Category Archives: New England

Steve Martin: Pied Piper with a Banjo

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I work out to Steve Martin‘s banjo music.  I imagine he would be appalled to know that, but then again maybe it’s a marketing idea.  I sort of admire people who can go the gym and work out regularly but I am not one of them.  The idea of getting in my car and driving somewhere to exercise just seems wrong, not to mention embarrassing for someone who refuses to wear sweatpants anywhere, ever.  If it’s too cold to walk outside, looking out the basement window and listening to The Crow gives my mind something wonderful to do while my body is busy being miserable. It’s perfect.  Forget Katy Perry, Michael Jackson and the rest of the thumping-base workout music – it all only reminds me of how young I am not.  But banjo music brings out the young in everyone.  It is inherently happy, endlessly sunny and an invitation to love life. The winter melts to spring, the rural roads stretch before me, and when I am finished I can go and write.

Speaking of which, a while back my daughter and I went to hear Steve Martin himself talk about his life and play a little banjo.  At the end of the interview by insipid entertainment reporter Joyce Kulhawik (I am loathe to even give her a link), Mr. Martin took questions.   One person whined to him about writer’s block and asked him how he kept himself creative and he was blissfully bemused.  In effect, he told her that, having worked so hard to get to this point in his life that he can now pursue his ideas whenever the mood strikes him.  No pep talks, no tricks of the trade, just a very candid glimpse of someone who has earned the right to do nothing and thus pursues everything.  Think about it – writer, comedian, actor, director, playwright, poet, collector, musician.  Even if you did have writer’s block how could you think someone like Steve Martin could provide you with any more wisdom than he already has?

Last Tomato

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We have a sweet children’s book called First Tomato, in which a young bunny picks the first ripe tomato and her mother makes her fresh tomato soup.  Only after downloading this photo did I notice that the morning light reveals tiny spiderwebs on the tomato plants, a harbinger of Halloween.  Taken just a few days ago, it already harkens back to seemingly distant, definitely brighter summer days, and I am hoping that the remaining tomatoes will ripen before the frost arrives.  We wait all through June and July and into August for that first tomato, but we never can be sure when we will eat the last, finding sometimes that the days have gotten too short and we have waited too long.

A Temple Grandin Moment

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It’s the first day of school and the new ridiculously early schedule and the blazing heat make me feel like I imagine these cows feel – I just want to stand in the shade and barely move and not think at all.  I am already nostalgic for summer and the late afternoon moments when, while riding with a car full of kids (autistic and not, for the record) past the farms, all of them would spontaneously start to moo at the grazing cows.

BP: Goo Gone

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As I woke up to the radio this morning I heard the first news item about the British Petroleum oil spill that I did not need to hear again to understand.  The cap on the oil well is secure but something – they aren’t sure what - is coming up through the ocean floor nearby.  It might be pressure building up as a result of the cap, but then again it might not; such seepages can occur naturally.  Thus, BP is reluctant top loosen the cap because that will result in more fines for them, but apparently they can’t be held legally responsible for the rupture in the ocean floor.

Despite the 24/7 spill cam  documenting the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and the valiant efforts of Anderson Cooper, it’s still difficult for me to get a handle on both the science and magnitude of the spill and how it came to this.  As I type at my computer in my air-conditioned home atop a two car garage I know that I am complicit in the energy dependence that drives companies like BP to do something that is inherently dangerous to the global ecosystem.  I’ve pored over the graphics illustrating how deep water drilling works, how relief wells will help, how natural gas and oil are mined but not necessarily collected at the same time and how bacteria that feast on the oil are depriving the rest of the ocean of the oxygen they need to survive.  The only news item I won’t read is Kevin Coster’s solution to some or all of this - you won’t be getting a hyper link to that one from me.

At some point someone suggested that the President or Secretary of Energy provide the public with strategies for responding to the crisis – and in ways more practical than planning a vacation to the Gulf.  If people can start carrying reusable bags to the grocery store like more people are doing nowadays the possibilities really are endless, days and  in these days of PowerPoint I am really shicked that no one has issued a bulleted list of things people can do to cut energy dependence – of if they have why they haven’t shown up on milk cartons and paper bags. 

Speaking of which, my own personal ray of hope has been the flourishing of the farmer’s markets near our house.  When we moved here 17 years ago there were three tiny, tired farm stands that we counted on for corn, strawberries, blueberries, zucchini, tomatoes and potatoes each year.   Now, we have a Friday farmer’s market near the center of town and those three old farm stands – all within sight of one another – have each constructed new buildings and are offering local milk, eggs, meat, bread and cheese.  This year, for the first time, it’s possible to skip the supermarket entirely for weeks at a time.  We are saving gas on trips to Costco and we are helping the local economy as we develop a taste for grilled vegetables.  It is the Michael Pollanization of America, and it’s great.

Still, my thoughts keep drifting to the basket under my kitchen sink.  For years I have been slowly replacing the Dow chemicals under it with more environmentally friendly cleaners – more white vinegar and less unpronounceable stuff.  But my favorite bottle in the basket is Goo Gone.  It’s a  miraculous citrus-based grease and adhesive remover and it makes all of my worst petroleum-based household problems go away and smell lovely.  I have to admit that I don’t know that all of it products are all natural.  But I harbor fantasies of giant tankers of Goo Gone dispatched to the Gulf of Mexico where the waters and sands will be restored to an orange-scented bliss.  And if that was Kevin Costner’s idea, I don’t want to know about it.

Photos:  Vineyard Sound, July 2009; Spring Brook Farm, July 2009; Summer Produce, July 2009.

Spring Thaw, with a Vengeance

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Last week the roiling Nashua River escaped its banks and pummeled the abandoned mill buildings it once powered.  Ten inches of rain fell over two days during the second powerful storm to hit New England in a month, taking all of the season’s snow and the contents of many cellars with it.  This mill wall, with it’s bricked up window and stars whose purpose elude me, says so much about how much we struggle to manage nature.  Harnessing and fighting its power at the same time; eventually giving up and letting it loosen and take the bricks with it downstream, one at a time.

If You Can’t Stop, Wave

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There’s nothing better than when people make a little extra effort to do the right thing.  This is the sign in front of the new Police HQ in Littleton, Massachusetts, and it stands on the site of a former farm stand, Stan’s Big Acres.  Owned by the late John “Stan” Paskiewicz, the stand – a small red shack with a screen porch and a hand painted white sign with red writing - had a greeting painted on it  “If You Can’t Stop, Wave.”  Whenever we gave people directions to our house when we moved from the city, Stan’s sign was the landmark that reassured them they were not indeed lost and were , in fact, close to their destination (the other site was Bob’s Bait & Tackle).  Guests often arrived with cider or apples from Stan’s (no one ever arrived with bait - go figure) and even when I driving past alone I found myself raising a hand to Stan as I drove by.  When Stan’s closed it stood empty for a number of years, falling into disrepair, the sign still outside.  We kept waving anyway.  When Littleton decided to use the site for the station (and a beautiful one at that) some civic-minded person or group preserved Stan’s greeting on the new sign.

So, Stan’s is a Police station and Bob’s is a yarn shop.  There are still signs of the agricultural life along the way home - farm stands, horse farms, fields of sheep and produce – but nothing quite like Stan’s, save for the red house directly across the street (below) that echoes his stand in it’s waning days; the future on one side the road, the past on the other.  If you can’t stop, wave.   Okay, then.