We had a great time at the show, which celebrated reaching the $1 million mark on their fundraising campaign. Although I am still concerned that the new facility they’re building will be too “shiny”, there’s no question it will make their lives easier than wrestling with the grungy but charming quarters they’re in now.
Step right up, step right up, everyone’s a winner, bargains galore
A couple of weeks ago we got invited to B&K Green Mountain Auctions with Sherry and Prov. We had a great time, and bought a pair of nice nesting end tables and an old wall clock that might turn into something someday, or it might not…
Many of the people in attendance, who were mostly old men, were obviously regulars, and we could see how they end up with barns packed to the rafters with stuff… you could easily fill a pickup for $50 or less. Of course, most of what you bring home that way is junk, but you always hope for that antique whatsit to be worth something someday.
They’re there twice a week… and Lee is glad that we don’t really have a place for me to store stuff.
And PS — if you don’t know the reference in the post title, it’s worth tracking down. I never really got Tom Waits until I heard this song…
Fast Eddie’s
Fast Eddie’s made good donuts and burgers, and they hosted the hot rod club on Saturday nights, but they didn’t open last summer, and we figured the owners just gave up and stayed wherever they go in the winter. Now, however, there’s a sign in the window saying they’re accepting applications, so maybe they’ll reopen.
A lion in winter
As I fly west and south to a place where even the slightest hint of winter is strictly a matter of chance, I praise the stoic lions who keep our porch safe.
Confucius say
Better to make front page as Wintry Mess than Hot Mess.
Estey Organs.
Estey Organs, full stop. Which is a funny, see? Organs, stops?
As many times as I’ve been by these buildings, I never noticed that sign until today.
They all fall down
Yesterday, we went to the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center’s annual domino-toppling fundraiser. I think they said this was the seventh year for the event, but it was our first. I goofed on the time, meaning that instead of being half an hour early so we could get a good spot to watch, we just barely made it in time and so had to crane our necks to see over the people in front of us. Obviously, it wasn’t possible to jostle our way to the front… If one person had tripped, it would have been a real disaster.
Almost 28,000 dominos were set up, and with only one extra nudge right at the beginning, the entire chain worked.
Kids came from all over the area to spend their entire Presidents’ Day weekend setting this up, only to have it all disappear in a few minutes. I imagine there are some important life lessons there.
Baby it’s cold outside
It’s been a pretty warm and pretty unsnowy winter so far, but global warming hasn’t yet turned Vermont into Vero Beach. But, in terms of drawing long-term conclusions from limited data, last year we had a -15 night…
Winter, finally
The snows finally got here over the past week, and it will be subzero temperatures this weekend. Luckily, the Christmas amaryllis was also a late bloomer, so things were brightened up for a week or two.
Ice ice baby
Why does the ice form in discs like this? Swirling eddies probably.
Make every day a holiday
Just the other evening, our quest for 10,000 steps took us into one of the public housing complexes on the other side of the tracks. We saw an entirely too-active traffic pattern in the parking area, and several apartments sported a defiantly festive lighting scheme.
The Ephemera Archive for American Studies
Yesterday, right at the end of my long walk, I chanced on this man, who was taking his recycling out to the curb. 
I crossed over and said hello, and learned that yes, he is the tenant in the storefront there.
That storefront has been hard to keep full. It was a Jamaican vegan restaurant when we first got here, but that closed before we ever tried it. Then it was a candy store where you reach into jars and fill up candy to be sold by the pound. Given my estimate of the population who are more or less constantly stoned– and more so in that particular neighborhood — I thought that business might work well. After not very many months, they added a Thai restaurant, where we ate once and it was good, but then the whole venture collapsed.
More recently, however, the windows have been filling up with stuff. And not just stuff, but interesting stuff.
Mr. Kit Barry was more than happy to indulge my curiosity. “Window Theater,” he explained. “First time anybody’s seen such a thing in America.” It was cold, I was tired, and the conversation moved quickly, so I did not ask him to elaborate as to whether that meant that such a thing happened in other countries.
This window, then, isn’t just an assortment of stuff. The Elvis lamp, well, it represents Elvis, looking vapidly and emptily past the dinosaur, his dedicated fan. The King’s tragic career is represented by the tapes, moving right to left from his innate genius and early success through a period of greater and greater mismanagement and corruption. See the marbles being lost? Finally, the whole thing unravels (get it?), and the scary Halloween skull tells us what happened next. But wait! look up! The blissful optimism of the human spirit watches over all and gives us hope.
On the basis of my expression of interest, Mr. Barry invited me in for an introduction to the mind, the context behind this and the other windows that are visible from the street. It turns out that he’s been collecting ephemera since his teenage years. And I even got a good definition of ephemera, a word I mostly hear on Antiques Roadshow (which program Mr. Barry disdains). Ephemera is printed material specifically designed to be used for a defined and relatively limited period of time and then thrown away. Advertising, posters and fliers, tickets, newspapers, and so on. Magazines and catalogs and phone books.
He’s got hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper in there, mostly from the 19th century, all (or at least mostly) neatly cataloged and arranged in 3-ring binders. Is it the largest collection of such objects outside the Smithsonian as he claims? Hard to know for sure, but why not?
Fascinating and overwhelming, both for him and for any visitor. He’s always on the lookout for visitors to share the collection with, and even willing to entertain the idea of volunteers to help manage it. He’s not much computerized… that would be quite a web site!
We only spent about 15 or 20 minutes together, as I was eager to get home to a nice hot tub and a nice cold beer. However, I hope I’ll have the chance to talk with Kit Barry again. He is another of those unexpected and uncategorizable souls that seem to be overexpressed around Brattleboro. One thing he said particularly resonated with me: most of what we learn in school these days is designed to provide answers, but the Ephemera Archive is all about supplying questions.
One foot in front of the other
Yesterday I walked to Putney and back, a total distance of about 22 miles. I was one of about 25 people who joined this walk in order to raise awareness of the problem of military and veteran suicide. One common figure is that 22 veterans kill themselves every day. Their shadows loom.
The event was organized by 22-year-old Lauren Mabie, daughter of a prominent local family, and newly commissioned Army 2nd Lieutenant.
I met some nice people on the walk, including a couple of very active Veterans for Peace, whose views are strong and whose spirits seem unbroken despite decades of crying in the wilderness.
I know my legs are sore today, and I didn’t even carry a rucksack like fresh-faced Lt. Mabie, whose recovery will surely be harder… tomorrow she ships off to Germany for her first tour with a Patriot missile battalion.
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 