Greetings fellow travelers and happy day to all you mothers:
Buying sliced Nova,
I feel a whole smoked whitefish-
giving me a look……………………………………………………………Haikus for Jews
Uugghhh…..mud season in the mountains; it has been raining, and then snowing for two weeks…grey an misty…and cold…I think we are skipping spring…..but the Vermont House finally passed legal pot for the state, and the Senate jumped on this in a Nano-second…and now waiting for the conservative (can you believe it?) Governor to veto it…but we have a patch of primordial soil all ready and waiting ….
So…a week of settling into a very wet and dreary mountain home…..
Last Sunday- we made our inaugural trip to our favorite East Restaurant in Rutland, for the Roast Duck with pine nuts…OMG- gotta have it…went with the Jewish Fish Monger (if its Sunday- must be time for Chinese), who filled us in on all the winter gossip…then hit the local KMART to buy him shoes. In a surreal moment, we were the only people in a this huge cavernous airplane hangar of a building…they built this shopping center twenty years ago as a regional hub- but no one goes there and the 10,000 parking spots sit like a decaying old airfield…
Monday we got back on the horse with our daily routines. Stu worked in the morning and then went to the Gym on the slope, where he was the only person in the whole facility (even the staff were somewhere else-maybe where the sun is shining?)…..then lunch with the Yentas at Java Baba’s, back home for a nap by the fire, and then on to Folk Club for pickin;’ and grinnin”…home for a late supper and watching the Cavs annihilate the Pacers. Jenn, meanwhile back at the ranch…spent the day making a five page project list and inspecting the upstairs rooms for potential bedding needs…
Speaking of Folk Club….we have two new young musicians who have started coming- a breath of fresh air to counteract the Evil Witch and her musings…..
And I Had a Dream…….Jen tells me I woke up at 3 in the morning , bolt upright in bed, bellowing and thrusting my jaw out. She thought I was having a heart attack….but indeed, was having a rather spectacular Technicolor dream in my child hood neighborhood…the same bullies who chased me over fifty years ago, were chasing me and had me cornered…and of course, I was sitting up to expose my fangs like I saw them do on True Blood…but they wouldn’t come out, and fortunately, I then woke up, thus avoiding another fatal conflict. Dr. Freud?
Since we like to keep lists (and cross them off, of course)…we had a variety of mountain firsts this week…..
First outing of the season- headed up north on Thursday to find a hike, and wound up on the best kept secret- The Interfaith Peace Trail, which is on the pass over the mountains outside Middlebury. They have a dozen or so trails, each one devoted to a spiritual path and posted with placards with inspirational ditties all along the way. It was our first part sunny and mild day, so we schlepped our way through four trails ..accumulating five miles, while Lucy did about 15 in- circles. We got the Christian, Native American, Druid and Buddhist enlightenment walks,…but could not find the Jews trail…but it was getting close to Shabbos, so maybe they were preparing…… We stopped on our way to the trail at the very vintage Ripton store- in the middle of nowhere on the mountain. They have a 1914 cash register, which I believe probably moved in with the gent who was tending it…built in 1870 with wooden floors and safety deposit boxes, to serve all the local needs…..After the hike, we headed down into Middlebury for a local date night dinner at a place run by the college..…waddling out an hour after for the sunset drive home through the mountains….we got home just in time for it to start raining again….
First music event in the mountains- Friday night we motored up Route 100 to Stockbridge to the mystical and eccentric Wild Fern to hear our beloved music leader, Claudine, in one of her many band iterations, with the father and son Shrewsberries. There were five tables in the tiny place and about fifty of us…so it was quite intimate. We took along all of our friends who are in the process of bitter divorces, so the ride there was quite uplifting. Everyone at the show was a musician –so there was a lot of chorus singing going on ,and a decent amount of air fiddling. All of the dinner we had was food sourced locally within five miles of the joint…and given how long it took to get our food, I think they sourced it as was ordered. All in all, a quite Vermont-centric experience.
We finished our week of firsts on Saturday with a trip to the first Rutland Farmers’ Market of the season (Lucy got humped eight times, so she had a ball), where the couple who run the Wild Fern, were providing music for the shoppers…..everyone in Vermont has a number of different gigs. We stopped for a while before the rain came back, at the West Rutland community wide Yard Sale and acquired some unneeded junk and some fine pastries and breakfast sandwiches…and generally got to mingle with the more traditional Vermont society (“we love the Trumpster”). Last night, it was so wet and cold, we plugged in the master bath Jacuzzi and hid in there for a bit, and then lit a fire in the Walter and Karen shrine room, and stared at the flames with the moonlight
After a somewhat mild day yesterday, it is now again raining and 45 degrees, so we hunkered in this morning for mother’s day breakfast and I relented to go over the 14 project lists that Jenn has running…and now have consolidated them into a tidy five lists of projects for this summer and fall. I, myself, am going to find some work to do and get traveling…to avoid at least some of the carnage. This afternoon we are heading up to Dartmouth, for a timely documentary on Race in America (can you say, Trump?) and then the traditional mother’s day dinner with the Indians (dots, not feathers).
Be well, enjoy the spring if you are lucky enough to have it, and stay in touch.
Ferlin’