Royal Wedding

We stumbled into the Royal Wedding yesterday morning. I mean the TV broadcast, of course - not the real thing. (My sister told me today that she has determined via ancestry.com that we are 40th generation descendants from Henry III - but thank God we didn't get invited as really I had nothing to wear).

The kids and I had somehow failed to register that the wedding was scheduled for yesterday, but we were all excited to find that the usual local morning news team from Plattsburgh had been displaced by K & W. I got ready for work and school to the sound of prayers and hymns and vows, stealing looks at K & W, and Elton John, and the Queen and the top, bottom, sides of Westminster Abbey while I brushed my hair and teeth and packed Shack's backpack.

And wasn't it all lovely? When we talked about it at work, everyone was smiling. The newscasters were smiling when they reported it all. I stopped for coffee at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and the staff had a handwritten sign on the counter extending best wishes to "our friends Will and Kate."

I am sure that the usual too-smart, too-cool, too-egalitarian bores are taking all this adulation as evidence that the rest of us are even stupider, more gullible and more venal than they had previously believed. But screw them. Some of them are boors, all of them are tedious, and that is worse than almost anything they can say about us.

Anyway, it got me thinking again about the Queen. (Sorry, I'll try to be brief!) With my Canadian legal education, I was more or less forced to learn about the centrality to the common law of the English monarch. She is - among other things, of course - a stand-in for the whole country. She is them. They are her. (Sort of like, you know, the Jesus model). I don't think this is a notion that gets a lot of official reinforcement these days, but it is bred in the bone over there and it will out. Like when the Heir Apparent gets married to a beautiful young woman. Hurray for all of us! Even all of us who just wish them well from afar.

Now We Are 46...

There's an A.A. Milne joke in there somewhere. I am feeling sort of decrepit.

In the background today I have been playing (though not really watching) a Gregory Peck retrospective on Turner Classic Movies. Great Cold War stuff. I remember the Cold War - or at least a big chunk of it toward the end. Sigh. Well, my recollections do not go so far back as the last horrible movie (Gregory miscast as a hard-boiled smart-aleck army officer who keeps referring to "dames" and calling a nurse "nursey"). It was somewhat redeemed by the hats and the haircuts. And GP's perfect posture.

I have stolen an hour to post a new picture or two and just to say hello. The banner is fresh from today - taken when Maisy and I stole a walk to the river to look at how it has changed in the last few days into a sinister brown lake. The first warm days of spring have just arrived here in the far north, along with floods. Nothing like the weather disasters in the deep south, though. (The older I get the more I feel the horror of natural disasters. Maybe that's progress?)

It's strange here after this punishing winter to feel a wind blowing soft instead of with a knife edge. Here's another picture from the back field that I took today. I fiddled with the greenness a bit but it is morally correct if not completely photographically correct. See you soon. Thanks for looking in.

What Have You Been Doing?

I made a resolution this year to see more live entertainment. So far, I have seen Cloris Leachman do her one-woman show at the new Performing Arts Center in Stowe. (In a word, Fabulous). I have seen David Sedaris do a reading in the a restored Vaudeville palace in my hometown of Schenectady (also Fabulous). I won tickets to see Janis Ian (remember that song "17"?) with Tom Paxton (I knew the name but wasn't sure why), also in Stowe. I won two tickets so I invited (well, "dragged") the Understudy (now 13) along. I told her to imagine she was going to see Lady Gaga but Tom Paxton and Janis were both closing on 70 and Tom, in particular, had arrived apparently arrived in Stowe via teleporter from 1969 (complete with Greek Fisherman's Cap) singing songs (for example) about the depridations of mountain top mining. "Oh they took off the top of the mountain and it will never be the same, oh for shame, do si do" variety. I was slightly charmed by the throwback nature of this and his apparent sincerity. Also, Janis was a surprisingly impressive blues guitarist. She also sang a funny song for openers about her Canadian wedding with her long-time partner and got heckled by a drunk (Not done in Vermont!). So, that gave the concert a bit of a fear factor/civil rights uplift as the audience clapped down the drunk.
So, I was enjoying the show, but at intermission, the Understudy made it clear she would never forgive me if I made her miss Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock to see the end of the concert, so we had to go. (OK, I also wanted to see those TV shows but I would have stayed if she hadn't moved me on).

Next month it's Adele in Montreal. I am the biggest Adele nerd in the state of Vermont and I bought these tickets at the pre-sale event for Adele nerds. I see they are now up to $200 apiece on Ebay but of course nobody is getting mine. I'll let you know how it goes.

It's Here...

The Best of the Last House 2005 - 2011 by KSV Woolfoot | Make Your Own Book

I haven't been writing much because I have been working on my "blook."

It's as done as it is going to get. I think the widget above makes it possible to order a copy. You may need to cash in a mutual fund or something but they are nicely printed. Or come visit and I'll show you the ones I bought.

XXOO

Have You Heard the One About A Horse Who Goes Into A Bar?

I have a new teenager in my house. The developments have been predictable. (Me: "You're not wearing that to school!") Luckily, so far at least our senses of humor have not diverged. Also a plus is that the Understudy has become the family IT department (Me: "Can you set this up to print wirelessly?") and also an internet gold miner. Here's a link to her Tumblr blog, which is a lot of fun. She found this joke out there and I asked her to send it on to me for re-blogging purposes. We both laughed at this one:


A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks “Why the long face?”.

The horse does not respond because it is a horse. It can neither speak nor understand
English. It is confused by its surroundings and gallops out of the bar, knocking
over a few tables.

heh heh heh.

Today's Top Tip

The Spoken Word: British Writers, 3-CD Set, The British Library

I know to a lot of people, including some of my near relations, including my offspring, listening to old recordings of famous writers is an activity with all the appeal of, say, sitting bare-bottomed or a block of ice, or having a series of inoculations. Of course, those people are just flat wrong, but what are you going to do? Just play the CDs loud and never mind about the people screeching from the back seat as though they were being stabbed.

I took this British Writers set out of the library last week and have not quite worked my way through the first of the three CDs. I had a chance to listen in peace this afternoon to Somerset Maugham, in his old age, summing up his career, his plans for the future, some general thoughts about his times and times to come and it was so beautifully wrought - and spoken with equal grace -that I wanted to weep. (You know me). I came to the internet tonight to see if the speech had been transcribed, but I couldn't find it for you so all I can do is steer you to the CD. You know you can trust me.

This set includes the only known recording of Virginia Woolf, and I am looking forward to that. Rudyard Kipling, poor, despised and left behind Rudyard Kipling, gives speech of perfect eloquence to the Canadian Royal Society for literature, albeit with references to the great racial history of Canada, "the English and the French who refuse to be de-civilized no matter the cost." (I heard a dramatic reading "The Ballad of East and West" on my satellite radio recently and I thought it was great).

I am so glad I have two CDs left to hear. It's like having money in the bank. If only I had a little more alone-time in the van... I thought you all might like it too.

The Depressing Signs of Spring

The first body turned up on Thursday morning. The victim was an Australorp, a breed known for ease around humans and striking black feathers. Judging from the loss of those feathers this winter, as observed when the little flock was recently released from the coop for some time in the yard, she was also low chicken on the pecking order.

Dead, just before spring. “Like a soldier dying the day before the war was declared at an end” said Whusband, who found the body.

The horrible surmise was that the other four hens, perhaps stimulated by their first break from the coop in months, had pecked her to death. It was a horrible surmise but also a reasonable one. The Australorps had been added to the two surviving members of the flock we bought last summer and so had always been junior members - and she was the most junior among them.

The senior hen, Mable, was a survivor extraordinaire. She had lived through at least four predator holocausts. Each time something got at our birds, we tried new security measures. Their A-Frame coop, covered with tarps and foam insulation for the winter, is surrounded on all sides by chicken wire – including the floor. We replaced boards around the bottom this fall. The winter has been a bear, and the chickens showed the signs of their hard winter when I sprang them for the first time a couple weeks ago.

Imagine my horror when I came out yesterday to release them and found Mable in a nest bucket, feet up, a literal stiff.

Funny, given all the chicken I’ve eaten, how horrible it was to find trusty, clever Mable down. Two summers she has wandered around the yard with her Sancho Panza, the other clever hen called Buffy. The two of them would appear whenever we came out, following us here and there. Once I removed the body I saw that she was in the midst of egg laying, and I figured she had become egg bound. Poor thing, what a way to go.

It was a nice day yesterday so I let the three survivors wander around for the afternoon. Buffy and the two Australorps sunned themselves on the front porch of our little cabin. I shooed them back in the coop for the night and sealed it up. I went to give them some bread this morning. No one came to the door of the coop. Black feathers were everywhere. Really. I wanted to cry. The first day of spring. I am rethinking the cause of death of the first two birds...

If we get anymore chickens we’re getting a proper building with a hard floor and some perches up high in case some horrible weasel breaks in there.

Also, it's mud season. See below.