Much has been made of white-nose disease and its damaging effect on bat populations. I say, "Let 'em go."

  True, bats eat mosquitoes. Also true: You could live a lifetime and not meet one person who likes mosquitoes.

    However. We're not killing bats through recklessness or cal… Read full post »

...Working on some blog items that aren't ready to go, but mostly deciding whether this still makes sense for me. I enjoy it, don't get me wrong; love the writing, the connecting, the...je ne sais quoi. But...time does not equal money. As the owner of a large, old, mouse-attracting house, I… Read full post »

Ears of corn for sale

 

At the gas station-market.

 

Only in Vermont. Read full post »

I imagine the sun rose beautifully over the hills today. The weeds above the trellis had been cut back, I think, making for fewer bugs and therefore, fewer bats. My house, I hope, is empty.

Monday night, we made a production, D and I, of getting me to sleep early.  It… Read full post »

...Do you think I was rude not to shake the pest-control guy's* hand after he'd picked up a mouse dropping and several other unidentifiable objects and rolled them around in his fingers?

 

*This is the new PC guy. The one I mentioned in an earlier post got divorced (as I… Read full post »

My brother's messed up in the head. In some areas, rather bright. In others...not. I like to say that if you held a conversation with him, you'd conclude he was retarded. If you played checkers with him, you'd conclude that you were.

We have this stereotype in our culture: the… Read full post »

I like rain in the summertime. It keeps the temperature from climbing too high. I like to think it keeps bats from flying. It's a good thing.

You can have too much of a good thing. My property's plants have gone Jack-and-the-Beanstalk; rain forest; shoots appearing in upper story windows. That… Read full post »

Not long ago, I discovered a visual artist whose work I adore. This doesn't happen often. Music, yes. Art, not so much. Michelangelo, Monet, Renoir; those are my guys, and I discovered their work long ago.

But here was someone new. New-ish, at any rate; he's been painting for more than… Read full post »

A cool, rainy day.

Writing my novel. I'll pay.

That's the thing. Always.

I'd forgotten that, like so many things, small-town Fourth of July parades make me weepy.

As the house-on-fire float passed me, I said, "That's great!" the way a drunk might declare, "I love you, man!" Surely the Cub Scouts wondered about me, too.

Magnificent floats. And trucks and flags and… Read full post »

Celebrity deaths are weird. Before the Internet, we had, essentially, one way to know people we hadn't actually met. Everybody knew the subject in the same way, knew the same details collectively.

I'm hearing comparisons between Michael Jackson's death and that of Elvis. For me, it more closely echoe… Read full post »

Belle, Vermont -- It's beautiful here, and tranquil. If anybody's sneezing or spitting into their bathroom sinks, I don't know about it. Instead of silence, bird calls. Traffic, yes, but a whoosh; no horns, no sirens.

Yesterday, I came back from errands and saw a Band-Aid on the floor. Not… Read full post »

These days, parents try harder. Then, everybody did the best they could and hoped it was enough. Sometimes, it was. Depends what they’d learned.

My father, like his own father: patient, even tempered, funny, and able to understand a child’s point of view. For instance, he taught me the fol
…

Read full post »

For about three weeks, we lived on my stepfather's houseboat in the backyard canal while our new home was undergoing renovations.  I remember luring the indigenous ducks by tossing pretzel sticks into the water. My mother remembers writing me a lateness excuse for school: "My daughter couldn't g… Read full post »

Early jackhammers

Brr brr brr! Brr brr brr! Brrrr!

Like a freakin' nail.

 

Shrieking monster kids

Tear through the building courtyard.

Can't you please shut up?

 

Of course, long ago, I was the shrieking apartment-dwelling child, racing across the parquet dining area, making loud high-pit… Read full post »

From an email to a friend, February, 2007, after I'd looked at the house on the sly:


Dxxxx knows none of this. All he knows is that I've made a decision that this will be the year I buy a cheap vacation house. He's against it, of course, and trying to persuade… Read full post »

When D and I were at the house last week, we met a neighbor. I was sitting in the window seat, actually, posing for that photo, when I saw a man leaning against the front door.

Huh?

He lives in the house behind mine, he said, and wondered whether he… Read full post »

Weird music from the woman upstairs who constantly spits from deep  in her throat, then runs the water. Sneezes, too. All the time. All the freakin' time. (Truth be told, so does my husband. I don't care for that, either.) Sounds--the music does--like a soprano singing along with a Theremin.* No… Read full post »

D at last came with me to the country house.

I needed photos to accompany an essay I'd written for publication. He was a good sport about taking pictures.

Here I am in the sunroom.

...and outside...

...and in my room. (Yes, I… Read full post »

Where there's humidity in Vermont, you'll find these bugs that look like worms. I don't recall their proper name. The pest guy I hired to inspect my property told me. Usually, you'll find them curled up, dried and dead. (The wormy thing-os; not pest control people, per se.) When alive, they… Read full post »

I spent the better part of a week at the house; invited the neighbors for brunch; enjoyed the visit.

Stared out the windows at the bright sunshine and birds; made friends, of a sort, with a little wormy thing-o that had made a home in my kitchen sink.

Drove past… Read full post »

"I went back to Ohio," The Pretenders sang, "but my city was gone."  

Call it Marlocent, a little village in the mountains of southern New
Hampshire, just over the Vermont border.
After three years of noise, crowding, filth, ugliness and unjustifiable expense in Manhattan, I craved open space and… Read full post »

Adult life replicates childhood in so many ways.
As a kid, I lived with one family, visited the other. Not fully part of either.

Two lives, two households, then and now. Different incidental characters at each. Part of one small universe, then another. Events take place; I'm not there.

Need time… Read full post »

 At the 2009 Hunger Walk. Under my real name, managed to exceed my $500 goal--with extra boosts from my husband and a friend's husband's company's matching gift program. Read full post »

Just to remind you good people, the Walk for Hunger is this Sunday.

I hope to raise at least $500. While I know it's awkward to ask you to support my cause, I also know that's the only way for me to give an amount that might actually make a… Read full post »