You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
In the early ’80s, when I lived in the Rust Belt, we chanced upon a small Greek bakery in the middle of a residential area – just five or six blocks from our house, actually.
What an incredible discovery! Along with the realization it made no sense to try to keep anything over an additional day – that honey soaks through the flaky phyllo dough too quickly! But, oh my, before it does!
The concept of community gardens, where public land is made available to individuals and families to raise produce and flowers, is a noble one. When it works as envisioned, gardeners get to know and respect one another while swapping advice and their harvests, families eat healthier and tastier, and a piece of ground is simply put to good use.
Of course, there are spoilers, as we hear.
One year, for instance, all of the purple cabbage heads kept disappearing from the different families’ sections at one site, at least until a restaurant owner was caught in the act.(The audacity!)
Another year, I think, some of the garlic was raided.
This year, a large blooming tithonia plant was dug up and taken. It’s a big plant!
And more recently, as one man worked his plot, he observed a woman going through the neighboring sections and filling bags. Excuse me, he said, those aren’t yours.
But it’s a community garden, she retorted.
You’re stealing, he said, dialing his cell phone. I’m sure the police are perplexed by this one.
She was well-dressed. Her Audi was full of produce. She’d driven more than 30 miles from her home.
Does she really have no awareness of all the work that goes into ordering seeds, starting them indoors, transplanting, weeding, watering, weeding, watering, weeding, watering, staking some up … oh, well …
I’m waiting for the rest of the story. For now, I just can’t wrap my brain around this one.
New Englanders – at least those living in old houses – will occasionally speak of ghosts, and their stories can be compelling, no matter how skeptical the listener.
Of course, the specifics can differ. A dark apparition moving silently through dark hallways – or, in other modes, clumping loudly up and down the staircase. Leave empty junk food wrappers and soda cans and bottles on the counters and coffee table and even in the unmade sheets. Laugh eerily at midnight. Slide in front of you at the bathroom door, close it, lock it.
Drain the wi-fi bandwidth.
Expect steak and lobster and cheese while ignoring lettuce or eggs or peas.
But have you ever heard of a trail of stench that follows its movement? Oh, that detail is so telling. The fear of taking a shower, as well – the soap and washcloth remaining untouched.
They speak of the chill you feel, more than the dense smoky cloud. Or the echoing conversation as it’s twisted with a chortle and thrown back.
One version, in fact, has every intimate conversation accompanied by a Hollywood laugh track. And that, I’ll contend, is the most annoying.
A boulder resembles a round loaf on a breadboard. Maybe it’s just there for giants in the night. The leaves on the ground give an idea of its size.
At our yearly meeting sessions each summer, one night features an all-ages coffee house organized by the teens. It’s a great release for the adults, who have been hunkered down in joint business agendas that often run three hours at a shot. Still, in a week filled with those plus organized discussions and workshops, committee reports and tables, social issues documentaries, casual conversations, and much more, the live amateur entertainment can be a bit much, no matter how excellent many of the acts are.
So it was for me one year when I decided to skip the event – perhaps even go to bed early for a switch.
As I wandered down a hallway, I came across a half-dozen or so Friends gathered around an upright piano and singing four-part music. Great! I jumped right in and was delighted when we turned to a Stephen Foster piece that’s also in the repertoire of my choir. We were just getting it down for ourselves when the announcement came: “You’re on in five!”
What?
My plans had just changed.
So there we were, all adults, lining up for the stage, marching up, finding our places in a semi-circle facing the audience, and being introduced by an enthusiastic high school senior. What was supposed to be “the Hard-Timers,” after the piece we were to sing, came out of her mouth as “the Old-Timers.” Instead of being offended, though, I was grateful it hadn’t come out “the Alzheimers.” Ahem.
If you’re not yet there, be warned: This getting older does have a lot of unanticipated turns. Don’t you forget it. And don’t forget to smile.
It’s bound to appear, the bumper sticker, at least where I live:
A soft drink of local note – or notoriety, depending – is thick, dark, bitter Moxie. Think molasses. Or patent medicine, as it originated.
The soda has a cult following, something that mystifies many of us. Well, in our part of New England it’s something like Dr. Pepper is elsewhere. Hardly a universal taste. Either you get it or you don’t.
Well, there’s also Red Bull, which commonly gets teamed up with Jagermeister – as the Jagerbomb. The rumor is it’s so popular with underage drinkers that anyone buying Jagermeister at the State Liquor Store will get carded, regardless of age.
So the other day I noticed one of our neighbors sitting out in the sun and sipping … Moxie.
What, no Jagermeister with it?
No, he said smoothly. Moxie goes with Captain Morgan.
The bed stand, salvaged from a roadside, holds forsythia back so the blueberry bushes may thrive. The netting in the foreground is actually on the blueberry bushes, to keep birds and squirrels from picking all the berries, rather than on the ground, where the bricks anchor the netting.
No idea who left them this way, either.
It’s started. It’s definitely started. The 2016 presidential race.
Those living in New Hampshire can assure you by one indicator, the sudden rise in home phone calls. If you’re registered to one political party or the other and have a number listed somewhere, you’re getting invitations to meet its hopefuls — even the ones who haven’t yet filed. And if you’re registered as an independent, you get them all. And everyone’s asked to express opinions, though not all of the surveys are scientifically neutral. Did I mention the pleas for donations?
We view it as our quadrennial state sport – as well as an obligation to serve as guinea pigs for the rest of the nation. We’re not as rural as many think — much of the state’s really an outer suburb of Boston, so we get our share of big-city problems. And we’re more diverse, as well. We’re small enough to give deserving underdogs an ear – rather than just those who already have the most money. In face-to-face encounters, some of them in neighbors’ living rooms, we work to look through the mass-media image – and often we see somebody quite different than what you’ve assumed. Some highly qualified individuals are warm and witty in intimate settings but stiffen up in front of a big crowd or the television cameras — while some who look great on a tightly scripted screen are truly uncomfortable, even incoherent, in an everyday setting. We’re diligent enough to recognize the congestion of clown cars can be wildly entertaining, so we pay close attention. Besides, we know that just because these hopefuls can pay the registration fee doesn’t mean they can manage anything, but we still hope they enjoy their extended vacation in New England. They do put the rest of the crowd in perspective.
I’ll let folks in Iowa weigh in with their version of this winnowing process, but this is something we in the Granite State take seriously, no matter how eccentric or even lunatic the messenger. It’s a job somebody has to do, and staying informed isn’t always easy. We’ll be ready to kick back when it’s over.
Oh, would you excuse me? The phone’s ringing again. It just might be …
Jnana's Red Barn 