Who's my mommy?

Okay, here are four eggs, with a quarter to give you some sense of perspective (though observe that the quarter is against the drawers while the eggs are touching it, but sticking out more).

The question is, what kinds of eggs are they? The hints I'll give are that no wild nests were disturbed in making this photo, and that I have already eaten some of the evidence and intend to eat the rest, too, while it's still fresh.

Answers at the end of the weekend.

(Love this country living!)

Guest blogger

Hannah Gay is a local woman who graduated from our high school a few years ago and, after college, is now teaching at a middle school in Crownpoint, New Mexico. Periodically, she sends us a column. I wish she'd write more often, if she could keep up the level of inspiration and quality you're about to see. Mostly, I wish my granddaughters would have her for English when they reach middle school. I asked her to let me post her latest column here because it's not at all the sort of thing I would, or could, write, but I sure liked it a lot.

They say Chicago is the windy city. They, whoever “they” may be, have never been to Crownpoint.

Spring is wind season, and the gusts here have, at times, exceeded the highways’ speed limits.

Desert sand blows into coughing mouths and keeping the windows open, despite the summertime temperatures, becomes risky should one wish to refrain from spending an hour picking dirt out of a computer’s keyboard.

Occasionally, a freak hail or sleetstorm will accompany the blustery wonder.

Ten minutes later, peace temporarily arrives and I find myself cheerily washing dishes and gazing out my kitchen window into yet another one of the most beautiful sunsets in the world, made possible in part by the organic smog of fine dust lingering in the air of the Navajo Reservation.

I hear there’s snow in Maine, and my mother left me pictures after her recent visit here of the trenches she dug in the March coat of white covering my hometown.

My friends in New York send me messages about monsoons, and a recent flight I was scheduled to take was canceled due to tornadoes in Dallas.

Strange weather, it seems, is everywhere.

Yet inside Room 3 in Crownpoint Middle School, things are unseasonably calm and in order.

I began school last fall wishing to do nothing other than lead my students toward publishing some kind of class anthology.

People told me to have high expectations for my students, to accept nothing less than what kids in more affluent areas would be producing.

Kids in a wealthy private school in Albuquerque had published an actual book; certainly my students and I could aspire toward that.

Yet in my first semester of teaching, overwhelmed by textbook methodology and the prescriptions of various supervisors, I temporarily forgot the bigger picture.

Then, as the frost began to disappear from early morning windshields and desert shrubs, so did my care to follow anything the books and authorities said.

Our state standardized test was over, and as a successful English major, I finally trusted myself to know what it took to be a successful reader and writer.

My kids are well on their way into creating an anthology of personal narratives, writing about everything from breaking their pinky in fourth grade to grandparents’ deaths to their first encounter with drugs on the reservation to a recent unexpected explosion in their science class.

Today we spent class trying to figure out if memoirs and personal narratives ever were really true non-fiction if they were written from memory, and we read and discussed excerpts from and articles about the controversy surrounding James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces.

We even got to watch and respond to a clip from Oprah. Tomorrow we’ll be discussing a Navajo memoir set around here that was similarly found to be fabricated (Nasdijj’s “The Blood Runs Like A River Through My Dreams”), and I am finally confident that my students are actually thinking and questioning the world in my classroom, not just memorizing and mastering sometimes irrelevant standards.

And with that, I’m starting, just a little bit, to feel at home here.

On Friday I could barely hear my principal speak at our weekly staff meeting, as the drums and singing of a small pow-wow happening in our gym drowned him out.

My art teacher, a Navajo herself, shouted jokingly to the darn Navajos to quiet down in school, and I had no self-consciousness laughing at her joke.

Yesterday about twenty of my girls arrived at school in traditional Navajo dress, with velvet skirts, yarn in their hair, handsewn moccasins and immaculate silver and turquoise jewelry.

It was a stark contrast to their usual KSwiss sneakers, blue jeans from Hot Topic and black hoodies.

They were going on a field trip to the Navajo Nation government in Window Rock, Arizona, and they were beautiful.

And for the first time, I felt comfortable gazing at their traditional dress, smiling that I knew the people inside those clothes, the girls who liked to listen to Godsmack or Akon and couldn’t figure out apostrophes and wouldn’t chew gum unless it was yellow.

I’m a Mainer by birth, and will never be a New Mexican, much less a Navajo. This is not my home, and I feel humbled every day how welcomed I am here and that I have such an opportunity to live on the beautiful reservation.

Yet I now secretly laugh at tourists who can’t figure out how to eat an unwrapped tamale as I used to laugh at people from away eating, or attempting to eat, a lobster back home.

The wind doesn’t bother me as much as it did in the fall, when it kept me up awake at night, kept me longing for the protection of my Maine woods.

Now I often fall asleep to its howling lullaby as I rest for yet another day in the life on the reservation and despite the violence of the weather outside, things feel a bit more peaceful all around.

The Big Backyard

I have always loved the fact that reporters basically get paid for satisfying their curiosity. Of course, since I'm an editor and not hourly anymore, working on Saturday doesn't actually pay anything. But the paper is going to get some mileage out of a Saturday that was a whole lot of fun for me.

The Small Woodlot Owners Association of Maine had a workshop on vernal pools this weekend, about 20 miles east of town. (Vernal pools being depressions that fill with water each spring long enough that some small critters from fairy shrimp to wood frogs can go through a breeding cycle there.)

I thought it would be mostly small loggers with questions about regulatory compliance, but, as the photo above suggests, it was mostly people who have bought several acres of land and are interested in taking care of it. They weren't all city transplants, and a few genuinely were working their woodlots rather than just living on them. Nearly all, I think, want to improve their property not in the sense of developing it but in the sense of cleaning it up and making it green in the metaphorical sense. (And, as it happens, there aren't a lot of regulations about these things for the timber industry -- it's a matter of them wanting to know how to do the best for the forests, which many of them do want to do.)


Our host for the event was Warren Balgooyen, a naturalist who is active in the county extension and serves on a state committee for the future of Maine's land. I suspect he's one of those people who is more active now that he's retired than he was when he was working. He's got a good sized spread on which he has built several small ponds and, no kidding, a salamander crossing.

One of the issues for the turtles and amphibians in this kind of countryside is the number that get splattered crossing roads. They move from pool to pond to pool over some surprising distances, but their world wasn't set up with automobiles in mind. If you've driven at night in this sort of country, you've seen those nights when the frogs are just teeming across the roads, but apparently that happens pretty much every night to some degree. We'd see the results more if the ravens and raccoons and other scavengers didn't get out at dawn and clean most of it up. But Warren was saying that, if you took all the salamanders in a three acre forest, and all the birds, and piled them up, the salamander pile would be considerably taller.

So he created a crossing under the road near his house by getting a grant so the town could put in a culvert at no cost to the taxpayers, and then threading a soaker hose through it, with the end in a 55-gallon drum of water so it has a steady supply of wetness. And he has seen it work.



We walked around on his property for about three hours and he would just take his net and scoop around and, each time, interesting stuff came up, like this salamander egg mass. Notice how much more cohesive it is than frog eggs, which would be running off the woman's hand.


This is a red eft, which would have been a yellow newt if we'd seen it sooner. They start out living in the water as newts, with external gills, and then they become these land-dwellers and wander off to wherever efts and salamanders go -- nice damp abandoned mouse holes, under logs, down in the duff of the forest floor. Then, after about six years, they come back to the pond and move back in again, which is when they lay their eggs there. Pretty interesting little critter, and this was the first time Warren had seen one scooped out of a pond in its "just about to split for a few years" form.

We also saw caddis flies, damson flies, frogs and a whole lot of other things. And, as we walked down to the final pond, he and I spotted a painted turtle sunbathing on a rock in the middle of it. The turtle quickly scrambled off into the water, but the interesting thing was that Warren didn't know he had a turtle in that pond. So, for all the ones that get mashed on the highway, here was one that found a new place to hang out. (And last year one of his other ponds acquired a turtle from who-knows-where.)

Now, like I say, I'm not really getting paid to go out and do these things anymore. I'm just getting paid to make sure cool stuff ends up in the paper, no matter who actually does it. But needing to get that stuff in the paper, with the accompanying fear of the blank page and empty folders, is a great way to motivate me to get off my butt and go see all this stuff that, otherwise, I would sit around planning to do later, some other time, when I get round to it.

This weekend was a good example of something that I might have done sometime, but did right now, instead.

Happy Birthday

To a daughter-in-law who makes me smile.

BAGHDAD, May 2 -- The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today.

Have you ever noticed that datelines don't include the year? Okay, usually they don't include the date, either. Anyway, here's the source of that encouraging report.

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair where I sit:
There isn't any other stair quite like it.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top:
So this is the stair where I always stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up, and isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery, it isn't in the town:
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
"It isn't really anywhere! It's somewhere else instead!"

(A A Milne)

Gwen Ifill slices through the fog

I was a fan of Gwen Ifill before yesterday. She's got a straightforward way of cutting through the rhetoric that would make her a good mediator and makes her a terrific interviewer and anchor. Yesterday, she brought that talent to "Meet the Press" for a discussion of the Don Imus flareup with two of the good old boys of the media -- Tim Russert and the NYTimes' David Brooks, as well as Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post and John Harwood of the Wall Street Journal.

The transcript of that session is here (The conversation starts at the bottom of Page 2.)

Here are some samples of what she brought to the discussion:

*****

There’s been radio silence from a lot of people who’ve done this program who could’ve spoken up and said, “I find this offensive” or “I didn’t know.” These people didn’t speak up.

Tim, we didn’t hear that much from you.

David, we didn’t hear from you.

What was missing in this debate was someone saying, “You know, I understand that this is offensive.” You know, I have a seven-year-old goddaughter. Yesterday, she went out shopping with her mom for high-top basketball shoes so she can play basketball. The offense, the slur that Imus directed at me happened more than 10 years ago. I like to think in 10 years from now that Asia isn’t going to be deciding that she wants to get recruited for the college basketball team or be a tennis pro or go to medical school and that she’s still vulnerable to those kinds of casual slurs and insults that I got 10 years ago, and that people will say, “I didn’t know,” or people will say, “I wasn’t listening.” A lot of people did know, and a lot of people were listening, and they just decided it was OK. They decided this culture of meanness was fine until they got caught. My concern about Mr. Imus and a lot of people and, and a lot of the debate in the society is not that people are sorry that they say these things. They’re sorry that someone catches them.

When Don Imus said this about me when I worked here at NBC, when I found out about it, his producer called and said, “Don wants to apologize.” Well, now he says he never said it. What was he apologizing for? He was apologizing for getting caught, not apologizing for having said it in the first place. And that, to me, is the debate that we need to have. David’s right, about the culture of meanness, about the culture of racial complaint, about the internal culture in our community, about the way we talk to one another. But this week, just this week, it was finally saying “Enough.”

*****

MR. RUSSERT: (quoting the concept) “If you don’t want to watch it, you turn him off. It’s the marketplace that should govern.”

MS. IFILL: But here’s the thing—you know what, that’s—there’s something to that. But here’s the thing, for parents of kids, like your—like John, here, he needs to know what these, what these kids are listening to. He needs to hear what the words are. You need to make your judgment. I don’t completely turn it off, I watch it just to know. Now, I don’t watch it for long, because I find it so offensive, but I need to know. And that’s what everybody — people can’t say, “Oh, I had no idea.” Especially when you’re trying to raise a generation of right-thinking kids.

*****

MR. ROBINSON: But back up, back up a step. I mean, we should have the discussion about, about rap music, about gangster rap and, and, and that language, and, and I—and that’s a discussion, for example, those are issues that Al Sharpton has raised, that Jesse Jackson has raised. And, and, by the way, I got a lot of mail on—when I wrote about the Imus situation as well, and, and one strain of it was, was, “Well, who appointed Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to, you know, to be spokespeople?” And my answer was this business did. You know, we’re, we’re the ones who call them up every time anything happens and kept going back and kept going back. And what does he think today and what does he think tomorrow? So...

MR. RUSSERT: And it was fair to ask Jackson about Hymietown, and it was fair to ask Sharpton about Tawana Brawley.

MR. ROBINSON: Of course, it—of course it’s fair, but, but the idea that, that, in this case, they were self-appointed is not really quite right because that was certainly abetted by, by a news media establishment that, that went to them, you know, 50 times a day.

MS. IFILL: And it, and it should be added that it wasn’t just Jesse and Al—Reverend Jackson and Al Sharpton talking about this. It was C. Delores Tucker, who took this. It was Calvin Butts, who steamrollered CDs. It was, it was, it was Essence magazine, which did an entire series of articles about what was happening to girls. Now, everybody who’s suddenly so concerned about what Ludacris and Timbaland have had to say, they weren’t concerned two weeks ago. So if this means we’re going to have this conversation, that’s fine. But let’s not pretend that certain elements in our community haven’t been trying to have this conversation with much less success.

*****

MR. BROOKS: I think if you’re Howard Stern or Bill Maher or Glenn Beck or Michael Savage, you got to watch out. I mean, I mean, this, what happens is people change their standards. The only caution I’d, I’d, I’d say there’s comedy. A lot of this is comedy. And when you look at “Borat,” for example, Frank Rich....

MS. IFILL: Doesn’t comedy have to be funny, David?

MR. BROOKS: Well, it, it tries to be funny. But, but there is a, there is sometimes, like, for the example of Borat. Borat’s a guy who spews anti-Semitic stuff. Everybody knows he doesn’t mean it. And I’m not comparing Borat to Don Imus, but there is a carnival atmosphere, and that if we judge everything by the standards the comedians, the carnival people in our culture, by the standards of politicians, well, then we’ll have no comedy because all of the stuff that they say is, is nonliteral.

MR. HARWOOD: Well, exactly, and “Saturday Night Live” last night begins the show with a send-up of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Do people, you know, flyspeck a presentation like that for what, what kind of stereotypes are they playing to? Yeah, it’s hard to know where you draw the line in the entertainment realm.

MS. IFILL: You know, except that it’s really not hard to know where you draw the line. We know where the offense is. We know what’s acceptable and what’s not, and the best way to dilute the argument in the moment we’re in is to say, “What about this? What about this? What about that?” The fact is, we have a moment where we can talk about the things which have been bugging us. I know a lot of people who aren’t really crazy about something—about, about “Pimpin’ All Over the World” or about what—something that Snoop Dogg would say. And you know what they do, they’ve been doing? They swallow it. They just turn off the TV. “I got—I don’t watch these shows. I don’t listen to these videos. I, I just don’t watch it.” But somewhere deep inside these girls becomes this little—you’ve heard what the Rutgers basketball players said when they were asked about this. They didn’t say, “Oh, well, yeah, I think it’s fine.” They don’t think it’s fine. And after a while it builds in them. And that’s what we saw happen this week. So if we want to—you know, we can, we can say it’s not a big deal because it’s happened all the time or it’s been happening for a long time. It’s precisely because it’s been happening a long time that...

MR. HARWOOD: But I’m not, I’m not saying it’s not a big deal. Look, Gwen, it’s harder than you think. And take the example of “Borat,” which David mentioned. I’ve not seen that movie, but I’ve heard people intensely on both sides of that issue. Some think it’s hilarious and fun, and some think it’s grossly offensive and racist and all sorts of things.

MR. BROOKS: Right, and I mean, I’m not saying, I’m not comparing “Borat” to, to what Don Imus said. What Don Imus said is so obviously over the line that it’s not worth debating. But the hard choices come further in, and “Borat” is a good example. I thought it was a very funny movie, extremely cruel. He is picking on people who aren’t good on TV or in the movies. And so I think those are the hard cases. And I don’t think it’s unfair to ask the question of this case, of that case, how much of it is just make believe. Human beings are extremely good at separating make believe from reality.

MS. IFILL: Yeah, unless they’re the targets. And when you’re the target, somehow it seems a lot more real.

************

She also had an Op-Ed in the New York Times on the topic, and on Imus's slur against her. Not sure how long it will be available there, so I've linked to the Houston Chronicle's reprinting. And here's a quote:

Every time a young black girl shyly approaches me for an autograph or writes or calls or stops me on the street to ask how she can become a journalist, I feel an enormous responsibility. It’s more than simply being a role model. I know I have to be a voice for them as well.

So here’s what this voice has to say for people who cannot grasp the notion of picking on people their own size: This country will only flourish once we consistently learn to applaud and encourage the young people who have to work harder just to achieve balance on the unequal playing field.

*sigh*

Cathleen ni Houlihan
and other reflections on Revolutionary Ireland

"It is not those who can inflict the most, but those that can suffer
the most who will conquer" —Terence MacSwiney

Oh, father why are you so sad
On this bright Easter morn’
When Irish men are proud and glad
Of the land where they were born?

Son, I see in mem’ry's view
A far off distant day
When being just a lad like you
I joined the IRA.

Where are the lads that stood with me
When history was made?
A Ghra Mo Chroi, I long to see
The boys of the old brigade.

From hills and farms the call to arms
Was heard by one and all.
And from the glen came brave young men
To answer Ireland’s call.

‘T' was long ago we faced the foe,
The old brigade and me,
When by my side they fought and died
That Ireland might be free.

And now, my boy, I’ve told you why
On Easter morn’ I sigh,
When I recall my comrades all
From the dark old days gone by.

I think of men who fought in glen
With rifle and grenade.
May heaven keep the men who sleep
From the ranks of the old brigade.

Where are the lads that stood with me
When history was made?
A Ghra Mo Chroi, I long to see
The boys of the old brigade.

My friend Sherwood has compiled -- he doesn't just write, but researches and illustrates -- a wonderful blog reflecting on the Easter Rebellion, in light of the astonishing rapprochement in Ireland today. The very notion that Ian Paisley, for decades the face of violent, racist Unionism in Ulster, would sit down peacefully with Sinn Fein leader (and thus, ex officio, a member of the board of the IRA) Gerry Adams was absurd. To see it happen was stunning.

I was going to post a comment for him, but the number of associations it touched off was too much to confine to a "me too" and so here we are.

As Sherwood notes, I had said to him that, for Irish nationalists, the urge, the instinct, to bury guns against a future need must be overwhelming, it is such a part of the political memory. In fact, the Howth guns he writes of were memorialized in a ballad about a fellow burying his "old Howth gun" after the truce, knowing "a day will come again, O my old Howth gun, when I'll join the fighting men, O my old Howth gun. With some brave determined band, proudly there we'll take our stand, for the freedom of our land, O my old Howth gun!"

The song I posted at the top is a Republican ballad that emerged during the recent Troubles and which neatly encapsulates the sense of historic memory that has been part and parcel of Irish nationalism for at least the past 175 years or so.

As is the case with much of political art, it is sentimental and ahistorical, because there really wasn't that large a turnout for the Easter rising, which gained 90 percent of its impact not from the stirring declaration read by Padraic Pearse but from the brutal overreaction of the British government in executing the leaders of the rebellion.

And yet, as is the case with much of political art, that hardly matters. Unlike those Vietnam revisionists who continue to insist that the Tet Offensive was a stunning defeat for the communists, historians on both sides of the Irish question accept that, military significance aside, the Easter Rebellion was a landmark event that helped make Irish independence inevitable.

One of the advantages the Irish revolutionaries had was a wealth of artists capable of transforming relatively minor events into popular ballads, combined with a British opponent that insisted on executing people it didn't need to, thus turning minor figures like Kevin Barry into major heroes, and upon enforcing blindly foolish policies like the one that allowed Terence MacSwiney, the mayor of Cork, die on hunger strike.

They wrote a song about MacSwiney's death -- "Shall my soul pass through old Ireland" -- set to the same traditional tune as was used in "Kevin Barry," but I can't find the lyrics on line and barely remember them. His words at the top of this page, however, sum up not just Ireland but Algeria and Vietnam and, now, Iraq.

Part of that suffering, that enduring, lies in remembering, which is best done not through dry history but through living art. The fact that so many world leaders have studied history and learned nothing from it is proof enough of that.

As for the beautiful woman at the top of this post, she is Maud Gonne MacBride, one of a number of English citizens who fell in love with Ireland and its revolutionary cause. She was married briefly to John MacBride, who was later executed for his role in the Easter Rising, and their son, Sean MacBride, won the Nobel Peace Prize and founded Amnesty International.

Sean MacBride also instituted the MacBride Principles which helped, through fair employment and investment practices for US firms doing business in Northern Ireland, to pave the way for peace there. It should be noted that Ireland's hearty economy is very much responsible for the current peace: People find other ways of dealing with political issues when they have meaningful employment and decent day-to-day lives.

Who Maud Gonne never married was William Butler Yeats, who, though they were great friends and he proposed to her several times, was too much of an artist and idealist to ever appeal to such a committed revolutionary. He immortalized Maud Gonne in his idealized symbol of Ireland, "Cathleen ni Houlihan," but the two never connected on the level he wished they would.

Hardly surprising. There have been a few revolutionary artists -- Pearse, for one, and Jose Marti and others -- but for the most part there is a gulf between them, so that the artist ends up memorializing rather than joining them. And, of course, Yeats typified this with his own reflection on this day, an admission that he never quite understood those who were so "full of passionate intensity." (The woman is not Gonne, who was in France at the time, but Constance Gore-Booth, Countess Markiewicz. The lout, however, is MacBride, an abusive alcoholic Gonne had left some 12 years earlier. But even he is, if not forgiven, reassessed.)

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Chapter CVI

in which I say to hell with it

April 5, I woke up to discover 18 inches of snow in the front yard. And the back yard. And what in Maine they call the door-yard.

So, of course, when I came home from work, I discovered that all the snow on the roof had slid off and was piled in front of the door.

The guy who plows had just done the first 20 feet or so, enough so that I could pull off the road. I guess he saw that, with the ground no longer frozen, he was pushing up as much dirt as snow.

What this meant, aside from my having to walk back to the house in my footprints from the morning, was that nothing had been added to the snowbank at the side of the house. So, if you look to the right, you'll see that I just said to hell with it and walked around to the back porch and came in that way.

Which I will continue to do until lilacs next in the door-yard bloom.

in Just- spring when the world is mud- luscious

Yes, folks, that's my driveway in Just-spring, when the world is puddle-wonderful.

I just met my first truly droll Yankee, who lives in the house you can see to the left of the bon. He's an electrical contractor, perhaps a few years older than I am and the kind of flinty Abe Lincoln-looking Yankee that Norman Rockwell loved to paint.

As I pulled part-way into my driveway last evening, he was just pulling into his long driveway, so I backed out again and drove down to say hello. I told him I had learned, a bit too late, to park out by the road this time of year, and he told me that there's a rock ledge on the right hand side of the property (as you're looking at this) and the back that forms a nice cup right under the buildings and driveway, so that the heavy clay stays wet much longer than the surrounding area. By contrast, he said, he put in his own road maybe 50 yards away and has never had to touch it since, though he did start with a layer of roundstone for better drainage. But it would take tons of gravel to make my driveway into something you can use in the spring.

We stood and talked for about 20 minutes, during which time his wife arrived home and joined us, and I have to say it was the funniest conversation I've had since I got here and maybe the funniest I've ever had in which nobody laughed except me. Truly a droll Yankee, he delivered his lines in a classic Maine accent with a twinkle in his eye but only a hint of a smile.

He mentioned a mutual acquaintance in the general area and said, "She can be a very nice person," and when I didn't laugh, he looked at me out of the corner of his eye and added, "I said 'can be.'"

And when I had said that, if I were to be offered the house for sale, I don't think I could afford all that would have to be done to it, he agreed, telling me, among other things, that it has no septic tank, only a cesspool, and the clay leachfield doesn't absorb that stuff much better than the driveway absorbs the runoff. He characterized the house as having "no basement, just a hole that won't support a house," which is absolutely true.

That was about when his wife got home. She and I had waved across the yards, but this was our first conversation and I said, "I thought I'd come down and say 'hello,'" to which he remarked, "I was thinking of coming up and saying hello to you, but it was too muddy."

A-yuh.

My little boy is growing up

I was cleaning out Howard's tank tonight and realized he's grown a bit. Then I realized that it's been six months since he hatched (well, six months and two weeks), and so I figured I'd take another picture of him, again with a quarter for scale.

He's certainly no trouble. Every week or two I put him in a bowl and then scrub his rocks and rinse out his tank, which isn't hard since it only has about an inch-and-a-half of water in it. And as far as expense, it's negligible -- he's still on his first packet of turtle food, though every two or three weeks I give him a chunk of raw meat about the size of the top knuckle of my little finger. (Hmm ... perhaps that's not a comparison I should share with him, lest it give him ideas.)

As far as sociability, he's no more eager to be my friend than he ever was -- snappers are grumpy, solitary characters by nature and the little ones stay out of sight for the first couple of years of their lives anyway. On the other hand, he's learned that when he sees me moving around, food is likely to happen, so he often comes out of his cave and cranes his neck to see what I'm up to.

This is a little bothersome in terms of my original plan to keep him around until he gets larger and then release him -- he really shouldn't come up to people expecting food once he gets out in the wild. But this interest in food doesn't mean he's ever going to be "friendly" and he'll certainly become more risky to handle the larger he gets.

It is a puzzlement. But he continues to amuse me and I like having him around. When he gets big enough to snip off my fingers, I guess I'll have to sit down and think it all out, but, even at this rate of growth, that's going to be awhile.

Awww ....

The puppies are bonding. (She likes me, too.)

Sunday Funnies

Our biggest rival, the Sun Journal out of Lewiston/Auburn (circulation 36,000), maintains a bureau in Farmington but is apparently a little shortstaffed in its on-line editing department. Needless to say, we find these things quite amusing. Mostly when they happen to someone else.

Town meetings totally rock

I'm in New England now, where we have town meetings. Tonight, I covered the meeting in Chesterville, a small, not overly wealthy town just south of Farmington. I assigned our reporter to Farmington which I'm sure was much more uptown. I'd rather be in Chesterville.

Last weekend, I covered a meeting in another town that was about half "locals" and half artists and skiers. But Chesterville is totally local, and it's a wonderful example of how wrong those smart-ass city people are when they peg country folks with Deliverance stereotypes. These people aren't all college graduates -- the three in the foreground are a garage owner, a volunteer firefighter and a deputy sheriff -- but when they stand up to ask a question or make a point, you know you are listening to an intelligent person who has looked into an issue and either formed an opinion or come up with a probing question.

And the direct democracy is just a gas. Most of the time, the moderator (and there is a moderator appointed, who is from outside the town and thus neutral) -- well, most of the time, the moderator knows the name of the person rising to ask a question or make a point. It's very informal ... "Yeah, go ahead, Tim ... " and there is humor, usually aimed at the board of selectmen. It's a conversation among people who know each other and live together.

When you arrive at the town hall, you pick up a booklet that has the various articles to be voted on, as well as reports from each department within the town for the year. So you have all the tax assessments, and the budget for the animal control officer, and every other detail in the town government. Some towns get fancy and add color and a little self-promotion, others are bare bones. Chesterville was bare bones, but it was still a thick little booklet of information.

What impresses me about these meetings is the good spirit of it all. You don't have a lot of the penny-pinchers who sink so many school budgets in other areas. Most of the questions are genuine attempts to get information, and the town officials are very open to providing that information.

Two things came up tonight that impressed me. Now, let me start by saying that there were 53 articles, each of which needed an up-or-down vote. At most town meetings, the vast majority of articles are approved, since they've been chewed over by the budget committee and town board. But there are always a few that get more scrutiny than others.

My notes are out in the car, but one item was about $9,000 -- but I forget what it was for. Someone asked why it was $3,000 more than the previous year. Well, there was some back and forth on that, but then one of the selectmen (as town board officials are called) said, "We've got some reserve, so I'd like to offer an amendment ... " and he chopped off the three grand. As simple as that.

A much more complex issue came up at the end of the evening. Most of these "articles" are pretty cut-and-dried. For instance, the state licenses snowmobiles, and each town gets some of the fee back to maintain trails. The money is traditionally turned over to the local snowmobile club which is the group that actually does the work. For Chesterville in the past year, it came out to a little over $900. It would be silly not to approve the article because who else wants to go out there and maintain the trails? So that article usually passes with little discussion, although one town locally has two clubs and one of them apparently wasn't pulling its weight -- and that became a discussion point! Hey, your neighbors know when you're slacking off.

Anyway, there was a proposal to increase the minimum lot size for building to 40,000 square feet, the reasoning being that the necessary distance between wells and septic tanks made that a more logical lot size. But people at the meeting objected, pointing out that, as written, the article would forbid you to buy a quarter acre from a neighbor to put up a garage or even a storage shed, which has no impact on either wells or septic tanks. The building codes officer accepted the criticism, and one of the selectmen finally asked people to defeat the article so they could take it back and rethink it.

People of goodwill work together.

But the best moment came on an article that would give $700 to the local group that works with "special needs" people. Someone asked why it was so much, and proposed an amendment to cut it back to $150. Well, excuse me, but if you think only city liberals have compassion, you should have heard this group rise up against that notion.

What would the town do with that money that would be more valuable than helping these people, someone asked. And someone else said, "It's a small price for personal dignity." Of all the proposals that night, this one got the loudest "nay" vote for the amendment, and the loudest "aye" vote to approve the appropriation.

It comes down to this: People can be heartless when they are talking about abstractions. But you get into a town hall with your friends and neighbors, and you start talking about real life, and the generosity of people bubbles to the surface.

I wish more communities in this country had town meetings.

Two is better

I spent Saturday sitting behind the wheel of my van, from 6 in the morning until 9:30 at night.

I drove from Farmington, Maine, to Salt Point, New York, and back, a distance of about 750 miles. Salt Point is where Melissa Carlin lives. Melissa is a breeder of Rhodesian Ridgebacks, who produced Jack, my (now) ex-girlfriend Donna's dog, and Cole, her current dog. She also had owned Nikki, an African-born champion who then "retired" to live with my son, Jed, and his family, and she was one of two breeders who produced my own dear Nellie Bly. (The other was Destry's breeder -- Nell was his niece.)

When I had to put Nellie down in December, Melissa made an offer that I turned down. She had a bitch, Ziwa, who was ready to retire from breeding and the show ring, and she wanted to find this sweet girl a nice place to live. If I wanted her, she was mine.

I pondered this for a time, but said no, that I wanted to be a one-dog family now. And I did. But Destry didn't. Now, I don't ascribe a lot of rational thought to dogs, and Des wasn't wandering around the house looking for Nellie. But he simply didn't function as well as a solo dog as he had when Nellie was there to give him some companionship and backup.

So I got back in touch with Melissa, and the result was that, as of yesterday, Ziwa is now part of our family. She's a very nice Australian-born girl with soft fur and a relatively sweet disposition. I say "relatively sweet" because she's no pushover. With Destry on first meeting, and then with our Labrador buddy Spike McManus today, she gives a quick snap and bark to say, "Don't push it, bud." But she's not unpleasant and is, in fact, funny and affectionate and, once she gets her feet under her, will be a cuddler.

I like a girl with a little snap, who is willing to set the limits but without rancour or attitude. She's a mom and has some ideas of how people ought to behave, but she's a lover.

And she and Des have already begun to play. They don't cuddle yet, but I'd be surprised if they did, within the first 24 hours. They like each other, and more affection will follow.

As for the thing about being a one-dog family, well, it's a conversation I'll have with Ziwa in a few years. I had always figured that Nellie and I would end up alone, and the difference is that Ziwa is two years younger, and a little more assertive.

I already love this girl.

My Grandfather Speaks

In the early 1900s when I was about 10 years old, I was invited, along with two of my buddies, to spend a weekend with another boy at his father's farm north of Bessemer, Michigan. It was a large farm for that area, well-equipped and operated, and of great interest because it was the county "Poor Farm," with the accent on "Poor."

The Andersons were actually tenant farmers who had a working agreement with the County of Gogebic whereby they housed and fed inmates (nobody would think of calling them guests) who had been placed there by the authorities.

None were compelled to remain, but they had no alternative. Of the 20 or so there at the time, mostly men, all were old and, though still able to walk, unable to earn a living, and all had given up the struggle. The air of hopelessness and despair was overwhelming.

At about the same time, I also observed that here and there in our neighborhood there were old people living with their sons or daughters and their families and thus able to avoid the stigma attached to the "Poor Farm." This system of family responsibility appears to be as old as civilization, perhaps older.

Invariably, these folks would remain out of sight until mealtimes when they would appear at the table to eat and then disappear again. They didn't take part in conversation nor were they encouraged to do so.

Naturally, I didn't see this occurring very often, but I knew it existed and I also knew that it was only a step above the Poor Farm situation.

There was yet another group of old people commonly known as "tramps" who wandered up and down the countryside doing odd jobs around homes and receiving handouts from the housewives and permission to sleep in barns or haylofts. While unable to hold down steady jobs, they too avoided the degrading existence of the Poor Farm.

I did not include the able-bodied men in this general category who were vagrants by choice, and traveled on freight trains or walked from town to town begging, stealing or working for a meal in a pinch. I felt no pity for them, nor did they deserve any. They were not numbered among those that the Bible says "we will have with us always."

I dwell on this general subject for one reason only: When I became old, I wanted to be included out of this existence.

Parenthetically, I should state that I grew up in a neighborhood where there was only one "rich" man, the mine captain, who was reputed to be earning $200 a month.

None of us thought that we were poor -- President Johnson had not yet invented the "poverty" caper and we firmly believed that each of us was completely responsible for his own future. There was nothing resembling "public assistance" or "Social Security" and pensions (very small) existed only for some war veterans. If anyone had told us that we had "rights" we would have been mystified. Our schooling, of course, was free through high school, but that was about it.

While no one spelled it out, I knew that one should go to school until he was 16 years of age and then should go to work giving all of his wages to his parents until he was 21. Thereafter, he must pay board, buy his own clothes, etc. and save up for his old age. Marriage, which was now a
probability, should not shut off (though it certainly would curtail) this saving habit.

The conviction that I had to provide for my own old age grew stronger and stronger as the years went by, and in time resulted in an effort to increase my earning power.

The only solution appeared to be to go to college and prepare myself to handle a higher-paid job such as being an engineer, accountant or school teacher.

In this I was greatly influenced by our school superintendent and the science teacher at our high school -- two wonderful men.

***************

Arthur Peterson was the son of Danish immigrants on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. After dropping out of school to help support his family by working in the mines, he was persuaded to return and earned a scholarship to study metallurgical engineering at the University of Wisconsin. This undated letter to his grandchildren was written in the early 1970s. The picture was taken at my wedding in 1971.

Absorbing a dose of championship energy

This picture is why I don't mind driving up into the countryside late at night. A little high school up there (about 300 kids, grades 9-12) won the state championship in girls basketball, and as I was watching the game on TV down here, I thought, yeah, better get up to the school. Fortunately, the team was about two hours away in Bangor and I only had to drive 45 minutes to get to the school. So I was able to easily get there about half an hour before their bus pulled in, accompanied by the town's firetrucks and ambulance with lights flashing, at 11:30.

When I pulled into the drive, there was hardly anyone at the school -- maybe half a dozen cars -- and I thought, oh, man, this is going to be a bust. But that's because half the town had made the two hour trip to Bangor. They all got back before the bus and were there to greet the girls with pizza and a cake and the whole shebang.

And this picture, if it were the only one I brought back, made the trip worthwhile. These are seniors sharing a moment of total happiness -- the friendships that come in these small schools exist on a very special level.

At the risk of posting twice in one day, you should really read this. It's kind of the opposite of where I'm at. Thank god. But also, thank god people write these kinds of letters.

Welcome Home
(The shovel's just inside the door)

Why would anybody build a house in Maine with two -- count them, two -- roofs slanting so that they collect the snow and then slide it right off in front of the door?

We got maybe a foot of snow today, but I came home to about two and a half feet of it between me and the door. And, yeah, the snow shovel.

Ah, well. It's gonna look beautiful tomorrow when the sun is out. Hope so, anyway, because I'm heading up to Kingfield to cover the annual town meeting at 9 a.m. and then down to Industry for an ice fishing tournament.

The ice fishing folks are probably unhappy -- this is wet stuff and it's going to make it tough to clear the ice, drill holes and get set up. They're counting on 300 to 400 fishermen, with the proceeds going for upkeep on the town beach. Fortunately, it's a two-day event, so, even if Saturday isn't too good, by Sunday they should be okay.

The town meeting folks are probably just fine. The place is about 25 miles north of here, just into the mountains. My guess is there will be a lot of snowmobiles parked outside the school.