We went for a walk Friday afternoon on Mackworth Island. I’ve only been there in the summer before so it was wonderful to see all the changes a different season brings to the place. It was just as beautiful with its beaches laced in ice, and any bits of color standing out triumphantly against the drab browns and snowy fields. Beaches in winter are amazing places.

I visited the Indiana Dunes National Lake Shore in late winter a few years ago and departed in sheer amazement. The landscape was almost unrecognizable, as the cold temperatures and resulting ice created a phenomenal playground. Below is a photograph from 1911 of a man on an ice shelf at the Indiana Dunes State Park. The view I had when I visited was not so spectacular as this, but it gives a glimpse of winter at the dunes nearly a century ago. And I find myself in awe.

[image courtesy of the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society]

My body seems to have further betrayed me, leaving me able to speak only in uncomfortable squeaks and odd pitches. Laryngitis I suspect. Maybe the next couple days will demonstrate the virtue that monks find in taking vows of silence. Then again, talking is a hard habit to break and I still try to verbalize my thoughts, only to find once again that I sound like one of the Chipmunks with a bad cold. Yes, that bad. Just ask J.

I may not be able to talk, but I can still bake. We watched the whole BBC production of Pride and Prejudice last night, though I slept through much of it. And J enjoyed it even if his enthusiasm for Jane Austen is less than fervent. I think we finished the last tape (VHS!) near 2am. I awoke this morning with fits of coughing and restlessness and after adding a few logs to the hot coals in the stove, I set about finding a recipe for a breakfast baked good. Not willing to wait for anything requiring yeast, I first settled on biscuits and then opted for scones. I will admit they were not attractive — at any stage. I think the fog lodged in my head prevented the proper thought and care.

Nonetheless, the scones were fetched from the oven and though unshapely, we ate them eagerly with butter and lemon curd. And mugs of hot coffee. The coffee was a Finca Mauritania roast I ordered via this joy + ride, roasted by ed whitman (to learn more, read ed’s blog, Coffee is Food). It was a tasty and strong brew thanks to poor ratio calculations on my part. Again, I blame the brain fog.

I am feeling a bit stir crazy now, so I think J and I are going on a short jaunt to run some errands, including a bookstore visit, which is always welcome. And hopefully a winter walk to clear my mind. I hope your weekend is filled with slices of sound and silence.

“Severe weather,” as so many folks like to describe the various weather occurrences, most often in winter, send pangs of fear up and down many a spine. This includes a great deal of folks who call themselves Mainers. I surely don’t want to point fingers or create rules, but it seems to me that a true Mainer, one who embodies those qualities and characteristics we recognize as vital to a Maine soul, simply accepts precipitation in a multitude of forms. This is not to say that we always rejoice in harsh conditions, but we recognize that life can (and does) continue despite the inches of snow or ice on the road.

Like many other Mainers last week, as the freezing rain fell, coating every pine needle and blade of grass, I thought back to the Ice Storm of ’98. Wow, 1998? Over a decade ago? That seems hardly believable. As I sit comfortably on the sofa at my brother’s, basking in woodstove warmth and lantern glow, I remember similar scenes from the two weeks my family survived and thrived without electricity. Lacking artificial light for days on end, one begins to realize a few things. The first is the glory of sunlight. And that one must use it wisely and not squander its generous rays. Our days gained a structure we had not known or needed before. Although tasks took longer, there was something enjoyable in the routines. After a few days it didn’t seem bothersome to carry a candle around, or heat up water on the woodstove to scrub your face. And it didn’t seem too unusual to carry bucketfuls of melted ice to the bathroom to flush the toilet.

I do not want to paint too rosy a picture and thereby misinform you of the drawbacks of the new life forced upon us. Frustration with other family members eventually ran high, given the tight quarters and constant companionship. But all in all, things were placid. Our daytime was spent carving out ice chunks to melt indoors, reading in broad daylight, cooking on the stove, and slipping and sliding our way down the road for walks. Most evenings we ate dinner, played Rook and retired early to bed.

We were among the fortunate. Heat galore, plenty of food and drink, and brimming bookshelves ensured a safe and mostly enjoyable couple of weeks. But those without the essentials found themselves cold and desperate. Our dirt road was impassable and we could only check on and help those within walking distance. Thankfully, most families nearby had either generators or alternative sources of heat to keep warm.

Last Thursday night I slept on the sofa to be nearer the stove and its pleasing glow. Early Friday morning I called work to find that I did not have to go in, and could instead return to slumber. But before my eyelids closed again, I looked outside with awe. The ice accumulation had grown considerably from the night before, and the additional ice mixed with a thin layer of snow coated everything. I walked around in the afternoon awestruck at the layers of ice thick on everything the freezing rain could touch. The pine tree boughs hung scarcely above the ground, weighted down with all the ice.

I had planned to gather friends for a game night, but suspected that risking one’s life for Monopoly or Boggle seemed unlikely (not to mention my warning of the power outage). But I am always happy to be proved wrong and so it was that I welcomed not just one but four friends into my home for a lantern lit game night. Pizza was warmed up on the woodstove, water was boiled for hot cocoa and the ice cream kept cold on the doorstep while we sipped and laughed the evening away. These folks, well, they are true Mainers and I commend them.

This holiday season, more than in past years, I am doing much of my shopping locally, buying from individual artisans when possible, and making some gifts.  And these days, with a resource as incredible as etsy available to everyone with internet access, perusing handmade AND local gifts is hardly a challenge.  I will be posting a few gift/shopping ideas here, but I begin with…

*Family Style*
The River Cottage Family Cookbook by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Fizz Carr, $32.50
The Creative Family by Amanda Soule (a Maine dweller), $10.50 (used)
*Foodies*
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver, $17.95 (used)
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan (I recently received this as a present from J and can’t wait to read it), $21.95
*Luddites*
The Freedom Manifesto by Tom Hodgkinson, $9.50
What are People For? by Wendell Berry (a personal favorite), $14.00
*Kids*
My Wonderful Christmas Tree by Dahlov Ipcar, $16.95
The First Chinook by David Pagel with wood engravings by Rick Allen, $16.95
*Off the Grid*
A Handmade Life by William Coperthwaite (another Mainer), $25.00
The Self-Sufficient Life and how to live it by John Seymour, $30.00
*Typophiles*
Hand Job: A Catalog of Type by Michael Perry, $35.00
Hamilton Wood Type, A HISTORY IN HEADLINES by Bill Moran, Dennis Ichiyama, and Richard Zauft, $19.95
*Etc.*
A Healing Touch edited by Richard Russo with wood engravings by Siri Beckman (both Maine folk!), $15.95
A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart, photographs by Maria Alexandra Vettese (of port2port press) and Stephanie Congdon Barnes, $19.95

Although I included a link to each book for online purchase, I suggest checking your locally owned bookstore first (find one here).  This will save you added shipping costs and give your local bookstore the business.  Cheers!

After spending some time over the weekend thumbing through A Handmade Life, I began reading last night, making my way through the foreword and introduction.  I suspect I will really enjoy this book and I plan to add notes and thoughts here as I progress.

p.s.
Aren’t libraries wonderful?

First, the credit for my discovery of The Freedom Manifesto goes to a combination of my own curiosity and Michael Tucker, manager of Bowdoin’s bookstore and textbook center. One small broadside and short discussion later, I could hardly keep myself from skipping over to the library. To give you a better handle on the book’s subject matter, I offer the subtitle: How to Free Yourself from Anxiety, Fear, Mortgages, Money, Guilt, Debt, Government, Boredom, Supermarkets, Bills, Melancholy, Pain, Depression, Work, and Waste.

Hodgkinson addresses these areas individually and collectively, as the areas themselves and their accompanying commentary, naturally spill over into one another. He urges his reader to reconsider the capitalist mantras so deeply rooted in the minds of most Westerners. His historical evidence gently reminds us that life, and perhaps life of a higher quality, existed long before Benjamin Franklin and the Industrial Revolution. One of the most important points, brought up in various ways throughout the book, is that up through the Middle Ages, charging interest was considered sinful — preying upon the less fortunate. The very term for this practice is “usury,” though bank representatives seem to know nothing of this more accurate description. I daresay that most Americans can scarcely imagine a world in which they don’t depend upon usury for their “secure” future, or more importantly, one in which they are not victims of usury their whole life through.

The book is certainly not flawless, but I suspect Hodgkinson himself would agree on this point. At the very least it provides ample food for thought and many a hearty chuckle. Part radical, part practical, and part rant, The Freedom Manifesto left me hopeful and itching to read up on the medievals. If you want to start with just a sip of Tom Hodgkinson, head over to The Idler, an online version of his print magazine of the same name. And if you are curious about this post’s title then I suggest you skip on over to the library and check out The Freedom Manifesto.

an evening at home with the fire…

This, I just decided, will be the name for a collection I plan to gather. It will be a collection of stories or poems that use all the words from a completed game of Scrabble. Brilliant. And photos, drawings, sketches, doodles and any other manner of visual representation can be included. Maybe this project will stick and next December I will be binding an edition of carefully printed scrabble stories. Or I will wake up in a couple days and realize that this was rather a silly idea and not exactly original. Only time will tell…
Oh, and audience participation is welcome. Game night anyone?

My family held our Thanksgiving gathering at my brother’s house in Freeport last week. I don’t recall celebrating this November holiday anywhere other than my parent’s house, or at either of my grandparent’s places. Well, aside from the Thanksgiving I spent alone in Gladstone, Oregon. Please, no sympathy. It was bliss. I sipped hot cocoa, made pancakes, fried bacon, and licked my fingers clean of maple syrup as I polished off the first course. After a movie and much needed nap, I slapped a steak on our front porch grill and mulled apple cider for the day’s fruit serving. It’s possible I baked a potato, but in truth, I can’t recall a vegetable. I basked in the solitude and ate delicious food to my heart and stomach’s content.

But this year, despite the absence of an elaborate breakfast, the company was hard to beat. With help, I made this butternut squash soup and goat cheese pear tarts for our appetizer. My mother ordered and cooked an organic, locally raised turkey, and thanks to my brother’s incredible luck of the draw (and firearm skills), we also had a moose roast gracing the table. The other usual suspects were present as well including mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, my mother’s heavenly crescent rolls, an almond-broccoli ring, and last but certainly not least, the pies. This year my mother made a lemon meringue (she knew it to be J’s favorite), pumpkin, and apple. Unfortunately, I ate too many other things to manage more than one piece of lemon meringue, but it was perfect. I would even venture to say that it was her best lemon meringue pie yet.

My family was particularly pleased to spend the time together as my brother left early the next morning on what will be a 3-4 month deployment. He’s been through it all before, but I’m sure he tried to savor his last day at home amidst the last minute packing and errands. I think he has to shift his mindset a bit as any deployment approaches to prepare himself for the coming change of everyday life. I can’t quite imagine it. He will be gone for Christmas so my mom tried to sneak in a few things at Thanksgiving to quench his holiday tradition thirst. And I will begin writing letters and sending packages soon. Then he’ll be back before we know it.

I am back in a groove — not a rut, but a comfortable groove, offering the sort of confidence I feel cross country skiing when, on a groomed trail, my skis are firmly in the track and it seems that nothing can stop my glide. But it’s a rather more sedentary groove with which I am presently pleased. Reading. Yes, I must confess that this activity, historically a favorite, had slowly slipped away, book by book, chapter by chapter. I was getting by with an Orion article or Wendell Berry essay here or there. It seemed my life was too busy with other things to be bothered with keeping my eyes open for an extra 30 minutes at the end of a day. But busy with what? I realized, of course, that I was not too busy, in fact, one could hardly call me busy at all, save for the lion’s share of the day that my job swallowed whole. Instead, my perception was skewed. I had somehow come to think that I needed more time to relax at night. The mistake was disqualifying reading from the list of available relaxation options.

Okay, so there’s not really a list. And until I began devouring chapters again recently, my thoughts on this had not crystallized. I knew something was amiss, but I had not understood that the void was more than just missing the act of reading itself. Now that I am back in the groove, I realize reading’s importance more than ever. It activates my brain and gives me cause to think beyond the confines of my everyday life, and it sometimes creates an alternate world to which I can escape and do far more relaxing than I could hope to do in the “real” world.

In the last few weeks I have read several books and will start with the first. I casually picked up Straight Man, a Richard Russo novel, from J’s bookshelf and suddenly found myself absorbed in a fictional world. Of Russo’s work I had only read Empire Falls before this, so choosing Straight Man was spurred by my enjoyment of Empire Falls, but also by recent knowledge that my great uncle, Leon Duff, was a racquetball partner and friend of Russo’s (pictured together here). It took a Down East article for me to learn of this connection, conveniently followed by my family reunion a month later to chat with Leon about it.

But I digress…life seems to hand you what you need and so it was with this book. I found myself finishing this book, which deals in part with the politics of the English department at a small college in Pennsylvania, just before starting a new job in the Economics department at a small college. Beyond this I will not draw parallels, but it was the perfect thing to read before beginning my new employment, and more importantly, the perfect material to settle me back into a groove.