Category: Archeology of Home
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Real Things
I’m up to my neck in deferred things and pressing things, and always the real thing gets shelved. — Ted Hughes (Source: The Atlantic) I’ll soon revise and publish a post observing, lamenting, and resolving to vanquish “the tyranny of stuff” once and for all. Or, at least for a while. The post, still in…
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Sitting Sentry
Sometimes a poem is born of an idea once removed from reality. This even even supposed imagines Carley on “guard duty”, sitting outside the icehouse while I’m composing a tribute to her. I imagine myself looking down from the window above, observing her. A sentinel observing a sentinel. After all, isn’t a poet, a sort…
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Christmas Countdown
If the 12 days of Christmas refer to the interval between Christmas and Epiphany, then the same duration beforehand — the 12 days *prior* to Christmas, — are the Christmas countdown. And they’ve now begun… We’re already several days into this beautiful tree from Karen and Jim Thew, owners of the Spruce Mill Brook Christmas…
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Evening Emanation
This evening emanation greeted me while inspecting progress of the driveway improvements being undertaken by Bob and Phil, or *endeavoring* to inspect their work in the darkness that descends earlier and earlier and earlier this time of year. A glowing beacon. A bucolic barnscape. An icehouse lighthouse… After a year and a half of creative…
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Gray Day
What a persistent stretch of rainy gray days. It seems to me that February or March of this year marked a transition from *typical* North Country winter to rain-dominant weather. Then a rainy spring followed by a rainy summer. When autumn arrived, everyone was in agreement that the rain was behind us. Certainly September and…
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Sunup Sunday
Up early for a soggy gray morning, rambunctious not-quite-winter wind thrashing and whorling, raindrops on and off, on and off,… Not quite the sunup Sunday I’d conjured in my technicolor imagination! It was the sort of unsettled environment that makes the prospect of returning to bed more inviting than, say, making breakfast for Carley. But…
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Cargo Sled
Hat tip to Tony, Glen, and Yard Glider (yardglider.com), “the cart without wheels”. After brainstorming how best to transport seven aluminum framed, wood decked dock sections to three different areas of the property. Heavy, large, (4’x13’) and unwieldy, relocating the docks had been challenging my imagination. Meet the cargo sled! This clever contraption turned out…
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Poetics of Essex
At least part of what I was longing for after living, working, and exploring in Western Europe from 1999 to 2003 was a “connection with place“. To be honest, I’d fallen hard for Paris and Rome, and after four years based primarily in the former, untethering was bittersweet. But something was missing. I had begun…
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Holiday Homecoming
What a wellspring of euphoria this evening! We returned to Rosslyn after briefly sojourning in Santa Fe, returned to a delicate frosting of snow underfoot, early dwindling natural light, holiday lights glowing in windows, 28° outside, toasty inside, the promise of savory stew and spicy cider wafting like a whimsical Christmas carol,… Rosslyn welcomed us…
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Thank You, Steve!
This evening I return to thanks giving with a tribute to Steve Cooley. Over the last few years Steve has undertaken winter snowplowing, spring-summer-autumn lawn care, and landscaping maintenance (from hedge pruning to leaf collection and composting) at Rosslyn, ADK Oasis Highlawn, ADK Oasis Lakeside, and the Westport Yacht Club. And last winter he helped…
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Rosslyn Reindeer?
Recent wildlife camera footage suggests that we just *might* be hosting a herd of Rosslyn reindeer. Or Eastern Whitetail Deer masquerading as reindeer… That handsome 8-point buck above is rehearsing his best Rudolph routine, and his nimble chum below could pass as Prancer. Captured with discretely located cameras in Rosslyn’s wildlife sanctuary, these robust whitetail…
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Tony & Trigger
Sometimes a snapshot… is all we need! This candid of Tony and Trigger (Aaron’s constant companion) landed with a digital ding on my phone this evening. The caption, “Tough Guys”, made me chuckle. Like a movie poster for a vintage action film, perhaps? Trigger shadows Aaron wherever he goes, whatever he does. Tiny dog. Huge…