Today at Mary's Farm from YankeeMagazine.com

Get Out There and Shoot

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 04:00:00 +0100

I am truly blessed by the mail that I receive. It all seems to me to come out of the blue. A letter from a member of the National Guard, telling me how much he loves Yankee, how it used to be the perfect size to fit into the pocket of the cargo pants of his uniform -- why did we change it? (I can't answer that question!) Another day, a letter from a minister who tells me that after all these years of reading my articles, especially about rebuilding this house, that he is retiring and he and his wife are going to move into an old house in West Virginia, a house that needs a lot of work. All his years of ministry, they have lived in various parsonages, cared for by others. I wish them hearty good luck and hope I have not made it sound easy. Then yesterday, a card from a woman in Cheshire, Connecticut, also a longtime reader who remembers an article I wrote some years ago, called "The Trip to Spring," about the pilgrimage my husband and I used to make in the spring down toward the mouth of the Connecticut River, in search of boned shad. It was usually warmer that much further south than it was in our New Hampshire home, hence the name of the article. We often ended up at Spencer's Shad Shack, down in Haddam. Well, this past spring, this woman and her mother decided to take a ride to see if they could find Spencer's red roadside fish shack. She was writing to tell me that they had found it and she included several photos that brought tears to my eyes. The old shack was closed. It looked as if it had been closed for years. "Mom and I peeked in the torn screen windows and I zoomed in on that old table. I could almost hear the chatter of the skilled knives deboning the fish, the smells and the presence of the people at the counter awaiting their turn, all the details you mention in your story." Then, she said, several days later, she returned on the same route, and there was a big yellow bulldozer next to the shad shack. "I was so glad I was able to snap these shots for you, before it was lost forever."

I was glad too. That brought to mind words of the famous New York photographer, Berenice Abbott whom I profiled for Yankee more than 20 years ago. She was in her nineties at that time, living in a remote part of Maine. Berenice was a sharp-minded, small but rugged lady if ever I knew one, her old eyes like a narrowing lens. One of the highlights of her career was a road trip she took in the 1950s down U.S. Route One, all the way from Fort Kent, Maine, where the road begins, to Key West, where it ends. She took photographs all along the way, not only practicing her art but simultaneously creating a historical record. Look at those photos now, more than fifty years later and you see a landscape that no longer exists. Berenice was not unaware of the duality of photography. She had taken photographs of New York City in the 1940s and had seen for herself the dramatic changes since that time. "You should be taking photographs of your cities and towns right now. Don't waste a minute. They are changing like crazy, changing every minute. Get out there and shoot."

So here was Spencer's red shack, abandoned, boning knives silenced along with the gossip of the boners, the skeletal remains of it all captured in these snapshots from May 2009. A week later, the vision was gone, erased. No hint of the stories and experiences that had been there for so many years. Berenice was no fool. Though she died some years ago, I pass her words now: photograph these cityscapes, townscapes and landscapes before they are gone. Old houses, buildings, shacks, all kinds of the things we take for granted, landmarks we recognize and love, these are pushed over and eliminated every day. It doesn't matter if it's a shack or a castle. Only a few things are really protected and in the case of natural disasters, nothing is. Even the trees and the hills aren't there forever. Don't waste a minute. Get out there and shoot.

Celebrating the Fourth in the Cemetery

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:00:00 +0100

Around here, we have our choices of ways to celebrate the Fourth of July. In the town next to us, dozens of residents gather to read the Declaration of Independence, including the names of all the signers. This is done at their historic Meetinghouse which looks like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The shared reading takes place during the day and lots of people attend. But mostly we celebrate with fireworks, which I love. Throughout the three-day weekend, if I miss them in one town, I can find them in another. Or, if I plan it right, I can go to three or four fireworks displays over the long weekend. This year, there has been so much rain some of the shows were canceled or postponed for the weather. I have always wanted to go to the celebration in the nearby town of Greenville. It's unique as they have the fireworks sometime around 11:30 at night after a full day of events and picnics. It's not so much the fireworks people look forward to as what happens next. After the fireworks, at midnight, the entire town turns out for the Pots and Pans Parade. Everyone brings a skillet and a big spoon or a pot and a lid and they engage in making the most god-awful noise you can imagine. They are preceded in their parade by all the town's emergency vehicles, lights whirling, sirens blasting but these big engines can't hold a candle to the noise the people can make with their kitchen equipment. I think it's the only town in the world that celebrates this way and I have no idea how they got started on such a tradition. And why it takes place at midnight. But it must be very satisfying on some level.

For some reason, cemeteries figure prominently in our local celebrations. Most years I enjoy going down to the end of this road, setting up a chair in the town cemetery and watching the fireworks burst up high over the lake. But this year, on the night of the Fourth, I was working at my desk and suddenly heard the popping sounds of gunshots. I went to the window and could see the great colorful blasts lift above the trees. It's not the same but I can still watch the show from my front door. Light travels faster than sound so there is this delay, the big explosion of color and a few seconds later, the muffled booms. Kind of like the audio delay of a foreign correspondent on TV, reporting live from a remote part of the globe.

Because of rain, the fireworks in Harrisville, the other town where I enjoy fireworks, were postponed to Sunday night, the end of the somewhat soggy three-day weekend. I got home from a barbecue and decided to go to that show, which is about 15 or 20 minutes of bombast -- chest-shuddering blasts and brilliant founts of color and sparkle. They set the fireworks up in the town cemetery which is called Island Cemetery -- it's not really an island but either it once was or else it's an island that was connected with a causeway that grew or something like that, anyway, it takes imagination to think it's an island except that it juts out into the lake more like a peninsula. Lots of my old friends like Bill and Laney House and the wonderful and colorful Harold Clark, no relation, are buried there. But on the Fourth, the fire department hauls in the big trailer of fireworks and you can't tell me these guys aren't like kids in a candy store having the fun of setting off these rockets. I always like to watch from the church, which is right near the cemetery. That's as close as they will allow you get anyway. But it's close enough to see the big flares of fire that propel the rockets up into the air from their brackets on the ground and then the clouds of smoke that follow. The sound of the rockets blasting up out of their cylinders is almost as thrilling as the explosions that follow. There are trees in the way and a rise that blocks a full view but if I stand on tiptoe, I can see this shroud of gunsmoke and the outlines of the big headstones illuminated by the fire of the rockets shooting up.

Most of the town watches from the other side of the lake so there were just a handful of us watching from beside the church. We could hear the others in the distance cheering and screaming at the most spectacular shots, or sighing at the gentle showers of brilliant sparks that drifted down toward us from above. Then they set off the big finale, boom boom boom and an amazing razzle-dazzle, flashes of blinding color and brilliance, so much noise and commotion it makes me laugh. Then the huge silence that follows. After that, I saw through the smoke and darkness our town policeman, Buddy, coming toward me. He greeted me by name, nice to know the town cop is able to recognize me in the darkness. I asked him if they set the fireworks up right in the cemetery. I've never actually seen how they do it and it seemed hard to believe they would do that, or even logistically how they could fit the trailer of rockets between monuments. He said yes, it's the best place in town to do it because everyone can watch them around the lake. "It's not the only place but it's the best, really." Then he said, "Besides, nobody lives there." And then, he added, drily, "Nobody's ever said anything."

I came home smiling. No matter where I go around here to celebrate the Fourth, I am never disappointed.

Two Dogs, One Heart

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:00:00 +0100

Mayday came home a week ago. Her fever was gone and she was basically ready to return to her life. There had been no ready explanation for her illness and no real explanation for her recovery, other than the antibiotics she received and the "magic" chicken and rice concoction I took to her up at the animal hospital in Vermont.

I went to get her last Sunday. The hospital was closed but Andrea was there to let me in. The waiting room was quiet, no anxious dogs on leads or cats in carriers, making themselves heard. Mayday was in the back, curled in sleep. When she heard my voice, she lifted her head sharply and seemed to break out in a smile. I took her in my arms. She was so light compared with her usual weight.

Andrea gave me a packet of oral antibiotics that would last Mayday another week and told me to keep feeding her the special chicken mix, gradually mixing in her usual food until she was back to normal.

I put her on the leash and walked her to the car, past the paddock with Andrea's donkeys. One of them stopped in his tracks and brayed, that funny breathless call that sounds like a bagpipe warming up.

When we reached the car, an Amtrak passenger train went thundering by on the tracks behind the house, blowing its horn mightily. There is only one such train that goes through Westminster so I knew they were headed for New York City. This seemed auspicious, Mayday returning home with these two clarions as signs of life. She settled into the back seat, which is her riding preference, and we headed for home.

I was apprehensive about her health, of course, but further I was worried about reintroducing her into the house, now that Harriet had had a whole week as an Only Dog. She had taken to it quite well and I was afraid that would only intensify their rivalry.

When we neared the house, Mayday sat up and yipped, happy to see the familiar sight of home. I decided for the first day, at least, I would keep her in a separate room with the door closed, just to get her back into her routine and let her feel safe. So I carried her inside to my bedroom and sat with her for a while.

She was just like anyone who's spent time in hospital. Shaky on her feet, very very thin, and, if possible, even pale. She likes to lie on the bed facing out the window, looking toward the field where there is sometimes deer or turkeys to be viewed. And barked at. She lay down, facing the field, and gave a big sigh. Her happiness was palpable.

Harriet, meanwhile, was tied up outside, wondering what was going on. I brought her in and played ball with her, which kept her occupied. This was fine for a while but I had guests who came soon after. I got a little distracted and apparently left the door to my room open. Sometime later that evening, from the kitchen, I heard the sounds of two dogs playing. I held my breath and snuck toward the bedroom. When I got there, the two of them were lying on the bed together, regarding me curiously. An hour later, they were asleep side by side.

Just as I cannot explain Mayday's illness and recovery, I cannot explain this either. I had felt extremely guilty about Mayday getting sick as I suspected that it was somehow tied to Harriet's arrival into this household. Friends told me I was being silly but I never saw anything like the way Mayday reacted to Harriet. If a dog could hold its nose, she would have. And she was angry with me. When I walked into the room, she would get up and leave. Rather than sleep with me, which she has for all of her 13 years, she slept on the couch.

There was no doubt in my mind that Mayday was very angry with me about bringing this little pest into our house, into her comfortable life. And I felt all this had caused her to be sick.

Harriet was not mean or vicious. She was just a puppy who wanted to play. She always approached Mayday with tail wagging a mile a minute. But Mayday was pretty firm. No way, you little intruder! Get lost!

So I don't know whether a week in the hospital made us all look a lot more attractive but Mayday is more open to the idea of Harriet as friend. When Harriet gets to be too much, Mayday lets her know. But they have found their way and spend most mornings tussling on the porch. I hope it lasts.

In one short week, Mayday has regained her lost weight and looks like herself again, pink cheeks and all. Harriet is happy to have her friend home. I don't know if it had anything to do with the chicken and rice or maybe just that old thing about absence making the heart grow fonder. Whatever, it certainly has made my heart feel a lot better.

A Strawberry Homecoming

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:00:00 +0100

Yesterday, friends came over for supper. Our main course was to be strawberry shortcake. It's strawberry season here and, even though we've had way too much rain to make it a good year for berries, there are still wonderful berries to be had.

At this time of year, we all have our favorite berry patches. Mine happens to be one in Walpole, Homestead Farms. My older dog, Mayday, has been very sick and in hospital up near there so I had been making the best of a bad situation by stopping to buy strawberries on my way up or on my way home to visit with her.

Because of the rain, the berries are bigger than usual, almost swollen, but still red, red and extremely juicy. Also because of the rain, they spoil faster so it's necessary to eat them as soon as you get them. No problem.

My friends were coming over in the afternoon and promised to bring salads. It had been raining on and off most of the day. The hay standing in the meadow is overdue to be cut. It waves, the tall tassles swaying in the wind like wheat on the plains, and in places, the grass has been flattened by the weight of the water and by the wind. The garden doesn't mind the water but could use some sun, which is how we all felt. Earlier, I'd had a small fire in the cookstove which made it warmer inside. It wasn't so much cold outside as it was not warm.

Mayday had been in hospital for almost a week, running a high fever, origin unknown. She struggled through the week, not only hot but refusing to eat. At home, I had the puppy, Harriet, who was more than thrilled to be an Only Dog and filled the empty space quite nicely, in her opinion. But there's no dog like Mayday. She was finally ready to come home. And I was more than ready to go get her. I took Harriet for a walk and settled her in her crate before I left. Poor Harriet didn't seem to know that her reign was about to end.

My reasons for traveling nearly an hour north of here to have my animals cared for is simple: many years ago, Andrea Neilley, a newly licensed veterinarian, set up a practice in Westminster, Vermont. At the time, I had a dog named Gorm, a lovely and humorous combination of basset hound and golden retriever. When she was eight, she fell ill. I took her to my vet at the time who advised she should be put down, as she likely had a brain tumor. I was shocked and had no interest in his advice.

So I took Gorm to another vet in town who said something similar, except she felt that Gorm had liver cancer. She hadn't done any tests, but that was what she thought. Another vet kept her for observation and concluded she was a "hypochondriac." I knew that Gorm was smart but not that smart.

From there, I took her to the famous Angel Memorial Hospital in Boston. Gorm, in the meanwhile, was still very ill. I had to carry her everywhere as she could not stand up. Angel concluded that Gorm had kidney cancer. And suggested she be put down. She was gravely ill, I could see that, but I wasn't ready to give up on her yet.

I had heard good things about this new vet, Andrea Neilley, and made an appointment at her new place, an old house on the main road in Westminster. Her tests were inconclusive. She was unsure what was wrong with Gorm but she suggested I make a mixture of rice and chicken and gravy for her, see if I could get her to eat, which seemed like the most important thing for her at that point. I took Gorm home and cooked for her.

Gradually, gradually, Gorm recovered. In fact, she lived to be fourteen, a respectable age for a dog who had been condemned to death three times in the middle of her life.

hat I admired about Andrea was that she was content to say that she did not know what was wrong with Gorm and suggested that remarkably sensible treatment. I have used it many times since with my various dogs and it always works. That was many years and many dogs ago but Andrea has been my vet ever since, even though I have moved further and further away from her office, which means more travel to get help for my dogs.

One of the problems with Mayday this time had been that she wouldn't eat. So I made up some of this old remedy and took it up to Mayday where she lay in Westminster. I put it into her dish and she wolfed it down. I left a large container of it for them to feed her. She had lost a lot of weight because of this spell but several days later, her fever was gone and she was ready to come home and resume her life with me and Harriet, her nemesis. I couldn't wait to get her. She apparently couldn't wait to come home with me as she pranced in front of the car door, anxious to get back into our routine.

On the way home, I stopped at Homestead and picked out a quart box, overfilled with the red berries of June. At home, Mayday went for a short walk and then headed for the bedroom to settle in her favorite spot. Little Harriet chafed to get to Mayday but I kept Mayday behind a closed door. Mayday was not ready for Harriet's antics just yet. I washed and hulled the strawberries.

My friends came soon after. After we ate the salad and bread that they brought, I got the flour down from shelf in the pantry and started the biscuits. My recipe calls for sour milk or buttermilk but I use kefir which is like yogurt except you can pour it and it's wonderful to drink, lightly sweetened. I keep it on hand all the time for various things and this is an especially good use of it as it gives the biscuit an extra lift, preferable to milk. Making biscuit is quick and while they were in the hot oven, I whipped up the cream.

While I was doing this, the rain had stopped and the sun came out, illuminating our world and spilling light across the kitchen floor. It had been so long since we'd seen the sun, we all stopped our chatter and looked out as the light flooded the hayfield, bringing up a thousand shades of green in the hills near and far. It seemed that it was still raining so while I split the biscuits and piled the sliced berries on top, my friends looked to the east for a rainbow.

None was found, though we didn't look very hard. We were pretty focused on the strawberries and the shortcake. I drizzled maple syrup over the berries, gilding the lily no doubt, and topped it all with the cream. Sun on the field, Mayday asleep on the bed, there was silence as we ate. Harriet, it seems, was the only one not totally satisfied.

In the Wild

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Thu, 28 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

My father used to pay me a penny for every dandelion that I dug up out of his lawn. He was a post-war suburban homeowner, anxious to remove those blights from the carpet of green he worked so hard to create. His penny could not be had without the entire root of the plant. Just pulling out the leaves was not worthy. The plant had to be pulled up and out, never to be seen again. For that, he taught me the proper way to dig up a dandelion, using a tool similar to a long curved knife but with a pointed, forked end that looked something like a devil's tail. I loved the opportunity and found that in no time at all I could earn a dollar, which was good money back then for a ten-year-old.

My parents were not rural folk so they likely had never heard that some people further out in the country enjoyed dandelion greens at the dinner table. Or perhaps they had heard of it but I'm sure would never indulge or even think of doing such a thing, even in hard times. For them, vegetables came from the garden, or from a can. Anything picked from the wild was suspect, though I don't know suspect of what. Today, anyway, wild is preferable to domesticated, as in my memory, those dandelions growing on my father's lawn would have been riddled with all kinds of toxic lawn fertilizer and weed killers.

Recently I read that dandelion greens are selling for $9 a pound at trendy markets. Known in the trade as "yuppie greens," purslane and lamb's quarters have become just as desirable. It seems a very odd time to start charging high end prices for things that grow for free and were, for the most part, a cornerstone of survival for many during the Depression. Though it doesn't seem like an odd time to start appreciating what grows in our yards and in the near forests. According to your own taste, there is an abundance of food out there that can be had for free.

For the record, I have tried dandelion greens but find them quite bitter and so I share my father's view of them as a disposable weed. However, I have, over the years, sampled other wild edibles such as fiddleheads, ramps and milkweed shoots. Fiddleheads, the little curl of greenery that precedes the emergence of certain ferns, have never excited me. I know they have their fans and there is even a company in Maine that cans them and sells them on grocery store shelves. But, again, they seem dull to me, a little like vegetables that we were once forced to eat. Greens for greens' sake. Plus, you need to work pretty hard to find a source of them and pick them just as the fern starts to unfurl. Timing is critical in the hunt for fiddleheads.

In the wild, I favor milkweed shoots and ramps. Milkweed shoots are easy, the only trick is getting to them when the shoots are ripe. Let them go by and they flower and then go into their poetic pods of late summer. The shoots can only be picked in the spring, like nipping back the basil or the zinnia, to keep it from going to seed. Nip those two young leaves in the center and you have the beginning of a wonderful meal. Milkweed shoots are like spinach only the leaves are more substantial, more rugged and if you add a bit of crumbled bacon after you have steamed them, you'll find it the centerpiece of your plate. And, like other such plants, the more you pluck those center leaves, the more they come back.

Further, ramps are so desirable, at least in my view, that I had a dream about them recently. Ramps are sometimes confused with skunk cabbage as the leaves are similar but the roots are not. Ramps are actually wild leeks so if you pull up the whole plant, subterranean part and all, you get a nice white bulbous root that is sweet as any leek and good with anything you might add onions to -- an omelet, a burger, draped over a roast as you tuck it into the oven, like that. Ramps, it should be known, grow wild near streams and in lightly wooded areas where sun might filter through. So they like damp and a bit of light.

I had found a likely patch beside the road, about a mile from here, and gone in to pull a few for my evening meal. But they are hard to pull and if you don't employ a suitable tool (I think that such a tool would be the weeder my father used to uproot dandelions), the leaves tear off at ground level and you've lost the heart of the plant. So I went into that patch, all full of enthusiasm and sudden impulse but without the proper tool and I ended up with nothing but disappointment and sorrow that I'd interrupted the growth of these good congregants of the forest. That night, I dreamt that I walked into a field scattered with ramps that had already been uprooted. The leaves were a tender spring green, the roots bright white even down to the root tendrils. Perfect. And lots of them. They lay temptingly on the ground, ready to be scooped up. I was about to realize this easy harvest when I saw that I was sharing the field with a half dozen or so pigs who were the ones who had rooted up these ramps, or so I assumed. I thought that perhaps the pigs had contaminated the roots and reluctantly pulled myself back. I woke up feeling as frustrated as I had when I drove away from the ramps I'd yanked from their placid places beside the stream. I guess the moral of the story is that nothing comes easy. Except milkweed shoots. Watch for them before someone starts to charge $9 a pound for them.

Away for the Weekend

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

I went last weekend to a high school reunion -- a very unusual reunion which I will write about at a later date. This event, which was to span three days, was planned last fall so when my little puppy, Harriet, came to live with me, I already knew that the middle weekend in May would require me to find some kind of care for her and for my old dog, Mayday. Mayday has always been content at the local kennel which sometimes calls itself "Luxury Suites," with good reason. Each dog has its own room with a glass door and sheepskin beds, which are suspended off the ground. The little rooms look out on a kind of courtyard, a big room with several couches and a big screen TV that plays animal videos 24/7. This is about as different from my house as you could get. Mayday has enjoyed these accommodations at times but I wasn't sure a three-month-old puppy was quite ready for that environment. I consulted with the owner of the kennel and she assured me that Harriet would be fine with them. Some of my friends had offered to take care of her but I was hesitant. I've had bad experiences in leaving my dogs with friends in the past, nothing to do with their care but happenstance has brought misfortune on more than one occasion. The kennels are not as wholesome as a friend's home but they tend to be safer and more reliable. Unfortunately, as yet, Mayday and Harriet have not bonded. In fact, if a dog could hold its nose, Mayday would do so when she sees Harriet coming. I'm still hopeful that they will come to a better place with each other. Harriet's all for it but Mayday is not to be convinced. To her, Harriet is nothing but a pest and an annoyance. Harriet's sharp little puppy teeth aren't very convincing, either. The kennel offers a lower rate if two dogs will lodge together but that's not an option for us yet.

So, very reluctantly and with some apprehension, I took Harriet to the kennel on the Friday morning of my departure. I carried her in. She had never been there before but she dug her nails into my coat as I attempted to hand her to the lovely woman who always greets Mayday like an old friend. She was every bit as welcoming to Harriet but Harriet sensed something was not right with this hand-off. She began to wail. I have never heard her cry, in fact, she's the quietest puppy I've ever had. But not at that moment. I gave her a little kiss goodbye and told her to be a good girl, that I loved her and all of that. Never mind. She cried like a little baby and as I walked out to the parking lot, I could hear her howling loudly as she was carried into the back room. I even heard her as I drove out, which gave me a very unsettled feeling, a shaky start to what was otherwise to be a joyful weekend.

Harriet is growing up, now all of ten pounds. I took her out in the truck one day. She sat on the seat beside me, attentive to the road and the sights all around us as we drove slowly into Peterborough. I wasn't sure she would ride well. We'd been on two journeys so far and both times I had put her in a borrowed car carrier and she had gotten very sick inside the crate. A mess and an upset. This time, I decided to try her just loose beside me, see if she would behave. We got to town, so far so good. I went to the bank and waited in line at the drive-through. Harriet had been sitting tight against my side while we idled in line. I felt her nudging me and glanced down. In my jacket pocket, I had my cell phone, a set of keys and a five dollar bill, folded in fourths. Harriet looked up at me. Emerging from both sides of her mouth were the edges of the five. I gently removed the money from her grip. She released it without damage. At the window, as always, the teller put a biscuit into the drawer with my receipt. Mayday knows well what happens when we go to the bank but this was Harriet's first experience at the bank. And since she was sitting so nicely beside me I decided not to rouse her with the excitement of a biscuit. So I put it into the breast pocket of my jacket. I'd give it to her when we got home. As we were leaving the bank, I spotted an old friend and rolled down the window to chat. Harriet came up onto my lap to say hello. We talked on. I suddenly heard crunching. Harriet had now picked my top pocket of the treat and was downing it. I wondered if, tough times being what they are, I might someday be able to use her talents as a pickpocket.

Once I arrived in New Jersey where the reunion was to take place, I refrained from calling the kennel, figuring if anything was wrong, they would call. Still, my mind kept wandering back there, in spite of the many distractions all around me. I had such a wonderful time, I realized that one of the few things that pulled me back home was the thought of rescuing Harriet from her little prison. But when I got there, the woman at the desk told me Harriet had made a fast friend out of Sadie, a Jack Russell terrier. "They've been playing together all day. She'll probably fall asleep as soon as she gets into the car." Sure enough, I put Harriet on the seat next to me and before we were out of the parking lot, she curled up and closed her eyes. I think actually that the next day, she wanted to go back to the kennel, where the action was.

Poetry for the Moment

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Thu, 07 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

Last Friday, five poets gathered at the Chesham Church, the place of the art show, the place where the jazz concert would be held the following night. The church, which slumbers through the winter, had been the center of activity for the past week while the congregation held a work party to clean it inside and out for the upcoming season, while the artist and I carried paintings through the big double doors and hung them on the pressed tin walls. Six flower arrangements, composed of the forsythia, tulips, daffodils and grape hyacinth that were brightening my gardens, brought color to the gray and white interior.

I had put out the call for poets and these five had answered, one of them bringing her younger brother, a senior at the Mass Maritime Academy who, she said, was a three-time poetry slam champion.

Another one, whose poetry I did not know but whose cooking I did, came with not only poems but cookies to share. She told me she had written a poem every day in the month of April, the last of them the day before.

I brought with me poems I had written in anticipation of this event. It had been so long since I had written poetry, April had flown by with rhythm in my head. Rhythm and music were already in the air at the church as the paintings that now hung on the walls were of saxophonists and trumpeters, Miles and Dizzy, scribbles of all the old greats whose music we still love. Their portraits lined the walls in mute testimony.

Some people say that poetry should always be read out loud, never silently on the page. I agree. It is a little like music that way.

One after the other, the poets carried their verses to the pulpit and, as the warm, gentle evening air moved into the winter-cold church, they gave us their words. A small but appreciative audience sat in the old pews.

Peter read about his journey across the country with his wife, a trip they enjoyed so much they made it not just once, but twice, resulting in a long narrative poem that includes humor and irony. Nori read two long, poignant poems about her father and one about macaroni and cheese.

Amanda and her brother brought youth and beauty to the fore, each of them giving more performance than poetry, the muscular young man who is to become a Merchant Marine almost dancing as he put together an amazing string of rhyming words that flowed from his mouth like song. This is the new poetry, closely allied to the popular form called Rap. This audience in the little rural church delighted in being treated to something so exotic, so outside its reality, as the evening sun streamed through the colored windows.

The other poems of that night, offered in voice, vanished into the sweet spring air so I can only tell you they were all, each of them, extraordinary. I offer you one I wrote the week before, far from perfect but it was of the moment and felt right for that particular time and place. But you must read it yourself.

Want

On the second Sunday
after Easter
our minister,
robes flowing
flowered shawl
draped around his neck,
reads to us.

We sit on the hard benches,
listening.
Warm spring air
blows in through
the open doors.
Outside,
daffodils nod.

"The Lord is my shepherd,"
he reads
from the big open book.
"I shall not want."
His message is all about
that one word:
Want.

Want,
we want so much,
we see so little.
Open your eyes!
he cries.
We are blind to our desires,
is that what he is saying?

On the road outside,
which passes so near,
bikers stream past,
engines throbbing
with the wantonness of spring.
They pulse by,
each a single beat in a long song of freedom.

With our backs to the doors,
we cannot see them,
we can hardly hear
our man's words:
"He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters.
He restores. . . ."

Like hungry animals,
the engines snarl,growl and snort
in crescendo.
On and on.
We wait.
There must be hundreds
on this Sunday jaunt.

The wild cacophony wanes.
Diminuendo.
The bikes are headed to
their Jerusalem,
the perfume of spring
their rod,
their passion their staff.

They shall not want.

The next night, jazz resounded into the quiet village and across the pond. Four young men in black gave their versions of "Who's Sorry Now" and "Ain't Misbehavin" to a packed crowd of jazz lovers. The drums made crazy rhythms, Scott's sax cried out. The old floors bounced as we all tapped our feet and held ourselves back from dancing. There was no room for that.

It was a happy night, a very happy night. Now the walls are silent once more, the paintings and the flowers are gone and the church waits for the doors to open for summer services. And, you know, those motorcycles will be out and about, racing toward Loudon.

For the Love of a Church

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:00:00 +0100

Almost twenty years ago, I started putting on art shows to raise money for my church. The church, known as the Community Church of Harrisville and Chesham, is actually two churches, a Baptist church and a Congregational church both in the same town and unable to survive on their own. As a result, many years ago, the churches joined forces, navigating the complicated restrictions of each faith and managing to maintain each building, one a big brick edifice in the center of town and the other, the Baptist, a simple white-steepled chapel, something like you might find on the prairie. It is this Baptist church that I love. It is where my husband and I were married and where his funeral took place all too soon after. So I try to do these things to insure this church's survival. Having been a member of this church since the mid-1980s and having served on various committees, I know how close to the bone the budget runs. The art shows have managed to fill a few gaps in the revenue stream, for which I'm grateful. Most of the church services and events are held in the brick church but in the summer, services are held in the Chesham church, which is what it's called now since it is no longer Baptist -- time has simply run that vein out of the union. Holding services there in the summer months is a bit like having a vacation home, smaller, warmer, cozier.

Inside, the church is simple, a foyer and a sanctuary, a reed organ and a piano. Tall colorful windows line each side of the walls and behind the pulpit is a stained glass window given in memory of Zophar Willard, one of the early settlers of this town. The building has no running water. Built in the mid-19th century, the church has never been updated. The pressed tin walls and ceilings look almost brand new. This beautiful chaste interior made the idea of holding art shows seem enticing but hanging paintings was not going to be easy. Before the first show (for an artist whose work is now so high-priced none of us could afford it), I hired a young man to install picture moldings along the tops of the walls. We used hooks so we could suspend the paintings from each hook with fish line. This way, the walls would not be marred. I planned receptions for the artists, as if we were a fancy gallery. I thought the platters of grapes and Gorgonzola might encourage sales. I guess I was right or else the setting was alluring enough to encourage folks to open their wallets. Whatever, the combination has turned into a wonderful annual event at the church. It is also thrilling to me to find that people who have never stepped foot in that church have entered and taken in a breath at what they see, the beautiful walls, the light and the paintings.

There so happens to be a rich vein of artistic talent in this area so there is no shortage of choice. After all these years, I've never run out of artists. This year I'm doing the show with an interesting local artist, Michael Reilly, whose passion is jazz. He paints portraits of men like Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie and Don Cherry, big colorful fluid portraits that have motion and sound. Michael used to paint landscapes of the area but one day he was at the dump and he spotted an old book, an encyclopedia of jazz. He plucked it from the pile of rubble and flipped through its pages, finding photographs of the old masters. He took it back to his studio and painted Satchmo. It made him think of his father, who used to listen to jazz late at night. He painted more. Now he has hundreds of these big expressive canvases. It seemed to me that we should do a show at the church and invite another talented man I've come to know, Scott Mullett, who plays jazz like the masters Michael paints. And so we've planned this show for the May Day weekend, a reception on Friday night which will include a poetry reading -- seven poets altogether will read from their work. I will read as well. And on Saturday night, we'll move the pulpit to the side and Scott will come forward with his sax and his friends on drums, bass and trumpet. And maybe the big granite foundation of the old church will move just a little bit off the ground.

Michael and I will hang the paintings this week. The quiet white walls of the church just now awakening from its winter slumber will brighten with the memories the great men of American music and the church will come alive with that music's soul. Come if you can. Friday, May 1st: reception for the artist begins at 5 p.m., poetry reading starts at 7:30. Free. Saturday, May 2nd: Scott Mullett and his quartet, music starts at 7:30, tickets $10 at the door. Michael's paintings will be on display all weekend, 10 to 5. All at the Chesham Church in Chesham, NH, just one mile off Rt. 101, halfway between Peterborough and Keene. Follow the signs. A percentage of the sales will support the church, a really good cause.

Best Dog

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:00:00 +0100

We are all excited about the passing of this winter in particular because of an ice storm that paralyzed us in many more ways than just the absence of electricity and the comforts of home. It came in December, before the first snow, but we are still talking about how it affected us. And so as I mentioned in an earlier report, the rigors brought on a kind of madness that sent me to see a litter of puppies, to supposedly choose one. Actually, I didn't have a choice. There were only three in the litter and the other two were spoken for. Plus they were so young when I went to see her, she was nothing but a little sleeping ball of fur -- about the size of a can of soup. I picked her up and held her to my chest and she just nestled back in and slept some more. So, in spite of all that is written about how one should pick one's puppy to suit them, there really wasn't a choice at all. In fact, how often do we truly get the pick of the litter?

I remember vividly my first best dog. My husband worked at a printing plant and one night, soon after we had moved to Vermont, he brought home a little puppy. He said there had been a box of puppies left at the time clock and he picked one up on his way out the door. It was unexpected but I was thrilled. She looked like a little bear cub so we named her Gorm, after a fictional character, a bear endowed with the powers of mind speech, from a favorite book called Hiero's Journey. She turned out to be a combination of a basset hound and a golden retriever, truly a fantastic mix but hardly anything shaped like a bear. She was long and low, with the turned-out front paws of the basset and the beautiful golden coat and face of the retriever. When she wagged her long tail, her whole body swayed. I always called her "best dog," because she was, but then, I have called all my dogs "best dog," because, at the time, they always are. But there was no choice about Gorm. She just arrived.

In the same way came Dune, a terrier mix but that's as far as I ever knew about her kind. I went to Block Island for the weekend one summer and a little boy came up to us on the beach. He had a puppy in each arm, one white and one black. He told us his mother had said that these puppies had to go before they left the island. They were on a sailboat. The puppies' mother leapt at his side as he told us of his predicament. At first the answer was no, no thanks! But he persisted, a smooth little salesman, and so, after some thought, I chose the white one. Gorm was home, to be surprised with this new life on my return from the island. I came home on the ferry with the puppy tucked into the front pocket of my hooded sweatshirt and named her Dune for her origins on the beach as well as for a book of the same name that I'd worked on in my early editing career. And so it went. Gorm, Dune, and then Mayday, who I actually did choose from a litter of seven others. But I didn't employ any science to my selection -- there are whole books devoted to the art (not science) of puppy selection. I just liked the one who greeted me with the most enthusiasm. It always seemed like Mayday chose me. So now there is Harriet, who was not a choice, except that I chose to take her from that particular litter.

It's been a long time since I've seen a sign on a tree for Free Puppies and I never again ran into any little boys with an armload of puppies looking for relief. People have been so good about spaying and neutering their pets in recent years that mutts are being imported to this area from places like West Virginia and Puerto Rico. Everyone likes a mutt, including myself and supposedly our President. But this time, I'm going with this little one, the last of a small litter of Border Terriers. I chose this kind because of a friend who had one, a wonderful boy dog named Quimby, named after the aviation pioneer Harriet Quimby. I just fell in love with Quimby, who has the happy temperament and wise countenance of a Tibetan monk. Dune lived to be 17 and was 15 when I brought home Mayday, who revived Dune and made her play again. Mayday is now 13, not really that old but I always like to bridge the old dog with the new one. It seemed like it was time. The next litter of puppies from Quimby's kennel, I wanted one. Thus has come Harriet. Incidentally, the breeder told me that James Herriot's dog was a Border Terrier. So the name seemed like a natural.

Right now, Harriet, all five pounds of her, is asleep at my feet, eyes shut in blissful stillness. Earlier, she was racing around the room like a dervish, from chew toy to rolled-up sock to her current favorite, an empty Windex bottle, which for some reason provokes her to growls and scolding sounds. I think Harriet's going to work out fine around here. But, I really didn't choose her any more than I chose the others. Mayday's still Best Dog but Princess Harriet, she is ascending.

Scents of the Past

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100

A long winter often gives up some of our friends. February and March tend to be particularly rough months for the elderly. A glance at the obituary page in the daily paper confirms this -- much more space taken up by death notices in these months than, say, in April or May, such hopeful months to be alive. This year took a particular toll on my friends and relatives so that the first couple of months of 2009 seemed consumed with tasks such as writing obituaries and attending services for those who have passed on. One of the more shocking in this group was my neighbor, Annie, who suffered a heart attack and died behind the wheel of her car in early February. I had spoken with her in the morning and by afternoon, she was gone, just like that.

She was the right kind of neighbor. We could call each other when in need, whether of an egg or a ride to town, someone to get together with on a winter evening for a bowl of soup, share news, maybe watch a movie. The best part about Annie, though, was her great sense of humor and her spirited conversation. She had an opinion about everything and it was fun to spar with her. There were never arguments, just disagreements that ended in laughter. A sprightly lady who favored jeans and denim jackets, often with a red bandanna knotted around her neck, Annie had a youthful look. In fact, I never knew how old she was until she died. Isn't that sometimes the way? She was clever about it and most people thought she was much younger than her 77 years. She'd had an interesting life, first as a fashion editor and writer, living and working for a time in Paris, then later she took on the fashion pages in Cleveland and Chicago, occasionally landing a piece in the New York Times. Finally, she retired home here, where she had always spent her summers. She lived in her mother's house, which had been left to her, a sensible house with a great big veranda, as she liked to call it, that overlooked a wide expanse of pasture where she once kept her horses. No more. Still, she managed an active life, serving on town committees and even a term as selectmen -- a devotion that should most certainly assure one a place in heaven.

Something about Annie, though, she never wanted to throw anything away. Visiting her, I was often itchy to help her take the recyclables to the transfer station or convince her of the need to share her belongings with the church rummage sale. She truly tried. She often wrote me e-mails of her efforts to sort the clothes, the shoes, the books. It was on her mind but she didn't seem to be able to do anything about it. She had such a complete collection of movies on video, she could have opened a rental center. Her house and her garage overflowed. She was attached to it all and had reasons why it all had to stay. And so when she died on that surprise of a day in February, all these saved and treasured belongings were left behind.

A service was planned for late March and in those intervening weeks, her three stepchildren set to the task of getting to the bottom of what was stockpiled in her cozy home. They worked and they worked. Many trips to the dumps, many trips to the consignment shop (she had shoes alone to rival Imelda Marcos), many nights spent reading through papers and sorting photographs. At last, the day of the service arrived. Three hundred people came from far and wide and crowded together in our community church. Many kind and funny words were spoken about her. After, a lavish reception was staged in the vestry of the church. Great platters of food were set forth and greeted with good appetites.

Apparently among the things the stepchildren found during their clean-out were a lot of bottles of perfume. I suppose her work in the fashion industry parlayed into a lot of "gifts" and so there were a couple of bushel baskets of perfume, of all brands and all vintage. I don't recall that Annie ever wore perfume. But there it was, a small mountain of bottled scent. The stepdaughters thought it would be fun to fill a huge silver bowl with some of these and put them out at the reception for anyone to help themselves, a souvenir of Annie. At one point during the reception, I went over to this ersatz perfume buffet and, along with many others, tried to find something of interest. We were like brides at a Filene's sale. Chanel, Yves St Laurent, Vuitton, Armani, all the big names were in the bowl. I don't wear perfume, in fact, most such scents repel me. But it suddenly struck me that it would be sweet to have a bottle of Annie's expensive perfume on my dresser as a little memorial to her. We were all very merry as we sorted through this grab bag, pointing out brands of note or shapes of perfume bottles that were unique or particularly appealing. Virtually all of them were unopened and untested. Some were so old they smelled like pine tar, some like the bosom of an old auntie. One of Annie's friends, a young woman named Susan, was standing next to me, loading up. She had at least six or seven boxes gripped in her arms. I was struggling to open one particularly stubborn bottle and all of a sudden the cap came off and my finger hit the plunger. We were all generously anointed, especially me. This took us all into fits of laughter but at the same time, Susan dropped most of her booty and one of the little bottles shattered at our feet. Someone hustled forth with paper towels from the kitchen. Mostly, we laughed and I felt Annie laughing with us. I think the church hall will be so scented for a long time to come, in spite of many efforts to clean the huge puddle of Arpege.

I returned home, saturated. My husband could make me laugh whenever we would pass someone doused in perfume or cologne. "What happened, did they break the bottle?" he used to whisper under his breath. Now I was the very result. I came home and showered to no avail. Maybe I will always smell of Annie's perfume, perfume she never wore but that she liked to have, that she liked to keep. I did manage to bring home a sweet little bottle in the shape of the Taj Mahal, all golden and shining, and it is now on my dresser, well sealed and hopefully never to be opened -- something I will like to have, that I will want to keep.