devil's pantsuit

i do not have babies. as a result, i rarely shop for baby clothes. i had no idea what a luxury this was. if you've spent any time visiting this blog you know i knit and that lately most of the knitting has been clothing for the small folks. and i know a little bit about babies, mostly scientific stuff like how babies respond best to bright things the first six months they're around. it's not that they can't see other things like pastel bunnies and blankies, it's just that they react more strongly to the intense stuff. high contrast. babies won't wither and die without it. it's just what they're drawn to. and although i do make the cute little pastel things from time to time, it's more interesting for me as a knitter to do bright stuff, especially stripes. and devil pants.

so i made some devil pants for a friend who lives across the country and with the leftover yarn made some black and red striped shorts. cotton and silk, good for desert winter. i thought i'd pick up a little black t shirt somewhere and send the whole packet out into gila monster territory. since i live in nyc, close to some of the best (or most easily available) boutique shopping around, i wasn't worried. i live in flatbush, brooklyn only a few train stops away from park slope, ground zero for overindulgent parents. finding a hipster t shirt for a baby should be like shooting fish in a barrel. park slope is a loose confederation of brownstones, small restaurants, ridiculously priced clothing and trinket stores and maybe 900 little meccas for ornamenting babies. all different. all preciously hip. tragically hip? no, that's a band.

and like always, i come up out of the subway at 7th ave and head toward salvation. it is 90 degrees, which means the station is slightly warmer. i have the devil pants in my bag, thinking i'll be able to hold them up to whatever i find to get the right size. i go into the first tiny store filled with precious things. there is a stroller near the register. the price tag says it costs more than my first, second and third cars all together. the woman working there glanced at me and gave me a face that suggested maybe i smelled different than i should. she spends her day surrounded by babies who are pooping, peeing and barfing so i suspect it's just the look she gives the barren. yes, that's right. women who work in boutique baby stores can recognize a woman who isn't shopping for her own baby, a woman who can't be convinced to buy the bazillion dollar humvee stroller, and she doesn't like us. although i was the only person in the store, i had to say, "excuse me," and squeeze past her to get to the small fry clothing. she didn't budge and nearly knocked me over. she also still didn't acknowledge me by saying anything. hello. may i help you? please get out of my store, you barren monster. then in walked a mommy, dragging two screaming children in a stroller. the store woman was delighted. the two women abandoned the screaming children and began squealing over new merchandise. the older child, a girl of four or so, stopped crying when her mom held up a little shirt. the mom put it on the counter. this shirt cost more than everything i'd dragged onto my body today. and i'm talking all store-bought clothes. no thrift store stuff and no long term loans from a sister. but the baby kept screaming. i edged around the stroller log jam and peeked in, half afraid i'd see the baby covered with scorpions. it was that sort of crying. attack of the scorpions crying. but the two women were able to carry on as before, ignoring this poor child. as i sidled out, another mommy came in with a six year old screaming, "i want..." whatever. she was unintelligible, but i'm sure whatever it was, her mom bought it for her after she found it, grabbed it, and threw it across the room. there were no black t shirts there.

the next store was a little larger and after a few minutes wandering around the store alone (again, there was nobody else there. just me.) i finally asked the terribly bored woman behind the counter about black baby clothes. she led me to some beautiful pink t shirts with ruffles on the sleeves. "these are very nice," i said, "but they're not really as black as i'd hoped." oh. she didn't realize i wanted black clothes. no. they don't carry things like that. especially not for the little babies. fifteen blocks down and across the street i walked into yet another empty store. you'd think these folks would be all over a customer since it seems like they don't get many. i told the woman what i was looking for. a black t shirt for a 3-6 month old. "you should really get a onesie," she said. so i revised my search. "do you have any black onesies for a 3-6 month old baby?" no. she then proceeded to tell me that she carried very nice things and her prices were far better than those of nearby stores. so how are your prices on black baby clothes? i wanted to ask. she said to check back in the fall. "black is a cold weather color." she also suggested i go a few more blocks and cross the street.

i did. very chic store. very expensive. at this point i was ready to drop fifty bucks for a stinking black t shirt if it would get me out of baby clothes hell. there were two women working in the store and i asked my question. do you have any black t shirts. i want a black t shirt or onesie for a baby, 3-6 months. it's pretty specific. the stores are small and honestly, the small baby sections of these stores are pretty limited. it's not a tough question. one of the women simply walked away. the other paused, thought for a very long time, then wandered back to the shelf (one shelf) where the little baby things were. she looked for a long time at the four little piles of shirts. purple pile. yellow pile. pink pile. green pile. what was she looking for? is this what happens when people go stare into the fridge at night? they're hoping something will materialize that wasn't there before? finally, after what seemed like two hours, she said, "no, i don't think we do. but we have this nice purple one." why can't people hear me when i speak?

so i left seventh avenue for fifth. more restaurants and bars than baby boutiques, but it still boasted plenty. you're remembering that it's still above 90 degrees outside. i've walked about two miles at this point. the woman in the first baby store on fifth eyed me like i was contaminating her store. i should say at this point i knew a little of what i was up against and actually got dressed up for this. blue linen skirt and a red shirt (not made of t-shirt material) with a ruffly bit of a cap sleeve and a real live v shaped girl neckline. and i was carrying a bag that was not made by the u.s. army. i looked like a grown up. in fact, i looked like a teacher. i was clean and i'd brushed my hair and put it in a loose bun. perhaps the relatively sleeveless nature of the feminine red shirt let her see that i don't shave under my arms and she deduced, properly, of course, that i am a horrible animal. a monster of some sort. maybe i just smelled from two hours of walking in 90+ degree heat. but she assessed me and knew who i was. i asked my question. "have you tried the mall?" she said flatly. "i'm sure old navy or target would have something like that." actually, i was pretty sure they wouldn't so i didn't even try. but she had my number. i didn't belong in a store with forty dollar onesies. my ruffly red shirt came straight out of old navy.

on my way to old navy, i passed by one more baby boutique. i went in, asked my question. the kind woman pointed me to a precious yellow t shirt with a frog on it. it was really a lovely frog. why didn't she understand my question? what is so difficult about "black t shirt"? so i said, "that's really a lovely frog, but i'm looking for a black t shirt. plain black". and she looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. she smiled that smile you get when you're telling a child monsters don't really live in the closet and under the bed. she was getting ready to tell me the truth. "well, they don't really like black". wow. that's a loaded sentence out of context, but i interrupted, nodding. "yeah, parents like to put their kids in soft colors..." "no," she insisted. "the babies. they don't like wearing black." oh. i see. i guess she got that email from all the babies in the world where they decided to boycott black. and before i could stop myself, i blurted out, "babies do like black. they like it a lot. parents just force them to wear pastels!" and i continued on my way to old navy.

to be fair, although the parents i know do buy pastels for their kids, i think that's mostly because pastels are what's out there. and i make pastel things for some folks all by myself. because, like most things pastels are fine in moderation. little girls can wear pink. they can also wear a joan jett skirt if they want in black and red. i've sent quite a bit of black, white and red out into the baby world with no complaints from parents or babies. so, on to the mall. daffy's. there's a rack of stuff and i find a cool glow in the dark bat skeleton shirt with long sleeves. perfect. there's only one. it's for an 18 month old. target. what a depressing store. at least the one at atlantic center. at least in the baby section. everything was hannah montanna. i'm not exaggerating. there were several empty racks which will at some point be refilled with more hannah montanna, but nothing in black and nothing at all under 6 month size. same with old navy and target. this is sort of what i'd expected, but i was hoping against hope. i considered, just for a minute, going into the consortium for haitian empowerment office there in the mall. they, at least, like black. instead i struggled back up flatbush avenue toward my stop. after nearly four miles of walking, all of it at 90+ degrees, i stopped in at a nearby cafe to reward myself for my suffering. iced mocha. no matter what you say, i deserved it. as the very kind woman, a woman who said hello to me when i walked in the door, smiled, asked what i wanted, said no problem and then set about to help me get exactly what i wanted (whipped cream? why, yes. thank you) made my mocha, i gazed out the window toward the subway entrance. right next door is american apparel. you know them. they put those emaciated women in panties in their ads. they look like the grown up versions of those save the children children. glassy eyed. starving. hideous. but they do sell tons of cotton in every color of the rainbow. and the other colors as well. free range cotton with no sweatshop labor. shade grown. heh. so i grabbed my mocha and got myself over there. the first thing that hits you when you enter an american apparel store is the tinny, heart attack music. my students don't listen to junk like this. but it's blasting. it's an assault. did i mention i'm starting to realize i'm really forty? the teenagers behind the counter stared like deer. i walked straight to the baby section. black. black black black. hoodies. t shirts. onesies. thank you, american apparel. truly, you are kings among men. and for $18 i had a black hoodie made without sweatshop labor in a 3-6 month size.

then i got home. perfect. exactly right. and i started thinking about the desert and the gila monsters. i know most deserts get cool at night, especially in winter, but have you ever been to phoenix? phoenix has designed this horrible zone around itself that stays warm even during an ice age. so today i will go back. i will brave the music and the slack jawed teens. these are things i am familiar with and feel safe around anyway. i will get the onesie or the tee and will pack up the silk and cotton devil pants and shorts along with the tee and will send it to the new child living among the rattlesnakes and scorpions and gila monsters so they will welcome him and his pointy tailed self as one of them and will help keep him safe. and i will send the hoodie on to the new supernatural nephew as soon as i knit some pants to go with it. it's a cloaking hoodie anyway and i don't know this new desert dwelling child well enough to send him something a complicated as that.

dad's punishment #1

my dad is not very good at lying. i say this because he tries way more often than he should in light of this fact. he must be aware of it. he always gets caught. i suspect i have inherited my poor lying skills from him and that's fine with me since i'd never remember the intricacies of telling a lie. but then, neither does my dad. but he plows on anyway.

most of the time these "misunderstandings" (a term i'm sure he would use) or sins of omission (my own more accurate term) center around his own health. for instance, when my dad had cancer. cancer is not a thing you "forget". oops. it slipped my mind. i forgot to tell you about my cancer. yeah, right. because i live half a country away, i depend on the accuracy of phone and email communication to know what's going on back in the homeland. and my dad managed to not realize he hadn't mentioned cancer for quite some time. i found out when my mom said something about after his treatment. treatment? i was scanning my brain. had i forgotten a surgery my dad was having? it's always a possibility. i played along. i played along until it was pretty obvious this wasn't a little surgery to remove a mole but was something a little more substantial that had involved time. time my dad had used to talk to me about all sorts of stuff that didn't include cancer. so he got in trouble. and my mom, too, although it's difficult to punish your parents from so far away. but this is what he does. "forgets".

he also reinterprets events. for instance, he had a boat. i say had because he sold it this week. his take on why he sold it is this: "your sister (that's my sister, his middle child) won't let me take the grandson out in the boat anymore so i'm going to sell it." now, while it's true this sister can be a formidable adversary, she doesn't just make up random rules and she's pretty good about letting her kid experience lots in the world. the child was allowed to set off fireworks on the fourth of july as soon as he was old enough to hold his hand steady to light. so i pushed. no, he said. that's it. she just won't let me. so i talked to mom. dad and the nephew (his grandson, you know) take this boat out on a friend's lake. it's a small lake, pond-like. the child is nearly eight and knows how to dial 911 on a cell phone (which his mother taught him because she knows her father). she knows she has to tell dad the rules (don't let the child get in the lake because he has an ear infection) and then she reminds the child. she tells them in front of each other so they'll both know the score. they'll know she knows they both know. so when she picks up the child later and he's not quite dry she asks, "what happened. did he dangle you by your feet over the side of the boat?" the child's eyes get huge. he did. how did she know? she knows her dad. and he got in trouble. and she suggested that if the two of them couldn't stick to really simple rules that kept the kid healthy, they couldn't play together on the boat. so all dad would have to do is promise to follow the rules and then he'd have to do it. he'd rather sell his boat.

he is a stubborn man with a set of internal rules nobody can understand. he will not deviate. in his sixties, he chooses to mow the lawn between noon and two regularly, without anything to drink, with no sunscreen, in 90+ degree weather. did i mention regularly? why? it's 20 degrees cooler in the morning. yes, but that's when there's dew on the ground. you can't mow wet grass? really? it will clump. holy cow! really? clumped grass is horrible. it's terrible. it's definitely worse than DYING FROM A HEART ATTACK BECAUSE YOU'RE MOWING THE LAWN WHEN THE TV AND RADIO ARE SCREAMING ABOUT HEAT ADVISORY AND TO STAY INDOORS!!!!!

so let's go back to the health thing. my dad has always been annoyingly healthy. he smoked cigarettes during my entire childhood and when he quit, his smoke and tar clogged lungs went right back to being pink and healthy and fit. and although when he quit smoking he took up aggressive eating and gained weight, his cholesterol and blood pressure have stayed right where they should be for years. through bacon and eggs at least once a day. through absolute inactivity and tv watching. through four popsicles and two fudgesicles a day. until recently.

the other day i was on the phone with him and i heard my mom in the background (a woman who, in her sixties, has broken every large bone in her body in the last few years and still refuses to take calcium supplements "i don't have osteoperosis!") yelling, "tell her about your lab tests!" and he did. honestly, they weren't what you'd think they'd be for a man who makes the choices he does. most folks who make his choices have been dead for years. he mentioned high blood sugar levels and a mild concern he'd become diabetic if he didn't change things. duh! probably. so i suggested some very simple, non-threatening things he might do. cut back to one popsicle a day. walk around when he goes to the mall instead of just sitting in the food court for hours on end. get a two egg omelet instead of a three egg one. nothing huge. nothing about cutting out all popsicles.

then, in a different call, i mentioned the conversation to mom. did i mention she's an instigator. come on. where do you think i get it? when he came home from golf/the mall/wherever, she yelled at him. and he called me. and here's what he said: i never told you anything like that. right. he was steadfast. i never told you anything like that. don't worry. i'm healthy. but then he called my sister. not the formidable one. not even he is up to a confrontation with her. he called the baby. the baby sister is the mother of the new supernatural child and i think he must have been counting on new motherhood to addle her brain. he accused her of telling me about his tests. motherhood has not addled her brain and she let him know. so he demanded to know how i'd found out. which is when she cornered him. she told him he must have told me (duh!) and then said, "so your blood sugar was high." and he was caught.

my next phone call involved dad doing a lot of backpedaling and speculation about who might have said what. i'm sure he thinks his health is his own business and not mine. well, he's wrong. although i will not have to choose a hospital or nursing home for him if he stops taking care of himself (that pleasure goes to the formidable sister) i will have to go to his funeral. or maybe i will have to make a new rule that sits next to that "i do not go to funerals for drug dealers or gang members" rule. it will be "i do not go to funerals for people who eat four popsicles a day and complain that they can't get their blood sugar lowered without medication".

eagle buzzard osprey eagle

just west of margaretville the east branch of the delaware river helps fill the pepacton reservoir. right before the river changes to reservior the platte kill flows in and just upstream, another, smaller stream flows lazily into the delaware. it is where this slower stream enters the delaware that the d.e.p. or some such agency has converted the feet of an old bridge into a sort of fishing gallery. on either side of the river, wide grassy paths lead up to the edges of a bridge that must have come down some time ago. we've driven by and seen folks working there and thought they were putting up a new bridge. instead, these grassy paths lead to wide cement platforms fenced with wood and cable, reinforced below with boulders.

this is where the sweetie brought me to fish. the past few days' rains brought the river up quite a bit so it was roiling and brown. and five in the afternoon isn't really the best time to fish. not to mention these platforms are twenty feet above the water with a slope of rock below keeping the bank of the river out at least ten feet from where a person might stand. not so bad for casting, but unpleasant for reeling in. so i had my excuses ready. i lost the first lure when i dragged it across a submerged slab of the old bridge and managed to wedge the thing somehow in a crack of the cement. the sweetie wanted to set me up with something less snaggy. he produced something that looked like a 20 tentacled squid and situated it around the hook so the hook wouldn't snag on brush or any of the other mysteries of the deep. i had me a guaranteed no-snag lure which i lost in a deep section in the middle of the river where the water was pretty fast. i thought i had a fish, really big. i could feel it tug at the line so i was sure i wasn't snagged. when the sweetie took over the reeling in because he was sure i was snagged, even he became convinced that i'd snagged a monster fish. one that didn't move. there was nothing out there- no branches or anything and looking back i probably hooked one of those massive snapping turtles we'd seen submarining around from time to time. but if i did, he got away with that squid lure that was unsnaggable.

i took advantage of my complete failure at fishing and began to wander around the platform with the camera, trying to will the snapping turtles to swim close enough they'd be clear in a photo. turtle minds are impenetrable. frustrated, i was putting the camera away when the sweetie said, "well, there's your eagle!" i managed to get the camera out and on just as a huge bird perched on a tree above us. i could see his giant yellow claws on the branch but not much else. i snapped a photo anyway, just in case. the sweetie was saying maybe he was a buzzard after all since he didn't have that white head but then again maybe he was a young eagle, not yet all white feathered. he didn't look like a vulture, didn't fly the way i see them fly. buzzards get up so high and just sit there. i don't think i've ever seen a buzzard flap a wing. and buzzards don't fish. nope. they do look a lot alike, though. those long feathers at the ends of their wings like spread fingertips, white along the underneath of the wings. i know i have no credibility what with my earlier confusion of heron and eagle, and then deer and bear, but i knew this was an eagle.

then i did what i see fisherfolk doing all the time. i waited out that bird. it was early evening and he was out fishing. i knew he wasn't going to just sit there all evening staring at me when the fish were starting to jump. the small birds were starting to swarm around like bugs, skimming the water. everyone fishes at the same time. and i waited. he was still the way rabbits get still when they're out in the open and you see them. he moved a heavy claw a bit to the side on the branch and i began to snap photos. i should probably mention here that i have one of those fantastic little digital cameras that thinks for me and most of the time that's fine. i take most pictures on the auto setting. here's the thing about auto setting. the little camera brain says, "hmmmm. let's see. what is it she wants a photo of? is is the thing in the middle of the frame or the thing over to the side? there sure is a lot of stuff here. trees. water. some sort of large bird. well, we'll just try to catch as much of it as we can." and i can hear it whirring inside, focusing back and forth, thinking for me. and then, "well, the light today certainly is challenging. early morning light, but look at all that fog. well, well, well. that's going to be a mess, all fuzzy and way too bright. let's tone things down a bit and we won't use the flash." and no matter how many times i smash down on the button while the camera is thinking, it won't do a thing. it has to be ready. it has to know exactly what it's planning to do, which can take several seconds, before it will allow that stupid button to work.

as a result, from the moment i saw that bird move his foot, i started snapping and didn't stop until i could no longer see him down the river in the fog. several seconds during which my finger snapped down on the button probably thirty times or more. for all that, i got five grainy photos of a giant bird flapping out of a tree, past the mountains and down the river to the reservoir. loch ness monster. big foot. and i checked all sorts of websites about ospreys, which look pretty much like a juvenile bald eagle when they're out and about. but the 2 or 3 year old eagle is a mottled white and brown with incredible yellow claws. not ospreys with their gray feet. and eagles have a wingspan of seven feet. that's right. lie down on the floor. now stretch your arms out past your head. eagle wing span. way bigger than an osprey.

when you see an eagle out fishing where you're fishing it's like seeing your favorite actor in the diner where you get lunch. you're both in the same place. and for the same reason. and although i know the poor eagle would just like to sit in his booth and order his patty melt and milkshake in peace, i'm always going to be that clod who stumbles over, begging for an autograph right when the food arrives.

hissy fit on a grapevine

helpful hint: click on the photos to enlarge. they're a bit grainy, but you can really see the bird rage. you want to see bird rage, don't you?

coming back to brooklyn didn't mean we'd left the wildlife behind. we came back to two hostile cats (no, they didn't miss us. they resented our return.) and an endless supply of squirrels and their flying counterparts, pigeons. first, the cats are inside cats. that's because our last outside cat went to the great catnip factory in the sky courtesy of local traffic. so these two are indoor cats. jim, a very mellow 17 pound marmalade monster doesn't seem to mind, but ruby, the one who hates all things, does not want to be an inside cat. she was a rescue cat and was found close to feral and "rehabilitated" at a shelter and she has hated us since the day when she was eight months old and we brought home jim so she'd have a pal. he was three or four times her size and she immediately tried to kill him. he does not spend time with her now, choosing the uneven attention he gets from the small dogs over the consistent nastiness she dishes out. but she is very pretty and we are mildly afraid of her so she continues to control our house, the other cat, both dogs and, of course, us.

and then yesterday i opened the back door and she escaped. i yelled her name because she knows who she is and in fact she did turn around. she looked at me. her face said, "you are stupid. i am leaving." all this after i brushed her stupid fur all morning and brought her canned food as a treat. ruby is small and wily and impossible to catch so although i went after her, i knew i wasn't coming back in the house with her just yet.

i went back in the house to finish up some devil pants for a friend's new baby and heard a horrible ruckus out back. screaming. now, we have a tiny back yard that shares a fence with nyc transit's glorious q train, which runs in a cut below the house. the train platform for the southbound train is just below our fence and sometimes we hear drunks or deranged folks ranting from the platform. i didn't pay it much attention. but it continued. it sounded like squirrels in a lawn mower. or at least what i imagine they'd sound like. horrible. screeching. swirling.

so i went to the back porch. i could hear them squeaking so loud i figured there must be five hundred of whatever they were out there. but there were only two. two mockingbirds. they were tearing around from tree to grapevine to porch rail. you wouldn't imagine four ounces of bird could do what they were doing, making such a racket. and then i thought of ruby. she must have climbed a tree and destroyed a nest. that's how they were acting, like she'd destroyed their family. certainly she's capable of such things. her hatred extends far beyond her immediate family. and when i looked around i couldn't find her. i scanned the whole yard, looked up in the tree, under the porch. the screaming continued. she must be somewhere because they were still flipping out. i looked past the porch, behind the tree and there, under a big pile of metal scaffold junk our landlord keeps against the fence, sat ruby, cowering, terrified. i have never in my life seen her like this and i'm mildly ashamed to admit that for a brief moment i simply savored the image. but she was really scared. she was convinced those birds were going to kill her and i wasn't so sure they didn't have a right to. she looked very guilty. but i went out under the canopy of screaming and called her. she belly crawled a few feet and i scooped her up. generally, picking up ruby requires something similar to hobbling a barnyard animal. you grab her front ankles in one hand and the back ones in the other and carry her with the claws pointing away the shortest distance possible. if you choose to do something looser, you look like something that could be used in a horror movie. but not this time. this time she leapt into my arms and shoved herself against my chest like a normal pet. it was terrifying.

i brought her in and put her down. the birds continued their swearing for at least ten minutes more, and she was back at the door watching them before they were through. i suspect ruby's brain has a memory loop of about two minutes most of the time and i wonder how she can maintain her hatred of us so consistently and purely. although right now she is sitting next to me on the couch, purring. if i just continue to sit here and i don't make eye contact or try to pet her, she may continue to let me live here and occasionally rescue her from mockingbirds.

gun

i own a gun. it's an old one and very pretty. it is not a gun i will ever use as a weapon, unless some fool breaks into my house when i'm at my desk and i use the butt of it to smack the person across the head. it is a solid gun, so it would probably slow a person down a bit and let me get away. since this sort of foolishness is unlikely, we'll go back to the fact that i will never use it as a weapon. it is a long gun with a lovely wood stock, made for the new york state militia, manufactured upstate. it is old enough to be considered an antique, something i don't have to register, even in nyc, as long as i don't by bullets for it. i don't intend to. but it took a lot to get me to be willing to have it here in my house. because the only thing it can be used for is to kill. in this case, it was designed to kill people. this makes me uncomfortable, even as a piece of history. i do not like the idea of killing people and probably would not be very good at it anyway.

here's the thing. when you decide to be a teacher and you go to teacher school, there's plenty you learn. i really did learn a lot. but i didn't learn to deal with things that make my heart and stomach relocate to the same place. like when a child dies. there are lots of ways a child can die and as many ways to manage yourself. in the four years i've been at my current school, we've had what seems like a surprising amount of deaths, both current and former students. illness and suicide are strong contenders for claiming the most children, but there's also self-destructive behavior (drunken car crashes, overdoses, falling from something you were never meant to be on) and one i have only dealt with once before this week. shooting.

shooting is tough, especially when you know the child who was shot dealt with guns or at least talked a big (and very realistic) game. because what you want to say is "violence begets violence" or "live by the sword, die by the sword" but then you don't expect them to really do it. so i want to tell you a little about this boy i know who was shot to death last week because he was pretty complex. and i told him more than once i was worried he'd get shot. he'd laugh and say, "not me." sometimes there's no joy in being right.

he came to our school midyear on a safety transfer. he was tall and looked too old for ninth grade, really, too old for high school. he wore an impressive scowl and the colors of a well known gang. he tagged up on the chalkboard (again with the gang stuff) and i called him on it. he walked up, towered over me and insisted i didn't know what i was talking about. i said i did. we argued back and forth for a while and then he did something i didn't expect. he didn't back down and he didn't threaten me. those are the two normal responses. he laughed. and when that scowl disappeared it was easy to see the child in there. he said i was alright and he laughed again. i erased the board. everybody won.

in the months that followed, he walked out of the room randomly, sometimes didn't show up, once ordered some delicious-smelling hot wings which he ate in class, threatened a girl and nearly beat her in a hallway because she grabbed his "flag" (a bandanna of a certain color worn in a pocket to signify gang membership or gay preferences, depending on the community, although i think the latter use has nearly died out). in class, though, he was brilliant. he knew strange and obscure answers and asked questions that led the class in fascinating directions. and the kids worshiped him. he was a born storyteller. the sort of boy who would do well in a college english program if we could get him there.

here, then, is the problem. the kids didn't worship him because he was smart. they worshiped him because he flashed large wads of cash and other kids were terrified of him. they worshiped him because of what he said about his exploits with weapons and drugs and in jail. because to a teenager, that's all very romantic stuff. of course, to teenagers, being shot is also romantic.

but then there's this other thing. teachers really liked him. we all knew who he was. he was very honest about it, but he was smart and just incredibly nice. drug dealer nice, i'd said at the beginning. see, if you're a drug dealer you have an excellent client base in a high school so you don't want to get in trouble. and he was drug dealer nice. but i think he was genuinely nice as well. a kid with these two parts- gang life and academic life. he was very good at both and was even managing to be very good at both at the same time. for a while.

but that doesn't last, and in the early hours of 14 july he was at a party with friends when two people with guns showed up. there was an argument that included this boy. one of the people with guns shot this child in the chest. he died out back of an apartment building in brownsville at 2am. now, two other boys were shot but survived and there were plenty of people around and i know some of them know what happened. but they won't say a word. they'd rather let the man who murdered their brother go free than be seen talking to cops. if people watch you being murdered and they don't help find the killer, are they really your friends? this is a real question i will ask my students. which brings me right back to the first murdered student i had eleven years ago. a drive by in a park on a sunday afternoon. plenty of witnesses. nobody saw a thing. the man who murdered him is still free, although i guess if he's been doing drive bys there's a good chance he's underground just like the two children he shot.

see, to anyone who reads an article in the paper on this child he's just a street thug who is part of a community of violence. that's what i think when i see other people shot in situations like this. to the kids who knew him he's a hero for standing up to a man with a gun, even though he's dead now and that doesn't really matter. but to me he was a smart child who would really like college if we could trick him into getting there. he had an easy sense of humor and an odd, unexpected kindness to him. he was important. he is important. and i don't see how it's ever going to be okay for the person who took him away to be walking the streets of brownsville with a gun.

sad tomato

we were grilling up a few burgers. nothing fancy. i picked up the tomato we bought two days before at the grocery store. ordinarily, we buy our tomatoes from farm markets because they taste like tomatoes, but we weren't sure we'd make it to the farm market so we grabbed a few at one of those fluorescent light stores. i put them in the window because they didn't look quite ripe.

but we needed a tomato, so i took one from the window, put it on the cutting board and sliced off the stem end. i'm sure that's not how you slice your tomatoes, but i'm less likely to lose a finger if i do it my way. at first, i thought it was full of worms. let me tell you, you do not want to slice open a tomato and find it full of tiny white worms. mostly, this is because my own experience of tiny white worms suggests that if they're tiny, white, wormy and on food, they're maggots. it didn't matter that the tomato was blemish-free on the outside. maggot swarm was my first thought. but i looked again. they were sprouts. like bean sprouts. how on earth would bean sprouts get into my tomato? i know. i know. but bean sprouts in a tomato was a bigger problem for me than how the maggots might get in there because at least maggots would make sense. it took me a second to realize the tomato seeds had all sprouted. how old was this thing? i sliced again. it was sprouts all around and stem end to whatever is not the stem end. it was like a little chia tomato turned inside out.

so we sat on the front porch during a spectacular thunderstorm and ate our burgers. nice slices of red onion. home made cheese from the farm market down the road. corn on the cob. no tomato.

squirrel in the floor

the sweetie called to me from the bathroom. "can you hear that? he said. i could hear nothing over the sound of two full sets of dachshund toenails clacking on the wood floor as they came in to investigate. we picked them up and listened again. it sounded like they were still walking around. in the walls. the bathroom upstairs is under the eave of the house so half of it has ceiling and half of it is a slanted roof. the small clattering walking around sounded like where that slant of roof meets the wall, down near the baseboard. clatter clatter. a bit later, downstairs, it sounded like guthrie was walking around upstairs. clatter clatter. except for the fact that there are rugs where the walking was happening. and guthrie was snoozing on the sweetie's lap. it walked all over upstairs, from the front of the house to the back. and it sounded like a ten pound dachshund. clack. clatter.

i decided it must be a raccoon (because raccoons and i are sworn enemies and i blame them for many things) and began to harness the dogs up and put on their leashes. why? the sweetie wanted to know. in case it gets loose or is rabid. i don't want it chasing them or them chasing it. oh. the sweetie is used to this sort of thinking and frankly i'm surprised i had to explain things to him this time. he got the flashlight to investigate. he likes to investigate and i like that this usually means i don't have to investigate. i am shaggy to his fred. we'd been having a sporadic thunderstorm quite a bit of the evening but only the light show and sound effects were left as the sweetie stepped out into the wet night to find the creature.

he did not find it, but found how it got in. by the time the dogs and i got ourselves together and got outside to gawk into the darkness, the sweetie was saying, firmly, "well, he'll just have to come out." i didn't know who he meant and said so. the animal. of course. because saying it so forcefully will certainly make it so. i'm pretty sure mr. raccoon up there heard the sweetie and said, "dear, pack up the kids..... well, we've got to go...... i'm not sure, exactly. the people seem to think we should be somewhere else..... i know. if it's what they want."

when the sweetie showed me the hole the animal got in through, a place along the roof of the porch where two boards should meet but don't, i couldn't believe it. the animal making the noises in the house was too large to get through there. i was sure of it. i tried to imagine stuffing one of the dachshunds through there. not a chance. guthrie's little plow of a chest would get stuck, not to mention his rather un-dachshund-like backside. and max would simply refuse to fit by willpower and anger alone. he has that jedi thing.

but now it's clear that it's not likely a raccoon. maybe a squirrel. so when we are downstairs, there's something running around right over our heads. when we're upstairs, it's below our feet or in the walls. there's a pretty big amount of empty space inside our house we didn't know about. space we're going to shoot full of that sassy injectible insulation one of these days soon.

until then, the sweetie will fashion some sort of mechanism to get the thing out. a one way gate, so to speak, so the animal will be able to go back to the wild but no matter how many of his pals he tells about the place, none of them will be able to get back in. the sweetie knows how to do these things just like he knew how to rewire the lamp sitting across from me right now. just like he figured out how to build some contraption that removes humidity from the basement and managed to do most of the work on an ancient volvo for several years.

see, for me, every obstacle is a horrible raccoon, probably frothing with rabies, waiting to bite my poor, defenseless, little dogs. for the sweetie, everything he encounters is an opportunity to see if he can do something spectacular and unexpected.

camera

the new supernatural nephew called the other day. i hadn't heard from him for a while, but i knew he'd been busy entertaining houseguests- family from spain who don't have the luxury of seeing him any time they want. i know how they feel. it is tough to pack everything you want to tell someone so new into such a small time and i didn't want to call right when they were getting to know him and were storing up for the long time in spain when they have to be without him.

but he dialed up on his own and everything sounded muffled. "you've got to help me!" he said. he sounded like he was in a very soft cave. "cola, where are you?" i asked, worried he'd got himself dumped in a hamper or something. cola is not his name. it's not even what i call him, but we've been playing a game called renamer, where we try to come up with as many variations on his name as possible, giving him and endless supply of uncomfortable nicknames. cola has stuck a bit because it makes him laugh. eventually i will transfer cola back to nicolas then to nikolai and it's only a matter of time before i start calling him tesla and make his ringtone on my phone modern day cowboy or something. when i call him cola, he sometimes calls me root beer. he thinks this is endlessly funny. we are now so far from the point we're going to need a map. hang on.

small child, muffled phone call. "she thinks i'm asleep," he whispers. "i'm under the blanket in my bed. i have to be quiet." "okay," i say, trying to imagine how he got down, got a phone, got back up and dialed without getting her attention. "but why? your mom seems pretty mellow about the whole baby thing and she hasn't blown your supernatural cover, so what' the problem?" "i see them in my sleep, coming at me from out of nowhere. cameras, videocameras. when i open my eyes, she's there expecting me to be cute. look. i can't be cute all the time. she swoops in so close the camera is this horrible monster coming to devour me!" "oh, come on now," i say, laughing. "if you're smart enough to know it's a camera, you know it can't eat you. don't be silly." "i'm speaking metaphorically," he snapped. i laugh again and begin to explain the difference between simile and metaphor. he's only four months old, so i'm not going to be too hard on him. then i think a moment. he really is speaking metaphorically, sort of. although he's also using some personification (monsterification?), i figure it's best if i just don't mention it.

so now i have a problem, a conflict of interests, so to speak. because i can talk to his mom about the paparazzi-style scene she's created in her home and he'll know i'm there for him, on his side. he'll know i've got his back and that i'd cross even my own sister to make him happy. then there's the other choice. because i still haven't actually met him yet. i've never seen him for real so all those pictures and movies she's constantly making are most of how i know who he is. the earliest i will get to meet him is october and he'll be around seven months old then. he'll be driving, i'm sure and will probably be practicing his supernatural skills as well. flying. invisibility. he doesn't even know what i look like. if he stepped off a plane by himself, i'd need to have a big card with his name on it so he'd find me.

i should be used to this, of course. the older supernatural nephew has been growing up half a country away as well and visits are every six months, every year. so although the new nephew is coming to me for help and because he has faith in me, i'm at the point in the superhero movie where someone has to make that big, selfless choice and this is where my own inability to think beyond me me me dooms the hero to a great deal of suffering and indignity. because i would look at new photos of him every day and i would listen to his chirps and gurglings as long as as she can hold the camera on him. so i try to make it sound like this is the small bit he has to give as a supernatural to keep her in check, to keep her going along with the whole normal infant story line. he doesn't want to blow his cover. he buys my story because he has very little experience of the world and simply doesn't know any better, but he whines a bit and wants to know if it will let up at all. it will, i assure him.

i know tomorrow she'll grab the camera and wave it in front of him, daring him to do something adorable. and he will, because i told him he has responsibilities. he hangs up the phone and i think to myself he's really being sort of a baby about all this. i hope he'll grow out of it by october.

cookies & milk

i went to the co-op to get some cookies and milk because, well, that's just how things are. a person needs cookies and milk from time to time and it was time. the co-op is now the big store in the hood so even though milk is more than $4.50 for a half gallon, i went.

when i got there i went straight to the paul newman cookie section. i love paul newman. sure, his movies are nice, but the man runs a great company. cereal. pasta sauce. salsa. popcorn. coffee. tea. snacks. cookies. mints. dog food. our dogs discovered paul newman during the great dog food poisoning scare. you've got to have a little more faith in a dog food company that tells you the name of the farm where they grow chickens for the food. look, the chickens lead a better life than most people i know and happy chickens are tastier. so at our house we love the paul newman, his "shameless exploitation in pursuit of the common good" and his cookies. i knew the sweetie was expecting mint oreo-style cookies but i saw some soft cinnamon cookies we'd never tried sitting right above them. i'm grown. i can buy what i want. i got both.

i strolled up to the register with the two bags of cookies, some of that solid gold milk and a cup of yogurt or two. the teenage girl at the register said hello, then started singing softly. whiskers on kittens. bright copper kettles. schnitzel with noodles. she didn't sing the way teenage girls sing, all trilling and woobly and over the top. just soft and very simple. sweet. but then the teenage boy bagging up my cookies joined in. not what you'd call a confident singer, but his voice next to hers sounded like it should be there. and they were singing a song from the sound of music. it made me laugh. she smiled and said they were trying to make people feel happy. i've never thought about teenagers working together, while at their grocery store jobs, trying to make anyone feel happy. but i was, so i said thank you. as i walked out, she turned to the boy and said, "when rod stewart did a cover of that song it was awesome!" and i giggled the whole way home.

i don't usually plug the companies, but i think mr. newman and i vote similarly. for more information on the sassy paul newman go to: http://www.newmansown.com there's more stuff at the newman's own organics section. i can't guarantee your check out person will sing just because you're buying mr. newman's cookies. maybe.

rail

the first time i saw it it was sitting on a flatbed trailer across the street in front of the bed and breakfast. some sort of tiny orange car with metal wheels. i stared out the living room window and felt dizzy. my chest was collapsing in on itself like my heart was trying to devour my body. it is rare that i feel an overwhelming desire for objects, but when it happens, it's crippling. the need makes me sick. i didn't know what it was, what it was called, but i knew i needed one. maybe more than one. my need was so great i was unable to speak. i went out onto the porch to stare at it some more.

on the back, near the top left side of the orange body was a plus, the sort you see on first aid things. some sort of tiny railroad ambulance, maybe. i sat on the porch, forgetting the mountain and the birds and everything else. little orange rail car. little orange rail car. then it was gone. the sweetie mentioned he'd seen another one and we thought maybe some sort of convention was going on. tiny rail cars everywhere. then, yesterday, it was back. sitting on its flatbed in the evening. how many were there in town? how many could there be?

this morning, we drove by the depot, which is nearly impossible to avoid, because it is about a block from our house. they were lined up. ten. twelve. more. mostly orange but a few yellow. some had two seats like my orange ambulance. some had four. and there were old guys milling around everywhere grinning like little boys, sitting in the things, wandering around with reflector vests. gray hair. white hair. orange vests. orange cars. we kept driving. we had someplace to go. but when we came back, we saw them a few miles down, driving on the rails, spaced out like cars on a highway, full of still grinning old guys, two in a car or four. like they had new bikes or something.

the depot was empty so the sweetie called when we got home. the woman on the phone called them "putt-putts" and said the old guys were a gang who roamed the country riding around on little bits of railroad in these things. i'll bet when they're not riding, they're working on their putt putts or talking about engines and parts and railroad history and bridges made of stone or iron from before even they were born. and when they're riding, they don't say much. they just grin like idiots and drive somewhere between 20 and 30 miles an hour down the track.

eagle

this morning the alarm went off at 5. funny thing is, we were all four already awake. the sky outside was a color that doesn't exist anywhere during the day, a little difficult to look at. 52 degrees. the dogs pretty much went right back to sleep, but the sweetie and i got ourselves into the car and drove three or four miles down to the east branch delaware.

it was cold enough to feel the air hit your insides when you breathe and i was surprised to find the water warmer than the air. we stood in the water and cast and reeled, cast and reeled. i've recently noticed i like fishing. it's not so much the catching part. the sweetie likes that. he catches them, too. but i like standing out in the water, looking around at the mountains and the rocks and all. i like the repetitive casting and reeling. i like the not talking and the sounds the birds and water make together. so while the sweetie focuses on reeling in the fish, i wander around, look at the sky, watch the tadpoles.

and then i saw it. "look! an eagle!" i yelled and pointed. the sweetie looked up. "that's not an eagle. that's a heron." oh. it had a white head. it had gray wings. it was big. and i wanted it to be an eagle. everyone around here blathers on about all the eagles they see all the time. like they're stray cats or something. although i know it isn't possible, i watch every day from my old lady rocking chair, expecting an eagle to come flying down the road. i already said i know it isn't possible. so the sweetie says it's not an eagle. and then two seconds later i yelled, "look! an eagle!" and he looked. and evidently (according to the sweetie, who tends toward factual information) while he looked i said about seventeen other sentences, each with the word "eagle" in it. it is an eagle. wow. that's really an eagle. it is an eagle, right? eagle. eagle.

it was. not more than a few seconds behind a great blue heron, it came sailing around the river bend and followed it upstream, right over us. and i was too stupefied to get my camera. i've never seen an eagle flying around in the wild before. it was certainly worth the early morning. we also saw two deer, one of which i thought was a bear. i am working on my animal identification skills.

for kevin, where the fish go

pepacton reservoir during drought. it looks like "former site of olive" may be taking back a little. this is on the way to d.e.p. fishing










the road to nowhere on pepacton reservoir, a d.e.p. site, where you can walk right down into the fish on a road that used to go to one of the towns that's still under there.



pepacton reservoir, just before a large storm came through and slightly before some jerk asked if we caught anything. when we said no, he snorted, "how could you not catch anything down there?" well, jerkweed, maybe i wasn't trying very hard. or maybe i'm really bad at fishing. feel better about yourself?





pepacton reservoir from shore because we do not have a boat. when we get one, it will not be able to leave pepacton reservoir because the d.e.p. says so.

fishing on esopus creek off 28 near allaben, state land











fishing on esopus creek off 28 near allaben, state land, the other direction

along delaware and ulster rail bed trail, where there are many fishing streams, but also a pleasant walk with scenery enjoyable by nonfishers, even small children.









d.e.p. fishing site on route 10 near south kortright.

trans am acres. just past the above fishing site. i do not believe the d.e.p. is in any way connected with this.










d.e.p. fishing site on east branch delaware near margaretville. that's the remains of an old bridge abutment.

knitting on east branch delaware, a d.e.p. fishing site, not zoned for knitting at all















nests under bridge over east branch delaware, a d.e.p. fishing site. the birds living here have a deal with the d.e.p. and do not require a permit to fish.

happy anniversary

to the new supernatural nephew's parents.

the magnificent exploding max

max fell out of bed. at 4:40 this morning, i awoke to a thump. it's the sort of thump that lets you know a medium sized dog has landed on his back from a few feet up. the thump wasn't on my side of the bed, so i woke the sweetie, who insisted max just jumped down to get a drink. now, max is gearing up for his sweet sixteen this fall and he's not the jumper he used to be. back in brooklyn, we have little steps so he and guthrie can get up and down from the bed without breaking those short little legs they insist on having. here, we lift the old guy up and down by hand, the way they did it in the olden days. max won't jump down himself. instead, he'll put himself very near my head and will cry a sad, horrible cry for as long as it takes to wake me and let me know he needs to get down. this does not work with the sweetie as he could sleep through an explosion, so max doesn't bother.

so it was no surprise to me when we turned on the light and max didn't look quite right. well, max has never really looked quite right, but this was different. we've noticed he's going deaf and we've also noticed sometimes he stares off into space for a while. none of this has really changed him all that much. if anything, he's been more wonderful in his ancientness. but when i reached down to pick him up he snapped at me. this made me think he broke something in his fall. all his bones are about the same age, so it could have been any of them, but he was standing when the snapping occurred, so i figured it wasn't a leg, back or head bone. probably a rib. scary. ribs are always snapping off, puncturing lungs and other horrible things. we saw this a few weeks back on deadliest catch, and if it can happen to a ship captain, it can happen to max. the sweetie insisted he was fine until the snapping turned his way. then, suddenly, he came to the conclusion, based on all he'd seen, that max fell out of bed.

which meant that in the still dark morning we all four (guthrie is a worrier and needed to be right up next to max) went downstairs (max had no trouble here, which really narrowed down the possible bones he'd broken) where the sweetie took max out for a walk because nobody could sleep. this meant guthrie stood inside with me worrying up a storm. he is, after all, my dog. when everyone was back inside we continued to look at max's grumpy side. this particular side harbors many of his old dog bumps. you will remember from a few posts ago we had to have a particularly hideous bump removed from one of max's back toes. and a few years back, while he was under for something else, we had one removed from his back, right in the prime pet zone. so this side, his grumpy side, was grumpy far before he fell out of bed.

and what we found when we examined the horrible side of max is that one of his awful old dog bumps had been torn out by the roots. we did not find the actual bump, which we suspect might be somewhere inside max. it's best not thinking about that sort of thing. what this means is that max had a gaping hole in his side the size of a pencil eraser that went right into him. we are, at this point, pretty well able to deal with any sort of external grotesqueness max can create. and now that we weren't worried one of his ribs had leapt off it's mooring and skewered a lung or two, everything was fine. max was still in a lot of pain and feeling pretty stupid for falling out of bed while gnawing off one of his bumps. we waited for daylight. then we waited for the drugstore to open. the sweetie went to get a bandage and other max repair items. we hoisted him into the kitchen sink (his least favorite place in the house) to bathe off what looked like a tunnel into max. then we wrapped him up like a fighter with taped ribs.

for the first fifteen minutes, he was so humiliated, he just sat, staring into space. i reminded him whose fault all this was and what time the sweetie and i got up to investigate all this drama. i let him know guthrie had stood by him, staring, clueless for hours. suddenly he recovered. he has five or six bumps left right now, but he can only reach two. i'm sure he'll be dramatic when the time comes.

freaks and monsters

disclaimer: don't get yourself all riled up about the word "freak". go to the coney island freak show and learn a little something about difference if you're snarling right now.

yesterday i spoke to the first supernatural nephew. i had called his mom to ask about shipping some mysterious chocolate and then there he was.

what's your favorite animal? he asked. now, i know my favorite animal is the bat. there's nothing better, nothing more fantastic, but i paused, scanning my brain, because i wanted him to be impressed. i wanted him to be proud of my choice. i went with bat. he seemed pleased. i asked about his favorite and it's a pterodactyl. he hesitated first, asking if it could be extinct. i said extinct would be fine because i know how he loves the dinosaurs. good. then his favorite is definitely pterodactyl. he likes the way they're able (in his way of seeing things) to fake out larger, land-bound predators by swooping away at the last minute. he laughed just thinking about it. he said pterodactyls would laugh, too, yelling down taunts to the carnivores snapping below them. secretly, i was thrilled because we'd chosen the same animal. okay, not really the same animal, but kindred creatures. freaks. irregulars. it is his ability to recognize and celebrate rarity and strangeness that i hear most in these calls. the nephew and i love the churkendooses.

for those of you who don't know, the churkendoose is the barnyard version of the "it takes a village to raise a child" story. it seems one day the ladyfowl at the farm notice an egg all by itself. it doesn't belong to any of them, but each takes a turn sitting on it. all that sitting somehow infuses the little birdlet with characteristics from all the mamas involved. the hatched bird is a freak. spectacular and gifted, a little bit like everyone but not entirely like anyone. misfit. but every one of those bird mamas saw her own kind in the little freak. that's the moral of the story, i suppose. that even the strangest among us has a little bit of us. but what i got from it as a kid is that everyone loves the strange kid.

there will be more phone calls. the nephew lives half a country away and we don't see each other much. he changes quickly and i can't keep up with what wildness swirls into his head but he reports on bits of it from time to time. i know there will be more questions and i'm ready. i have not forsaken my beloved bat, but there are more loves than one in the animal world. i have a whole list of animals he'll like to meet. platypus. wallaby. axolotl. but those are pedestrian. those are easy. i've gone to schreber's fantastic beasts for the serious stuff. malayan stink badger.klipspringer. fossa. crab-eating fox. african chevrotain. greater grison. babirusa.

gunpowder pinhole

warning: this is too long to be one entry. you know how little kids see something exciting and then tell you about it in meandering, stream of consciousness? proceed at your own risk. loads of photos toward the end.

disclaimer: polaroid pinhole photos were rephotographed on a digital camera and downloaded. editing was hasty.

those of you who have been visiting a while will remember the very first post, about "arkville holiday", a confusing little wonder involving firemen, bbq, fireworks and santa all on the 27th of december. well, i don't mean to alarm you, but that's not the only time of year we get a fireworks combo. that's right. the fourth of july, done up margaretville style, is not to be sneezed at. and, of course, there are firemen. and bbq, though santa was nowhere to be seen. in his place there's a no joke, bona fide carnival.

here's the deal. the carnival busts loose on the first. we went over to the field behind the a&p around dark. there were clusters of folks milling around brightly lit rides, none of which seemed to be going. that was not a problem. most everybody was deeply involved in some sort of carnival food- cotton candy, funnel cakes, fried vegetables, lemonade, sausage and peppers. a few were trying to win things at those games of skill. the prizes were impressive. almost nothing was a cartoon character. this sort of thing repeats itself until friday, when the entire town takes off from work in anticipation of the day's festivities. starting with the flea market. now, the flea market is a lot like most. it's outside on a field between arkville and margaretville, sort of across from the local hospital. it has plenty of folding tables full of stuff like twenty year old used hair mousse and lots of broken kitchen utensils. and farm implements. and wagon wheels. the local army navy place has a little booth, complete with a display of guns "not for sale". heh. but on the fourth of july, the flea market transforms. it takes on a level of seriousness and excitement that truly makes it worth taking a day off to see. so we did.

generally, folks park at a pull out on the side of route 28, with space for maybe ten cars. but on this special day, cars were lined up along both sides of the road, parked in the lot of a semi-defunct restaurant and even on the grass near the edge of the market. we walked over to the first "booth", which was mostly a bunch of junk lying on the grass. the folks at the flea market appear to have limited marketing and display skills. this doesn't matter when you're selling stuff for a buck, but when you slap a $300 sticker on a rusted saw, you better make it look pretty. and they don't. but back to the first booth. junk on the ground. and then the puzzles. 33 jigsaw puzzles, all assembled, lying on the ground. i'm not joking. mostly outdoor scenes. village scenes. at first i thought they were mounted on something and meant to be used as art. nope. just put together for folks to look at. that way you can see all the pieces are there and you can see what you get in the end. brilliant. disturbing.

there was a table near the middle with an old microscope. it sat on a wooden board next to some other lab looking equipment and had a $25 tag on it. i might have mentioned before my love of microscopes and my need to have old, busted up junk all scattered around. it was a raggedy, dusty mess. the sweetie wasn't too sure. he loves the old, busted up junk as well, but in this new house, he likes his busted up junk a little nicer than what we've had in the past. the thing about the sweetie is, no matter how raggedy an object is, if it has working mechanical parts and he can fix it up and get it going, he can be convinced that we need it. he was. so i forked over my $25 and it was at this moment i realized the microscope was mounted on a board and the strange little machine next to it was coming home, too. this, for me, is the equivalent of spying a dollar on the street and realizing it's a five while picking it up. i was worried someone would find out what we had before we escaped with it. we got it home where i freed both machines from the board and shined them up a bit. the sweetie got things working and in no time at all we'll be gazing at pond water and fly wings under the thing.

but i forgot about the firemen. the margaretville firemen do not have brooks bbq cater their field days. they make their own. on the lot across from the a&p there was a mile long grill with several firemen tending half chickens and there were some folks standing at little booths scattered randomly (and with no clear indication of what's going on) over this parking lot and on into the park behind the grocery. i think we counted five places to buy chicken, none of which said anything even resembling "hey, buy chicken here!". but it doesn't matter. if you want the chicken, you'll find it. and for $7.50, these folks will slap half a chicken in a styrofoam box and toss in a roll and two sides (i got beans for both mine). i have been known to be squeamish about food, but for some reason, seeing the guy grab a half chicken out of a large cardboard box covered with tin foil didn't stop me from digging in on the walk across the street.yes, before we sat down i was chewing on chicken in the street. and there will me more again today. they are not joking around with this whole field days thing. judging from the amount of folks i saw gnawing on half chickens, margaretville firemen will be able to buy a whole new set of trucks. perhaps they will sell the old ones at the flea market. i know someone who needs one.

but we still aren't to the main event. the fireworks. now, we live about a mile from margaretville, just down the road on route 28 and we hopped in the car around 9 for the 9:30 show. we knew to expect something pretty swanky from the arkville holiday experience and we wanted to get a good seat. we did not understand the event at all. we underestimated everything. we turned right off our own road onto 28 and within a few yards we saw cars parked along the side. some folks were walking along the dark road toward margaretville and the a&p while others were just sitting in lawn chairs in the backs of trucks or on the ground between cars. the flea market grounds were packed and the little rise where the hospital sits was covered with families on blankets. like times square on new year's eve. i'm not exaggerating. except without any of the nastiness. no yelling. no honking. and our car was going forward. confusing. we decided to go for it. we kept driving, taking a right into margaretville, crossing the river and going past the a&p. and we drove up into town. now, margaretville is like many small towns. it's small. once you get off the main street it's just houses and churches and sidewalks. so we drove toward the back end of town, which is pretty much four blocks from the front end, and we parked. we didnt' really know where things would be so we followed the stream of folks with lawn chairs and blankets. we had our own blanket and a couple of cameras with a tripod. this will be important later. the trail led us to an alley up behind the big trucks the carnival people live in. there were plastic lawn chairs scattered near the side doors of the trucks, but everything else was shut up tight against the mass of townfolks. we kept walking.

and then the road went right up to a roped off clearing with every human being for fifty miles packed in. this is where i mention i'm not so good with crowds. i know i've spent the last ten years in nyc. still, not good with crowds. but fireworks is a whole other kettle of fish, so we pressed on. there was a little open space on the ground right at the edge of the road and we plopped our stuff down. a woman and a young girl were selling glow sticks, which we clearly needed. they're still glowing this morning. we faced ourselves the direction everyone else was facing and the dark finally got serious. we were looking at a small rise where a tiny building with the sign "margaretville water dept." on it hunched down. when i say tiny, think shed. from behind margaretville water dept. it started. fireworks like you only read about. and, just like at arkville holiday, they echo off the mountains in crazy ways. you can feel them exploding in your insides. and we had managed to wander into front row center seating. the sweetie took photos with the digital camera, long exposures with brilliant color. i had the pinhole camera on a tripod, exposing the film for a minute or more. the whole explosion thing lasted at least 30 minutes, during which time if you craned your neck you could see a terrifying red cloud just behind the margaretville water dept. sinsiter. perfect.

after the fireworks we went strolling around the carnival, looking for places to set up the pinhole camera. we found plenty. and each time, some fortysomething guy, kid in tow, would look at us shyly for a minute, then ask, "is that a... a... pinhole camera or something?" in the manner of a ten year old boy with a crush. yes. it is. although i'm not prone to generalizations, especially those about men or women, i feel comfortable saying men of a certain age get all stupid over cameras they don't have, especially if they hearken back to something from their youth. i'd show the photos and they'd ask more questions. one guy had a child who is, i'm sure, in regular contact with the original supernatural nephew. he was keenly interested in cameras and had his own digital at home. he looked at the photos, gazed at the camera (at seven, he could already recognize the beauty in a simple, functional object- clearly a superpower) and cried, "that's exactly the camera i've been wanting!" of course it is. a wooden camera with no lens and a polaroid back. the very camera. so i agreed with him. his dad laughed and said they'd maybe try an oatmeal box pinhole. but i figure if you're buying a seven year old digital cameras, you've got the cash to buy him something really beautiful. something that will not be easy. something without a viewfinder, so he will have to find his own way. something that will require him to be very still and count, maybe as high as 300. that kid needs a camera like mine for real. the way he doesn't yet know he needs fireworks. and carnival rides. and chicken made by firemen.

front porch

the chairs are finished. i have managed several hours a day (it's okay. you can be impressed) in my rocking chair on the porch. before anyone gets all critical, i spend my remaining time hiking, gardening, picking up rocks scattered all over the yard, mowing and dealing with small but energetic dogs. i get my exercise. but at least one hour during the day and usually several every evening around dusk, i sit in my rocker, sip some sort of beverage (tea, bourbon, hot chocolate- it gets cool here at night), breathe air that smells like the summer when i was eleven and knit pants for the supernatural or peruse our library of geekdom.

when we bought the house, we immediately furnished it with a field guide to wildflowers (north american), catskill region waterfall guide (where we found that nice trail featured in an earlier post), peterson field guide to eastern trees, and the national audubon society field guide to birds- eastern region. this is because once you become a homeowner, a landowner, you have to know what's on your land. and around it. and i do. mostly i use the books in my secret feuds with the tree guy. he does not know about these feuds. he says the trees in our fence row are chinese elms and i know they're rock elms, mostly because of the drooping lower branches. he says the woodpeckers destroying said rock elms are downy woodpeckers when they're clearly yellow bellied sapsuckers. i win these arguments entirely in my mind. the field guides are vindication enough. the tree guy is so nice i don't have the heart to fight him for real. although i would clearly kick his butt. but this is what i do. i sit on the porch and look around and need to grab a book every few minutes to establish my surroundings. biblical folk say god let adam name everything. i want to know everything's name.

like the hummingbird i saw the other night. i thought that would be tough. they're tiny and it was nearly dark when the thing zipped over to the tiger lilies (who were in the process of closing up for the night) and pranced around. i was secretly hoping it would get stuck in a closing lily, but those things are pretty quick. by the way, the fireflies were all around the lilies, too, and i was begging them to fly into a lily and light up. they absolutely refused, although one did hover just above a lily and set the whole thing ablaze. but the hummingbird. the hummingbird, indeed. tiny. dusk. impossible to identify. except, according to national audubon society, the ruby throated hummingbird (archilochus colubris, of the family trochilidae) is the only one living its frantic little life around here. good. because i have no idea how many centimeters the thing was or the color of its undercarriage. generally, the folks at audubon are pretty straighforward with their descriptions of voice, habitat, nesting and range. but not with this little critter. check this out: "nesting: 2 white eggs in a woven nest of plant down held together with spider silk and covered with lichens. nest is saddled to the branch of a tree." holy cow. just put a few line breaks in there and you've got yourself something sassy enough for a high school poetry journal. the thing is, the language is pretty, but i'm thinking, "how do they get the spider silk?" i know they're small and i know they're fast, but come on. you're telling me a bird with that sort of amped up personality can abscond with a spider web and then manage to use it successfully to cobble together a hobbit nest?

they're so sleek and shiny and small, the hummingbirds. thank goodness for bats. fat, fuzzy, disheveled looking. it's the bats i really love. since i was a kid. they're such a brilliant package. mammal. nocturnal. flying. sleeping upside down in caves. and then the echolocation thing. seriously? one animal got all that? cows must be pretty annoyed. regular birds, too. not me. i couldn't take all that responsibility. i'm nearly overwhelmed just taking it all in from my rocking chair.