Sunday, August 29, 2010

Snippets from a screening.

A flood of lusty learning about Vermont yesterday seeing the rough cut of a friend’s documentary about Vermont – "The Vermont Story: Freedom and Unity," an epic cornucopia of topics chronicled by many filmmakers, brought together under one embrace by the editing eye of Nora Jacobson. There’s still work to be done, but this was the first grand toss up onto the canvas to see what’s there and there’s a lot. So much of what was up on the screen spoke to me in mysterious ways, inexplicable connections to what drew Richard and me here to live, but here are a few things that stuck (and know I'm a history nerd from waaaaay back):

- Vermont was not one of the original 13 colonies. It was an independent republic with a constitution that predated the United State’s.

- When Vermont was being considered for statehood the stipulations were that there couldn’t be any existing claims on the land, especially by native Americans; in Vermont, this would’ve been the Abenaki tribe. There were many Abenaki here (and still are), that would travel to several camps throughout the year so as not to overtax or deplete the natural wildlife or plant life of any particular region. Ethan Allen and his brother, major proponents for statehood, went to Washington and proclaimed that there were no Indians in Vermont, that they were just “passing through.” Statehood was immediately offered. Settlers were cautioned to honor any Indian encampments, but coming upon these seasonal camps, they thought the Indians had abandoned them, so they set up their own camp and houses and when the next season arrived and the Abenaki’s returned, they found a settlement.

- Both Bill W. and Dr. Bob, co-founders of AA, were born and raised in Vermont and it is supposed that the foundational underpinnings of AA meetings with its egalitarian flavor and concept of “no set leader” was inspired by the traditional town meetings of Vermont.

- Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church, is from Vermont.

- The Underground Railroad as well as the Abolitionist movement were quite vigorous in Vermont. Vermont judges refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, a law of the land before the Civil War which ordered that escaped slaves caught in the north had to be extradited to their owners in the south. There were many free blacks working and prospering in Vermont before the war. Vermont was the first state to abolish slavery. Inter-racial marriages were common here in the early to mid- nineteenth centuries.

… and so much, much more. It will touch on eugenics, secessionist movements, the hippies, gay civil unions and marriages (Richard and I will be included in portions of that section), farming, and on and on and on. Such rich soil, the indefatigable spirit of the place. I am so proud to live in this place, so grateful to whatever mysterious, synchronistic pull that brought us here. And yesterday we traveled an hour and a half to the screening through some of the most gorgeous countryside you can imagine – hills and valleys with that last burst of green before the colors turn, all basking beneath a clear, blue sky yesterday.

And hearkening back to synchronicity, we get to the gathering, eat with our fellow filmmakers and historians and contributors of many stripes and fashion, and we meet a gentlemen, a political scientist/farmer who is interviewed through one particular section of the movie, and we tell him that we live near Newbury, Vermont, to which he replied that he grew up in Newbury. He asked what road we were on and when we tell him the name of the road, he said, “I know it well. I used to walk 7 miles to see a girl who lived on a chicken farm out that way.” Our reply? ‘That’s our house. That’s where we live.’ “No shit.” Not only that, but his “girlfriend” Susan, we had seen just that morning when Richard borrowed her kayak to go out with me on the Connecticutt River for an early morning row.

It’s a small state.

A small WONDERFUL or WONDER FILLED state.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Dilemmas

I have a bloody scar curving down across my left eyebrow. This wound was delivered with surprising severity earlier this afternoon by Snowball, one of our 3 turkeys. One minute she was cooing at me in a slightly odd voice I’d never heard before – she’d hopped up on a boulder to be near me as I hung a blanket out on the line to sun dry – and as I bent closer, stroking her white feathery breast and asking her “what’s the matter?”, she lunged at me, inflicting the gash. Thinking she was out of sorts, I went around to embrace and hold her – a fairly common practice, nothing out of the ordinary – and she went for the skin between my thumb and index finger. And held on. Tight. Later, as I dabbed peroxide and Neosporin on my slash mark, I concluded that she must’ve thought my eyebrow was a caterpillar and my finger a worm. My next thought was “Well, this makes eating her at Thanksgiving a little easier.”

Okay, wait. Much like the Samarai are admonished not to fight when angry, I don’t want to eat Snowflake for revenge. And I don’t want to cast eating Snowflake for Thanksgiving in a comic light. This is a dilemma. We have gotten close to all the turkeys, we’ve named them (I know, bad move. We were counseled against it, many times.) AND we’ve named our chickens and roosters. “Processing” them will be in their futures too. This is one of the many dilemmas I’ve found about living on some semblance of a farm and raising animals that you intend to eat. I think that’s why I was so against Richard getting chickens and geese and turkeys in the first place because something inside of me knew that I would be the big softie when it came to wrestling with the predicament of to eat or not to eat, to kill or not to kill. Richard’s a sweetie, he loves all his animals, but don’t be fooled by his angelic disposition; he’s got cold steel flowing through his veins. Remember, he shot a Canada gosling in cold blood! A bullet to its head! At close range!! Okay, granted, it was a mercy killing. It had been injured, it needed to be done away with, but still, he did it! You think he’s losing sleep over whether or not to eat one of the turkeys?! Not on your life. This is a man who named a couple of his chickens “Puddin’ Pie” and “Dumpling” last year.

And there’s the geese. Another dilemma. Not that we’re thinking about eating any of them. No, not on your life, we’re agreed on that. BUT we’re seriously thinking of getting rid of them. There’s really no reason to have them. Richard’s had the experience, he sees that he enjoys chickens and turkeys much more. And they serve no purpose, they provide no product like eggs (well, okay, for 2 months. But just try to get one without getting nipped at.). They poop all over the place. Schmuel harangues and scolds us (well, me. He’s sweet as all get out to Richard. Schmuel and I got off on the wrong foot. I try to be nice to him, but he sees me coming, and his head goes down, and his neck goes out, followed by a banshee screech which sets the others off in a crazed sort of Greek chorus. But I digress.) Richard and I made a mental list of pros and cons regarding the geese the other day and we filled the con side, FILLED IT. Not a pro. And yet … our hearts melt seeing them swimming on the pond. They are so beautiful over there, a floating haiku, a meditation. It’s ridiculous. Ugh. We’re suckers. Richard has listed the 3 young uns on Craig’s List, but other than a few nibbles, nada.

And getting back to turkeys, Richard just hatched 6 new babies! And they are adorable and imprinted on us, but where are they going to go this winter? The 3 adult turkeys have been taking up space in the chicken coop ever since the raccoon attack and, yes, will probably be gone come Thanksgiving and Christmas (I just shuddered, honestly), but those 6 are going to take up a LOT of room as they fatten up all winter. And come Spring, who’s going to want them? No one eats turkey in the spring. It’s ham or lamb. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe we could disguise them, cover them in wool, teach them other kind of animal calls and people will be none the wiser.

Richard’s going to a Chicken Swap on Sunday, a quaint get together in these parts. He doesn’t actually “swap” his chickens. He gets in there, sells what he has, and skedaddles. The last two times he’s been there, it’s been a quick success. This time he really is trying to clear some space in the coop AND get rid of a few trouble makers. Too many roosters around. Oh, and I just thought of another dilemma. Today, just before leaving for work, Richard informed me that Pearl, a white hen of ours, was starting to go broody and if ever I saw her on a nest sitting on eggs or spending an inordinate amount of time crouching down on the coop floor, I was to scat her outside. Well, sure enough, when I went out to collect eggs midday, there she was, sitting, hunched over 2 eggs, that glassy, broody look coming over her eyes while outside the weather was glorious. I gathered the eggs and with a “C’mon, Pearl, time to get out in the day!” reached beneath her and tossed her out into the grass. I felt as if I were shoving a depressed person in robe and curlers out the door of an asylum. “Get out there! It’s good for you! Enough shock therapy!!” And to add insult to injury, the moment she hit the ground, still dazed in a broody high, Major, our Australorp, hopped on her and humped her. Sorry, Pearl.

I seemed to have needed to get all this off my chest. I feel much better now. My wound is clotting nicely. The turkeys are busying themselves with some havoc in the backyard. The geese are across the road getting ready for another chapter of their pond choreography. Of course they’ve waited until it’s the most perfect time of day to embark, the sunlight dusting off the leaves that are just thinking of turning color. They’ll ease out onto the surface of the water and barely, imperceptibly create a ripple. And they’ll look as if they’re fully concentrated on what they’re doing, but those geese, they’re tricky, they look at you out of the side of their head, when they’re in perfect profile, and they can see that once more they’ve melted my heart. And there they go.

Okay, they can stay.

Snowball’s days, however, are numbered.

Friday, August 20, 2010

New From the Home Front

A quick catch-up before heading to Hall’s Lake for an early morning kayak. Just cuddled each of our newly hatched turkey chicks to get the imprinting ball rolling. Yes, it’s not the ideal time of year to be hatching chicks of any kind, but Richard was disconsolate over the loss of 3 of his adult turkeys to a raccoon attack a couple months back and I urged him to try ordering more. He assured me that the season to order was long past, but to his surprise this was not true, an oddity, and he found himself bidding for 12 turkey eggs. He won the bidding war, the eggs were shipped, he incubated them, and 6 out of 12 hatched 2 days ago. 2 of the unhatched were fully formed inside their eggs, but didn’t make it. One of them had started pipping the shell, however he or she had gotten themselves upside down and couldn’t pip out through the bottom and died. Richard was saddened by this. They’re such vulnerable, adorable creatures. And none of them have bumble foot (I think I’m remembering the term correctly), an arthritic-looking malady that curves some of the turkey’s “toes” 90 degrees. I had thought this new brood would be fully grown by Thanksgiving, but some quick arithmetic earlier this week put a lie to that. Where and how they’ll be kept over the winter is an issue to be dealt with sometime soon. Tomorrow is another day. And Richard’s already thinking of thinning out his various flocks. There are a couple “chicken swaps” coming up where he’s sold some pullets in the past AND we have prospective buyers for Daphne, Felicity, and Prince Mishkin (our newer geese.) I still feel the older geese will be heartbroken by the separation, though I have to keep reminding myself that idea probably comes from Disney animated features.

Autumn feels as if it’s here, especially in the mornings. We wake to all our cats burrowed in close, with no complaints and calls to get up and fix their grub, they enjoy the warmth. Of course, we get up at 5:30 or 6 so where would the complaint be? Oliver was out all night – we left the porch pet door open for him, while keeping the screen door shut to prevent anyone else from getting out – and is now crashed out on our bed like a teenager who partied hard the night before. The geese have raised their morning ruckus and are in the road, pruning and fluffing their feathers, urging on the last of their molting. They love lining up across the road preventing cars from going by, and giving the drivers “what for” if they deign to honk at them or slowly edge their way through the flock. Audacity reigns.

Yesterday around 4 of a hot day in the high 80’s, I came home with a new kayak. I’d been on the fence about buying one for a while, ever since a blissful time on a friend’s pond a month or 2 back. I’d been paying close attention to the sales price of kayak’s slashing down, down, down. The confluence of the lowering price and my deep yearning for a return to that joyous day on the water came together in a surety yesterday around 3. I pulled into Farm Way, decision made; the salesman was barely able to start into his pitch and I had the kayak picked out, oar, life preserver, and mount rack, all at a percentage of what they had originally been. Fantastic! And yes, the Connecticut River is in my near future, and I’m open to other autumn haunts for these early mornings, but yesterday, the idea of being on our pond, trying the new boat out, paddling back through the swampy areas that only the geese and ducks pad to, seemed like nirvana. The geese were aghast as I portaged this 12’ orange creamsicle-colored plastic thing across the road toward “their” pond. They stood motionless, with just a few whispers to one another as I lowered it into the water beside the pier. Even Schmuel, the ultimate neck craner, was nonplussed. I eased into the boat, pushed off from the shore, and soared out to sea. So beautiful, so still, so perfect. AND the geese followed. This was completely unexpected. Usually when we swim, they hightail it out of there. They might observe from the safety of the bank, but they don’t want to be anywhere close to these splashing, shouting, whooping creatures. Do we become something else to them when swimming, I wonder? But the kayak – the exact color of their bills, by the way – must’ve been something different altogether. They were curious and intrigued. They followed me, so beautiful, this little clutch of goose family, swimming along with slow, sure ease. For the most part it was a dance between the two of us. They’d circle me, come close, confer a bit, all very calmly done. Once Schmuel seemed to recognize the top part of my body sticking out from this orange floating arrow and began to arch out at me, but that was short lived. Mostly it was a pondy meditation on one another. Who are you, really?

When I came to shore, I propped the kayak up against our small willow tree near the pond and went back to the dock to exercise a bit and lay back to take in the gorgeous sky. The geese got out beside me and both Ginger and Schmuel approached the boat as if it were an adversary, their necks craned, bodies low, warning honks and jabbers. The boat didn’t make a move. So they all moved in for a chew and a bite. They couldn’t really gain purchase there and finally resigned themselves to acceptance. Richard soon came home, having heard of the recent purchase, and wanted a paddle out on the pond himself and again, and the curious journey and dance were repeated.

It seems like a poem of a day, light relaxed and easy on the trees. The perfect opportunity to become one with a body of water. I think I’ll go enjoy bird song and beauty from the perspective of a boat on the water.

Have a great day.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Poet's Choice

Poet’s Choice

I feel like such a dilettante when it comes to poetry. And that thought led me to the dictionary for a quick definition and in addition to “dabbler” or “someone who takes up an art or activity merely for amusement, esp. in a desultory or superficial way” (my intended meaning), “dilettante” ALSO means “a lover of an art or a science, esp. a fine art.” And you know, I’m so eager at times, even unintentionally as in this case, to wrap myself in a mildly negative defining of something, that this time I choose the second definition to describe myself, "a lover of fine art" for I am a lover of poetry. I can rush to say I know so little, I’ve read so little compared to others (“compare and despair” as one wise friend reminded me) BUT those poems that I have read I cherish. They stick with me. They stay with me. I love them. Deeply.

Several years ago, let’s say in the 80’s in NYC (30 years ago, geez), I became enamored with Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” There was a chapter in “Prince of Players,” a book about the American actor Edwin Booth, in which young Edwin observes his father, actor Junius Booth, entertain a friend who’d stopped backstage following a performance of some Shakespearean tragedy by reciting the entirety of the “Ancient Mariner” … off the top of his head! “Here’s a little ditty I’ve conned, I think you’ll like it.” IT’S AN EPIC POEM! A LOOOONG POEM! I can just see the friend squirming in his seat, trying to keep an interested, engaged smile on his face. No! It must've been amazing! Mesmerizing! captivating! Another great performance. And this after playing “Othello” or “Macbeth” moments before. It’s what you did! You recited poetry. Well, something about that whole notion grabbed me and convinced me that I had to do it. So I set out to memorize the entire poem. For a moment or 2 I thought that I should also become addicted to opium since it’s alleged Coleridge wrote "Rime" under the heavy influence of that drug, but I quickly dismissed the idea as tangential. I got pretty close to getting the whole poem down too. ("Water, water everywhere; and all the boards did shrink. Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.") I even worked on a piece of it with an acting coach. I think that’s when poetry really grabbed me. I’d done some Shakespeare before, dabbled around a bit with other poetry, but learning “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” was my first experience of a poem really taking hold of me. The epicness of it at least.

Then Ben Okri, a south African poet, came into my life. This would have been in the early 90s. A book of his poetry was prominently displayed in a London bookstore window when I happened to be in that town during a particularly low period of my life. I literally felt it call out to me from the bookstore window, pulling me to pay attention. “Look here! See, buy, read.” There’s a poem within that particular collection “A Letter to an English Friend” which bolstered me then and continues to do so through unfamiliar deserts in my life. A life buoy, an embrace. That mysterious and undefinable magic of art that makes you feel not quite so alone on earth. I highly recommend his work.

And since Okri, Donald Hall, Jane Kenyon, Ted Kooser, Philip Levine, WS Merwin and countless others whose names escape me at the moment have all delighted and uplifted and awakened me. I have a book by Edward Hirsch called “Poet’s Choice” that I bought back in 2006 and have read each year since then. It’s a smorgasboard sampling of his favorite poets, those whose poems, like Okri’s in mine, have come at the exact right time in his life. In the introduction to the book, Hirsch says that he can remember where he was, what he was doing when he first read certain poems. They’ve been companions during hard times. They’ve elucidated and deepened knowing. They’ve “sacramentalize(d) experience.” I love that. I believe that. And he goes on to say something else I believe, that we need poetry in our lives now more than ever in a world rife with dehumanization, with commercialization, materialism, with war, the destruction of nature. Poetry can help challenge us to find meaning in it all. We need it now more than ever because it speaks to our collective hearts. It gives voice to sorrow and anger and joy and doubt, to LIFE, to everyone’s experience, everyone’s voice. It reminds us, even in a reassuring whisper, what is truly important.

I’m so grateful and glad that some voice told me to reach for “Poet’s Choice” this morning and open its pages. Maybe the self same voice that told me to look at Ben Okri’s book in the window of that store in London a few decades back. Maybe a poet’s voice, a dilettante’s voice. To choose poetry. To see life, this day, as an unfolding poem. To see one’s self as a poet. There’s an invitation. And just for today, I choose to see myself as such. To pay attention, to be present in one’s life, to appreciate - fully.

And being a Vermonter, maybe some time today I’ll even pick up a bit of Robert Frost and give it a read.

Have a good poetry filled day, fellow poets!

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Tree First Aid

Our mountain ash looks like a cross between a wounded veteran and a Christmas tree, all signs of a battle I’ve been in with a stubborn sapsucker. I was admiring the tree the other evening, bountifully berried with bright orange clusters for the first time since we planted it several years ago. On closer inspection, though, I saw that the bark both around the tree proper at eye level as well as on several of its branches was riddled with holes exposing the phloem or xylem (I’m not sure which, still reading up on that.) Bottom line – it’s serious. The tree’s in danger of being girdled and killed, much like the rodents did to several of our maples this past winter. If the bark’s gone, the flow of water and nutrients up and down the tree is interrupted and from my limited understanding, bark does not reconstitute itself. It can’t grow back. I quick got a can of black tar to fill the holes and as I was doing so Richard spoke of a product called “tanglefoot” which is a sticky substance you slather onto the bark to keep the birds from landing. They can’t stand the feel of it on their feet.

Smash cut: landscaping store, next day. No, tanglefoot is more for insects and can’t go directly onto the bark, it injures it. If you insist on using it, put duct tape over the bark, sticky side out to further discourage the birds, and then smear tanglefoot on top of that. I decided to forego the tanglefoot and got a “wrap” for the tree. Back at the house, I gently and carefully wrapped the tree’s blackened wounds, my own mini-triage unit, and waited to see the outcome.

Next morning I spotted the sapsucker on the tree. It was acting very curious, up and down the wrap, not knowing what to make of the material. I shooed it away, then checked the surface. No further damage. So far, so good. But later, and not much later at that, I returned to see sap seeping out of the wrap. It looked ghoulish, like bleeding wounds, bees hovered around, landed. Obviously, this wasn’t working. I covered the new wounds with more tar, and tried the duct tape backwards, but an hour later I returned, and the sapsucker had drilled through that as well. A few of its feathers were stuck to the tape, but other than that, the bird had not been deterred. I phoned Richard to commiserate and he suggested something he had seen on a neighbors tree, foil or mirrors hung on branches to unnerve the bird. I searched the drawers - no foil, no mirrors, no shiny objects. But wait a minute. The aluminum bottoms to little votive candles we have around the house caught my eye. That could work. I jimmied out the candle carcasses, punched a hole in their aluminum sides, and then, stringing a piece of cooking twine through the hole, hung them on various branches of the tree, about 8 in all. Now, it’s still another morning and I haven’t had the heart to go out and check its success – or failure. Knock on wood. If you have any other suggestions, please don’t hesitate to leave them. It’s felt good, though, to have some hands on care of a tree. They’re well worth it.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Catch up and Quick Update

Here’s an installment I wrote a week ago while in New York to celebrate my mom’s 80th Birthday:


“July 22nd. Good morning. Eyes open at 4:30 am, out of bed at 5; still got my Vermont mojo going though I’m in NYC for a few days, staying at an absent friend’s place. I have news from the northern front, though, from Richard. Accompanied by the insistent and haranguing honking of Schmul below them, the Canadian Geese took flight from our rise yesterday, but instead of landing in the water across the road, they kept rising ever higher and disappeared over the tall pines and firs on the other side of the pond. Gone. My heart sunk at the news.

“But they came back after a couple hours,” Richard added after an appropriate storyteller’s pause.

‘Oh.’ I let out a sigh of relief. The inevitable has been put off for one more day. It’s so bittersweet witnessing the cycles of nature like this. It’s like autumn beginning early. They may be gone by the time I get back up there on Sunday. I’d get out of there too if I were them, what with the constant badgering our geese give them. Sometimes the two families dwell beside one another in blissful détente, grazing idly. The other day, for instance, it was beautiful seeing them standing beside one another, calm and impervious, as the sky opened up with a crashing downpour. They were very “no big deal, we’ll be alright; we’re geese, we’re in this together.” But then, as if an inner “Now wait a minute!” wakes up in our bunch, they begin jabbering, going after the Canadians with a threatening charge, necks extended, bills snapping. Xenophobia, alive and well. When Richard and I speculated about what Schmul must’ve been feeling as he honked at the Canadians flying overhead, we went over various options -“He’s cheering him on!” or ‘I think he feels bad that he can’t fly” - but Richard finally landed on the most probable choice: “And stay out!!!” That’s Schmul’s very own version of “Take Back Vermont!” or “We the Geese!” like the “We the People. The revolution is coming come November!” Tea Party, anti-Obama, anti-government guy who emblazons his rhetoric across his white packaged hay bales right by the on ramp to the interstate. (This “guy” purportedly got mad at one of his cows a few years back and punched it between the eyes, breaking his arm in the process. Also his relative owns the run-down barn that heralds the biggest “Take Back Vermont” sign in our neck of the woods. His name is Appleton and his wife, 30 years his junior, is still making babies with him. She home schools her kids, but also runs for the school board so she can dictate policy there. Hmmm??)"

It’s August 1st, a fantastic day, blue, sunny, a touch of autumn in the air (45 degrees yesterday morning! I can’t believe it!) The Canadian’s have been gone for almost a week now and we miss them. I don’t know if that goes for Schmul, probably not, and he has calmed down considerably since the Canadian’s departure, as has our entire flock, but still, the Canada geese lent a certain class, an easy detached grace to all of their comings and goings. I liked seeing them around. Until next year then, I wish you well on your travels.

Speaking of travels, we trekked 2 hours to the northwest part of the state yesterday, up and down sharply serpentining roads, until we landed at the exquisite grounds of Jeff and Paul, a hydrologist and horticulturist, who throw an annual shindig, combination dinner/salon/party amid teeming flowers and trees and plants, vegetables and fruit, greenhouses galore, and ever flowing wine. Quite wonderful. A gorgeous day. Loads of laughter, great conversation, new friendships forged. Ever fascinating to hear the variety of stories surrounding the subject: "so what brought YOU to Vermont?" Thank you, thank you, thank you!