Are You Kidding Me?

The next time someone accuses me of being a partisan hack because I’m critical of the whole Obama/Messiah vibe, I’ll point them to this. (Hint: All your Obama chotchki needs in one place.)

First Novel Syndrome

Even the cover is atmospheric.

Recently I was at Mom’s down in Dartmouth, MA. She has a ton of books so I was looking for some reading material for the summer. I picked out Moon Tide: A Novel by Dawn Clifton Tripp because the author lives in the next town over, Westport, and the book is based in that same town during the 19′ teens. I asked my Mom what she thought of it.

“I didn’t finish it…I couldn’t get into it…read it and you’ll understand why.”

I skimmed the first few paragraphs and immediately thought, “First Novel Syndrome.” Here’s a sample from pages 8-9:

When Elizabeth was twenty-one, she met Henry Lowe, the only son of a prominent Transcendentalist. She married him the following summer under the grapevined trellis in his father’s apple orchard. Lowe was a graduate student in zoology at Harvard, obsessed with the relationship between the migration of glaciers and obsolete fish. He shared the belief of his professor, Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, that while climactic and geologic change could bring about extinction, each new species was a thought of God. He helped Agassiz start an experimental school for marine science on Penikese, the afterthought of an island off Cuttyhunk on the fringe of a deep rip shoal in Buzzards Bay.

[...]

They made love in the juniper woods and Elizabeth lay there afterward, her bare arms scathed in sunlight on the dark cool soil. She looked up toward the new pine shell of their house rising against the sky, the inside still damp with the smell of mason’s glue and paint mixed from a base of linseed oil. She did not know then that in less than a year she would bear a son and her husband would leave to go in search of God among the ice floes…

In fairness, I am reading the novel to the end. So far there’s a servant having an affair with the local grocier and a young girl, whose mother committed suicide (the body found by the girl) and in her grief, the girl hoards food to watch it rot. If I knew this stuff went on in my area of the world, I would have moved out much sooner than I did.

Cool National Anthem

A special moment at Fenway Park on Disability Awareness Day. It’s worth a look.

 

H/T: The Anchoress

Happy July 4th

I posted this last July 4th and it’s still relevent today…

I never forgot this passage from Vera Brittain’s Testament to Youth. I think it’s appropriate to bring up on July 4th. Vera was a British nurse during WWI. In 1918, the war was going badly for Great Britain. Each week, her field hospital retreated before the German onslaught. Though the English newspapers painted a rosy picture, Vera and her colleagues knew their army had little time left, until…

WWI Dough Boy

Only a day or two afterwards I was leaving quarters to go back to my ward, when I had to wait to let a large contigent of troops march past me along the main road that ran through our camp…though the sight of soldiers marching was now too familiar to arouse curiousity, an unusual quality of bold vigour in their swift stride caused me to stare at them with puzzled interest.

They looked larger than ordinary men; their tall, straight figures were in vivid contrast to the under-sized armies of pale recruits to which we had grown accustomed…Then I heard an excited exclamation from a group of Sisters behind me.

“Look! Look! Here are the Americans!”

I pressed forward with the others to watch the United States physically entering the War, so god-like, so magnificent, so splendidly unimpaired in comparison with the tired, nerved-racked men of the British Army. So these were are deliverers at last, marching up the road to Camiers in the spring sunshine!

…An uncontrollable emotion seized me – as such emotions often seized us in those days of insufficient sleep; my eyeballs pricked, my throat ached, and a mist swam over the confident Americans going to the front. The coming of relief made me realise all at once how long and how intolerable had been the tension, and with the knowledge that we were not, after all, defeated, I found myself beginning to cry.

Happy Dominion Day!!!

True North Salute!

Deluge & Stitches

How it feels most days.

I don’t know about the rest of the country, but here in Massachusetts the month of June has brought nothing but rain. Most days have been overcast with at least part of it washed by water droplets. It’s been so damp that mushrooms are taking over the lawn outside of the patio area.

I suppose I could bear it better if there was a good thunderstorm every afternoon. Everyday there’s a “chance” of a storm. I’ll see dark clouds bunch up to the west and then…nothing. Grrr….

Because of the indoor-ness of the weather, I’ve taken up crochet. I stink at knitting since I’m very uncoordinated using two sticks but one hook…I can deal with that. So far I’m just learning the stitches which is creating irregular, rectangular pieces of yarn. I’m scared of the whole “gauge” thing. (I have to make how many stitches within an inch?) I’m learning this domestic skill by reading The Happy Hooker by Debbie Stoller and when I need to see a moving visual, I surf over to YouTube where there are plenty of crochet videos to watch.

Can’t wait to make my first irregular pot holder.

USA #1

Last week I ran into a cousin who I haven’t seen in a few years. He’s a lovely man with a heart of gold who works as a DJ at a strip club. I may not agree with his place of employment but I’ll never forget what he did in the early ’90’s.

Cousin was in the National Guard who served in the first Gulf War. After his return from the Middle East, my cousin was full of patriotic vigor. Around this time, my Cousin, Augusta Bro and a friend decided to drive to Montreal for the weekend (a very do-able 6 hour drive from southeastern Massachusetts). My cousin helpfully volunteered to drive. I remember he drove up my parent’s driveway to pick up Augusta Bro. I don’t remember the car exactly…some Detroit boat of a car. But I do remember that my cousin had written in white house paint on the hood and sides of the car,

I laughed my a$$ off picturing the looks on the Quebecois as this example of exuberant American patriotism passed by.

Reality Stinks

You never know what peace is until you walk on the shores or in the fields or along the winding red roads of Prince Edward Island in a summer twilight when the dew is falling and the old stars are peeping out and the sea keeps its mighty tryst with the little land it loves. You find your soul then. You realize that youth is not a vanished thing but something that dwells forever in the heart.

-Lucy Maud Montgomery

I think it’s an unwritten Canadian bylaw that anything that has to do with Prince Edward Island must include a quote from it’s most famous islander. Before I go on, I must confess (I’m catholic, I can do that) I read Anne of Green Gables for the first time one week before my PEI trip. I only knew Anne from that excellent t.v. mini series that everyone watched in the 1980s.

The book paints a bucolic picture of a rural island with red soil, farms, presbyterianism and small town relationships (and everything that entails.) Twenty first century PEI is about the same (except the presbyterianism – they became United Churches). Today’s population totals 138,000, so it’s possible that locally grown PEI potatoes outnumber people like 100,000 for every 5 PEI’er. In the touristy stores, not only can you buy Anne stuff, but also a sack of potatoes. Don’t believe me?
 

Massive Bag for only $9.95 Cdn

Back to Anne…Seeing how rustic the islands is still, I was excited to see Cavendish, Montgomery’s town which was the model for Avonlea. In her time, Cavendish boasted a library, meeting hall, two churches, a school and a number of families who all seemed to be related to each other. Driving north up Route 6, I passed an oyster farm and a number of agricultural farms. Besides the town line sign, Cavendish was announced by the Shining Waters Water Park and Avonlea Village (a recreation of Anne’s Avonlea/Cavendish).

Green Gables itself  is now a National Park surrounded by the Green Gables Golf Course. While walking through the ”Haunted Woods” Hubby and I made our way around golf carts and while wandering down “Lover’s Lane,” I noticed a golf ball in the babbling stream. The actual Green Gables home was owned by her grandparent’s cousins and, according to Montgomery, it was the model for Anne’s home. The place was cute and crawling with young, female park wardens wearing dirty fleece jackets. Hubby and I were able to explore the building unhurried. We exited just as a bus tour of retirees arrived. Phew!

That's not Matthew on the ladder.

Today’s Cavendish has lost it’s school, a church, the meeting hall and most of the families. As our breakfast waitress told us one morning, “No one lives in Cavendish…maybe 50.” Even in Montgomery’s time, the Anne books brought loads of tourists to the island. Montgomery’s own childhood home was torn down because her uncle (who inherited the place) was sick of the tourists peeking through the windows (it stood empy for a number of years and was falling apart), trampling his crops and knocking on his door to ask questions about his niece whom he didn’t particularly like.

Even Montgomery’s own life didn’t live up to Anne. While on the island I bought a copy of Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings, by Mary Henley Rubio. Her grandfather (not the model for Matthew) was a sh*t, her husband suffered from severe depression and was dependent on bromides and barbituates (as Maud did herself). Her oldest son was a clinical psychopath and, to top it off, there’s reason to believe that Montgomery committed suicide.

During her lifetime, Montgomery liked writing books with happy endings and always treasured her time on PEI (she moved to Ontario when married in her late 30s). It’s no wonder that she wanted to be buried in Cavendish, a short trek through the Haunted Woods where her beloved Green Gables stands.

Though I think she would be saddened to see what her novels have done to her hometown.

 

Vacation…All I Ever Wanted

Hubby and I were on a little jaunt for a few days. Where did we go? Here’s a hint:

Gill...where am I?

Details and pictures coming soon!!! 

The Visitor

The plot is near the back. The grass in the 10×3 f00t rectangle is greener than the surrounding lawn. At the head is an overload of garden paraphernalia: solar-paneled glow lights, pinwheels, and non-military flags. The plot is too new for a gravestone yet there is a picture of a young man in his late teens smiling into the camera. 

And she’s there nearly everyday around noon. She sits cross-legged on the edge of the plot, head bowed, picking the dark green grass between her fingers. Sometimes a man is with her. He leans against the car, arms folded, looking down at her. Is he tolerating her visits or is his grief not as visible?

This tableau is not unique to St. Cecilia’s in Leominster. It’s repeated in every cemetery.