Today at Mary's Farm from YankeeMagazine.com

Silent, Brilliant Storm

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0100

It's been calm here this week, unusually mild for November. Temperatures have been in the 50s, skies are a light blue, the sunlight pale and weak on the bare trees, bare ground. This exposure is fleeting. It will be covered soon. But there has been a peaceful feeling all around, a sharp contrast to the storm that flies above our heads at night. I am referring to the Leonids, meteor showers that occur at this time each November. These meteors which silently whiz across the night sky in the early morning hours, have an intensely dense scientific explanation, something about a combination of solar wind, ionization, photons, frozen gases, and the remains of comets which passed over and above us in the 1700s and 1800s -- incomprehensible things like that are written to explain this magnificent show. All I know is how spectacular these showers are. I actually had never heard of them until perhaps the year 2000. Previously, I had been an ardent follower of the Perseids, which pass through in the middle of the month of August, usually around midnight. I always hope for clear skies on those nights and plan to stay up. The view of the night sky is almost unobstructed here and there is very little artificial light to obscure the constellations. A good place to study the stars.

So I became more interested and heard about the Leonids in time to view the shower in the year 2002, one of its banner years. Leonids are best viewed in the early morning hours, before sunrise. So that year, around 4 a.m., I went out into the west field that rises above my house. Walking with my head looking straight up, I gasped at the sight. I could well have been a shepherd outside of Jerusalem at the time of Christ's birth, my surprise, amazement and awe was that deep. Suddenly I was standing in the light. I've read that sometimes 500 meteors pass by within an hour's time. I have no way of knowing how many were zooming over my head but there were many. It was not so much the frequency but the brightness. Each meteor lit up my field like daylight or a bit more like the light from a prolonged flash of lightning. The other remarkable element in all of this is the silence: all this light and action and not a single sound.

I stood there so long, the brilliance of this stream illuminating the field all around me, that my feet went numb. I wished someone had been with me to confirm that I was not dreaming, that this profound radiance was real. I finally went inside and lay on the couch just long enough to thaw my feet, intending to go back out. But I fell asleep instead and, not so surprisingly, dreamt of spaceships and UFO's passing over the arc of my silent field, otherwise only visited by a solitary deer or wild turkeys, pecking the ground. It was as close as I've ever come to the divine.

And so this is the time for the Leonids. And this year they are predicting the showers will be intense. And the skies are clear, at least they are here in New Hampshire. The showers peaked last night, November 17, but I was on the road, giving a talk in the town of Plaistow, New Hampshire. I got home late and went right to bed, intending to get up early to view the height of this silent storm. When I opened my eyes, the sun was already starting to light the horizon. Too late. But there is still time. The Leonids will be passing overhead again tonight and all the way through to Saturday, November 21. Try to find a dark place, in the early morning hours. Whatever you do, don't miss them. If you have ever doubted there is something greater than ourselves, something beyond the silly aspirations of such mortals as Sarah Palin, beyond the ponderings over who caused the death of Michael Jackson, you need to view the Leonids. I'll be out in my field with my dogs, head thrown back, heavy socks on my feet, prayers of gratitude on my lips.

Deer Strike

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0100

This past Sunday I was slated to do a program in Kennebunkport with my friend, the author Carolyn Chute. Carolyn doesn't drive so I was going to go pick her up which meant I was basically going to drive three sides of a triangle, from my home to Parsonsfield, Maine, down to Kennebunkport, and then back up to Parsonsfield before returning home to Dublin. If I were to have gone from my home to Kennebunkport, the journey would have been less than four hours, all told. Alas.

In all, I anticipated driving nine hours before the end of the day. I set forth at 8 in the morning. The program was at 2 in the afternoon and I was to pick her up at noon but I decided to get there an hour early because I realized we would have to stop somewhere for lunch. It's always amazing to turn into her driveway where little handpainted signs of caution and scoldings are nailed to trees: Stop first at the Security Office!, Watch out for Small Animals, and the like. I've known Carolyn since 1985 when I went to interview her for a story for Yankee (April 1985). We have been friends ever since. I recognized every single one of the old trucks that have been abandoned under the trees and out of the way of the path, remembered when they were functional vehicles.

Carolyn came out to greet me. It's always a great reunion to see her. I was expecting to just pick her up but she said she had made a beef stew so we wouldn't have to stop anywhere for lunch. So the day began with beef stew inside their incredibly eccentric home where revolutionary slogans are tacked to the walls beside pictures of loved ones and dogs, past and present. They had to do some rearranging to find a chair for me. I sat on an old rocker beside the warming woodstove, using a log stump for a table. In order to talk with Carolyn and Michael, I had to look through a thicket of stuff, including the barrel of a shotgun, which I had no doubt was loaded. Their many Scottish terriers sat quietly in a hallway that was closed off from the house with fencing and a gate, like it was outdoors. The house, designed like a New England farmhouse, with dormers, an el and a farmer's porch, was built with some style but never finished past the framing, insulation and plywood floors. That was more than 20 years ago. Water still comes into the kitchen sink through a garden hose. Bathroom is an outhouse across the driveway. Money, or the lack of, has always been an issue for them.

The beef stew was good. There is always lots to talk about. And laugh about. Michael told of his uncle who lived to be 99 years old and all he ever ate was Fruit Loops. Secret to old age. There are always stories like that when we get together. There is always so much more to tell. I had to hurry us up so we could get to the gig on time. Which we almost didn't as we got lost, of course. But we arrived at the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust, an elegant new building looking out on a marsh at the end of a long dirt road. Fans awaited both of us, which was nice -- nice that we both had admirers rather than one and not the other. It was such a gorgeous, warm day, many of them waited out on the deck while we gathered our things together and entered the building.

This is the third time Carolyn and I have done this, we call it a duet as we sit in rocking chairs and talk about our work and read from our writing. We are such different writers, I don't know why it works but, well, it seems to. The audience seemed very appreciative throughout, smiling at us and, after, there were questions and comments, which were provocative. Sun streamed through the big windows behind us, emphasizing the surprising November warmth. Cooling breezes came in through open windows. After, books sold briskly. We signed them and chatted with the visitors. Cider and delicious small cakes were enjoyed. A fine writer named Joshua Bodwell had engineered this, a series of readings to benefit the town's library. Carolyn and I were the last presentation for the season. He and I have corresponded over the years so it was nice to see him and make that connection again. He put a lot into this program and I was grateful.

Around 4:30 we got back into the car. I was not going to see the ocean, as I had hoped. No time. I wanted to get home before midnight. It always amazes me how easy it is to miss the beauty of places known for their beauty. You have to turn off the main thorougfare which is always Rite Aids and MacDonald's and superduper supermarkets, none of which one pictures when going to Kennebunkport or Biddeford. I think of tranquil, sun-specked waters and stony beaches.

Going back to Carolyn's only took something over an hour, which was what it should have taken us going down. But, once I let her off, I had three more hours in the car before home. Generally, I like long drives as it is time stolen to process events that sometimes otherwise are lost in the collision of events that comprise my life. So I was thinking about all that had happened that day, being in Carolyn's revolutionary home, and soon again being among a lot of people of a different mindset but who were excited to greet this member of the 2nd Maine Militia. And Joshua had told me about an artist's collaborative he and his partner are about to start in an old mill building in Biddeford, space for artists and art events and readings such as this one. All things to support the arts, which is such good news in a bad economy.

About an hour into it, somewhere near Ossipee, it was just like everyone says, all of a sudden she was right in front of me, standing still across the center line. I saw her eyes, she appeared to be trying to decide what to do, but there wasn't even time to swerve, I immediately hit her, crack, crunch and it was over. I can't believe that in all these years of driving these roads, I have never hit a deer but there it was, it had happened. Another doe lurched toward the road, as if wanting to come to the stricken's rescue but then she shot back into the woods. I pulled over, shaken. Fortunately, it was a very lonely stretch of road, no cars coming either way. It was also pitch dark. If my car was a mess, I couldn't see.

I dialed 911 on my cell phone. I wasn't sure where I was, it was just road and woods, no landmarks, which they asked for. No problem, within seconds, the deep-voiced dispatcher was able to pinpoint my exact location by tracking the GPS that's in my cell phone. A loss of privacy is a help in times like this. They asked me to wait right there and a car would come. As I sat there, I remembered the awful story of a friend driving these roads some years ago in a big old car in the summer, windows down. They hit a deer but didn't think anything of it and kept going until several miles down the road, they noticed a little stream of blood trickling down around their feet. They pulled over and got out. The deer's head was in the back seat. Other stories like that came to mind while I sat waiting for the policeman.

The police car came from the other direction, flicking on his blue lights when I was within sight and making a u-turn to position himself behind my car. The officer was a nice young man with a shaved head and a helpful smile. The deer was gone, too. It seemed almost as if it hadn't happened. But it did. I can't imagine the deer could have lived through that but maybe she was off somewhere in the woods, licking her wounds. Maybe she was beside the road. It was too dark to see much of anything but she was not in the middle of the road, as I had assumed. "They're pretty resilient," the officer said, with assurance. With his bright police car spotlights and his big handheld flashlight, he and I walked around it, carefully inspecting my car -- no sign of anything! A small scratch perhaps, no blood. It was a good half hour before I resumed my journey home.

I eased a Mozart piano concerto CD into the slot and soothed myself with that amazing music the rest of the ride home. I got home around 9:30. The dogs were ecstatic to see me and after walks and a bit of play and a chicken sandwich, eaten standing up -- there had been no time or desire to stop for dinner -- I went directly to bed, thinking about the deer in the woods and hoping she was as unscathed as my car.

Puddings, puddings, puddings

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:00:00 +0100

We sat sequestered in the Sunday School room of the Charlemont Federated Church, three of us, twenty-seven glorious puddings set on the Sunday School tables, which had been covered with bright red and yellow Provincial table cloths for the occasion. For almost two hours, the puddings had been carried in through a light rain, cradled like newborns, the dishes, which ranged from elegant to earthy, cloaked in dishcloths or tin foil or snugged into Tupperware.

Many entries came from the nearby town of Hawley but some came from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont -- this contest has legs! As they arrived, one after the other, the little room, which had been cleared of its scissors and library paste, Sunday School texts and crayons, filled with the smell of cinnamon, pumpkin, raspberries, vanilla -- too many fragrances to totally identify. It all came down to: mouth watering.

We had come to judge the annual pudding contest, the heart of the Pudding Hollow Pudding Festival, the brainchild of Tinky Weisblat, a creative and humorous being about whom I wrote in the March/April 2009 issue of Yankee, The Queen of Pudding.

As a result of that article, Tinky asked me to return this year to be a judge of her famous contest. (The contest began in Pudding Hollow in the nearby town of Hawley, where Tinky lives, but it had become so popular, they had moved it to this bigger venue.)

The other judges there with me were Kathleen Wall, an official "culinarian" at Plimouth Plantation -- she has judged the puddings for four years in a row so she had a decided mastery of the subject and of the process -- and Michaelangelo Westcott, who runs a "French-inspired Bistro" called Gypsy Apple in nearby Shelburne Falls (everyone spoke of his establishment with reverence. I intend to try it next time I am in that area).

Michaelangelo arrived a bit late, having had trouble finding a parking spot in downtown Charlemont, which was buzzing with activity on this day of the Puddings. He entered as if from his own kitchen, dressed in his white chef's coat, his name smartly embroidered on the pocket and, on his head, an interesting black cap, all if which served to give him a natty and professional appearance. In any case, he and I were both new to the puddings, new to the process, so we followed Kathleen's charge in every way.

There were two categories, sweet and savory -- all but five were sweet so the savory category seemed like the logical place to start our tasting. There were many pumpkin creations, the many entries making their own category, and she recommended ending with the chocolate entries since, "Once you taste the chocolate, that's it for the rest of the day." We nodded sagely.

Paper plates and spoons were distributed. The puddings stood smartly before us, an array of temptation -- some in earthenware pots, some in crystal bowls, some in chafing dishes, some with their own bowl of whipped cream or secret sauce alongside. Each had a name: Cranberry Cover-up, Fruit of the Earth, Haddie-Leakie Bread Pudding, Three Fruit Cold but Cheerful Pudding, Persimmon Pudding, Shaker Rock Cream Pudding, Harvest Delight.

News photographers' cameras flashed at us as we sank our spoons into the first of the day's puddings, a savory entitled Indian Coconut Almond Rice Pudding, a dense and interesting mix of all those flavors. We loved it but did not end up giving it an award. There were so many puddings yet to sample.

The time flew by as we paced ourselves, clearing our palettes with water sipped between puddings. Tinky or another of her Festival volunteers frequently opened our closed door to see if we needed anything, then, as the time went on, to see if we had, ahem, come to any conclusions. But we had fourteen more puddings to go! It was the essence of too much of a good thing. No time to flag -- the Festival awaited our decisions.

Outside our chambers, the townfolk were enjoying a big meal of ham and beans and fried potatoes. We could hear the din of their merriment. When we were finished, there would be the Great Pudding Parade and then the Award Ceremony. We toiled on, tasting, deliberating, straining to discern the spices within, whether this was homemade cake or Duncan Hines, what on earth this texture was. Is that coconut? Good heavens, do I taste bacon?? And so on.

It had all sounded like fun when I was invited but it was turning into a monumental task. Daunting, in fact. Finally, we had our list -- best presentation, spookiest (it was Halloween, after all), best pumpkin pudding, most original, fifteen prizes in all, and, for the best all around, the Pudding Head Award. We consulted our pudding-stained notepads.

After three hours of deliberation, the judges were ready. The three of us had no trouble deciding that the Pumpkin Gingerbread Pudding was the best pudding, hands down. "I could eat a lot of that," Michaelangelo had declared lustily and Kathleen and I said we sure could too. We almost did. Just the thought of it now makes me hungry.

It was much harder to decide about all the others. We opened the door and exited our chamber. The cooks entered to retrieve their creations and then lined up, proudly bearing their puddings, some holding them aloft, and marched them into the sanctuary of the church, down the aisle and up to the altar, where a large table had been set up to display the puddings vying for a prize.

A skit, songs, laughter, the cozy feeling of a town that holds together and finally, the awarding of the prizes and the crowning of the Pudding Head -- it all flowed as the three of us sat in the back holding our heads and our stomachs, starting into recovery from Pudding Overdose.

After the awards had been announced and the prizes bestowed(a food processor from Cuisinart, a baking set from Calphalon), the townspeople came forward for the ritual sampling of the puddings. Everyone eagerly lined up in the aisle to go forward to the altar and partake of the Exalted Puddings. They helped themselves, so many to choose from, and returned to their pews with their plates. A very special kind of communion on a rainy fall day in the Berkshires.

The Metropolitan Opera in the Pines

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:00:00 +0100

I went to the opera on Saturday afternoon. The Met. Verdi's Aida. Around noon, I put on a pair of slacks and a sweater, gave the dogs a cookie and left the house. I turned left out of my driveway, headed down a paved road which soon turned to dirt. I was on my way. Rain was pelting the windshield. Along the roadside were trees, a pond, and more trees. Shortly, I turned down another dirt road, hardly marked. I had arrived at my destination: Peterborough Players, an old summer theater in the middle of tall pines. During the summer, venerable productions take place here in an old barn that once housed farm animals. Many years ago, the first production of Our Town was staged here, with Thornton Wilder in the audience. The play, after all, was based on the town of Peterborough, which hasn't changed so very much.

Patrons hustled under umbrellas toward the barn. Big timbers hold up the roof under which plush seats have recently been added. It's not rustic anymore but, on the other hand, it's certainly not the Met. But this is where the "Live HD simulcast" of Aida was going to take place. I understand there are many other places in this country where these broadcasts are being made available. None quite so unique as this one. Just a guess.

Inside, the old wooden stage was filled with a gigantic screen. There was hardly an empty seat in the house. I saw many friends and neighbors among us. We gazed up at the giant screen before us. The see-sawing sound of the instruments tuning seemed right here, right now. The camera was panning the New York audience as they were settling in to perhaps the most gilded opera venue in the United States. Gold ornamentation glittered everywhere. The camera zeroed in on brightly dressed children as well as adults, all excitedly waiting for the maestro to take his place in the pit. No camera panned our midst -- we were not elegant -- but we were just as excited, literally flies on the wall of a far-away event. The maestro entered and with a stroke of his baton, the first soft notes of the violins emerged. And then, enormous curtains parted and the magnificent show began. I knew the music. I did not know the story, a slave who was once a princess, captured from a rival empire, falls in love with the commanding officer of the hostile Egyptian army. He is also secretly in love with her, though it is intended that he should marry the daughter of the king. A love triangle ensues.

Larger than life, we could see every hair on the performers' heads; we could see the sweat that ran down their cheeks, every stitch in their magnificent and brightly colored costumes. As they sang, their enormous, rich voices filling the barn, we could still hear the din of rain pounding the metal roof above us. The general and the princess and the slave wandered helplessly in their passions while armies decamped. Battles raged and scenes of passion took place beside the Nile. Victory marches, complete with a parade of the spoils of war and wagons of captured soldiers, rolled across the stage. Seeing no exit from their prison of passion, the general and the slave went to their tomb together, singing their anguished duet. The great curtains closed. We applauded, as we had for each act, applause which never reached the ears of the deserving performers but what else was there to do? We rose and reluctantly left our seats, following each other back out to the parking lot, popping our umbrellas as we met the rain.

That night, the rain increased. Wind lashed my house. Branches fell. The sound of the wind rose to a roar, like a big brass instrument moving up and down a low scale. It sounded like a conquering army was coming over the mountain. Shutters flapped. Branches fell on the roof. The lights flickered several times. I turned on the outside lights. Leaves and debris were flying past the window at a high rate of speed. I feared a tornado, set my flashlight out beside me, made sure my cell phone was charged. I imagined the great tenor, dressed in full battle regalia, flinging himself into a passionate lament of the storm's power. I could almost hear the words in the voice of the wind, which cried and screamed. My startled dogs barked, little, short tentative barks. Counterpoints. When the power failed, we all went to bed, the wind still knocking to come in.

In the morning, the air was still. The sun rose over a wind-combed earth. Everything, the grasses, the branches, even the apples from the tree were laid down. I went out and gathered apples into canvas bags, brought the windfall into the kitchen, cut the deep red fruits into quarters and set them into the big stew pot. The pink-edged pieces slowly surrendered to the low flame: applesauce, the spoils of a tumultuous, well-armored night.

Of Sick Dogs, Of Mad Dogs

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 04:00:00 +0100

Here was my week:

Monday

When I got home in the afternoon, I found Mayday, my 13-year-old mini-schnauzer, sitting in the corner, staring at the floor and trembling. When I picked her up, she felt hot. A few months ago she had been in hospital for a week with a high fever. The cause was never found. So I took her back up to her beloved vet, Andrea, in Westminster, Vermont, where they discovered she is running a fever of 103. I had to leave her there. She was terrific yesterday and the day before! We went on a great walk and she trotted right along. It was so sudden, though. I'm worried. It's very quiet in the house tonight. Harriet subdued.

Tuesday

After Mayday left yesterday, Harriet, eight months old now, was so quiet I could not find her in the house. Finally found her in her crate, sleeping. Today, she seemed to recover and she's pissed off. She's tossing my 5 pound dumb bell around the bedroom and snarling at it. After she throws it, she glances over at me angrily. I think I've taken away her favorite toy.

Wednesday

Just got back from visiting with Mayday. She is pretty weak. They led me back to where she was staying. From behind the bars, she was still, a look of pain in her eyes. I took her out of her pod and held her for about 15 minutes, just talking to her. Then I took her outside for a walk. She crumpled when I set her down. But I got her to walk about 15 yards before she gave up. Not great. Then I carried her to the car where Harriet was. They had a little nose-to-nose, Harriet very excited. I sat in the back seat with Mayday for a while, holding her. I know she loves the car so I think it's good for her to be in its environment, as close as I can get to taking her home. She was very still in my arms, looking around a bit. The sun was strong and there was a nice, fragrant breeze which ruffled her soft gray fur. She put her nose up into the fresh air and half-closed her eyes in the warm sun. After I carried her back inside, when I set her down, she crumpled again. Andrea says she might come home tomorrow but she seems frail. We'll see. Dogs do give us pleasure but also heartache. They think she has pancreatitis - contracted perhaps by eating a dead animal. The hay fields have a lot of squished critters in them. We went for a long walk on Sunday, when she was perfectly fine. She likes to graze in the field. Sometimes I call her my little cow. Harriet is still mad. This evening, she chewed up my reading glasses. When I discovered this horror, they were so twisted and contorted, they looked something like a modern art installation. Somehow, miraculously, my eye doctor's office was able to resurrect them. At least for the short term.

Thursday

Mayday took a turn for the worse overnight. The vet told me this morning that she didn't hold out much hope, things were very bad. I was pretty much of a mess, not enough Kleenex in the house. I went up to Vermont at noon. They did an ultrasound but could not find anything. I felt hopeful in the fact that they don't know what's wrong with her. Something in her belly hurts her. So far, they have eliminated pancreatitis, lymphoma, and liver tumor. But she still has a fever of 103. When I got there, she was lying on her side, not much light in her eyes. She "smiled" at me. They unhooked her IVs and I carried her out to the car again. Setting her down, she just goes into a heap. So I held her and she sat with her head up, which was good, looking around. That seemed really positive. We sat for a good long time again, in the sun, enjoying the breezes. Her ears came up and she appeared to notice people walking by and other animals. Overall she seemed more alert than yesterday. I talked to her and told her she better not leave me alone with Harriet!! After an hour or so, I took her back inside. They all love her there, she is an old friend and she gets a lot of kind attention. I am going to make her chicken and rice tonight and take it up to her first thing in the morning. She has not been eating much.

Friday

This morning, I got up at 5 and made the special chicken and rice dish that she likes so much. I got up to the vet's in Vermont just as they were opening up and the night guy said as I came through the door: "she is a little better! But she still can't walk." He was so sweet, clearly invested in her progress. I went to her spot (they have nice facilities with nice warm fleece inside a stainless steel pod. I felt like climbing in). When she saw me, she raised herself up on her two front legs and I could see her tail was wagging! That was a huge improvement over yesterday. I dished out some of the chicken mix and she wolfed it down. I reached in and picked her up, gingerly as she is so tender all over, and carried her outside. I set her down. She was very wobbly but after some effort, she stood up and then she walked! This is huge because she hasn't done that in a few days and hasn't peed or pooped as a result. This time, she did her business right away. Major progress. The night guy was watching from the door and he shouted, "All RIGHT!!" and clapped his hands. She walked all the way out to the car on her own steam and then we sat in the back seat for a little while together, which is how I've been visiting her. Harriet greeted her enthusiastically, nose to nose. One of the vets drove in just then and she and her dog got out and came over. (They all bring their dogs in with them so it's like a zoo in there.) She was so excited! And then Mayday growled at the dog. That was major major progress! Mayday walked all the way back to the vet's office then I had to return her to her little spot and leave her but very happily thinking that she had turned a corner. They told me to call later in the day to talk with Andrea, who wasn't in yet.

Later Friday

Talked with Andrea. She said Mayday is not out of the woods yet but things are looking a lot better. I might be able to bring her home tomorrow. I have to call in the morning. Of course, I will be counting the hours.

Sunday

I brought Mayday home today! It's quite remarkable as, just last Thursday morning, they were telling me they didn't hold much hope for her. She was almost lifeless. When I went to get her today, even though the clinic was closed, I was greeted by some amazed workers who have been caring for her and they acted a bit like they had had a visitation from the Virgin Mary or seen the risen Christ! That Mayday, she is like that, quite a mysterious gal. So now she is resting on her little throne on the back of the couch and Harriet is anxious to harrass her but I've separated them. At least for a few days. Mayday still has a bit of a limp on her but she is very anxious to be back into her routine and back with her real life. They never did conclude anything about what was wrong with her. But eventually they began treating her for Lyme Disease even though she tested negative (not reliable, those tests!). And that is when she perked up. They put her on doxicycline which is the standard Lyme treatment and the improvement was fast and quite remarkable. She has a shine in her eyes again.

Five days later

Mayday has been home five days now and is back to normal, playing with Harriet (when she feels like it, snapping at her when she doesn't), eating hungrily and going for walks. Yesterday, I spent the whole day outside splitting up wood for the coming winter. Three cord is piled now. The whole time, Mayday wandered in the field, sniffing, eating grasses, chasing crows. This is her life. And hopefully that will continue to be so for some time.

The Mystery of Marriage

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

This summer, I was set to attend five weddings and the last of them was last weekend. Lori and Dave, sweet young friends who met on match.com. So many weddings, all of them different. Only one took place in a church -- another was beside Buzzard's Bay, another in a chateau, another was at the bride's home, in an open field. This past weekend's wedding took place at an open air chapel, in the rain. All of the ceremonies were different, some longer, some more poetic, one even included a homily by the reverend. But all of them contained the words, I do. I noted that brides -- at least these brides -- no longer toss their bouquet and certainly don't do the silly thing with the garter, whatever that was all about. In spite of all that has transpired for women in the past few decades, all these young ladies were "given away" by their fathers. They all had stunning white wedding gowns just like their mother's and their grandmother's and all of them wore veils.(Lori's was fetching, a small veil, just over her eyes, at a tilt, like something out of the 1940s.) Many toasts were proposed, to clamorous applause and whoops, and frequent tapping of glasses, requesting the bride and groom kiss. Which they did. All the weddings ended the festivities with a big, high glamorous cake. And dancing. Overall I am surprised to observe how traditional weddings seem to have remained. White dresses? I thought they were destined for the history books but then I am a child of the 1960s.

These weddings have all been so joyful, everyone just glowing, especially all the parents. If any of them had any misgivings about these unions, I didn't see it. All their faces seemed about to break at each and every ceremony. Their happiness was like a contagion in the gathering. Whoopee! It made me want to grab the nearest guy and plan a wedding.

Lori and Dave asked me to do a reading of my choice during the ceremony. I selected a passage from Wendell Berry's Poetry and Marriage. This was suggested to me by my friend, Richard Jones, who is the pastor of a church in Bolton, Massachusetts. It's a wonderful passage, pointing out the communal nature of marriage, that neither the husband nor the wife will have their way, that it is a joint venture down an unknown road. And then he refers to marriage as "deciding to stay," as opposed to not staying. ". . . . they know the likelihood that they will be staying for 'a while,' to find out what they are staying for. And it is our faith that you will not stay to find out that you should not have stayed. . . . Not everything that we stay to find out will make us happy. Our faith is, rather, that by staying, and only by staying will we learn something of the truth, that the truth is good to know and that it is always both different and larger than we thought."

In other words, that marriage, like life, is a mystery and we follow each day like clues, agreeing that the quest is worthy. Together. That life is not about knowing, rather it is about not knowing, that uncertainty is where we put our faith in marriage. I'm sure that Lori and Dave envisioned their marriage taking place in the bright sunshine, the majestic profile of Mount Monadnock rising behind them. Instead, it was a rain-soaked, cold October afternoon, the mountain hidden behind a bank of fog and all the guests huddled under umbrellas. All perhaps a little preview of what Berry is saying, that marriage is all about uncertainty, in this case even from the first minute of its existence.

As I watched Lori and Dave, Naomi and Brian, Lydia and Josh, Samantha and Mike, and Andrea and Nick stand before us all and say, "I do," they were being launched into a darkness they were not only willing to take on but anxious to. Berry makes it all sound simple. Maybe it is, maybe we make it more complicated. But as they all waltzed back down the aisle, there was no indication that any of these young people were anything but thrilled to be moving into this new and mysterious phase of their lives. May that darkness be magical and long-lived for all of them, may they all decide to stay.

What There Was Not to Tell

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

About ten years ago, I began the process of writing "What There Was Not to Tell," a book based on letters my parents exchanged during World War II. There were more than 2,000 letters and it took me a whole year just to read and organize the letters. These were not the usual letters of war, exchanges of love and longing, though there was some of that. Instead, these were about a man named Tom, who my mother had decided to marry instead of my father. My mother and father had known each other since childhood and it had always been my father's intention to marry my mother. My mother, however, liked to play the field. One summer while on vacation with her parents in the Adirondacks, my mother met a man named Tom. Tom fell for my mother rather hard and then came war. He asked my mother to marry him but she could not make up her mind between him and my father. Tom was the swashbuckler; my father was quiet and steady.

Both my father and Tom joined the Air Corps, which is the early name of the Air Force. Tom trained to be a pilot and my father, an engineer, helped plan and build the air fields. My father was sent first, to North Africa, where he slept in a tent beside the air field and wrote sad letters home to my mother. Tom remained stateside, taking little training planes up into the air and landing them, then writing about his experiences to my mother. One day in 1941, Tom called my mother to tell her he was being sent into the South Pacific. She was not home and so he left a message, saying he was leaving. On the way over, he wrote to her: "How can I do any good in this war if I can't be sure of your love?" She wrote back, telling him she would marry him and mailed it off. Tom was shot down and killed before the letter could reach him. It, and other letters she had written to him at that time, was returned to my mother, stamped "deceased." My mother's heart was completely broken and for months she withdrew from life, writing to my father only to tell him of Tom's death then ceasing to write at all. He wrote and wrote, hoping to encourage her to write back. In her silence, my mother came to the decision to join the American Red Cross, in hopes of being sent to New Guinea, where Tom's plane had gone down. She hoped perhaps to visit his grave, or to find him. She felt there had been a mistake, maybe he wasn't dead, just missing, or maybe even his serial number had been confused with someone else's. She simply couldn't accept the news of his death.

My mother ended up joining the Marines, among the first women to serve. She was sent to Miramar in San Diego where she worked a desk job, processing soldiers coming in and out of the South Pacific. Daily she greeted soldiers returning, missing a leg or an arm, blind or with head injuries, the typical and tragic result of a bloody war. After six months she wrote home to her parents, "You needn't worry anymore. I no longer want to go over. I've seen enough from here."

My parents died within two months of each other after nearly 50 years of marriage. When my sister and I opened our mother's wallet, we discovered a photo of a young man we did not recognize. At the funeral, we asked a few relatives who identified him as Tom. She never forgot him and she hoped we never would either. His parents became our third set of grandparents, Grandma and Grandpa Platt, we called them. Tom had been their only son and they died in the 1950s, clearly, even to me at that very young age, broken-hearted.

This book is about a love story but it is much more than that, a book about how one death in a big war can reverberate into the next generation, how war does not end with the peace treaty but instead continues to corrode the heart, like the slow and steady rub of sandpaper of a rough surface. It is the story I saw when I read those letters and thought about the life we led in our house, so soon after World War II, both my parents returning from the war and quickly marrying like thousands of other veterans. They were encouraged to be proud of their service, and they were. They were encouraged to carry on and get jobs and buy houses and have children, and they did. But deep down, I don't think either of them ever completely healed from the war. Whenever I used to ask my father about the war, he always used to say, "There isn't much to tell." And that's why I titled it, What There Was Not To Tell, since what I learned from the letters they left behind is huge in proportion to what they ever did tell me about that war: nothing much. I think what he actually meant to say was, "There is too much to tell. I wouldn't know where to start."

And so the book is supposed to be about the aftereffects of war, the deep wounds it leaves even on those who never received a scratch from their service. And the affect it can have not only on those who were left behind but even on those who were born after. But, for some reason, publishers to whom I have sent this book find it unlikely anyone would want to read it. They all say it is a good book, that it is beautifully written, they all say it deserves to be published. Except not by them. The most recent rejection I received said this, in part: "This is a wonderful book, beautifully written but it would be 'small' for us (meaning we could only get out a couple of thousand copies). Please remember I am with one of the most commercial houses in the industry. We publish John Stewart and Nicholas Sparks, etc. And, our bottom line has been tougher lately as bookstores get less traffic, so our new mandate is to go after the "really big" books and we'll publish fewer of them. I do hope you find a way to send this to more houses, ones that can take a bit of risk."

I wonder what they mean by "risk." I've never known publishing to be about anything but risk and what I think is sinking the big houses now is the mad dash for the "big" hit, which they keep missing and missing and missing by publishing "sure bets." That doesn't work in horse racing and it doesn't work in publishing either. The "sure bets" that miss are a lot more expensive than the risks. Publishers are in the embrace of planning their future by looking at their past, a very poor way to publish literature.

If this book ever does get published, I'll be able to tell my own war story about how many times the manuscript was turned down before someone found it. It does make me curious, though. All I can do at this point is just keep going. I've written in other blogs about the Kindle and the "fate" of the written word and so on, the evolution of reading and writing, whether changed by technology or the warp of the modern brain. Everyone has a theory and I'm no exception. I think what is clear is that publishing is in the midst of a revolution and we won't know the outcome for some years into the future. It could be that trying to stay safe will kill the industry. I look at the best seller list and I see celebrity profiles and how-to books and I think, it's not so much that people don't want to read or buy books anymore but more that people are not being given books that interest them, excite them, mystify them and make them think. In my experience, there are still legions of people out there who love to read.

Gathering in the Fall

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:00:00 +0100

Every year at this time, I drive down into the Connecticut River Valley, down through Northfield and Sunderland and Hadley, to buy my winter supply of onions and potatoes, plus winter squash and apples, and a few other things that will keep in my root cellar. This way, I don't have to think about buying winter vegetables again until spring. I have done this so many years, I can no longer count how long this has been my custom. This year was especially exciting as one of my friends from my growing up years moved to Amherst in the beginning of September. She had lived for years in San Francisco until she and her husband moved to Washington D.C. a couple of years ago. That was certainly a lot closer but a move to Amherst put her practically in my back yard. I went down to welcome her on Saturday, which so happened to be one of the most magnificent days of the summer, so far. Cloudless, cobalt blue skies. Warm but not hot sun. Gentle breezes. The harvest was in progress on the fields of all the farms I passed on the way down. What could be a better setting to renew a friendship?

Mimi and I went through high school together. We listened for hours on end to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (and sometimes laughed hysterically at the wry irony of the lyrics and the comedic intrusion of the tuba and exalting horns). "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64," sounded to us like twenty lifetimes away. Subsequently, we discovered our love for classical music, not as much of a contradiction as that may sound. Mimi had a passion and a talent for modern dance and even danced for a brief period with the Jose Limon dance troupe in New York City. This would have been in the 1960s. I sometimes accompanied her in to New York so she could attend her dance classes. After, we would explore Greenwich Village where we would eat at exotic food stands and buy unusual earrings at bohemian stalls several steps down from the sidewalk. There was a sense of freedom in all of this, a sense of new beginnings and a great big world out there ahead of us. We grew up together with these expectations.

So here we are, more than forty years later, with most of that great big world now having been encountered, digested, analyzed, laughed at and mourned over. It seems almost impossible that we are at an age where we are able to look back further than we will ever again be able to look forward. I picked Mimi up a bit before lunch and we set forth. I wanted to find a pumpkin, for starters. We pottered along, admiring the old tobacco barns, many of them now used for purposes other than drying tobacco. The open stretches of field all around us created a big sky and made us think of the Midwest. Corn had already been cut, leaving that distinctive autumnal stubble. Great coils of bittersweet wrapped itself around trees and telephone poles, turning itself red from the effort. Occasionally we'd slow for a big wide tractor lumbering down the road, many of them pulling large wagons loaded with squash or pumpkins. They were headed, we assumed, to the farm markets of Northampton or Amherst. Weathered wooden stands set close to the roadside displayed bright bunches of multi-colored zinnias in Mason jars, $5 a bunch, an honor system box beside them. We saw pumpkins big enough to wage war and cabbages too ("that would make a lot of galumpkies," Mimi commented as we encountered a monster bigger than a basketball), all massive examples of the abundance of summer. Many varieties of winter squash spread across lawns, boxes of tomatoes sat under umbrellas, pots of purple asters and orange mums lined the roadways, all beauty queens hoping to be noticed. We noticed. We bought. We filled the trunk.

Toward the end of the day, we spotted a yard sale with abundant offerings. There had been many, all day, but our focus had been the farm stands. This one, however, seemed tempting. Clothing on hangers, tables laden with what seemed like the contents of an entire kitchen, furniture, sports equipment, books. We caused a bit of a traffic hazard by stopping short. It wasn't what we had hoped and the prices were high. Mimi found a basket for $5, bargained it to $3, still too much, but she was happy with it when we got back into the car. Onward to Sunderland where, again, a yard sale in front of one of those huge old dowagers that line the main street caught our attention. We stopped again. It was 4 p.m., close to closing time. Some of the tables were covered with plastic, they were already packing it in. Nothing much to shout about. We sauntered back toward the car. On the curb, Mimi noticed a pile marked "free." We started to pick through the offerings. I found what appeared to be a big white tablecloth, big enough for my dining room table. I tucked it under my arm. Mimi discovered a poster and a frame. A bag full of pine cones. My eyes focused on a bread box -- sapphire blue, a good match for my kitchen. It was in perfect condition, just a little dust. I have never had a bread box before. It struck me as a sensible idea. I picked that up as well. Was it really free? We re-checked the sign. It seemed to be so. We hustled back across the road to our car, feeling a bit like fugitives, packed our treasures in around the pumpkins and cabbages and headed back toward Amherst.

When I got home, I opened up the tablecloth, expecting to find a hole or a large red wine stain. Nothing. It was perfect. And it fit my table. I have looked for a tablecloth big enough for that table for years. I pulled things out of the pantry and put the bread box in and then fit everything back in around it. It looked like it was meant to be there. Mimi reported that she had already arranged the pine cones in the basket, a fall centerpiece for their new table. What's next? There's still a lot of poking around to do before snow.

A Visit to Berlin

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:00:00 +0100

On Wednesday I went up to Berlin, New Hampshire, to give a talk. I've been giving these talks for the New Hampshire Humanities Council for some time now, gigs that take me all over the state to libraries large and small as well as historical societies, some housed in big old town halls and some in historic houses. This one was in the library of a community college and to reach its doors, I had to wind through the back streets of Berlin which has not fared well in recent years. The big stacks of the shuttered paper mills rose up from behind the rows of small houses like a storm cloud, threatening. Detroit gets all the attention but the paper mill towns of northern New England have been suffering from attrition for some years. There have been no bailouts that I know of. For sale signs decorated many lawns. A man, leaning heavily on his cane, was struggling to cover the bright orange marigolds that lined his driveway, an effort to protect them from the frost that was forecast to arrive overnight. The leaves in the maples that stood sentry on these lawns had started to turn, all of which added to the feeling of sadness that filled me as I turned left, turned right, and generally bumped along the potholed streets, looking for the college. The paper industry has pretty much abandoned our north country for the bright horizons of China and it feels unlikely they will ever return. What can save communities like Berlin in times like this?

Nevertheless, a warm and cheerful group of people greeted me and we had a good evening, talking about food, which is my topic -- baked beans and fried clams, how food can define a region. In it, I talk about Fannie Farmer, the pioneer of the "domestic science movement" who wrote the first cookbook to include precise measurements, and I draw the life of Julia Child, a California girl who became interested in gourmet food to please her Boston Brahmin husband, a graciousness that blossomed into a magnificent passion all her own. Her food was international and extravagant but her television career started in a little makeshift television studio in Boston, where her heart remained regardless of all the exotic places she traveled to. And Haydn S. Pearson who waxed rhapsodic over baked beans and fried corn meal mush, a man who wore his heart on his sleeve for his favorite foods. He recalls the time when everyone had cows in the barn and a garden filled with fresh produce, much of it kept through the winter in the root cellar. A simpler time, a thriftier time. I love introducing people to Haydn Pearson, who grew up in the next town to mine, the son of a minister, and who was mostly known as a nature writer before turning to his true passion: New England food. Food can always cheer us up. And it did on that evening. We laughed about Fannie's starchy prose, the foibles of Julia and enjoyed the spirited conviction of Pearson's writing -- he maintained that if we got back to the habit of having beans on Saturday nights, the national debt would come under control. He wrote that in 1946 and I can't say I disagree with him today. I wonder how he might have suggested we solve the healthcare crisis. I'm sure his solution would be direct, simple, practical.

After, there were refreshments and a chance to chat. Soft, spicy molasses cookies made by one of the ladies of the town fortified us. There was a warmth in the smiles of those in attendance, a happiness of sorts. New Englanders, especially northern New Englanders, are a rugged group, a breed apart. Outside, I could feel the frost starting to descend but I left with a lighter heart, knowing that things are not always as they seem from the outside.

Filling in for Linda

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 04:00:00 +0100

Last week, I filled in at the front desk for Linda, who has been the trusty receptionist for Yankee for many years, the voice everyone has come to recognize when they call in. "Good morning, Yankee Publishing, how may I direct your call?" she intones hundreds of times daily. She also runs a little store up there in the front office, selling calendars and books and other Yankee and Old Farmer's Almanac products to folks who wander in. Linda had to go to Maryland to be with her mother while she underwent surgery so, always game for a new experience, I said I would give working the front desk a try. She coached me on the basics and set me loose.

I spend most days up here on the hill where the action consists of a few turkeys strolling by the window, deer grazing in the meadow or the occasional car passing by the house, usually going too fast. But the front desk in Yankee's reception office faces the street and the main street of Dublin is actually Rt. 101, a major east-west highway. Cars and trucks, also usually going too fast, pass by the magazine's windows like a moving river. I found it hypnotic, as I sat, stemming the tide of incoming calls. Even while talking on the phone, I could watch the action. There was a surprising lot going on, on any given day.

For instance, directly across the road from Yankee is the Dublin town hall, a gracefully designed building from the 19th century. This week, two muscular young men scraped and prepared the front of the building for a new coat of paint. Last week, they had given the church steeple, on the other side of the road, its new coat. The work required a big crane-like lift, an enormous vehicle that resembled a prehistoric animal, moving on four wheels but concealing a long neck and head which is retracted when not in use. In all, it resembles a dinosaur without a tail. The behemoth could be driven around the building and positioned at certain points. The young men stood in a basket (the animal's head) and did their work. I suppose steeplejacks, hanging from the peak on straps and a prayer, are a dying breed. In any case, last week, the painters finished their spruce-up at the church and, in an apparent twofer deal, on Monday they positioned this beast at the edge of the highway and prepared to cross over to start work at the town hall. Our beloved town police chief, Jimmy, stepped out into the highway and brought the traffic to a halt, allowing this strange vehicle to move, snail-like, across the road. Motorists were patient as it backed and forthed, all the while making a big beeping racket, until it was in place. And that is where it stayed for the week as the town hall changed from shabby to shiny.

The week went by like that, as I watched the silent movie of the town's affairs. I saw our church minister, wearing t-shirt and slacks (at first I did not recognize him), cross to the town hall. He returned shortly, leaving me to wonder of his mission. I saw patrons come and go from the library, carrying stacks of books, somehow a soothing sight. From the garage that is cattycorner to Yankee, I watched the mechanics (they are a cheerful group who love their work) peer under various hoods and test drive certain vehicles, short trips out and back from home base. And, inside the building, people stopped in to buy Yankee products and sometimes they would tell me where they were from (Quebec, Iowa) and sometimes they just wanted directions. It was a kind of a big week as the annual edition of the Old Farmer's Almanac ("Useful, with a pleasant degree of humor") was about to go on sale. The phone calls were pretty predictable (sales, advertising, subscriptions) except for one elderly lady who called from Idaho to ask the Old Farmer's Almanac when she ought to plant her rutabagas and another man called from Texas to ask if I could tell him what the Almanac was predicting for weather in July of 2010, on the date of his daughter's wedding. That was easy, I looked it up in the regional forecast section, under Texas, and found that it was going to be "sunny, hot." Which is what I told him and he laughed and said, in a hearty Texan accent, "Well, I could have told you that!" Another man called from a newspaper in Grand Rapids. He wanted to write about the little hole that appears in the corner of the Almanac, and wanted to know why it is still there. I told him I had always thought that it was there so you could put a string through it and hang it from a nail in your outhouse but I wasn't sure. So I connected him to an editor who could verify that.

And so it went. By Friday, the town hall was newly painted and the big hulking creature that had assisted the boys in their painting jobs had been stashed in the empty church parking lot, awaiting an escort back to home. I returned to my hilltop and my occasional turkeys, glad for the chance to have played Linda for the week, a slice of life I relished.