All posts by johncohn

Sunday night – Latkes… again

Another great, slow, peaceful day..   Last night My folks took us all out to dinner to Mexicali.. the official restaurant of the post-post apocalypse in Vermont. I always love seeing the guys there.. After

They  left this morning.. It was nice having them up here. Before they left., I had to share this Billy Collins poem that I came across last night. with my mom. . It felt appropriate..

The Lanyard – Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly

off the blue walls of this room,

moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,

from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,

when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary

where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist

could send one into the past more suddenly—

a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp

by a deep Adirondack lake

learning how to braid long thin plastic strips

into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard

or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,

but that did not keep me from crossing

strand over strand again and again

until I had made a boxy

red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,

and I gave her a lanyard.

She nursed me in many a sick room,

lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,

laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,

and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,

and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

Here are thousands of meals, she said,

and here is clothing and a good education.

And here is your lanyard, I replied,

which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,

strong legs, bones and teeth,

and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,

and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.

And here, I wish to say to her now,

is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,

but the rueful admission that when she took

the two-tone lanyard from my hand,

I was as sure as a boy could be

that this useless, worthless thing I wove

out of boredom would be enough to make us even.


Here’s a recording of Collins reading that poem

The re..st of the day was pretty uneventful:.. some house cleaning, a sloggy run through the melting snow with the dogs, a trip to the town garage to pick up sand… 

 I also managed to build a little cool contraption with an arduino processor that wirelessly checks on the the number of hits on this blog. Originally I had the little thing send a twitter message every time it checked.. … which dumped a bunch of cryptic messages to me twitter and facebook feeds. It’s only when you do soemthing really dumb like that. that you find out who’s whatching oyur feeds.. (sorry abotu that folks)

Tonight was a special treat, Max accidentally had a party.. it didn’t ‘t start out as a party.. Diane had offered to make Max some post-Chanukah latkes because he’d been at school for the holiday. then Mason showed up, then elsa.. then raye and josh and .. then .. Merideth came in from eastern VT.. and mariah and her folks showed up.. then Brendon.. It was pretty festive.. the house filled with proto-grownups and the air heavy with frying potatoes.. Yum…


Ugh… just looked t the time.. its nearly 1:30… Programming always makes me lose track of time.. I better hang up now..

Nite folks.. Nite Sam !
-me

Saturday evening – Jonesville Riots


Boxing day. Very sleepy rainy/sleety day.. Aside form a good walk this morning with Diane and the dogs, I didn’t go outside … didn’t even go upstairs more than twice.. I sat on the couch and hung out with my folks who are up visiting..  Even fell asleep there.. I think my brain is trying to catch up from the last couple of weeks..

One thing I did do was thumb through a book on our town that  I’d gotten Diane for Christmas. It’s called  “Richmond, Vermont: A History of More than 200 Years” by Harriet Riggs, a woman we know from here. Harriet had talked about writing this book for all 25 years that we’ve known her, and she finally did it.. She did an excellent jb capturing the history of our small town..  It’s full of pictures, maps and stories about folks from the earliest days until the present. It’s great looking back at through this and seeing the grandparents and great grandparents of our friends .

Our little neighborhood… Jonesville,  and our house are mentioned several times.. Here’s a picture Hariet found of our house from 1904…  You can see several differences compared to today:

– the weather vane is different
– the tower has shutters rather than windows
– you can see the old staircase.which which has since been removed through the right front downstairs window
– the windows over the door are staggered and different than they appear today.
– the front door is different…

Here’s another picture… which I think I must have given Harriet. it shows Joensville right after the 1927 flood. You can our house in the left center of the picture. You can also see the old toy factory washed off of it’s foundation in the foreground. The building is gone.. but the foundation is still there in our neighbors’ back yard.   ………………..

To the right you can see the place that the old covered bridge was before this flood. The story goes that THE bridge washed out and was swept own the Winooski where it crashed into the Richmond covered bridge and took it out too.

The stories in the book are pretty amazing. I just learned something new about our little town of Jonesville (pop 400 ?) According to the book on the 1st of July in 1846 a group of 200 to 300 Irish railway worker started a riot here because they had not been paid by the railway.   They dug trenches across the main street (now Us Route 2) to block all travel between Waterbury and Burlington.. That was a big deal because that road was the only path through the gap that the Winooski cuts through the Green Mountains.  When pay was still not forthcoming. They took one of the railway bosses, Henry Barker,  hostage and held him in the Jones Hotel (which burned in 1980) while his partner, S.R. Haight,  went to Montpelier to see if he could find some money to pay the rioters and ransom his friend. On July 2nd, Deputy Gleason from Richmond and the local priests tried to tlak the men out of the building/ When that didn’t work, the sheriff called in reinforcements. On July 3rd, the Light Infantry from Burlington came and disperesed the mob by force.. Many of the men ran up into the  hils in Bolton.. Finally on july 4th they managed to free Barker. The rioters were rounded up and put on trial. In the end all but one were released.. The story doesn’t say what happened to that last man. Seems like you need to fight for your right to party !
   A record of the event said that the total cost to put down the “Irish Insurrection” in Jonesville was $370.11 including 1.5 barrels of crackers ($5.25) and  27 loaves of bread  ($2.16)

That’s probably the most exciting thing that’s ever happened in Jonesville !

OK.. insurrection is over, time for bed
Night folks… night Sam !
-me

Thursday evening – Xmas eve, all is quiet

Good quiet day.. I’m trying to keep in the moment and keep my own spirits up. So far so pretty good. Had a few pretty soulful  moments through the day.. but I guess that’s to be expected.

Last night Gabe and I decided to go sledding at abotu 10.  If you’ve never seen it , we have a fabulous sledding hill in our backyard. It’s there because our then neighbors brothers truck managed to slip out of park and careen down the hill. It made it about 2/3’s the way down.. and it wasn’t coming back uo.. so the guys cleared the trees to let it doan.. and it’s been a sledding hill ever since..   It was fast and cold last night.. Gabe and I raced, made tais and tried to beat eachothers distance records in the snow.. It was a reeally good time..

This morning.. we all slept late.. DIane had a Yoga class at 8L15 this morning.. She did a restoritve session, very slow and meditative. just what I was looking for.

Diane’s friends surprised her by offering her a christmas Chai Tea party after the class.. It was really nice !

As we sat there afterward we started talking about Christmas tradition which lead to Chinese food, which lead to Stephanie telling us about her favorite Chinese place in NYC. She really likes this place called Wo Hop on Mott St right off of Canal.. She told us to go in there and order this tofu dish …   check it out !

We spent the rest of the day just puttering and cleaning.. getting ready for tomorrow.. very quiet..  Max and Gabe came back from the mountain at about 3. Soon after we headed up in to the woods for our tradition of decorating a tree for the animals. This year we chose a tree off the Catamount trail.

We took all of our stale backed goods, peanuts and birdseed

Then we toss them into the tree.. we had a bunch of stiff.. so it took us a fair bit to decorate the tree… (Note. Diane and I go back and collect the strings after the food is eaten.. so no litter’s left. )

We left a candy kiss there for Sam…

And we put a Samstone in the tree as we have these last three years..   It’s good keeping this tradition up.. I remember decorating a  tree outdoors right after sam died.. it was so hard. I remember it well. I have a picture form that time I look at frequently..

Now we’re getting ready to go out for dinner.. everyone’s doing pretty well.. keeping to ourselves and quiet. Things feel pretty good. The stockings are layed by the… uh.. sofa.. with care.. One for each of us.. including Sam.. as in all years past.

And even ones for the pets.. including Gabby who passed away in 2006  The spirits we love stay with us….

So my friends.. I hope you’r eall having a peaceful and warm Christmas eve surrounded by the love of your family..

I am !

Merry Christmas folks.. merry Christmas Sam !
-me

Wednesday eveining – cookies

I took today off work to hang out with Gabe at his school. All the 8th graders were doing service projects in the community. Gabe’s group had been selected to go over to teh Elementary school and help the 2nd graders wrap presents  .. and do some other chores around the school.  We spent about 2 and a half hours making pinatas, taking down posters, folding cards, tearing out worksheets.. etc.    It was slow and peaceful.  The teacher we were working with. Emily, turned out to be something of Deadhead.. so we talked music while the kids worked.. . I wasn’t allowed to take pictures over there without getting permission from the kids parents.. so.. Phooooey..

After our work at the elementary school, we headed back to the middle school. Gabe and his group had an Exploratory class today which involved making cookies… again.. no pictures of kids allowed.. so I took pictures of their cookies.. Aren’t they lovely ?

I gave a post-cookie talk on the colony.. to Gabe’s class. I think it went pretty well..  then we all came home.. That was the sum-total of my day..  

TO be honest.. I’m not very good at this relaxing business… It’s kind of hard for me to stop suddenly lie that. My fingers are still itching to work or build something. .. But I’m going to really work on relaxing this break (wait.. is that an oxymoron ? ) One thanksgiving I stayed up most nights programming for fun.. this time I’m going to try and reduce my screen time and spend more time hanging out with family..

If you see me online.. tell me to log off….

like now

nite folks.. Nite Sam !
-me