Category: Events

Hungry Lion Bike Tour

With several buddies, I rode in the Hungry Lion Bike Tour yesterday, starting out in Whitingham, just near the Brigham Young memorial, and meandering around the Mohawk Trail area.


Fall is definitely in the air, with some trees turning and temperature at the starting line only about 50. The sky was a beautiful blue, the winds were quiet, and overall it was a great day to be out. We mostly stayed together, but then Elizabeth and I eased ahead of the others, and pushed less and less easily through the final third of the ride. She is headed to Hawaii for the Ironman World Championship in a couple of weeks, so when I gratefully tucked into my post-ride burger, she got back on her bike for another couple of hours.

The early part of the ride was livened up by the passage of dozens and dozens of vintage motorcycles, all participants in some rally of their own. We had some great stretches of silky new pavement, and we even went by Lake Sadawga, home of floating islands.

At the finish, I didn’t win any raffle prizes, but I did get to eat delicious barbecue and drink good beer while listening to World Way, my favorite local reggae band. In fact, they are the only local reggae band I know of, but they’re my favorite.

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Death, love, courage, fear, and reverence 

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. 

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Characters 


A lot of people dress up in silly costumes before heading out watch the race go by. Not counting the MAMILs of course (middle aged men in Lycra) like me, who might be the silliest of all. 

Some people don’t need to dress up…

And PS, I don’t think I took any of these pictures… We are starting to share photos among the group, so thank you Maribeth and Stuart. 

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All aflutter in Avignon 

In Avignon last week, the whole city was in festival mode: theatre, music, lots of stuff. Since everything is made of stone, it’s hard to hang posters, so they tie up these great long strings and fix the flyers to those. They flap in the wind like crows and make a haunting rattle everywhere you go.

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Backstage

Every day, just a few minutes after the race ends, there’s an award ceremony. On our podium day, we got to stand in the backstage area and see the props used by the podium girls. Sashes to denote the sponsors, flowers for everything. 

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Brattleboro Goes Fourth 2016

Kind of everything you could hope for in a small town parade…

Visiting family warming up for their role as applause providers


Marching bands, although more would have been welcome


Military service clubs juxtaposed with the Governors Institute (a summer camp for future protesters). 


Kids on bikes


The baton group. We’re not sure if the gentleman in front considers himself a leader or a participant, but he is always in the parade, and the little girls do seem to look up to him. 


Tired Little Leaguers


And of course, Alfred…

And PS, yes we did have fireworks. 

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Boston morning 

I found myself in Boston a couple of weeks ago and had a beautiful morning walk around the harbor area. 


There’s a lotta old infrastructure under those streets…


I ran across this interesting amalgam of stuff left out by the curb for free. At some point you just outgrow your “No Casino” sign and various other things, including a whole bag of CDs and videotapes. 


Whoever it was had good, eclectic taste in music, but I’m too streaming-happy to even try to suck all those songs into my phone. Even so, I lugged the whole bag home, and made a shipment to Decluttr. I’m about 25 bucks richer now…

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Why not?


I heard part of the track “Twilight World” while driving the other day and wanted to hear it again, but when I got to the iTunes Store I ended up buying the whole album. 

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It takes a village 

to make a glass bowl.


After I finished the Boys and Girls Club bike ride on Saturday (and yes, you can still donate), we joined the Provs at The Hot Glass Art Center in Marlborough, NH for a glassblowing lesson. It was a lot of fun!  Jo, the owner, in the middle, and her assistant Bridg, right, did a very impressive job of simultaneously telling us EXACTLY what to do and keeping it light and fun. Lee supplied some extra air.

On the one hand, very easy to get started: with no experience whatsoever, we were able to make seven neat things in under two hours, bowls, a pitcher, a glass, and some decorative flowers. On the other hand, there would be plenty of opportunities to practice… years’ worth, actually! None of our pieces ended up exactly round, or as thin as we might have wanted, or perfectly tapered, or totally smooth. But they will be serviceable, and nice to look at, and I’m looking forward to doing it again.

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Strawberry Party 2016

A great time as usual. The day was hot, but by the time the party started it was just right, and a couple hours later the fire was welcome.  Yay Vermont!


I thought this big German Shepherd was purely decorative, but no, he was actually part of the cleanup crew…

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Tin can tourism 

On Saturday afternoon we went a few miles out of town to the KOA campground, which was hosting its annual vintage trailer rally.even though the temperature was not much above 60, the rain held off, and the snack bar served a good sandwich. We had fun last year, and thought it would be worth it to see if it is still fun.

Again this year, 20 or 30 trailers from the ’50s to the ’80s, most available to go inside and look around. All the owners more than willing to talk about every detail of the trailer, the restoration process, and all the fun they have had.

And again this year, I didn’t really get the pictures I wanted to get. My interior shots don’t capture the cleverness of the spaces. The exteriors were often hidden underneath the colorful canvas awnings that define your “front room” in the campground. But, the quality of the photography notwithstanding, I think these little trailers are really charming.

All in all, a fun way to spend a couple of hours…

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That’s close enough, thank you 


On the way out of Indianapolis last week, we got caught behind a motorcade, complete with energetically swerving SUVs, flashing lights, the works. 

There was a lot going on in Indy that day, between the NFL draft and the final paroxysms of the Cruz campaign. We don’t know for sure, but we guessed that we were following Carly Fiorina and/or Heidi Cruz. Whoever it was, we were glad that the private aviation turnoff was a couple exits before the main airport exit so we could drive normally. 

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The stories we tell 

Last night, thanks to the unexpected generosity of the Retreat, we got tickets to The Hatch’s annual storytelling extravaganza at the Latchis.

Fronted by Tom Bodett and led by a gang of local movers and shakers masquerading as soccer moms, the Hatch brings storytellers (in the vein of This American Life or The Moth) to town for a fundraiser. Each year they choose one charity, and last night was Youth Services. A fun event for a worthy cause.


As it happens, there was also a Paul Stone painting available via silent auction… that brings our collection to two.

The program was certainly entertaining, and it really was a good cause, and we were happy to be there. But of course there’s a niggle…

In these times we live in, it has become possible for a whole class of people to get astoundingly good at doing spoken word performance stuff (and also blogging !!!), from standup to serious. This show leans heavily toward the personal and confessional, the kind of reflective story you’d unexpectedly share with a college friend you haven’t seen in 20 years.

Except these stories are edited, polished, perfected, and practiced so they seem even more real than they already are. Which somehow makes them less real to me. Constructed rather than lived… recited rather than shared.

Somehow the standard for “truth” in these spoken memories seems uncomfortably fuzzy to me. In photos, when we airbrush our fashion models, or rearrange the bodies on the battlefield, most people object that there’s been an act of deceit. And when Ben Carson talks about West Point… But when these radio storytellers deliver their homilies about life and loss and love, we aren’t fact-checking. I think even if  we did find things to quibble about in these stories, we’d decide that the authenticity of the emotions they conjure outweighs the heavy use of craft to convey them.

Anyway, it’s all just a niggling question, of little real importance. The Hatch’s mission is clear and benevolent … use the power of narrative to raise money for groups that need it. Since I support the causes they support, and since it really was a great show, I’m quite willingly complicit.

And years from now, using all the techniques I’ve been able to glean from watching and listening to Bodett and crew, I’ll lean over to the tourist who just walked into the beach bar and tell him my story.

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Tripping Feyly, Gayly Over the Verandah

Probably Tina Fey and I agree pretty often, but we don’t know each other that well, so I can’t be sure. One point on which we are united, however, is that neither of us is impressed with Gay Talese. Maybe for different reasons, but still, me and Tina, we’re in harmony on this thing.

My reason for being unimpressed with Gay Talese is that I just barely know who he is. He was/is a journalist who pushed at the literary edges of that craft in his own books and some of the major American magazines of the 1960s and 1970s, along with a bunch of other famous guys  people. I didn’t really read those magazines at that time, and there are other journalists and other magazines that wormed their way into my reading habits. Mostly, it’s just a generational thing, I guess.

Tina’s reasons, however, are more pointed. At a recent conference, 84-year-old Talese bumbled an answer to an audience question about the women writers who inspired him. None, he said, women weren’t into that kind of thing at that time, didn’t really know of any good women role models for him. Ouch! As recounted in the Brattleboro Reformer, a sharp intake of breath was followed by mad typing on 500 smartphones, and a whole bunch of smart, influential women eviscerated Talese on Twitter. Fey was just piling on, but I love how she did it… an absolute stone-cold put-down, but funny in just her quirky deadpan way even if you didn’t understand the reference: just a silly non sequitur to wrap up the interview. Bam!

But this is not “Boston literary seminar adventure” or “New York literati of a certain age adventure,” no indeed. This is Brattleboro Adventure, and yes this story does belong here. The audience question that started the whole discussion came from local poet and Packers Corner commune co-founder Verandah Porche. Never met her, but I bet she and I would agree on a lot of principles and very few details. I feel the same way about Bernie Sanders, come to think of it. Honestly, I have a hard time getting past her name.

Why would you raise your hand and ask somebody a difficult or challenging or provocative question in public? Maybe you want to call out an old codger whose attitudes toward women are outdated at least and probably worse. Maybe you want helpfully to prompt an expansion of his original answer so he doesn’t unintentionally come off as a misogynist. Maybe you just want to hear your own voice and show your insightfulness. Maybe you hope the answer will shine a good spotlight on the women he neglected to mention. Maybe you’re just genuinely curious. Whatever her reasons, Ms. Porche showed the power of a short, simple question, and reminded us that even our best and brightest have their smudges. For her as a poet, I would think it would be profoundly satisfying to create such a stir with so few words, and profoundly sad that the stir stirred up something unpleasant from the bottom of the pot.

Best of all, she inadvertently brought me and Tina Fey a little closer together (Tina, please feel free to come over for coffee anytime…).

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