Folks around here grumble harsh comments about the arrival of a lot of people from away, who don't usually arrive until the most beautiful part of summer, and leave just as it ends. While most of them come from our neighboring state immediately to the south, I've seen some New York license plates as well, especially around Wolfeboro.
Given that we've been advised to avoid each other for weeks now, due diligence should continue to carry us through. But someone did point out that any infected incomers will put additional strain on our meager health care resources. It's poignant that we've already sold them all of the waterfront and, in some places, let them build gaudy palaces on hillsides and ridgelines. They already monopolize the best of the warm weather. Now they're liable to suck up all of the medical supplies and sicken our front-line medical personnel before most of us get a chance to.
Even the uninfected among them will get to see what it's like to live here during the months that they have not been able to. I remember the late 1980s, when it seemed like every immigrant was a city dweller who had racked up a few quick bucks in the early 1980s surge and was going to go live in the country and have either an inn or a village store. I arrived here in 1987, when this was at its height, like an airplane that had climbed too high and too steeply, and was about to stall and plunge. And so it came to pass. Northern New England went down first in that recession. Part of the blame goes to the economy in general. The rest of the exodus happened after thousands of fantasizing flatlanders got to see just how bugger ugly the place is for months and months.
They'll be going nuts within a couple of weeks, whether they've quarantined themselves or ventured out to mingle with a local population they may believe is untouched and unconcerned. There's nothing to do here.
There are locals who do act as if they are immune, or as if we all have nothing to worry about. Hey, the fatality rate is only 1-2 percent. A very small local deli is supposedly only doing carry-out, but the space is so small that people waiting inside have to take turns inhaling and exhaling, because a full house can't all inflate their chests at once. And the work space is so small that a six foot distance between the staff is utterly impossible. They are not concerned. One of them is the mother of an infant. She still comes to work. This whole thing is overblown. New Yorkers welcome.
Other businesses have shut completely. They did so before the governor's order to close non-essential businesses. The ones that remain open do so with varying degrees of stringent procedure in place.
The response from governments at the state and national level has been abysmal. We needed to be testing wide swaths of the population more than a month ago to determine where the virus was, so it could be contained. Supposedly focusing on minimizing economic disruption has guaranteed massive economic disruption. The general disregard for the welfare of citizens has gone unchallenged for decades. Will that change? The representatives of concentrated wealth hope that a beleaguered citizenry will be so grateful once the mess is over that they will fall into line and continue voting in favor of the plutocracy. At the same time, dismantled environmental protections will make it easier to dump your waste oil down a storm drain and burn a pile of your old tires without any social stigma, so that will make it popular with rank and file voters. No more will someone try to guilt trip us about throwing our trash out the car window whenever we feel like it. Good times are coming! What's a few thousand dead? They'll mostly be people we never even met.
Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Thursday, November 22, 2018
Troubleshooting Scrooge
As the holidays approach and some regions already have winter thrust upon us, the misunderstood character of Ebenezer Scrooge will take to the seasonal stage.
Scrooge’s offense was not that he thought that the holidays are bullshit, it’s that he was a chintzy employer and an exploitive landlord and lender. Amazing how he is embraced as a great guy when he softens and starts sharing some of his customers’ own money with them in the form of Christmas largesse.
Largely viewed as a misanthropic cheapass, Scrooge was living a low budget lifestyle because he couldn’t see the point of living more extravagantly. This is completely legitimate. So is your festive brightness and cheer, if you choose. Just bear in mind that large indoor gatherings with lots of hugging and shared food are the reason that the season ushers in the plagues of colds, flu, and contagious vomiting illnesses.
Dashing through the snow
To a toilet or a shrub —
Hope I’m not too slow.
I ate some tainted grub.
Was it the hors d’oeuvres
or maybe bad eggnog —
Aunt Alice didn’t look too good;
I thought it was the grog.
Jingle bells, this was swell
Parties are great fun —
but I’m green around the gills
and so it’s time to run...
It’s all in your outlook, of course. I have enjoyed many holiday events and jolly festive times. I’ve also been a casualty. If this is when you can get the gang together, and that's what you're up for, do it. But the short days also favor solitude. Mentally if not actually, I try to find a high and lonely place in which to squint toward the distant sun barely giving us a nod as it flies low across the southern sky. It doesn't even need altitude if it has a good sweep of horizon and sky. A nice beach or coastal marsh will do quite well.
Scrooge’s offense was not that he thought that the holidays are bullshit, it’s that he was a chintzy employer and an exploitive landlord and lender. Amazing how he is embraced as a great guy when he softens and starts sharing some of his customers’ own money with them in the form of Christmas largesse.
Largely viewed as a misanthropic cheapass, Scrooge was living a low budget lifestyle because he couldn’t see the point of living more extravagantly. This is completely legitimate. So is your festive brightness and cheer, if you choose. Just bear in mind that large indoor gatherings with lots of hugging and shared food are the reason that the season ushers in the plagues of colds, flu, and contagious vomiting illnesses.
Dashing through the snow
To a toilet or a shrub —
Hope I’m not too slow.
I ate some tainted grub.
Was it the hors d’oeuvres
or maybe bad eggnog —
Aunt Alice didn’t look too good;
I thought it was the grog.
Jingle bells, this was swell
Parties are great fun —
but I’m green around the gills
and so it’s time to run...
It’s all in your outlook, of course. I have enjoyed many holiday events and jolly festive times. I’ve also been a casualty. If this is when you can get the gang together, and that's what you're up for, do it. But the short days also favor solitude. Mentally if not actually, I try to find a high and lonely place in which to squint toward the distant sun barely giving us a nod as it flies low across the southern sky. It doesn't even need altitude if it has a good sweep of horizon and sky. A nice beach or coastal marsh will do quite well.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Burning Desire
It's been a long, cold winter. The wood pile is almost gone.
At times like this, those of us who heat with wood start to rate everything around us on the basis of combustibility. Scrap lumber, dead stuff from the forest, and old, broken furniture are obvious candidates. But when every BTU counts you start to look at every possibility.
Dried cat barf? Wood stove.
Detached cat dingleberry discovered in the middle of the floor? Wood stove.
Swept-up wads of shed pet hair? Wood stove.
Bacon fat? Wood stove.
Chunks, chips and sawdust from the woodshed floor? Throw it in.
Chunk of cheese get away from you in the back of the refrigerator? Some good heat there. Dried-up leftover cake frosting works, too.
You can find many devices to turn old newspaper into fire logs. Paper and cardboard don't last long unless you increase their density by layering them tightly, but sometimes a brief, joyous flare is all you need.
The other day, my parents visited and brought a basket with some oranges in it. I looked at the basket and thought, "great, more crap in the house." Then I thought, "hey, that'll fit in the wood stove." I didn't burn it, but somehow I feel better knowing I could.
Don't burn pressure-treated lumber or particle board. Don't burn plastic or glossy paper. Don't burn glues, solvents or petroleum products, pesticides and other nasties.
I don't put anything too weird into the catalytic wood stove. Its updraft design does not have a solid floor in the fire box. But the old Jotul in the basement is a classic iron box with a door on the front and a pipe out the back. It will take anything that fits.
Those dried cat barfs under the bed? Leave them. That's April's fuel.
At times like this, those of us who heat with wood start to rate everything around us on the basis of combustibility. Scrap lumber, dead stuff from the forest, and old, broken furniture are obvious candidates. But when every BTU counts you start to look at every possibility.
Dried cat barf? Wood stove.
Detached cat dingleberry discovered in the middle of the floor? Wood stove.
Swept-up wads of shed pet hair? Wood stove.
Bacon fat? Wood stove.
Chunks, chips and sawdust from the woodshed floor? Throw it in.
Chunk of cheese get away from you in the back of the refrigerator? Some good heat there. Dried-up leftover cake frosting works, too.
You can find many devices to turn old newspaper into fire logs. Paper and cardboard don't last long unless you increase their density by layering them tightly, but sometimes a brief, joyous flare is all you need.
The other day, my parents visited and brought a basket with some oranges in it. I looked at the basket and thought, "great, more crap in the house." Then I thought, "hey, that'll fit in the wood stove." I didn't burn it, but somehow I feel better knowing I could.
Don't burn pressure-treated lumber or particle board. Don't burn plastic or glossy paper. Don't burn glues, solvents or petroleum products, pesticides and other nasties.
I don't put anything too weird into the catalytic wood stove. Its updraft design does not have a solid floor in the fire box. But the old Jotul in the basement is a classic iron box with a door on the front and a pipe out the back. It will take anything that fits.
Those dried cat barfs under the bed? Leave them. That's April's fuel.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Strange Day
This is a strange day, and not just because it started at 3 a.m.
The cellist rolled out of the driveway at 0330 this morning on her way to Maryland to take an orchestra teaching position there. Her 15-year struggle in the cultural wasteland of northern New England had worn her down to the point where she did as crusty locals tell incomers to do, and went back where she came from.
The decision was not made lightly. It doesn't not reflect on the happiness of our marriage or her ability to deal with the climate and isolation of northern rural life. We're not as far north or as rural as the state has to offer, but we're well clear of anything that would be mistaken for urban or suburban. Such a place has many attractions. High-quality arts education is emphatically not one of them.
Northern New England seems actively hostile to her profession. When it comes to serious music education they only like half-assed shit that makes everybody look bad, but does not single out individuals as particularly bad. It is a pact of mediocrity. The few sites where music is pursued at a somewhat higher level are like small, low islands facing the waves in a cold, empty sea. Those islands are already populated with other castaways, eating everything that grows or washes up. They're as likely to push another person's raft back out to sea as they are to try to accommodate one more on the island. To be fair, there's only so much food and shelter.
A parting like this creates a strange new reality for both people. The one going forth has to undergo the displacement, homelessness and a new job. The one left behind has to live with the sudden absence of the partner. I have to relearn how to live alone, but not really completely alone, because I have to maintain the place we had in such a way that she can return when her time permits. But when she's not here, she's not here. I have to do everything in a larger and more complicated facility than I would have if I lived truly alone. While she is occupied by all the new things in a new job -- regardless of the familiarity of the profession -- I have to get used to being here, missing only the most important person in my life.
In 1996 when we started into our relationship, I could have lived with a seasonal cohabitation. We had that for a couple of years, but never really questioned that we would merge our living arrangements. She liked New England. Maryland was clearly sagging under the weight of surplus population. So she came here, full of hope. Once she'd given it more than a couple of years we could never go back to the way it had been when she was a plucky single woman living in Baltimore and I was a mountain hermit living in New Hampshire.
We both gave up much for what we gained. So this reconfiguration to something like that earlier phase is not and does not try to be a return. It's a new game. For one thing, I can no longer afford to be in this house by myself. If I suddenly had to make do without the financial contribution of my spouse I would virtually disappear as I cut off things like cable, phone and Internet to reduce expenses. The nice cushion I had in the mid 1990s has been whittled away by necessary expenditures as we tried to stay afloat while she pursued her career in this cultural desert. What a couple of idiots, right?
We did not know she was terminally ill when we got together. I don't even think we knew it by the time we married. So that casts a shadow over any vision of the future. How soon will her kidneys fail? How much will she be able to work once she goes on dialysis? It's not a matter of months, but no one knows for sure how many years it might be, while research creeps along in search of treatments that might extend kidney function, let alone cure the disease. So there's that.
Obviously no one knows how long they have. Her brother dropped dead in an instant from a heart condition no one knew he had. We all know someone like that, perhaps even several people. And there's cancer, blood clots, ALS, MS, car accidents, bathtub falls,... But having a specific ticking clock adds to the sense of urgency when the person you wanted to spend your life with needs to spend significant amounts of time pursuing her adult professional goals a considerable distance away.
Today I stacked the last of the firewood. I usually solo that chore, so the lack of another person did not stand out. But the task made me think of winter, and preparing for winter, and all that needs to be done before then. Subtracting my wife made the prospect look more intimidating than normal. Winter, even in the age of global warming, is a primal force around here. You need to be ready and you need to stay ready for as long as it lasts. It is the season around which everything else revolves, the season of darkness and cold indifference to life. We are grateful for all that is not winter, even if we love the opportunities winter brings. If you're not using winter's advantages, its disadvantages loom monstrously.
I consider returning to Maryland, but only to a place outside the sprawl. Even then I don't know if I could afford it. One thing about hardscrabble places like rural New Hampshire, the cost of living is pretty low. Income is low, too, and the physical demands are greater than in southerly climes, but somehow a balance is possible that I never found in Maryland with my patchwork of credentials and experience.
Once the tourist economy fails along with the middle class, New Hampshire will have nothing. There's a bit of industry in the southern part of the state, but the job creators will have no incentive to put a facility in a place with so little transportation and communication infrastructure unless they're attracted by sufficient numbers of desperate people willing to work for cheap money. We're probably a couple of years from that, but nothing indicates that the political and economic trends will change course to prevent it. But in my new strange world I can't let myself look too far ahead in any case.
The cellist rolled out of the driveway at 0330 this morning on her way to Maryland to take an orchestra teaching position there. Her 15-year struggle in the cultural wasteland of northern New England had worn her down to the point where she did as crusty locals tell incomers to do, and went back where she came from.
The decision was not made lightly. It doesn't not reflect on the happiness of our marriage or her ability to deal with the climate and isolation of northern rural life. We're not as far north or as rural as the state has to offer, but we're well clear of anything that would be mistaken for urban or suburban. Such a place has many attractions. High-quality arts education is emphatically not one of them.
Northern New England seems actively hostile to her profession. When it comes to serious music education they only like half-assed shit that makes everybody look bad, but does not single out individuals as particularly bad. It is a pact of mediocrity. The few sites where music is pursued at a somewhat higher level are like small, low islands facing the waves in a cold, empty sea. Those islands are already populated with other castaways, eating everything that grows or washes up. They're as likely to push another person's raft back out to sea as they are to try to accommodate one more on the island. To be fair, there's only so much food and shelter.
A parting like this creates a strange new reality for both people. The one going forth has to undergo the displacement, homelessness and a new job. The one left behind has to live with the sudden absence of the partner. I have to relearn how to live alone, but not really completely alone, because I have to maintain the place we had in such a way that she can return when her time permits. But when she's not here, she's not here. I have to do everything in a larger and more complicated facility than I would have if I lived truly alone. While she is occupied by all the new things in a new job -- regardless of the familiarity of the profession -- I have to get used to being here, missing only the most important person in my life.
In 1996 when we started into our relationship, I could have lived with a seasonal cohabitation. We had that for a couple of years, but never really questioned that we would merge our living arrangements. She liked New England. Maryland was clearly sagging under the weight of surplus population. So she came here, full of hope. Once she'd given it more than a couple of years we could never go back to the way it had been when she was a plucky single woman living in Baltimore and I was a mountain hermit living in New Hampshire.
We both gave up much for what we gained. So this reconfiguration to something like that earlier phase is not and does not try to be a return. It's a new game. For one thing, I can no longer afford to be in this house by myself. If I suddenly had to make do without the financial contribution of my spouse I would virtually disappear as I cut off things like cable, phone and Internet to reduce expenses. The nice cushion I had in the mid 1990s has been whittled away by necessary expenditures as we tried to stay afloat while she pursued her career in this cultural desert. What a couple of idiots, right?
We did not know she was terminally ill when we got together. I don't even think we knew it by the time we married. So that casts a shadow over any vision of the future. How soon will her kidneys fail? How much will she be able to work once she goes on dialysis? It's not a matter of months, but no one knows for sure how many years it might be, while research creeps along in search of treatments that might extend kidney function, let alone cure the disease. So there's that.
Obviously no one knows how long they have. Her brother dropped dead in an instant from a heart condition no one knew he had. We all know someone like that, perhaps even several people. And there's cancer, blood clots, ALS, MS, car accidents, bathtub falls,... But having a specific ticking clock adds to the sense of urgency when the person you wanted to spend your life with needs to spend significant amounts of time pursuing her adult professional goals a considerable distance away.
Today I stacked the last of the firewood. I usually solo that chore, so the lack of another person did not stand out. But the task made me think of winter, and preparing for winter, and all that needs to be done before then. Subtracting my wife made the prospect look more intimidating than normal. Winter, even in the age of global warming, is a primal force around here. You need to be ready and you need to stay ready for as long as it lasts. It is the season around which everything else revolves, the season of darkness and cold indifference to life. We are grateful for all that is not winter, even if we love the opportunities winter brings. If you're not using winter's advantages, its disadvantages loom monstrously.
I consider returning to Maryland, but only to a place outside the sprawl. Even then I don't know if I could afford it. One thing about hardscrabble places like rural New Hampshire, the cost of living is pretty low. Income is low, too, and the physical demands are greater than in southerly climes, but somehow a balance is possible that I never found in Maryland with my patchwork of credentials and experience.
Once the tourist economy fails along with the middle class, New Hampshire will have nothing. There's a bit of industry in the southern part of the state, but the job creators will have no incentive to put a facility in a place with so little transportation and communication infrastructure unless they're attracted by sufficient numbers of desperate people willing to work for cheap money. We're probably a couple of years from that, but nothing indicates that the political and economic trends will change course to prevent it. But in my new strange world I can't let myself look too far ahead in any case.
Monday, February 03, 2014
February, that long short month
February comes in like a groundhog and goes out like something wet and cold.
On Groundhog Eve we held our annual celebration. We shifted it from Groundhog Day to avoid a big football game that would have curtailed the attendance of some guests. It also seemed more appropriate to celebrate the predictive powers of the celebrated rodent by holding our Second Annual Groundhog Day Jam and Poetry Slam before this year's decision was known.
The dinner ended with the traditional cake.
Guests brought their own culinary contributions. These are groundhog cookies built on Nutter Butters.
The evening was filled with poetry and song. Since this was a larger gathering than we'd ever had, a bunch of new people became aware of the possibilities of satirical groundhog-themed versions of well-known music and poetry. There were also several original compositions.
*********
The party used up not only the last of my roasted coffee but the last bean I had on hand. Fortunately, ten pounds of green pulled in as the old stuff departed. Here is Peru Cafe Succhia and Kenya Githembe.
The fastest way to roast with the equipment I have is on a high-powered stove burner. I'm shaking the beans in a popcorn popper. When they really start to roast there's a lot of smoke. This shop vac arrangement pulls a lot of smoke and blows it out the window. When I'm really on my game the smoke alarms don't go off at all. Today I had a few chirps during each roast, but not bad.
Since shaking the roaster is about all the exercise I get these days, I welcome the activity. Bike commuting season will return. For now I have to get as much benefit as I can from household chores and fidgeting. Being heavily caffeinated certainly helps with the fidgeting.
February will lead to March, an even longer month. The government hath decreed that we shift our daylight pretty early in March, which opens up outdoor possibilities pinched off in the darkest time of winter. But we're a long way from that.
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