snowshoe walk in the woods

from here

to here

and back

People Should Come With Warning Labels

This side up
fragile, handle with care
do not disturb
smoke detector
For external use only
Batteries not included
shake well before using
do not open if package has been tampered with
Private
No Trespassing
No poaching
proceed with caution
no unathorized personnel beyond this point
Yield
dead end/private drive
through traffic
local traffic only
detour
roadwork ahead
blind driveway
No turns
do not feed the bears
surveillance cameras in use
follow all package directions carefully

Major Winter Weather Event

For once they got it right

Yesterday  morning

Today same time

The stonewall disappeared ,  and there's two feet of snow all over everything..  This morning we weren't sure just how much there was: with the wind it was a tossup if we had 8" or 72 feet.

happy man, here

Reporting in

Yesterday my monitor went black and refused to work.  "maybe,' i said, "it's the monitor and not the tower".
"no, no,' he said,  "there's a disconnect somewhere, it could take days to find it" 
"why don't we plug in the old monitor and see"
"no no ", he said,  "you just don't understand.  The tower just isnt getting the signal from the monitor, that's why its' not working. Let me think about this."
"Look, here's the old monitor. let's just plug it in and see."  sigh. grumble fuss.  "I just don't see what good it will do."

"what does it cost to try?"


It was the monitor. 

Now I have a nice new one;  however its one of those silly wide screen jobs,  and it took me all afternoon to figure out how to resize the images so they don't stretch clean across the whole screen.  'You wont like it",  he said. "it just distorts everything".  

nooo  it works just fine *g*

----------------------------------------------------
And now we are sailing into what appears to be either the storm of the century, a storm of historical proportions,  or a huge embarrassment.   In  a way it's like waiting for Santa.  He never lives up to the
buildup,   I sincerely hope this one is equally disappointing...Film, as they say, at 11.

Full Moon Silhouettes

http://vimeo.com/markg/fullmoonsilhouettes


with permission of the videomaker,  Mark Gee.  This is a stunner. 

The Blizzard

last  night we were warned by the weatherelves that a major storm was coming our way.  A foot of snow, wind, and in the morning below zero temps. At bedtime it had already begun.  I had visions of mounds of snow being whipped about, turning into other mounds of snow, all over the fields. 
This morning I went out and took a picture.   Somewhere there are weather men, highly paid meteorologists, with very pink cheeks, wondering just  what happened to the blizzard...

this has got to stop

For the past several years many of my most memorable dreams have been in what I think of as  text format.  Usually a newsprint article,  in which I read the article as if it were in front of me and then I segue into a narrator in which  I am also physically present in the dream interviewing or living the article as well.  Yes yes it's weird  but so are dreams of flying.   And this past month or so Ive been 'reading' long long texts nearly every night. Most memorably a week ago, when I had three of them to wade through, in three separate dreams.   Last night I was involved in a newspaper 'bio' of Connie Francis which described in great detail the poisoning death of her husband Brian Finnerty and then  a subsequent "operation" to have her voice box repaired.  Since she had no husband, and none of them were named Brian Finnerty, I have to wonder what and why I'm reading.  

As in all dreams there is often a reason for the dream, or some small section.  Sometimes it's a warning (often those are valid) about something in the body, sometimes they are Disaster Dreams (hi, Ron.) in which the car I'm involved with turns into a disaster movie straight out of Laurel and Hardy, and now and then an extremely silly dream the purpose of which is to inflict terrible puns on the dreamer.

Or maybe I had too many butterscotch bits before bedtime.  Who knows.

from the archives (3)

LOVE SONG TO MY WIFE*


(by J. Sprat)

Last week we fixed the door.
Today you broke the floor.
Every time you take a bath
I fear for every lath
and every beam and timber.
I am no longer young or limber
and it’s really getting harder
to avoid your mammoth ardor--

I think we need to talk.
You can no longer safely walk
without causing mass destruction
to the sturdiest construction
from the kitchen to the basement.
This will be the fifth replacement
of the stairs. When you cannot make it
through a door without a jimmy
Then I can no longer take it.
I’ve seen you in your shimmy.
I’d love you more, turtledove,
if there were just a little less of you to love.



Published a million years ago by C.E. Chaffin in Melic Review

White Flower Farm

The spring catalog arrived today.  The gardener's wish book that rivals any sears christmas catalog ever published...
I will look at it, and drool, and then look at the prices and gasp.
I will fill out a pretend  order form adding everything that takes my eye.  I might even go so far to put it in the envelope.
Then at last remember that WFF, based in Connecticut,  is zone 5.  They insist we are too.  That means plants ordered for spring usually arrive in a late April ice storm,  or during a period when the ground is frozen so solidly a jack hammer couldnt penetrate it.  Fall plantings arrive long after the ground is, you guessed it, frozen.  Usually under the  snow. 
I write, I call, I email them, reninding them that we are indeed zone 4.  oh, they say we'll change that right away.  Annnnd the plants arrive firmly on the 14th of November.  Just after the fifteenth  hard frost.  And the label says,  "Zone 5".  sigh.

Apologies to Emily

If Emily was Online

how sweet to wait-
in this special place--
mouse in hand-
keyhoard ready-
I stir the keys
no email yet--
the box lies empty
beneath my hope-
to know the words
lie just outside my reach
all of heaven
waits in a keystroke
all of that other place-
with you not here-

Thinking out loud all over the place

The terminally annoying are everywhere.   There was a time when the best they could do was soap your car windows or bash in a rural malibox,  cut off the heads of all  the flowers in your front yard or spray paint the cows.  Now they have expanded into the crevices of the internet,  appearing predictably in every corner, from forums, message boards,  email,  Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and private spaces. 
As always they force choices upon us who only want to travel our own paths quietly,  cheerfully dragging along anyone who wishes to travel the same way.  The choices are almost always unpleasant,  the shockwaves sometimes surprising in their intensity. 

I used to be on a message board a long way from here both in time and purpose, and the administrator traveled a fine narrow path between the very different points of view, often as not finding himself reprimanding hosts and posters alike for their behavior, while realizing the Goad Factor that exists in such a situation. 
And sometimes the decisions are painful. 

Know what I miss, in this politically correct world?  Halloween as it once was wrought, with soaped windows, burning doggy bags on the front stoop,  little kids in immense bands wandering about parentless for a few hours, large shopping bags at the ready.  That holiday belonged to them.   I miss Christmas when people were not afraid to say Merry Christmas to anyone, when you were allowed to display the symbols of your faith and joy on the lawn, in the window,  or in an ad, without reprisal from the now easily offended.
Christmas parties in the schools are now banned.  Too much religion.  Someone Might Be Offended.  Halloween, amazingly, is also banned from many places.  It appears to be the opposite extreme in the eyes of the rigid:  satan worship.  The devil.  Parents are afraid their little wonders will be traumatized by it,  but it's okay for those same little wonders to play computer games with blood dripping out of their online enemies.  Go figure.

We have given ourselves freedom of speech and too many people believe it means their speech, not yours.
We live in one of the most open societies  in the world and are becoming one of the most regimented, one segment at a time. 

Im 67.  I probably will not live to see what happens with the generation now teething, learning to walk,  to talk, to function as adults.  Part of me wishes I could:  they will either close a few more doors or blow those doors off the hinges, the way kids did in the 60s and 70s. 

Merry Christmas, dammit.

Heads up

Instituting a new mode of posting.  I would appreciate anyone posting to either register, sign in, or at the very least identify themselves in the body of the comment box. Somewhere. Anywhere.  It's a courtesy to me, and to anyone else, and I do like to know who is here.  Thank you in advance.

Merry Christmas

Pearl Jam "Better Man"

The words are there:  listen carefully--"she dreams in red"

On The Other Hand...

It well may be that in the night the calendar was indeed turned over and those of us who slept were shifted into a new slice of universe where everything seems familiar but really isnt. The key,  here, is seems familiar.  How do you know it's different if it looks the same?


Apparently there are some well paid mattress inhaling physicists out there who seriously propose the idea that the entire universe is just one big computer simulation.  Our tax dollars at work, yessir.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/whoa-physicists-testing-see-universe-computer-simulation-224525825.html

12/21/12

And on the last day it snowed, or rained,  or didn't.  Rivers flowed to distant oceans where  fish, unaware of the shortness of life or its sweetness,  continued to swim, propagate, and become cat food.  Life went on as it always does;  no turning the page, no dire predictions of eternal nothing to disturb  the deer, the buffalo,  the eagle. 

There were moments unseen in the darkness when Something crept nearer,  touching this soul and that one gently,  lifting them like fine silk and away into a new darkness.  Babies were born.     In barns everywhere horses stirred in their sleep, or chewed a favorite stall door,  and cows moved against the walls restlessly, as they always do. Chickens laid sleepy eggs, searched their feathers for snacks, clucking softly to themselves in the cold.

In hundreds of dwellings all over the earth people gathered up their possessions and set fire to them, in a glorious ritual of penance,  despair, and  terror.  Some gave their belongings to neighbors, friends, family, the 'nonbelievers'  who would not be there anyway to appreciate the treasures they had been given.  The nonbelievers, no fools  they, said "why thank you"  politely and locked their doors.

Darkness came, the moon rose behind heavy clouds.  People bid each other tearful farewells and fell asleep knowing this would be the last day of their lives. 

The next morning there was the sound of rejoicing,  and then the  great hush of Mortified Silence as  all over the earth people went forth to reclaim their furniture, clothing, and livestock.  Outrage and lawsuits rang forth, and the lawyers rejoiced.

solstice

four days. 
be there. 
prepare to revel.

Something, but what

Something needs to be said,  and yet when I try, realize there is utterly nothing, but nothing, that can be said. No words harsh enough, or soft enough, to mitigate or condemn.   And after all,  words are often like skipping stones across a still lake:  no matter what you say, or how well or poorly, they only go so far and disappear.


Good people died. Babies died.  There it is.

A Good Day

Wednesday around here is half price day at the Salvation Army (my seekrit indulgence);  some days there's little or nothing to appeal, and somedays all the cylinders hit perfectly.

This was the prize find.  They look to be from about the mid nineteen hundreds, maybe older (search says 'vintage" which these days includes me and thee too).  They are listed as salad tongs, but they are also for
getting small cans and boxes down from the top shelves, extending one's reach downward just a bit more, lifting hot jars out of the canning bath,  and annoying the cats...

Found two Lawrence Blocks that are new to me, two silk blouses for the cold days, and a marvelous dark brown floppy cardigan.  Not a bad one in the bin.   That and 50 deg. in the sun, not bad.

Twins of a prickly kind

Late last summer these two baby porcupines appeared,  no bigger than baseballs.  Apparently mother porcupines  release them into the wild at about two months, and then they are totally on their own.  These were twins, something Ive never seen before, and quite adorable. By now they are about 5-6 months old and have grown from baseballs to basketballs.  All fall we have seen them in the fields,  grubbing away at roots and grasses,  and only this past week have they come together again.  Now and then one will waddle over to the other and sit up, peering into the twin's face.  "Dat  you?  Who ARE you?"

And yesterday after the snow melted there they were on the lawn, only a few feet from the house, working on some especially interesting bits of weeds.  When I went out they gently turned their backs and moved away.  It's very hard to catch a porcupine full face,  they keep shifting so that the back is what you encounter.  If you make noise or get too close the back hair rises like a windowshade and there the quills are.  Bite me,  it says.  Go ahead.

But by and large these are gentle critters and we respect that.  We also keep shed doors closed.  Respect is all well and good but so is keeping them away from rubber tires and shovel handles...