In which we find ourselves in another part of the world
The blog turned five last month, which went unheralded at the time. But surely that’s a milestone, especially in Internet years, where it’s gotta be like a hundred.
To celebrate, I present my very first actual cat video. It’s not long, but there’s layers and nuance.
Wantastiquet Road, constructed 1899, fittingly situated at the base of the mountain.
Somebody had leaned matching walking sticks on them. Perched on one was an old lost glove, and on the other an old lost set of car keys.
Where Whetstone Creek crosses under Main Street, by the Latchis.
Chuck and Susan are our bridge buddies (and by ‘bridge’ I mean appetizers and bubbles followed by a few hands of ‘now how do I respond to that bid?’ followed by dinner, more cards, and Ben & Jerry’s right out of the carton) and dear friends.
Here, stone cold sober, and after much rescheduling, we all celebrated their fall birthdays.
PS — not stone cold sober
A few random shots from recent morning walks around Brattleboro.
One way to afford a fancy plug-in hybrid is to carry a table lamp in the back seat.
These blocks appeared a while ago to block off a makeshift parking area. Parking can be tricky for downtown residents, because few houses have garages, and in the winter you’re not allowed to park on the street (to make way for the plows). Plus, those blocks are across from somebody’s front window. So, the whole block thing just seemed a little hostile to me. Los numéros appeared a few weeks later. Somehow I think they are wonderfully, slyly subversive.
Here’s a fire truck getting its daily bath. We recently learned that one of our half-million-dollar trucks must be replaced several years ahead of schedule because the frame is rusted. And we are currently paying a million dollars a year in bond interest to replace this fire station, for reasons that include mold in the walls. Maybe consider drying the truck more thoroughly before pulling it back in?
It’s been a month to shake off the complacency. I’ve been reminded that relatively big things in your life, like a job, can just disappear from one minute to the next. I’ve been reminded that much of what I thought I knew about politics, about the very nature of our public discussion, was wrong. From there, it’s easy to think about all the fragility of all the systems that surround and support us. One hacker destroys the food distribution system, one text message smashes the car. One cell divides too quickly. One mob with a pitchfork – or an automatic rifle – decides not to like you.
Probably most people in the world already knew that stuff better than I… incomprehensibly bad things happen every day, everywhere, and to everybody. Still, when your glass is even a little emptier than it used to be, you notice, and wonder, and worry.
But even faced with a crazy set of changes, what I’m noticing this weekend is a glass that still feels way more than half full. Lost a job? Lucky, and grateful, to be in a household with another one. And to be in a household, not all alone. And for that household to be in an actual house. And so on.
Lost a little knee cartilage over the years? Extra thankful for my bike. Far-flung family? Hooray for big-hearted friends. And so on. At some point, after some number of losses, I suppose I’d feel differently… the emptiness would overwhelm the fullness, the unfairness would eat the joy right off the plate.
But not yet. I’m thankful this weekend for all of it. And even though it’s probably Pollyanna thinking, grateful for the new choices we will have to be making in the coming days. Exciting times!
Over the past month, progress on the living room ground to a near-standstill. The final subcontractor, doing the picky finish work on the glass blocks, just wouldn’t show up reliably. So, in a moment of frustration we told them to just get as far as they could get last Friday and then pack up and get out.
Now, we have some painting and patching to do ourselves, and some edges won’t be quite as smooth as they could be. But, we have our house back.
This makes 2 out of 2 contractors on this project who suffered from 95% disease… sheesh! You like them, you like their work, but they just can’t quite bring themselves to get ‘er done!
My last morning in Chicago, in which I enjoyed a nice morning walk. There’s a lot of architecture here, which is like saying there’s a lot of weather: anywhere there’s a building there’s architecture. But in Chicago it seems like there’s a lot of “significant” architecture. There are also a lot of these building-sized murals, particularly I think in places where neighboring buildings have been torn down, leaving relatively ugly brick walls exposed.
On my walk, I went across the Roosevelt Street viaduct and bridge, which included these cool little sculptures on the handrail…
Woulda been even more enjoyable at 7-something than at 5-something. Thanks for nothing, eccentric axis!
Some of the things that have become themes on this blog might seem mundane, even silly. Manhole covers, duct tape on cars, door knockers, that sort of thing. However, there are moments of excitement…
But rest assured, I don’t travel around the world only to stare at the pavement… There is cool stuff up in the air as well.
The Art Institute lions are looking jauntier than last time I took their picture.
A new type of access cover
Sunrise from the Navy Pier
Costco taking Christmas excess over a whole new level of the top.
Biking buddy Carl put out a call the other day that he wanted to ride a particular stretch of dirt road on Friday, and who would like to join, and somehow I was the only one to respond.
So, mid-morning he and I set off toward Stratton. At home, it was sunny, breezy, and 50. Up there, it was mostly cloudy, windy, and 42.
We parked at the Grout Pond access lot and rode down, then up, then down and down and down some more, on what is now known as Kelley Stand Road, formerly the Sunderland Turnpike. Although the road is closed in winter, it was actually quite good, any car could have navigated it (until the snow comes), and we saw a surprising amount of traffic.
Nearly all the ride was within Green Mountains National Park. We crossed over the Appalachian trail , and passed by Beebe Pond, which offered a nice view through the now-bare trees.
Carl’s a local, and a well-read kind of guy, so I wasn’t surprised to hear him start telling me that we were just near the spot where Daniel Webster had given a famous speech back in the day.
We coasted on down the road, following Lyman Brook downstream, until we hit Kansas Road at the bottom of the hill. Now we’re actually in Sunderland, home to about a thousand souls, and also to Orvis, whose catalogs are always a pleasure.
But what goes down… we retraced our route much more slowly. Even as the temperature dropped and a few snowflakes swirled, we got warmer and warmer, peeling off a layer partway up.
Just at the end of the ride, Carl spotted The Rock…
Quite a story! The 1840 Presidential Campaign turned out to be a bit of a turning point in American Presidential politics, and I’m sure the story resonates with me all the more given that most of my Facebook friends think that American politics as we know it may have just been killed by the election of Sleazebag-for-life… and I’m not completely convinced they’re wrong.
So, down the rabbit hole. The Whigs in 1836 couldn’t agree on a nominee, and so they simply submitted four candidates. For the 1840 race, they were determined to have only a single candidate. In 1839, they decided on war hero William Henry Harrison to run against incumbent Democrat Martin van Buren. Van Buren was a technocrat and career politician from a middle-class upbringing, and was seen as arrogant and out of touch with the Common People. The Common People, in their turn, were still reeling from the economic reversals they suffered in the Great Panic of 1837. Wait just a damn minute… is this sounding a little too eerily familiar?
But it’s all true, as far as an hour on the Internet can tell me. Van Buren painted Harrison as a boor, a rube, with some dismissive comment about log cabins and hard cider. And suddenly that became the campaign slogan.. Harrison was the scion of an aristocratic, slave-owning family, but he embraced the whole rough-and-tumble thing (having in fact spent some time in the frontier wilderness known as Ohio) Harrison’s Whigs, including the great Daniel Webster, set out around the country holding great rallies. As an aside, in Michael Pollans’ book The Botany of Desire, he hypothesizes that Johnny Appleseed was primarily in the cider business, since you can’t reliably grow good eating apples from seed…
This was the first time anybody had ever actively campaigned for President. Although ‘log cabins and hard cider’ is a slogan now remembered mostly by amateur historians, the other motto from that year lasted much longer: Tippecanoe and Tyler Too. We know how the story ends… the wily, and I would say disingenuous, campaigner trounced the well-qualified incumbent by claiming to be a a Man of the People. I’m sure he would have appointed his sons to the Transition Team, and even to important posts in the government, but he died only a month after being elected. Some say he caught his death in the cold delivering America’s longest-ever Inaugural Address. Doubtful to my way of thinking… but who knows?
So, back to Sunderland… you’re as ready to be done with this bike ride as I was at that point… couldn’t really feel my toes any more.. didn’t wear quite enough clothes around the extremities.
July 7-8, 1840. The word went out all over Southern New England that there would be a great rally in Stratton, VT. People immediately began felling spruce trees for a 100-foot log cabin built solely for the occasion. Whiggish supporters invented the Tailgate Party by driving their own log cabins, mounted on wagons behind horse teams, from miles away and parking them in this field on top of a hill. And Daniel Webster came and gave what we can only guess was a hell of a speech. We can only guess, because nobody bothered to really take down the substance of what he said… newspapers in that time and place were mostly political propaganda machines, and so the details didn’t matter: hearing the actual details of what was said wouldn’t really change anybody’s mind anyway. Clinton-Trump debates, anyone?
There’s an ancient Chinese saying that unpredictable change is the only thing that lasts forever, and I mostly believe that. At the same time, I’m a believer in a parallel truth to the effect that there isn’t all that much new under the sun… and at least regarding political campaigns, that truth seems stronger at the moment.
Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition 