Today at Mary's Farm from YankeeMagazine.com

Give Us This Day Our Daily Storm

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100

The only thing people have been talking about these past few weeks is the weather. Not only has it been stormy but it's been cold. In the past week, I've visited two neighbors who had hearth fires snapping in their living rooms. We all pulled up beside these fires as if it were October. I myself, after a lot of debate, lit a fire in my cookstove. I haven't really brought in any wood yet so I burned some scrap that had been in the bottom of the woodbox since May, when I thought the woodheating season was over. This, while I had on two layers and my fleece jacket. And my winter slippers. I just can't get warm enough. It seems like a treat when I get in my car and can turn on the heater. Is it really August?

But this is the least of it. North of here, tornadoes ripped out a dozen houses and a woman died in her home. A couple of weeks later, there were such heavy floods that a family who had been camping were trying to get out of the campground in their SUV when it was swept into the water. The seven-year-old girl died in the water while her family clung to trees. I saw a picture of their SUV on the television news. It looked as if it had been through the crusher.

Every night this week we have had thunderstorms. Towering thunderheads move up out of the west like tall creatures. They are big-headed monsters that, from a distance, look as delicious as whipped cream. Their high heads appear to be prospecting, feet marching as they approach, distant thuds like the drums of a distant band, approaching. If it is deemed a dangerous storm, the local weather service will give its ETA: it will be in Brattleboro by 5:45, Chesterfield by 6, Keene by 6:15, as if it were a guest arriving for dinner. Several trees on this road have been blasted to smithereens by lightning strikes. It is sobering to see their remains in the morning, pieces of the tree that look more like swords and arrows scattered around the road and in the woods.

I have sufficient respect for thunderstorms so that, if the storm is threatening enough, that is to say, loud enough, I will place my chair by the stairway, which is the only place in the house where there are no windows. My mother, who once endured a lightning strike, always told me to stay away from windows and doors and don't ever run the water in a storm. The weather service doesn't warn me against taking a shower but it does repeat my mother's advice: stay away from windows and doors, it intones along with its announcement of the storm's approach. So if the storm is violent, I take a kitchen chair into the hall and settle there with a magazine.

I was doing just that in a recent storm. It was almost midnight and this storm was particularly loud and the lightning seemed incredibly, piercingly bright. It grew harder and harder to concentrate on the story I was reading. My dog, Mayday, was settled at my feet. Unlike many dogs that I know, she is not particularly bothered by thunderstorms. But this one she seemed to think was worth staying awake for. She lifted her front paws onto my knees, panting. I reached to calm her when there was such a terrific blast, I could well have been in Beirut or Baghdad. Simultaneously, all the lights in my house went dark. There was no question in my mind that the house had been struck. My ears were ringing from the concussion of it. Rain pounded against the side of the house and the lightning continued, strobe-like, with big forks stabbing out in the fields.

I grabbed the phone and dialed 911, a first for me. I told them I thought my house had been struck and within minutes, our local fire chief was at my door. He was soon followed by a fleet of fire trucks, the roll of their red lights competing with the steady lightning. Over the thunder and torrential rain, we talked in shouts. Bravely, they not only walked all through the house, their big flashlights illuminating the electrical panel and other vital organs of the house, but, through the angry storm, they also walked all around the perimeter of the house, checking my many roofs for any possible damage. They found nothing. I was glad I had no neighbors to be alarmed by the fire trucks that had come in the middle of the night. But I was so grateful for the firemen's attention. In the morning, I hurried them a donation, so sorry to have disturbed their evenings, sorry for the false alarm, so sorry they had to walk around in that raging tempest. And yet I was so glad, glad that they were there and glad that they were willing. Thinking about the woman who died in the tornado, inside her own home, and of the little girl swept from the safety of her car, out and away in the swollen river, I felt so lucky.

Kindling a New Romance?

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0100

It should probably come as no surprise that I am a book lover. Every room in my house has shelves of books and stacks of various volumes, new and old, appear here and there since the bookshelves have long since run out of space. I am not unaware of the debate concerning the demise of the book. We are headed for a paperless age, I am told. The book is out of date. Look at the children, they read screens, not books.

I know. The other day a good friend of mine, a man who is my same age, excitedly showed me his new Kindle. A Kindle, for those of you who have not heard, is a computer-style book produced and distributed by Amazon.com. I like to compare it to an i-Pod. You buy the hardware, a plastic entity with a screen the size of the average book page. I think it costs something like $300. Once you have this tool, you can download most books and most magazines or newspapers into the Kindle. You pay for each book as you would a magazine subscription or, well, as you would a book. If a hardcover book would cost you $25, the download of the book into your Kindle costs about $10. My friend has already subscribed to the New York Times this way and he has the latest bestsellers queued up for his next read.

He handed me the mechanism and showed me how to turn the page: two touch pads on the side, one marked "next page" and the other "previous page." I held this space-age book in my hands, weighing whether or not I could tolerate reading a book this way. It felt a little like a book, lightweight, and the page had the look of a book page. Well, no, not quite, more like a computer screen, much like what I am typing into at this very moment. A typeface, probably Times Roman, the letters shaped as we have known them for centuries. So it was familiar. Innocuous. In spite of my cynicism, I felt myself drawn in. At least, I didn't run screaming from the room. I started to read. I kept hitting the "next page" button by mistake so the page kept turning while I was in the middle of reading a sentence. Annoying. But, in spite of this, I saw the utility of this gizmo. I even saw the possibility that I might someday acquire a Kindle, or something similar (I believe there are other brand names for this same innovation), and download a new book, even before it appears in the local bookstore. It won't be soon, as I have not even bought an i-Pod yet, though I am attracted to that concept. For me, wheels turn slowly.

Still, I sat on my friend's couch, turning the pages, reading as I would any book. I began to relax with it in my hands. But I felt like I was holding an object, something foreign to the book itself. I often read until I fall asleep, the book falling to the floor with a thud. Would such a fall ruin this expensive piece of electronics? Many of my books, in spite of my devotion to them, have experienced drops, falls and even a rainwater bath when left on the porch. Recently one of my favorite books was dowsed with ginger ale and it has lived to experience another reading, though the dried pages are a bit tanned.

I am a person who loves touch and smell. The Kindle has neither. I love the feel of a book page, the paper, and the slight imprint of the letters. The hint of ink and the accessibility of the entire work, with the comments on the back cover and the option to skip to the end if I want to. And then of course there is the collage that the book spines make on my walls, the colors and the reminders of the writers I love. Just having their names and the titles of my favorite books broadcast out at me from the silent shelves can inspire me or excite me. Reminders of pleasures past. I know that the Kindle can store a library of thousands of books in its tiny heart. But that will not replace the company I keep with the host of the many pages that share my rooms, pages that continually warm my life.

Moonrise On the Beach

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100

On Friday I drove out to the end of Cape Cod to attend a memorial service for an old friend, Arturo Vivante who wrote beautiful short stories, some of them for this magazine. I had planned to visit with him this past April. We had picked a date but when I called a week ahead to make sure he still felt like having a visitor, his daughter, Lydia, answered and told me he had died on April 1. Arturo was 84 and had not been well so it was not a great shock, however, the news provoked a wave of sadness for great things lost. He was not only a wonderful writer but a true friend, gentle soul with compassion and a philosophical outlook on almost everything, including the price of grapes. His voice, at times, was barely audible, which usually caused me to lean closer as I did not want to miss a single word. I have known Arturo probably 20 years, maybe more. As a young man, he was impishly handsome. I have seen pictures. As an older man, one was drawn to the wisdom of his eyes, dark pools of understanding.

Arturo started out in life as a doctor, in Italy, which was his native land. He practiced medicine in Rome until he met Nancy Bradish, an American woman who would become his lifetime partner. In 1958, they married and moved to New York. Arturo had published a couple of short stories in small magazines and then a story was accepted for publication in The New Yorker. This apparently gave him enough confidence in his craft so that he quit his medical practice and within a few years, he and Nancy moved to Wellfleet with their two young daughters, Lucy and the infant, Lydia. There, he took up the life of a full-time writer and all that that entails.

In all, Arturo published more than 70 short stories in The New Yorker. He also published four collections of short stories and three novels along with the occasional play and poems as well. He taught at Bennington and some of his students, most notably Brett Easton Ellis and Donna Tart, emerged from his classes as full-blown, best-selling writers, something he himself never attained. But I never had the feeling he minded this very much. Like the best of writers, Arturo sat back and observed. He listened. Whenever I was with him, I felt I had his complete attention and any small matter I might mention suddenly seemed important and worth discussing.

Arturo loved the ocean. The last time I visited him, he wanted to take me to lunch at his favorite place in Wellfleet, a combination restaurant and bookstore -- what could be better? The restaurant had two levels, the upstairs having an open deck that looked out at the ocean. He was not well and had trouble climbing the stairs but that was his wish, to sit on the deck for lunch. So we ascended slowly and chose a table outside. It was a particularly windy day in late spring, not yet comfortable for outdoor dining. Our orders, fried clams and such, practically had to be nailed to the table as everything kept sailing away, especially our napkins. The wind also made it hard to hear those soft Arturo words. But he seemed unperturbed and eventually fell into a spell of looking, gazing out at the water as it tumbled toward us.

His children, who are now in their forties, planned a memorial service for him at his favorite beach. The event was timed to coincide with the rise of the full moon. I arrived in time to find the beach, a high cliff above the ocean, which, because of a hurricane out at sea, was roiling. A large group of Arturo's friends and family were gathered on the ledge. Below us, on the beach, a perhaps larger group of surfers and their families were sprawled across the wide sands. A half dozen or so surfers were paddling out to catch these impressive combers. Surfers wait for times like these. Surfboards lay on the sand with their fins up, like so many beached sharks. Around them, families picnicked and partied. High flames from several bonfires licked at the gathering darkness. Using a generator to provide electricity, a group of about six musicians were pounding out rock music.

Lydia called us to gather closely so we could hear. It was difficult not only because of her soft voice but also because of the music and the steady roar of the thrashing surf. I cupped my ear. She and Lucy and brother Ben read poems, as did others. At their feet was a big wicker basket adorned with flowers. When they had read all they were going to read, ending with the last poem Arturo had written, the three of them turned and walked down the path toward the water, Lucy carrying the basket. The music stopped, just a coincidence I suppose, but a good one.

We all stood at the edge of the cliff and watched as the three figures became smaller and smaller, skirting the partyers and walking steadily toward the sea. The big waves were rolling in rhythmically and I guessed it was probably high tide or near to it. Arturo's children stopped at the water's edge. One at a time, they waded into the waves to cast Arturo's ashes. Stopping only once to look back at the sea, they climbed back up to the top of the cliff, the basket empty.

They had also provided for us a moveable feast. Big boxes of delectable-looking sandwiches were laid out on a picnic table with wine and melons. As we ate, we talked. One woman, who told me Arturo had used her name as a character in his most recent novel, had come up from Florida to attend the service. She said to me that Arturo was all about love, love, love. It was the only thing for him. "He even used stamps that said 'love' on them. Whenever he mailed me a letter, it had a love stamp on it." Thinking about the letters I had back on my desk, I realized that was true. I overheard an elderly man saying, "That was the quintessential Arturo sentence!" I wanted to know which one. Here we were, a gathering of the faithful, naming his essence, benighting his sentences. It didn't seem that anyone present was famous or of the glitterati. We were all just Arturo's friends, each of whom he loved. And whose work and whose heart we loved. I guess he was what one might call the writer's writer. "I wrote to know the mystery even a small moment holds," he once said.

Through the dense clouds that had gathered at the end of that extremely hot day, the moon made a brief, if fiery, appearance. At one point, the big orange globe appeared to be an eye closing, as the clouds consumed it.

As I was leaving the beach, a man approached me in the parking lot. "Excuse me," he said, "but what is the occasion? A wedding?" I told him that it was a memorial service. "A memorial service?" he asked, somewhat incredulous. I was slow to catch on. He somehow thought that the people standing on the cliff and the revelers below on the sand were of one celebration. "And you hired a band for a memorial service?"

I quickly straightened him out. When I was trying to listen to the poetry being read in honor of our friend, I felt it was too bad that the band had to be playing at that particular moment but later I thought about the two events going on simultaneously, the celebration of a life lost and the spontaneous celebration of life and the sea. It seems to me Arturo would have enjoyed watching the revelry below us. I can just see him smiling. His life was like a beautiful sonata, softly crescendoing, quietly receding, his words still with us after he has left.

International Picnics

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100

I've been on the road for about a week, with more miles ahead of me. I sometimes tell people I don't write for a living, I drive. I once calculated that I had driven a million miles in the course of my work for Yankee and that was some time ago. If I have to drive, which, quite, frankly, I love, I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be than on the back roads of New England. Right now, I'm working on a long story about the Canadian border between New England and Canada. I've been out for a week and, through no particular planning of my own, it has been one glorious day after another, driving through the green majesty of Vermont and up into Canada, chasing sunrises, sunsets, thunderheads, words and stories.

In Canada, the signs are all in French so my high school lessons have to be recalled, though not always successfully. I did remember that the highway speed signs posted as 70, were really more like 30 mph, and I recalled the meaning of Arret but what were these frequent signs, Chemin du Chansons? I still am not sure what those mean. Somewhere north of the border of Highgate Springs, possibly in Bedford, Quebec, I passed a farm that raised elk and sold the meat from the kitchen of the farmhouse. In bare feet, the woman of the house came to the back door and asked if I would like to come in. She had a freezer full of elk steaks. I did not buy any, mostly because I didn't know when I might be home to cook it. But, even in mid-July, it was still strawberry season up there and many roadside stands were selling baskets of bright red fruit, irresistible for the journey, even if, in my exuberance over their goodness, I managed to stain my best traveling shirt, first day out.

In the delightful little village of Frelighsburg, we stopped for a picnic under towering pine trees. The old grammar school served as an information center and provided a clean bathroom, always welcome on the road. A young girl, probably still in school but out for the summer, stood ready for us behind the counter and proudly told us, in uncertain English, the story of Frelighsburg, a town that once thrived on its apple orchards but that now is known for its wines. All such products were for sale in the old schoolroom. A couple of women, who had ridden in on their bikes, sat at a picnic table on the green, chattering away to each other in French. Could it be that I was only a few miles from Vermont?

Outside, under the pines, we spread the red-checked tablecloth we had packed for these occasions, set the table with plates and silverware, cut up carrots, cucumbers, peppers and cheese for our salad, which included greens picked from the garden just before leaving, and eagerly dug in. I am not one to take road food seriously. I travel frequently and find it is harder and harder to find a place that serves good, nutritious food at reasonable prices. I remember when fast food was first spreading across this land and one of the aspects of it that supposedly helped in its rise was the idea that when you ate at, say, McDonald's or Wendy's, you would know exactly what to expect, whether you were in Vermont or in Texas. That is perfectly true and I can't defend some of the really and truly terrible food you can stumble upon when out on the road, in a place that is totally unknown to you. And the worst part is that when you get up from that meal, you have to pay for it. But I regret that that one reason has convinced people to eat generically rather than embrace the specific place where they end up at mealtime.

I find it more reliable to bring my own creations in a cooler and a hamper, including the niceties of the table which we take for granted at home. In my picnic basket, I pack two rugged plastic plates that are shaped so they can serve as a plate or a bowl if need be and two plastic mugs. I bought both these at L.L. Bean's many years ago and they look as good today as they did when I bought them. In a couple of cloth napkins, I roll up forks, knives and spoons from the cutlery drawer in my kitchen. Since many picnic tables can be in scenic places but the spills of the last folks (or critters) who sat there are sometimes evident, I always take a tablecloth. In the evening, in the motel room, the dishes are washed and dried and made ready for the next day's journey.

Into the cooler goes cheese and yogurt, fruit, bottled drinks, greens for the salad. I like to make up tabouli or couscous salad or potato salad made with vinaigrette as well, because these can endure some brief failures of refrigeration. In the hamper, I carry salt and pepper, salad dressing, a Ziploc of my favorite teabags, wet naps, crackers, whatever will fit and will remain intact for the journey (for instance, I take apples rather than pears because they are more rugged and don't bruise so easily). All that's needed is a good picnic table site, which, where I am right now, is not hard to find. But, even when they are, I prefer this way of providing for myself to any other and will stage the picnic in the car or the motel room, if need be.

The only thing I've discovered is that the border guards are intolerant of one's picnic hamper. They are inconsistent. Some guards have not even glanced at it, while other have rifled through it with glee. One emerged with my lemon, brought so I could make iced tea for myself in the morning. I make strong tea in the motel room, pour it into my sipping bottle. Then I fill it with ice from the motel's ice machine. Add lemon. Voila! Fabulous iced tea. However, at one crossing, the guard burrowed into my trunk like a gopher. He was in there a long time, rummaging. At last, he emerged with my prize lemon! My heart sank. "Sorry," he said, "I can't let you go through with this." He strode to the nearby garbage barrel, lifted the lid, and ceremoniously dropped the lemon into the barrel. When he closed the lid, he all but dusted his hands off with the satisfaction of a completed task. He explained all about USDA stickers, boring insects and so forth. That didn't make me any happier. So, my advice to you is to pack a picnic and make it fun and elegant. But, if you are crossing the border, leave the lemon at home.

The Dear Old Computer

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:00:00 +0100

Yesterday my computer crashed. I hate that sentence and all the possibilities that it implies. I was sending photographs on e-mail to a magazine I occasionally work for and, whether it was this actual act or just coincidence makes no matter, the fact is that the computer threw up a dark screen and refused to work after that. Like a human being, it just quit. Over. Nada. Give it up. Go away and leave me alone. I had so much more I had to do before the day was done! I tried but failed to figure out how any of it could be taken care of without my computer. Not only that but my brain suddenly seemed empty, as if an emergency lobotomy had been performed: all those files, representing so many parts of my life were suddenly gone and I had no idea if they could ever be retrieved. In what other drawer, closet, cellar, cupboard or barn do I keep so much of what is precious to me? It's unfathomable, as if my house and all I owned had burned to the ground.

I remember, back in the 1980s, when computers first arrived on our horizon here at Yankee. Each of us was given a box that contained a computer and, we were told, when we were ready, we could take the computer out of the box and try it out. I was stubborn. I liked my typewriter, an IBM Selectric that seemed to be able to do most anything I wanted to do in order to write a story. I liked everything about it, the touch of the keys, the sounds it made, including the ring at the end of each line, the gentle hum and slight vibration. It was a dear friend that had been through many struggles with me.

As is the case with anything foreign and new, I didn't actually know what a computer could do for me, such as eliminate the time consuming process I used to go through when doing rewrites of my stories: I would reorganize the paragraphs, cut them out with scissors and then tape the whole thing back together. From that I could retype the story in its new form. When working on really long stories, I did that several times before I was ready to submit the story to my editor. Some stories I probably retyped ten times. And when I was done, someone else would typeset it for the magazine.

All this rearranging of paragraphs and such can be done instantly now but at the time, it all seemed normal and as it should be and so, in my ignorance, I cried: I don't need a computer! claiming that writers can write on paper tablets if necessary. I didn't want all the complications I feared would come along with the computer, the ability to make charts and graphics, none of this was anything I needed. I only needed a typewriter! I spent a lot of energy bemoaning all of this ? E.B. White wrote in a small shed down by the water, a rough plank for a desk. Howard Frank Mosher has never learned to type and writes (still) on a yellow legal pad. I could think of many writers who have stuck to their lead pencil guns.

After sufficient time had passed, I was not-so-gently persuaded to open the box and turn on the machine. I guess you could say, though I didn't think so at the time, my life changed at that moment, just as all of ours did as the world of computers gradually spread across the land. And that was in the new dawn of computers, before e-mail, before video games, before MySpace, before personal websites and Google. We were all such innocents.

And so, when my computer stopped in its tracks yesterday, I went back to that thought, that all I really need is a typewriter, which is, of course, complete bunk. I now use the computer for many other applications, including e-mail and photography, and, without the computer I was suddenly bereft and slightly hysterical. For one thing, I panicked that I had lost all my files, all my photos, which I have let build up inside that mysterious place called memory in my computer. It's all sitting invisibly inside this slender notebook, stories that I wrote years ago, stories that I wrote yesterday. I don't know if I will ever even look at them again but, like any pack rat, I want to know that I have them, that they are there for me, should I ever want to use them.

I have a barn filled with files, stories I wrote before the computer entered my life so quietly back in the 1980s. I can't let go of these, either, and, occasionally I am rewarded when someone requests something from these files. Aha! It has been worth it, all this squirreling away! But, in all, it seems these personal archives take up a lot of space, all of which could now fit into this slender pad in front of me, yes, it's back. The computer crashed, a young man rescued it and performed the magic that I have yet to understand, and I am happily back to work. But in that brief period, less than 24 hours, I saw my whole world unravel, insane methods of triage came to mind. Like losing something dear, you realize, in that instant, how precious these machines are, how damnably necessary.

The Fox Comes Out

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 04:00:00 +0100

A few years ago, I wrote a short story I titled The Fox. It is about a young woman who is struggling to recover from the death of her husband. She works a mind-numbing job and comes home each night to an empty house. One hot summer evening, a fox wanders into her yard. The fox appears to be sick, or have mange or maybe even rabies. The woman is alarmed and calls the local police, which, in her small town, consists of a part-time constable. The story goes from there as the fox returns again and again, each evening at dusk and the woman bonds with the sick fox; she, in a sense, falls in love with the fox. I wrote the story and shared it with a few of my writing friends but never sent it out. The market for fiction has dwindled considerably in recent years and I'm so busy, well, enough to say the story sat in my computer.

Over the winter, I had a chance encounter with a young man with the fulsome name of Joshua Bodwell, which sounded to me like a character out of Melville or Wharton. I had gotten to know Josh when I was the fiction editor of this magazine. A good writer, he was interesting to me at the time because he was young and he operated a wonderful letterpress shop, putting out small editions of poems and stories to an even smaller public. An idealist, to be sure, a rare breed in these increasingly mainstream times. Now he is an editor at a Maine magazine and just as idealistic and energetic as he was back then. But, older now, with a family, he has to keep the money coming in. So he has this job editing a fine glossy magazine and when he's not doing that, he writes fiction and free lance articles for literary magazines. He sent me some of his stories, which I found to be very moving. I made some suggestions which he said he found helpful but the stories were strong and really did not need my guidance.

Getting to know each other again, he asked if I had written any fiction lately. The last piece I had written was The Fox so I told him about that and he asked if he could read it. I was thrilled to search it out of my computer and, as used to be literally true in the old days, dust it off. I sent it to him and he responded with praise as well as the offer to fine-tune it, give it a good line-for-line reading. Too good to pass up. He not only has his day job and his family to keep him busy but he was about to go off to London to do a teaching stint. My head was spinning as he told me all about his schedule. Even when I was his age, my life never held so much. So off he went to London with The Fox in his briefcase (more likely a backpack) and the promise to me that, while there, or perhaps while on the flight going over, he would work on it. Sure enough, when he returned he mailed me the story, which I received yesterday. (It was further uplifting to receive the manuscript in the mail, printed on paper, marked with ink and in his own handwriting. In case you are not aware of this, most work of this kind is now done online, excluding anything personal, which this work is, intrinsically.) He included some wise suggestions as well as some very warm and enthusiastic comments. This kind of attention gives a writer a boost that people in few other professions can appreciate. It is not only a great service, to read and comment on another's work, it is a generous measure of faith. Like a good jar of jam, a story can stay for years on the shelf, somewhat inert, but once you open it and share it, it comes to life, feeds and nourishes.

I was scheduled to do a reading that night in Merrimack and had opened Josh's letter and read through The Fox manuscript and Josh's comments just as I was leaving for the evening. I drove over to Merrimack in a warm mood. Compounding that, the people who attended the reading left me feeling lighthearted and happy so my ride home, under a big moon scudded with clouds, was easy, almost euphoric.

It was late by the time I neared home and I was ready for bed. Things happen in an instant sometimes, so we have to recreate what actually happened in retrospect. What I saw was a fox in my headlights, no time to swerve or even hit the brakes as he was right under my wheels or so I thought. But there wasn't a sound or a sensation. The fox had apparently, somehow, avoided my speeding car, passing under it or behind it, I have no idea, but somehow I managed to avoid hitting him. Since I didn't hit him, my sighting of him seemed almost like an apparition in the bright light of the full moon. I stitched all of this together as I continued on toward home. And then I remembered the story of the fox, which had come to me in the mail that day from Josh, with his careful, thoughtful comments. And I thought of all that had led up to that. The fox was saved. That's all I could think of.

To read the story, The Fox, go to Edie's website, www.edieclark.com.

Blue Heaven

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 04:00:00 +0100

On hot mornings like this one, I start early when it's still (relatively) cool. Last weekend, I planted the vegetable garden, and later, morning glories on the porch posts. I need to keep these well watered, at least for their first week, and more if the heat continues. I only have one faucet, which is on the west side of this big old house and my gardens are scattered about in all directions so I've devised a system that works pretty well. I hitch the trailer to the tractor, put two 20 gallon buckets into the trailer (these purple buckets are handy but they are advertised in the sales brochures as "party buckets," and I believe folks pack them with ice and cans of beer for their parties), fill the buckets from the hose and then drive slowly around to the various gardens where I dip the watering can into the vats of water and quench my seedlings. I've come to look forward to this chore as it is still cool in the mornings, even the hottest ones, and the water is cold from the well. There is usually a breeze and the birds are very vocal all around me. From the pond come the red-wing blackbirds, swooping and trilling and carrying on. They are bold and feisty as I saw one yesterday, furiously chasing a crow a long ways to the tallest tree. In the meadow, the bobolinks chirp and squawk while they loft themselves out of the grasses and then sink. It's no wonder they nest in the fields. I am not sure they can lift themselves high enough to reach the trees. And then there are the rest of them, the mourning doves providing a soothing counterpoint to all the busy chatter, in all, a big masterwork chorus accompanying me as I work.

I especially worry about the morning glories as they begin in such a frail state, the stems at the root seeming almost strangled by the earth. My mother was not much of a gardener, or at least I never think of her that way. She never belonged to a garden club or read gardening magazines or anything of that nature. But she always planted ageratums and nasturtiums, bachelor's buttons and marigolds. Nothing showy or fancy, but she liked blues and yellows and oranges, a bit of color around the house foundation and sometimes in the window boxes. My father planted these from seeds he bought at the lumber store, placing one or two seeds into each paper cup and setting them on a tray in the dining room window. When the seedlings were ready, my parents would go out together and plant the little starts in the same places they had been the year before.

The best, though, were the morning glories. Now, this was in New Jersey, a state about which you might have lots of things to say but one thing you can't take away from New Jersey is its growing climate. Living here in the north country, I have never even tried to equal the beauty and abundance possible down there. If my mother took pride in anything she grew, it would have been her morning glories, Heavenly Blues, which, it seems to me was the only color of morning glories back in those days. She planted them at the base of a the big bird feeder in the middle of the lawn, something my father made before I was born, a house big enough to be a doll house fastened to the top of a tall post. The vines grew fast and vigorously, circling, clutching the post, and soon enough the big blue trumpets were bursting from the dense cloud of heart-shaped foliage. The feeder at the top of all this looked like it was sitting on top of the stairway to heaven. In particularly good years, my father took my mother's picture, dwarfed as she was by this billowing show of blue and green.

Though I aspire to this, I know it's not possible here. Still, I search high and low for the Heavenly Blues. To the other purples and reds they have come up with for the new world of morning glories, I say bah humbug The only morning glory in my book is a Heavenly Blue, so I give these little ones the best I've got, providing a climbing trellis and often manually attaching the shoots so that they will grow in the right direction. I get them started as early as I dare, though here it is usually foolish to plant before Memorial Day as we do get late frosts. And early ones in fall. I simply do everything I can to reach that grail of memory.

When I finished the watering this morning, I went inside the screened porch and sat there for a while, planning the day. Even during the worst heat waves, the porch, in the morning, with its cold stone floor, cool breezes and satisfying shade, is a certain kind of heaven. As I sat there, a little bird fluttered onto the clothesline. I saw its blue back and then the sweet pink throat -- a bluebird, solidly perched, looking at me. I think it might be a good year for the morning glories.

Writing Workshop is About Telling Stories

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:00:00 +0100

Over the weekend, I held a writing workshop here at the house. Writers gathered in my living room, clutching notebooks and harboring stories. We ranged in age from 84 to 15, six women and one man. The 84-year-old woman wanted to share a story about her night-blooming cereus, a desert plant she'd rescued from the roadside some 40 years ago. It has been with her ever since. She told us that the plant blooms only once a year. By now, the plant is enormous, capable of being moved only on a rolling cart. The blooms are huge, white, and fleeting. The night before she came to the workshop, the plant was to give forth its annual blooms, which apparently come in the middle of the night, a half a dozen or more opening like balloons and then collapsing after a night of show. And so she invited friends from her retirement community to come over, in their bathrobes, and view this spectacular event, celebrating it with champagne. She wrote about this tender moment for us and in so doing she realized the parallels in her own life, surely in its final segment -- and was inspired to write it so. We all found her story amazing and inspiring.

Another, a woman from a rural part of Massachusetts, wanted to write about the farm her father bought when she was 6 years old. She had seven brothers and sisters, and they'd been living in a small house in the suburbs. The new farm gave them space and the mysteries of farm living, the chickens, the cows, the earth. Writing all this took her there, and she wept for the experience of it. And we wept with her as she rendered the farm into a real place we all seemed to know, and then we felt the loss of it, too.

The 15-year-old brought the enthusiasm only youth can show. Her excitement about writing, about being a writer, showed through. A freshman at the local high school, she surprised us with the news that she had already been in a movie, shot in Hollywood last summer. It will be coming out in the fall, she said, and we all scribbled down the name and vowed to attend. A big set of braces on her teeth glinted frequently as she smiled a lot. And laughed. A beautiful girl. She happily filled us in about texting and IMing and how one gets around these things in class, as well as how such a young person can manage to keep up with conversations on the cell phone, all those messages, as well as studies at school and conversations that take place on keypads. Add in casting calls and -- well, it's not an easy life for a young girl these days. As if to prove her point, she received a call on her cell phone toward the end of the first day. She'd been called to a set in Connecticut and had to leave the workshop early. That took some adjustment for the rest of us. She'd brought us so much joy and made us happy about this sometimes-dubious future we face.

Another, a published novelist, came hoping to work her way into the form of the personal essay, the subject of this particular workshop. She drove down from Vermont and brought with her funny, warm, insightful stories about the town she lives in and the people of her town, a story about the young boy who mows her lawn, expanded into the story of the big family he belongs to -- a family who has lived in the town for generations and who holds a certain entitlement as a result. Most of family members enjoy hunting, and one of them bragged about the fact that he'd shot a big buck out the window -- not just out the window but through the window, blasting out the glass and the screening along with the deer. With her words, she brought us laughter and tears and the feeling that we've known such a boy, such a family -- loved them and hated them all at once.

While we shared all of this, we all leapt to our feet to watch my dog encounter a fisher cat outside the porch, successfully fight it off, sending the animal up a tree, and then down the road. The dog, terrified, couldn't stop barking, for hours, which seriously interrupted our quiet workshop. Even while we tell our stories, new stories unfold.

Having such a group of gifted and inspired writers in my home for the weekend made me happy and gave me so much to think about these days since. So much grim news is being issued from the world of publishing, as if no one will ever read again. It's over, the battle won by e-mail and BlackBerries and cell phones, where stories spill out, never to be captured again. Our young participant's grasp and love of the technology of her generation didn't surprise any of us. And yet, here we were, in a room together, sharing stories. Everyone wrote with pad and pen, no computers. It could have been anytime in our nation's history. It's the stories that keep us alive, however they're told. I still believe that the written word is one of the best ways to bring a disparate world together.