour I am doing another one the way Puccini wrote it. I suppose it's really more headstone material than T-Shirt material but my deeply trapped inner Maria Callas needs to advertise - as you already know.

I am mentally blowing you all kisses, with very grand gestures, from the balcony of my imagination. Ciao, my darlings! Ciao!

You Are Repressed, But You're Remarkably Dressed

I didn't get any takers on the little challenge I set out at the end of the last post (from whence did I steal the title of that last post?) So, rather than keep you all in suspense for another minute, I am just going to tell you. It was from the Morrissey song on the Bona Drag album, "Hairdresser on Fire." This post title is another bit of lyric that sticks...

"Hairdresser on Fire" comes from the mid-career, post-Smiths, Morrissey ouevre, when he was still young and tormented. (I understand that lately he has settled a bit and might even have taken a stab at some form of romance).

There are a couple of live versions on Youtube, but I prefer to listen again to the one that plays in my head, from the days when Bona Drag was a regular in my car's CD rotation. Some fan painstakingly collected all these views of M and overlayed them on that familiar track, if you want to hear it for yourself.



Remember me to Sloane Square.

A little more follow up on the last post, keeping with our U.K. theme, I did make it to the British Invasion Car Show in Stowe last weekend. The best part of it was listening to the Beatles tribute band, "Britishmania" (not to be confused with Beatlesmania (TM)). They played at a block party on Stowe's lovely Main Street on Friday night. The kids danced. I bobbed my head and sang along and watched the other people in the audience - New England types who did not want to get too close to the stage and who also limited their display of interest to headbobbing and singing along. Late in the evening (like, 8:30) a few people migrated out of the beer cage (it was a very well-regulated event and beer was sold only in a small area enclosed by snow fencing) and some of those people moved their legs and arms a bit and shouted requests. We all sang "Yellow Submarine" together and bonded.

Adding to the festive atmosphere were all these fabulous old Jaguars and MGs and Minis and Sprites and even a Rolls or two that were parked up and down the street which was otherwise closed to traffic.

On Sunday, the Understudy and I went up to the show field and caught the tail end of the main show. Well, mostly we shopped feverishly in the goods tent as the vendors were packing up all around us. You'll be relieved to hear, I am sure, that we we were able to buy a bunch of things emblazoned with Union Jacks, albeit under pressure. We also got to see at least a few cars and I managed a few photos (above and below). These pictures don't do the cars justice because we had to hurry and also because it was too sunny and bright to get the romance of the things. Still, here ya go.

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.