Seasonality Tuesday, Dec 30 2014 

Uncategorized acairfearann 21:29

Because I work in retail, I mostly get it…but.

I found it deeply perverse that on the first truly bitterly cold night of winter (It was so clear that the moonlight through the trees was illuminating my car’s interior in a very disconcerting fashion, until I figured it out, on the way home) and with two solid months, the real months, of winter stretching ahead with March as a potential third…. I am being inundated by ‘spring!’. Now, I like the seed and plant catalogs, although they have impulse shopping for green down to a science, but the clothes, the gifts, the fact that there is Valentine candy in the store…the fact that the dark, winter beer are being shoved aside for ‘crisp’ lemony ‘spring’ ale?

Fine, the last is the most annoying.  Well actually, the pink! Valentine candy was the most annoying. But would it kill the retailers to at least wait till January? I know, you can’t sell what is in the back room, and heaven knows the buyers had to guess the market and order correctly about four months ago, and the manufacturers (well they do what they want when they want).  But Pink! Lemon! Spring Grass! Wear a bathing suit!

Bah.

 

An entirely unrelated chuckle Monday, Dec 22 2014 

Uncategorized acairfearann 14:02

Medieval Scribal Marginalia

 

 

dartboard! Sunday, Dec 14 2014 

gardening and Landscapes and Uncategorized , acairfearann 20:37

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Otherwise known as your random photo of the day. Hard to believe that there is a busy two lane road out there!

Norway spruces for the most part, the tree in the front/left is a young redbud. What is funny is that until I was looking at this picture just now, I hadn’t seen the strong diagonal of those spruce trunks…I’ll have to give that some consideration. Lines make a garden!

 

 

Five feet high and rising Tuesday, Dec 9 2014 

Uncategorized acairfearann 16:32

Don’t get me wrong, I am very glad it isn’t snow, especially this year. But water on frozen ground is mighty close to useless. All it is doing is running down the hill into the rivers.

I am equally glad it isn’t ice though, just a touch of true freezing rain this morning to glaze things.

But my real question…why is it colder down near to the shoreline and warmer up here? I am sure the weather people said it would be the other way around….

Weather: providing jobs for frustrated prophets since year one.

 

Modern ephemera Tuesday, Nov 25 2014 

Uncategorized acairfearann 11:01

Our tech guru spent most, all?, of yesterday resurrecting our personal email accounts which had been suddenly terminated thanks to ATT and Frontier, who assumed that nobody was still using their old dial-up email accounts. (or given the current nonsense, they just didn’t care) In my case, most of my professional/personal contacts are accessible only through those email addresses stored in that email account, I don’t know where they live or their phone numbers.* Sure, I could find out most of them, eventually. But it would take quite a bit of time. It also stores nearly ten years of emails that took the place of personal letters during college/post grad, and the account dates back to the late 1990’s. Or did.

The fact is, I wasn’t treating my email account like an email account; but more like a personal archive. And that doesn’t actually work on the internet for long periods of time.

The near loss of the material and the loss of the address illustrates a well known issue. On one hand, you can find anything on the internet. On the other hand….the connection is astonishingly fragile and entirely out of one’s physical control.

Unless steps are taken otherwise, which is why I am contemplating the creation of an address book that does not exist on the internet and probably not even on the computer. As a medievalist, and a believer in the lasting power of the pen and paper, you would think I would have already done this!

Still, it is funny. Physically, I am still here, where I have maintained an address for all my life. But briefly, my virtual address, which so many more people know, vanished from existence. It will take me forever to remember to give out my new email address….

Now, where’s my pencil?

 

*I know I am stupidly lucky, you don’t need to tell me that again.

 

Must be nearly winter Tuesday, Nov 18 2014 

Uncategorized , acairfearann 21:43

If all the scented geraniums and the jasmine and the citrus have been moved from beneath the south porch (an enclosed, but not insulated area) to various locations inside. This is a bit of project: we have four jasmine, one passionflower, three full sized geraniums in gallon pots, and multiple small ones, along with various other plants including a collection of baby citrus grown from seed (so who knows what they are, maybe Meyer Lemons maybe mini oranges, maybe?)

Most of these plants like a period of cold weather, but they can’t take an actual freeze. The area beneath the porch is ideal for a month/month and a half. If the interior basement door is kept open, this enclosed space can be kept above freezing as long as the true outside temperatures stay above 20 and the day was sunny. If not…on a night when it is windy and severe clear with a low in the teens, well it just isn’t good for things that can’t take an actual dip into freezing: i.e. the temperature of the leaf surface gets down to 32. Which weather usually occurs right about now!

But it is definitely nearly winter when the space is promptly given over to a frozen solid, aromatic*, grubby horse blanket that must get dried out before the next storm.

*I put it next to the furnace in the basement only once….the odor when drying is well, exactly what one would expect!

 

November 11th, 1918 Tuesday, Nov 11 2014 

Uncategorized , , acairfearann 13:20

23 November 1918
La Neufor (near St. Menehould, France.)
My Dear Dad and All:
It seems strange to start a letter by naming a town, and stranger still this town, for this is where we started the great drive through the Argonne Forest to the Meuse, which we had crossed when the Boche quit.
…Since August 10th this regiment has slept under the open sky, right up until the 11th of November. On August 10th we went in on the Vesle River and scrapped there and to the Aisne. As soon as the Aisne was reached we came here, or rather to Givry in trucks, and started the greatest forest fighting in history.
…We have not had the publicity or the limelight of some others but Gen’l Pershing has said, “there is no better in the army and none that can be banked on to accomplish its task as well as the 77th.” That’s praise enough for us, and history will tell the story someday.
…Sept. 20th at 5 A.M. was the start of the attack with artillery. Lordy! How they did roar….The Argonne is as thick a woods as you have ever seen; steep ravines covered with thick underbrush, and it was defended by the 120th division Landwehr troops, who had been in these same woods for eighteen months. They were a first-class division, and made up of woodsmen who knew every path and trick in those damnable woods…
I’ll never go into the woods again or underbrush without my heart in my throat. It was literally impossible to discover a machine gun nest except by the sudden cutting down of yourself or someone else. The manual says that machine gun nests shall be destroyed by ‘flank attacks and by the use of hand and rifle grenades and the 37 mm. gun” Oh Jay! The man or board who wrote that knows nothing. Did he ever try to throw a ball and have his arm caught by brush? Or fire a rifle grenade which would be stopped by woods in ten feet? Or pull the lanyard on a 37mm gun knowing that the shell would explode as soon as it left the muzzle? You can bet something he wasn’t thinking of the Argonne. ‘Use your auxiliary arms” Another joke. The arms you used were your own and twenty-two days of hand to hand fighting was what we got. The regiment got just that and ended up with the brilliant and expensive taking of St. Juvin and Hill 182. That was in the open, wide open, and it was this that carried men forward who were so worn and weary that they would sleep when halted under the heaviest kind of shell fire. It was the relief after being stifled by underbrush and woods that made us take that hill and carried two and part of another battalion against three regiments of Germans – youngsters this time of a Guard Division – and we licked them to a standstill. Two regiments of Hell’s children counter-attacked…and they were literally beaten to death, those that didn’t get by as prisoners.
I’ll never forget the days of October 10th and 14th. It took twelve of my best friends in the regiment that one afternoon of the 14th, but they died the most glorious death in the world and we mourn them not….
…As for staying in the army, no. I’ve done enough. I’m tired, so damned tired I’ll never get rested it seems to me. Personally, the war has brought me knowledge of men and things, what they think even without their speaking. It has brought me a greater love for my country, it has brought me the satisfaction of doing my job well, and Dad, I’m through.
Will see you soon
Your affectionate son,
Bradford.
(Captain Bradford Ellsworth, Intelligence Officer, 306th Regiment, 77th Infantry Division)

 

Warning Politics Wednesday, Nov 5 2014 

Uncategorized acairfearann 15:26

Without comment, aside from noting that ‘blue state’ is somewhat inaccurate at the town level! Pity that the various politicians of all stripes won’t address the divide. Who’s right? H— if I know.

http://www.courant.com/data-desk/hc-map-race-for-governor-townbytown-20141104-htmlstory.html

 

Ginkgo Tuesday, Nov 4 2014 

gardening and Modern Photos and Trees and Uncategorized , , acairfearann 22:52

Still! waiting on frost here, let alone cold enough temperatures to make the ginkgoes drop while green; so we get to enjoy the lovely pure gold (and the easier clean-up). The big* ginkgo is a tree we just don’t think of as ‘big’; it barely hits 60 feet, which when surrounded by 80-100 foot giants isn’t much. But it definitely is getting broader in the crown, particularly to the south and east. Again not easy to notice, because of its position on the northeast corner of the house. You only really see it from down in the meadow, when one notices how the big pines are now solidly hidden, aside from their tops of course!

*The little ginkgo is spreading like mad, but mysteriously lost its leader two years ago and shows no sign of regrowth, apparently it will be much, much wider than tall.

Here is a view looking up into the big ginkgo a few days ago, before it went solidly gold. The gold works in from the edges of the leaf, so the wonderful scallop pattern of the leaves is at its most prominent for just a week or so in the fall. It also works in from the top/sides of the tree, so the core is greener than the top.

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Randomness Monday, Oct 20 2014 

Uncategorized acairfearann 12:43

As a vestry member and parish clerk, I am so glad that the elderly Sugar Maples that are periodically dropping things are not on the church’s property! They are elegant old trees belonging to the neighboring house…but it is never a good sign when two unfriendly and focused gentlemen are walking around taking photographs and staring pointedly at the offending trees!

Talk about a traffic hazard. The river runs hard against a big retaining wall in the center of town, making a lovely pool (I do hope that wall has good footings!). People are forever parked in the breakdown lane of the highway fishing over the side, since it is a good spot. The river has plenty of fish, especially trout, and the combination of deep water, braided channels, and sandbars make the area particularly interesting.  The fishermen are an expected hazard. The unexpected hazard was the gorgeous, large, juvenile bald eagle that was also trying her luck in the spot and flying at about eye level with passing cars. Lovely animal.

 

 

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