Category: Green Mountain Blog

Bonjourno:

“It is June. I am tired of being brave.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………….Anne Sexton

“May my heart be kind, my mind fierce and my spirit brave”……………………………………………………………….Kate Forsyth

“I’m Hangry!!!!!!!!!”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Berry Family vacation mantra between meals

“Beyond Valium,
Peace is knowing one’s child
Is an internist.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Haikus for Jews

We hear from our friends that it has been sultry and steamy in the Midwest and down East this week, but it’s mainly been a steady mid 70s in the Greens- rainy and cold early in the week and very nice last 4-5 days….but Monday is a scheduled high of 49 degrees….go figure. The wet/cold to warm/sunny has produced the desired greening effect and all is now in full bloom across the valleys and foothills and the snow is gone from the ridges…well, hell, it is June.

This has all led to a burst in gardening activity- often from dawn to dusk- for our master gardener. Plants, mulch and assorted yard tchotchkes have become our bread and butter. Apparently ,we are signed up once again for the Mt. Holly Annual Garden Tour, which will lead to a frenzy in July ….culminating with a host of gabardine clad folk traipsing across our property with cameras and comments. We also had to mow and trim twice this week- what is up with that….maybe there can be too much Green?

The new dishwasher is now in and and running after our experiment in learning hard-wiring…only resulted in several minor jolts…none requiring the defibrillator….

It was a pretty slow week, overall, with the only things moving pretty much the grass…while we hung about and considered home improvements, pickup trucks, garden tools and baskets and what to eat three time a day that does not have carbs or sugars… I think chocolate counts ok?

We went out to The Chop House in Ludlow for the early bird dinner special, which has a very giant salad bar that is very nice…but the real treat was that the mains came with either rice pilaf or garlic mashed….oh man, oh man….how good is that shit?

And, we went to dinner mid-week at our friends’ Beverly and Rick’s down in Chester. They are my mama and papa folks who feed me three times a week at Java Babas for my post gym lunch (limited these days to small plates of vegetables and scoops of meat salad). We drank too much and we certainly ate too much, ending with key lime pie and chocolate cake…which led to ‘Jen passing out on the way home from sudden toxic carb/sugar overload. I was fine but gaily stayed up until four in the morning, prowling the house in search of projects to accomplish (let me just rewire that dishwasher). We were early for dinner so took a short drive into Chester, where we hit a stalled traffic construction zone (really) and so headed north up some dirt road. This led us to an area we had not seen before, which appeared to be primarily inhabited by some brand of survivalists (one house boasted eight cameras in blood red Charles Manson writing on the barn). We did not get lost and made it to dinner on time.

Friday, our first guest of the Airbnb season arrived…a nice woman computer nerd from Boston visiting her son for parent weekend at our local neighborhood treatment center. Which led us to genuinely clean the house for the first time this year, since we have been mostly living in three rooms. Since we have to appear to be straight out of better homes and gardens, this required a full day of cleansing and hosing…. which I guess gives us more rooms now to hang out in and consider carbs. Our guest coming seemed to throw us off schedule kilter, and we were up and ready to go at six am on Saturday morning. So, we headed up the next mountain to Shrewsbury to make out annual pilgrimage to the Throne of the Trout King. The King now has 28 trout ponds and three buildings of holding tanks. We had been trying to pin him down for weeks to get our Pond Bacteria in before I have to get out in the kayak with my strainer…..but he is quite busy and pretty wired to boot. Check out the pond foxes at his estate…and harken whilst he regales us with a half hour of enchantment on his pending colonoscopy. This is what I’m talking about when I mention the fun times in the mountains.

We also came home with a bucket of crawfish and 20 brown trout…so Ya’ll are welcome to come up and fish and have us a N’Awlins boil……that is, if the 40 year old snapping turtle (who reappeared last week) does not eat them all first…

After the Tout King extravaganza, and the fish deposited back in our lovely Pond….we drove down to Rutland for farmers’ market day. The Market is back in full swing…and many of the vendors were thrilled to see their friend, Lucy, again…..who thinks this is the best place in the world, with dogs of every size and persuasion and scraps of food under all the market stalls…..and then she gets to go to her second favorite place, the next door Walmart, to sniff out the bottom shelves and make the yellow vested staff’s days…never knew a dog who loves shopping as much as she does. Loaded down with a trunk full of yet more plants, we returned home to more planting and more searching the fridge for something sugar free to eat…

And that is all she wrote….Dear John…I’ll send your saddle home…

Go Cavs….happy June….take a whiff….

Stu-ber

Happy Memorial Day weekend to all, and humblest thanks to those who have given their lives for our freedom:

“I am anti- war, not anti-warrior”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Bernie Sanders

“America will not be cheated any longer, and especially will not be cheated by foreign countries charging people much lower prices for medicines”………………………..Donald Trump

“People who live in glass houses should not throw stones”……………………………………………………………………..Geoffrey Chaucer

“What I am, I am: and let it be enough”……………………………………………………………………………………………………..D.H. Lawrence

“Jews on safari —
Map, compass, elephant gun,
Hard sucking candies.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Haikus for Jews

Ah, life in the mountains. Yesterday was a hot and sticky mid to high 80s-summr in blooming….this morning is in the mid 40s and going to just crack 50 later….ya just never know.

This week was a sad week for us. After months of downward spiral, injections and forced pill taking, we had to put our beloved old kitty, Niko, to sleep. She had quit eating and was basically living under the bed. Once a robust 15 pounds, she was down to five and half. So, we took her on Wednesday, and had her put gently to the next kitty world. The house feels a lot emptier without her prowling around, talking nonstop to us. Niko was originally Jenn’s mom’s cat, but we have had her since she passed ten years ago, and it always felt like a little bit of grandma Pat was with us in the house. A very sad moment, as we hovered over her on the table, dripping tears down, as she drifted off to sleep. She was one of a kind.

But it wasn’t all sad, as life rarely is.

I am in the process of having the full Monte Vermont medical experience. Having had some pretty debilitating muscle and joint problems for several months, and not finding an exact reason, have been exploring some alternatives to try and deal with it, apart from taking steroids and walking around in a perpetual state of road rage. This has led to some interesting experiences. I found an eccentric doctor with non-traditional methods at Dartmouth, who I spoke with several times this week. Let’s just say the man is precise and quite unequivocal in his view of his own magical cures. When dealing with him, it feels very much like talking to Frazier’s’ bother, Niles , on the old TV show, if you know what I mean. I cannot get in to see him for three months (apparently quite the demand for the magic bullet), but he emphasized (at least five times) that I have “express, consent permissions” (he really said that) to call him daily to see if he has had a cancellation. This may be quite an experience . I also have at least six different mountain folks offering to make me potions guaranteed to rid my joints of all toxins…and our friend, Linda, made a trip down from the lake, to offer her healing in the form of a large suitcase filled with some kind of hydro-electric, ultrasonic, photon-enhanced electronic device with wands that light up blue (like in Star Wars) that you wave around your body parts for ten minutes and ostensibly clears out all the bad juju. Once we warmed up the device, I immediately got a jolt of electric shock for unknown reasons before having the wand miracle for the allotted ten minutes. All of this to be able to get out of bed a little easier in the morning……

As a result of the joint issues, I sometimes cannot find a comfortable sleep position, and one night this week, after lots of tossing and turning, headed off to one of the other bedrooms to try and sleep without mowing Jenn or Lucy down. I went to one of the small dark bedrooms and snuggled in for few hours of sleep, only to wake to find I had been lying in a vast pile of mouse turds that had been gifted over the winter. Apparently, we had not gotten to cleaning out this room yet. Jenn was horrified….but I wondered if there was not some possible healing component to this?

Thursday, we had young Ian over to work with us on some outdoor projects. Ian is the son of our friends John and Linda, and maybe gets a bit fuzzy at times from a slight overuse of psycho active substances. Initially, he showed up the day before for his Thursday appointment time, and then, once here, fought with our old weed Wacker for about an hour to get it started. I had left him to it and was in the house finishing a work project, and could hear him screaming at the machine, so went out to check and found him circling it and periodically kicking at it, while lashing out with various creative epithets. I gave him some Gatorade and got the machine started for him, which seemed to go well until he ran out of line, and shut it down to re-string it. At which point, the screaming and pacing began again. I again went out to assist and coach him to get it started without beating it to a pulp, which he did, and went out to resume whacking, which seemed to be going very poorly. So I again went out to help him and found that he had no string line on the whacker to make it work, which he had apparently forgotten was why he had had shut it off in the first place. Ian is a nice kid, but good help is hard to find in the mountains.

While he was in mortal struggle with the Wacker, I managed to get out the chainsaw and cut down and cut up a tree…mountain work is never done…..

Wednesday night, after putting Niko down, we were blessed to have the Jewish Fish Monger offer to have us come over and watch the Cavs- Celtics game 5 with him and have him feed us. So- went over to his classic bachelor shack (we cleared the couch of piles of dirty clothes to sit down) and had a totally Yiddish inspired version of Italian food and then had to endure his whooping as the Celtics trounced the Cavs. It was a good distraction and only required four or five Tums apiece after the ethnically challenged meal.

Thursday night, we continued our mission at home- remedying our broken dishwasher. We went to Home Depot in Rutland after talking them into giving us 10% off the already drastically reduced sale price on a new Whirlpool- so that we would not have to make the dark of night, sneak-over drive to the hated New Hampshire….. just to save the sales tax. The HD manager was slightly incredulous at our request, but probably thought we were so strange that he agreed to the “tax abatement” discount. So we now have all out supplies to hard wire the dishwasher; including a special medical kit for mid-level electrical shock treatment. After an hour in Home Depot, we were so exhausted, we had to go to have Chinese at our beloved East.

So…back from a break from my early morning Sunday scribbling- after a short trip down to the lovely town of Wallingford for their annual town wide yard sale day. We had no needs per se- but still came back with a car filled with other people’s junk, to add to our own junk ….including some kind of early-Americana schlock, painted wood liquor cabinet, that is now searching for a home. It is truly amazing the shit that people collect, and then sell to other people to collect and then sell, etc., etc., ad nauseum….

And then…yesterday the JFM and I had made an all-day drive down to Boston to see the Sox play at Fenway. He got second row field box tickets for free from one of his fish guzzling customers, so we set off early in the morning for the 3 hour plus drive down to his hometown of Newton, where we parked and took the T (short for “train?) down to the city. But first, we had to make quick stop at Barry’s Village Deli (his boyhood haunt) to pick up $100 worth of deli sandwiches, which we initially consumed sitting on the floor of the packed train to the delight of our fellow travelers who stood all around us smelling the air to figure out what in the hell was happening in that train car. The stadium seats were incredible (and cushioned), it was incredibly hot and muggy, and the Sox won big. The crowd was delirious and we saw a couple of balls pounded off the famous Green Monster. Steve had four tickets so he invited two old rock and roll playing friends to meet us ….brothers Johnny and Vince from the Boston North end classic Italian gene pool. The guys vaped their way (not tobacco) through the whole game and kept a nonstop dialog going for three hours…..Goodfellas, good fun. On the trip back we stopped at a roadside park to have part two of the deli deluxe, with corned beef, pastrami, brisket, sour tomatoes, pickles, cole slaw, rugalach (you get the picture), sitting on a park bench at sunset while the mosquitoes had an orgasmic frenzy over both us and Barry’s Deli. As part of my herbal recovery, Jenn had had us trying to not consume carbs or sugar, which I had done very well on for a week (losing an amazing 7 pounds)…and which was more than reversed with yesterday’s eating frenzy (totally worth it).

Jenn, meanwhile volunteered for another community supper at the Oddfellows hall, and came back with 14 pounds of leftover baked ham…which is probably dead on for the caveman diet….

And now, my friends, I do believe it is nap time on bleak Sunday afternoon.

Be well, try to love one another right now, right now, right now…..

RIP…..Niko-Niko………………………

Ferlin’ Stu-Man

Guten Tagin:

“I was lying in a burned out basement, with a full moon in my eyes
I was hoping for replacement, when the sun burst through the sky”………………………………………………………………….Neil Young

“When I die, I wanna go out like my granddad did. Passed out in his sleep…not like the other screaming passengers in the car”……………………..Willie Nelson

“The sparkling blue sea
Reminds me to wait an hour
After my sandwich.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Haikus for Jews

Spring has definitely sprung in the mountains, though it is still pretty cool-had a night in the 20s this week….and pretty rainy. Not much has happened this week, aside from the greening of the Greens, so thought I would try to do some choice updates and leave it at that…plus…well, you have to wait…

The trees….are all green and blossomed overnight this week

THE POND- is full and spouting water from the fountain twice a day for several hours….none of our trout farm citizens seem to be apparent after the winter…no carcasses… where did they go?

Baby Quinn turned one year old and ate cake…with Nanna Jenn in attendance

Jenn got back Tuesday from five days cavorting in Cleveland….and has been buried somewhere out in the garden ever since …I believe currently lying under two yards of mulch

Tess and Jake are closing on their new house in a few weeks and have sold their current one…movin’ on up

Max is closing on his new and first house, in Paradise, also in few weeks…..movin’ to the other side of the tracks

Tess had a slight fall up (not down) this week on the basement stairs….and hurt her finger, but the baby did not come out

The CAVS remain alive after thrashing the C’s last night

The Jewish Pig Farmer and his bride….are now The Jewish Pig and Solar Farmer…..they are doing weight watchers with some success, but go out to dinner once a week , and all bets are off…..we went to eat with them last night at Mojo in Ludlow….and they ordered everything on the menu….we were there a long time…

We have finally installed our new SMART TV and it has totally outsmarted us…..we have no idea how to work it

Nikki, the post mistress, has applied for a better paying job at a PO over in hated New Hampshire….and has disappeared without telling anyone…..but WE know….

Kevin, the Walrus Dump Master, suggests Jennifer should come live with him for week, and fill up his garbage

Without any sensible people around right now, the Folk Club has become the out- of- control jammin’ club….someone is a bad influence…

Keven, the cantankerous owner of the General Store….had a near fatal fire this week overnight……only hours after telling us how much he hated his place and wanted to get rid of the store…subtle!

The Jewish Fish Monger is getting us tickets to go to Boston and see the Sox next weekend…..I’ll be sure to wear my Cavs t-shirt and earplugs

After a month of Jonesing……Stu went off to Waterbury this week for a Governors Council meeting and an overnight at the Marriott….and thought about just moving in there…..there is really good Thai food across the street, a hot tub, mountain views, and no house projects or pickup trucks looming

AND…our baby, Lucy, is going to turn four in a week or so…we took her on an early birthday treat to the market yesterday, where she encountered a pet pig on a leash…she was in disbelief and thought she had gone to hog heaven…especially when the pig started shitting in the middle of the market, which Lucy thought was expressly for her to roll around in..…suitably aromatic, she then went shopping ta Walmart, where she is loved no matter how she smells………………………..

So…you are probably wondering what is it with Aunt Sadie….and what the hell she has to do with The Blog? Well, truth be told, I was thinking yesterday afternoon that I did not want to do the dam blog thing this week, and maybe I could pacify my angst ridden readers by just telling a story…..then it morphed into a few short sentences about the week as a lead in to the story…AND…the story…..and then I got into the whole thing, and you get the above ranting..…but I promised the story anyway. So the story you get.

My Great Aunt Sadie worked in the Garment district in the city for almost 50 years. This was during the Golden Age of this place, where 90% of the all the world’s clothes were produced in this tiny corner of the big city that stretched for eight blocks by four blocks centered on 7th Avenue in Manhattan in the high 30s. The enclave flourished in the 1920s up through the 1970s before China started making all our clothes a lot cheaper. Sadie was a master seamstress working in one of the zillion sweat shops for 12 hours day, six days week for all those years. But, every day at noon sharp, she walked over to 7th and 38th, and met up with her coffee klatch colleagues of Yiddish speaking, Eastern European immigrant women for a light lunch and little master Yenta activity. Some herring, a bit of chopped liver, a smoke and a glass tea….and then she would head back to the shop to work until long after dark. One particular overcast and drizzly day, Sadie was on her a back to the shop- when a tall, gaunt man jumped out at her from a doorway along 33rd St. He had on a long raincoat and boots showing underneath. The man blocked Sadie’s’ way, and opened his raincoat to show her his naked boy underneath. Aunt Sadie stood there in the drizzle, looked him up and down for several minutes..….and in her very heavily accented English, said (you have to hear the accent!)……..”you call that a lining”……………..

Let the sun shine……….

Stu

Happy Mother’s Day to all: (Mothers in the many senses of the word)

“All truths wait in all things” ……………………………………………………………………………………Walt Whitman

“To understand nothing-takes time” ……………………………………………………………………….Zen Saying

“Sorry I’m not home
to take your call. At the tone
please state your bad news”…………………………………………………………………………………….Haikus for Jews

There have been many miracles this week in the mountains. The sun came out for more than one day at a time. After several false starts, the tractor is running AND mowing….and the broken dryer is now fixed by the urban-bred home repair boy…without the appliance repair guy coming. And……Thursday it turned green here overnight…one of nature’s unusual phenomena.

Jenn is off to Cleveland for four days for Baby Quinn’s first birthday- leaving me to deal with the various forms of animal excrement…as well as slamming medicine down the throat of poor little fading Niko the cat…..who is beyond traumatized by the process. We made another sudden trip to the vet this week- thinking again it may now really be the time to put her down, but once again she got a reprieve and has bounced back- for the 700th time. Now, under the unconventional and bizarre care of Dr. Stu –she seems to be thriving..…what does this mean? Let’s just say that maybe the junk food diet has some benefits….

Wednesday was our good weather day this week- so we headed off to find a drive and dirt road (we are staying off trails, per se, due to increased tick activity in May)..…wound up down in Peru (really!) for a lazy walk up a mountain dirt road and then down to J. Hapgood’ s general store, where we picked up lunch and ate on the church bench in the hazy sunshine….watching a bevy of guys with high-end implements clean up everyone’s yard in town….what do we have to do to qualify for having this ?

We got home for a quick rest and then up the mountain to John and Lydia’s house for another memorable swinging soiree..…John and Lydia tend to show up out of the blue for few days and invite us for dinner PLUS….which always has significant consequences for the next two days. We had a heated five hour discussion over whether or not they were bonafide “Southies” (look it up)….apparently vehemently not, with quite sophisticated explanations on what exactly makes a “Southie”..…I still think that they actually are, but then that is just me…

Jenn made a trip down the mountain this week to visit with The Jewish Pig Farmer and his bride, who are now doing weight-watchers (Kosher, I presume) and are barely visible due to immense weight loss…..we will go out to dinner with them next weekend, which may present some menu challenges..

I made another twisted road, lost- four -times, exotic trip to see the Healer up in the Woods this week….in order to…well, get healed (modicum of success)….I was on her healing table for two hours and could barely walk when I left…but felt very woodsy-Zen like.

Friday was a moderately nice day…and the Pond-schmutz has begun to announce its presence due to the thousands of tadpoles giving birth…so I did a hocus-pocus pond treatment and then convinced Jenn to get in the water (before she left for the airport) and re-initiate our wacked out fountain and water moving system…..it was in the low 60s and the water temp (which I assured her was lukewarm on the surface) was probably in the 30s….but since I had hid her car keys, and she could not leave for the airport to go to Cleveland…..she agreed to do it…with superior results.

Well- cutting it short today…as I have excrement to contend with…and heading over to watch the Cavs and Celtics Game One with The Jewish Fish Monger (a lifelong die-hard Celtics Fanatic)…..which I hope to survive intact…so got to get going…..plus he has promised to make matzo ball soup to modify the game conflict and tension…

So, until whenever….

Yours, Papi

Greetings mes amis:

“I walk into where the light is”……………………………………………………………………………………………Mark Strand

“Sorry I’m not home
To take your call. At the tone
Please state your bad news”………………………………………………………………………………………………..Haikus for Jews

GO CAVS……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Ferlin’ Norris

You were probably wondering where the heck I’ve been today-as I try to have this ready for your Sunday brunch….but alas, country life in the mountains gets in the way…spent most of the day with chainsaw in hand cutting up limbs from our recent losing battle with 60 mph winds….then on to getting the yard machines running (so far- amazingly- so good)….and then lamenting the sudden loss of our clothes dryer with a lot of wet clothes to dry…in the rain….Still- a lot for nice Jewish boy from the Bronx, NO?

As a result….I am sore and tired and still have damn house things to yet fix today….So, again, he threatens the Zen version…but today I am committed….so bear (or bare) with me….

THE POND…is thriving…with a zillion little frogs’ eggs abounding, waiting to overtake our lives and some new resident ducks floating around…and the peepers at night are like a country symphony…..

Birthday came and went this week…quiet one, but made the requisite lunch trip to Java Baba, where treated like a local here for surviving for __ years (you’ll have to guess)…and then on to my first visit to our little local post office (only open for two hours each afternoon), where the postmistress, Nikki, came out to jump into my arms…apparently missed our fascinating brand of mailings..

Monday…got back to folk club, for Monday night music for the first time…the real folkies were missing and I am a bad influence, so we got little loud and crazy (Can you say 20 minutes of Neil Young ranting?) ..which I will have to temper for the next one

Tuesday, our bestie, Blue Skies, came over “for coffee”….which is a metaphor for a lot of Yenta action…and filled us in on winter’s life on the Mount…as she was leaving, she mentioned , in passing, that she was getting her knee replaced the next day…Vermonters are stoics, don’t you think?

Wednesday….the sun came out for the first time, and the temps soared to a ridiculous 86 degrees (it was 24 on Monday night)..so the snow is almost all gone now…and we headed up to quaint Middlebury for a drive through the mountains, lunch with Mama Corleone at Costello’s Italian Deli (we actually had a sandwich called the Don Corleone)….then up over the Middlebury Pass to find a dirt road and Big-Ass pond (actually a dam built in 1916..and still filled with ice) for a nice hike down…then the drive home down scenic route 100, and our first Maple Creamees of the season…which Lucy adores….

Speaking of Lucy, she is adjusting to the mountains slowly- going out at night to howl at the beasts of the mountain night (nothing there), digging massive holes in the yard, in search of what?….and rolling in shit daily…which adds to our cacophony of animal experiences- with Grace puking daily and old Niko leaving puddles of liquid poop..…this is all where Jenn comes into play…

Friday, we snuck under cover of darkness, over to the hated New Hampshire, to go to the Super Walmart and buy a new Smart TV at a silly-low price…AND…no sales tax….We’d love New Hampshire if everyone was not busy acting out the “live free or die” thing…..so now we have a massive unopened box in our living room that we are trying to figure out how to fit in our quaint country home (this was actually a Xmas gift from Max, that we returned in Ohio-so as not to schlep it to Vermont, and then re-bought, with our return Mart gift card…at $100 less…my momma wood be proud)…

Yesterday we spent the day as true Vermonters- picking up trash along the roadways for statewide Green-Up day and then volunteering for the first community supper of the season (thanksgiving in May…) at the ODDFELLOWS HALL (for real). I was rewarded for my superior serving skills with a few glasses of pinkish wine, which I did not know really existed- thought it was a myth…

Jenn is off next weekend to Cleve-town for baby Quinn’s first birthday (see her pix)-while I apparently will have the animal excrement assignment back in the Greens…and Tess… is halfway there with baby girl whatitsname…and that, my friends………is all she wrote…

Spin your dreidels and make a good wish…..Love Ya’ll,

Stu-man

Greetings fellow travelers:

“The world is its own magic”………………………………………………………………………………….Shunryu Suzuki

“Our plans never turn out as tasty as reality”………………………………………………………….Ram Dass

“Lacking fins or tail
The gefilte fish swims with
Great difficulty”……………………………………………………………………………………………………..Haikus for Jews

We have just arrived…so time is of the essence, as we are overloaded with moving in and set up issues- but I thought that many of you are probably twitching at this point with withdrawal, so felt obligated to resume pontificating, at least minimally…so the Zen of this moment:

The Winter…….was somewhat daunting….thirty days in a row below 15 degrees and then the rains hit for two months solid….and of course about four days of suns since November…our water system sprang a leak somewhere in the yard, so sump pump ran every minute (we’re on our third one) and Stu walked around with a chainsaw in his left hand looking for wood to cut to keep the house from becoming an igloo…and work travel…ughh….let me count the airports I was stranded in since December…Jenn did yoga 14 times a week, found an ecological center to volunteer at, thus bringing home a brand new range of ideas to translate home dictatorship into, and fruitlessly searched for the magical p-up truck. We also had a range of exotic health issues, but who wants to know that shit anyway?

Prep for the transition went smoothly until I dealt with our cable provider in Ohio- Time-Warner- who I had such a delightful time with, I told them I’d walk on their grave and hung up, terminating a 35 year relationship. Who does not hate their cable company? Then, on our last day, I decided to drive the ancient Jeep and snaking out of our driveway, totally knocked off Jenn’s side view mirror (for the third time),which led to a two hour unplanned – for jury-rigging job to allow her to have any view whatsoever for the 12 hour drive (she’s such a wimp- who really needs to see out both sides, anyway?). Did I mention that this is the fifth year in row of last second calamities trying to leave Ohio…what is the message here anyway? I would recount all of the calamities to you…but it would be very Un-Zen like, so another time, maybe?

Generally speaking…I’m wondering if we are getting too old for this double life? But, then I’d have to start talking about health issues….which I’m refraining from, at least for the moment….. no promise on this

The trip here tuned out to be quite easy on a beautiful sunny almost 70 degree day…with our new strategy of driving as far as Binghamton (yes, it really exists) making it very bearable. Lucy slept the whole way somewhere amidst the piles of shit in the back- I even had to wake her to go potty….and the cats are now loose and crawling all over Jenn for 7 hours. We had great delivered – Italian from our new favorite road stop place and made Mt. Holly by 2 on Friday after a somewhat late start….and arrived to find not only no Green, but a yard with snow piles and very brown grass…no memo here yet on it being spring time…BUT….the POND is peaking…what joyful sight

We then spent almost three hours unloading the cars in a downpour….leaving the almost heated house in a state of utter chaos and confusion…but being the slightly OCD, frenetically driven and competitive schmucks that we are, we had most of it sorted out before going to bed at midnight…though neither one us could bend down by that point (that is not really health related!?)

So- the initial updates……………………………..

Jenn insisted I go down to Java-Baba while we were unloading to see Beverly, who had texted me every Friday all winter to tell me how much she missed me…when she sent me one last week, I replied on Monday, with a link to David Bowie’s “Monday I have Friday on My Mind”….which may have tipped her off that we would be back this week and set up a misguided (on my part) expectation…that I surely needed to fulfill….though it resulted in our usual massive and wonderful free lunch

And by the way…it is April 29th…and snowing out as we speak….ah, mountain life…….

And….we found our return greeted by mouse turds everywhere, so the cats are out at night (instead of being locked up in their hovel) and little Grace is bringing us a daily gift of dead meece at the foot of our bed each morning….

Saturday turned out to be a decent day and we headed off to massive choring in town…so, musings from our first outing:

– The dump now has an office (instead of the beloved Belmont Mall)-which is where Kevin the Walrus in now hiding out…though he came out to flirt with Jenn when he saw us arrive….and Lucy still
thinks the dump is doggie heaven
– The General Store is still very general…and the proprietor, Kevin, is still a world class curmudgeon
– The Famer’s Market is thriving indoors for the moment- and still a cost match with “Whole Paycheck” foods
– Walmart still loves Lucy-and she loves that they stock interesting things on the lowest reachable shelves
– Our favorite Ramuntos- still has the best pizza north of NYC…and a good supply of Burlington’s “Seven Days” weekly news rag for our green-lefty readings
– It’s still a major treat to shop at Hannaford and walk out into the parking lot and be surrounded by mountains

We got home to sunshine and Lucy immediately went exploring to find the best pile of shit she could roll in- which had her banned outside until Jenn deigned to bathe her…I myself kind of look forward to the scents

We have been welcomed back by countless Facebook messages and texts from our mountain friends-apparently the word leaked out that we were back in the greens…though people have been kind enough to stay away rather than have to help us unpack and schlep…

AND…our really BIG NEWS…both my kids (Max and Tess) had offers accepted yesterday on new house purchases…moving on up…and if you don’t already know, Tess and Jake are expecting a little girl in October….which has been quite a shock to us all….and will be our second grandbaby- to go with our dearest little Quinn in Cleveland (Ryan and Lauren’s little girl) who will be a year in a couple of weeks…trying to get used to being Big Papi and Meme right now……

So…back to adjusting-which means Jenn is relentlessly cleaning and ordering shit on line, and I am destined for the couch and watching the Cavs try to win game seven…supposed to be up into 70s midweek so hoping for some mountain hiking, and then next weekend is Green-Up day and the first community supper of the year-both of which we will be volunteering at…but for now, we eagerly anticipate Sunday night return to East for some special duckling and elegant Chinese in the mountains…

Well, once again…not very Zen-like-but there you have it….back in the saddle

Stay safe, do a good deed and stay in touch…

Love to all,

Papi

Greetings fellow travelers:

“No one’s mouth is big enough to utter the whole thing”……………………………………………………………Alan Watts

“Through the Red Sea costs
extra”- Israeli movers
overcharge Moses………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Haikus for Jews

Well…a reluctant and BRIEF (promise) mid-winter Sunday dispatch due to overwhelming popular demand to keep The Blog going from the flatlands……………………………………

Bee-Bop- A- Lupa………Manish Tanah Khalilah Chazeh………Go tell it in the mountain……….Da-doo-run-run-run, Da-doo-run –run……You can’t always get what you want, but…….

These are the chants of the mid-winter blues. Is anyone else quite done yet? We are at a balmy 20 degrees today ,after a week of numbing cold that never exceeded ten….and we are apparently one of the warmest in the eastern half of the country (it’s BAD in the Greens)…so what to do, what to do…..

Apparently the answer is….Bedding…after ten days of sleeping in our lovely double bed with two dogs (Cousin Rosie has been with us while The Nave and Suba were off on the heated slopes of the Rockies)- we are committed to find a king bed setup that we can schlep up the narrow old- farmhouse stairs (the kind that inflate on contact with the air and may explode– but are worth it for a good night’s sleep)

So we are trolling the internet, visiting the new state of the art IKEA nearby, dealing with a variety of scammers on Craig’s List who purport to want to purchase our Sleep Number double unit, but in reality want to steal our identities…… and are busy procuring a vast selection of bedding regardless of whether we yet have a bed to put these on.

This, along with the daily pick-up truck availability report…..and…a list of a dozen or so pending new home renovations (yes, it comes with us from Vermont to Ohio) are making for a busy mindset of winter activities, not allowing for much else. Of course-we all know what this array of activity means for your faithful scribe…..yes, you guessed it- checking in to the Marriott…..any Marriott. Which I had planned for this week, but spent the best part of a miserable day on Thursday at the Columbus airport unsuccessfully trying to get flights to Philadelphia, where there was apparently another storm of the century. I wept when I had to call the Marriott to cancel my reservation and trudge back home to the waiting tasks at hand.

Not much else has happened over the holidays, which were very quiet in a Zombie sort of way. Been reading a lot of books (I am now able to solve the mysteries by page 17) and seen a lot of movies….and burned a full cord of wood in less than a month trying to keep the old house warm (I am wearing nine layers as I type this- along with a coonskin cap and giant skunk mittens with the fingers cut out).

We had a low key family Christmas with Tess and Jake…with the possible exception of four insane dogs going berserk for 24 hours- and spent the stroke of New Years senior- dozing on the couch after a nice afternoon trip to the fine Columbus Museum of Art (hence the Impressionist photo)….and now we are just in the deep freeze and waiting for the basement to fill up with melting water and the sump pump to once again cease to function…but who’s complaining….could be worse, no?

I have another week at home before I begin a bizarre two months of travel to all the places you would not want to go in the dead of winter (excepting a week with the prodigal in sunny San Diego paradise). But- I get ahead of myself-since today is clearly about bedding, project preparation and truck hunting….though ..there ARE a few Marriotts nearby, and Jenn seems to be horded away at the moment making fiendish plans….so maybe a slip away into the cold, and some room service is not yet out of the question….

Be that as it may…enough is enough….a wink is as good a nod to blind horse…and so on……..

Where is Leonard Cohen when we really need him? Or Jim Harrison? Or MacGyver? C’mon people now , smile on your bother….……..right now…..right now…..right now……….

In Sha Allah (look it up)

Stu-brahim

Dear readers and sometimes friends:

“ It is only the empty mind that can see clarity”………………………………………………………………..Jiddu Krishnamurti

“ You can observe a lot by watching”………………………………………………………………………………..Yogi Berra

A middle aged married couple from New York go to Hawaii for the first time. The husband asks the wife on the flight if she thinks it is really supposed to be called Hawaii or Havaii- as he wants to not seem like a tourist, which she says she does not know. As they are getting their baggage claims in Honolulu, they see an elderly tanned man in a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, and the husband goes up to ask him whether the proper local pronunciation is Hawaii or Havaii to which he responds……” it is Havaii”. The relieved husband tells him thank you very much…to which he relies………”You’re Velcome.”

And that my friends, sums up our return to the heartland for the winter. Never an easy transition, this one was fraught with the usual sets of perils, with a variety of house related issues, the predictable cable company woes and trying to re-acclimate to the savage parkway lights outside out window all night long. But my home of 32 years, still feels like a sacred place with some comfort and appeal (probably only to me) in its familiarity.

So…THE BLOG…as you know I’m not really all that inclined to think that tales of life in Central Ohio have the same gravitas as those of the Mountain Greens ( as in, who really cares anyway)…but so many of you made the case for having some continued Sunday morning amusement (I know it’s a little late in the day, but I have been traveling a lot- so my times zones are confused) that I felt compelled to bore both you and myself with some form of diatribe.

So…brief it will be…but better than nothing…maybe……

The Selected Highlights of The Ups for living in the winter Heartland

• Spending time with Tess and Jake who are an hour away
• The new grand baby two hours away
• Seeing friends we’ve known since the 70s
• The hot tub on the deck
• The YMCA eight minutes away
• Take out Chinese five minutes away
• The airport 25 minutes away
• The Bunty Station boys playing the unique brand of Country and Eastern music every Monday night
• A plethora of accessible Ethnic restaurant
• A plethora of people of different colors
• Watching all the Cavs b-ball games on local TV
• Movies, movies, movies
• Grocery and Walmart five minutes away

The Highlights of The Downs of not being in the Greens

• Enough already with seeing our kids and grand kids
• Where are the mountains?
• Where is THE POND?
• The beloved inn at Scum Pond
• Sunday dinners at East
• Lunch at Java Baba
• Dirt roads and aimless drives and walks through them
• Sunshine more than once a week
• Darkness on the edge of town
• Community spirit
• Farmer’s markets
• Organic foods
• Our king size bed that we all three can fit in
• Walks in the woods everywhere you look
• The JPF, the JFM, the dump master, the masseuse in the trailer, the trout king…well, you get the picture

Have I mentioned that returning to the heartland seems to result in my making lots of lists?

So…we have much new bedding and nightly reports on available pickup trucks (some things are relatively the same wherever you are)

Since we have gotten back, I have been to Houston, Toledo, Minneapolis, Camden and Minneapolis again……all highlight destinations for winter travel

We had a lovely Thanksgiving at Jake’s grandparents with the whole extended family…. Grandpa is a retired Methodist minister so the celebration is in the re-assembled church basement in their house…..long folding tables, folding chairs, big coffee urns, industrial china…and prayerful chanting..…but we feel most welcome there….. and I believe they truly value having a token lapsed Jew in the mix

Lucy has adjusted to her other home and spends most of the frigid days perched on the top of the couch where she can stare out the window at the passing deer and motorists on the beloved parkway. She also seems to enjoy taking two thirds of the queen sized bed…effectively leaving Jenn and I to share a twin

So…life goes on…the holidays are approaching and Christmas cheer is everywhere (Have you been out shopping to experience the joy on people’s faces?)…and I think I have run dry…..got to go do some Bah Humbug bullshit as I am traveling next two weeks………and may talk to my children who are gathered together out in smoky San Diego…..and maybe see if we can get the house warmed over 65 degrees…

I might be back with Blogging at some point…but after this fiasco…who knows

Peace on you…..Preacher-Stu