Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition
In which we find ourselves in another part of the world
A friend pointed out this roadside plant the other day, which is pretty this time of year. Although I’d never really paid attention to it before, it’s everywhere.
Big green leaves, long fuzzy cream-colored flower stalks, what’s not to like?
Everything, it turns out. She called it American bamboo, but it’s more commonly known as Japanese knotweed, aka Fallopia japonica. It’s massively invasive, really hard to get rid of, no local predators, a new northern kudzu.
Well, ours does… maybe keeping it out of the weather will help it not be out of order so often.
As we come up on five years of relatively close observation around these parts, it seems like parking meters and traffic lights have gotten an inordinate amount of municipal attention. On Main Street we just replaced several chirpy walk signals with a much quieter talking signal… after just two or three years. All in the name of progress, I guess.
The original Honda Insight was such a cool idea. This one has been held together with duct tape so long that the once-matching tape has faded to a beautiful palette of sunset colors. Reminds me of a print from the doctor’s office way back when.
I discovered this cool trail some months ago, and I wrote about how it was great to have trails to walk on, but I wrote also about how I was sad to see so much trash along the side.
Some neighbors went a little further than writing about it on their blog, and picked up all the trash the other day.
Awesome!
It was big times in little ol’ Brattleboro this weekend.
The Tiny House Festival got a ton of press, but we were not impressed. For the money, you can buy a really nice RV, with a much better use of space.
There were some cool designs, but overall, meh.
And speaking of RVs, it was time for the twice-annual all-night contra dance, so our parking lot completely filled up with conveyances big and small.
With our visiting friends to back us up, and some liquid courage (the monkey glands were just the beginning), we asked to go in and take a look. Wow! It was much more graceful and fun to look at than we had thought. The people we talked to were super nice, if perhaps a tad eager to introduce us to their cult, er, hobby.
The next day, after Brian and Denise got on the road to their newly empty nest, we went to the Guilford Fair, our second visit.
The draft horse pulling is still the biggest draw, and quite a sight. The teams can all pull a 5,000 lb. sled with no trouble, and the best of them can move 8,500 a few feet.
But there’s more… including a surprising number of things you can win a prize for. There were a lot of blue ribbons given out.
I have a feeling that many divisions were uncontested, but the whoopee pie contest was fierce.
And of course the livestock barn…
And the show ring…
And then it’s back to school, and the harvest picks up, and we await the leaf-peepers next month, and then we start to think about cold days. But not yet.
We had a great visit with Brian and Denise this Labor Day weekend. Brian’s special cocktail this time was surpassing tasty, even with a name like “monkey glands.”
Are these richly painted objects tossed upon the bank of Whetstone Creek evidence of some long dead civilization? Perhaps they were uncovered by Tropical Storm Irene? Or were the volunteer muralists at the New England Youth Theater bored on their lunch break?
Last year around this time I went on a ride that was advertised as “about 50 miles” and ended up being closer to 80. Yesterday we had 16 riders, which is a big group for here, maybe the biggest of the year, and the supposed 50-mile ride was exactly 50 miles.
Long sleeves are coming out already, and the first few leaves are losing their greenness.
I don’t actually know anything about the answer to that question, but it looks like one early step might be to feed a cat some special dye and then get the cat to throw up moer or less in the right place.
is the soul of marquee wit at the Latchis this week. Or did they just run low on letters?
The drywall is in and primed. Window trim all done.
After a couple rounds of design back and forth, the new knee walls are framed up, ready for glass blocks.
Next week, floor refinishing.
Joyce, John B. and I stopped at a farm stand for some of the supposed best corn in New Hampshire.
Yesterday we saw soprano aerialist Elizabeth Wohl debut her one-woman show Laudate, A Singing Circus.
We know Elizabeth a bit from her legal work for the hospital, and we’ve run into her around town and heard her sing at the Friday night opera sings at the Brooks House. She’s also a student of the aerial silks and a board member at NECCA. And the wife of a newspaper columnist and state legislator. She is as charming as she is ecumenical.
In this show, the proceeds of which all went to NECCA and the Brattleboro Music Center, she tried to combine the soaring voice with the actual soaring. In the introduction, we were challenged to decide whether that was genius or mere stubbornness. Some of both, and an awesome clinic in breath control.
Altogether, she sang 11 pieces, ranging from Bach, Handel and Mozart to Copland and Bernstein. Some were sung on the ground, recital style, and others involved various amounts of acrobatics. She had accompaniment from piano, violin, and bass.
She definitely succeeded in illuminating some of the texts in a new way. Hearing Copland’s setting of the Emily Dickinson verse “Why do they shut me out of heaven? Was it for singing too loud”? as she clambered up and up and then spun down to the ground was marvelous. “Dream with me” from Bernstein’s Peter Pan and “Je veux vivre” from Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet made wonderful sense swinging in the silks.
While I doubt the show will find its way onto a larger stage, she packed the room with family, friends, and curious others, raised a little money for good works, and certainly exorcised any remaining performance anxiety she may have been harboring. It was a little weird, powerfully moving at times, kinda silly at others. That is to say, it was a deep drink of distilled Brattleboro.
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 