Talking In My Sleep

 [Posted on Facebook, June 17, 2018]   "Blackbird singin' in the dead of night ..."   That's my song for the day, only I composed my own line, with apologies to McCartney, "Bobolink singin' on the compost pile."   It pretty much works.   Try it.   There's that extra syllable in "Bobolink" but it's easily incorporated. I sat weeding the garden this morning while the bobolink serenaded me from atop the nearby compost heap, blurting his character istic song, reminiscent of R2D2 computing the answer to a posed problem.   The reason that kinda thing makes hearts flutter around here is that, through some intentional machinations, we set out to attract bobolinks to our very property.   Bobolinks are meadow birds – they like wide expanses of open grassland, and of course they hate it when they go to all the trouble to construct their ground nest of grass and soft leaves and then some tractor comes along and makes hay out of the en...

When he who hears doesn’t know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks doesn’t know what he himself means – that is philosophy.   -  Voltaire I mostly avoided philosophy in college.  It would be years before any formal study of the field caught my interest.    I did take one course my freshman year in which we were assigned The Myth of Sisyphus , the Greek legend, as interpreted by Albert Camus.   The central figure rolls a heavy rock up a hill, repeatedly, only to have it roll back down each time.  Sisyphus is condemned to repeating the cycle for all eternity.  I read the central story and judged it to be completely pointless, blithely unaware that this determination was an intellectually valid viewpoint.   My conclusion was couched not in any deep contemplation of Camus’ eisegesis but rested instead upon the relative unimportance of academics to me at the time.   My attention focused more keenly on sports, ...

Flicksville, Pennsylvania was my home for most of three decades.  In that time I delved into the history of the village, very little of which had been recorded in a single work, and wrote, with contributions from locals, Flicksville History.  A group of these folks had created a history club and held meetings in the Flicksville Church.  We organized a bicentennial celebration in 1991 and that same year published a monograph on the history of the village.  This piece is the foreword that I wrote for that work.   FOREWORD             The dusty memories of a little village of no particular grand distinction will, undoubtedly, be laughable to some. At times, I myself am struck by the notion, "What an incredible squandering of time and energy this project is!"    The number of individuals in this account who gained any notoriety or who were of obvious significance beyond the confines o...

[Posted in the Lowell Edition of Front Porch Forum (https://frontporchforum.com/) on April 10, 2019]      Just returned from a week in Sanibel, Florida where I was involved in high-level negotiations with the Sun, imploring it to return to northern Vermont. I accosted it first thing each morning as it arose over Dinken's Bayou and tucked it in behind Blind Pass Beach each night. Throughout the day we chatted as I walked in surf and lounged in sand, but no near-term commitments were to be had, so I returned to Lowell to find snow-covered fields, icy rivers, and chilling winds. My apologies to all. Especially, to the lonely woodcock who "peents" each frigid evening along our hedgerow before launching through bone-chilling air on his sky dance. Also to the waterfowl, huddled en masse in sparse open waters on iced-over lakes. And, our hungry barred owl whose dinner remains well hidden under persistent snow. But, I hear no complaints from these wild creatures – ...

Written August 9, 2007 From childhood's hour I have not been         As others were; I have not seen         As others saw; I could not bring         My passions from a common spring.         From the same source I have not taken         My sorrow; I could not awaken         My heart to joy at the same tone;         And all I loved, I loved alone.           Edgar Allan Poe. "Alone."                                                  The fact is, he was a homely child – his baby pictures always remind him of unflattering photographs of Pres...

Written June 8, 2005            I spoke to Joe Renard the other day.  We talk by phone every few weeks these days.  He went on about his five children, all girls, eight grandchildren, and four great grandchildren, all brilliant.  Nearly all his descendents who have come of age have acquired advanced education.   Three daughters have master's degrees.  Joe himself claims to be a fourth grade dropout from a one-room schoolhouse, but he contends in his slow, gravely voice, “I figure a fourth grade education in a one room school house is about the same as a master's degree these days.”  Then he got down to what we both love - “Where Are They Now?”  Joe fills me in on the long-lost gentry of Camp Hill , PA – names that I remember from times long past.  These conversations evoke long-sleeping memories and shed insights into some of that town’s social machinations that I couldn’t grasp as a boy.  ...