It’s stunning out today. Sunny, clear, temperature edging toward the 80’s, buds coming out on the trees, green coming out on the fields. We’ve earned it! My God! Richard’s outside finishing up hemlock siding to the new chicken coop - the coop I shingled I’ll have you know; I can hear his hammer blows echoing out up the hill. All our poultry are thriving. Tops on the list are our 2 baby Geese, Ginger and Mary Ann, who are so delighted by the sight of either Richard or me whenever we walk into their room. They’re immediately up, talking, craning up to be held. Oh my God, they’re adorable with their tiny yet enormous webbed feet and their wee wings flapping uselessly at their sides. We’ve read that they will gain a pound a week for the first ten weeks and then taper off, so we’re enjoying them while they’re young and handheld size. Amazing, amazing, amazing how cute they are. When they were first hatched, Richard was shoving me away from the incubator window making sure they were imprinting on him and not me. I think we have equal imprinting here.
This morning I feel equal parts Garrison Keillor and Dr. Doolittle. Surrounded by, tended to and taught by animals? Yes. Woebegone? Not I, not here, not today. I do find, though, that when I check in to give the news from here, oftentimes a spiritual storm front has just passed through and cleared the air. It’s been an interesting few days of internal bumps and bronco rides. Sometimes I don’t even know what’s caused them. Maybe I don’t need to know. Maybe upheaval of any sort is simply a sign of the times. All the energy of change going on in the world, all the resistance, all the willingness and fearfulness mixed up in equal measure, all the old ways and new ways slamming up against one another. I think we can’t help soaking it up from the air, even when you’re “away from it all.” Yeah, who says? I think I’m never away from it all. I may choose to try to think or live that way, but I’m always near it all, in it all. And no matter where I am, however I’m living, whatever I’m working on within or without, whatever I’m thinking and feeling is felt, matters, has consequences. Fascinating times, inside and out.
Last evening around 6 or so with plenty of light left to the day, Richard and I went across the road and began clearing a wooded area around our pond badly in need of sprucing up. It was fun. We chain sawed dead branches and teams of new maple sprouts; we snapped and scissored undergrowth; we dragged and toted and tossed logs. The exertion felt great. There’s something appealing to me to jobs that have a spiritual symbolism to them, where I’m doing something on the outside that mirrors or parallels a process I may be going through inside. Clearing the land so we can see what’s there, so we can sculpt it the way we intend, so we can blend our intents harmoniously with nature’s pure and potent growth. I think it’s the first time I fully understood the phrase “can’t see the forest for the trees.” I had “gotten it” before to a certain extent, but there was always a part of me asking ‘What do you mean forest for the trees? Isn’t a forest made up of trees? Aren’t they both trees? You can’t see the trees for the trees?! What so you mean?!!’ Last night it was different; last night I felt I was living “can’t see the forest for the trees”, I was inside it, in the midst of it. And this morning to be treated to a view of the once hidden old stone wall across the way and see the beginnings of the shape that piece of our land will have was so satisfying. I can’t wait to work on it some more.
Speaking of this morning, I woke at 6 am to the dissonant sound of a dog bark honking up the air. It was muffled, but strident, out-of-place. I got up and went out onto our front screened porch where I was instantly enveloped by bird song, enwrapped by it. The male Canadian Goose was out on the pond checking out the dog bark too. It turned out to be Ron and Tabitha’s dog from down the road, stirred up by something, it doesn’t matter what, I just found it funny that a dog bark down the road in the country served as a clamorous equivilant as a car alarm going off in the city. What a different world it is out here.
We had a group of actors and designers up from Project Playwright on Sunday and what a grand group it was. So fun feeling our place filled with new energy. It’s been a dream of mine to have this place be an artist’s retreat of sorts, a place where friends, actors, directors, writers, painters, what-have-you can come up here to work on a new piece or just recharge, retreat, refortify. It was good feeling that energetic take some sort of form, even in the form of a party. One of the group was a young writer/teacher, Carla, born in Puerto Rico, raised in Chicago, an expansively confident, jovially creative presence, and being a city girl she spoke of her split at being out here in the boonies. In one respect, she loves it and is so grateful for the new experience, while in the other, she goes stir crazy with the lack of SOUND. She said she e-mailed a friend of hers recently, a sound technician, and BEGGED him to make her a tape of traffic and send it to her so she could play it when she went to bed and finally GET SOME SLEEP.
We’re looking forward to a lot of visits from friends and family this summer. We love sharing this place with others and seeing the affect it has over them. We’ve created a beautiful place and we’re looking forward to planting our garden, to planting new trees, to post-hole digging a new fenced area for Richard’s new chickens, to building and insulating a new room up in a portion of our attic/old hayloft, to constructing a little pier to go out into our pond. We’re feeling Spring.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
For Beverly and Shirley Imogene
This entry has a specific purpose - to guide my friend Beverly and my mom Shirley through the confusing entanglements of the web to my blog. It sounds a bit like a fairy tale and I'm the enchanted frog. Hmmm. Well, here it is. I've set it so every installment I make, every new blog, shall go to your e-mail where you will be notified officially. So Bev and Mom you can read this bit and go back in the library of past bits. Also of reading pleasure would be Richard's blog at poultrychronicles.blogspot.com His site has many more pictures than mine does and gives the nuts and bolts of a chicken obsession. It's sad.
A busy night here! 2 goslings hatched into the world, Sofia's fever broke, and Richard was able to come up from White River and rehearsal to experience them both ... and More! Yay! We've been up a goodly part of the night, but are both exhilarated and grateful by the lively turn of events. Hooray for LIFE in all its forms. I'm hoping the turn in Sofia's health will make a trip this morning to the Burlington Hospital unnecessary. We shall see.
Have a fantastic day!
A busy night here! 2 goslings hatched into the world, Sofia's fever broke, and Richard was able to come up from White River and rehearsal to experience them both ... and More! Yay! We've been up a goodly part of the night, but are both exhilarated and grateful by the lively turn of events. Hooray for LIFE in all its forms. I'm hoping the turn in Sofia's health will make a trip this morning to the Burlington Hospital unnecessary. We shall see.
Have a fantastic day!
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
EB White
I’ve been wanting to write about EB White for quite some time now, but felt as if I needed a special reason or occasion to frame the endeavor. But I’m not putting it off any longer. Today is the day. The special reason is simply that I want to; I love the way EB White writes.
Recently, I read a short biography of White at the back of a collection of his essays which began with something he had written on the occasion of his 58th birthday: “The theme of my life is complexity-through-joy.” Like most of what Mr. White writes, “complexity-through-joy” stayed with me. I’m pretty much a sucker for anything that has “joy” woven into it for it’s a state to which I aspire and a state to which I, sadly and bafflingly, set up numerous roadblocks against. There’s also something about the phrase that reminds me of acting class where one is urged to make one’s actions toward achieving a goal “simple and strong” so that the “complexities” of who you are are allowed to shine through. Simplicity first, complexity second. Joy first and complexity follows. (Funny to think of joy as being simple.) I’m also impressed with the idea of someone being able to come up with a theme for their life. Granted EB has four years on me and I have no doubt that when I’m 58 I’ll have life themes galore, but I have a hard enough time coming up with the theme of something I’m writing let alone the theme of my life. And “complexity-through-joy” sounds so pithy and wise. If I were hard-pressed to come up with a life theme right now it would hover between “spirituality-through-restlessness” or “tolerance through chickens.”
I’ve felt a deep kinship with EB over the past few years. One of the reasons is my recent move to New England and realizing how much this place speaks to me, which parallels a similar move and realization he made in the 1930’s. I find myself traveling back and forth often between Vermont and New York City, as he did between Maine and New York, many times because of work, but more importantly to seek a balance between the country and the city, both of which I love and long for; I know the same rang true for him. I can’t help smiling as I read his work from sheer delight. I find myself sharing passages to Richard, or I'll read an entire essay out loud to him or to other friends, for sharing EB White with others is a sharing of affection to me. His writing is true, thought out. There’s a mastery of his craft that’s never showy, always accessible, and a wisdom mixed with vulnerability, a low hum of self doubt behind it all. He reveals himself through his writing and I love him for it.
Though my affection for Mr. White and his work has deepened considerably in recent years, I realize that our “acquaintance” spans back over most of my life. My first experience probably mirrors most people’s - the reading of “Charlotte’s Web.” The book was still fairly new when I attended kindergarten at Northcrest Elementary School in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Every afternoon in that long ago autumn I would sit cross-legged on the floor as Miss McNamara would read the next chapter of the saga. I'd stare up at that book cover as she read, a cover I'm glad to report has become iconic and hasn't changed in all its reprintings. There's something assuring in that. I have a feeling that the reading was intended to lull all of us into a post-graham crackers and milk naptime stupor, but I sat up alert, wide-eyed, mesmerized, eating up every word. Nothing like a good story to keep the sandman at bay. So many gifts came from that book. I certainly looked at spiders differently from then on, which is no small feat when one’s mother is terrified by the very mention of them. And when Charlotte died I was SHOCKED and DEEPLY STRICKEN!! I FELT IT, people. I think “Charlotte’s Web” was the first time that the concept of death was introduced into my life. I thought about it, talked about it. It stuck with me. And what more can a writer ask – or any artist, actor, sculptor, creator – then to have something of theirs “stick.”
My second encounter would’ve been in high school in the early 1970’s with the reprinting of Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style”, that thin blue paperback version, a well-worn copy of which I’ve carried with me for years. I bought the updated, red hardbound “gift” version with all those kicky new pictures a few Christmases back and loved the added remembrances of EB and Will Strunk, White’s English instructor from his days at Cornell and the author of the original book. I still read and reread “Elements of Style”, hoping it too will stick. Practice, practice. It did hearten me when I read recenlty that White first expected the task of editing Strunk’s original work for re-publication in the early 50’s to be a breeze and that he was surprised and increasingly daunted not only by the immensity of the task itself, but on discovering that he didn’t feel he’d adhered to a lot Strunk’s rules himself; he (White) had written without rules in mind, working it out in his own way, along the way, until he felt and knew it was right.
After “Charlotte’s Web” and “The Elements of Style” in high school, it was about 30 years before White walked into my life again, in a used book store in Los Angeles. It was another worn blue paperback that called to me from the stacks, a collection of his essays entitled “One Man’s Meat.” It sounded slightly salacious, and maybe that was the original impulse to reach for the book, but in short order I found that “One Man’s Meat” had been the title of a monthly column White had written for Harold Ross at the New Yorker, sending his installments in from his North Brookline house on the Maine coast where he’d moved with his family. I realized I knew next to nothing about him and these essays would serve as my first introduction to his life and I took to them immediately. An added plus was that they’d been written from the mid-thirties through the early-forties, my favorite period of American history (next to the Civil War). The history nerd in me rose from the ashes and relished every mention of FDR, the New Deal, and the coming war, reliving it as if it were happening for the first time (ie “I wonder if Hitler’s going to win this time?!”). I am convinced I lived back then, but that's a topic for a later entry.
Reading "One Man's Meat" was akin to welcoming an old friend back into my life and feeling as if no time had passed. And in hindsight choosing that unassuming book from all the books in the stacks almost seems preordained, part of some plan. I'd just begun toying with the idea of moving back east, but “The East” meant NYC, not New England or Vermont. True, I’d had a soft spot for that part of the country for a long time, but still moving there made no sense. Maybe EB knew something I didn’t know. Something about his stories spoke to something in me, something beyond simply enjoying them. And I found that I wanted to read more about him and by him. I got his Collected Correspondences and devoured it, I listened to him narrating his children’s books – a flat, nasally, and uninflected voice, slightly New England, just this side of uninteresting, but I relished hearing a voice to go with the pictures of him I'd seen. I came across his “Here is New York” essay in an original printing at my friend’s while visiting the city and it felt so right to take the book along as a friend on my subway rides and walks throughout the city that day (By the way, I read while I walk. Again, another possible future blog entry). I found that people on the subway would notice me reading the book and ask me about it, engage in conversations about him. It was grand. I think that EB had the same love I have for New York. It vitalizes me, it opens and enlivens me, I can feel all its ages and times pulse through me, such a grand and sordid history it has. And such a grand place to work. A similar love and kinship for New York booms out of that essay. Well, “boom” isn’t really a word I’d associate with EB. No. The book enwraps you, embraces you, insinuates itself into you so you feel those feelings and thoughts are yours.
I mentioned earlier in another blog entry of EB’s love for “Walden” and Thoreau that is spoken of so beautifully in his essay “A Slight Sound at Evening.” Within it he imagines conjuring Thoreau to the present time and accompanying him about. I can imagine doing the same with EB. I would’ve loved to have met him. Of course, I would’ve loved to have visited him and Katherine at their Maine home, go down to the small boat house and see where he wrote, but having them over to our place would’ve been just fine with me too. I can picture having a drink together, sitting around and talking. I’d be nervous thinking what I was going to talk about with a renowned author, a hero of mine AND his fiction editor wife. How would I ever hold up my side of the conversation? But I have a feeling that he’d put me at my ease. And now that I think for a moment, there’d be plenty to talk about: Richard’s newly arrived chicks, the goose eggs - I think EB would especially be interested in them. Then we’d walk across the road to our pond, feed the trout and the Canadian Geese, enjoy the slow coming of evening. We’d manage. He might even be interested in the theatre and films we’d been in. I don’t know. I’d try to make him laugh. I imagine him being a bit stoic, like Jimmy Burrows, the great television director. But Jimmy has a great laugh that jolts counter to his seemingly sour puss. Everyone has their own unique laugh. I wonder what EB’s would’ve been like? A chortle? A soft giggle? There’s a picture of he and Katherine sitting on a couch beside one another in later life sharing a big guffaw together. It’s quite wonderful.
A friend of mine in New York recently suggested over lunch that I should do a one-man show about White, I speak so highly of him all the time and one-man shows are in my blood. What an intriguing idea for an undertaking. So I've been doing extra research, wondering about what one would have to do to get the rights to passages from his pieces, imagining the structure of the piece. I have a dear friend in California who worked under White at the New Yorker when my friend was young and he had a few memories of White that I relished. He shared that he and White were never chums, White was too hallowed a personage for him to approach in that fashion, but he remembered being so surprised at Mr. White’s slightness, both in manner and appearance. A faint, bristly moustache, but other than that, no distinguishing features. He feared a high wind “might blow him down.” Whereas by contrast he felt that Katherine would’ve broken him if she’d sat on him. White was in the background alot. He didn't like speaking in public, rarely did, even when he was given prestigious awards. So why would someone like that want to talk to an audience about their life's work? It’s already tricky trying to dramatize the life of a writer, especially in a one-man venue. What’s the premise? Why is he talking to us? What moved him to do so? Did he come back from the grave bothered because nobody knows who he is anymore? I can’t imagine EB coming back from the grave to toot his own horn. That’s an intriguing obstacle to overcome in a one-man show when the main character is a man who’d rather not talk, but write, that's where he showed up, that's where he spoke. Maybe the lights could come up on a desk with all his books and essays strewn about on it and that’s it for 2 hours. It's all an intriguing idea. More to follow I'm sure.
In the same brief bio of EB that I quoted at the beginning, there’s another quote of his that I cherish. It’s from a 1961 New York Times interview where he says, “All that I ever hope to say in books is that I love the world.” How wonderful again to distill down the aim, the goal of one's life. Through your gift, your talent, you aspire to share with the world your love for it. You take joy - maybe quiet joy - in living, and you share what you come up with with others, in all its complexity.
Charlotte's Web
Stuart Little
The Trumpet of the Swan
Death of a Pig
Is Sex Necessary? (with James Thurber)
Here is New York
A Slight Sound at Evening
Elements of Style (with Will Strunk)
One Man's Meat
and on and on and on
Thanks for a complexity of joys, EB.
Recently, I read a short biography of White at the back of a collection of his essays which began with something he had written on the occasion of his 58th birthday: “The theme of my life is complexity-through-joy.” Like most of what Mr. White writes, “complexity-through-joy” stayed with me. I’m pretty much a sucker for anything that has “joy” woven into it for it’s a state to which I aspire and a state to which I, sadly and bafflingly, set up numerous roadblocks against. There’s also something about the phrase that reminds me of acting class where one is urged to make one’s actions toward achieving a goal “simple and strong” so that the “complexities” of who you are are allowed to shine through. Simplicity first, complexity second. Joy first and complexity follows. (Funny to think of joy as being simple.) I’m also impressed with the idea of someone being able to come up with a theme for their life. Granted EB has four years on me and I have no doubt that when I’m 58 I’ll have life themes galore, but I have a hard enough time coming up with the theme of something I’m writing let alone the theme of my life. And “complexity-through-joy” sounds so pithy and wise. If I were hard-pressed to come up with a life theme right now it would hover between “spirituality-through-restlessness” or “tolerance through chickens.”
I’ve felt a deep kinship with EB over the past few years. One of the reasons is my recent move to New England and realizing how much this place speaks to me, which parallels a similar move and realization he made in the 1930’s. I find myself traveling back and forth often between Vermont and New York City, as he did between Maine and New York, many times because of work, but more importantly to seek a balance between the country and the city, both of which I love and long for; I know the same rang true for him. I can’t help smiling as I read his work from sheer delight. I find myself sharing passages to Richard, or I'll read an entire essay out loud to him or to other friends, for sharing EB White with others is a sharing of affection to me. His writing is true, thought out. There’s a mastery of his craft that’s never showy, always accessible, and a wisdom mixed with vulnerability, a low hum of self doubt behind it all. He reveals himself through his writing and I love him for it.
Though my affection for Mr. White and his work has deepened considerably in recent years, I realize that our “acquaintance” spans back over most of my life. My first experience probably mirrors most people’s - the reading of “Charlotte’s Web.” The book was still fairly new when I attended kindergarten at Northcrest Elementary School in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Every afternoon in that long ago autumn I would sit cross-legged on the floor as Miss McNamara would read the next chapter of the saga. I'd stare up at that book cover as she read, a cover I'm glad to report has become iconic and hasn't changed in all its reprintings. There's something assuring in that. I have a feeling that the reading was intended to lull all of us into a post-graham crackers and milk naptime stupor, but I sat up alert, wide-eyed, mesmerized, eating up every word. Nothing like a good story to keep the sandman at bay. So many gifts came from that book. I certainly looked at spiders differently from then on, which is no small feat when one’s mother is terrified by the very mention of them. And when Charlotte died I was SHOCKED and DEEPLY STRICKEN!! I FELT IT, people. I think “Charlotte’s Web” was the first time that the concept of death was introduced into my life. I thought about it, talked about it. It stuck with me. And what more can a writer ask – or any artist, actor, sculptor, creator – then to have something of theirs “stick.”
My second encounter would’ve been in high school in the early 1970’s with the reprinting of Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style”, that thin blue paperback version, a well-worn copy of which I’ve carried with me for years. I bought the updated, red hardbound “gift” version with all those kicky new pictures a few Christmases back and loved the added remembrances of EB and Will Strunk, White’s English instructor from his days at Cornell and the author of the original book. I still read and reread “Elements of Style”, hoping it too will stick. Practice, practice. It did hearten me when I read recenlty that White first expected the task of editing Strunk’s original work for re-publication in the early 50’s to be a breeze and that he was surprised and increasingly daunted not only by the immensity of the task itself, but on discovering that he didn’t feel he’d adhered to a lot Strunk’s rules himself; he (White) had written without rules in mind, working it out in his own way, along the way, until he felt and knew it was right.
After “Charlotte’s Web” and “The Elements of Style” in high school, it was about 30 years before White walked into my life again, in a used book store in Los Angeles. It was another worn blue paperback that called to me from the stacks, a collection of his essays entitled “One Man’s Meat.” It sounded slightly salacious, and maybe that was the original impulse to reach for the book, but in short order I found that “One Man’s Meat” had been the title of a monthly column White had written for Harold Ross at the New Yorker, sending his installments in from his North Brookline house on the Maine coast where he’d moved with his family. I realized I knew next to nothing about him and these essays would serve as my first introduction to his life and I took to them immediately. An added plus was that they’d been written from the mid-thirties through the early-forties, my favorite period of American history (next to the Civil War). The history nerd in me rose from the ashes and relished every mention of FDR, the New Deal, and the coming war, reliving it as if it were happening for the first time (ie “I wonder if Hitler’s going to win this time?!”). I am convinced I lived back then, but that's a topic for a later entry.
Reading "One Man's Meat" was akin to welcoming an old friend back into my life and feeling as if no time had passed. And in hindsight choosing that unassuming book from all the books in the stacks almost seems preordained, part of some plan. I'd just begun toying with the idea of moving back east, but “The East” meant NYC, not New England or Vermont. True, I’d had a soft spot for that part of the country for a long time, but still moving there made no sense. Maybe EB knew something I didn’t know. Something about his stories spoke to something in me, something beyond simply enjoying them. And I found that I wanted to read more about him and by him. I got his Collected Correspondences and devoured it, I listened to him narrating his children’s books – a flat, nasally, and uninflected voice, slightly New England, just this side of uninteresting, but I relished hearing a voice to go with the pictures of him I'd seen. I came across his “Here is New York” essay in an original printing at my friend’s while visiting the city and it felt so right to take the book along as a friend on my subway rides and walks throughout the city that day (By the way, I read while I walk. Again, another possible future blog entry). I found that people on the subway would notice me reading the book and ask me about it, engage in conversations about him. It was grand. I think that EB had the same love I have for New York. It vitalizes me, it opens and enlivens me, I can feel all its ages and times pulse through me, such a grand and sordid history it has. And such a grand place to work. A similar love and kinship for New York booms out of that essay. Well, “boom” isn’t really a word I’d associate with EB. No. The book enwraps you, embraces you, insinuates itself into you so you feel those feelings and thoughts are yours.
I mentioned earlier in another blog entry of EB’s love for “Walden” and Thoreau that is spoken of so beautifully in his essay “A Slight Sound at Evening.” Within it he imagines conjuring Thoreau to the present time and accompanying him about. I can imagine doing the same with EB. I would’ve loved to have met him. Of course, I would’ve loved to have visited him and Katherine at their Maine home, go down to the small boat house and see where he wrote, but having them over to our place would’ve been just fine with me too. I can picture having a drink together, sitting around and talking. I’d be nervous thinking what I was going to talk about with a renowned author, a hero of mine AND his fiction editor wife. How would I ever hold up my side of the conversation? But I have a feeling that he’d put me at my ease. And now that I think for a moment, there’d be plenty to talk about: Richard’s newly arrived chicks, the goose eggs - I think EB would especially be interested in them. Then we’d walk across the road to our pond, feed the trout and the Canadian Geese, enjoy the slow coming of evening. We’d manage. He might even be interested in the theatre and films we’d been in. I don’t know. I’d try to make him laugh. I imagine him being a bit stoic, like Jimmy Burrows, the great television director. But Jimmy has a great laugh that jolts counter to his seemingly sour puss. Everyone has their own unique laugh. I wonder what EB’s would’ve been like? A chortle? A soft giggle? There’s a picture of he and Katherine sitting on a couch beside one another in later life sharing a big guffaw together. It’s quite wonderful.
A friend of mine in New York recently suggested over lunch that I should do a one-man show about White, I speak so highly of him all the time and one-man shows are in my blood. What an intriguing idea for an undertaking. So I've been doing extra research, wondering about what one would have to do to get the rights to passages from his pieces, imagining the structure of the piece. I have a dear friend in California who worked under White at the New Yorker when my friend was young and he had a few memories of White that I relished. He shared that he and White were never chums, White was too hallowed a personage for him to approach in that fashion, but he remembered being so surprised at Mr. White’s slightness, both in manner and appearance. A faint, bristly moustache, but other than that, no distinguishing features. He feared a high wind “might blow him down.” Whereas by contrast he felt that Katherine would’ve broken him if she’d sat on him. White was in the background alot. He didn't like speaking in public, rarely did, even when he was given prestigious awards. So why would someone like that want to talk to an audience about their life's work? It’s already tricky trying to dramatize the life of a writer, especially in a one-man venue. What’s the premise? Why is he talking to us? What moved him to do so? Did he come back from the grave bothered because nobody knows who he is anymore? I can’t imagine EB coming back from the grave to toot his own horn. That’s an intriguing obstacle to overcome in a one-man show when the main character is a man who’d rather not talk, but write, that's where he showed up, that's where he spoke. Maybe the lights could come up on a desk with all his books and essays strewn about on it and that’s it for 2 hours. It's all an intriguing idea. More to follow I'm sure.
In the same brief bio of EB that I quoted at the beginning, there’s another quote of his that I cherish. It’s from a 1961 New York Times interview where he says, “All that I ever hope to say in books is that I love the world.” How wonderful again to distill down the aim, the goal of one's life. Through your gift, your talent, you aspire to share with the world your love for it. You take joy - maybe quiet joy - in living, and you share what you come up with with others, in all its complexity.
Charlotte's Web
Stuart Little
The Trumpet of the Swan
Death of a Pig
Is Sex Necessary? (with James Thurber)
Here is New York
A Slight Sound at Evening
Elements of Style (with Will Strunk)
One Man's Meat
and on and on and on
Thanks for a complexity of joys, EB.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Song Shuffle
Miles Davis is on the I-Pod speakers. I'm sitting in our kitchen, a cup of coffee by my side. Might be a little late for a cup o' jo (it's 9 pm) only time will tell. I have a feeling a few Valerian drops to counteract the caffeine will do the trick.
Tony Bennett's on now singing "Smile", Charlie Chaplin's song. I'm here with the cats and the birds. 4 cats - 3 healthy and 1 a bit punk. Sophia got into something outside and for the past few days has been throwing up, not eating. She just looks up with these woeful "what's going on with me?" eyes. Hope whatever it is is working its way through with a little help from our vet.
Moody Blues "Story in Your Eyes." The birds are all in for the night -- 25 5-week olds out in the new coop, 5 grown hens in the old coop laying 3-5 eggs a day and freely roaming around all day, 1 spunky little chick named "Spike" in his plastic container pining for a little company ---
Mills Bros. "Opus One." --- and 3 geese about to peck out of their shells back in the gopher-bator. Sometime over the next 3 days they'll be pipping out -- and Richard's not here again. We also have our 2 Canadian Geese on the pond across the road, the female spending most of the time on her nest these days while the male stands guard and roams around, checking things out. The nest is in an excellently protected "island" mound in the midst of our swamp.
"Momma Look Sharp" from "1776." Also on the pond are a pair of mallards, the male looking all dapper and dressed up in his green and brown while his mate smocks around in a dullish beige brown; its as if he went out to the clothes store, spent all his duck buck on his own duds, and then said "Oh, sorry honey" and stopped by a thrift store on the way home for her lovely ensemble.
Dixie Chicks "Favorite Year." I love song shuffle. And I love The Dixie Chicks. Good combination. If you've never seen the documentary about their odyssey following the "we're from Texas and we're embarrassed about President Bush" at a concert, get it. What an amazing journey and artistic breakthrough. There whole sound changed, something they had yearned for, but which probably wouldn't have happened without a cataclysm like that. They rock.
"Promise of Living" Aaron Copeland - I mentioned recently that I start most every day listening to this piece of music. There's something about Aaron Copeland that speaks America to me, deep down, root deep, the idea and promise of it, the sadness of it underneath everything else, the fortitude, the pioneering spirit, the hokum and the heart, tender and lovely and moving and shimmeringly uplifting. It starts one's day off well, swelling to a climax and then bringing you back down for a gentle landing in your morning.
John Williams "The March from 1941" from "1941" Great overture, shitty movie, enough said. Well, no. Even in shitty movies there are wonderful bits that make you mourn why the rest of the movie didn't work. Robert Stack is so terrific in this as I recall, the only real heart in most of the movie. And John Williams score is fantastic. This march and his music for the jitterbug contest: Swing, Swing, Swing. Excellent. Since I was a kid I've LOVED movie soundtracks, loved to collect them. I toted around vinyl for years, now all gone.
"On Broadway" by Greg DeBelles from "Karl Rove, I Love You" My movie, great jazz score by Greg DeBelles, so proud of and delighted by the soundtrack. Cool, cool, cool.
"My One and Only Love" Oscar Peterson Funny, Greg DeBelles played this for me when he was interesting me in his idea for the score to my movie, when the idea was still in his cells, in his head, in his gut. It's fun hearing the seeds of it here. Also this makes me think of Richard who's down in White River Junction tonight - this whole week really - directing 2 plays in Project Playwright, a program under the auspices of Northern Stage Company where 10 plays are chosen from many written throughout the year by area 5th graders and are then mounted fully by professional designers, directors and actors on both the main stage and the area schools the playwrights attend.
There followed "Fragile" by Sting; "Woman" by the James Gang (oh, sophmore year in high school!); some Carole King; more Greg DeBelles; songs from "Working" and L'il Abner" and now I'm fading. Oh "How the West Was Won!" - next to "Big Country" its my favorite Western soundtrack. Such a great score to such a star-studded, stilted, politically-incorrect flick.
This may not need explanation, but my music taste is an eclectic, hodge-podge and I love it. I depend upon Richard for most anything contemporary and he is utterly dismayed that within that arena I can't recall the names of groups or individual singers, even when I love their song. Ah well.
Just a ramble tonight. Hope you enjoyed it.
Create something good for the world! And have fun doing it!
Ciao!
Tony Bennett's on now singing "Smile", Charlie Chaplin's song. I'm here with the cats and the birds. 4 cats - 3 healthy and 1 a bit punk. Sophia got into something outside and for the past few days has been throwing up, not eating. She just looks up with these woeful "what's going on with me?" eyes. Hope whatever it is is working its way through with a little help from our vet.
Moody Blues "Story in Your Eyes." The birds are all in for the night -- 25 5-week olds out in the new coop, 5 grown hens in the old coop laying 3-5 eggs a day and freely roaming around all day, 1 spunky little chick named "Spike" in his plastic container pining for a little company ---
Mills Bros. "Opus One." --- and 3 geese about to peck out of their shells back in the gopher-bator. Sometime over the next 3 days they'll be pipping out -- and Richard's not here again. We also have our 2 Canadian Geese on the pond across the road, the female spending most of the time on her nest these days while the male stands guard and roams around, checking things out. The nest is in an excellently protected "island" mound in the midst of our swamp.
"Momma Look Sharp" from "1776." Also on the pond are a pair of mallards, the male looking all dapper and dressed up in his green and brown while his mate smocks around in a dullish beige brown; its as if he went out to the clothes store, spent all his duck buck on his own duds, and then said "Oh, sorry honey" and stopped by a thrift store on the way home for her lovely ensemble.
Dixie Chicks "Favorite Year." I love song shuffle. And I love The Dixie Chicks. Good combination. If you've never seen the documentary about their odyssey following the "we're from Texas and we're embarrassed about President Bush" at a concert, get it. What an amazing journey and artistic breakthrough. There whole sound changed, something they had yearned for, but which probably wouldn't have happened without a cataclysm like that. They rock.
"Promise of Living" Aaron Copeland - I mentioned recently that I start most every day listening to this piece of music. There's something about Aaron Copeland that speaks America to me, deep down, root deep, the idea and promise of it, the sadness of it underneath everything else, the fortitude, the pioneering spirit, the hokum and the heart, tender and lovely and moving and shimmeringly uplifting. It starts one's day off well, swelling to a climax and then bringing you back down for a gentle landing in your morning.
John Williams "The March from 1941" from "1941" Great overture, shitty movie, enough said. Well, no. Even in shitty movies there are wonderful bits that make you mourn why the rest of the movie didn't work. Robert Stack is so terrific in this as I recall, the only real heart in most of the movie. And John Williams score is fantastic. This march and his music for the jitterbug contest: Swing, Swing, Swing. Excellent. Since I was a kid I've LOVED movie soundtracks, loved to collect them. I toted around vinyl for years, now all gone.
"On Broadway" by Greg DeBelles from "Karl Rove, I Love You" My movie, great jazz score by Greg DeBelles, so proud of and delighted by the soundtrack. Cool, cool, cool.
"My One and Only Love" Oscar Peterson Funny, Greg DeBelles played this for me when he was interesting me in his idea for the score to my movie, when the idea was still in his cells, in his head, in his gut. It's fun hearing the seeds of it here. Also this makes me think of Richard who's down in White River Junction tonight - this whole week really - directing 2 plays in Project Playwright, a program under the auspices of Northern Stage Company where 10 plays are chosen from many written throughout the year by area 5th graders and are then mounted fully by professional designers, directors and actors on both the main stage and the area schools the playwrights attend.
There followed "Fragile" by Sting; "Woman" by the James Gang (oh, sophmore year in high school!); some Carole King; more Greg DeBelles; songs from "Working" and L'il Abner" and now I'm fading. Oh "How the West Was Won!" - next to "Big Country" its my favorite Western soundtrack. Such a great score to such a star-studded, stilted, politically-incorrect flick.
This may not need explanation, but my music taste is an eclectic, hodge-podge and I love it. I depend upon Richard for most anything contemporary and he is utterly dismayed that within that arena I can't recall the names of groups or individual singers, even when I love their song. Ah well.
Just a ramble tonight. Hope you enjoyed it.
Create something good for the world! And have fun doing it!
Ciao!
Thursday, April 16, 2009
New born
I love morning
I love coffee. I love the smell of it brewing, the sound of it percolating, the gurgle and train hiss hush when it's finished.
I love the light on our hill, earlier now, earlier every day, the green aching to break through.
I love our pond, the ice covering finally thawing back in a slow reveal, giving the Canadian Geese more room to swim and do that bottoms up feeding thing they do, a little dip down to show off their feathery asses.
I love our morning routine, slightly different every day. First, waking to the cries and complaints of Sofia and Oliver wanting food or a faucet turned on or just us UP! Then, the plodding downstairs naked - even with the mercury at 25 degrees outside (inside, before Richard's stoked the fire, it's 60) - talking to the cats all the way, reminding Richard not to open the curtains just yet, begging Sofia's indulgence while I crank up the caffeine before dishing out their chow. Richard's in and out of the kitchen through this, checking on chicks and eggs, and gathering kindling for a nice warm fire (he's a Promethian pyromaniac) Sometime during this one of us starts the music from our i-pod speakers which usually accompanies our shufflings about - Aaron Copeland's "The Promise of Living", a couple of brief chants sounding very medieval, and then a piece called "Hidden Rivers", a gentle "becoming" piece which fits the beginning of the day quite nicely. Next, it's a bit of a jolt with "Jupiter; The Bringer of Jollity" from Holst's "The Planets" conducted by Leonard Bernstein; and finally there's Copeland's "Appalachian Spring" very apt now, and which suits our cabin and morning to a T. Food usually comes a little later, all the above taking place in 6 or 7 am range. Then upstairs for clothes and writing; Richard sticks to the stove area for correspondence.
Morning is most often set aside for writing. There's a pulse to the morning, something electric that calls to me. And if I don't heed its call, if I don't write or create in some way, that pure energy turns in on itself, it lashes out, like an electric high voltage wire severed and whipping around, spewing sparks. And I cab hear William Blake's warning: "Better to strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." So I fill the mornings with play ideas, blog writing, jabs at poetry. Poetry is tempting me these days, the writing and the reading of it. It suits our place. And Vermont. I'm reading a wonderful little book by Ted Kooser called "The Poetry Home Repair Manual" that I highly recommend. It's easy, accessible, talking specifically about poetry, but in a larger, universal way about all creating. In addition most days I read a chapter of Edward Hirsch's "Poet's Choice" and listen to Donald Hall read his poems courtesy of my Subaru's CD deck. I was even drawn to read a piece of "Canterbury Tales" yesterday, despite the shuddering memories of bone-crushingly BORING English poetry classes in high school. It may have been April that called me to do it, my pilgrimage back to the poem at the same time of year the pilgrims were wont to tread toward St. Thomas's slaughter site. I chose one of the Wife of Bath's Tales, and was surprised how much I enjoyed it and how easily it leapt off the page. That Geoffrey Chaucer has a future. He's good.
Afternoons have been given over to helping Richard with his construction and puttering around the property, picking up, planting holly bushes, getting the garden ready, and stacking wood. We just had 2 cords of wood delivered in a huge mound on our side yard and for the past couple days, I, Sisyphus-like, have been toting and stacking it on 2 of our 3 porches. It's been great exercise and the weather has been fantastic, so I get good views of the property as I back and forth from the pile to the porch, stepping around our gossiping and interested hens. Just when my back starts to twinge, Richard calls me to come nail up a few more boards and the change-up gives relief and balance. It helps my soul being out here without a clock. Left to my own devices, I can TIME everything and measure its worth by how it's clocked in, how much I've produced within a given chunk of time. I suppose that's helpful at times, but it becomes so business-like to me, a bit anti-art, anti-LIFE. It gets me wrong-headed; I don't like myself when I'm in that frame of mind. I'm impatient, nothing's enough, least of all anything that makes me happy. And I think I've just begun to tap deep, constant, and easy happiness and joy.
I can see why the pilgrims chose April to shake off the sloth of March and get moving. Your spirit needs the stretch, needs to get out after being cooped up. The air calls to you. Buds are coming, flowers, animals. We saw a group of wild turkeys - 2 Toms and 9 hens - parade across our hill single file the other evening in a pilgrimage of their own to the far forest line, pecking along the way, the Toms stopping every once and awhile to pomp out their full back feathers. Very impressive. Our hens seem to have gotten over the rigors of their enforced pilgrimage back home and are enjoying their new digs. 3-5 eggs laid a day speak of good spirits. Our new chicks are on pins and needles waiting for their journey from utility room to new coop; they're packing their things as I type. Gardens are being worked on, soil turned over. There are calves, baby goats, chicks everywhere. Productivity abounds. Everything's in motion. And the sap is still running. Early mornings, local trucks pass by our place, their backs weighed down by full plastic vats of sap on their way from the trees to the sugar houses nearby. The truckers look to our house and wave. It's a common good-natured practice here, to look towards a house and, seeing someone, wave. And it's another good reason for Richard to keep the curtains closed in the morning when I'm prancing about naked as a newborn.
I love coffee. I love the smell of it brewing, the sound of it percolating, the gurgle and train hiss hush when it's finished.
I love the light on our hill, earlier now, earlier every day, the green aching to break through.
I love our pond, the ice covering finally thawing back in a slow reveal, giving the Canadian Geese more room to swim and do that bottoms up feeding thing they do, a little dip down to show off their feathery asses.
I love our morning routine, slightly different every day. First, waking to the cries and complaints of Sofia and Oliver wanting food or a faucet turned on or just us UP! Then, the plodding downstairs naked - even with the mercury at 25 degrees outside (inside, before Richard's stoked the fire, it's 60) - talking to the cats all the way, reminding Richard not to open the curtains just yet, begging Sofia's indulgence while I crank up the caffeine before dishing out their chow. Richard's in and out of the kitchen through this, checking on chicks and eggs, and gathering kindling for a nice warm fire (he's a Promethian pyromaniac) Sometime during this one of us starts the music from our i-pod speakers which usually accompanies our shufflings about - Aaron Copeland's "The Promise of Living", a couple of brief chants sounding very medieval, and then a piece called "Hidden Rivers", a gentle "becoming" piece which fits the beginning of the day quite nicely. Next, it's a bit of a jolt with "Jupiter; The Bringer of Jollity" from Holst's "The Planets" conducted by Leonard Bernstein; and finally there's Copeland's "Appalachian Spring" very apt now, and which suits our cabin and morning to a T. Food usually comes a little later, all the above taking place in 6 or 7 am range. Then upstairs for clothes and writing; Richard sticks to the stove area for correspondence.
Morning is most often set aside for writing. There's a pulse to the morning, something electric that calls to me. And if I don't heed its call, if I don't write or create in some way, that pure energy turns in on itself, it lashes out, like an electric high voltage wire severed and whipping around, spewing sparks. And I cab hear William Blake's warning: "Better to strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." So I fill the mornings with play ideas, blog writing, jabs at poetry. Poetry is tempting me these days, the writing and the reading of it. It suits our place. And Vermont. I'm reading a wonderful little book by Ted Kooser called "The Poetry Home Repair Manual" that I highly recommend. It's easy, accessible, talking specifically about poetry, but in a larger, universal way about all creating. In addition most days I read a chapter of Edward Hirsch's "Poet's Choice" and listen to Donald Hall read his poems courtesy of my Subaru's CD deck. I was even drawn to read a piece of "Canterbury Tales" yesterday, despite the shuddering memories of bone-crushingly BORING English poetry classes in high school. It may have been April that called me to do it, my pilgrimage back to the poem at the same time of year the pilgrims were wont to tread toward St. Thomas's slaughter site. I chose one of the Wife of Bath's Tales, and was surprised how much I enjoyed it and how easily it leapt off the page. That Geoffrey Chaucer has a future. He's good.
Afternoons have been given over to helping Richard with his construction and puttering around the property, picking up, planting holly bushes, getting the garden ready, and stacking wood. We just had 2 cords of wood delivered in a huge mound on our side yard and for the past couple days, I, Sisyphus-like, have been toting and stacking it on 2 of our 3 porches. It's been great exercise and the weather has been fantastic, so I get good views of the property as I back and forth from the pile to the porch, stepping around our gossiping and interested hens. Just when my back starts to twinge, Richard calls me to come nail up a few more boards and the change-up gives relief and balance. It helps my soul being out here without a clock. Left to my own devices, I can TIME everything and measure its worth by how it's clocked in, how much I've produced within a given chunk of time. I suppose that's helpful at times, but it becomes so business-like to me, a bit anti-art, anti-LIFE. It gets me wrong-headed; I don't like myself when I'm in that frame of mind. I'm impatient, nothing's enough, least of all anything that makes me happy. And I think I've just begun to tap deep, constant, and easy happiness and joy.
I can see why the pilgrims chose April to shake off the sloth of March and get moving. Your spirit needs the stretch, needs to get out after being cooped up. The air calls to you. Buds are coming, flowers, animals. We saw a group of wild turkeys - 2 Toms and 9 hens - parade across our hill single file the other evening in a pilgrimage of their own to the far forest line, pecking along the way, the Toms stopping every once and awhile to pomp out their full back feathers. Very impressive. Our hens seem to have gotten over the rigors of their enforced pilgrimage back home and are enjoying their new digs. 3-5 eggs laid a day speak of good spirits. Our new chicks are on pins and needles waiting for their journey from utility room to new coop; they're packing their things as I type. Gardens are being worked on, soil turned over. There are calves, baby goats, chicks everywhere. Productivity abounds. Everything's in motion. And the sap is still running. Early mornings, local trucks pass by our place, their backs weighed down by full plastic vats of sap on their way from the trees to the sugar houses nearby. The truckers look to our house and wave. It's a common good-natured practice here, to look towards a house and, seeing someone, wave. And it's another good reason for Richard to keep the curtains closed in the morning when I'm prancing about naked as a newborn.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Some more reasons to love it here
I think it's time for a few more enumerated reasons. I stuck Sofia, our Vermont cat, as reason number 17, I think. I'm losing count, really. Here are a few more reasons I'm loving living in Vermont.
18) The Vermont Legislature overriding our Governor's veto and making Gay Marriage Legal in our state!! Unbelievable! In my lifetime, in my newly adopted state. Wow! Though marriage, heterosexual or homosexual, has never been a passionate issue for me, I am still so proud and grateful for all the sung and unsung heroes who committed to this cause, a seeming lost cause if ever there were one, and saw it through to a victorious end. How wonderful. Richard and I are seriously thinking of making our 1999 commitment ceremony officially legal. Whoooo-hah!
19) North Road - the drive down North Road, a major dirt thoroughfare between Bradford and the Newbury area, offers such satisfying and smile inducing views of the New Hampshire mountains, canopies of sugar maples, rolling farm land, deer and other wildlife, the changing seasons, that it's become a symbolic reminder of why Richard and I are here. It's poetry in motion, even when the mud season craters in the road rattle and jangle your car to kingdom come. The road's effect is both mysterious and marvelous, an instant grounding, a pause for reflection and thought, a reach back in time, a friend.
20) A vital above 65 population. I feel so stimulated and inspired by the rich, rich vein of curious, invigorating, essential, colorful, wise, delightful, and expansive "older" population here. I find it difficult to find any term that does them justice, for any descriptive such as "elderly" "retired" "mature" has a negative connotation that I find offensive. I'll have to conjure up another to better embody the people I have the privilege to know. Many of those I've met are subscribers or board members of Northern Stage, a LORT theatre in White River Junction I've had the benefit of being a part of both as audience and cast member; many are former teachers and professors at Dartmouth, many others are simply interested in the vitality of their community or of continuing learning and living life to its fullest. I welcome their engaging conversations, the passing on of another time, the worth of their experience.
21) Our kitchen - The kitchen has always been the heart of any house I've lived in and this has to rank among the best. Warmed most often by the fire of a wood stove, this is also our cats favorite room to roost, to beg, to eat, to watch bird action outside, to play. There's a great creative energy in this place beginning with our combined creative energies coming up with the design in the first place, to the carrying out of the design by the gifted Mazzarella's, father and son, framer and finisher, to the wood from our pines and cherries configured in the construction, to the dinners prepared here, the classes and auditions worked on, the ideas bounced around, the "passionate discussions" (a euphemism if ever there was one) had, the energy coming in from the outside and carried through to other parts of the house, the writing and correspondence concocted, the books read, the meals eaten, the sits by the fire in contemplation in rockers or easy chairs, the visitors welcomed, the playing of games, the views to the outside in all seasons, the cozy embrace of its walls, its assurance, its smile givings. A swell place.
22) The chickens - I can't help it, I give, they've won. Having the chickens back from down the road, hanging around, looking sideways, accompanying us every which way, is fun. Richard's coop is coming along nicely and I'm helping out more. There should be great progress today, the day being spectacular, and by the end of the week, the other 25 will have new digs to expand into, and soon after that a finely fenced expanse to cavort. Richard is also building a tractor fence to take them to different parts of the property and keep them protected throughout.
That's it for now. I'm going outside, it's too nice to ignore.
18) The Vermont Legislature overriding our Governor's veto and making Gay Marriage Legal in our state!! Unbelievable! In my lifetime, in my newly adopted state. Wow! Though marriage, heterosexual or homosexual, has never been a passionate issue for me, I am still so proud and grateful for all the sung and unsung heroes who committed to this cause, a seeming lost cause if ever there were one, and saw it through to a victorious end. How wonderful. Richard and I are seriously thinking of making our 1999 commitment ceremony officially legal. Whoooo-hah!
19) North Road - the drive down North Road, a major dirt thoroughfare between Bradford and the Newbury area, offers such satisfying and smile inducing views of the New Hampshire mountains, canopies of sugar maples, rolling farm land, deer and other wildlife, the changing seasons, that it's become a symbolic reminder of why Richard and I are here. It's poetry in motion, even when the mud season craters in the road rattle and jangle your car to kingdom come. The road's effect is both mysterious and marvelous, an instant grounding, a pause for reflection and thought, a reach back in time, a friend.
20) A vital above 65 population. I feel so stimulated and inspired by the rich, rich vein of curious, invigorating, essential, colorful, wise, delightful, and expansive "older" population here. I find it difficult to find any term that does them justice, for any descriptive such as "elderly" "retired" "mature" has a negative connotation that I find offensive. I'll have to conjure up another to better embody the people I have the privilege to know. Many of those I've met are subscribers or board members of Northern Stage, a LORT theatre in White River Junction I've had the benefit of being a part of both as audience and cast member; many are former teachers and professors at Dartmouth, many others are simply interested in the vitality of their community or of continuing learning and living life to its fullest. I welcome their engaging conversations, the passing on of another time, the worth of their experience.
21) Our kitchen - The kitchen has always been the heart of any house I've lived in and this has to rank among the best. Warmed most often by the fire of a wood stove, this is also our cats favorite room to roost, to beg, to eat, to watch bird action outside, to play. There's a great creative energy in this place beginning with our combined creative energies coming up with the design in the first place, to the carrying out of the design by the gifted Mazzarella's, father and son, framer and finisher, to the wood from our pines and cherries configured in the construction, to the dinners prepared here, the classes and auditions worked on, the ideas bounced around, the "passionate discussions" (a euphemism if ever there was one) had, the energy coming in from the outside and carried through to other parts of the house, the writing and correspondence concocted, the books read, the meals eaten, the sits by the fire in contemplation in rockers or easy chairs, the visitors welcomed, the playing of games, the views to the outside in all seasons, the cozy embrace of its walls, its assurance, its smile givings. A swell place.
22) The chickens - I can't help it, I give, they've won. Having the chickens back from down the road, hanging around, looking sideways, accompanying us every which way, is fun. Richard's coop is coming along nicely and I'm helping out more. There should be great progress today, the day being spectacular, and by the end of the week, the other 25 will have new digs to expand into, and soon after that a finely fenced expanse to cavort. Richard is also building a tractor fence to take them to different parts of the property and keep them protected throughout.
That's it for now. I'm going outside, it's too nice to ignore.
Monday, April 13, 2009
A good Friday
Friday, Good Friday, I woke early, 4 am early, to the light of a full moon glowing through our bedroom window. When I got up to see that it wasn’t the dawn, that it was indeed the light from la bella luna, I had to see it in its full glory. So I tromped downstairs to the kitchen for a better view and gazed up smiling. There she was, high above the silhouettes of the tall firs across the road, shimmering proud and boastful in the clear indigo sky. Quite a sight. I was instantly wide awake. (As I had been, I realized later, at exactly the same time a month ago with a similarly accompanying full moon when I sat down to write my first installment to this blog.) I did go back to bed, though, not for sleep but to engage Richard in conversation (he was sort of awake) and we lay back and trekked through various topics – praise for his continuing construction on a new chicken coop, debate over whether or not to move forward with some other renovation work, our cats, love stuff, and, of course, chickens. Richard informed me that today was the day we would go down the road to our neighbors where our 2 Rhode Island Reds and 3 Barred Rocks have “wintered.” The plan was to catch them and transport them back in plastic pet containers to their refurbished and fenced-in coop, one that Richard had built last year. In the electric rush I feel most every morning when I see all the possibilities the day holds, my mind grabbed onto a topic that really didn’t need to be revisited, but I bulldozed ahead regardless, grilling Richard about the specific plans to keep “his” chickens penned up and seeking assurance that they would NOT be allowed to shit all over the front porch in great profusion like they had last year. Richard stared back at me with Medusa eyes and I stilled to stone. I had hit “a chord”, a familiar dissonant chord, and just before he let go with a stream of “we’ve been over this before, I’ve given you countless assurances, what more do you want? They won’t be on the front porch, I’ve made all plans and preparations, what more can I say or do?” I saw visions of him imagining my head on a chicken chopping block as he stood nearby, wild-eyed, wielding a big ole chicken chopping hatchit. But the anger passed quickly, as it usually does these days. We tend to laugh it away. What helped ease its passage this time was Richard ushering me to his gopher-bator where I saw a teensy-tiny piece of eggshell pipped by the Wyandotte chick within. Richard estimated that by tomorrow morning it would be out. All was right with the world, again.
I sat down to write for a couple of hours while Richard went outside to continue coop construction, and then we took a break and set off down the road with carrying cases at our side to pack up our pullets and bring them back home. We knew the main obstacle was going to be our neighbor’s rooster, a gloriously plumed bird who had welcomed our hens into his harem and wasn’t about to let them go without a fight. Very territorial, he. One of Richard’s favorite television shows is HBO’s Mormon soap opera “Big Love”, and yesterday we found ourselves cast as unwelcome guest characters in an altered version of that show. We soon realized that threats of legal charges regarding polygamy rings hold very little weight in the bird world. Also we found that making a raid at midday played right to the rooster’s advantage for not only were “his hens” outside and not in the barn, making them harder to catch, but they would follow their hypnotic paramour wherever he urged them to go, which yesterday turned out to be mostly swampland, flowing with winter thaw. Richard and I smooshed and slopped our way back and forth through the gloppy terrain, billing and cooing, shaking cups full of feed, anything to entice our chickens away from that feathered Bill Paxton. And he was something to see alright, decked out like an Incan chieftan. If I’d been a hen – hell, another rooster -- I would’ve followed him through a swamp; well, come to think of it, I did. Finally by hook and by crook we managed to nab 1 Barred Rock and our 2 Rhode Islands and steel away home, where we penned them into their new and secure home as the rooster fumed and keened in the distance.
A flurry of activity followed - a quick lunch, more writing and construction, a power nap - and then, as we were rushing to get Richard to the local garage where his car was being serviced and which he needed to drive to an afternoon class an hour away, we discovered that the Barred Rock was out. He’d flown the coop, EASILY flown OUT OF the coop and was pecking away nonchalantly nearby. In a fluster, Richard quick-fixed a chicken wire covering, we corralled the Barred back in, and tore off.
When I returned home, the Barred was out again, again nonchalantly pecking and scratching. I was not nonchalant. No. I oh so wanted to be pissed at Richard. This was exactly why I had brought up the topic of chickens on the front porch earlier. What happened to these assurances of preparations and plans and inescapable pens? Of course it would bring out the parent in me. I have better things to do than chase chickens around. And babysit. Yeah. These were HIS chickens, weren’t they? Hadn’t we been over boundaries? And where was he anyway? Not here, that’s for sure. No, after his class he was planning on attending a community theatre production of David Lindsay Abaire’s “The Rabbit Hole”, (a curious Easter weekend option that I’d opted out of ), and he wouldn’t be home until late. He was gone, just as he had been when the baby chicks had arrived 4 weeks ago, and who had gone to get them? ME! OH, YEAH! My inner critic was really rolling up his sleeves. He woke my inner victim and both of them stepped up on my inner soapbox: “If something goes wrong with the chickens, let it go wrong! If the fence can’t hold them, then let them get out and Richard will learn his lesson.” I salivated with visions of foxes and fisher cats trotting up our hill with tubby hens clamped in their jaws.. The only thing missing was me wringing my hands while tossing my head back with peals of Calligula-like laughter. I mumbled about all the indignities being heaped upon me as I trudged up to the coop and figured out a “tented up” jerry rig to the chicken wire covering that would help keep the chickens in. Then I turned to the Barred Rock and gritted my teeth, imagining the horrible task that lay ahead of me rounding him back up into the pen, and I opened the gate and she had the audacity to simply walk back in. She turned and looked at me, “Well?” I stood there looking back at her. My anger didn’t know what to do with this situation. So it just … went away. Disappeared. Flew south.
It must’ve passed the pair of honking Canadian Geese that were coming the other way above me, arcing high over our next door neighbor’s tree line. I wondered if they were “our” Geese, “ours” because a pair have adopted our pond for a future family and have been feeding on the birdseed in the front lawn. I looked out front to check just in time to see their sleek heads periscope up from the other side of the stone wall for a gander at the sky. They always look like very high class feminine bandits to me with their stylish face masks. They soon flew up to join their new friends for an aerial show, all of them out honking one another with delight.
I really didn’t quite know what to do with myself. So to celebrate all the bird action, I decided to Holly-tone some yellowing firs on our property, ones we’d planted a couple autumns ago, and then clear a bunch of small maples and brush that had engulfed the fence row down by our road, a job that Richard had hoped would be done and that I thought would make him happy. It turned out to be tough going, uprooting and tugging, sawing and chopping, lugging, but it was exhilarating. The field was full of blossoming crocus and the green beginnings of daffodils. The air was brisk and inviting. By the time my pile of brush was chest high, I was grubby and filthy and fine. As I sang to myself, sawing away on a hefty crab tree branch, I could feel the presence of someone nearby, looking at me. So I turned to see the 2 Rhode Island Reds right next to me, poking away at the crocus. Now THEY were out! With perfect timing, the branch I’d been sawing on snapped, swung down and BAP! bounced off my lip. There was a brief thought of whether this wound would Elephant Man my natural good looks – ah, vanity! --, but after the initial shock, I thought, of course, the branch bap was as if nature were saying “Hey! Don’t even think about being pissed. You’re having a good time, right?! So shut up!” I went inside for an ice cube for my lip and when I came back, there looking in at me through the storm door were the 2 Rhode Island Reds ON THE FRONT PORCH. Of course. I cracked up.
Now, it wasn’t all fun and games. Much to your amazement, I didn’t take it all in stride. I gave Richard a call with an update on “what was happening IN HIS ABSENCE.” He didn’t answer. The Barred Rock was out again too and both he and one of the Reds really got my goat by sauntering right back in the gate AGAIN with no fuss. How dare they!! The other Red, though, gave me a run for my money, a merry chase all over the property, hide and seeking around and around fir trees, finally dashing under our front porch behind cedar latticework. There was no way to crawl in after her; I had to coax her out. Again the corn meal in a cup, again the enticing shaking of the cup, this time with me commiserating about how hard change is, purring “I know how you feel, I know.” But she wasn’t buying any of it. She just stood there on the other side of the lattice, glaring at me indignantly, giving off this extended cawing kind of growl. I think she was getting back at me for having come between her and her “man.” Finally, I gave up. I got up, and walked away. And off course, soon, curious, she came out. And lo and behold, it was the front porch that caught her. She had gone back up there when my back was turned, and had become transfixed by her own reflection in the storm door. She stood there, frozen, staring at herself. I don’t know if she thought it was a long lost friend or, like Narcissus, she’d become enamored of herself, but whatever the reason, I used the distraction to slowly ease myself closer and closer until NAB! I got a hold of one of her legs. There was a quick squawk and flutter and then she instantly calmed, as if she were glad to have been caught. She seemed soothed in my arms, and she cooed as I carried her up the hill for a reunion. It was past dusk, so I nestled them all up in their coop, treated to the discovery of 2 new eggs in the process! I thanked the girls, telling them it was perfect for Easter. I took the eggs inside, grabbed a beer for a walk up to the top of the hill and a view of the last strands of daylight on the far mountains. Then back down to the house, quite dark now, where I shucked off my work clothes for a well-earned rest.
But two messages awaited me on our answering machine. The first, our neighbor down the road who said that now would be a good time to pick up the 2 remaining Barred Rocks for they were roosting in the barn, quietly, and the rooster was penned in. The second was Richard asking me to check on the progress of the pipping chick (I’d forgotten all about him/her) and telling me to call and give him an update. I put my work clothes back on, grabbed the carrying case, and a flashlight and headed for the door. On my way, I stepped into the utility room where the 2 containers holding our 25 4-week old chicks reside, as well as the gopher-bator where various eggs are being hatched. Peering in the top window of the incubator, I spied a newly hatched black chick, wet and splayed out on the still remaining eggs as if he’d been washed up on a rocky shore. Okay, this was cool. I cracked open the lid and he/she stirred. It looked up and began chirping, a good healthy peep, its wee little wings flapping the air. He kept trying to regain his balance looking up at me as if saying “Sorry, you caught me in such a state – whoa! -- I really wanted to make a better first impression – woops! -- but HELLO! I’m glad I’m imprinting on YOU, oh parent figure of mine – (slip, slide) -- Life is pretty swell so far, but, boy, I’m bushed!” He was cute and tough and I dubbed him “Spike.” Remembering something about him needing to stay in the incubator until he dried off, I assured him that I would return and went for the 2 Barred Rocks.
There followed a darkened barn, and a slightly perturbed horse watching, powerless to the quiet kidnapping of 2 more birds. The abduction was a piece of cake, both birds were docile, drowsy. The only hitch was a little panic of plastic scrambling when I moved them from the carrying case to the new coop. I apologized for my clumsiness, I think they understood. I checked in with “Spike” one or two more times, while the surrounding chicks in their crates nosed up to their mesh covering to see what was going on. I had a pang that they were feeling left out, so I rolled back the covers and let them use me as a perching post, a human tree with arm branches. I’d have about 4 up on me at a time, the others roosting at other points around the room, a little seventh inning stretch as we calmly eyed one another, shared our day. They seemed content. And not one of them shit on me. But it would’ve been alright if they had. Wait. “Alright?” Well, I would’ve understood, let’s not get carried away here.
I tucked the birds back in, showered, and got into bed for a read. Astrid came up to hunker down on top of me. The phone rang. It was Richard, he was finally returning my calls. He was on his way home from the play, it was around 11, and he wanted an update, especially about the new born. I gave it to him and he asked if I’d go down and clean up the shell in the incubator. The tone of my voice must’ve darkened at the prospect of leaving my nest because his did in response to mine. I agreed to get up though. He said he’d have to come home and find it its own box before coming to bed, etc, etc. I went down and performed my janitorial duties - Spike chirped appreciatively - and I went back up to call Richard and let him know the job was done and to bring back the bounce to his voice. We talked for a nice stretch about the play, the birds, the plans for further coop construction tomorrow, as he drove on, nearing home and I lay back in bed, drifting to sleep. I don’t recall hanging up, but I do remember him coming to bed, smiling and energized after fixing a new home for the new born. All was right with the world. Again.
Friday was one of those days, looking back at its beginning from the perspective of its ending, where it felt as if years had passed rather than just 24 hours, so many events and turns of feelings had been “cram packed” into it: moon waking, bedroom talking, argument laughing, coop building, play writing, rooster fooling, fence fixing, anger fleeing, geese flying, brush clearing, chicken chasing, hill climbing, beer downing, view gazing, birth awing, night nabbing, bed nestling, phone talking, shell cleaning, love lighting, dream drifting. It was truly a good Friday, in every meaning of the word. I even felt a little resurrected afterwards. If there was a learning in all this, I’d say it was a reminder that I always have a choice. Putting it in bird terms, I can either focus on front porch shit or fly with new found wings. Just for today, I’ll choose feathers.
I sat down to write for a couple of hours while Richard went outside to continue coop construction, and then we took a break and set off down the road with carrying cases at our side to pack up our pullets and bring them back home. We knew the main obstacle was going to be our neighbor’s rooster, a gloriously plumed bird who had welcomed our hens into his harem and wasn’t about to let them go without a fight. Very territorial, he. One of Richard’s favorite television shows is HBO’s Mormon soap opera “Big Love”, and yesterday we found ourselves cast as unwelcome guest characters in an altered version of that show. We soon realized that threats of legal charges regarding polygamy rings hold very little weight in the bird world. Also we found that making a raid at midday played right to the rooster’s advantage for not only were “his hens” outside and not in the barn, making them harder to catch, but they would follow their hypnotic paramour wherever he urged them to go, which yesterday turned out to be mostly swampland, flowing with winter thaw. Richard and I smooshed and slopped our way back and forth through the gloppy terrain, billing and cooing, shaking cups full of feed, anything to entice our chickens away from that feathered Bill Paxton. And he was something to see alright, decked out like an Incan chieftan. If I’d been a hen – hell, another rooster -- I would’ve followed him through a swamp; well, come to think of it, I did. Finally by hook and by crook we managed to nab 1 Barred Rock and our 2 Rhode Islands and steel away home, where we penned them into their new and secure home as the rooster fumed and keened in the distance.
A flurry of activity followed - a quick lunch, more writing and construction, a power nap - and then, as we were rushing to get Richard to the local garage where his car was being serviced and which he needed to drive to an afternoon class an hour away, we discovered that the Barred Rock was out. He’d flown the coop, EASILY flown OUT OF the coop and was pecking away nonchalantly nearby. In a fluster, Richard quick-fixed a chicken wire covering, we corralled the Barred back in, and tore off.
When I returned home, the Barred was out again, again nonchalantly pecking and scratching. I was not nonchalant. No. I oh so wanted to be pissed at Richard. This was exactly why I had brought up the topic of chickens on the front porch earlier. What happened to these assurances of preparations and plans and inescapable pens? Of course it would bring out the parent in me. I have better things to do than chase chickens around. And babysit. Yeah. These were HIS chickens, weren’t they? Hadn’t we been over boundaries? And where was he anyway? Not here, that’s for sure. No, after his class he was planning on attending a community theatre production of David Lindsay Abaire’s “The Rabbit Hole”, (a curious Easter weekend option that I’d opted out of ), and he wouldn’t be home until late. He was gone, just as he had been when the baby chicks had arrived 4 weeks ago, and who had gone to get them? ME! OH, YEAH! My inner critic was really rolling up his sleeves. He woke my inner victim and both of them stepped up on my inner soapbox: “If something goes wrong with the chickens, let it go wrong! If the fence can’t hold them, then let them get out and Richard will learn his lesson.” I salivated with visions of foxes and fisher cats trotting up our hill with tubby hens clamped in their jaws.. The only thing missing was me wringing my hands while tossing my head back with peals of Calligula-like laughter. I mumbled about all the indignities being heaped upon me as I trudged up to the coop and figured out a “tented up” jerry rig to the chicken wire covering that would help keep the chickens in. Then I turned to the Barred Rock and gritted my teeth, imagining the horrible task that lay ahead of me rounding him back up into the pen, and I opened the gate and she had the audacity to simply walk back in. She turned and looked at me, “Well?” I stood there looking back at her. My anger didn’t know what to do with this situation. So it just … went away. Disappeared. Flew south.
It must’ve passed the pair of honking Canadian Geese that were coming the other way above me, arcing high over our next door neighbor’s tree line. I wondered if they were “our” Geese, “ours” because a pair have adopted our pond for a future family and have been feeding on the birdseed in the front lawn. I looked out front to check just in time to see their sleek heads periscope up from the other side of the stone wall for a gander at the sky. They always look like very high class feminine bandits to me with their stylish face masks. They soon flew up to join their new friends for an aerial show, all of them out honking one another with delight.
I really didn’t quite know what to do with myself. So to celebrate all the bird action, I decided to Holly-tone some yellowing firs on our property, ones we’d planted a couple autumns ago, and then clear a bunch of small maples and brush that had engulfed the fence row down by our road, a job that Richard had hoped would be done and that I thought would make him happy. It turned out to be tough going, uprooting and tugging, sawing and chopping, lugging, but it was exhilarating. The field was full of blossoming crocus and the green beginnings of daffodils. The air was brisk and inviting. By the time my pile of brush was chest high, I was grubby and filthy and fine. As I sang to myself, sawing away on a hefty crab tree branch, I could feel the presence of someone nearby, looking at me. So I turned to see the 2 Rhode Island Reds right next to me, poking away at the crocus. Now THEY were out! With perfect timing, the branch I’d been sawing on snapped, swung down and BAP! bounced off my lip. There was a brief thought of whether this wound would Elephant Man my natural good looks – ah, vanity! --, but after the initial shock, I thought, of course, the branch bap was as if nature were saying “Hey! Don’t even think about being pissed. You’re having a good time, right?! So shut up!” I went inside for an ice cube for my lip and when I came back, there looking in at me through the storm door were the 2 Rhode Island Reds ON THE FRONT PORCH. Of course. I cracked up.
Now, it wasn’t all fun and games. Much to your amazement, I didn’t take it all in stride. I gave Richard a call with an update on “what was happening IN HIS ABSENCE.” He didn’t answer. The Barred Rock was out again too and both he and one of the Reds really got my goat by sauntering right back in the gate AGAIN with no fuss. How dare they!! The other Red, though, gave me a run for my money, a merry chase all over the property, hide and seeking around and around fir trees, finally dashing under our front porch behind cedar latticework. There was no way to crawl in after her; I had to coax her out. Again the corn meal in a cup, again the enticing shaking of the cup, this time with me commiserating about how hard change is, purring “I know how you feel, I know.” But she wasn’t buying any of it. She just stood there on the other side of the lattice, glaring at me indignantly, giving off this extended cawing kind of growl. I think she was getting back at me for having come between her and her “man.” Finally, I gave up. I got up, and walked away. And off course, soon, curious, she came out. And lo and behold, it was the front porch that caught her. She had gone back up there when my back was turned, and had become transfixed by her own reflection in the storm door. She stood there, frozen, staring at herself. I don’t know if she thought it was a long lost friend or, like Narcissus, she’d become enamored of herself, but whatever the reason, I used the distraction to slowly ease myself closer and closer until NAB! I got a hold of one of her legs. There was a quick squawk and flutter and then she instantly calmed, as if she were glad to have been caught. She seemed soothed in my arms, and she cooed as I carried her up the hill for a reunion. It was past dusk, so I nestled them all up in their coop, treated to the discovery of 2 new eggs in the process! I thanked the girls, telling them it was perfect for Easter. I took the eggs inside, grabbed a beer for a walk up to the top of the hill and a view of the last strands of daylight on the far mountains. Then back down to the house, quite dark now, where I shucked off my work clothes for a well-earned rest.
But two messages awaited me on our answering machine. The first, our neighbor down the road who said that now would be a good time to pick up the 2 remaining Barred Rocks for they were roosting in the barn, quietly, and the rooster was penned in. The second was Richard asking me to check on the progress of the pipping chick (I’d forgotten all about him/her) and telling me to call and give him an update. I put my work clothes back on, grabbed the carrying case, and a flashlight and headed for the door. On my way, I stepped into the utility room where the 2 containers holding our 25 4-week old chicks reside, as well as the gopher-bator where various eggs are being hatched. Peering in the top window of the incubator, I spied a newly hatched black chick, wet and splayed out on the still remaining eggs as if he’d been washed up on a rocky shore. Okay, this was cool. I cracked open the lid and he/she stirred. It looked up and began chirping, a good healthy peep, its wee little wings flapping the air. He kept trying to regain his balance looking up at me as if saying “Sorry, you caught me in such a state – whoa! -- I really wanted to make a better first impression – woops! -- but HELLO! I’m glad I’m imprinting on YOU, oh parent figure of mine – (slip, slide) -- Life is pretty swell so far, but, boy, I’m bushed!” He was cute and tough and I dubbed him “Spike.” Remembering something about him needing to stay in the incubator until he dried off, I assured him that I would return and went for the 2 Barred Rocks.
There followed a darkened barn, and a slightly perturbed horse watching, powerless to the quiet kidnapping of 2 more birds. The abduction was a piece of cake, both birds were docile, drowsy. The only hitch was a little panic of plastic scrambling when I moved them from the carrying case to the new coop. I apologized for my clumsiness, I think they understood. I checked in with “Spike” one or two more times, while the surrounding chicks in their crates nosed up to their mesh covering to see what was going on. I had a pang that they were feeling left out, so I rolled back the covers and let them use me as a perching post, a human tree with arm branches. I’d have about 4 up on me at a time, the others roosting at other points around the room, a little seventh inning stretch as we calmly eyed one another, shared our day. They seemed content. And not one of them shit on me. But it would’ve been alright if they had. Wait. “Alright?” Well, I would’ve understood, let’s not get carried away here.
I tucked the birds back in, showered, and got into bed for a read. Astrid came up to hunker down on top of me. The phone rang. It was Richard, he was finally returning my calls. He was on his way home from the play, it was around 11, and he wanted an update, especially about the new born. I gave it to him and he asked if I’d go down and clean up the shell in the incubator. The tone of my voice must’ve darkened at the prospect of leaving my nest because his did in response to mine. I agreed to get up though. He said he’d have to come home and find it its own box before coming to bed, etc, etc. I went down and performed my janitorial duties - Spike chirped appreciatively - and I went back up to call Richard and let him know the job was done and to bring back the bounce to his voice. We talked for a nice stretch about the play, the birds, the plans for further coop construction tomorrow, as he drove on, nearing home and I lay back in bed, drifting to sleep. I don’t recall hanging up, but I do remember him coming to bed, smiling and energized after fixing a new home for the new born. All was right with the world. Again.
Friday was one of those days, looking back at its beginning from the perspective of its ending, where it felt as if years had passed rather than just 24 hours, so many events and turns of feelings had been “cram packed” into it: moon waking, bedroom talking, argument laughing, coop building, play writing, rooster fooling, fence fixing, anger fleeing, geese flying, brush clearing, chicken chasing, hill climbing, beer downing, view gazing, birth awing, night nabbing, bed nestling, phone talking, shell cleaning, love lighting, dream drifting. It was truly a good Friday, in every meaning of the word. I even felt a little resurrected afterwards. If there was a learning in all this, I’d say it was a reminder that I always have a choice. Putting it in bird terms, I can either focus on front porch shit or fly with new found wings. Just for today, I’ll choose feathers.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
She's on the mend
It's midnight, just past. I went back and did some rewriting on last night's post and realized I probably need to include an update.
Sofia's good. She woke up in great spirits at the vets this morning and was even kind to them, reaching her paws through the cage to play. They were a little wary of the Jekyl and Hyde routine, but had to admit she seemed like a different cat from the Linda Blair version they'd experienced yesterday. She ate several times, small portions, and had kept them all down and after being observed all morning, she was ready to come home. She'll be off by herself for a couple days as we work her diet back up and watch to make sure it stays in her. The other cats don't recognize her scent - she smells of vet - and they've been hissing at her when they catch little scent glimpses. Strange and wonderful that, the amnesia that sets in so quickly. I want to go "Oh come on! You really don't recognize her?! It's not as if she's been gone for months. Aren't there other senses then smell for you guys? Open your eyes, for God's sakes!"
It's good to have her home. She does have a different sound, though. Richard spotted it. We don't know if it's from the constant gagging she'd been going through when she was sick, but her meow has lowered a tone or 2. Now she sounds like a street tough, like one of the "Bowery Boys", Leo Gorcey probably. I don't know if it's going to change back, which is fine by me, it's growing on me, but Richard is a bit troubled by it. If he were one of the cats, he'd probably be hissing too.
Sofia's good. She woke up in great spirits at the vets this morning and was even kind to them, reaching her paws through the cage to play. They were a little wary of the Jekyl and Hyde routine, but had to admit she seemed like a different cat from the Linda Blair version they'd experienced yesterday. She ate several times, small portions, and had kept them all down and after being observed all morning, she was ready to come home. She'll be off by herself for a couple days as we work her diet back up and watch to make sure it stays in her. The other cats don't recognize her scent - she smells of vet - and they've been hissing at her when they catch little scent glimpses. Strange and wonderful that, the amnesia that sets in so quickly. I want to go "Oh come on! You really don't recognize her?! It's not as if she's been gone for months. Aren't there other senses then smell for you guys? Open your eyes, for God's sakes!"
It's good to have her home. She does have a different sound, though. Richard spotted it. We don't know if it's from the constant gagging she'd been going through when she was sick, but her meow has lowered a tone or 2. Now she sounds like a street tough, like one of the "Bowery Boys", Leo Gorcey probably. I don't know if it's going to change back, which is fine by me, it's growing on me, but Richard is a bit troubled by it. If he were one of the cats, he'd probably be hissing too.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Sofia
I got up at 5 this morning with "a call" to write, but my muse had to be put on hold - due first to our coffee pot erupting watery grounds all over the kitchen counters, and second to the discovery that Sofia, quarantined in our upstairs bathroom for "observation", had gotten sick several more times during the night and would have to return to the vets again today. And Sofia LOATHES the vets.
We knew that one of our cats had been getting sick with greater and greater frequency and volume during the past few days, and my money was on either Oliver, who is constantly up in the attic scrounging through stuff, or Delilah, our hefty Maine Coon that one of our friends has dubbed "Delta Burke." Astrid, our sleek black cat, was an outside chance, but I never would have suspected Sofia since her energy hadn't shown any signs of flagging and her clawing leaps and moans for food had been as passionate as ever, if not moreso. Now her "moreso" made sense, for of course she would've been starving if she'd been throwing whatever we gave her right back up.
Having uncovered that Sofia was the sick one, yesterday morning I crated her into her sherpa carrier and headed for the vets. Did I mention that Sofia DESPISES the vets? As we pulled into the veterinary's gravel parking lot she began a low growl and her countenance darkened like a threatening storm front. I exaggerate slightly, for she really does become a split personality when we walk through those doors - angelic to me, infernal to them. "They" are the enemy; "they" prod her and stick thermometers up her butt; "they" take her away from me, her protector, into another room where "they" try to draw blood from her leg for tests. I happened to peer into the "operating room" window yesterday when the blood drawing was taking place just in time to see "them" - the doctor and her assistant - run for cover as Sofia swiped and screamed and bared her teeth, the syringe left dangling from her back leg. (Editorial comment - Sofia is a great cat, kind, kittenish, loving. Yes, she's a TOUCH feral - which I'll explain soon - but she is NOT devil spawn if you happened to talk to the veterinary receptionist with the claw marks down one side of her face. It's just that Sofia ABHORS ... you get the picture.)
"We didn't get enough blood," the doctor said, panting into the room a few moments later. She was untangling the long tube to the fluid bag she'd brought in the room with her. "Next time we try we'll have to sedate her, which I hate to do, but she just gets too traumatized by the experience."
I noticed her unfastening another needle for Sofia's fluid injection and thought 'Good luck.'
"I have to admit when you called this morning saying you were coming in, I was hoping it wasn't Sofia."
(Editorial reminder: She's a good cat!)
"Your other cats just take everything in stride, especially the black one."
'Astrid'
"Yes, Astrid. She just looks you in the eye like she's saying 'Just do what you have to do, I trust you."
'That sounds like Astrid,' I agreed. 'She's very maternal.'
The door opened and the assistant came in with Sofia. Her carrying case was open and when the assistant set it down on the table, Sofia crept out of the carrier and crawled up my sweater and as she did she fixed me with these large Velvet painting eyes that seemed to say "why did you even bring me here?!" She got to the side of my neck and clung to me with all her might. It was horrible; I felt like I'd betrayed her.
Earlier the doctor had done a quick physical examination of Sofia. She'd felt no obstruction or sign of discomfort in any particular area despite Sofia's continuous low growls throughout, but to be thorough she had suggested a whole slew of "next step" options, giving the pros and cons for each as she listed them - blood work, x-rays, "barium" x-rays, antibiotics, fluids injection, pepcid, keep her here for observation, take her home and observe her. I had opted for blood work, a pepcid and fluid injection, and then said that I wanted to take her home instead of leaving her here. I nixed antibiotics unless things got worse. Even though my dad's a (retired) pharmacist and drug salesman, there's something about "anti" (against) and "bio" (life) that makes me hold off, especially when prescribing them for a pint-sized cat. A STRONG and DETERMINED pint-sized cat who I was now trying to disentangle from my sweater - it was like getting unstuck from a briar patch - and get her back onto the table, into the hands of the "enemy" for her final 2 injections. Poor baby. By the time we made our way back home over bumpy roads which made her throw up again, Sofia was spent.
Sofia's a survivor. She's the only one of our 4 cats who is a true Vermonter. All of our cats are rescues and each one has their own "incredible journey" saga, but Sofia, while still very young, survived an entire Vermont winter outside. She and 14 of her brothers and sisters had been abandoned when their owners, a local family unable to keep up house payments, had been forced to leave them. Hearing of this, Richard had "adopted" 2 of the orphans, named them Sofia and Buster, and surprised me with the news. I was REALLY surprised when Buster sprayed our bedroom. Sofia acclimated well, but Buster was just too skittish and wild and we finally had to take him to an animal shelter where he was successfully re-socialized and found a new home. In fact, most of the other orphaned cats had similar good fortune.
Sofia is a runt, very small for her age, which is probably 3. We think she's probably inbred. Richard also thinks she's mentally retarded and has been heard to call out "Tardo!" with politically-incorrect glee when Sofia has one of her mercurial mood changes. But mentally challenged or no, we love her. She's magical and loving; lively and erratic; happy and grateful. Okay, I'm being a bit Disney here, endowing animals with human attributes, but so what, I'm nuts about her. I'm not quite as bad as Richard, though, who has dubbed Sofia - "Sofia Maria Christina." Now that's just too gay.
I monitored Sofia throughout the rest of the day after returning home yesterday. Her energy was definitely lower than usual, but her purrs were loud and content, and she seemed to enjoy curling up on my lap when I sat down on the floor beside her for a visit. No, I did not read to her. She did get sick a couple times, clear bile. And this morning, the mess she made upstairs made a call to the vets mandatory. They said to bring her in to the hospital and I told them that I would defer to whatever the doctor suggested, even the antibiotics. ("GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE SHOT!!!). I dropped her off and returned home to await the call, and when it came, the doctor sounded weary. She said that she had managed to get 1 x-ray taken and an antibiotic shot given before a combative Sofia would have no more of it and retreated to her sherpa lair, victorious and content. 2 white objects had shown up on the x-ray, 1 in the colon and 1 in either the stomach or the upper intestine. Another x-ray would have to be taken to get the exact location and size of the objects since the single one taken was not definitive. The doctor wanted to do a barium x-ray, but knew Sofia would not let her near her without being sedated, and if Sofia were sedated, she wouldn't be able to take the barium which has to be administered orally. She was at an impasse. So I volunteered to come in and give Sofia the barium myself.
It was good to see Sofia, frazzled as she was. It felt as if I hadn't seen her in ages even though it had only been only a couple hours tops since I dropped her off. We sat around and caught up, spent some quality time together. She told me she would pay me if I broke her out of this place (I talk fluent "cat"). I said that, unfortunately, I couldn't do that. She growled, but then, having gotten it out of her system, she forgave me. I cradled her back in my arm and eased the barium syringe into the side of her mouth for 5 chalky doses with slight pauses inbetween. She choked them down like a trooper. I had been told that the barium soothes cat's stomachs; I hoped so. After she got it all down, she was mum for awhile and lay on my lap, warming herself, and calming down. The doctor peeked in and was kind enough to extend visiting hours. Finally, back in the case Sofia went, and she was whisked away to her overnight accomodations. I can only hope there's a pool and jacuzzi.
After Sofia was gone, the doctor ushered me into another room to show me the x-ray and I almost shit. Those white glowing obstructions were HUGE. And they GLOWED.
"They're probably bones," the doctor explained. "Maybe a mouse. This one in the colon looks as if it's on its way out. The other we don't know until we see it from another direction. We also can't really tell the size until we get another perspective. It's surprising. It might be much smaller. Or larger. We'll take a look, observe her, x-ray her again in the morning and see if there's been any further movement."
'Okay' I thanked her, and began to leave.
"And thank you for coming in. She wouldn't have let me do that, no way. Your check will be at the front counter."
It's 8 pm now. I'm home. The other 3 cats are around me. It's quiet here; I'm waiting for Richard to get home from Hanover. The vets checked in about an hour ago with an update. Sofia's sedated, no temperature, comfortable, well, as comfortable as she can be with what she's been going through today. The obstruction in the colon is no problem and should work its way out; the other, though, is large and in the stomach. The barium didn't move it at all. So in the morning they'll feed her and if she's able to keep it down without throwing up, good; if not, if she does throw the food up, they may have to go in and take the obstruction out. The doctor hasn't made a decision yet.
"We didn't get enough blood," the doctor said, panting into the room a few moments later. She was untangling the long tube to the fluid bag she'd brought in the room with her. "Next time we try we'll have to sedate her, which I hate to do, but she just gets too traumatized by the experience."
I noticed her unfastening another needle for Sofia's fluid injection and thought 'Good luck.'
"I have to admit when you called this morning saying you were coming in, I was hoping it wasn't Sofia."
(Editorial reminder: She's a good cat!)
"Your other cats just take everything in stride, especially the black one."
'Astrid'
"Yes, Astrid. She just looks you in the eye like she's saying 'Just do what you have to do, I trust you."
'That sounds like Astrid,' I agreed. 'She's very maternal.'
The door opened and the assistant came in with Sofia. Her carrying case was open and when the assistant set it down on the table, Sofia crept out of the carrier and crawled up my sweater and as she did she fixed me with these large Velvet painting eyes that seemed to say "why did you even bring me here?!" She got to the side of my neck and clung to me with all her might. It was horrible; I felt like I'd betrayed her.
Earlier the doctor had done a quick physical examination of Sofia. She'd felt no obstruction or sign of discomfort in any particular area despite Sofia's continuous low growls throughout, but to be thorough she had suggested a whole slew of "next step" options, giving the pros and cons for each as she listed them - blood work, x-rays, "barium" x-rays, antibiotics, fluids injection, pepcid, keep her here for observation, take her home and observe her. I had opted for blood work, a pepcid and fluid injection, and then said that I wanted to take her home instead of leaving her here. I nixed antibiotics unless things got worse. Even though my dad's a (retired) pharmacist and drug salesman, there's something about "anti" (against) and "bio" (life) that makes me hold off, especially when prescribing them for a pint-sized cat. A STRONG and DETERMINED pint-sized cat who I was now trying to disentangle from my sweater - it was like getting unstuck from a briar patch - and get her back onto the table, into the hands of the "enemy" for her final 2 injections. Poor baby. By the time we made our way back home over bumpy roads which made her throw up again, Sofia was spent.
Sofia's a survivor. She's the only one of our 4 cats who is a true Vermonter. All of our cats are rescues and each one has their own "incredible journey" saga, but Sofia, while still very young, survived an entire Vermont winter outside. She and 14 of her brothers and sisters had been abandoned when their owners, a local family unable to keep up house payments, had been forced to leave them. Hearing of this, Richard had "adopted" 2 of the orphans, named them Sofia and Buster, and surprised me with the news. I was REALLY surprised when Buster sprayed our bedroom. Sofia acclimated well, but Buster was just too skittish and wild and we finally had to take him to an animal shelter where he was successfully re-socialized and found a new home. In fact, most of the other orphaned cats had similar good fortune.
Sofia is a runt, very small for her age, which is probably 3. We think she's probably inbred. Richard also thinks she's mentally retarded and has been heard to call out "Tardo!" with politically-incorrect glee when Sofia has one of her mercurial mood changes. But mentally challenged or no, we love her. She's magical and loving; lively and erratic; happy and grateful. Okay, I'm being a bit Disney here, endowing animals with human attributes, but so what, I'm nuts about her. I'm not quite as bad as Richard, though, who has dubbed Sofia - "Sofia Maria Christina." Now that's just too gay.
I monitored Sofia throughout the rest of the day after returning home yesterday. Her energy was definitely lower than usual, but her purrs were loud and content, and she seemed to enjoy curling up on my lap when I sat down on the floor beside her for a visit. No, I did not read to her. She did get sick a couple times, clear bile. And this morning, the mess she made upstairs made a call to the vets mandatory. They said to bring her in to the hospital and I told them that I would defer to whatever the doctor suggested, even the antibiotics. ("GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE SHOT!!!). I dropped her off and returned home to await the call, and when it came, the doctor sounded weary. She said that she had managed to get 1 x-ray taken and an antibiotic shot given before a combative Sofia would have no more of it and retreated to her sherpa lair, victorious and content. 2 white objects had shown up on the x-ray, 1 in the colon and 1 in either the stomach or the upper intestine. Another x-ray would have to be taken to get the exact location and size of the objects since the single one taken was not definitive. The doctor wanted to do a barium x-ray, but knew Sofia would not let her near her without being sedated, and if Sofia were sedated, she wouldn't be able to take the barium which has to be administered orally. She was at an impasse. So I volunteered to come in and give Sofia the barium myself.
It was good to see Sofia, frazzled as she was. It felt as if I hadn't seen her in ages even though it had only been only a couple hours tops since I dropped her off. We sat around and caught up, spent some quality time together. She told me she would pay me if I broke her out of this place (I talk fluent "cat"). I said that, unfortunately, I couldn't do that. She growled, but then, having gotten it out of her system, she forgave me. I cradled her back in my arm and eased the barium syringe into the side of her mouth for 5 chalky doses with slight pauses inbetween. She choked them down like a trooper. I had been told that the barium soothes cat's stomachs; I hoped so. After she got it all down, she was mum for awhile and lay on my lap, warming herself, and calming down. The doctor peeked in and was kind enough to extend visiting hours. Finally, back in the case Sofia went, and she was whisked away to her overnight accomodations. I can only hope there's a pool and jacuzzi.
After Sofia was gone, the doctor ushered me into another room to show me the x-ray and I almost shit. Those white glowing obstructions were HUGE. And they GLOWED.
"They're probably bones," the doctor explained. "Maybe a mouse. This one in the colon looks as if it's on its way out. The other we don't know until we see it from another direction. We also can't really tell the size until we get another perspective. It's surprising. It might be much smaller. Or larger. We'll take a look, observe her, x-ray her again in the morning and see if there's been any further movement."
'Okay' I thanked her, and began to leave.
"And thank you for coming in. She wouldn't have let me do that, no way. Your check will be at the front counter."
It's 8 pm now. I'm home. The other 3 cats are around me. It's quiet here; I'm waiting for Richard to get home from Hanover. The vets checked in about an hour ago with an update. Sofia's sedated, no temperature, comfortable, well, as comfortable as she can be with what she's been going through today. The obstruction in the colon is no problem and should work its way out; the other, though, is large and in the stomach. The barium didn't move it at all. So in the morning they'll feed her and if she's able to keep it down without throwing up, good; if not, if she does throw the food up, they may have to go in and take the obstruction out. The doctor hasn't made a decision yet.
And that's the way that is. (I sound like Walter Cronkite ... which really dates me.)
Tonight, think some good thoughts for a tough little girl.
Oh, and PS as I was driving home and saw some gorgeous new calves in amongst a herd of cattle I like checking out. And along the hillside of the family that has 2 beautiful brown goats are some babies!! What do you call baby goats? Kids? Billy goats? There were 3 of them, frolocking and lively, white and brown and black. Adorable.
Tonight, think some good thoughts for a tough little girl.
Oh, and PS as I was driving home and saw some gorgeous new calves in amongst a herd of cattle I like checking out. And along the hillside of the family that has 2 beautiful brown goats are some babies!! What do you call baby goats? Kids? Billy goats? There were 3 of them, frolocking and lively, white and brown and black. Adorable.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Chick Magnet
If you had been wondering how Richard was doing helping his chicks wend their feathery way into my heart, need I say more? HE'S DIABOLICAL!!!!
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
A catch-up before bed
I'm a little bushed. I've been out in our garden the past few days, hoeing, digging up the soil, planting rye winter grass, placing a layer of straw down over it. It's supposed to grow quickly, a month tops, and then be tilled under to give the soil a good shot of nitrogen before planting the vegetable crops. I had planted some in late October -- a little too late -- and it didn't take, not due to the lateness really, but to me neglecting to cover most of it with a sufficient layer of dirt. This latest planting should yield dividends. In addition, I've been helping Richard design and build a fenced-in area around his old chicken coop incorporating as much old wood from our 2 year old, tarped pile of timbers and barn wood and old floor boards behind our house. This is the last year we'd be able to use wood from the pile because it's starting to get a touch of mold on some of the boards. But we've got some good and fun ideas in store for its use which include: the fence around the garden, the fence around the new chicken coop, the main structure and foundation of a turkey shelter up in the orchard, and possibly a new open-sided wood shed. We're very productive these days.
Earlier in the day our friend Dylan stopped by to look at the property across the road and the possibility of helping us clear some of the tall dead fir trees over there. Before trekking across the road he smiled and asked me how I was enjoying "mud season." I was thrown by the implication of the question that mud season had just begun for I was sure that we'd been in it for weeks now. In fact, I remember coming down a main back road on a dark rainy night three weeks ago and it looked and felt like some enemy force had been mortaring it steadily for days, the craters and divets and gouges were so extreme. Small inland seas had formed in some of the holes. I'm amazed that car chassis can take the abuse. But my good ole Subaru, all wheel drive wonder, stood the battlefield test. Subaru, official New England car, we in Vermont salute you! Ah hell, I'll list Subarus as reason number 15 I'm living here. Having been a Prius owner in LA my only wish is that Subaru had better gas mileage or a hybrid in the works. (Don't tell the guys at the Car Store in Norwich, but if Toyota could only design a higher riding Prius I'd be a turncoat in a second. As it stands these Vermont back roads would have chewed up and spat out my poor little Prius ages ago. Subarus still rule!!)
2 Canadian Geese showed up at our house yesterday. They were munching on the indian corn cobs Richard had thrown out beneath our bird feeder out front. It was good to see them; a sure sign of Spring. They always look as if they've dressed up for the occasion, out in their Sunday best. This makes the third family of Canadian Geese we've had on our pond. Well, the fourth really, because one pair got jostled off last year only for the victory pair's male to meet its feathery demise at the claws of a weasel or fox about 4 weeks after that. Up until then he'd been proud and squawky, putting up a fuss and flapping his wings at any car that would dare to drive by and disturb his wife and 3 gosling who would often dine (and other things) in our front yard. It was a fine family. I loved watching them swim in formation on our pond, or spy on the kids getting their first coltish flying lessons from mom and pop. Also, boundary setting. The geese liked us around for we'd come to the pond and feed them, but the mother taught the offspring to keep a safe distance from possible predators. Unfortunately her husband didn't heed her warming and one day he turned up missing. For a day and an evening she keened disconsolately in our front yard, pausing to hear a replying call that never came. It was heartbreaking. And then, they all disappeared. The mother and her 3 offspring, gone. Of course, we feared the worse, that whatever had done in daddy had feasted on the rest. Survival of the fittest at play on our pond. But we were wrong. A week later, Royce and Richard took a country walk and spotted them alive and well -- along with 2 other 1 parent family of geese -- on a secluded and protected pond a mile away from us. There was no way the baby geese could have flown that far, so our surmise is that the momma led them there. They must have waddled, all 4 of them, slowly but surely more than a mile to this pond, down back roads traveled by occasional cars and trucks zooming by and with forests full of predators on either side of them. They made it and, as far as we know, they survived the year and flew south for the winter.
Speaking of fowl, Richard's chicks are thriving and growing and it looks as if several of his goose eggs, once lost in the mails and now safely warmed in a gopher-bator of his own design, may hatch. There's signs of life within when the eggs are candled (that's incubator lingo for holding a light up to a fertile, incubating egg to see if a fetus is forming and healthy). Keep your fingers crossed.
Poor Sofia, the only true Vermont cat of our feline flock, is feeling punk. It may be from eating dead flies in our attic, who knows. She's endlessly voracious and will eat anything. One of our cats has been getting sick lately and we wouldn't have even guessed it had been Sofia for she's forever darting about, playing, purring, leaping about, putting up fusses and endlessly seducing you for food. But, it's her. We're hoping whatever she has passes soon. It's so sad seeing a pet suffer; they don't understand what's going on. Not that understanding would make it any better.
Oliver has come to walk across my lap between me and my computer screen, his hair high in the air Peppy LaPue fashion, completely obliterating my view of the screen for a brief, furry moment. He must've sensed I was writing about some other cat, ill or no, and he was having none of it. If it's not about him, it ain't going to be about anyone. So I'll bring this laid back check-in to a close. It's past 11 pm here in Vermont which is unheard of. We're up WAY past our bedtimes, my gosh. So from our household, adieu, adieu, remember meeeeee! Sleep tight.
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