día de los muertos in vermont

A baton was passed at our house yesterday. After fifteen years of a creative Halloween party http://micabob.blogspot.com/2008/11/picasso-pumpkins-and-pop-quiz.html we started a new annual tradition—a Día de los Muertos party. This Mexican celebration combines Aztec and Mayan traditions honoring the departed with Catholic celebrations of All Saints Day and All Souls Day http://micabob.blogspot.com/2008/11/da-de-los-muertos.html.

The event blends remembrance with some irreverence. We prepared an ofrenda with framed photos of ancestors, smiling skeleton figurines called calacas, candles, and even authentic papel picado, thanks to the generosity of a worldly neighbor. My daughter and I shaped painted cardboard boxes into tributes to favorite pets and animals. She adorned hers with faux pearl earrings and three sparkly toothbrushes. Friends brought their own contributions. I loved hearing and telling stories about hats worn by missed family members, meditation stones they held, a red sox fan, an old whaler’s golden earring, a lost cat, a pie tin, a horse race, a favorite breakfast. It was lovely, and fun. Mariachi music played in the background.  Kids colored skull masks.

We feasted well. Rolled black bean, beef and chipotle enchiladas. Layered corn enchiladas with salsa verde. Spicy Spanish rice. Southwest chicken and lime soup. Outdoors we had a brick oven cranking so people could roll dough into skull shapes and bake it under the stars. The hot bread looked so tasty, I think everyone got slightly burned fingers.

This morning after cleaning up, I sat on the sunny porch outside drinking a hot cup and savoring the previous evening.   It was nearly 60 degrees F.  As my husband took apart the brick oven, a gentle breeze blew traces of ashes over my bathrobe.  I looked down at the ashes and thought that was a nice ending to our Vermont celebration.

bob marley and mary poppins

Today’s title seems an unlikely convergence of musical icons. Yet, this peculiar combination proved a recipe for recovery as my family fell like dominoes to influenza. Music and movies surely helped five days of severe fatigue, inertia, et al pass more quickly. If you thought a spoonful of medicine helps the medicine go down was the main attraction, you are wrong! Instead it was stir it up, little darlin’.

I often subscribe to naturopathy, so we had a mélange of flavors and concoctions to consume. Licorice tasting immune glycerite and tart tasting cough glycerite, freshly brewed by my naturopath, accompanied thousands of IUs of vitamin D to combat the virus. The trick was to get a small child to swallow these healing elements. That’s where the little medicine cups were handy. I have some sweet, tiny stoneware mugs. Add a little ginger ale and maple syrup to the herbs, and sing together stir it up, little darlin’! Worked every time.

I’m sure some of you quietly shuddering readers pictured this practice as something more like brimstone and treacle, a song by the anti-nanny from the Broadway version of Mary Poppins. It was a great ritual, really! Dessert was ultra-fragrant chicken soup delivered to the porch by a dear neighbor and pictured above along with the other accoutrements. After couch sitting and humming along through Mary Poppins many times, Bob Marley got us moving vertically. A reggae beat is truly the rhythm of influenza when you need to stand up and do something.  Let’s get together and feel alright!

halloween moments

The predicted Halloween downpour happened while we were strong-arming a small child to eat some dinner toast before trick-or-treating. That's why we got a late start. That's why her newly sewn kimono stayed dry and miraculously mud free. Our goal was to keep it simple and keep to Pleasant Street. This small street of 12 houses offers the best ever of small town Halloween. It's blocked off by the ambulance and fire truck so it's pedestrian friendly.  Kids can climb inside the trucks. The neighbors have bonfires, if it's not raining, and other, well, pleasant things.

My favorite is browsing candy while being mesmerized by live bagpipes and drumming. Fresh coffee and doughnuts. Giant gnomes over a pot of gold. One ancient woman with a long string of kids out the door asks each child what their costume is about and records the explanation and their name in a journal. Every year. My little Japanese princess made this year's list.

The evening ended at the local small coffee house where we were entertained by a ghoulish looking ten piece band playing Motown. No candy there, just tiny pieces of chocolate cake and a cup of warm tea. By the time we got to the pumpkin display at a local farm, a special little someone was fast asleep in the car. A perfect and peaceful Halloween evening.

dance du jour

After swim lessons, my daughter and I passed the windows of the adjoining indoor field house and witnessed an unusual synchronized affair. Seven people dressed in sport shorts and tees gracefully moving close together in an undulating wave through a miniature garden. Each had an arm outstretched, eyes half closed in meditation and concentration. It looked like a choreographed dance. I was baffled, because this was a…….dog show.

…with an obstacle course. Seconds later, I realized the dancers had two minutes to walk, or “wave” in this case, through the obstacle course before the competition started, dogs in tandem. As we stopped to watch the canines dance through the course, I wondered how I incorporate dance and grace in ordinary, daily activities. I tried to imagine grace at the office, picking up the phone with my feet perched on the windowsill, pulling a FAX off the machine. That was so wrong, wrong, wrong! So were the grocery shopping and laundry analogies.

Rather, the kitchen is my swan lake. On balanced tiptoes with hair swept up, I can stir the batter, roll the dough, press the garlic, peel the apples, braise colorful vegetables, grill savory meats, et al, and get a three-to-four course meal on the table nearly every night. I can practically do it with my eyes closed. My dance du jour. My forte. Truthfully, meditation and relaxation for me often involve reading cookbooks.

Dancing through life is something I aspire towards, to live with as much grace as possible, despite the obstacles. Dancing is how I got to know my husband. A friend snapped the photo above of us on one of our very first dates, contra dancing. You can see us spinning in the lower left corner. It was twenty years ago that we met. Happy Anniversary, sweetheart. I’m so glad that our daily life dances have lasted for twenty beautiful years. Keep on spinning all you dancers.

lost treasure

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about treasured daily moments. Today, the focus drifts towards other treasures. We have a barn full of mechanical treasures. A family of tractors and their kin. 1948 Ford 8N. 1957 John Deere 420C Crawler. 1989 John Deere 1070 4WD with a quick release bucket loader. 2000 New Holland LS160 skidsteer. 2002 Hitachi Zaxis 80 excavator.

All this equipment gets used regularly, and we often wonder aloud what we did without our mechanical friends. Imagine pruning apple trees without the bucket loader. Putting in asparagus without the excavator.

Still our tractor family was incomplete. For about ten years now, my husband has searched for a Massey Ferguson 135. Live hydraulics. Wet brakes. Hard to find. Early this summer, the search was over. He found one through an estate sale in Vermont. Bought new in about 1970 by an orchardist who recently passed away. It had a German-made Perkins diesel engine. Rare. Good price. A dream tractor.

He could barely wait for the day to go pick it up. With the trailer hitched to his truck, off he charged to get it. When he got there, he found that the tractor had been stolen. Broken lock on the barn. Tell-tale tire tracks across the grass where the tractor had been dragged away. Shock. Lost treasure. He left dejected as the police arrived to meet with the estate executors. Apparently, the estate would still like to sell him the tractor, however the police have yet to figure out where it is.....

Evenings have resumed endless web searches for other tractor treasures. Still, honing tractor knowledge is a respectable pursuit. Of course, there is this postscript perspective on the situation.

A man and his tractors. Inveterate.
A man who knows tractors. Erudite.
A man whose wife knows tractors. Truly sublime.

reunion yearbook page

Last weekend was my big college reunion weekend. Here's what I submitted as a reunion yearbook page, except you get the color version! What I've been up to....

1980s

▪ After graduating as an English major, worked as an aquatic biologist for the US Forest Service for five years in Idaho’s Selway-Bitterroot wilderness. Surveyed 200 alpine wilderness lakes and fought forest fires.

▪ When those lakes were frozen six months of the year, worked in Alaska for the Department of Natural Resources, or for US Fish and Wildlife Service as an animal tracker using snow tracking, radio telemetry and live trapping methods to collect data on lynx, wolves and marten.

1990s

▪ Worked as an aquatic biologist for the Agency of Natural Resources. Spent summers underwater diving in Lake Champlain or boating on the surface.
▪ Traded in my wetsuit for a business suit in Eastern Europe with the Sustainable Communities Program, started by former Governor Madeleine Kunin.
▪ Coordinated the Sister Lakes partnership between Lake Ohrid, shared by Macedonia and Albania, and Lake Champlain, shared by Vermont, New York and Quebec.
▪ Wrote a feasibility study for the Central Balkans National Park in Bulgaria.
▪ Managed the Center for Environmental Training in Volgograd which created an EPA-certified Smoke School to detect illicit air emissions. Ate caviar often. Had regular jet lag.
▪ Worked on forest biodiversity issues in Bolivia, where they amazingly translated my graduate thesis on land evaluation methodologies into Spanish.
▪ Bought an old hilltop farm at the end of a dead-end road in the mountains. Cleared brush and trees for years. Now make hay instead.

Skiing the Bridger-Tetons (2003).

Biking and hiking coastal Maine (2003).

2000s

▪ After 12 years of unwedded bliss, eloped to Japan, and spoke at the 9th World Lakes Conference.
▪ Three years later birthed a beautiful baby girl!
▪ Was a guest of the Mexican Ministry of Environment to speak at the Fourth World Water Forum.
▪ Represented North America at a UNESCO conference in South Africa for the southern hemisphere. My specialty—alternatives to legislation and regulation for watershed protection.
▪ Still working as the state coordinator for the Lake Champlain Program, a partnership among Vermont, New York and Quebec.
▪ Still in touch with Northern Studies friends: Gloria M., Marcy M., Ibit W., Peter B., Marjorie U., Molly M., Dan K.
▪ Wondering if I have the youngest child in my class and whether anyone else owns an orange excavator. Speak up please!

backyard rainbow

No words necessary.

today's treasure

It's June 1st tomorrow, and I've missed my chance to share signs of spring with my readers. As I view blogging more as an opportunity to trade comments than a diary, I like to post something that inspires people to write back. So, how about sharing some life treasures instead? Our treasure this week involved two baby mice.

My four-year-old and I discovered them in the grass near the porch, so tiny they lacked hair and open eyes. No doubt, one of our felines dispatched with their mother. My daughter carefully collected them in her octogonal box and began mothering them. She fed them for two days with an eye dropper and kept warming them in her hands. Snowflake and Geranium. Her instincts were very sweet. She drew a wardrobe of little pink dresses on paper and cut them out. She drew baby blankets decorated with little flowers and taped them to the box. At the library, she selected Margaret Wise Brown's collection of stories entitled Mouse of My Heart. I read aloud the stories she selected for the mice. Two days later, she buried them in her flower box underneath some pansies so she would know where they were. These were all her ideas, I just sat back and smiled.

I am very awed by these simple expressions of love. My way of saving this treasure is to write this vignette, keeping it in my octagonal box of memories. That and this photo of little pink paper dresses.

urban dialogue

We just returned from our annual pilgrimage to NYC. The yearly checklist includes Japanese takeout with a small mountain of tuna and yellowtail sashimi, watching the seals feed and the animal chimes ring at the Central Park Zoo, and Novalox from Zabar's on a poppyseed bagel from H&H. New this year was the Cosmic Collisions imax film at the Rose Planetarium (mamela, are we really on that planet right now), finding the legendary curving granite slide in Central Park, and Mary Poppins on Broadway--a very special birthday present from one of my daughter's god mothers. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Pure serendipidity also played a role in defining a fabulous weekend getaway. My three twenty-something cousins, one of whom lives in Manhattan, were also planning a weekend get together. I consider their parents my older siblings. We rendezvoused over indian cuisine. It was delight to hear what inspires twenty-somethings these days. I noted that when dating entered the discussion, I got a big zero for content. As the youngest sibling was describing her course of study and summer research, the following memorable short dialogue about careers and choices ensued.

Oldest sibling: So, you're becoming dad.

Youngest sibling: Well, you became mom.

Middle sibling: I'm neither, so I'm truly independent.

I've thought about this exchange quite a bit, wondering how I might respond in kind. There's serious parental blending in my case. I've got dad's negotiating abilities and a calm demeanor under pressure (thank goodness). I've got mom's creativity genes and a flair for planning large gatherings with mountains of good food (thank goodness). Of course, there are many other good things. I'd just like to take this opportunity to say thanks mom and dad! It was fun thinking about you two being young twenty- and thirty-somethings on your first date in NYC, and wondering what sort of urban dialogue inspired you at the time. xox.

spring awakening

A couple weeks ago, a blogging friend recounted a sweet conversation about tulips with her five-year-old son. I was moved by the double entendre to compose a haiku entitled spring awakening.

Tulips are tender flowers caressed by the sun, or

two lips kissing.

Last Sunday, another spring awakening occurred which shifted the sensation from the sublime to the brisk. The 11th Annual Pond Plunge Classic! On the first sunday in May, a group of hearty friends and neighbors gathers on our porch to ponder the annual questions. Who's jumping, who's cheering? This annual rite of spring usually occurs one to four weeks after ice out on our swim pond. Icy plunging and shrieking is followed by maypole dancing, a toenail painting soiree, and divine picnicking.

Compliments of my four-year-old, I earned my glitter painted toenails after immersing myself, twice. A spring awakening indeed. You're all invited next year. Happy Mother's Day!

feats grand and dubious

With the last of the snowplow icebergs waning and the snowy mountain peaks greening, it's time for some spring cleaning--specifically cleaning a couple winter blog posts that I never posted out of my mind. Today marks the end of my leave of absence from blogging.

My daughter accomplished grand feats on the ski slopes. Four and a half and she started skiing black diamond trails. She especially likes skiing the bumps! I am in awe. She's confident and takes her time, while hollering "whoohoo" down the mountain. It's quite remarkable to see a pink-clad, pint-size child disappear and reappear in a moonscape of large moguls. She often calls over her shoulder, "Race you, Mom!" If only I could contain my anxiety about all the other skiers navigating around her. I spend my time hollering over my shoulder, "Watch out for that little girl!" Ah, the benefits and reassurance of someone wearing magenta in the moguls.

Now teen kitty Daisy Mayhem learned to mouse. Her first three captures occurred within 14 hours. A meadow vole and mouse in the evening, and a shrew the next morning. Whoohoo! I didn't know we had such a variety in the house.....

My feats have been dubious at best. First, we ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the same friends on the same day, all unplanned. Breakfast rolled into sledding rolled into lunch and warming up rolled into scrabble and music rolled into dinner. We've talked about doing this with these friends for years. Wouldn't be great if....? What else? Well, I wore my pajamas all day...for work. Slept in long johns, an ice storm closed work, telecommuted from home in my long johns. Went to bed in the same pair...just to say I did it! Clearly, all praise goes to my daughter and cat for their more notable accomplishments.

p.s. I've been enjoying the weekly photos that some friends posted and thought I might be able to accomplish a seasonal photo. While the photo above captures my husband and me in a rare photo together, our daughter was too short to make the frame! Nice photo nevertheless. There's room for improvement in spring.

hope amidst wreckage

Our neighbors' house burned down on Friday. It was a small red camp a few houses down from us. The same afternoon my office was having a small holiday gathering, rescheduled due to weather, at our house. We had an amusing time performing for three esteemed judges in our version of "Office Idol," and had a humorous yankee gift swap. Midafternoon, four of us went for a quick ski on one of our forest and field loops where we found an unfortunate frozen porcupine far from its protective den. Temperatures had dropped to about 15 below (F) the night before and things still felt pretty brisk.

When we returned, we noted that our non-skiing friends had already left to beat the predicted bad weather, or so we thought. As we stood by the barn unclasping snow gear, the mail carrier pulled in to say that the neighbors' house was on fire. We scrambled down the hill to help out and arrived 15 minutes before the first fire trucks arrived at about 3:45pm. Apparently, our office manager was driving by the camp on her way home when she noted smoke coming out of the vent in the roof peak. She drove right back to our place, where my husband promptly called 911. It took three rings to get through. That was sobering. Since the bridge midway up our road is closed, my husband drove around an alternate route to the bottom of the road to waive the out-of-town fire trucks around the closed bridge.

One of our office mates also happens to be a volunteer fire fighter. He warned us of the perils of opening the door to an explosion of flames, before any of us tried to free the three cats and a dog we knew were inside. The windows were already black when we arrived and he thought there was no chance of life inside. Sure enough, when the fire fighters were finally prepared to open the door, it fairly exploded into a gigantic tower of flame.

The first two trucks were getting set up when the woman whose house it was arrived home from work. I can hardly describe the shock on her face. Her husband arrived shortly after. They were crushed by the enormity of the situation and most distraught about losing their beloved pets.

Imagine all of our utter surprise when two and a half hours after the fire started, a firefighter pulled a cat alive from the basement. Spike was wet, singed, exhausted and awfully glad to see his owners. They were awfully glad to see him, and noted that the basement can only be entered from the outside, so the cat must have clawed its way through floorboards and insulation to escape. What a miracle, and a sense of hope amidst the wreckage of their home.

Our community has been rallying to help our unfortunate neighbors through these difficult times. Immediate help ranged from supporting our neighbors, serving hot coffee and food to the fire crews, warming and feeding the cat, and posting family contact information on the electronic "front porch forum," to helping direct traffic. Long-term assistance will be to help our neighbors rebuild their home. Many, many thanks to the fire crews from four different towns who worked well into the night in bitter cold temperatures to control the blaze. Their work was not finished until after midnight.

This experience is a good reminder of how quickly joy can turn to despair and still be replaced again by hope. I am thankful that the fire did not occur at night when our neighbors would have been sleeping, and that they are safe. I am also reminded again of both the pleasures and perils of living in a rural area. Ironically, and thankfully, my husband replaced fire extinguishers in our house and rental houses a few hours before the fire down the road began. No kidding. Please everyone, check your smoke alarms and fire extinguishers after reading. Be warm, be safe, and be as joyful as you can.