It’s March 15, 2016. Primaries today in 4 or 5 dozen states. The “big” ones: Florida, Ohio, Illinois. Mainscream media trumpets this “day of decision” as the one where, at the end, we “all know” how “this thing” is “going to play out.”
Really?
I thought we had that day already. Continue reading
The Florida primary is next week, and her spouse is drawing ginormous crowds there. We are even starting to see pictures of these crowds on TV. Finally, Big Media seriously entertain the thought that Bernie Sanders’ campaign for a political revolution has grown some legs. Now, inevitably, the searchlight swings Jane Sanders’ way. America and its punditry will begin to look long and critically at Jane. Continue reading
Old Bernie Sanders is quite a rig. He is by miles the most exhilarating presidential uppity-comer, our Bernie – he’s the Real Deal. A real Democrat-Plus: that is to say, not just your basic Democrat — no, Bernie is the deluxe model: he’s an Independent. Democratic. Socialist. Fully loaded. The “real” Democrats, though, are giving him an awful hard time for this. They say he’s not really one of them. They say he’s a Johnny-Come-Lately. They say he’s just using the Democratic Party to get himself elected.
Goodness I love to swim.
I love slipping through water that is the same temperature as my skin. I love the way a cupped handful of water resists being pushed out of the way. I love the way my body feels, stretched all the way out, rolling in a rhythm, and weightless.
I especially like that my chest is weightless in water. That it stops pulling on my neck and shoulders and getting in my way. That for this interval I get a break from the pain this causes me the other 23 hours of the day.
The gravity waves that rolled through our area last September finally — finally! — bulled their way up through the primary season fizz-over and into the news this week. These waves were generated a long time ago when two black holes collided. They turned up on CNN because they comprise the first direct evidence of rippling space/time as predicted by Albert Einstein over a century ago. These waves are Big News. Big news, but not local news:
I have a house thermometer, but it’s a cheap one. It only goes down to zero degrees. I also have a good, Northeast Kingdom thermometer that goes down to minus 60, but that one’s nailed to the outside wall of my milk house, a good hundred yards away across my dooryard and the paved road. Entirely too far from my kitchen door, in other words, to just casually “go check” on an early, arctic morning like this one. Especially before coffee — because in such cold as this, the trip requires dressing up: Continue reading
Aren’t you amazed at what you can produce — for good or ill? The dainty things — the nice turns of phrase, the perfect batch of heart-attack cookies, the accidentally wonderful photograph — these get pinned up for public appreciation right away. But the other things — the smelly, sitcky, somewhat disgusting and embarrassing productions — I usually throw a tissue over those. I imagine you do, too. But they are just as worthy of attention. They, too, have their marvelous qualities.
Take earwax:
Continue reading
I like the first cup of coffee in the morning.
I like t-shirt sheets.
I like the Boston Red Sox.
I like Bob Dylan’s music.
I like the Beatles, too. And John Prine. I love John Prine.
I like Annie Dillard’s essay, living like weasels.
I like the sound of snow at 15 below.
I like Elmore Mountain glittering the way it looks to me on the way to work in January from up on West Hill, or actually by then it is probably Town Hill.
I like encountering wild things in wild places; I like the way we stop time when we pause and take each other in. Continue reading
Forget your stupid little Wii games and your World of Warcraft and your boogie boards and your iPods and all that what-have-you. You want excitement? Be 8 or under …in the woods, by water, with two new friends… pull a twig off a cedar and, on the count of OneTwoThree, scream GO!! …and fling it upstream, off a little wooden farm bridge. Then race to the other side of the bridge …and drop in unison onto your bellies… and the three of you hang your heads under the roadway to watch, upside down, while all the leaves bob on the water til the current takes them. When it does, at the top of your lungs, yell I’m winning!! I’m winning!! even if you’re not… because during the month of August, leaves adrift pick up speed in the presence of soundwaves. This is a known fact. Squeal when your little sister’s creased blackberry leaf inches up to and past your friend’s stalk of golden-rod…and groan so the second balcony can hear you when your maple-nose turns lazy in the water and hangs up on a cedar snag. Jump up and down and make the bridge shiver like a plucked string when the leaves set adrift by the other two kids collide and drift off into a bankside eddy. …Inspire your Aunt Margaret to tell you to stop… but also to laugh and not really mean it… An hour or two of that, mister, will exhaust you — happily. You might then come back in… dragging your sandy feet across my clean kitchen floor …and have a bit of homemade raspberry icecream to recharge your summer batteries.
