a long strange Sunday!

this morning i was the umdze and it was my first time leading the new long chants. 

then i had lunch with karen, always fun!

home in time to go to Raglan Shire's annual talent show - fun even tho i could not always get the audio to work.  i took no pictures, but i am sure there are hundreds posted by now!

then to Show and Tell in second life, my sunday ritual.  Barney and Flo have organized and hosted it for i think 6 years.  i've been going for almost 5 years.  this was the last one!  they want their sundays back after all this time.  very sad...i will miss being at the forefront of creativity and with the funnest audience anywhere! 

and then...Gianfar Peaks sims invited all dragons, & dracophiles, of whatever breed, genre, world, age or style, to a memorial service for Anne McCaffrey, beloved author of the Dragonriders of Pern stories, who passed away last week.

held at the Weyr Bowl at Shaula Weyr, dragons of all sizes, and other avatars of every stripe gathered to keen, as is the tradition in Pern. it was heartbreaking and perfect.  i did manage to take some crummy pictures of this awesome tribute: (click for youtube to see bigger)

omg news

mudpie reports she attended zayn & wynx's town hall meeting for tinies and was stunned by announcement that tinies and raglan shire are going to break out silly fun and friendliness to the world at large!  (and hopefully waffles too!)

here is a picture of the meeting

click to see bigger

...and here is a lnk to the next tiny thing - JAZZ PAWS www.jazzpaws.com
be sure to get a tshirt and send them all your spare change!



*

sky kine

in the morning mist
black cows fly through the trees
above the river

                            ~ mudpie


the problem with this haiku, dear mudpie, is that when you are famous and your haiku are in anthologies, this one will be corrected to say "black crows fly through the trees" by someone who assumes that "cows" is a typo.  and i suppose the title will be corrected to "sky king."


~

perfectlynormalbeasts detour past my house

grandma moses had the perspective nailed.

when i look across the back yard to the hill above the stream, it really does look like a flat 2 dimensional hill going straight up with black lines that are the tall riverbank trees.  

yesterday, while i was out doing mostly ineffectual bits of this and that to the mud left by Irene, i heard loud cow-calls and looked across at the hillside to see 4 large black muscular long horned cattle-things moving single file across the middle of the flat backdrop of the hill, right midway up in the trees. 

flying cows!  

and suddenly i remembered a dream from last week of huge black cattle flying through the trees, like some japanese movie.

one of them noticed me hunkering behind a tree trunk and flew down with bovine curiosity to close its muzzle over my hand.

i yelled as loud as i could to chase it off, and john shook me awake for my hollering.

in retrospect i think you are supposed to hit them on the nose.

click to enlarge

got camera barely in time to catch a straggler mooing after the others

goosing the poet

geese again!

what is it with the wild geese
here's yet another poem
telling how someone's heart lept
telling how new hope was born on their wings
but tell me, what kind of life is that
like rock stars, they bring us momentary joy,
excitement, forgetfulness of self
and then they are gone in the freezing sky
a damp and dangerous life of wandering, homeless
and what about the tame geese?
what's wrong with 3 square meals and a cozy shed?
a few responsibilities, guarding the house or bullying the sheep?
perhaps a swift death and an afterlife as a quilt
not the cruelty of a broken wing, a coyote family feast?


================

FIRST SNOW ~ Irene cleanup retrospective

here it is!  always sneaks in when we aren't looking.

and i found this on my camera from September 5, the brave crew of volunteers who chloroxed my cellar ~ too bad i didn't think "photo op" the week before when these folks and others as well shoveled a foot of muck and stone from the cellar into buckets and brigaded it up the stairs, across the dining room, and out to the road.  boy were they a mess by the end of the process!  what a wonderful bunch of folks, some from town, some from the Shambhala center, and some from other towns and states!

hard times

i never wanted to live in the woods or high up in the hills with a great view but no neighbors in sight, even though this is the dream of so many folks who move to Vermont.  i like to look out my window and see houses with lights in their windows, and kids on bikes, and dogs being walked.

my neighbor across the street - i'll bet i only had about 5 conversations with her, mostly just saying hello, nice day, but i knew her so well and she probably knew us just as well. i watched her toddlers play in mud puddles, learn to ride bikes, go off to school, have pool parties when they got a big above ground pool, learn to drive!  Their tiny dog always had something to say when I went out the front door.

likewise my neighbor to the south - 2 big dogs outside always greeted us from their tie-lines as we came and went. we talked to them and patted them, and worried that one would escape the line and come jump on me affectionately! these dogs were big! and friendly!  we did try to talk to those neighbors, but they were strangely private and mysterious.  i hope the dogs are ok wherever they have all disappeared to.

neither place will have xmas lights this year to brighten the winter darkness ...they stand empty.  one neighbor moved due to her health, the house is for sale. the other folks mysteriously vanished two months ago, and courteous strangers sent by a bank have been taking photos, asking questions, planning to spruce it up i hope.

the house behind ours will be dark soon, too, sold out to our local Very Rich Man who has a history of buying houses and removing them, gaining a prettier view while eliminating a decent family home. we will be like an island here!  perhaps we should consider putting up xmas lights.  do they make them shaped like little Buddhas?

Shocktober Thriller Dance time again!

yesterday Raglan Shire celebrated Shocktober with their annual Thriller dance!

click to enlarge

getting lined up and synchronized is...  it's alot like herding cats... and bunnehs and pups and otters and ferrets and and and everything else too! 

BOO!

there are cobwebs on my blog!  is it neglect....or SHOCKTOBER!
it's shocktober in Raglan Shire and mudpie and friends went to the haunted house.
mudpie ("mud" to her friends) had this to say:
it wuz so skarey i 4got to take pitchurs until we sat down to catch our breaf!
rats chased us, a spider almost got us, we got roasted in da oven, and den
running from a tiny-eating plant got caught by a skeletenoid!
zombies cudn't eat our brains cuz we haz none.

mud & a friend wearing jack-o-lantern masks - don't be scared!

going away party

mindfulness

ever so carefully stepping
firmly on each narrow step
down our steep new-england stairway
i in my flip-flops
long bathrobe
reading glasses
practice total concentration
to carry a jar in one hand
the other hand steadily pressing an index card to the top
as i place each foot just so
one foot after the other
one eye on the spider in the jar
soon to learn that the world is a very big place

~_^

the song garden

yesterday T. (not just a pretty face) took me for tea in the morning to a place he'd just discovered in new hampshire, about 1/2 hour drive.

you turn onto a dirt road and drive and drive for what seems like it must surely be the wrong road, and then you come to a wide meadowy place
overlooking distant hills and the mts of vermont, and there is a very large flower garden consisting of rows of flowers arranged in rows by color.

at the entrance to the garden are scissors, baskets, sun hats, jars, ribbons, flower-preserver packets.
you can go in and cut whatever flowers you like to take home with you!
there is a box if you want to leave a donation.

if you walk up the hill there is a small one-room cabin with chairs on a tiny screened porch and a tiny deck on another side.
inside is a table and chairs, set with a lace cloth, china dishes and teacups, fresh flower arrangement.
along the sides are all kinds of interesting objects, plus a big electric container of hot water, all kinds of teas,
a little fridge with half and half, a little sink to leave your cup in, a daybed with lots of pillows, classical music playing. 

nobody is there.  you are invited by signs to have tea, have a scone or biscotti or granola bar, use the china, etc, wander around, and leave a donation.
you can buy or take some pot pourri and leave money in the box.

and up the hill a bit further is a pleasant outhouse!

isn't that amazing?  it was such a beautiful sunny day and so relaxing, that in the afternoon i dragged john over for afternoon tea and he loved it too!

a message from the west coast

you wouldn't think a greeting card would do much for someone still digging out from a hurricane and flooding, but this one has helped lots!  i have it posted right on my big kitchen window where i see it many times a day.  thank you Candy!

some things about hurrican irene's effects on the residents of my village

a truck went into the flooding river - did the road give way? ms O tied a cable to her car, other end to her husband (some say it was an extension cord) and in he went to pull the guy out of the truck.  once he had the guy, D. drove her car away pulling them from the river minutes before the flash flood of the jumped river came down and took the truck away.

during the storm we were evacuated at the fire station. nobody could get any information. that night we could get home to our house, after the rain let up and the flood stopped rising. still no way to get information. but then we started getting calls from friends (we have an old wired phone we hooked up) who were telling us what they saw on TV - where the storm was and what we could expect during the night.  we had calls from california, south carolina, ohio, and even ethiopia!

that night i looked down from the upstairs window into the wind tossed black-black electricityless night and saw for the first and probably last time in my life foxfire softly glowing on a rotten log below!

early in the morning after, mr A arrives at the village mom & pop store with a check for $1000 and the instruction that anyone needing food should be given it free.  food was free all day to all comers anyway.

partly because the store had no generator to keep the freezers going.  lots and lots of food was sent up to the volunteer fire dept, as was all the food from the school (it was to have been the first day of school) and a big cookout blowout town wide dinner was held at the fire dept for anyone who could get there.

later the store located a generator to use, but food remained free to all for the rest of the day. the streets were full of people all day, exchanging information and help, and the volunteer firemen were everywhere pumping out cellars and giving out whatever supplies they could. by the next day the national guard had arrived with bottled water, MRE meals, cleaning supplies and more. mr X who has his own helicopter went back and forth overhead taking arial photos for whatever use may come in the future.

early the morning after, old mr O started calling the government to get permission to volunteer to work on the flooding.  after many hours he got the OK and took his Great Big Yellow Machine to the flood where he spent all afternoon and half the night clearing under the bridge, digging the riverbed back to where it belonged, and when he was done the river was back in it's bed, altho of course everything it carried off, including the road, was still gone. i think he had the time of his life!

as the assessment and pumping continued all day, the street was like a party - no traffic could go, but everyone was out walking and talking. two of the firemen were catching 3 and 4 inch trout from sinkholes with their bare hands, and taking them back to the river.

.

tired and muddy!

less than a week and the road to the south is passable again!
i drive out to shower at kathe's, stupified by the new scenery,
the young who rioted in london were a puff of air
compared to the rioting of vermont brooks
let loose from their beds for a day to rearrange the landscape to their liking.
here and there i pass a house that looks solid and untouched
my heart leaps with the wish that i lived there.

something glowing

last night we slept fitfully waiting for the wind that follows the eye, listening even as we dozed off and on, still dressed and downstairs in case a tree, one of the many big big maples now rooted in nothing but soft deep mud should fall on the house. there was not a light in the village because there was no electricity and the stars THE STARS were a wonder beyond telling and as i gasped at a shooting star above i glanced down at the grass below the window and something was glowing.
what glows at 2 am? a wind-dropped solar light would not be still bright, reflective paint would have nothing to reflect, a rectangular glowing shape in the grass maybe 18" long and 2 or 3 wide. nothing in my experience could explain this.
the next morning on the back porch i remembered the glowing thing and looked over where i'd seen it.  and there it was.  an old rotten piece of tree branch.

making vinegar

friends used to talk about fruit flies - even get into animated conversations with strangers - it was some class i guess i didn't sign up for....breeding fruit flies.

my neighbor has given me a big bowl of blackberries from her bushes. 

or are they black raspberries?  the internet says: Black raspberries become hollow in the middle when picked from the main plant whereas the blackberries retain its stem.

must be black raspberries.

last year i froze much of what she gave me, then never knew what to do with them. 

so this year i am making vinegar. 

here's how:

cover berries with water.

mash them up.

pour into a sterilized jar (i boiled a large canning jar for a bit)

cover with cloth and a rubber band (i used a flowered handkerchief i found in my drawer - where/when did i ever get that?)

wait 3 months or so until the mother (gloop on top) falls to bottom and then pour off the vinegar!

sounds easier than the saurkraut i tried to make last year and ended up throwing away !

but what about the fruit flies?

they seem to like the idea, and gather on the top.  what are they doing?  

if they are sitting, ok, but if they are laying eggs or pooping, i'm not happy about that.

i can't see that they are leaving anything there...they just seem to like to gather in the vinegary atmosphere.

i guess i should have taken that class!

another baby story

must be baby season!  everyone's having them recently!  
i admit i'm not up on the latest trends in childbirth and baby care, so when these pictures came via email of friends and their newborn, i was very surprised!  
decided i'd better disguise them, they might not want to be blogged.
you think there's people who object to women nursing in public, wait'll they see THIS on the subway!

it is too much to be too long anywhere*

we always moved before 4 years, and usually not that long when i was a kid.
but i've lived HERE many times that now.
now everywhere HERE tells me stories. where cats are buried, where we played softball, where houses stood, where my friend was killed in a car accident, where my baby learned to swim.

everything is impermanent.
when you move around you don't notice this.
when you stay still things change around you like a slow carousel or a fractal kaleidoscope.

now a new baby has been born to a village family, and i am one of the few in the village who might recall that once upon a time another baby was born to that house. 

that house has had a few owners since then.

the tiny years-ago baby died of crib death, so heart-breaking that now i irrationally fear for this new little boy.
i tried for days to remember the name of the other little boy, to assure myself they don't have the same name! finally i remembered -- and to my relief it is not the same. 

i'll never say anything about this to anyone if i can help it, but it's a hard thing to know.

* said gimme the ax in the rootabaga stories

Perseids answer the crickets - summer is ending

dark before 9 now
takes us by surprise - and lo!
meteor showers!

driving through the night
shooting stars distract our
watch for deer on the road

                                                         ~mudpie

nothing gold can stay

summer's perfect day
until i heard the cricket

and knew all was lost

                                     ~mudpie