Category Archives: General

This year simply won’t let up, and it’s finally starting to wear on me. So when I found this monster mix of Peanut M&Ms, I bought it, poured it into a bowl, and between Andy and me, we devoured it in two days flat. Not sure what I put into my body based on these colors alone, and quite frankly I didn’t and don’t care. They were sweet and crunchy and got me through a rainy afternoon. It won’t be a pattern, I hope – my pants aren’t quite ready to expand for the winter – but in a pinch, candy lifts the spirits. 

“Electricity is the power

turn it on, it gives you light

But you have to know

how to use it: treat it right!”

Such is the ear worm of a teaching song that appeared on ‘3-2-1 Contact’ or some other PBS educational show in the 80’s, and it’s stuck in my head ever since. It came up and reared its head when our power went out for a whole night thanks to a recent storm. Our electricity went out at 4 PM, and was originally scheduled to be back by 9 PM – of course that didn’t happen, so I went through the house finding all the candles, because it’s remarkably darker than you think it will be when you’ve been accustomed to electric light for 45 years. 

A stunning pair of scarlet beeswax honeycomb candles – a gift from our friend Anu – made for perfect light, especially when paired with a mirror to double their illumination. As for the rest of the night, it was passed in relative quiet and darkness, with our phones making the most of the Vice Presidential debate, each switching out at various points, at which time we would change to the other one, forming a patchwork that largely allowed us to hear most of what was going on. Just another typical night in 2020. 

Sleeping proved remarkably more difficult in complete and total darkness. Not because of fear or anything, but for the simple unaccustomed totality of the darkness. Maybe I’m not quite ready to return to that level of basics. Luckily for us, the power kicked on early the next morning, which was not the case with several people I know, who went without for two more days. They’re the real profiles in courage. We didn’t even lose the ice cream (but just in case I went in the next day and ate it all – preventative measures, you know).

This blog is showing its age and slowing down a bit, because its creator is showing his age and slowing down a bit. After hosting our annual fall treasure hunt with the twins yesterday, I promptly took a two-hour nap, and I’m only just now coming to awareness. That post and some spooky pics from the day will be coming up later – for now, I invite you to take a moment and pause to enjoy the day. We’ll be back in a bit, recharged and reinvigorated. 

We won’t get into the atrocities of Christopher Columbus right now because the world has gone divided enough – look that cultural genocide up if you are so inclined. For now, let’s take a quick back-gander at the most recent tumultuous week of October. How we will make it to November is anybody’s guess…

At the ripe age of 56, Lenny Kravtz got shirtless and showed us how glorious abs could be. 

Reaching the end of my rope, a bit of wisdom to keep hanging on. 

Rob Gronkowski finally found his balls. 

Phony negroni. 

Fall paints with light and ferns. 

Hugh Jackman got naked save for some shoes. 

A wicked fall storm signaled we weren’t in Kansas anymore. Or vice versa. 

After the stormy weather. 

Follow the doughnut path to my heart. 

That’s summer done. 

The fall song for 2020: Dynasty. 

Another generation on the way. 

Halloween movie battles. 

Celebrating National Coming Out Day – because it’s still necessary and it still matters. 

A time to learn and a time to be brave.

Presenting a binary choice in anything these days seems rife for complaint and fuckery, so of course I had to put up some of these polls on Twitter for the Halloween season! (That’s just the kind of dick I am.)

‘Hocus Pocus’ or ‘Practical Magic’? This is an easy one for me: ‘Practical Magic’ all the way, mostly for that magnificent Victorian and setting, that glorious little greenhouse where the starry paperwhite narcissus get a guest shot, and the cute little soap store that Sally opens.

‘Hocus Pocus’ has Bette Midler, it’s true, but I feel like you had to experience it growing up to truly love it, and I simply missed that. On FaceBook, this one generated the most heat, with people mostly demanding both because it was too much like ‘Sophie’s Choice’. Twitter seemed decidedly in favor of ‘Hocus Pocus’.

‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ or ‘Clue’? Tim Curry plays the main parts in both, so maybe it’s a question of whether you prefer him in a butler get-up or garters. Strangley, I’m going with the former, as ‘Clue’ will always be a favorite (again, because I grew up on it and recall watching it on rainy Saturday afternoons with my brother).

I came to ‘Rocky Horror’ much, much later than just about everyone else, and I’m weird in that I really don’t like getting water and rice thrown at me in a public theater (or anywhere for that matter). [At my first public viewing of it I had more rice in my underwear than I put in the rice cooker on certain nights. Luckily I’m so hot and wet that some of it was edible the next morning.]

‘Sleepy Hollow’ or ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’? Tim Burton gave his weird and wonderful directorial touch to both, and Danny Elfman composed his hauntingly atmospheric music for both as well. I’m a big Burton fan, again largely through nostalgia and growing up to some of his classics.

Though ‘Nightmare’ brought an instantly iconic character to animated life and is undisputedly the more artistic endeavor, I fall prey to the enchanting upstate New York setting and classic story of Ichabod Crane in ‘Hollow’, even if it was more grossly and blatantly commercial, so my preference leans to that. (Christopher Walken does another chilling turn that is so indelible you feel his menace even when he’s missing his head – I don’t even care if that wasn’t him in those scenes).

Based on all the polls, my picks are three-out-of-three not the favorites of the majority of those who frequent my Twitter account, and I’m ok with that. Good taste doesn’t always translate to mass appeal. To each their own. 

Her name is Shelly 2. (Shelly 1 met an all-too-early demise when we think someone poisoned her.) The wonderful news is that Shelly 2 is about to have a baby. Two in fact.

Shelly 2 is a Spider plant that I have from the office, now residing in our guest room as she wouldn’t get enough water with my limited office hours these days. She came from a parent plant that did quite well in its bright office corner but suddenly got stricken with something that ended up killing her. I saved a few plantlets in some water just in time to produce Shelly 2, who is now sending forth a couple of plantlets of her own. Even in this crazy state of the world, there is still hope to be found.

The view seen here was ripped to literal shreds with our recent storm, but it was such a pretty scene over the summer I wanted to put up one last look on this fall Friday morning. After the storm, I cut down the sweet potato vines which had put on such a stunning show, and clipped out the purple salvia which was equally impressive. I’ll take the awning down this weekend if weather allows – the final motion that will transform the patio into its bare winter look. I much prefer nakedness when it involves skinny-dipping rather than the bare bones of a summer canopy gone into storage, but we don’t always have that choice. 

Fall is here. There’s no going back. Embrace the morning chill and let it toughen us up for the winter ahead. 

Remember when the tornado dropped Dorothy and her house in the middle of Oz? There was all this loud mayhem and whirling and detritus flying through the air, and suddenly the big thud of a landing. Then there was quiet. An eerie profound stillness and silence that momentarily made you wonder if you’d gone deaf or been struck dumb. Slowly, you came to a consciousness both literally and figuratively, waking and walking into a brave new world that was as colorful and grand as it was dangerous and deceptive.

We tentatively stepped outside after our recent storm, to examine the damage (nothing major) and find our way in the altered landscape. This was a bend in the road, a place where the next part of our journey was still not fully seen, when mystery and unknown parts still waited just out of sight.

I walked in the space where the Eastern white pine and the Coral bark maple met the mighty oak – a triangular convergence that formed one somewhat secretive corner of our yard where no one ever goes. It is a sacred space made for special summer days when company is expected or those fall afternoons when you need a little shaft of secret sunlight to make everything feel right again even when everything is wrong. It is utouched by human footsteps in the winter; only the squirrels and birds enjoy its beauty then.

It came upon us quickly. One moment I was hosting my very first Webex meeting and the next the outside world was tumbling down, the electricity went out, and the house was plunged into darkness and silence. Typical 2020.

Out of the corner of my eye I’d been warily watching the outside turn steadily darker as my video conference progressed. The window was cracked open a little to let the air in and the rush of the wind sounded an early warning. Yet it was still a surprise when the sky was suddenly filled with falling pine needles. Like some Steven Spielberg bit of filmmaking, it was the onslaught of falling debris that signaled something larger and more ferocious at work.

Bigger boughs of oak and pine soon flew through the air and suddenly the deluge came down. Rain and wind collided, the electric went out, sputtered weakly on for a moment (never enough to connect for a quick Webex goodbye) and then went out for a couple of hours.

Gusts of wind clocked in at 68 miles per hour at the airport down the street while we hesitantly peered outside at a yard now filled with wet debris. All the potted plants had been felled – both fig trees, the immense angel’s trumpet, two containers of tomatoes, and the salvia, still blooming at this late stage of the game. Clumps of sweet potato vine had been torn from their perches and were strewn about the patio. Everywhere there were pine needles which had apparently been waiting for their chance to jump because there they all were. Even the mighty oak, always the last to let it its leaves go, had given up lots of little leafy ghosts.

There was something poetic about it all – the final reckoning of the sweeter season, torn asunder in dramatic form. Left in its wake was an instantly colder atmosphere. The warmth and humidity of earlier had been replaced by a chilly cousin. The world turned upside down.

Rob Gronkowski has come close to this before, posing naked here and here and here, and in this manscaping commercial he pretends to expose a bit more. It’s a nifty little reminder that manscaping matters, even in the age of COVID. 

“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Some of the angst I’ve been feeling was explained in the weekly recap yesterday, but not all of it, and I’ve felt so icky about the past few days that I’m going to excise a bit more here. Since it was supposed to start with a once-a-year-get-together with a family friend and end with a fun couple of days in Boston, sitting glued to the television and watching the news was probably a poor idea, and I have no one to blame but myself.

I ended up staying home due to Boston’s rising COVID numbers, our family get-together was cut slightly short, and the Harvest Moon was in full effect. For three days I mostly watched the news, and it was the perfect recipe for a run-down funk. Wallowing in the misery of our country, I broke through my vegetative state only for meditation, a couple of meals, showers, and a smudging. I’ll get into that another time, I think, as it was a minor point in the weekend. Better than that was sausage and pasta dinner Andy made on Sunday afternoon, and the shared commiseration as we watched the news together.

Those quiet moments took the place of dinners out and shopping excursions on Newbury Street. The occasional walk around the yard, when the sun was slanting low in the afternoon, punctuated my lounging, but the extensive inactivity fed upon itself, and I gave in to the laziness of the weekend. And it was such a pretty weekend, it felt like a bit of a waste, and a bit like it played out exactly as it needed to play out.

A full Harvest Moon is nothing to fuck around with, and so the insanity of the past week was not wholly unexpected. I did not take that into consideration when I planned to spend the weekend in Boston, so when the COVID numbers started to rise, I decided against the trip, but took the day off from work anyway. That turned out to be a good thing, not only because I honestly didn’t realize how badly I needed a break, but I also didn’t know Andy and I would be glued to the television seeing Trump being transferred to the hospital and watching his team of doctors spew lies and tales of obfuscation. A good doctor will not lie or give a rosy account of their patient; these are not good doctors. But that’s on them, and deceiving the American people about the health of the President rarely works out well. 

As far as days off go, it wasn’t quite as relaxing as I would have liked, but I have a number of vacation days I need to use before the end of the year, so we will try this again soon enough. The moon exhibited its tumultuous full-force in more ridiculous family drama, but you’ve heard it all before so I won’t get into that yet. On with the recap…

Keeping with the craziness of 2020, here is an azalea in bloom right now.

A pancake dinner.

Swimming into fall.

Hankering for a corn dog. 

Floral preparation and planning.

Automatic meditation.

September gourds.

Ghostly sounds.

When October comes. 

Gay October.

Andy arrived in October.

Falling for a phony negroni,

Doggie fruit.

Breakfast then, dinner now. 

Maine aster memories. 

The desire to dismiss.

Secret pines.

Come inside my velvet rope.

Unimpressed with snickerdoodles.

All lives won’t matter until Black Lives Matter. 

I hate snickerdoodles. What is the point of them? One of the greatest disappointments in life is the realization that snickerdoodles have nothing to do with Snickers candy bars. That’s one of life’s little fuckovers. And is there a more dull and boring cookie in existence? I mean, cinnamon. And blandness. Big whoop. 

Hidden behind an arbor made of the boughs of an Easter Pine and a Coral-Barked Maple tree, the side yard of our house, behind the wooden fence, is one of the relatively uninhabited and unused sections of our small property. It comes into prominence mostly at this time of the year, when the sun slants prettily through the oak leaves and the maple lights up its corner with a brilliant show of bright chartreuse color, echoing its spring emergence in one of those parallels only nature can conjure without seeming trite. 

In this space, the sun can bake the ground a bit when it’s clear during the day, and the scent of pine needles and pine cones rises like a batch of potpourri emblematic of a cozy fall day. I favor this place at this time of the year, and I pause here in my daily ambulations, taking in the afternoon light, the fading warmth of the year. 

One of the unheralded joys of the Chinese dogwood tree is its crop of fruit. While not genuinely viewed as edible (the fibrous fruits don’t taste awful as much as their pithy texture makes them undesirable) they are enjoyed by birds and squirrels, which have been going crazy for this year’s crop of bright red berry-like fruit. 

For humans, they are more ornamental than functional, and they’re like a second round of blooms before the foliage lights itself on ghostly fire. It’s one of the many charms held by the Chinese dogwood tree, and why we have several in our yard. The finale is about to begin, and by the time it’s done, the buds will have been set for next spring, proof that this lovely tree is always thinking ahead. A tree after my own heart.