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The Would-Be Farm: Jonquils or Daffodils?

6/14/2020

It's a very good Scrabble day when I can play "jonquil."

In the world, I rarely call these flowers anything but daffodils.

Be that as it may, my sweet mother-in-law calls them jonquils, and when she proposed a big honking field of them at the Would-Be Farm, I said heck yeah!

Pat is a wonderful gardener, and even in her early 80s, she can out-shop, out-weed, and out-sew me pretty much any day of the week. So when she said she wanted Jeff and me to be reminded of her each spring at the Would-Be Farm, I enlisted her actual aid.

Long story short, we ordered something like 200 bulbs from Holland last fall. Thank you John Scheepers. We hopped a plane (back in the days when people did that kind of thing without thinking about it much) once the package arrived in the North Country.

We made a girl's weekend of it, staying at my sister's civilized house, eating yummy meals, and playing dominoes at the end of the day.

And we flew South, happy but full of anticipation and the usual worries: Would squirrels eat the bulbs? Would the plants freeze to death? Would deer eat the bulbs? Would an early thaw fool the plants?

Springtime is brutal on hopes. When bright flowers do indeed rise from the cold clay -- oh glory.

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What I Miss Most Today

5/27/2020

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Okay, so everything has changed.

More or less.

Less in some states.

But for many people, especially those with a healthy respect for both the science of infectious disease and the preservation of our elders, this summer seems like the start of a not-so-brave new world.

So here's what I am missing.

In photo format, because nobody wants to hear that tone of voice.

With vintage photos, because it does seem like a long time ago since we went out dancing, or hung out without a care with multiple generations of the family ––or not-family –– or planned a trip, or hugged people, or shared aprés-sailing stories...

But all this aside, please be sensible and gentle with one another. We're all trying our best –– even when it's not that great, it's likely all the effort we can manage.

That is all. For now.

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Lost Stories

5/8/2020

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File under: stuff you find while looking for something else.

It's a thing that happens with readers: perhaps we gobble up a couple of dozen books a year (wink wink).

In six years, that's a gross. Fast forward ten or twenty years, and frankly, who knows how many books. Some books remain vivid, but the majority tend to –– fade.

Highlights linger like the memory of a dream, fragmented but compelling. Perhaps a title or something about the situation or characters, or the appearance of the book itself will persist.

And while some people can simply let it go...others will be haunted.

For many years, my book-loving Mumsie used to tell me about stories she remembered but hadn't had in hand for several decades. She had an ongoing quest to find a copy of The Swish of the Curtain, which she'd adored as a child.

It was, she told me, about a group of theater-mad children who staged shows in their English village. She looked for it at every used bookstore, but when I told her I'd located a copy (ah! early days of the internet!), she shied away from actually getting it. She said she didn't want to find it like that. She admitted she'd rather not test her memory of its charms.

Googling it today, I see that the book was made into a British television series in the 1980's, as well as older "radio plays.' There are recent paperback editions, and ebook versions. Huh. Turns out Mumsie was not the only one who loved the story.

Countless other folks are likewise looking or volumes that they only partly remember.

Ask any bookseller or librarian for their war-stories ("It was a suspense novel set in the American Southwest. The cover was yellow. Can you find it?").

Naturally, in these internet days, there are online services that can help.

For a couple of bucks, Loganberry Books helps the hive mind focus on your need.

The Library of Congress has a page of suggestions for how to find lost books/lost lyrics and more. The LoC site links to a veritable warren of rabbit holes, by the way, if you are so inclined (declined?) to potter around chasing other people's trails.

Like this Reddit page, this specific one, and so. many. more. <shakes head vigorously>

So if you have a vague recollection of a book about a thing, set in that place? The one you picked up at the Strand bookstore or the long-lost White Horse Books?

You can probably find it if you want to spend a bit of time.

And if not, man are there some great books out there waiting to be read. Hit me up for a recommendation if you like.

Stay safe, friends.

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Odd phobias

4/7/2020

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Everyone knows someone who is irrationally (well, that's all in the perspective, right?) afraid of, say, legless reptiles or eight-legged wall-walkers.

Not just slightly averse to these creatures, but seriously, panicky, clawing-a-way-out-the-window fearful.

Each of my parents had one. For my father and his siblings, having survived a canoeing accident as children where they and their mother clung to an overturned boat while long strands of seaweed brushed their legs, the fear was snakes.

Daddo would refer to them as "serpents" because even the word "snakes" was dreadful to him.

While enjoying a spaghetti dinner at our house, a neighborhood kid joshed offhandedly about how it was like red snakes slithering up into our collective mouths. My father dropped his fork in disgust and stalked to the other room.

Toward the end of his life, he'd say that if we really wanted to be rid of him, just toss a plastic serpent into his lap. He promised it would be quick.

Daddo was not kidding. Probably.

I never noticed Mumsie's issue until that first summer at the cottage. We'd gone to take a quick look at what they had purchased –– waterfront! as is! Bill Bailey blue! furnished with toys and musty furniture! –– on the shore of Lake Ontario. We ended up just staying all summer. Daddo went off to work downstate during the week while the three of us swam and read books and played with the neighbors (each according to her tastes. Mumsie was not much for running around pretending to be horses).

Naturally, given the body of fresh water, the long Northern summer days, and the untenanted nature of the cottage, there were spiders. But it was a summer cottage. When sweeping, you directed the little pile of debris down that knot-hole in the floor in the hallway. On Thursdays, before Daddo came up, we'd eat ice-cream for supper. It was a Platonic ideal of summer cottage life.

Except for the spiders. One morning, we all scooted out of the house while Mumsie sprayed some sort of aerosolized poison. We must have been gone all day. Or maybe it was stormy when we returned, because while my sister and I, diminutive then, walked into the shadowy cottage without incident, our mother entered to a suspended carpet of deceased arachnids. All hanging at about eye-height from the ceiling. The horror. The horror.

In college, I pestered Mumsie for an explanation.

She had a scientific mind, fearless and nature-loving.

She rehabilitated birds of prey, talked unhesitatingly about the facts of life, and if you stepped on broken glass and were pretty sure you needed stitches? All the kids knew to skip their own parents and go straight to her. She'd say, mildly, "Oh, don't bleed on the linoleum," and patch you up.

Grinding over long-term depression and agoraphobia, she held down a job to support herself and her youngest child. She solo-camped as a newly divorced woman in her late 30's.

But spiders freaked her the hell out.

Eventually, she dredged up a memory for me. "It might be this," she said, draping her paperback over her knee. "When I was very little –– on the farm in Springville –– I was playing in the creek." [The word "creek" in the geography of rural northern Pennsylvania was pronounced "crick." A thing I miss from her.]

She turned her head in the same questing way as when she was trying to recall the details of a dream. "I was splashing the water with a stick and there was an enormous water-spider. I hit it and it burst open and dozens –– hundreds?–– of baby spiders spilled out."

Gulp. Okay then.

My sister shares the distaste for spiders. We've often agreed that should there be an unfortunate single-car accident in her life, it's a near certainty to have involved a spider emerging from under the dashboard and landing on exposed skin.

I'm not fearful of snakes –– Not wanting to be afraid ever, I seized the opportunity in high school of grabbing up a handful of cold, writhing serpents as they emerged from their winter hibernation.

I carried the ball of them around at arms length, thinking if I could do this, I was snake-proof for life. Mumsie, gardening a few yards away, said, "Yes, well, put them down before they start biting you."

It's plastic, okay?

As for spiders? I understand they won't actually kill me, but I find it hard to casually look away once I've noticed one nearby. I find their globular bodies shudderingly distasteful.

Be that all as it may. I actually meant to write about weird phobias. There's no shortage of oddity in the world. And phobias are the most common of mental illnesses.

Mental illness. Huh.

I've felt claustrophobia. Couldn't get into an elevator for two years. It was a side-effect, I think, of a dreadful boyfriend and asthma.

Once I nearly fainted –– and me a farm kid! –– at the vision of a big splinter protruding from someone else's finger. All the blood and guts in the world, and I was about to keel over from a splinter. I couldn't even help her yank it out.

But that's pretty mundane stuff. What's more intriguing is the fringier fears.

For instance, I have one friend who cannot bear, to the point of vomit, not just the texture of the cotton plugs found in aspirin bottles -- but even a discussion of the dusty, squeaky cotton found in aspirin bottles. A full-grown man with his fingers in his ears, chanting, "Nah, Nah, I can't hear you!"

Another who runs –– runs! –– from praying mantis. One who cannot shower in an empty house.

While there's one pal who claims to be petrified of the music produced by the barrel organ, I'm less sure it's fear. Annoyance maybe.

One of our elders has what's known as "White Coat Anxiety." Whenever confronted with a doctor or medical professional in a clinical environment, her blood pressure goes sky-high.

I worked with a woman who couldn't stand scissors. We'll call her Peg. Another co-worker, Liz, a capricious but observant creature, had noticed that Peg invariably moved books and files so that a pair of shears on a colleague's desk would be hidden from her view

Peg was not a particularly pleasant work comrade; she tended to hover, to micro-manage, to mouth-breathe and offer unwelcome suggestions on how better to do one's job.

Liz, a graphic designer, took to asking Peg to hand her the scissors or the Xacto knife she needed when Peg came near her desk. In less than a week, Peg stopped hovering and micromanaging anyone in the graphics department.

I should be ashamed to admit that I, too, began leaving a pair of shears, gaping open, on my desk in editorial to ward Peg off.

Harnessing the power of fear.

It's what we're all doing right about now, indulging in our inner germophobia*. Which is fine, unless it's someone else pulling those strings.

*Technically, it's mysophobia or verminophobia but that's just me showing off.

Be strong, my friends.

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Art Safari in the Big City

3/12/2020

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For those hoping for an overview of the 2020 Everglades Challenge...that story is still coming. The team is safe, which is the main thing, and engaged in their next adventure. I hope to post a report early next week.

Meanwhile, something completely different from that...

My sister Sarah, an actual working artist, invented a thing we do called "Art Safari." I've written about it before.

We grab our cameras and drive or walk around some downtown or another.

It's all rather silly. We look at stuff through the viewfinder and laugh a lot.

Still, the physical act of focusing encourages a metaphoric focusing on what's right in front of us.

It's an exercise in seeing rather than just looking. A useful practice for a writer as well as an artist.

There's stuff to see if you just keep your eyes open.

We spent a long weekend in Manhattan recently –– summary: a bunch of us were were going to Italy to celebrate Sarah's birthday. Along comes Covid19, and poof! Manhattan it is!

The gang took taxis and subways, saw shows and shoes, walked Times Square and wandered museums. It kind of felt like every activity was going to be retold with the preface, "Back before the Pandemic, you could..."

Anyhow, wandering at will through the chic-chiciest of boroughs, especially wandering with artistic types like my companions, made me look twice or three times.

A few highlights of what caught my eye...

Frankenbarricade?

Elmo say "Please don't collide with delivery bike!"

No, please don't wake!

I looked.

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Lazing on a Saturday Afternoon

1/23/2020

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It's a thing we've enjoyed every now and then now for decades: an afternoon slouch on the couch watching whatever dope crap Jeff selects.

Back in our early courting days, we were en couchant watching some Voyage of Sinbad or another. You remember the kind of movie: claymation, sparkly costumes, "exotic" locales somewhere in the hills east of Hollywood.

In any case, our heroes were bundled to the teeth, trudging across a featureless frozen sea when Jeff pipes up with, "Oh-oh, watch out for the giant walrus."

Me: What?

Jeff can flatten the affect right out of his voice so while it seems like a warning, the phrase comes out completely without urgency. He spoke to the television screen again, "Oh, no, look out for the giant walrus,"

Me: What in the world are you talk ––

And at that moment, on the little rounded screen of my apartment's television, an enormous walrus broke through the styrofoam ice and speared one of Sinbad's less fortunate companions with a long tusk.

My astonishment was complete. I said, "You've SEEN this before?!" Honestly, watching it for the first time seemed faintly ridiculous, but it did have novelty value going for it.

Little did I know that Jeff's tolerance for ridiculous movies was nearly as deep as my own ability to grouse about them while nestled next to him on the sofa.

It's kind of a match made in heaven.

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A New Year...More New Projects

1/2/2020

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My favorite skipper and I eloped when it came time to get married.

He'd been through a big wedding already and I wanted neither the pouffy dress nor to stand at the center of that kind of social attention.

The legalizing deed was performed at the Wee Chapel of Love, which used to lurk on Gandy Boulevard in Tampa.

On the way to the Wee Chapel, we did a quick pre-nup. "I'm going to buy boats and forget to tell you," Mr. Linton said.

After a considering moment, I came back with "I'll get fruity furniture, like chaise lounges, and I just don't want any lip about it."

We both found these demands reasonable. And so it has gone.

This fall, between Flying Scotting, Sunfishing, and warming up Spawn (and then repairing the damage), himself started sailing a 2.4 Meter.

As a boat design, the 2.4 Meter looks very much like the old school America's Cup boats: a classic pointy bow and sweetly curved belly. Those yachty yachts of Newport Rhode Island fame. Dennis Conner and that gang.

Only, 2.4 meters comes out to a diminutive 13 or so feet long. So it's an America's Cup boat considered from the wrong end of the telescope.

The boat is large enough for a single person, who sits inside the hull with not much more than a noggin showing above decks.

As if Paul Bunyan had taken to the high seas, or as if a person had inexplicably shrunk down into a shoe.

The boat has been used in the Paralympics, as well as for the able-bodied; it's difficult to sink or flip.

It's got a mass of spaghetti line controls in the cockpit and Jeff will be using his feet to steer.

Of course he's excited for the new adventure. The man does love a new sailing challenge.

He went halvsies on a 2.4 Meter owned by a friend and began working on it, as he does.

Gelcoat, fiberglass, carbon fiber, epoxy, refiguring hardware, rejigging lines...it's all good.

A bigger project maybe than he expected, but intellectually stimulating.

In December, he got invited to a regatta in Port Charlotte, Florida.

One of the 2.4 Meter guys had a nearly brand-new boat that he'd lend Jeff for the race.

A nice shiny new boat.

Mr. Linton came home with an particular, peculiar expression on his face (or maybe it's the way he holds his neck).

An expression I have come to identify.

I said, "Did you buy that boat?"

Yes. Yes he did.

Happy New Year!

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As the Bookworm Turns

12/20/2019

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My childhood bestie, Care, reminds me from time to time about how it used to go down.

She'd come next-door at the cottage on a summer morning and ask if I wanted to do something: swimming, running around á la wild mustangs, making miniature ballrooms in the field, catching rabbits.

I remember spending those summers perpetually in motion, but evidently there were too many times when my answer was the dreaded, "Nah, I'm reading."

From disappointing my running buddy, I quickly went on to wreck my eyesight (Or maybe not, nearly everyone in my extended family was nearsighted.) from hunching over a book in poor light. And boy, did the books help my high school social rep --!

Bibliophile. Bibliophage. Dear Reader. Freaky four-eyes book-worm. Whatevs.

Before my eighteenth birthday I got myself set for a four-year reading sabbatical that shaped the rest of my days.

So far anyhow.

Some years I read less, but mostly I read a lot. Quickly.

I go heavy on novels, light on memoirs. I snack on essays and take sparse sips of poetry. I almost never read biographies. (That 5th-grade assignment on Betsy Ross <shudder>)

Generalized history gets a pass, but I do like specific topics (The Black Death in 1348, anyone? Rats in New York? ) and anything natural history-ish.

Stacks of books sprout wherever I perch: volumes I mean to read, books I have started, tomes I use for reference.

When Mr. Linton and I downsized, I culled about a third of my collection and still needed to rent a scissor-lift to get the rest of them up the stairs.

Sidebar Truth: While waiting for the delivery of the scissor-lift, and knowing the advantageous tide would wait for no book, Mr. Linton trotted the literal ton of books up stairs on tireless feet without a single complaint. Bless him.

I have reading recommendations the way pharmaceutical reps have sample packs and cronuts -- with roughly the same goal. Minus the commission.

Goodreads, which is connected in the cross-platform sales way of the modern world to Amazon.com (which is to say, Amazon owns the "social cataloguing" website), has become my preferred way to keep track of titles.

Instead of jotting down book recommendations on scraps of paper and then scotch-taping them someplace handy, a user can type in the name of the book (or a close approximation) or the name of the author and save it to the shelf of Books to Read.

Were I a slightly more nimble consumer, I could obtain any book with a few keystrokes, but my connections are not so tight.

Diversifying my stream: I read physical books that I buy. I read physical books that I borrow from the library. My sister (bless her!) gave me one of her extra Kindles, so I read on that, or on the iPad. We listen to books on CD or as podcasts or digital files.

I whittled a few titles off the "Books to Read" list recently and discovered one of my favorite bookchoices for the year. Some friends may be getting a copy of

The Fly Trap by Fredrik Sjöberg

Fredrik Sjöberg is an entomologist. He's aware how quirky a profession that is. And his particular passion –– hoverflies –– is not especially showy or accessible to the general public.

"Of course I could name a number of very good, very sensible reasons why a person ought to collect flies, but I am not a missionary."

Indeed he is not -- ostensibly -- trying to get his readers interested in hoverflies, fascinating as they may be. In this memoir, he's writing instead about larger questions of obsession and nature (or the outdoors anyway, as he thinks people's passion for "unspoiled" wilderness is a load of hooey).

He's clever and funny, with an original turn to his thinking that startles and charms. (He points out in passing that the only place an entomologist specializing in forensic work on cadavers might have enough work to make a living would be the United States.)

Like all the best memoirs, the book –– slim, but promising to continue in another two volumes –– is not so much about Sjöberg's insects, but about what he has learned from his pursuit of them.

I should be more embarrassed at my giddy fan-girl response to Sjöberg's story, but as my companions will attest: I cheerfully read aloud whole pages for their enjoyment as well as my own.

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In Sailing News Elsewhere

11/14/2019

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My mumsie used to call it "burbling," the sort of cheerful, not-terribly-important chatter that doesn't –– strictly speaking –– require an audience. As nice a term as any, and onomatopoeic to boot.

A propensity to burble was perhaps one of the reasons she sent me to kindergarten a little early. I've always had a lot to say.

I've tacked away from sailing as a topic to burble about (about which to burble?) for the past couple of months here on the blog, but it doesn't mean that I haven't been writing about sailing.

A start of the Lightning Pan Am Trials at Davis Island YC.

So for those sweet readers who tell me they enjoy this sort of thing, here are a couple of links to the Flying Scot webpage.

I've been doing an occasional column about boat names there for my Bar Harbor buddy Ned Johnston (Hi Ned!), who edits the class newsletter.

"Sing a Song of Sixpence" Page 18 of https://www.fssa.com/files/scots_63_4.pdf

"From Another Shore" page 16 of https://www.fssa.com/files/scots_63_3_web.pdf

"THAT Name" page 12 of https://www.fssa.com/files/scots_63_2.pdf

"What's in a Name" tag 11 of https://www.fssa.com/files/scots_63_1.pdf

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The Way-Back Machine: A Natural Bridge

10/21/2019

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I recently re-discovered this tale I wrote in the early 2000's. This adventure pre-dates the Would-Be Farm (though I was dreaming about it back then!) and some of the principals are no longer with us, but here it is, a retread road-trip...

I'd been helping my sister Sarah fix up her first place up North –– after a long break away from the North Country –– when we decided to spend a day away from the project.

I was in the market for some land, imagining (perhaps foolishly) that I could purchase a chunk of attractive brush with some water feature that would keep Mr. Linton and me happily occupied for the next few decades of summertime vacation.

Turns out, of course, that there are many chunks of brush, some attractive, a few with water features, but almost none in my small price-range offered by anyone actually willing to close a deal.

Anyway, it gave me a nifty excuse for pottering around the back roads of rural Northern New York State.

A classmate from high school was a real-estate agent, and although she was out of town on vacation that week, she had provided me with a stack of property listings to look at. On our day off, my sister and I set a goal of checking out a couple of those places (disappointing: peaceful retreats are rarely located within ear-shot of Fort Drum’s gunnery range).

After the unproductive real estate perambulations, our thoughts turned to something more rewarding. For years, we had heard about the reputed natural bridge over Perch River outside of the village of Dexter.

Even though we’d lived in the area for years, and I had ridden my horse all over that particular corner of creation as a young dandelion, this geographical wonder was unknown to us.

Sarah and I had talked about taking the kayaks up the Perch River, but she'd wracked her arm in a nasty boating accident involving a cleat, a big wake, and her elbow (yarg) earlier in the summer.

We looked at the big gazetteer map of New York, and lo and behold “natural bridge” was right THERE in small print, where the thin thread of Perch River took a stitch underground.

So that's where we headed.

I was driving down Middle Road. My sister was navigating and she said, "Hey, turn here."

A mailbox marked the turn, and I said, "Sis, come on, this is someone’s driveway."

Implacable, she repeated, "Turn in."

The driveway was long and twisty and really private. A few yards farther along, a deer stand loomed over a field. I said, "Sis, they hunt."

She said, "Keep going."

With no place to turn around –– and I didn’t like to back up around the curved driveway –– I kept going.

A few yards later, a big carved black bear held a “Welcome Friends” sign.

My sister pointed and said, "But look, they are friendly!"

"Yeah, but it’s someone’s driveway, sis...This could go very badly."

She said, "Look, there’s a spot. Park the car. Don’t be a candy-ass."

I did as she directed, since she is the older sister.

And we got out of the car with our water bottles and our hiking boots and all we heard was birdsong, wind in the treetops, and the whine of a distant chainsaw.

We consulted the map and oriented ourselves toward the river. We were preparing to trespass.

She’s like, "Okay, here’s our story: We are here looking for a friend from high school, and have gotten turned around somehow."

The sound of the chainsaw drew suddenly much closer. I though, gosh, maybe I should have availed myself of the facilities when we stopped at the library in Dexter.

Then a voice: "Helloooo!"

We stopped in our guilty tracks.

A kindly looking woman with a suspicious expression on her face came down the driveway.

"Hi," we all said.

"How can I help you?" she said.

Without even exchanging a look, my sister and I dropped the lie.

We explained that we grew up around here, and we heard that there is a natural bridge over the Perch River somewhere nearby, and we were really hoping to find it.

The woman said, "Why yes, there is. Do you have a half an hour or so?"

Next thing you know, the woman has collected her husband, who pilots a zippy ATV down the driveway to pick us up and they are taking us on a tour all over the 400 acres their son and his wife purchased a few years back.

There’s Perch river. There’s the bridge -- a smidge underwhelming, but aha! ––there’s the river emerging again from the other side of the natural bridge. There’s an old stone fence. Maybe the fence butts up to the Hall’s farm ––The Hall’s farm that was probably our Riggs family farm a hundred years ago. Maybe one of our great-great uncles stacked those very stones.

I mention the Pflugheber’s place, where my mom and I and the horse and the dog lived for a time.

Why, the husband knows Ed Pflugheber! The husband retired from the Watertown Daily Times.

Why then he must know my cousin Scott Smith, who works at the Times.

Indeed he does. He knows Toots Carbone, too, my buddy Care's Dad, our next-door neighbor on the Point.

We talk about the St. Lawrence River, and my sister points to her tee-shirt, which features a snap from our family history: Herbie Ward and Daddo with a string of fish on the dock at Fisher’s Landing.

Well, wouldn't you know the husband knows Herbie Ward.

Small world!

As it happens, the husband is connected to parents of classmates of ours.

And their daughter-in-law? Turns out she is my vacationing real-estate agent/high-school classmate. We trespassed on her land.

Hours later, our unexpected hosts raid my real-estate agent’s fridge for beer and my sister gets them to take pictures of the two of us in the ATV, playing with my real-estate agent's dog, and lounging on the porch with our purloined beers.

Those photos of us having our disreputable way with other people's porches, off-road recreational vehicle, and beer might possibly have been taken on an early cell phone that was unable to resist water when it went swimming.

But maybe one of those images will resurface, possibly on the tee-shirt of one of the great-grand nephews or nieces, who will point to it while trespassing and say, "Perhaps you know these two characters? Our aunts?"

And here's hoping it will parlay into a free pass, a tour, an anecdote.

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The Would-Be Farm: Jonquils or Daffodils?

What I Miss Most Today

Lost Stories

Odd phobias

Art Safari in the Big City

Lazing on a Saturday Afternoon

A New Year...More New Projects

As the Bookworm Turns

In Sailing News Elsewhere

The Way-Back Machine: A Natural Bridge

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