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Today at Mary's Farm
Edie Clark has written extensively about New England in award-winning feature stories for Yankee magazine for the past thirty years. Her column, Mary's Farm, has been a popular feature in Yankee since 1990. A collection of those essays, The View from Mary's Farm, was published in 2005; a new collection, Saturday Beans and Sunday Suppers, Kitchen Stories from Mary's Farm, was published last year. A new edition of her memoir, The Place He Made, has just been published. This and her other books are available on www.edieclark.com.
Silent, Brilliant Storm
Leonids Now Showing in Your Backyard Theater
November 18, 2009 at 8:24 AM | 1 Comment | Post a Comment
It's been calm here this week, unusually mild for November. Temperatures have been in the 50s, skies are a light blue, the sunlight pale and weak on the bare trees, bare ground. This exposure is fleeting. It will be covered soon. But there has been a peaceful feeling all around, a sharp contrast to the storm that flies above our heads at night. I am referring to the Leonids, meteor showers that occur at this time each November. These meteors which silently whiz across the night sky in the early morning hours, have an intensely dense scientific explanation, something about a combination of solar wind, ionization, photons, frozen gases, and the remains of comets which passed over and above us in the 1700s and 1800s -- incomprehensible things like that are written to explain this magnificent show. All I know is how spectacular these showers are. I actually had never heard of them until perhaps the year 2000. Previously, I had been an ardent follower of the Perseids, which pass through in the middle of the month of August, usually around midnight. I always hope for clear skies on those nights and plan to stay up. The view of the night sky is almost unobstructed here and there is very little artificial light to obscure the constellations. A good place to study the stars.
Deer Strike
A Day in Kennebunkport with Carolyn Chute
November 9, 2009 at 11:03 AM | 5 Comments | Post a Comment
This past Sunday I was slated to do a program in Kennebunkport with my friend, the author Carolyn Chute. Carolyn doesn't drive so I was going to go pick her up which meant I was basically going to drive three sides of a triangle, from my home to Parsonsfield, Maine, down to Kennebunkport, and then back up to Parsonsfield before returning home to Dublin. If I were to have gone from my home to Kennebunkport, the journey would have been less than four hours, all told. Alas.
Puddings, puddings, puddings
I Come to Judge
November 1, 2009 at 6:21 AM | 3 Comments | Post a Comment
We sat sequestered in the Sunday School room of the Charlemont Federated Church, three of us, twenty-seven glorious puddings set on the Sunday School tables, which had been covered with bright red and yellow Provincial table cloths for the occasion. For almost two hours, the puddings had been carried in through a light rain, cradled like newborns, the dishes, which ranged from elegant to earthy, cloaked in dishcloths or tin foil or snugged into Tupperware.
The Metropolitan Opera in the Pines
From Aida to Applesauce
October 25, 2009 at 8:19 PM | 4 Comments | Post a Comment
I went to the opera on Saturday afternoon. The Met. Verdi's Aida. Around noon, I put on a pair of slacks and a sweater, gave the dogs a cookie and left the house. I turned left out of my driveway, headed down a paved road which soon turned to dirt. I was on my way. Rain was pelting the windshield. Along the roadside were trees, a pond, and more trees. Shortly, I turned down another dirt road, hardly marked. I had arrived at my destination: Peterborough Players, an old summer theater in the middle of tall pines. During the summer, venerable productions take place here in an old barn that once housed farm animals. Many years ago, the first production of Our Town was staged here, with Thornton Wilder in the audience. The play, after all, was based on the town of Peterborough, which hasn't changed so very much.
Of Sick Dogs, Of Mad Dogs
One Week in the Life of Mayday
October 16, 2009 at 1:32 PM | 2 Comments | Post a Comment
Here was my week:
Monday
When I got home in the afternoon, I found Mayday, my 13-year-old mini-schnauzer, sitting in the corner, staring at the floor and trembling. When I picked her up, she felt hot. A few months ago she had been in hospital for a week with a high fever. The cause was never found. So I took her back up to her beloved vet, Andrea, in Westminster, Vermont, where they discovered she is running a fever of 103. I had to leave her there. She was terrific yesterday and the day before! We went on a great walk and she trotted right along. It was so sudden, though. I'm worried. It's very quiet in the house tonight. Harriet subdued.
