The village-town line runs right through our house. The Boy sleeps in the village, and we sleep in the town. Although only four years old, he knows the village has a little more cachet than the town. When he’s feeling tantrum-y, he’ll lord it over us a bit. We say “no ice cream,” and he says “peasants.”
Our mailbox and front door are in the village, though, and we get one of three local tax bills from the village, so the village elections seemed like a sure bet.
But no. A politically engaged woman who lives in our house — one who rightly dislikes driving on unplowed village roads, especially after having paid taxes presumably for the purpose of plowing — took her engagement to the voting booth last week, and was turned away. Apparently a front door, mailbox, living room and bedroom aren’t enough to earn you the right to vote in this particular village. The bulk of the lot is in town, and town is where we vote.
THIS was taxation without representation! Quick! To the lawyers! Fortunately, we have firebrand, rebel, metalhead lawyer friends! To arms, men! We called them.
They patiently explained that the Board of Elections had the right to pick a voting location for us, and that if they want to use the largest portion of the lot as the determiner of voting location they blah blah blah something about you can’t vote at your vacation home and something-about-Lemmy what-ever.
Of course, the boy voted at least twice, and keeps threatening to call the new mayor – his guy – whenever we make him clean up his part of the village.
•
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The Hiding
Winter lets you see more. When the leaves drop, after the first big wind in November, the land is laid bare, but the browns and blacks of the tree trunks and the browns and blacks of the passing leaves mask the contours. I love that season too, that muddy chill, but it is not a season of seeing.
Call the snow down, though, and you’re suddenly looking at a blown-out Xerox of your landscape, where only the thickly drawn dark outlines stay visible. Then you’re seeing the bones of the country; its high points and low, its undetectable ridges, lines, lifts and inclines. The fringe of trees limns it all in dense charcoal, and steeley waterways, lakes and ponds provide stark flat planes. Evergreens remind you in an understated way that this land is alive.
At the height of winter, there is no fog, no cloudy shroud, no airborne water at all. Just the sun, and the frigid air, and the things that freeze beneath. For as long as you can stand it, you can look deeper, further, with all the clarity of winter and all the angled light of the sun, shining into crevices it normally doesn’t touch. Truth is a reward worth the ice and inconvenience.
And now we’re coming to the Big Concealment. Life speeds up again. Buds form and the smudging finger descends upon the charcoal lines. The snow melts and the mud takes on the color of the trunks again. A gentle brush bearing watered-down green begins to apply its layers. Mist rises off the river and cloaks the places where land and water, air and land meet; insects, birds and thin vines further blur the boundaries. Our vision closes in; there is much much more to see, up close, and the world’s bones hide themselves for another year, which is awfully nice of them, considering.
It’s playtime. But as you go and play, you take that vision of winter with you, that season of far sight, of seeing deeper. Winter is not death; it is sleep. And sleep is when we dream. Play. But be a grownup, and remember what you’ve learned about playtime.
1) Share.
2) Eventually you’ve got to go in.
3) You have to clean up before that.
Further reading.
•
Call the snow down, though, and you’re suddenly looking at a blown-out Xerox of your landscape, where only the thickly drawn dark outlines stay visible. Then you’re seeing the bones of the country; its high points and low, its undetectable ridges, lines, lifts and inclines. The fringe of trees limns it all in dense charcoal, and steeley waterways, lakes and ponds provide stark flat planes. Evergreens remind you in an understated way that this land is alive.
At the height of winter, there is no fog, no cloudy shroud, no airborne water at all. Just the sun, and the frigid air, and the things that freeze beneath. For as long as you can stand it, you can look deeper, further, with all the clarity of winter and all the angled light of the sun, shining into crevices it normally doesn’t touch. Truth is a reward worth the ice and inconvenience.
And now we’re coming to the Big Concealment. Life speeds up again. Buds form and the smudging finger descends upon the charcoal lines. The snow melts and the mud takes on the color of the trunks again. A gentle brush bearing watered-down green begins to apply its layers. Mist rises off the river and cloaks the places where land and water, air and land meet; insects, birds and thin vines further blur the boundaries. Our vision closes in; there is much much more to see, up close, and the world’s bones hide themselves for another year, which is awfully nice of them, considering.
It’s playtime. But as you go and play, you take that vision of winter with you, that season of far sight, of seeing deeper. Winter is not death; it is sleep. And sleep is when we dream. Play. But be a grownup, and remember what you’ve learned about playtime.
1) Share.
2) Eventually you’ve got to go in.
3) You have to clean up before that.
Further reading.
•
Friday, March 23, 2007
In Good Company
In recognition of the responsibilities accruing to my new position as part of the hallowed Finslippy blogroll (thank you, Alice, and that thing we talked about? DONE!), I offer a few tidbits about the zany antics of my children:
Apparently the baby cut a tooth this week. How about that? And the lad had fivecount’emFIVE timeouts yesterday. He was yelling at Matthew. Last week he pushed Billy. But yesterday he was really good with Billy. And this morning? Contrite, well-behaved, introspective even.
Uhh, yeah.
You know, for all the scampering and the holiday magic and the tickling and the being lifted waaaaay up high till you’re all the way at the ceiling and the ice cream and the circuses and stuff….
Hmm. I was gonna say “for all that, being a kid sucks.” But that list kind of convinced me that it’s not so bad. I, for one, could really use a circus right about now.
Oh lordy, if you’re linking from Finslippy, just…just go back. Nothing to see here. Coming soon: more Tales of the Sump Pump.
•
Apparently the baby cut a tooth this week. How about that? And the lad had fivecount’emFIVE timeouts yesterday. He was yelling at Matthew. Last week he pushed Billy. But yesterday he was really good with Billy. And this morning? Contrite, well-behaved, introspective even.
Uhh, yeah.
You know, for all the scampering and the holiday magic and the tickling and the being lifted waaaaay up high till you’re all the way at the ceiling and the ice cream and the circuses and stuff….
Hmm. I was gonna say “for all that, being a kid sucks.” But that list kind of convinced me that it’s not so bad. I, for one, could really use a circus right about now.
Oh lordy, if you’re linking from Finslippy, just…just go back. Nothing to see here. Coming soon: more Tales of the Sump Pump.
•
Adjusting to Spring
OMG OMG OMG it was 50 degrees out this morning, so I leapt from bed at 5:10am, determined not to wake my sleeping family. Next I carefully WHANNG!ed my foot against a pile of mail and books, KICK!ed the edge of the bedroom door, belatedly RAN! to turn off my ALARM!, then FUMBLE!d into running gear, nearly TRIP!d over a cat someone left on the stairs, and went running out into the pitch darkness.
•
•
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Monday, March 19, 2007
The Serpents of Paradise
Ahh, yes, the country, I thought when I saw the garter snake sunning itself against the foundation. The most regular snake in the world, Thamnophis sirtalis, both wild and captive examples familiar from my childhood. Regardless, I knew it had to go.
The otherwise very brave woman with whom I share my abode has a cowardice around snakes that is nearly unmatched in the annals of chickenhood. To be fair, she still bears the scar of a youthful encounter with Crotalus horridus, an eastern timber rattler. Not that the snake did anything, but in her panicked flight she tripped over a boulder and gashed her knee on another rock. Then got up and threw stones at the snake.
In addition, we were eating buyer’s remorse for breakfast, lunch and dinner during those summer weeks after moving in. On top of the Sump Pump Issue, the Baseboard Debacle, the Questionably Leaning Mudroom and the Dinky Proportions Conundrum, the last thing I thought the house needed was an Unwelcome Species Situation.
Thus, having a snake of any kind on the premises, even a beneficial garden-friendly and pest-reducing garter snake, was right out. Besides, I wanted to show it to the boy. I snuck up on the specimen, made a clumsy grab, missed, and watched as it slithered directly upward into the siding.
That was an interesting wrinkle.
Perhaps because of perversity, but also with some underlying idea of taking on the Snake Admiration Deficit that pervaded our household, I told my wife a few days later that I’d seen one. And where it went. She was predictably unhappy. My naïve hope for primate-reptile reconciliation was dashed when she ordered its removal. So the next time I saw it, I made a more strategic and faster move, and had the snake.
The capture and release program I’d devised was based on repeat viewings of Mutual of Omaha’s pet project, so after some dramatic posturing and a recreation of the event for the lad, I carried the snake a couple of yards over, to a stone wall next to a small pond, and let it go. It immediately took shelter among the rocks.
And that was that.
Until a couple days later, when I spotted another snake in the same spot. This one was clearly not the one I had captured previously. It was smaller, and proved easier to catch. I brought this one down to the snake release center and didn’t mention it.
Not long afterwards, I opened the Bilco doors to enter the cellar and surprised two garter snakes lolling in the superheated oven beneath the doors. I grabbed one – the other slipped between two foundation stones. There were shed skins lying around like the remains of a particularly debauched Snake Party.
C’mon, what was I supposed to do, NOT tell her? How do you not tell someone about all these snakes? And whom could I tell but my trusted mate, my helpmeet, my advisor and confidante, my best friend?
She took it well, if by well you mean that she started calling different hotels to see what kind of non-anapsid specials they were running that week. I got on the horn with a couple of herpetologists to see how many there were likely to be and if they had a homing instinct. The lizard people were about as sympathetic as the smokies had been about the bear. “They’re great!” they told me (which I knew). “Keep ’em!” (I knew, I knew, but they didn’t understand, this woman has a snake scar.)
I converted a bucket into a snake conveyor, adapted a long-handled paint roller and a pair of gloves into the Acquisition Apparatus (I was sick of getting pissed on by every nervous snake in the county) and haunted the backyard, flipping open the doors at random intervals, getting under any snakes with the roller, flipping them out into the yard (I had weeded out the slower ones and now those I found would almost make a whiplike crack as they vanished into their holes) and scooping them into the bucket.
Worst of all, I wasn’t sure whether I was catching the same ones repeatedly. I started venturing further afield in search of the right habitat for release – it had to be as good as my cellar. (We also had these tiny black crickets, order Orthoptera, that lived around the foundation. Inky black little guys. They never bothered anyone. Least of all the snakes, for whom they were doubtless like chicken wings to a fratboy.) If you’re a snake looking for someplace with sheltered stony crevices, a ready supply of insects and occasional running water, our cellar comes up as the first result on Snoogle. The last two I caught I released at a farm ten miles away.
Total snakes: nine (possibly including repeats).
That seemed to do it; we haven’t seen any since. But last fall, after the snakes were gone, we started to see these large black crickets. Big, inky black, startlingly spidery. At night a couple of times, a rogue bull would enter the house, set up someplace undetectable and start singing. So we’d creep around late at night trying to pinpoint its location, and when we’d get close it’d shush. The crickets’ own version of Marco Polo.
And who doesn’t like Marco Polo?
PS: Were you looking for Edward Abbey? Here.
•
The otherwise very brave woman with whom I share my abode has a cowardice around snakes that is nearly unmatched in the annals of chickenhood. To be fair, she still bears the scar of a youthful encounter with Crotalus horridus, an eastern timber rattler. Not that the snake did anything, but in her panicked flight she tripped over a boulder and gashed her knee on another rock. Then got up and threw stones at the snake.
In addition, we were eating buyer’s remorse for breakfast, lunch and dinner during those summer weeks after moving in. On top of the Sump Pump Issue, the Baseboard Debacle, the Questionably Leaning Mudroom and the Dinky Proportions Conundrum, the last thing I thought the house needed was an Unwelcome Species Situation.
Thus, having a snake of any kind on the premises, even a beneficial garden-friendly and pest-reducing garter snake, was right out. Besides, I wanted to show it to the boy. I snuck up on the specimen, made a clumsy grab, missed, and watched as it slithered directly upward into the siding.
That was an interesting wrinkle.
Perhaps because of perversity, but also with some underlying idea of taking on the Snake Admiration Deficit that pervaded our household, I told my wife a few days later that I’d seen one. And where it went. She was predictably unhappy. My naïve hope for primate-reptile reconciliation was dashed when she ordered its removal. So the next time I saw it, I made a more strategic and faster move, and had the snake.
The capture and release program I’d devised was based on repeat viewings of Mutual of Omaha’s pet project, so after some dramatic posturing and a recreation of the event for the lad, I carried the snake a couple of yards over, to a stone wall next to a small pond, and let it go. It immediately took shelter among the rocks.
And that was that.
Until a couple days later, when I spotted another snake in the same spot. This one was clearly not the one I had captured previously. It was smaller, and proved easier to catch. I brought this one down to the snake release center and didn’t mention it.
Not long afterwards, I opened the Bilco doors to enter the cellar and surprised two garter snakes lolling in the superheated oven beneath the doors. I grabbed one – the other slipped between two foundation stones. There were shed skins lying around like the remains of a particularly debauched Snake Party.
C’mon, what was I supposed to do, NOT tell her? How do you not tell someone about all these snakes? And whom could I tell but my trusted mate, my helpmeet, my advisor and confidante, my best friend?
She took it well, if by well you mean that she started calling different hotels to see what kind of non-anapsid specials they were running that week. I got on the horn with a couple of herpetologists to see how many there were likely to be and if they had a homing instinct. The lizard people were about as sympathetic as the smokies had been about the bear. “They’re great!” they told me (which I knew). “Keep ’em!” (I knew, I knew, but they didn’t understand, this woman has a snake scar.)
I converted a bucket into a snake conveyor, adapted a long-handled paint roller and a pair of gloves into the Acquisition Apparatus (I was sick of getting pissed on by every nervous snake in the county) and haunted the backyard, flipping open the doors at random intervals, getting under any snakes with the roller, flipping them out into the yard (I had weeded out the slower ones and now those I found would almost make a whiplike crack as they vanished into their holes) and scooping them into the bucket.
Worst of all, I wasn’t sure whether I was catching the same ones repeatedly. I started venturing further afield in search of the right habitat for release – it had to be as good as my cellar. (We also had these tiny black crickets, order Orthoptera, that lived around the foundation. Inky black little guys. They never bothered anyone. Least of all the snakes, for whom they were doubtless like chicken wings to a fratboy.) If you’re a snake looking for someplace with sheltered stony crevices, a ready supply of insects and occasional running water, our cellar comes up as the first result on Snoogle. The last two I caught I released at a farm ten miles away.
Total snakes: nine (possibly including repeats).
That seemed to do it; we haven’t seen any since. But last fall, after the snakes were gone, we started to see these large black crickets. Big, inky black, startlingly spidery. At night a couple of times, a rogue bull would enter the house, set up someplace undetectable and start singing. So we’d creep around late at night trying to pinpoint its location, and when we’d get close it’d shush. The crickets’ own version of Marco Polo.
And who doesn’t like Marco Polo?
PS: Were you looking for Edward Abbey? Here.
•
Friday, March 16, 2007
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