It’s been a quiet and calm end to the summer. A lot of the things that keep us busy are in abeyance or not happening. I’m nursing my knee, so no hiking. Everyone’s back from school, camp, Camp Gramp, whatever the summer travels are. Somehow the last few weeks there’s been time to lounge in the hammock and read, or play video games under the labile blue skies. It’s easy to feel like this is just how things are now – easy. Relaxed. Calm.
But then when we sat down as a family to review the schedule for the coming week, panic set in. The kids are starting school on Wednesday. Soccer has already started and it’s like EVERY DAY and the practice schedule seems to only be communicated via screen shots of someone’s calendar sent on Snapchat. (I am not kidding. I wish I were.) And school starts on Wednesday. The rising Freshman has an academic load that looks like it’s going to hit him like a freight train – before we add in the 2 hours a day of soccer. The rising Senior is balancing school with driving lessons and drama (the on stage type, not the other type).
And then it turns out that the trip that my husband has been planning for “Fall” is suddenly “Thursday”. I’m deeply unprepared to run this household for an extended period of time without him. It’s hard enough with two of us! I’m starting to wonder if the next time I’ll take a deep breath will be early November. Hello fall – you’re welcome here. Let’s buckle up, kiddos.
As I emerge blinking into the middle stage of my life, firmly ensconced in children, career and suburban householding, I find myself increasingly aware of the oversized role “Naya Nuki: Girl Who Ran” by Ken Thomasma (see prior post) has played in my moral, educational and skills development.
Since I can remember, I have been fascinated by the question of “can I eat that?”. Oh, the wild independence of living off the land! Naya Nuki was followed in turn by all the greats of survivalist literature in my pantheon of imagination. Of COURSE there was “My Side of the Mountain” with the acorn pancakes and the algae. I mean, which of us didn’t want to run away from our families and support ourselves living in the hollow of an ancient tree with our forest friends? I also read “Robinson Crusoe”, obviously, and liked it well enough. But I read “Swiss Family Robinson” until the cover fell off (not realizing that it was closer to the fantasy of Tolkien than any historical account). How easy it was for the knowledgeable and hardworking to look to the land for all one needed! And lest you think that I only read white-savior-survival books, “Island of the Blue Dolphins” and “Julie of the Wolves” were also well-worn on my shelves. Heck, even in Tolkien Aragorn saves the day by finding kingsfoil by scent in the dark after the Nazgul attack on Weathertop, and Sam finds herbs to spice the survival meals he and Frodo subsist upon up to the gates of Mordor itself.
It was clear to me that in order to be the self-reliant, capable person I wanted to be – to be ready for anything from ringwraiths to shipwrecks to poverty – I would need to be able to forage competantly.
I even tried to take ethnobotany – a 300 level course – in college in order to accomplish this task. (It was pointed out to me that given that I hadn’t taken ANY botany classes this was probably not going to work. Alas. And also it didn’t teach foraging, so pthfft.)
Then I started a job, and lived in the city (compared to where I grew up), and had kids and you know. Somehow I’ve never been shipwrecked, lost in the woods, or on the run from orcs. But I’ve never lost my fascination with this idea of the virtue of knowing what it was you were looking at – and whether you could eat it.
For many years now I’ve had a farm share. It’s taught me a lot about the background skills of foraging. For example: spring greens. How to not by hungry by eating them. (Answer: not gonna happen. Please add cheese/eggs/beans/avocados etc.) It has also helped me understand the spikiness of foods in temperate climates. There are the hungry times, and the times where you can’t possibly eat it fast enough to prevent it from rotting. Foraging is all well and good when you’re on the run from your Blackfoot captors, but you need to also preserve foods if you have any intention of eating in February. And spoiler alert: most of the ways I know how to preserve especially fruits involve significant quantities of white sugar – an element likely to be in short supply in a shipwreck.
But there are pleasures that come with knowing your local flora beyond the practicality of eating it. Sure, I nibbled on a beach plum as I walked the Greenway Monday. (It was bitter still – needed to leave it longer.) But to look and not just see a wall of green but individual plants with their own personalities and uses. That particular quarter mile of Greenway has the easy ones: dandelion, crabapple, knotweed. It also has wild grape, the beach plum, staghorn sumac, chicory, milkweed, wild rose and many other plants crowding to our attention on overgrown verges – some edible, some not, so many invasive. I don’t usually eat them (except the crabapple when it bears), but I do enjoy saying hi to them. And I always VOW that NEXT year I’m going to try sumac lemonade.
The plot of land on which I live is devastatingly small – a tiny tenth of an acre mostly taken up by house and cars. But there are a few corners on which I may place a plant or two. And each of those plants is as attended to and beloved – my gaze falling upon them many times a day.
As avid readers know, I originally planted a Damson Plum, under the influence of yet another book (“Miss Buncle’s Book” by DE Stevenson). It was felled by disease before it ever bore a crop, although it was beautiful and gave glorious shade. But watching a British fruit felled by American disease (ah, how the tables turn!) I vowed to plant only natives in this small patch of Massachusetts I call home. Well, except for lilacs which are the “Pocahontas” version so clearly a North American native*. But I wanted these plants to be edible, in case of future food scarcity in which we would clearly live or die by whether my .01 of an acre bore food or not. I’ve discussed the paw paw investment I’ve made (only two of the original 4 pawpaws I planted yet survive – harassed by human intervention but those two are thriving and I’m hoping for flowers as early as next year). But in the corner of the yard, where I might plant a hydrangea or rose bush, I planted an aronia bush.
The varietal I planted is “Autumn Magic” – bolstering the bright autumnal scene of the back yard, with the invasive Norway maples looking all local in their coloring. Not chokecherry, mind, but chokeberry. I was searching for a North American native fruit I could turn to jam, jelly and sauce but couldn’t buy in a grocery store. This is a much easier task than you might think – so few of the delicious plants available are suitable to mass market production.
Many faces of aronia
With the example of the plum before me, I assumed it would be years (or never) before my Aronia bore any fruit. I didn’t get too excited when it laid out a glorious spread of blossoms: I’d seen that play before. I was pleased when flower turned to green fruit, but I thought that it was unlikely to be my own harvest. The nativeness in the plant was evident by the absolute deliciousness evidenced by the rabbits. The poor shrub, fast growing as it was, was of the utmost appeal to the coneys that invaded New England this year. No faster did a shoot appear than it was cut down by sharp tooth to feed the rapacious bunnies of the back yard. I clad it first in a plastic bottle, now in a vinyl sheath in an attempt to allow it to grow enough to survive the onslaught. And to my great surprise, the birds are far less interested than the rabbits in this ripe and appealing fruit.
And I’ve been rewarded to my great surprise with effulgent, ripe berries. I tasted one – tart on my tongue in the August heat. Adam muddled and decorated with them for a gin bramble. I ordered “The Forager’s Pantry” which features Aronia on the main cover, to extend my set of books and recipes for ingredients you can’t buy at Stop and Shop. The remainder of the unharvested berries is far too few for any serious purpose: pie or sauce or jam. But it gives me hope that my tiny back yard, with its stance on native plants, might yet provide a harvest of treats that are new to me, and old to this continent and those who have lived here so long.
One of my Facebook friends posted her Goodreads account with the lure that she actually posts updates and reads the updates of others, with the poignant comment “I’d like it if more of my social news were about reading”. In an era where all of us are thinking about how to game the algorithms to see content that makes our lives better, not worse (which is a great time to note that Facebook absolutely will do everything in its power to hide my blog posts – subscribe at http://mytruantpen.com), this plea struck me.
I’m spending a week in a cabin in the woods with my husband. We have to work during the day, but there are no chores (or even TV here), so I packed an unreasonable amount of books and art supplies in case my mental curiosity was piqued. (Last time I did this, I also brought a number of reference books for the book that I would totally write if I had the time. And by “the time” I mean “locked in solitary confinement for several months or that one time I knocked out 10k words in a weekend”. As opposed to the book I actually did write and is halfway between a novella and a novel and I can’t bring myself to edit – access to the file upon request. It involves local history and werewolves, and I really need to go about changing some of the names.)
ANYWAY, my point is that this is a stack of books I brought to a cabin in the woods without the intention to show off. So it’s very authentic. Except for the bit where it represents who I wish I was to myself, as opposed to whom I am (which is a person who reads a LOT of comic books before bed, and trashy novels in the bathtub).
My only regret, such as it is, being that I JUST finished one of those gnarly and deeply intellectual books of a level of academic interest and vocabulary that one leaves conspicuously on the coffee table for years praying someone will ask if you’ve read it so that you can affirm “Yes, it was excellent. Let me tell you about the Appalachian Orogeny.” According to the image search I just did (I found it unlikely I had not managed to SOMEHOW work it into the social media record that I was in fact reading such a weighty tome), I have been reading it since January. The fact I finished might be a miracle on the order of the weeping statue of Akita.
Is it even legal to read a book like this and not let people know?
But How the Mountains of North America Grew was actually a GREAT book, if only consumable one chapter a week. When backpacking last year, I had a life-changing encounter with a geologist at the Carter Hut who spent a captivating two hours regaling an enthralled hut about the history of the world leading to his truly novel proposed solution for combatting global warming. I loved his enthusiasm, and was thrown back to a teenage romanticism about the name of the proto continent from the Ordivician upon which my home is built: Avalonia. So while I was making bad decisions in a book store this winter, I came home with this tome of geography with the intent to be able to look at the rocks under my feet with greater understanding. I still can’t tell a schist from a gneiss, but I did find the books strangely reassuring. I actually also learned a bunch of stuff I didn’t know before. Like about how the planets moved in their orbits as they formed. That the earth at some point had rotated north to south (part of why there are tropical fossils in the Arctic). That there’s a single geological corollary to global warming (much slower, but we can learn). That big continents lead to iceball planets and smaller ones to more temperate, or even warm planets. How much hotter and how much colder it’s been. That our planet has had three vast universal continents and will have a fourth and final one before Earth’s heat is spent and we move no longer – and that to-be continent has already been named. That it looks like agriculture staved off an ice age in the Holocene. That the boundaries between eras are geographically specific with a golden spike – and that geologists have just selected the spot for the distinction between the Holocene and Anthropocene. I love learning new things, so it was worth having to look up some of the more confusing vocabulary multiple times, and STILL not having him talk about the gigantic 10,000 foot volcano that exploded in New Hampshire 122m years ago leaving behind its magma chambers (an element in my new book, which is why the omission is so tragic).
ANYWAY. That book isn’t in my current “to read pile” so I will not speak of it here.
What is in my pile? Let’s go bottom to top: A Deep Presence: 13,000 Years of Native American History by Robert Goodby was just added to my collection today in another ill-advised trip to a bookstore. In my defense, it was raining. I’m also really, really interested in the history of the folks who lived in these lands before us. And it’s surprisingly hard to track down anything readable on the topic – never mind having had even the vaguest introduction in formal education. I was answering a QR code on a lamppost in Cambridge about how I learned about indigenous people in school and was contemplating just how profoundly influenced I was by Ken Thomasma visiting my elementary school in 2nd grade. I spent the next five years pretending I was Naya Nuki. But the East Coast folks had 200+ years more erasure than the Shoshone, and it’s much harder to find their stories. I’m pretty pumped about this one.
A Cabin in the Forest by Roxyanne Spanfelner. Completely and totally unrelated to my desire to be Naya Nuki, I’ve decided to feed my fantasy of a cabin in the woods with some books so I can claim to be doing research. Why, just today on a long drive I solved the problem of my husband not wanting to do hot tub maintenance by putting a hot springs on my imaginary property! This is the kind of innovative thinking you get when you read. I have not started this book. I probably should write to the author with the “hot springs instead of hot tub” tip for husbands who don’t want to use their degrees in chemistry.
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute. Fun fact: my parents got my name from a Nevil Shute book called “Crooked Adam”. “A Town Like Alice” is on the list of books I’ve always thought I ought to read, that everyone loves and raves about, and that I have never read. If we’re being honest, I will never read this book. Unless that whole “solitary confinement thing” happens. For the record, that did actually happen to me once and it STILL wasn’t enough to get me to crack the covers on Piers Plowman which will still be unread when the Anthropocene turns into the Cockrochocene.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mendel. This book looks really good. I’m sure I will enjoy it. I will definitely read it BEFORE “A Town Like Alice” and WAY before “Piers Plowman” – but I think it’s been traveling in my to-read pile for a year, and this is likely its last chance before I actually give up on it.
The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker – I read the first book in this series and enjoyed it. I am about halfway through the second book and er… not gripped. The several years between readings have not improved my recall of secondary characters. This has a very mild chance of actually getting read so that I can stop thinking I should finish it.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. I’m wanting this to be a bit like Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. I mostly listen to Scalzi on audiobook (which might have something to do with Wil Wheaton as the narrator), but mostly because his plots and characters do not require full attention to consume. This is in the Station Eleven likelihood zone.
The Art of Drowning by Billy Collins. Unusually, I don’t remember why this book entered my collection. I know I put it on an Amazon wishlist, and my husband dutifully bought it for me for Christmas. But why it was on the list? I do not recall. One of my friends just started an MFA in poetry and our back yard fire conversations have been a little hot and heavy on the meaning of poetry lately, so in my packing I thought it would be salubrious if I were to read up on some poetry that had been written in the last two centuries. Salubrious is the kind of word you suddenly know when you have taken up reading poetry for fun. I promise that I’m likely to read at LEAST three poems in this book, none of which will be limericks or start with the line “Roses are Red”.
Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries I’ve always liked cemeteries and living in New England we have some very high quality examples of the art. So I’m always game for another discussion of how embalming is a Civil War artifact. This one actually had a couple interesting moments for me – it’s much more social commentary than I was expecting. But somehow in all my Naya Nuki heroine worship I’d never absorbed that NINETY PERCENT of the people living in North America died when Europeans arrived. Holy cow. It’s staggering to imagine what that does to society, and when paired with an invading force with novel technology. Well. It’s amazing we have as many survivors and surviving stories as we do. Anyway, I’m about halfway through this book. I’ll finish it, but it wouldn’t be my top recommendation on the topic of dead bodies and what we do with them.
When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through. I’m not sure I would have dared buy this one today if I’d realized it was a Norton Anthology. I believe by law those can only be purchased by students taking the class and that you are actually forbidden from reading them cover to cover. But this builds on my theme of desired American understanding, and intent to read poetry that is not iambic pentameter (as much as I adore iambic pentameter). I read the introduction and first chapter on the front porch this afternoon, and really wish they had a map. My knowledge of tribal geography and the current names of tribes… well, let’s say the only reason I know that Diné = Navajo come from having free-based the complete works of Tony Hillerman in my bathtub reading time. (Which I highly recommend, btw.) Anyway, hopefully the book police don’t find out about me reading this one.
I like reading with real paper books best. But I also read on the Kindle (mostly novels that I can read in one or two sittings and by sittings I mean “in the bathtub”). I also listen to audiobooks on my drive. I prefer books I’ve already read or that aren’t too complicated, given my divided attention. I just finished “rereading” the “Rivers of London” series on audiobook (brilliantly narrated, may I add) and am looking for my next commute companion if you have any ideas.
So…. that’s what I’m reading. (Except I’m not reading, instead of reading I’m writing this post, which is deeply ironic if you think about it.) What about you? What are you reading? How much do you read? What do you make sure you always have with you but never read? What will you definitely read if you’re ever put in solitary confinement, but definitely not before? What do you wish you were reading? How do you read? Let me know!
Four years ago, my kids were just getting to a point where the guilt of leaving for a day to go hike a mountain was less than the desire to hike a mountain, and a friend and I scarpered our ways up Osceola East and I pushed past the chimney to the summit of Osceola. I wasn’t aware of it then, but I had just bagged my first two of the 4000 ft mountains on “the list” for the AMC badge for hiking all 48 of the 4000 ft+ mountains in New Hampshire.
I’m doing my best Megan Rapinoe impression
A climb up Mt Waumbek in buggy weather last weekend has me with 8 left to go, and a steely determination NOT to end my quest on Mt. Cabot. (For those who care, I have the whole Bond Traverse: so Bond, Bondcliff, Zealand and West Bond, plus Cabot (ugh), Isolation (ugh), Jefferson and Madison.)
It’s been heavy going lately. I’ve done all the easy and close mountains – the ones where you hike for longer than you drive. This winter I did something to my knee which an orthopedic surgeon and MRI showed to be akin to “getting old” which took me 6 months and a Peloton to come back from. (To quote my surgeon, “Yeah, you’re no longer a runner.”) So I WAS going to knock off Isolation, Waumbek and Cabot at a minimum in the snow but nooooooo. (Isolation is a lot easier in the snow. Go figure.) Then I could day hike the Presidentials and have a glorious Bond Traverse overnight backpacking on Juneteenth. The best laid plans went aft agley, though. The Bond Traverse was still ON, the prep hikes had been done, and the discussion about exactly what summit foods we could make to inspire jealousy in our fellow campers was in full flight when the forecast got grim and grimmer. Look, I have hiked in rain. I have hiked in cold (-17 at the trailhead!). But hiking in rain AND cold is somewhere between dumb and dangerous – and definitely not fun. And theoretically this is a hobby I do for fun. So there was a deeply reluctant cancellation and rescheduling for fall.
We formed a self help society
The entire working/hiking community in New Hampshire has had a deeply frustrating season of it. Every weekend seems to be clocking in rainy, buggy, cold or an amazing mixture of all three. Or the forecast will be “appalling” and the day will be great and we’re left at home gnashing regretful teeth. Or the forecast seems doable, but the bugs “Biblical”. Or everything looks amazing – but it’s Wednesday and we all have two many meetings.
My hiking buddy and I can tell you in brutal detail about every mountain we’ve hiked (and will, as anyone who’s ever locked themselves in with us for the 14 hours of driving and hiking can attest – in fact we cannot be stopped). Every mountain has the litany of remembrance. Hancocks, amazing when you can glissade (aka butt sled) down them! Owl’s Head is underrated, and the best shape we’ve been in! (Only time we’ve ever trail run out after 17 miles wearing a pack – come hike with me to hear the full story!) The time we BOTH brought two summit beers (after a hot and thirsty hike the time before) – and it was snowing so we didn’t want any of them. How many months of the year we’ve been snowed on while hiking! (11). The crazy people we’ve met on the trail! Our not-so-secret desire for AT trail names! On every hike, we remember every other hike, adding in the sun-dappled streams, spectacular vistas, exciting weather, and insufficiently grippy shoes to our tale. (Flume Slide led to the creation of our “high friction” line of clothing.)
Garfield looking into the Pemigewasset wilderness across at Owl’s Head.
Four years seems like a reasonable number to take in order to summit 48 specific mountain peaks, although of course I’ve hiked many more in that time. Not all the mountains I hike count for the list, either for lame rules reasons (looking at you Mt. Hight) or because they aren’t tall enough (like my beloved Chocorua). By this year, I’ll have hiked more of the mountains than I am years old. But here’s hoping my knee and the rest of me holds together long enough to mail in for that great badge of honor, and I’m not stuck at 40!
I’m away for a week between roles in a cabin in New Hampshire. As you may know, big layoffs happened at my company on Friday. I was not laid off. My previous role was extremely vulnerable – the group I left was one of the hardest hit. And I know a ton of people impacted, so I’ve spent this week not in blissful disconnection, but checking in with the person who worked for me last Friday and is now unemployed, trying to figure out who I still work with and who might need me to keep an eye for roles, etc.
I picked this PARTICULAR cabin in the woods because I wanted to hike two four thousand foot mountains (Waumbek and Cabot), and these are a full three hour drive for Boston, which is a brutal one day trip. So I figured I’d knock them off (they’re not too difficult) while I was up here. But I’ve done … something …. to my knee. I think I have a meniscus tear (in my problem knee) which is causing instability and swelling. I’m having trouble with stairs. Did I still consider solo hiking a pair of 4000 foot mountains alone, in winter, with a bum knee? Of course I did. But the weather is also rather iffy, and that was one strike too many. So instead I went and did a super easy, completely flat 4 miles walk along a rail trail. Laaaaaame. The parking lot was snowy, but that was fine – our car was in the shop due to a rear ending that my husband was subject to, so I rented a 4 wheel drive just so trailheads would be no issue. I got in just fine, and did a lovely walk in which I saw no other living creature. It was gloomy and morose and like hiking in an old oil painting. I loved it. I got back to the car, texted my husband I was safe, and headed to the road to go get some dinner in the building gloom.
There’s a spectacular view of the Presidentials there. Right behind the clouds.
Less than a foot from the road, I lost traction, and got stuck. “No problem,” I thought “I’ll throw it into 4 wheel drive.” It didn’t work. I dug out the wheels with my hands. Didn’t work. And every attempt to power my way out I slid a little closer to the 8 foot ditch to my right side, where I would definitely be in trouble if I slid all the way in. A light snowfall was poetically falling against the pines, and I finally conceded my better judgement and called AAA. I told them where I was (thank you GPS!) and they patched me through to the towing company which said they’d be here in an hour. So I waited, increasingly hungry and in need of a bathroom, for an hour. At the appointed time, the dispatcher called me back and drawled. “We’ve gone the whole airport road in Jefferson, and we can’t find you at all.” “I’m at the Pondicherry parking lot, just shy of the Mt. Washington Airport” I replied.
There was a long pause.
“Which state are you in?” she asked. I replied, with growing unease “New Hampshire”. “Awww…. honey, we’re out of North Carolina. I’ll, uh, call AAA for you.”
I sat there in my car, waiting for a phone call (which never came), when a car pulled over – an old silver Ford Taurus by the look of it. “Are you stuck?” said the driver? I assured her I was, and darkly updated her on my predicament. “I’m going to call my boyfriend and he’s got a truck. He’ll get you right out of there.” Now normally I like to do things the proper way, but in this case, I said I’d be delighted if her boyfriend might be of assistance. It took maybe 20 minutes for them to assemble the full posse. The ladies in the car stayed with me the whole time. But two trucks, packed to the gills with young men with nascent beards and overflowing slightly dangerous energy, pulled up. In less than five minutes they had me out of that ditch and back in action. I think they were disappointed they didn’t end up needing the chain or shovels that they’d brought for the fun.
But it was 3 hours after I’d first stopped a foot shy of the road. I attempted to pay them, which was a complicated social dance, and then was on my way, chastened, sobered and deeply irritated that even my very safest possible alternative had still ended up being so complicated. I was also very grateful that only time had been lost: I was fine, the car was fine, it was like it had never happened. So I picked up some heat-and-eat from the grocery store right before it closed, came back to my cabin, and decided what I really needed was some comforting reading (Miss Buncle’s Book was just right) and maybe a new plan for roadside assistance.
Mood: 19th century oil painting with darkened varnish
Activity: MFA lecture and French dinner
Dress code: Academic chic
Our December “Fun is fun” event took a different angle. Adam and I have always been intellectually curious, loved museums, and been game for learning deeply about irrelevant things. (Ask me about the time we hired a tour guide for a day to give us the low-down on the Albigensian Crusade). So I decided for our December “Fun is fun” event we’d go to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I found this particular event (“Complex Relationships: Egypt and Nubia“) by deciding on venue first, and seeing what was on their agenda second. This might have been a special exhibition, costume party, or lecture on pretty much any topic. I AM rather fond of Nubia from the African History class I took in college, but much more interested in the complicated history of Nubian Christianity.
I digress.
We showed up to the museum right on time, and through some miracle of time and space got STREET PARKING. Astonishing. I went to the main window to pay for our entry – the tickets had been free, although I had to formally sign up for them. But in an amazing loophole, it turns out that the free tickets included entry to the museum. SCORE! Cost of the date so far: $4 in parking.
We thoroughly and deeply enjoyed the lecture and presentation. It was a very cogent and interesting discussion that mixed ancient and modern questions of identity, categorization, the connection between science and labeling things, and what makes Nubian pottery Nubian. The lecture was short – 45 minutes – but really engaging and well delivered and thought provoking. It was so much fun, I was sad when it was over.
After the lecture concluded, we had some time to spend in the MFA which – despite loving museums and living within a 20 minute drive for the last, uh, 20 years, we’ve only been to a handful of times. We barely hit three and a half galleries – our appetite still wet for bizarre and beautiful and interesting artifacts. But it turned out the museum closed at 5. Who knew!? So we headed early for dinner, vowing to return some day with more time.
Human skull rattle
I’d tried to pick the closest French restaurant to the MFA, which was in Back Bay. I’d planned on walking – we usually enjoy a nice stroll and parking in Boston isn’t in my list of fun things to do. But it was quite cold and we were underdressed for the weather, so instead we attempted to drive in. I swear we walked nearly as far from the nearest parking garage, and it was very stressful, but it worked! Our table wasn’t ready, so we sat at the bar and listened to the French-speaking bartenders chat as we contemplated the topic we’d just heard the lecture on and agreed that …. we really like attending lectures like this and we need more time at the MFA.
Waiting for our table
The drinks were excellent, the restaurant was noisy and the menu was adventurous. Note to self: you are an audacious eater, but you do not like liver. We were sated in mind and body when it was time to return back to the suburbs and our distinctly tweed-free lifestyles. But this was a real winner in terms of both the enjoyment in the moment, and the longer term feeding of the mind – it’s the sort of thing you can think about later that helps deepen and richen your experience of the world. I’ll never think of Nubian pottery shards the same way!
I admit it. I adore escargot. And the bread was phenomenal.It’s astonishing how many cool and beautiful things there are in the world.
In the still locked down but waning days of last winter, when pandemic podmates were all digging very deep for new conversation topics, we did an evening on the topic of “What band would you most want to see live” (with time for both fantasy/dead options and currently playing ones). I wanted to see the Ring Cycle in Bayreuth. I forget the two others. But my friend said her #1 wish was to see the band Bombadil play.
In an idle moment a little later, I Googled to see if Bombadil had any upcoming tour dates that we might be able to swing to see them. But alas, the list of tour dates was empty. However, there was the tag line “Email us if you want to host a show or need help with tickets or just have questions about life.” I had many questions about life, but I was wondering … could it work? Were they still a going concern? Could they possibly come here? With little to lose, I dropped an email. And so it came to be that this fall, Bombadil was coming to play the street, making my friend’s dream come true in her own home.
We’d asked the band what they might need for the concert. The answers were a gentle preference for selzer, red wine, and cake with milk. I took responsibility for the cake with milk. The morning of, I cheerfully made about 60 cupcakes in my favorite kinds of cake, and liberally frosted them. As the dark began to fall, I brought them across the street to join the other offerings, and watched the band set up. Friends had come from all over – states away – for this event.
The sense of anticipation when you are mingling with the band while guests arrive and the equipment gets set up was singular. And this night was exceptional. November it might have been, but even in the dark the weather was in the upper 60s with clear skies and gentle breezes. Sure, climate emergency. But on this night it was a glorious feeling of liberty as the walls between inside and outside were literally down. As the hour came, we all gathered with our backs to Nobility Hill. Above us sat a gaggle of teens, sitting close on a blanket. The lights were soft and the moon was rising over my house across the street. And the first chords fell upon hushed and listening ears.
Tilly wandered in and out among the band as they played
I am not sure I’ve ever been happier, for an hour and a half. I think that this depth of joy is only possible by contrast – after sorrow and pandemic and isolation and loss. You don’t understand a perfect moment until you have comparisons for it. And this was a perfect moment. We’d spent the lead up to the concert listening to the music, so when it finally came they were all familiar, I had favorites, and I could sing along with the choruses. Also, I got to actually ask the band what the heck the words to the chorus of “When We are Both Cats” actually are. We held our breath as to whether or not Daniel would fall off the steps where he was precariously perched. And around the circle of light the faces of my friends were glowing with a similar pleasure. It was a sweet loss when the set finally wrapped up, with the tear jerker, “Thank you“. The kids all bought tshirts, I got a vinyl (seriously 45 rpm dudes?!) signed by the band. We had another cupcake. The cables were all rolled up and carried to the van. We reluctantly found our ways back home.
The entirety of the assembled.
My heart is still warm, thinking about it. My lips pull up in a smile. It’s a moment I would wrap in honey, capture in amber for a future, colder world to marvel at. It was singular, and I’d almost be afraid to do something similar in case it bled any bit of the perfect color from this picture.
We have come through so much together, friends. And so much remains of sorrow and fear. I don’t need to tell you – you hear tale if it every hour of every day. But there is also this moment, this opportunity for a new and beautiful thing to emerge and be all the lovelier for the dark background it is set against. More things than I believed are still possible. And it gives me hope.
Move aside Pixies in Amsterdam. THIS is now the coolest thing I have ever been a part of.
What a wonderful feeling to feel like everything is right
What a wonderful feeling to know that everything is fine
Keep your family close
Because when you get in trouble they’ll be the last to lose their hope
I don’t know how the least few years have been for you, but the last, oh, two decades have felt like an ever accelerating roller coaster ride … after you ate the chili dog and large soda. The last three years, in particular, have been grim ones for me and my family. This is a large part of the reason this blog has lain dormant. My mind was more than full of things that are not appropriate to be delved into in public forums, and there was little authentic left over to be broadly discussed (except for cats. Cats are great. Hero and Leander became best friends and are a joy, delight and constant source of mischief.)
But if we were going to survive this all and still like each other at the end, we needed to bolster what was good. And my husband and I realized … we needed to have fun together, or nothing would seem worthwhile.
You remember fun, right? It’s that thing you do where you feel happy, and have good memories and enjoy yourself? You know, like laughing and light-hearted? Yeah. We’d kind of forgotten too.
But in the moment where society started carefully emerging from pandemic isolation – like a groundhogs sensing the coming spring, Adam got us tickets to an Event. The tickets said “Cocktail attire required”. And so we got dressed up and drove into Boston and sashayed around the common in the cold and went to this Beacon Hill mansion and got overpriced cocktails in a glamorous library with other well-dressed patrons and watched a magic show and re-creation seance.
And guys, it was SO MUCH FUN. And as we drove home, glowing with pleasure, we decided that we should do a Fun Thing every month. A thing we wouldn’t otherwise do. Dressing up preferred. I began the hunt for fun things, and here’s how it went.
March – Four Handed Illusion
This is the event that started it all. It’s held in this glorious setting (Although the books in the library are clearly for show and not for reading, which makes me sad). I actually super appreciated the formal nature of the attire – something about having to put on your finest and make an effort makes being a participant in the audience even more fun. Adam and I have both read rather extensively on the Spiritualism movement (for a fun time, ask me about the Mechanical Jesus next time you’re at a cocktail party with me), and the second half séance was a tour de force of just how the Fox sisters did it. I was grinning from ear to ear under my mask the whole time.
Happy people at a magic show
April – Tea at the Boston Public Library
No sooner had I heard that tea at the Boston Public Library was a thing than I knew I had to go. We’ve enjoyed teas across the world (ok, Victoria and London) and there’s something about crustless sandwiches that just makes you put out your pinkie finger while you drink your beverage. Good times are often better when shared with good friends, and we thoroughly enjoyed dragged our camping companions and gaming buddies along with us to a fancy dress occasion. Who knew they looked so good cleaned up? The only regret about this adventure is we had to get back to town in time for the soccer game (Adam coaches) and couldn’t linger in the library.
Fanceeee
Don’t ask how old I was when I figured out how you actually pronounce petit-fours
May – Sculler’s Jazz Club
What I was going for: speakeasy vibe with dinner. What I got: awkward dinner in a nearly empty restaurant where the only other diners were the band and _extremely_ experimental jazz. This was fun, but probably the biggest mismatch between price and enjoyment we’ve had so far. We went in cold to the ensemble and, uh, they would have benefited from some of our prior knowledge. And the dinner was fine at prices that were exceptional. As I told Adam, if all of our adventures are huge hits, we aren’t being adventurous enough. We were adventurous here, at least!
We took so many pictures while we were all dressed up.The band.
June – Belle and Sebastian
This group is a favorite of our pandemic podmates, and when I found out they were heading to Boston, it was a no brainer that we’d be there to greet them. We’d seen the Mountain Goats together in the fall, and it had felt really weird in the masking and “are we supposed to be distancing” space of fall 2021. But Belle and Sebastian was just a fantastic concert in a brand new venue – Roadrunner – in Boston. The floor wasn’t even sticky yet. We danced and sang and had a fantastic time under the black lights.
Smurfs or partygoers?So cool.
July – New England Revolution
Mixing it up from our concerts and 19th century entertainments, we went to Foxboro (my first time for not a vaccination) in July to catch the New England Revolution home opener. We do really love watching football, and while men’s football isn’t my first choice, we actually were at the very last professional women’s soccer game in Boston and will have to wait a while for it to return. I went to three professional sports events this year: 3 of us for soccer, 2 of us for Mariner’s baseball and 1 ticket for Patriot’s football. I paid the same for all three events.
Of the three events, we had the best seats for soccer
August – Roaring 20s Lawn Party at the Crane Estates
On one of the hottest days of a roasting summer, we dressed in our finest and drove up Cape Ann to Ipswitch to the beach… wearing our finest duds and preparing to drink squash and jitterbug to our heart’s content (although I had the foresite to pack swimming suits). And we had a blast, in the pounding heat. Adam did a ton of dancing. We enjoyed the very on point outfits and setups. And when the heat finally overwhelmed us, Nathan and I went down to the water and cooled our hot selves while finding horseshoe crabs and throwing rocks into the water.
The “parasol” was criticalAh, the old days when I was still taller than Nathan
September – Essex Dinner Train
I admittedly was starting to feel the heat of having to find a cool new thing to do every month. I mean, how do you find cool things to do? Some of the above was serendipity. Much of the rest was Googling. I keep looking for public murder mystery dinners, but to no avail. But I found a ball (tragically sold out) on a dinner train, and figured we could at least do the dinner train. So Adam and I drove down to Essex and then took this dinner train ride. Which was … fine. Perfectly fine. Much better if you were perhaps over 60. Nothing wrong with it, but not on my list of most memorable meals ever.
It was sitting. With dinner. And moving scenery.
October – Fancy Dress gaming dinner with Paul of Wandering DMs
OK, so this probably doesn’t _actually_ count since I would have done this without the challenge. But October is the busiest month in the Flynniverse. For Adam’s birthday we asked our college friend Paul, who is as close to a professional role player as you get, to run a game for us. Ideally where all of us were formally dressed. I’m happy to report that Tobin brought the evening to a rousing and successful conclusion with a bit of murder and pumpkin-spelunking. Those villagers will never know what hit them.
The pastels were pure, but happy, coincidence.A formal gaming table.
November … requires a writeup all its own.
But folks, I have a problem. I’m running out of ideas. So please … what should we do? What depths of cultural experience have gone unplumbed? What opportunities to dress up have we missed? How can we be fancy and fun and make memories we’ll never forget? Let me know – no idea too crazy to be considered! Also, what have you done lately? Are you having fun? What’s between you and that epic funness? What amazingly fun things have you done lately that we should put on our agenda?
Two towns there were, that with one sea were wall’d.
Built near, and opposite; this Sestus call’d,
Abydus that ; the Love his bow bent high,
And at both Cities let one arrow fly,
That two (a Virgin and a Youth) inflam’d:
The youth was sweetly-grac’d Leander nam’d,
The virgin Hero ; Sestus she renowns,
Abydus he, in birth; of both which towns
Both were the beauty-circled stars ; and both
Grac’d with like looks, as with one love and troth.
– Musaeus Grammaticus
First meeting
The last twelve months has seen us bid farewell to our feline companions of the last decade, renowned Tiberius of doughty strength, ineffable charm and unquenchable mischief and lovely Data, the sweetest cat ever to be worn as a scarf. Thus ended our second generation of cats – the first being Justice and Magic. But for us, a house without cats is only a house. It is the tread of paws which transforms it into a home. We gave Data a due period of mourning. We completed our adventures and camping – brainstorming cat names as we drove the sylvan road from Frankfurt to Strasbourg.
We had many pairs of names for boys: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Two girls were much harder, perhaps Tigris and Euphrates? Boy/girl we were spoiled for options: Tristan and Isolde? Abelard and Heloise?
Driving back from camping for Labor Day, Adam spent the entire trip filling out online profiles for adopting cats. When we adopted Data and Tiberius, there were probably 40+ adoptable cats in the shelter. But we were finding that there was no “stock” of cats, and they were getting adopted wildly quickly. We got a call on a way to the adoption appointment on Sunday night not to bother – there were no adoptable animals. But there were, she gave us insight, a bunch of them going through the process of being checked, neutered, etc. And we should watch the listings. On Monday late night, 10 adoptable cats were added. I fretted – Tuesday we had soccer and bass lessons and I didn’t know how we could go. But then the rains came and the field was flooded and the bass instructor got food poisoning and all of a sudden signs pointed to cat. By the time we got to the shelter at 6:15, there were only five of those ten cats remaining, and only three within the criteria we were looking for. Sterling, now known as Leander
The first cat we met was a handsome long-haired tuxedo called Sterling. He fearlessly permitted himself to be picked up and handled, and purred under adoring fingers giving him pets and scritches. He was five months old, and just a wee little kitten. Data was a tiny light cat at the end, and this little critter was half his weight. Sterling had extremely long and dramatic whiskers, ridiculously hirsute (or firsute?) and hairy ears and the most adorable socks – the ones on his back legs being extremely decorative. We learned that he was out of Virginia – and just a baby with no history. We pretended not to have decided that we were adopting him when we put him back, but it was all pretense.
Violet, aka Hero
The second cat was a tortie – mostly black with orange highlights except for the very tip of her five-month-old tail which is vibrant orange. Violet, as she was called, was lithe and powerful like a tigress, and ardent in her affections to the hands which stroked chin and shoulders. She’d been returned along with another cat after a week, with no reason given, so we don’t even know where she hailed from. She is DEFINITELY trouble, but that is the nature of a cat. She’s also sweet and affectionate and snuggly and has cat ADHD (in my very professional diagnosis).
Feline mischief, right here
They were not bonded, nor did they come from the same place. (Massachusetts usually imports stray animals from parts of the country with lower spay/neuter rates.) But they were both charming, friendly, affectionate and definitely coming home with us.
Very Dignified Cat
We’ve had them for a few days (each in a different attic room, slowly getting used to each other and each other’s smells). And so far they are very much kittens with so much kitten energy. They’re affectionate and funny and noisy and all over the place. They do have some epic zoomies. We’re totally in love, and can’t wait until we can unleash them on the house, and looking forward to many fine years of their soft and silly company.
Nine years ago, we brought home a pair of 8 year old cats from a shelter. Older cats are hard to adopt, but this particular pair was the most engaging, sweetest and most fun set of cats we’d ever met. I thought at the time that we would have them for a shorter period than if we got young cats. I remember thinking that they’d be coming to the end of their predicted life spans when my eldest son was in high school. This is unimaginable when you have a little kid – an impossibly distant future. But…. Grey is a rising junior. Here we are.
Data actually liked to be worn like a scarf. He’d jump on your shoulder.
Tiberius left us in October of last year. We learned, in that moment, just who was responsible for 99.9% of all the cat related hijinks in the house. We THOUGHT with two cats we probably had two culprits, but noooo. It was entirely Tiberius. With only Data, butter could be safely left on the counter, we never were startled by a cat leaping out of an unsecured trash can, and you could plate dinner without leaving an armed guard or two and still find it on your plate.
Kitty snuggle piles
But Data, like Tiberius, was approaching 17 – quite an advanced age for a cat. Despite being teeny to start with, he was losing weight every vet visit. His kidney numbers weren’t great. He had to have a thyroid cream put on his ear. But for the last year, no lap went unclaimed. I started calling him “Fur and purr” – so insubstantial but omnipresent and loving.
This last week, though, he started refusing food. Including tuna. I may not be a vet, but I know that a cat who will not eat tuna is a cat who is done living. I took Data in to the vet who said that he basically had no more kidneys whatsoever, and that his numbers were literally higher than the test could measure. He also looked very uncomfortable – hunched up. He started hiding, and could only endure about 10 minutes of lap-petting before he went back into a hidey hole. He was telling us in clear terms that it was time. I asked the vet to take some palliative measures (rehydration, anti-nausea meds) and called Lap of Love to see when they could come. Data purred past his last breath.
Watch cat
His parting was easy and painless, if not quite as funny as Tiberius’ (who literally died with a Dorito in his mouth). Unfortunately, both boys were away, so it was just Adam and I saying goodbye. Data was the sweetest, snuggliest, softest cat it has ever been my privilege to live with. He had a kind heart, and was very simple: he just wanted to love and be loved.
Take us with you!
With no children and no cats, the house is very quiet. I find for myself, cats are what transforms a house into a home. My nest is not yet empty, but my children are fledglings. We are unanimous on one thing: we definitely want more cats. I’m not really even sure how long we’ll hold out before we welcome new furry friends into our house. I can only hope and wish that we may again experience the joy and pleasure like Data and Tiberius brought to us.
Farewell, Fur and Purr. You are already deeply missed.
Fanceeee
Don’t ask how old I was when I figured out how you actually pronounce petit-fours
My Truant Pen 