The Pellets

 When Janet and I first got together and I moved into the cabin her in Calais we heated with a massive wood stove (there are several pictures of my constant morning battles with the stove here on the blog). Eventually, I convinced her to buy a pellet stove (I lost out on my goal of moving her all the way to acquiring an actual furnace) as part of my long-term plan to get a new dishwasher and microwave and now refrigerator. This just shows that she's a lot tougher than me, which is not saying much, obviously. On a day to day basis, heating with the pellets is simply a lot easier, or, to think of it another way, less wear and tear on my rapidly degenerating body. The one great exception to this rule is late summer when the mass of 40 pound bags of wood pellets arrive; then, as the excellent Mike Kelly would opine, shit gets real. I think the first year we bought five tons, and then had to buy more on a bag by bag option at the end of the season - and the second season we bought six tons, and still ended up buying more individual bags late in the season - and so this year we just went ahead and bought seven tons. Each pallet is a ton, comprised of fifty 40 pound bags. The first year I carried in most of them, with some much-appreciated help from Janet, Gary and Ali. The second year I vowed that I would get over my own idiotic self and make a more deliberate effort to get more help carrying them in; there was even talk of a group carry in the pellets chili party. However, it came to nothing, mainly because of my own obstinacy, which is a legitimate desire not to bother other people and my own rage against the dying of the light vanity. And so I carried in all six tons, little by little, with my main goal being to average five bags a day. At that pace I can get them into the basement of the cabin in a little over two months. Now, with my legs this is a real challenge, but I did definitely notice that I was getting stronger (although in no less pain) by the end, with the last few days featuring a half-pallet carried in. It's actually OK that it takes so long to get them in, not simply to prolong my fragile life, but also because we don't actually have enough room in the basement to hold all of them. We end up continuing to carry them on after we've started burning them, thus creating and filling space at the same time. As long as they're in by the time the snow starts I'm happy. Anyway, this year I've decided to get serious about bringing in more folks to help, even if it's just to hire young bucks to carry them for me. Of course, I said that last year . . .

Janet is clearly much more excited about the arrival of the wood pellets than I am.

OK, five down, only 345 to go.

They haunt me constantly, staring in mournfully from the back yard, reminding me of my many failures.

Oh, it's always the wood pellets . . .

2025 Readings 77

 I just finished a reread of Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. I had read it a couple of times before, but this time I listened to, based on my son's suggestion of a really good recording. He was right, the one that pops up on Audible was really well-done. Thankfully, he told me to avoid the recorded Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which he says is terrible. My best memory of Kafka on the Shore was using it in a Rhetoric of the Self class that I was tagged at the last moment to teach at Champlain. I also had the students read the Overture to Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, the combination of which I'm pretty sure broke them. Despite the high quality of the recording, I'd also have to admit that I didn't like the novel as much as I did previously, and I'm not certain why exactly. If you research lists of best Murakami novels, Kafka on the Shore often comes out on top, which, truthfully, I've never agreed with. All of that said, the private library where Kafka retreats to, and which launches his true adventure, always carries a special place in my heart, and it would make the short list of literary locations where I could settle.

Museum of Everyday Life

 Last Friday the usual Breakfast of Excellence was switched from the TASTee Grill to the Village Restaurant in Hardwick, as Sandy and Kevin had plans to visit the Museum of Everyday Life. I'd always heard about the museum, but somehow never made my way to it, which is shameful because it's absolutely wonderful. It is, as the name suggests,  a celebration of the quotidian. There is a regular collection, in the main barn, and then a separate space for a temporary collection, in this case focusing on Stains. It was absolutely amazing. I'll definitely go back soon.

The main entrance, i.e. the upper barn.

In the temporary Stains collection you could mess with Stained Glass, which gave Sandy the opportunity to express his artistic side.

Thanks to Kevin to organizing the trip!

The museum, for many reasons, reminded me of the Museum of Broken Relationships, as both celebrated objects that anyone could contribute.

It was also like the Museum of Broken Relationships in that some of the displays were truly heartbreaking, so as this one.

Beauty and the Beast

 Janet snapped this picture at Ali's show the other night at Hugo's. G3 has always been beautiful, thankfully taking after his mother and not his ogre father.

My response was that the guy on the left looks like a movie star (which his grandmother believed with absolutely certainty), and the guy on the right looks like a reanimated corpse in a zombie movie.

2025 Readings 76

 I've often commented on my relationship with baseball, which I used to have such a childlike love. It's also true that I simply don't care much about it anymore, at least major league baseball. I haven't gone to a big league game in years, and even though I have the baseball package I might watch a few games a year. Recently Janet and I watched a series of Toronto Blue Jays games, but that was entirely her doing. Now, I'm perfectly happy to go to a Vermont Lake Monsters or Vermont Mountaineers game, which, I would argue, shows that I still love the game in its purest form. I still think it's the perfect sport, or at least the perfect sport that doesn't feature a rouge. Real baseball has become a metaphor for everything that's wrong with America, just as I think for the longest time it was a metaphor for everything that was right about America. In this case, it's the gross inequality of American life, which we happily accept as the price that one pays for "freedom." So, a small market team like the Reds can compete, if they're lucky, for a couple times in the space of a decade before they have to trade away all the young talent they picked up during their years of dumping. In that way it's much like the impossibility of anyone poor actually benefitting from the American  dream anymore (and don't get me started on the sport's promoting and celebrating of gambling, even on Reds games, which shows an extraordinary lack of awareness of its own history). Having said all that, again, I like the idea of baseball. With that in mind, I just finished Brian Mulligan's The 1940 Cincinnati Reds: A World Championship and Baseball's Only In-Season Suicide. In their long history the Reds have won five championships, which isn't many in a history that stretches back a century and a half, but it's better than no championships (I'm looking at you, Vikings). Of the five, even Reds fans tend to forget about the 1940 champions. Everyone remembers the 1919 Black Sox championship season (I still think the Reds would have won, that was a very good team) - and of course the 1975 and 1976 Big Red Machine teams (which, as all right-thinking individuals know, was the great team of all-time), and the inexplicable wire to wire, sweep the mighty Oakland A's, 1990 team. However, most folks, including me, don't really know much about the 1940 team. It's a pity, because it's a great story. They had made the series in 1939, but were swept by a great Yankees team, and clawed their way back the next year, coming back from a 3-2 deficit, and being trailing late in game 7, to win their first championship in over twenty years. It's also the only one of their five championships that they actually won in Cincinnati. Plus, the team faced the tragedy of catcher Willard Hershberger committing suicide in the middle of the season. Anyway, it's a fascinating story, and Mulligan does a nice job telling it. I'd definitely recommend it, even if you aren't a Reds fan.

Friday Night

 Yesterday was a pretty amazing day, which featured the usual Friday morning Breakfast of Excellence (except this time in Hardwick), and then a trip to the Museum of Everyday Life (more on that later), and then a trip to the Adamant Friday Night Cookout, and then a trip downtown to see Ali perform at Hugo's. My heart is pretty full. Hugo's, which used to be on State Street, has now moved around the corner to the far end of Main Street, which gives it a very different vibe. Ali was performing up on the third floor, which left some climbing of stairs, but it was well worth the effort. She had just started what they're calling a mini-residency, which means she'll be hosting shows on a number of Fridays, including next week (which means I'll be there once again). The crowd was very appreciative. So, if you're downtown Montpelier next Friday be sure to drop by Hugo's.

I need to start collecting and framing her posters.

Ali finishing her set list before the show. She and Janet get along famously, as I would expect two artists to do (at least two artists who aren't forced to compete with each other; in this case, I think they both appreciate the artistic drive in the other).

I've never seen my son so consistently and deeply happy, and I can't imagine a better gift that any daughter-in-law could give me.

Dr. Uyterhoeven Stops By

 Last night I was able to go to the Friday Night Cookout at the Adamant Co-op and not actually cookout and not actually grill, which made for a much more pleasant evening. It's not that grilling isn't fun, which gives Ken (the true grill master) and I an opportunity to talk baseball, but with my leg condition it's pretty brutal to have to stand for that long a time. Instead, it was Janet's turn to grill (she does a lot more work at the cookouts than I ever do), so I just was able to stop by fur a burger and to soak in a lovely summer evening. Here's a picture I snapped, as I lounged under a tree and waited for Janet to finish.

When I retire at Champlain I'll probably leave my cane hanging in the hallway in Wick, sort of Dr. Uyterhoeven's parting gift.

Woeful

 Thanks, ESPN, I could have figured that out on my own. I liked that I predicted Flailing, but the Bot calculated Woeful instead. It didn't allow me to choose my favorite CFL team, so obviously its the most invalid form of clickbait. 

Of course, when you spend decades supporting the Minnesota Vikings and Cincinnati Reds this is what you have to expect.

2025 Readings 75

 Here's another book that I ended up reading because of the never-ending demands of the Epics book. I was looking for one particular passage in Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, and, of course, ended up reading the entire book for the first time in around thirty years. As part of the buildup to explaining his famous proposal that it is better to be feared than loved, Machiavelli ended up quoting something that Virgil has Dido say in the Aeneid. So, essentially, I was looking for verification for something that constituted half a paragraph, and this led me to rereading an entire book (and this is why the Epics project has stretched on for years; any writer would nod knowingly). Actually, I'm glad for the reread because The Prince is an extraordinary (and grossly misunderstood) book. The line that really jumped out at me dramatically, although I've paraphrased it so often over the last decade, is: "For this is an infallible rule: a prince who is not himself wise cannot be well advised." It's one of many, many reasons why our current dictator is, has been, and will always be, a terrible ruler. It also helps us understand, in a non-princely fashion, why the rabid followers in his cult can't be made to see their astonishing error. 

Mordecai and Nick

 Here's a great picture of two underappreciated gentlemen: Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown and Nick "Eleven Finger" Myers. Nick is my cousin, and a great guy who I wish lived a lot closer. He, like my brother, is trapped in the ravenous maw that is Indianapolis, and, much like light in a black hole, it's difficult to escape from it. It will take serious dark magic to get either of them to visit when we've moved overseas (although their imminently superior better halves may make them see the error of their ways). One peculiarity (of many) of our relationship is that I send along the names and cemeteries of famous (or not so famous) baseball players who are buried in Indiana, and Nick magically tracks them down very quickly. Here he is at the graveside of Hall of Famer, Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown. Mordecai could throw an almost unhittable pitch, made possible by his hand being destroyed in a farming accident (kids, don't try this at home). I'll celebrate more of Nick's adventures in later posts.

Mordecai's career stats: 239-130. 2.06 ERA. 271 complete games. 55 shutouts. 56.9 WAR. Played for the Cincinnati Reds for one season (an important factor in Nick's adventures). Brown is buried in Terre Haute, Indiana. Oddly, while Nick visited Mordecai's grave he didn't take the opportunity to visit the Eugene V. Debs Museum (he's still a work in progress - Nick, not Eugene).

My Inexplicable 3000th Post

 It wasn't that long ago, it seems to me, that I was lamenting with my friend Cyndi that I had just finished my 1000th blog post but that it was impossible to conceive ever making it to 2000 (sort of a misdirected, "my life is over" sulk). And, yet, here we are at 3000 posts. Part of it relates to my desire to create themed discussions (Proust, Pessoa, faith, 2025 readings, etc.), which inspire posting. Part of it, I guess, is that, despite my protestation s to the contrary, I'm not quite dead yet after all. But most of it is extraordinary self-absorption. Now, how to mark this odd moment? I think for the 2000th post I created a Top Ten places visited post, so that's out of the question (maybe I'll revisit it for my 4000th post). Since I have nothing planned, why don't I just capture this moment in time.

Labels (non-geographic) with the most posts: 1) Proust (740); 2) Faith (381); 3) Personal (269); 4) Reflections (238); 5) Friends (217); 6) Travel (129); 7) Discography (125); 8) Family (93); 9) Readings 2025 (76); 10) Disquiet (74); 11) Champlain (73); 12) Literature (47); 13) Food (42); 14) Marcus Aurelius (40)

Labels (geographic) with most posts: 1) Vermont (132); 2) Jordan (123); 3) United Arab Emirates (117); 4) Portugal (101); 5 tie) India & Zanzibar (97); 7 tie) Iceland & Tanzania (38); 9) Canada (35); 10 tie) Italy & Russia(34); 12) Namibia (30); 13) China (29); 14) Egypt (26); 15) Yemen (23); 16) Spain (20); 17) South Africa (19); 18) Austria (17); 19) Zambia (16); 20 tie) Oman and Croatia (15); 22 tie) Sri Lanka & Czech Republic (14); 24) Hungary (12); 25 tie) Belgium, Kenya & Lebanon (11); 28 tie) Australia & Cincinnati; 30 tie) Morocco & Turkey (8)

This doesn't do justice to this moment, I suppose, but it's an interesting snapshot, nonetheless.      

2025 Readings 74

 For a person who loves the Aeneid, it's sort of amazing that I never managed to read Virgil's Eclogues or Georgics. Happily, I found a lovely Oxford University copy that included both. In this case I suppose I was finally driven to do it by the endless and exhausting demands of the Epics book (a very cruel mistress). There was a great passage in one of the Eclogues that fit in beautifully with my Aeneid chapter; it discussed how much better the world would be under Roman leadership. It served my purpose because I was trying to discuss that what Virgil was celebrating in the Aeneid was not Roman power, but instead the role that Rome would serve in bringing order and light to the world. So, I may have finally read it for selfish reasons, but in the end I loved it for the beauty of Virgil's words. There are many beautiful passages, but let me just include one, right at the end of the Georgics Book I:

   "Surely the time will come when a farmer on these frontiers 

Forcing through earth his curved plough 

Shall find old spears eaten away with flaky rust, 

Or hit upon helmets as he wields the weight of his mattock 

And marvel at the heroic bones he as disinterred. 

O Gods of our fathers . . ."

I think I must have been moved by it so much because it reminded me of what I hope the Epics book accomplishes, waking people to these extraordinary works that are sadly ignored yet existing right beneath the surface.

Oceanario de Lisboa

 On June's trip to Portugal I went out of my way to visit a couple places that I had considered visiting before - and should have visited before. One of them was the Oceanario de Lisboa, Lisbon's wonderful and world-class aquarium. I have no idea why I had never gone there before, and please, if you go to Lisbon, don't follow my foolish example and avoid it. It was especially appreciated on a brutally hot day. If I were actually fit enough to lead a student trip to Portugal I'd certainly include it.

Maybe later I'll actually get into my camera and download some other pictures and include them. Not surprisingly, none of the shots I snapped can begin to do justice to the aquarium. I'm sure this attempt was another of my never-ending - and never-successful - efforts to produce a truly aesthetic shot.

 

2025 Readings 73

 A while back I finished Dino Buzzati's The Singularity, which I remember saying I definitely needed to read again because I wasn't quite certain what happened at the end. Last night I completed Buzzati's The Stronghold, which I'll also certainly again, although this time more surely because I liked it so much. This was another in the New York Review Books Classics series, which features works which simply haven't been given been given - or are no longer being given - the attention they deserve. I'm very happy to have stumbled across this series, as I've liked most of them immensely. The Stronghold (originally released as The Tartar Steppes) tells the story of Giovanni Drogo, an ambitious soldier sent to Fortezza Bastiani, a remote fortification  in the mountains. He initially plans to leave immediately, then agrees to stay for four months for bureaucratic reasons, but then never actually leaves. Drogo keeps waiting for heroism to find him in the form of an expected invasion, which never arrives (at least the heroism). As a man whose career is drawing to a close, with far more of a whimper than a bang, I can appreciate the metaphor. However, it much more than a metaphorical one trick pony, and the images that Buzzati painted of the Fortezza Bastiani will stay with me. Recommended.

2025 Readings 72

 Early in this year of reading I made my way through Proustian Uncertainties, and now I've followed it up with Roger Shattuck's wonderful Proust's Way: A Field Guide to In Search of Lost Time. Essentially, I figure that if I read Proust's In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past - eventually I'll train myself to use ISLT) enough times - and read enough books about Proust - I'll eventually understand it/him. Shattuck's work is a classic, and while I don't completely understand some of his more murky literary analysis, I also learned a lot about the subcurrents that run throughout Proust's masterpiece. As I've mentioned previously, last year I purchased all seven volumes of the new translation, so I guess I do have at least one more reading in me. If you've read In Search of Lost Time once, I suppose it just be that you're pretentious, but if you've read it four times (soon to be five) then you clearly love the story. 

Here's a lovely section where Shattuck is helping the reader understand the relation between the novel and the actual life of Proust:

     This fission-fusion process explains why it is so unsatisfactory to keep asking if Marcel or the Narrator represents Proust. There can be no doubt that the Search embodies a version - both revelation and disguise - of Proust's life. The links are too evident to discount, from the setting and action to details like the Narrator having translated Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies. But Proust's disclaimers are equally powerful. He insists that his book be read as a self-contained story and not as autobiography masquerading as fiction. It would be foolish to insist on one of these approaches to the exclusion of the other. Toward the end of the novel one comes upon an odd passage that makes a tiny step toward reconciliation. There is nothing like it elsewhere in the Search.

"In this book, in which every fact is fictional and in which not a single character is based on a living person, in which everything has been invented by me according to the needs of my demonstration, I must state to the credit of my country that only Francoise's millionaire relatives, whop interrupted their retirement in order to bring their needy niece, are real people, existing in the world." (III 846/vi 225)

Here, I believe, Proust is pointing out to us a kind of vestigial navel cord, a detail which proves that his vast work does not coincide with actuality but was born from it. Images of slow gestation and final parturition do greater justice to the novel's origins than concepts of literal imitation or of complete autonomy. (Shattuck, 17-18)

These observations from a true scholar of Proust (as compared to a pseudo-scholar of Proust such as myself) are invaluable. Shattuck's work might not appeal to everyone, but if you're one of that small legion of true Proust-lovers then it is essential.

Male Friendship Decline

 This statistic popped up in my social media (such as it is) feed this morning. It was from a story in Psychology Today, which had to deal with a man trying to get over the loss of his wife and his intentional and growing ability to make and keep friends. Now, what I thought of when I saw the statistic was my male students, the ones who can't look up from the screens and who are increasingly and painfully socially awkward. I'd hate to think of how many of them fall into the category of those who have no close friends (I'm sure it's over 15%; and it will only grow once they leave the artificial bubble of college). I feel bad for them, but I can't help but think about how it makes them easy pickings for the radical right, who are selling a manufactured and false sense of community and masculinity.

Janet's comment in response to these stats (as usual, I was pestering her with stuff I'd read as soon as she grudgingly opened her eyes) was that I'm definitely the exception to this rule because I have so many friends. That's definitely true, and it's something that I put work into. I'm sure my friends wonder why I send them so many texts about articles or videos or random ideas, but a big part of it is the constant "work" of maintaining friendships.

2025 Readings 71

This installment is a product of my recent completion of Forever Calais. Yesterday I finished Mark Bushnell's Hidden History of Vermont. As I begin to more and more consider life after-Vermont, it's not at all surprising that I begin to reflect upon  my time in Vermont. All of the chapters are four pages long, and they provide an amusing introduction to a number of peculiarities related to this decidedly peculiar state. Some of the stories I knew, but many I didn't. For instance, I knew that someone had "finished" The Mystery of Edwin Drood by channeling the spirit of Charles Dickens, I just didn't know, or didn't make the connection because I first heard about it before I moved to Vermont, that it was Thomas P. James from Brattleboro. I'd also forgotten the Vermont connection to the stories of William and Horatio Eddy and their spiritualism. The story of the rich and famous who frequented Neshobe Island was kookier than I realized. Anyway, it didn't change my life for the better, but Bushnell's Hidden History of Vermont was definitely a fun summer book to read.

Friday Nights at the Coop

 This is an odd picture, I guess, but I like it anyway. The last couple weeks I've grilled at the Adamant Coop, as part of our summer Friday night cookouts. We do it to raise money to support the Coop, and keep us open during those lean summer months (or those weeks during mud season when trucks sometimes can't make deliveries - yes, it happens). As I'm driving to the Coop I always grouse about giving up part of my Friday for the cookout, but I always have good time and end up happy that I contributed and spent time with the community.

Our little protector sits on top of the pizza oven, watching out over his flock.

2025 Readings 70

 As you know, I've been including Great Courses in my list of readings this year, which, considering their length and complexity, is a valid addition. Now, I guess the one objection might be if it was a repeat listen, however, I'm including them anyway. A couple days ago I finished - for the fourth time - Professor Charles Matthewes's course on Why Evil Exists. It's a thirty-six lecture series, and it's absolutely wonderful. As is the case with a great novel or film, it seems like I get something new from it every time I revisit it. And, yes, it was the inspiration for my Nature of Evil class. His Great Course is absolutely and enthusiastically recommended. I wish he'd written a corresponding book, although I did purchase his book on Saint Augustine and listened to his Great Course on the great thinker. He's one of those professors that I've written emails to thanking them for their work.

Glorified Cat Couch

 This is as useful as I get anymore: glorified cat couch.

The subtle variations in Mollie's existence: sleep on me in the basement vs sleep on me in the living room vs sleep on me upstairs in my office.

2025 Readings 69

 As we've discussed, as part of this year of reading I'm picking up all sorts of books that I wouldn't normally read. I say this a lot, but what do I mean when I say books that I normally read? First, I guess, would be the eternal rereads: any number of Dickens's novels, but especially Bleak House or David Copperfield or Great Expectations; Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (yes, I know, I've read it four times, which is worthy of abuse I receive for it) and books about ROTP; Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet (and I've started giving presentation on it, FFK) or books about Pessoa; books on Islam specifically or faith in general; novels by Murakami, especially The Windup-Bird Chronicle or Kafka on the Shore or Norwegian Wood, etc. I guess I should include the Iliad and the Aeneid and the Ramayana and the Shahnameh and Journey to the West, or books about the Iliad or the Aeneid or the Ramayana or the Shahnameh or Journey to the West, although that's also related to my massive writing project, so they seem more, at least at this particular moment, completely necessary. Seriously, do you really need to read Bleak House or Swann's Way or The Book of Disquiet for a fifth time? Obviously, that's a trick question, because the answer is obviously yes. Duh.

Anyway, this year, beyond merely chronicling what I'm reading, I'm also throwing a broader net. Sometimes they work out, and sometimes they don't. Last night I finished a book that falls into the latter category: Kim Ho-Yeon's The Second Chance Convenience Store. I think I read a good employee review of it at Northshire or maybe I just thought I'd read a popular South Korean novel (or maybe I was trying to balance out the Squid Game). It's pleasant enough, and you might like it if you specialize in "pleasant enough" readings, but there's not a lot going on here. The ending is clumsy enough to fall into the egregious category with Chris Pavone's Two Nights in Lisbon, although the crime is more silliness as compared to breaking the agreement with the reader.

Anyway, I wouldn't recommend it, although I wouldn't stop speaking to you if you read it.

Lisbon Pride Parade

 One of the unexpected joys of my recent trip to Portugal was being in town during the Pride Parade. I'm stumbled across it, which is a surprising thing to say about a massive parade. Nevertheless, I wasn't planning on going downtown - my legs were very unhappy with me after a long day of walking - but it was a beautiful evening and I hadn't made it into the city center yet. I ended up hanging out on the side of the road waiting for the parade to pass by, and it had already been going for a while when I got there. I leaned against a building and wept. It was impossible to not think about what was happening at that moment back in the US, and members of the LGBTQ+ community were suffering because of the actions of Trump and the radical right. For not the first time, I was deeply ashamed of my country.

This was one little glimpse of a massive parade that snaked throughout downtown.

The vibe was extraordinary, so positive and loving and accepting. I say this way too often, but I love Portugal so much. They are such welcoming folks.

Barn Dance

 This just popped up in my email this morning. As I've told many people, it's quite wonderful to live in one of the unabashedly liberal corners of our increasingly christo-fascist county.

I love our loopy little corner of the world.

Sodom Pond

 Yeah, I know, Sodom Pond, but that's what it's called. It's the lovely pond across the street from the Adamant Co-op. Adamant used to be called Sodom for a while, which was a commentary on the rough nature of the crew that lived there during a brief granite boom in the town. Close to it is a place which is still sometimes called Gospel Hollow, which I guess tells you all you need to know about the battle for the soul of Vermont.

I get tired of making the drive in from Montpelier to Calais, so I increasingly take the more circuitous backroads up the hill. Truthfully, there's not a drive that isn't beautiful.

2025 Readings 68

 "To the historian, every battlefield is different; to the philosopher, every battlefield is the same."

Yesterday I started, and today I finished, Anne Michaels's Held, which probably gives you a pretty good idea of how much I loved the novel. Oddly, I had never read any of her work before, but I'll definitely be reading more of it. Her writing is beautiful, and she doesn't go out of her way to make things easy for the reader, which I almost universally admire. Each chapter jumps forward and backward in time, and she's clever in how she shows, subtly, the relationship between the different characters. It's definitely not a book that you'd have success with if you set it aside and picked up after a while; rather, you need to be more inside the story or you'd missed the not always obvious connections between the different characters. I don't think it worked brilliantly and consistently throughout the novel (especially an appearance late in the novel of someone who just doesn't seem to fit at all, but maybe at my next reading I'll understand the logic more clearly). 

"To the historian, every battlefield is different; to the philosopher, every battlefield is the same. War has ever redefined the battlefield; we no longer pretend to fight on designated ground, instead recognize the essential substratum where war has always been fought: exactly where we live, exactly where we have always believed we were sheltered, even sacredly so, the places we sleep and wake, feed ourselves, love each other - the apartment block, the school, the nursing home - citizens ingesting the blast and instantly cast in micronised concrete, rigid as ancient Pompeiians in volcanic ash. The strategic bombing of hospitals, to prove how senseless it is to save lives in a war zone, senseless as stopping up a hole in the hull of a ship at the bottom of the sea. What history is war writing in our bodies now? War fought by citizens whose muscles have never before held a gun or passed a child overhead, hand to hand, to a mother in a train car crammed immobile with refugees. The war being written in these bodies, in this child's body, will be read as war has always been read: stranger to stranger, parent to child, lover to lover. And, even if it is possible to return to one's city, even if one has never left, it will be a history told as it has always been told: far from home.

What was Alan's task? To write what no one could bear to read. What was anyone's task? To endure the truth. To act upon it. But even empathy, compassion, was to feel and think in terms of separation. And Alan could only feel and think now in terms of entirety, or humanity as a single organism, a single entity of cause and consequence, the human union of breathing and being we are born to. A man's brain spraying across your face. A baby in the womb. a bullet hole in its forehead. Exsanguination. Decapitation. The physics of ballistics in human bone and tissue. Soldiers praying for a successful massacre."

Living in an age where Trump callously supports Putin's slaughter of Ukrainians and Netanyahu's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as a shield for his own crimes, these words seems almost painfully prescient.

Old West Church

 Lately I've been trying to go out for walks on the days that I don't actually make it into the gym. There are days when my legs are simply a lot worse than others, and I've had a slew of terrible days later. As I told my neurologist recently, there are days when I simply feel like I'm losing the ability to walk (which I think I mentioned in an earlier post, sorry for repeating). Still, you have to fight on, and so I'm forcing myself out to walk, although it's awfully painful. Yesterday I walked around the grounds of the Old West Church, which I'm sure had something to do with reading Weston Cate's Forever Calais. From the very beginning it was designed to be ecumenical. 

In 1828 the first apportionment was made with usage of the meetinghouse on Sundays divided as follows: Baptists 10 Sabbaths; Universalists 20; Congregationalists 9; Christians 6; Free Will Baptists 4; and Methodists 3. Twenty years later the division was Universalists 32; Congregationalists 7; Methodists 5; Baptists 4; and Christians 4. (Cate, 77)

I suppose, if I'm honest with myself, one of the reasons why I'm interested in this local history is that our time here is coming to an end. If all goes according to plan, a year from now we'll be in Sicily, on the first leg of the great move. 

Inexplicably, I've never actually been in the building, which isn't open that often. There's always a Christmas Eve service, which we always say we're going to attend, but never do. I think this year I'm going to insist.

I'd always heard that the back of the structure is painted red, but I finally got around to finding out that it's true. Apparently, at least according to legend, red paint was cheaper than white paint, so, to save money, the back was painted red; and now it's just tradition. This shot was taken from the cemetery at the back of the property.

2025 Readings 67

 This morning I finished Weston Cate's Forever Calais: A History of Calais, Vermont. Janet gave me a copy of this book when I moved in with her three years ago, and to my shame it took me this long to get around to reading it. I'm sure it benefitted from my decision this year to read a variety of books that I usually wouldn't, which is not to say it's not a good book, but, instead, it's more a commentary on me getting into a rut. It's interesting/odd to think that it wasn't that long ago that Calais had a much bigger population, at exactly the time when it would have been much harder to live out here in the wilderness. There are some much larger socio-economic factors that you can't fight, although the good folks of Calais do a pretty good job trying to not only keep the town going but make things better. One of my favorite section was the final chapter where Cate focused on a few of the really interesting personalities who came from Calais. I especially liked the story of Sleeping Lucy Cooke.

Lucy Ainsworth, better known throughout most of her lifetime as "Sleeping Lucy," was born in Calais May 4, 1819. She was one of nine children, and it is therefore not surprising that the family was poor. When the older children were forced to go to work to help support the family, Lucy learned to braid straw and make bonnets. She later became a tailor's apprentice for a time, but her work led to a sickness, which confined her to bed for two years.

Doctors agreed that there was no hope for her recovery. The family, however, sent for a brother living in New York state who seemed to have mastered Mesmerism sleep. The brother came home and help Lucy to fall into Mesmerismic sleep. Shortly thereafter it is said that Lucy spoke clearly saying she would get well if someone would put together a collection of special herbs and give them to her. This the family did, and Lucy gradually returned to good health.

Lucy first appeared to have powers that allowed her to help people find missing objects. Her reputation spread throughout the countryside. While she was not always successful, she was right often enough to maintain her reputation.

In 1846 Lucy married Charles R. Cooke, a native of Morristown. It appears that Coke was a Mesmerist though little is known about him. With the help of her husband Lucy became a professional clairvoyant physician. Her psychic powers seemed to grow. The couple moved to Reading, Vermont, where Charles died in 1855. Shortly thereafter she moved to Montpelier where she lived for 16 years. She had retained Everett William Raddin as a secretary following Cooke's death.

She probably practiced self-mesmerism after her husband died, for she was only able to find missing articles or prescribe medicines when she was in a mesmeric state. Further, when she awoke, she had no memory of what she had said during the trance. Her medical practice included the ability to set broken bones mesmerically and help those with dislocated limbs. She also did a considerable mail order business in herbal medicines.

In 1876 Lucy and Raddin moved to Boston. Her later years were not always pleasant. She was estranged from her only daughter, and family members felt that Raddin had taken advantage of her financially and otherwise. She died in 1896 and was buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, far from her early beginnings in Calais.

The story sounded familiar, although I'm not certain where I would have heard it before. It led to a shallow rabbit hole (I'm too busy writing to give too much time to anything at the moment). Apparently Lucy was involved in a couple famous events when she helped locate missing bodies, and she later married Raddin, although she was decades older than him (hence the note above on why her family felt he had "taken advantage of her financially and otherwise.") 

I'd definitely recommend Forever Calais, and not simply if you live here in the wilderness, but also for folks interested in Vermont or more generally a glimpse into life in a very different time.

Sleeping Lucy Cooke

Jeff the Mothman

 I'm posting this mainly because of my childish glee at seeing Mothman the name of the email sender. Yes, I'm that immature. I sent away for a few Mothman swag items lately and I was checking on the status (one of them was a onesie, and I didn't want the kid to be too big before the swag arrived). Until that moment, I didn't know that the Mothman's name is Jeff.

Actually, Jeff is a great guy, replied promptly, and immediately helped me out. Obviously, you should visit the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant, WV, and in the meantime order Mothman swag online. I really should teach a class on the Mothman; by its very nature, it's interdisciplinary.

Anniversary

 I can't believe that it's already our third anniversary. Janet is out in Iowa at a writing festival (which she's loving), so I'm bumming around here without my wifey - although I'm so happy that she's out there with her fellow writers, working on her craft. A dozen times since she made the initial reservation she talked herself into backing out, and I talked her into staying in. This morning I sent her a long thread of pictures, starting with one I snapped on our first date and ending with this one from our wedding day.

I'm very, very blessed.

2025 Readings 66

 I just blew through Vincenzo Latronico's Perfection in two days. Granted, it's a short novel, but mainly this is a testament to what a great novel it is. I picked it up several weeks ago at Northshire, another one of the books I  grabbed from their New York Review Books display. So, it was already in the queue, but then I read a BBC article singing its praises as books to read this summer, so it jumped the queue. It tells the story of Anna and Tom, an expat couple living in Berlin and the life that they think they're living. Essentially, they're the couple that Janet and I do not want to be when we head overseas. Yesterday I shared this section with several of my friends.

They lived a double life. There was the tangible reality around them, and there were the images, also all around them.

Those images would be on the phone that woke them up. An astronaut singing in outer space. A girl riding a wrecking ball. They would light up their pillows as they roused from sleep, and parade, one after the other, beneath their fingertips while they used the bathroom. They would be there in the kitchen on the tablet as Anna and Tom waited for their coffee to brew, then reappear seamlessly on their monitors in the home office. A jealous husband's threats graffitied across the front of a house. Goats teetering on a cliffside or at the edge of a highway overpass. Whenever they went out for lunch, the images would shrink to the size of the rectangular screen, and hover, midair, a foot above their plates. A tornado of sharks in the sky. While they waited for the U8 or the M29. While they took a piss. A famous woman spraying an arc of champagne backwards over her head into a wineglass balanced on her tailbone. Those images lit up their faces in the dark bedroom when they went to set the alarm. The faces of strangers. The faces of handsome criminals. Avocado slices.

Granted, millions of people live that "double life" here, without ever bothering to move overseas, but for some reason it seems so much worse if you've made the break with your home country and you're throwing away your time in your new dream. If you're living that double life in Kansas I guess that's just a form of self-medication, but if you're doing it in Italy or Portugal it seems almost criminal.

Latronico's Perfection is very highly recommended.

Republica dos Fantasmas

 Here are a couple pictures that I snapped in Coimbra of the Republica dos Fantasmas, which was part of a series of Republicas that are associated with the University. Truthfully, I don't know if I completely understand the concept yet, but I'm going to research it. From their website: "The Store - Royal Association of Ghosts Republic"

"History of the Store. Rooted in the experiential culture of the University of Coimbra, and consequently in the history of the city of Coimbra itself, the Republica dos Fantasmas (Republic of Ghosts) is a group of academic residences designed to house the student community, institutionally linked to the University of Coimbra. Founded in 1969, it has been located in its current building since 1971, with recognition granted by the Rector4ate of the University of Coimbra on February 17, 1982."

"Products and Services. True replacement communities, alternative homes for those left behind in their homeland, the Republicas go beyond other student houses or university residences, representing the traditional form of academic life in Coimbra, with all that this entails from bohemianism to ideological issues."

2025 Readings 65

 This morning I finished Miranda July's All Fours. I came to it in a strange way, in that I read an article in the BBC which discussed how the novel was single-handedly tearing book clubs down the middle. I talked to Janet about it, but she didn't seem impressed, but then she picked up a copy at a local bookstore and thought it sounded interesting. So, as part of my year of reading things that I normally don't read, I took a gamble. I don't know if I loved it, but I think I liked it quite a bit, and lord knows I finished it in just a few days. I didn't know that she was 1) born in Barre, right down the road, and 2) that it's, as hard to believe as it might seem, is at least partially autobiographical. If nothing else I give her a ton of credit for courage, and I'm definitely going to check out her other books and films. Some of it, at least to me, clearly didn't work, and only made sense if it was designed to be purely metaphorical tools (the idiotic young dancer and the decorated room in the rundown hotel, both of which, I guess, are also unbelievable enough to be completely believable). 

Monday Morning Philosophy

 It's amazing how much of my YouTube stream has been taken up by Nicole Wallace and Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller and George Conway and the Bulwark and the Lincoln Project, etc. I guess, on one level, I get it, because I'm clearly not someone who is in favor of the current authoritarian regime. That said, it doesn't mean that I like this crew, and, seriously, they can fuck off. The reality is that they're all Republicans, all children of Reagan, and some of them directly played a role in the nightmare that George W. Bush unleashed on the world. I can't help but think that their rage is directed less at Trump's authoritarian regime, but rather that they're no longer the inside players shaping the autocracy. If Trump and MAGA disappeared tomorrow, they would happily skip back to an only slightly less abhorrent and slightly less racist and slightly less Islamophobic and slightly less misogynistic GOP, but one that provided the requisite tax break. The fact that they're given such a central role in the anti-Trump world is a testament to the right wing dominance of American media and the total failure of the Democrats to provide a different path forward.

2025 Readings 64

 Last night I finished Sarah Kendzior's Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America. This is the third book of hers that I've read in the last couple months and I still have one left. I'll probably wait a bit, mainly because it angries up my blood. If you don't know about Kendzior you need to find her work, both in print and also online. She's been right about so many things over the last decade, including being one of the few people who predicted that Trump would win in 2016. You can tell she takes no great pleasure about always being right about Trump and his class of kleptocrats, and would prefer an America closer to what America was supposed to be. Besides bringing the good with extensive research, she's also a very good writer. Here's the beginning of her thoughtful and thought-provoking introduction:

The story of Donald Trump's rise to power is the story of a buried American history - buried because powerful people liked it that way. It was visible without being seen, influential without being named, ubiquitous without being overt.

The Trump administration is like a reality show featuring villains from every major political scandal of the past forty years - Watergate, Iran-Contra, 9/11, the Iraq War, the 2008 financial collapse - in recurring roles and revivals, despite the widespread desire of the public for the show to be canceled. From Roger Stone to Paul Manafort to William Barr, it is a Celebrity Apprentice of federal felons and disgraced operatives dragged out of the shadows and thrust back into the spotlight - with Donald Trump, yet again, at the helm. 

The crises of political corruption, organized crime, and endemic racism are all connected, and they shape everyday American life. But in addition to these structural problems, we contend with specific powerful individuals who have acted against the public good for their entire careers. We see the same old men, again and again, vampires feeding on a nation and draining the lifeblood from words like "treason" and "trauma" and "tragedy." They are buffered by backers who prefer to operate in silence, free from the consequences of scrutiny. There is a reason they call it a criminal underground: you walk over it every day, unaware it exists until the earth shakes below your feet.

In the eyes of autocrats and plutocrats, the future is not a right but a commodity. As climate change brings unparalleled crises, the future becomes a rare asset, meant to be hoarded like diamonds or gold. To millionaire elites, main of whom already had an apocalyptic bent, a depopulated world is not a tragedy but an opportunity - and certainly easier to manage as they insulate themselves from the ravages of a literally scorched earth. The last four decades have led to the hoarding of resources on a heretofore unimaginable scale by people who have neither baseline respect for human life nor a traditional sense of the future. Their destructive actions have programmed a desperate generation to settle for scraps instead of settling the score.

Unless we were part of the opportunity-hoarding elite - the Ivankas and Jareds of the world - my generation did not get to have choices. Instead we had reactions. We fought to hold on to what we had before it was stolen, while thieves demanded out gratitude and supplication. The opportunity-hoarding elite told us we were imaging the permanence of our plight and sold us survival as an aspiration.

This book tells the story of how they cornered the market.

And the book is extraordinary, and damning and frustrating, but also incredibly necessary. One of the things that jumped out at me was gaining a clearer picture of Jared Kushner. I knew he was an idiot and a child of privilege (terrible grades and SAT scores, but, of course, got into Harvard), but I didn't know how corrupt he was/is; I mean, I knew he was corrupt, but he's off the charts corrupt. unbelievably corrupt. One of the strengths of Kendzior's work is that it shows us the holistic, generational nature of the corruption - it's not just Trump, who will eventually pass away, but the system will continue to fester. Obviously, Hiding in Plain Sight is highly recommended.

Unique Skill Set

 The other day, after finishing a workout at the Planet Fitness at the Berlin Mall, Janet walked into the nearby store to buy a couple shakes while I grabbed a table (mainly, I think she was giving me a chance to rest my weary legs). She returned with not one, but two, biographies of Charles Dickens. I don't know how she does these things.

It is a unique skill set. Still, I'm not complaining, I ended up with a mocha frappe and two books on Dickens. Now, how she's going to get cull out these books before we move overseas is anybody's guess.

Skeletal Remains

 On the last day of the latest Canada adventure, as we finally made it back towards the border on a blistering day, we stopped at the last Tim Horton's (at least the one that you'd bump into if you took 15 South as you headed for my favorite place to cross the border). Anyway, we were standing in line when a guy pulled it in a beautiful vintage car, which had a skeleton sitting in the passenger's seat. Of course, I immediately began chatting the guy up - and, of course, Kevin wondered why he ever travelled with me. The guy, yet another very nice Canadian, took me outside to show me the car and how he had set up the skeleton. It was pretty amazing. I asked him if he ever took his wife out for a ride; he said he did, although she had to ride in the backseat.

And what topped it off, the guy had adapted the skeleton so that its head swiveled. If you pulled up next to him at a stoplight he would get the head to turn to look at the people in the other car. I love Canada.

Night Stalker

 Somehow neither Janet nor her friend Erin had ever seen Kolchak: The Night Stalker. It's like they were raised in a nunnery or something.

Luckily, and obviously, I have the entire series on DVD.

Gabinete das Curiosidades

 I mentioned previously how visiting the famous library at the University of Coimbra was a bit of a letdown (five hour + wait, only twenty minutes total in the entire museum, ten minutes in the historic library itself, no pictures; if I could have had fifteen minutes in the actual library to take pictures I'd have a very different opinion on the experience). That said, the ticket did allow you to stroll around several different cool places at the University, including the Gabinete das Curiosidades (the Cabinet of Curiosities), which is a collection of truly odd artifacts that University of Coimbra professors had brought back from around the world. It helped that it was an appropriately dark and creepy room. If I lived in Coimbra (and Coimbra would make our shortlist) I'd drop into the Gabinete several times a year.

Highly recommended.

 

I loved this guy, and he sort of reminds me of the Banff Merman.

This is the first picture that I sent to my friends Mike and Cyndi, which inspired MK to respond that he wasn't really expecting my first picture of the day to be of a Siamese calf (it's like he doesn't even know me).

I needed to have brought my friend Steve on the trip to the Gabinete das Curiosidades. As a folklorist, he would have seriously nerded out.

I remember years ago visiting a display on Pre-Columbian civilizations in Memphis, and my friend Dave opined that the room with the mummies was where all nightmares were born - I may have an alternate theory.

Hopefully they dispatched this monster before he gobbled down too many members of the expedition.

OK, some are just naughty, and speak to the generally perverse nature of college professors.

Fascismo Nunca Mais

 Here's a picture I snapped in Coimbra on the Portugal trip last month. It seemed particularly meaningful as my own country is sliding into an authoritarian regime (which apparently makes around a hundred million people really happy). All of this is convincing me that my idea to teach a class on Fascism next spring is a great idea.

One of the few things that gives me hope in these dark days is that Portugal went through it's own authoritarian days, and somehow came out the other end as a healthy state.

Monday Morning Philosophy

 This is apropos of absolutely nothing, but it was a strange thought I had this morning. When you're in that intensely physical stage of an early relationship (what Janet and I jokingly/lovingly refer to as the "cheesecake & sex" stage), the first day that you actually don't have sex is either the true beginning of your relationship or the beginning of the end of your temporary relationship. I think this is an observation that will launch a thousand Rom-Coms.

2025 Readings 63

Every "scholarly" piece I've ever written:

"It was a perfect title, in that it crystallized the article's niggling mindlessness, its funereal parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non-problems."

Every conference presentation I've ever given:

"Nobody outside a madhouse, he tried to imply, could take seriously a single phrase of this conjectural, nugatory, deluded, tedious rubbish."

This morning I finished rereading Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim for the first time in over thirty years. I remember reading it for the first time in my first year of graduate school and thinking it was the funniest thing I had ever read, and then reading it again as I was finishing my dissertation and still liking it, but thinking that it was not as funny as I remembered. And here we are three and a half decades later, and I thought it was funnier than on the first reread, but that I think, overall, I liked it better than on my two previous readings (such is our changing perception). It is one of the great "campus novels," so it helps if you're in graduate school or on the uphill side of the lectern. 

Shadows

 Over the years I've stumbled across some odd art exhibits (I always default to permanent catacombs above Budapest), and I did it again on last month's trip to Portugal. One my last full day in Coimbra I checked out a couple monasteries on the other side of the river, both of which I'll get around to discussing down the road. The second one I visited, which is the "new" monastery, was the Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Nova. The Portuguese are not strong on signage under the best of circumstances, and so, typically, I wandered into the wrong door when I visited the new monastery. The door was shielded with some black cloth, which left the inside very dark, which seemed like a very unusual - or maybe not so unusual - monastery. As it turns out it was an extra space which was occasionally given over to exhibits, and in this case it was a series of artists which dealt with shadows. Once I figured out what the hell was going on, I decided to stay and enjoyed myself quite a bit. 

This particular one was very disturbing and oddly beautiful. At the end of the hallway a screen was set up, and on a loop there a video of a housing burning down. That was the entire performance.

I sat and watched this one for quite a bit. On the mismatched screens there were two hands flapping, and hanging down was a lightbulb that swung back and forth.  I felt the artist was channeling David Lynch.