Author: stumberry

Greeting and Salutations on this Sunday Morning:

“It takes a long time to understand nothing”…………………………………………………….Edward Dahlberg

“Words, like eyeglasses, blur everything that they do not make clear”…………….Joseph Joubert

“Mom please, there is no need
to put that dinner roll
in your pocketbook”…………………………………………………………………………..Haikus for Jews

The SUN is ALMOST shining…for the first time since we returned. Yesterday was our first rain-less day after ten straight days of rain and never cracking 50 degrees. It is cause for joy….and celebration in the mountains….people are dancing naked in the running streams… We spent last night with our loco Bostonites friends, John and Lydia, up the hill. It is good thing it is 90 seconds away to get home after the usual debauchery…which means Stu is feeling it this morning, and thus The Ramble needs to be in shorthand………Ramble Riffing…

• Mud season brings no joy to the local folks. Half of local restaurants are closed until late May, the rivers and streams are overflowing, there is NO green anywhere yet, the grass is starting to grow in earnest but too wet to cut….and everyone’s car (and soul) is filthy…

• The Jamaicans are back…last two Sundays have found small family work group next door….can siding or painting be far behind? (see photo)…..No crew….No Goats…

• Monday night is still Folk Club night….still three hours of 12 people sitting in a circle singing variations of Kumbaya…they seemed to welcome my standing/roaming/circling frenzied return with bluegrass and Springsteen in tow…..

• The Gym at the Spring house at Okemo Ski Resort is still my personal training facility…went twice this week and I was the only person in the building (see Mud Season above)…

• Yesterday was Vermont Green-Up day…where every town and village in the state has volunteers running around with big, big very green bags to clean up the roads and waterways…..Where else but Vermont where we have now outlawed plastic bags along with Styrofoam…..our small enclave turns out en masse and we find ourselves a few out of the way, no-traffic roads to make pristine so Lucy can help….she and Stu wander around making friends while the Queen of Mt. Holly labors up and down the roadways to fill the Big Grin bags to capacity… (she wins!)

• Speaking of Lucy, she has discovered Jenn’s hidden compost pile… and comes home with her face covered in leftovers and smelling like the Dump……

• Wednesday was my Birthday…having reached an age too obscene to put in print…..we woke up to rain, gray and cold…went back to bed until midafternoon when we had our first “Portal” call with Max (excellent device to capture the prodigal’s wandering style of phone calling)….we finally got dressed in time for the evening news.. and drove down the Route 30 corridor where a beautiful valley runs between two mountain chains…to the hamlet of Pawlet….and had dinner at the 250 year old Barn Restaurant….then drove back and went back to bed…Fait accompli…Next year please…

• Speaking of the Portal experience, we had our first calls with Bebe this week….and she loves it ….touching Nana and Papi’s faces on her screen and giggling to the effects you can put on(Carmen Miranda head dress, Blues Brothers hats and glasses)…what could be better than Nana and Papi in 3D looking like Bugs Bunny?….

• And…..we are less than two weeks away from our ten days with Quinn…..we are doing daily workouts to prepare ourselves for 2 year old duty…

• Spent a rainy Thursday afternoon making the post –workout drive down to the Country Girl Diner in Chester to see my friend Beverly, who has been feeding me lunch at Java Baba’s for the last three years. She has moved on to the Diner…which is a pretty drive…but a midafternoon haul…and no more Free Lunch…but Beverly, who texted me every Friday this winter to ask “how many more days?”…was quite excited…and well…it IS a DINER….

• I got to be the keynote speaker this week at the Vermont Youth Summit in our glorious state capital of Montpelier (can you say Gold Dome)…and was charged with rousing 150 people toward embracing juvenile justice reform in Vermont…it was a horrendous rainy drive up on the interstate…but serendipitous (who loves “spell-check”) drive back on the fave of faves…Vt. Route 100….got the full Monty of flooding rivers and streams since the road goes through all the valleys splitting the mountains …and saw all the new entrepreneurial activity on the way (none!)…..the training evaluations featured a host of comments that sounded like “we want more Stu”…which made the haul of a day worthwhile….but….has anyone ever had a decent plate conference lunch?

• Birthday Party Vermont style-we headed over though the mud over to the local studio-in-a- barn for Claudine’s birthday bash Friday night(she is the founder of Folk Club and the leader of Vermont legends Gypsy Reel band) and got to see all our cronies in one place…cavorted with Margaritas, Jenn’s pigs in blanket with very oversized pigs, and hours of music circle of fiddlers and such playing Irish Reels…had spotting of The Jewish Fish Monger, The Alleged Russian Spy, the Misplaced French Chef and his Yiddish Wannabe Bride…our social reintegration to the mountains….

• And then came the holy-dry Saturday morning…after our Green-Up chores in the morning, we came home to four hours of chain sawing all the dead tree and limbs in the mud (was a windy winter)..isn’t there a village road crew to do this?…hobbled in for a late afternoon rest period with foot soaking and quinine taking…and then up the hill for the periodic debauchery…which centered on the running of the Kentucky Derby- replete with mint juleps…this was my first ever Derby watching (24 hours of build-up for a two minute race??)..and I understand it was the most controversial in history…John proclaimed he will “never –ever watch the Derby again” after the winner was shamed and disqualified due to a foul….after hours of animated conversations ,we stumbled down the hill to bed…

And so, another Sunday, another week…time to get the motors of the yard running, reclaim our house plants fostered over the winter…and the Queen is eying the muddy garden as the day is allegedly going stay dry and we may be approaching 60…..tonight a trip to the beloved East…and then….. we do it all again…

One year older and deeper in debt………in the mountains….

Papi

“How long have I been waitin’ for you,
How long have you been on your way.
How long have I been waitin’ for you,
Only forever…yes forever and a day”……………………………………………………………………..Jonathan Edwards

“You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.”……………………………………….Pema Chodron

“The day is coming when a single original carrot will give birth to a revolution”……Paul Cezanne

“Left the door open
for the Prophet Elijah,
Now the cat is gone.”………………………………………………………………………………Haikus for Jews

Good Yontif fellow Wanderers:

Have you been monitoring your Sunday calendars? Counting the days? Ant….tici…pa…tion…….Well….it’s time. Am going to do my best to keep this on this short (doubtful) intro side, since the Queen of Mt. Holly has begun excavating our buried-for-the winter treasures from the basement…and is probably wondering where I am hiding ….but…here we go…

Little Darlin’…its ben a long and lonely winter….cold and wet in the heartland and many delayed and cancelled work trips (who in their right mind takes on a project in St. Paul in the winter?). We did get off to see the prodigal in Paradise (SD) in January and then to annual Keys pilgrimage in March. The Bunty Band played every week this winter with our ridiculously ambitious project to recreate, note by note, the Byrds seminal 1968 Sweetheart of the Rodeo album…to honor the 50th anniversary of its groundbreaking release…..it’s been quite the challenge, and we will be performing it and studio recording in August here in the Greens (3rd annual summer band-visit extravaganza). Jenn did Yoga fourteen times a week all winter and developed a new set of codger cronies at the nearby ecological center.

But….what got us through the winter (and will be keeping us as snowbirds to Ohio) is the two grand babies. We lunched with little Sloane (heretofore spoke of a “Bebe”) and her parents (that would be Tess and Jake) _ every Sunday and got to baby sit and gather many times. We watched Bebe grow from a veritable bump on a log to a six month work of nature. As we left, she had begun to eat food other than mother’s milk- which is quite the adventure in naked debauchery. Missing the next three months of her rapid aging has made the mountain return bittersweet….she may be dating by the time we see her again in July.

We also made near monthly trips and holiday get togethers with our older granddaughter, sweet and precocious Quinnly, who is the trip to end all trips. She will be two in a few weeks and has recently focused her impressive language skills on two words at the moment..…No….and Myself….as in when you are trying to help her put the little boot on the right foot ,and she pushes you away with “No…Myself”…..we are going to have the amazing privilege of having her here with us in the mountains for ten days in May while Ry and Lauren go off to Greece…which will be incredibly exciting and adventurous….and may require a visit to the rehab center for both of us once she goes home.

And …now… we are back in the saddle…arrived mid-day Friday to a high of 38 and snow flurries…apparently skipping Spring altogether here…and have spent the last 48 hours trying to find everything we hid away from the mice and bears. Going pretty well….we have heat (and need it), water, internet, TV and phones….so not complaining …as I sit and type this missive wearing hat, coat and gloves….while Jenn hangs out in the warm basement….…

We did a quick shopping trip to town yesterday, visiting the usual haunts (can you say Ramuntos Pizza?). Stopped at the post office in search of our first lost Amazon delivery of the season (they can’t find us on our mountain dirt road)..and then on to the Dump, where Lucy went berserk with garbage-joy- and where Stu received the gift of a winter parka from Kevin the Walrus Dump Master from his Belmont trading shack. Did I mention that we unloaded our cars in cold , pouring rain for hours…and that I failed to bring any form of winter wear with me (I do have my snorkel gear though, pending my new work assignment in the Caribbean…but more on that in a later missive).

So… I’ll close with a travel anecdote and a survey: Every year we have some unbelievable last minute adventure getting back here (exploding shaving cream, no keys for our house here with us, etc.)-but this year our journey went exceedingly well with no mishaps….until…we reach our overnight stay in lovely Binghamton, NY at the nice little Residence Inn we usually stay at. If you’ve stayed at this Marriott chain, you know they have a nice kitchen for longer term stays. So….as we are unpacking, Jenn brings in our small cooler, and rather than unpack into the refrigerator, she takes out a shelf and puts in the whole cooler …and… places the solid glass – encased- in- plastic rim shelf on the top the black glass- top electric stove (yeah, yeah…I’m getting to it). She then takes Lucy for a walk and I decide to boil us some tea water (foreshadowing?), and place the pot of water on what appears to me to be a special stove top covering . While I then am waiting for the water to boil and e- mailings the Nave to let him know we had avoided any travel- drama, I smell smoke and the plastic casing around the glass fridge shelf that- has been placed on top of the stove…is up in major flames. I keep my wits about me and douse it with the pot of water…which immediately explodes the entire glass shelf into flying shrapnel across the entire suite.

Once I emerge from under the kitchen table and Jen returns, we begin the laborious two hour process of picking up a thousand shards of glass and then making a trip to Walmart to buy scrubbers and scrapers to get the melted plastic off the expensive and brand new stove.

But, really it was a drama –free trip………………………….

So…here is the survey question. Remember the Saturday Night Live routine that posed the question “Qui es moy macho”?….Fernando Lamas or Riccardo Montalban? So I’d like to pose the new question….Qui es moy loco?…….

Queen Jennifah- for putting a glass shelf on top of the stove and not mentioning it…or…

Estuardo…for deciding that this was special stove covering and then boiling water on top of a glass shelf

Choose one only…and good luck with this contest.

Time to get off to the basement and prepare to have our first socialization- going to a 21st birthday party tonight for our sometime yard-boy, Ian…

But.. there will be more…you can count on it.

Love and kisses,

Estuardo