Author: stumberry

Yo Peeps:

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live”…………………………………………………………….Jonathan Safran Foer

“Jewish voodoo tip-

mention an acting career,

then watch for chest pain”…………………………Haikus for Jews

Bada- dada…….Bada-dada……Bada-dada………dada – (you have to hum it yourself to get the right impact)

 

Lots doing in the mountains this week….still raining every 2^nd or 3^rd day in our new global warming era…but when not, have hit the daily 75 and sunny regime…….Can the Donald pardon himself?

Sunday drive last week over to Poultney through the rolling hills on western side of state….hit another roadside attraction in the form of Otto’s Cone Point General Store (check out the signage)  for their weekly music on the patio (in the shade of) major Route 30 (well, major for Vermont, anyway). Gorgeous day, greening up everywhere you look…and fine Maple Cremees for a buck …even Lucy had her own bowl

THE POND– has reached a new peek clarity…we can see the bottom everywhere and now thinking about a variety of contraptions to hide the pump setup (a pond’s work is never finished)..…miracle of miracles – came home one afternoon to find Jennifer floating in the pond (facing up and alive)…her first venture into the abyss in five years-which we repeated a second time later in the week

After eight weeks of almost daily rain, we finally got out with the kayaks- up to Nineveh- for a float. The greeter- tent man there had to inspect the kayaks, to see if our scum had come with it…but we passed   inspection (thanks to the sagely Trout King) and spent a few hours lazily paddling through the mountains, while Jen  made poor little Lucy swim most of the way- lots of work for those little legs (she then slept for ten straight hours)

Came home to tackle the damn apple tree that hangs over the pond, before it starts dropping a 100 apples a day into our pristine ecosystem…five sweaty hours later…and voila…..no more overhanging limbs, and two exhausted older adults

Midweek, I had my promised escape to the Marriott, spending the night up at White River Junction (this is really a place) to be close to Barnard and Silver Lake State Park for all -day Governor’s Family Council retreat the next day. The hotel is right across form the states only VA hospital…so it was me and a hundred deranged Vietnam Vets seeking out the smell of napalm in the morning…on the other hand, I had absolutely no fears of any kind of attack there, as they all seemed to be packing a little something and were out at all hours patrolling the perimeter…

On the way home, I gave a ride to a council member- who spent the two hours tearfully telling me her story of a child they lost. It was quite moving and I was glad to listen, but then we had the classic Vermont road experience of driving 20 miles down route 100A to within 100 feet of route 100 to get home…and having the road blocked off, when we could see the turn a mere hop, skip and jump away….so had to drive back and around…adding an extra hour to the trip (we don’t need no stinking road closed signs around here)…which maybe was a bit too much weeping for me…..

We have three massive fuel oil tanks in the basement-none of which has a readable gauge, so I thought we should get one filled up, so we have heat in the fall…..in Vermont, not always so easily done. Turns out the green-minded legislature had passed a new law that all tanks have to be inspected before any more oil can be delivered. So they came out and, of course, found our two ancient connected tanks, to be quite the pieces of decaying shit…so no oil until we remove, destroy or fix them. BUT, we have a third tank that looks much newer but is not hooked up to anything (have I mentioned we also have 48 circuit breakers?…power in numbers, I believe is the concept). So, now we are on the hunt to try and find out from our benefactress, Karen, what the story is with the big red tank…so maybe we can have them take us to cleaners to get that one hooked up…and then maybe we can have some oil…and then maybe we will have heat eventually……

Speaking or our projects….Jenn has now configured some kid of scaffolding system so she got the stairwell walls painted…..so the last part of that (staining and putting down the treads) can move forward. This will be just in time for the upstairs carpet to be put in, to start on the barn roof, re-finish the kitchen floor and electrify the outbuildings……I have lots of Marriott nights booked in August….and then, we are now having to talk about fuel oil tanks…AND just to add a cherry on top, Jenn has resumed her “time to buy a pickup” mantra….which led me to stop the car in the middle of Route 103 and start walking to Rutland….

Our week took a turn towards the cultural with Friday night at the Weston Playhouse to see “Lost in Yonkers”…very Jewish- angst Neil Simon, but quite well done and a fine experience, outside of my shouting match with a local blue haired biddy over whether I could park on red stones (I lost)…packed opening night at the Playhouse which is good to see, plus we are usually the youngest people there, which is GREAT to see….Then last night, we went to Stratton Ski Mountain to see the legendary Preservation Hall Jazz Band straight from my beloved N’Awlins (father’s day gift from Tess and Jake, bless their hearts). Big, big tent and I got to hang outside with the jazzmen as they were getting ready to take the stage. With the six of them, they tripled the color apparent in the audience.. though typical of NOLA, they presented all kinds of mixed shades of mulatto colors…which is probably why they were allowed to enter the state (are they really black?)…consummate musicians…..

And amongst the highlights of this week , we watched as much as could take (actually Jenn slept , while I howled) of The Trailer Park Boys at the North Pole…this is priceless hi-brow entertainment-can you dig it?

So- now we are getting ready  for our first dinner party of the summer tonight…for which Jenn has a six page house cleaning list…plus there is always THE POND I may suddenly need to attend to……

We are off to the heartland for our mid-summer visit this week and gone for ten days…with any luck the squirrels have found a better hotel deal this year…So- no Blog next week and who knows for the week after. Will you miss me? How about each of you send me YOUR BLOG next Sunday instead…can you dig it?

Happy mid-summer dreams to all…and to all a good night….ho…ho….ho…………………………….

Monsieur Stuard

Happy mid-July to all:

“With your chrome heart shinin’ in the sun…..long may you run”…………………………..Neil Young

“ Sorry I’m not home

to take your call. At the tone

please state your bad news”……………………………………………………….Haikus for Jews

 

It’s been a quiet week in the mountains. The grass has been growin’, the flowers have been bloomin’, the frogs have been froggin’, the birds have been chirpin’…and not a lot much else has gone on.

The week started with our annual Mt. Holly Daze cookout at milfoil- filled Star Lake (the town spent several billion last year to reclaim it, but have been foiled by the milfoil- whatever that is). Potluck, grilled dead meat, lounging in the grass in the midday sun with our neighbors and sort -of friends. Lots of spilled food- so a real bonanza for little Lucy.

THE POND has reached a next level of clarity…..seeking it’s spot in Better Homes and Gardens…..after a mere: 2000 packets of bacteria dumped in, an entire colony of crayfish nibbling the undergrowth, 650 barrels of algae removed via kitchen strainer and the various floatation devices spouting water at all hours of the day and night. And….I came home from town on Wednesday afternoon, to the startling site of Jenn floating around in the pond in one of our gifted deluxe floating rafts….her first time entering the sludge in five years, which so startled Lucy, that she was running around the entire pond in non-stop circles to try and figure out what had befallen poor Jenn….

And…have I mentioned our home improvement projects lately?……well we now have new countertops sprawled through the house and painted walls going up the stairs and into the upper hallway, AND, significant progress on her 3 month long journey to replace the stairway carpet with some kind of tread system……and soon the new upstairs carpet is coming , to be scheduled in with the sixteen remaining summer projects on the forewoman’s list….. you’ll be glad to know I have found a Marriott up at White River Junction that apparently needs my attention this week……..

So, I made my yearly trek this week  to see the medicine woman who provides “integrated positional therapy” (this is for real and you can only imagine) in the little schoolhouse in the woods that takes nine dirt roads to get to…and now am semi-healed until I get back to Ohio to visit with the beloved Shaman – whence we make our mid-summer visit…only in Vermont…..

Midweek found us at the first show of the season at the Weston Playhouse…a stunning reproduction of the play/film “Once”…fourteen very talented musicians on the tiny stage replicating a pub in Olde Dublin (Ireland, not Ohio)…..we are constantly amazed at the quality of these productions and that it takes us 17 minutes of driving down through the mountains with nary another car in site…we have now seen “Once” twice…..and this all for the “Vermonter” price of 25 bucks a ticket for center floor seats…..so, what’s not to like?

The rest of the week was consumed with dinner preparations. On Friday, we had our friend, Linda, over for supper. She is a delightfully funny little woman who is some kind of consultant, working for a company out of Boston, that is spreading some kind of scheme to cure cancer via the use of various non-toxic poultices (or something like that, I think). She and her husband, Phillippe, have finally semi- relocated from Arkansas (really) and looking to become full time mountaineers. In the interim, she is living here, while Phillippe, who is a Parisian born chef, has found a head chef seasonal job at some fancy yacht club up in the Bermuda triangle hinterlands, south of Burlington (which, you may remember is almost like being in Vermont). Phillipe is a very desirable catch in the Vermont foodie obsessed culture as he sounds distinctly like Maurice Chevalier, which in and of itself, raises a four star establishment to an automatic five star….

And then last night we had our fist overnight personal guests; a friend of Jenn’s from her wok in Marysville and his girlfriend, a music director for Delaware city schools (who very closely sounded like and resembled Georgeanne from the Mary Tyler Moore show). Jenn outdid herself with a locally-grown, organic, grass-fed, non-toxic, anti-bulimic, free-range, did I say organic?….and tasty meal…followed up with key lime pie made with a base of avocado and crust of figs and nuts……I later snuck to the fridge for ice cream..…nice folks, nice visit, short and gone, the way we  like it (not of course, if you are the ones coming)

So- that’s it for the quiet week…..much, much more action due this week…..in the meantime- a short test, if you will. If you have made it this far in reading this weeks’ musings, then maybe you would let me know. I get very little response for the weekly nuances, so once in a while get to wondering if anybody besides Jenn, Max and the Nave are reading this..…this is your chance to be counted amongst the loyal reader base and be entered into a contest to have a free subscription for life……..…But Wait………………………

 

Insha allah……Stubert

Greetings fellow Patriots:

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself”…..Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The wily red fox-

at temple, I spy it paws

lurking in a stole”……………………………………..Haikus for Jews

 

The bear has gone…along with all our bird feeders…replaced by a large box turtle that I almost mowed over on the tractor last weekend…40 minutes crossing the yard for 30 feet, and oblivious to my mowing and to Lucy’s frantic barking and jumping…does he know his giant brother lives in the pond?

Speaking of THE POND…knock on stripped project walls…it remains clean and flowing (waiting for bathers) and now the lily pads have started to return to the surface above where Jenn buried them on a ledge when the whole thing was totally empty last fall…..it’s like a wild life sanctuary in there…

And this week, the yard and the surrounding mountains, have begun their free fall of summer color…flowers sprouting their beauty left and right…alas to last only a short time…have I mentioned that summer in the mountains lasts about two weeks?

We had wonderful Indian guests (dots, not feathers) last weekend. I can’t remember their names but they all began with a consonant. In preparation for their arrival, I put on a sari and placed a rainbow dot in the middle of my forehead..…but Jenn made me take them off….. even though I was right and the mother of the young couple showed up with both the dress and the dot (who knows his guests?). They did not eat out for three days (mama had cooked up a storm), and our house still is filled with the aromas of week old Indian food. And..…they had lived for many years in Columbus, the young man at Ohio State (I.T.-duh) and the parents running a 7-11 at 270 and 33 (double duh)…so we had a lot in common….plus they had some serious misgivings about The Donald…..obviously, we liked them, despite the olfactory overload…

Another fourth of July in Mt. Holly…and thus another masterful edition of THE PARADE in out tiny village of Belmont. Jenn is now the Queen of the Community Association, so she spent days building the float and all morning preparing for the 11 am rave up….which, as usual, lasted about six minutes…..mostly with farm animals (free range, of course) and fire trucks. See Jenn in her Zen- in the parade pix…that’s my Queen….

One thing about the Belmont parade…more dogs than people, so Lucy had a wonderful Fourth…replete with post parade drive over to Castleton way to Roxy’s Famous (they really are) Fries for a little patriotic lunch…lots of scraps of fries spilled on the floor from the gallon containers they sell (cholesterol free)…plus she gets to share my baby Creamee cone…which makes Jenn foam at the mouth. Roxy’s is her favorite place, aside from Walmart, where she is greeted each Saturday like the mother of dragons (what is coming back next week?). The store folk all know her now, and the customers beam as she waltzes by in some sort of heaven with all the offerings at her nose level on the bottom shelves..…my take is she makes their day for about 80% of the shoppers…and 20% would like to take her out and shoot her…especially when she barks at the stuffed dogs

And by the way, how about Twin Peaks (the Return). Has there ever been a more twisted and bizarre show on the tube? What would it be like to have dinner with David Lynch?

This week was the start of the summer Music on the Green in Belmont, so we packed a picnic and headed off to see local legends Gypsy Reel on Thursday. Have I mentioned that the legendary Bunty Station boys are making the cross country trek in late August to appear here on The Green in concert? For real, the lord willing and the creek….

And finally (you probably reached that point three paragraphs and twenty minutes ago)….The Projects (please someone, hire me, so I can travel somewhere to stay in a Marriott for a week!!!)…the countertops are coming, and carpet being ordered. the steps are being stripped of their glued down carpet two at a time, and then sanded …..soon to be stained, painted and little wooly mammoth runners put on…..then there is the paint job for the stairwell and upper hallway…then the kitchen floors, the roof repairs and maybe digging out one whole wall along the basement….I say my prayers at night but salvation does not appear to be on the way any time soon…………but, then, who knows……we could get flooded and just wash away….

Love from the reluctant helper….and enjoy your longish summer,

 

Stu

Happy Freedom Day….can we have Freedom and Donald at the same time?………………………………..Zen question

“Let go, or be dragged.”……………………………………..Zen Proverb

“The curved greenish twig

is a snake! Time to go back

to our hotel room”…………………………………..Haikus for Jews

 

Short week…Rain, rain and more rain. We were filling Noah’s Ark last night after 6 torrential thunderstorms…..the porch s leaking, the barn is soaked, we have our first ever standing water….and THE POND is flowing and celebrating..…flash floods throughout the state and the mountains are dripping at every crevice…..the stream that has the bridge that gets you to our house is looking like Hoover Dam-see the pix…we may be stranded soon if this keeps up

Left town for three days to get some distance from the house projects…went to N’awlins…..worked, walked, ate, listened….hotter than hell….came back to many more deliveries from Amazon and a spate of new home improvements…looking for another Marriott escape soon

THE POND may be cleanest ever….knock, knock, knock  on wood……even starting to pull up weed- swamp grasses around the edges….water movement, crayfish, bacteria…the magic formula?

Hydroplaned down to Rutland last night for a feast at the beloved East…after the Jewish fish monger came over to help me put a new deck belt on the tractor after Jenn snapped the last one in a million pieces with her enthusiastic ZEN mowing practice….how many urban Jewish kids does it take to put on a tractor belt?

No Bear visit this week…but I think they may be taking up residence next door, where the property is returning to its primordial state since the new owners have not been here since they bought the place…you may need machetes to hack your way up to our house when you come…

That’s it…what is there to say….the mountains are wet…..and GREEN….and there is music in the air………Yahoo…..

 

Stu-Man

“The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless”……Alan Watts

“Tea ceremony-

steam, incense, lacquered bamboo.

Try the cheese Danish.”………………………………………………..Haikus for Jews

 

Greetings fellow seekers:

See the endless Green….everywhere is GREEN…summer has arrived in the mountains and it is lush with flowers, fauna and black flies…..75 and sunny with nights in the high 40s…G_D time in Vermont

And THE POND…after three master kitchen strainer skims, two bacteria treatments, 50 crawfish, three little worthless solar fountains and…and the spouting pump…it is clear as a bell…swim-time anyone?

Overall, quite a busy week with the home beautification projects in full swing. Came back from Europe to a house of construction. Jenn has her six page list of projects and determined to get them underway…..kitchen wallpaper stripped and walls painted, side of house and barn scraped and painted by our new best man, Yanu (per the usual mountain repair men, Yanu shows up and leaves at unpredictable times, and takes regular Wi-Fi breaks since he has no service elsewhere), new kitchen countertops measured and ordered, and more painting, fixing and flooring underway. We have the daily review of the project list as well as planned projects for the next six years…all of which tells me it is time for me to head out of town very soon…need a Marriott for quiet, rest and contemplation….

Which led us on a foraging trip to Home Depot (successful) and Bed, Bath and Beyond (not so much)- where we had a 20% off coupon that Jenn was determined to use. I wandered around but could not find anything that wasn’t a lot cheaper at Walmart, even with the 20%…..and then lost Jenn…..who I found rolling around the floor in the bedding section….took a half nelson or two for me to manually drag her out of there, with bedding swatches stuck in her teeth.

After one more day of torrential rain last weekend, Sunday turned nice for Dad’s day- so we took me on a hunt for some color…ranging up to Dartmouth to a quirky art house movie and dinner with the Indian folk. Just to make sure we were not wandering too far from the Vermont truth, we took a gorgeous twilight drive down Route 5 and the Connecticut River, stopping at the Windsor Snack Bar for Maple Creamees (see Jenn excited)

Tuesday we made the afternoon an outing with trip up to Woodstock and four mile jaunt up to Mt. Tom- perfect hiking day and magnificent view of one of New England’s most “picture-perfect” villages from the top (how many steeples can one town have?). No one else on the trail- so Lucy had free run and and got in her sixteen circular miles to our four. We got back in time to take up a last minute dinner and drinks invite from our friends John and Lydia, who live at the top of the hill once in a blue moon (these are wild folk from the Boston hub of the Irish) and spent an evening of unmitigated  laughter and debauchery..…crawling back down the mountain at midnight. Luckily, they only show up periodically or we would be in trouble.

But wait….the REALLY BIG news of the week, was an addition to our mountain household. For three straight nights this week, we have entertained (not willingly) a Big –Ass Black Bear, who has tromped through the gardens, shit all over the yard and  destroyed two very large bird feeders (bending a ten foot steel pole in half….see the pictures…this is for real) and causing general havoc in the middle of the night. When he passes in the shadows, Lucy gets the scent of a lifetime and goes nuts, running around the house howling and lunging at the windows…and momentarily  later, Jenn follows suit, running to the doors and shouting “You go…You go now”) I’m  wondering how many times a bear shits in one sitting? We are now forced for the time being to take Lucy out on a leash at night- so she does not become Bear fixins.

Yesterday was another beautiful hot day, so we headed out early for town and the Dump, the post office/general store (Breakfast sandwiches) and down to the hamlet of Castleton and Lake Bomoseen for the annual town wide garage sale. There is a big beautiful boulevard running through the middle of Castleton with graceful old manse-houses on both sides and a small 100 year old college right in town (even has a diner!). There is an old rail station that still has passenger trains and some cute cafes. And, Lake Bomoseen is a beauty- surrounded by mountains with gently lolling waters in a visual panorama of splendor (did I really say that?). But still…when it comes down to it…people’s junk is people’s junk…though it didn’t stop us from buying some assorted shit we don’t need.

So…time to go…my young yard-boy, Seamus, has arrived…to assist with picking up the 17 pounds of bear turd…and are we really glad to see him? He just graduated (since last summer has grown four inches, inherited a car, a goatee and an Afro…and has a girlfriend) and has been too busy with school and such to come over until now, which has led us to less desirable yard-boy performance options. Seamus is the closest thing to THE Marcus that there is…..so work to do, projects to review, places to go, mountains to climb….and the is always more bedding to consider…..

Off to New Orleans this week for some heat, work and gumbo…but see you soon.

 

Stu-Bert