Breaking my silence

Posted in Education, Humor, Nature, Nocturnal hours, Technology by Shelley Sackier

I owe my ears to a bug and a meditative master. Well, maybe more so to the meditative master because he’s the one who gave me a gift.

He taught me how to listen.

I don’t mean he advised me in the art of paying attention to people’s words and the message they endeavored to convey. I mean he instructed me to hear sounds, and tone, and vibration.

In absolutely everything.

At the time, I thought I had a fairly well-developed ear. I was a musician, trained to hear intonation and pitch with a considerable degree of competency. But he had a level of attention to sound that was mystifying to me. His auditory skills were on par with most owls and marine animals. Mice feared for their lives around him. Beluga whales bowed down in his presence. I just wanted a little piece of that magic.

But be careful what you wish for, right? Because a boon can just as easily become a blight.

I cannot find silence. I can’t remember the last time I have heard … nothing.

This man was a sound engineer, someone my music producer had hired to mix the final cuts of the album we were making, the film score we had finished and the commercials we whipped out. My job was done. I was excused and told to go work on the next project, but sometimes I’d plop down on the studio couch, make myself as invisible as possible and watch what unfolded.

And what unfolded was a brain twisting mystery. This man would sit in front of the sound board console and hold his breath. He was as still as the Buddha, who probably would have slapped him on the back with a thump of well done! Then he would crawl around on the floor, beneath the equipment, searching for an elusive something-or-other. Sometimes it would be hours before he actually played our music.

When I finally dredged up enough courage to ask him what he was doing, he’d answered, “I’m noticing.”

“Noticing what?” I asked.

“A lot,” he said.

And during the next year I began ‘noticing’ too. He showed me how to find the buzz in each cable, the hum in all the machinery and the layer upon layer of sonance everywhere.

I went a little wild with my practice and drove my producer crazy with my newfound enthusiasm and belief that we would both benefit from this exciting auditory adventure I pulled him along on. At one point when recording the vocals for a lush and abundantly orchestrated song, I made him stop and pull out track after track after track, positive I could “hear” something that didn’t belong there.

We found it. It was a cricket in the recording booth. Finding the cricket to pitch him out proved impossible. Finding the musicians to bring them back in proved expensive.

No one was happy with me.

Except the sound engineer.

But now I can’t go anywhere without listening for the layers. It’s not as if I’ve developed the auditory capability to hear dog whistles, but rather I’ve stopped tuning things out. And I practiced this for so many years now I can NEVER tune them out.

I lay awake at night, and hear the usual things.

The clock ticking, the dog breathing, the cat licking, the stinkbugs flying … and then smacking into walls and dropping onto the floor.

There is the sink dripping, the toilet running, the wind rattling, a coyote howling and an aircraft droning.

And when I have categorized these sounds, I am left with others that pull me out of bed and ask me to hunt them down.

The fridge has a little hum. The freezer has a funky hiss. The DVR has a purring motor that churns and roils, keeping something tiny inside of it cool and protecting it from combusting.

Down the hall in the family room I find two speakers, softly throwing out sound in the key of A. I bend down along the floorboards and hear muffled scratching—someone is busy making a tiny nest in the wall. I crawl beneath my desk and trace a treble tone to my computer’s hard drive. I start at an unexpected sound and bump my head, taken by surprise at the vibration above me where my smart phone was set to silently buzz with an incoming email.

I hear the heat vent whir to life, the soft whooshing of air, spongy and constant. Then the generator which lives halfway down the hill to the sheep barn clicks on for its weekly test drive. I open the back porch door and stand on the icy cold steps to count the multilayers of sound the generator is generating.

Far off, on the other side of the house, the wind chimes chingle.

And then I hear the birds chirping and something high-pitched and tiny. The sound takes me up the porch steps and back into my bedroom.

And right next to my bed.

It’s my alarm clock.

It’s time to start another day. Another day filled with sound.

I’m thinking the sounds will most likely be my yawns.

~Shelley

February Gotta Have a Gott winner

In January, Rob and I announced that his sketches will be available toward the end of the year in the form of a 2015 calendar! And our readers would get to be the judges and voters for which doodles they’d like to see selected for each month. We’ll reveal the winners one by one, and come November, If you’ve Gotta have a GOTT, you can place your order. Jump on over to see the cartoon winner for February!

Don’t forget to check out what we’re cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all talked about down in the pub. Plus, you can see more of Robin Gott‘s humor–all from the only pen carved from a human funny bone.

8Feb2014

Old Man Winter has been nothing but a snow job.

Posted in Humor, Nature, Weather, Winter by Shelley Sackier

People are fickle when it comes to the weather. And Mother Nature could give one whit about what we all think.

You can pray to the sun gods, shake your fist at the rain clouds and keep your fingers crossed for as many white Christmases you care to, but in the end … it’s a crap shoot.

Okay, that’s not true. It’s actually magic.

Not true again. Yes, I know it’s science, but it is, in essence, a mysterious mishmash of all three combined.

It’s one of few phenomena that we all share at the same time—at least all the folk in your neck of the woods. And most everyone has a prediction on how much we’ll get, a story about how they got stuck, and two cents worth regarding how come this is happening.

I have raised one child and still have a couple of years left on my contract with the second. The thing they share—apart from my genetic code—is their desperate wish to be fully immersed in the season 182.5 days away from the one they are currently steeped in.

We may be splashing in a lake and taking sips from the hose, but they’re talking about how wonderful it’ll be when they can finally get their snow pants on and head to the slopes. Or as the last crimson leaves float to the ground leaving the bare-boned beauty of our forest foundations, I hear talk of jelly beans and spring break follies.

One cannot pop into a grocery store, a drug store, a shop or a showroom without being immediately transported away from the moment we’re in and hurled toward a place in the forthcoming future. I don’t want to be in next month. I don’t want to jump to next season.

I’m not counting the days till I can shed my big coat, or ditch my fur boots, locate my trowel or pluck my first berry. It is winter. It is blustery. It is cold. And tonight …

IT WILL SNOW.

I want to kiss the screen where the meteorologist gesticulates toward the cold mass of arctic air meeting head to head with the looming expanse of precipitation. I get goose bumps when my radio program must interrupt their regular broadcast for a report from the National Weather Service. I dance a little jig when I see a red banner stream across my computer that changes from a watch to an advisory and then finally a warning.

Of course, I’m aware of the dangers—the folks who get caught, or those who must clear, and worst of all, those with no choice—but in an ideal world, a world where everyone stops and misfortune pauses, the aftereffects of a snowstorm create a silence so palpable, so resonant, so clear, it is breathtaking.

Who can help but look out their window and gaze, slack jawed, at the snow globe landscape?

Okay, we may not all be feeling that warm fuzzy #let’s-make-hot-chocolate-and-build-a-fire-while-we-stay-in-our-pajamas moment. Some folks might be slack jawed and glaring at the snow with the #how-the-hell-am-I-supposed-to-get-to-work-for-a-boss-who-allows-no-excuses-except-death panic. I get it. And I’m sorry. Bosses are awful, awful people.

All of them.

Except for the ones who aren’t.

But I live for snow days and the cancelling of school. I have repeatedly been shortchanged in the snow department this winter. And I am growing desperate. In my mind, snow days are cozy, book-filled, nap-saturated hours where you dip your mug into an overflowing pot of lush hot chocolate, ladle up rich lamb stews and wait for the magic whisky hour.

In reality, I am the one making the hot chocolate and having to clean up the bubbled over, stove scorched milk because I was busy chopping veg for the stew and didn’t catch it in time.

I am sore from walking up the one mile, thousand vertical feet driveway after parking my car at the bottom of the mountain so that come the next day we are not stranded with nothing but a 5000 lb metal-encased toboggan to ride downhill in.

I am the one making the fire, stoking the fire and feeding the fire.

In reality, a nap never happens, a book is never read and I pass on the calorie-sodden brown liquid goo so I won’t feel the guilt later on. But the whisky is a must. I shall never say no, thank you and I shall never feel the guilt. If there is snow, there will be Scotland in liquid form to follow.

It really doesn’t matter, I’ll take the day in whatever form. Busy or not, just bring on the snow.

But living here where I do, it’s not just the people who are fickle about the weather, but the weather that’s fickle about the weather. No matter how sure, how certain, how promising a forecast is foretold, there have been scores of times where I am left holding a carrot and two pieces of coal with no place to shove them. Well … I do glance back at the TV and radio frequently, but that usually offers no satisfaction.

If the earth communicated to our earthly magicians that it was a sure thing to let the audience know we would soon see something magical, then by golly, somebody better be pulling a rabbit out of a hat in short order. I need an equal dose of each beautiful season.

Spring must spit out flowers.

Summer must blister with heat.

Fall must burst into flames.

And winter … well, at this point, I’d settle for winter to just show up and answer during roll call. Just one day this year, show up for class.

But maybe he won’t because school has been canceled. Sadly, no one knows why.

~Shelley

Five Reasons Schools HATE Snow Days (http://www.CNN.com)
Weird Snow Facts (http://www.almanac.com)
10 Things You May Not Know About Snow (www.unofficialnetworks.com)

27Oct2013

Hell is empty and all the devils are here!

Posted in Farming, Gardening, Humor, Mountain life, Nature by Shelley Sackier

There is a plague on my house.

Or more aptly, there is a plague IN my house.

Even more aptly, there is a plague in BOTH my houses. (The hound has a tiny cottage just outside the dog door.)

It’s evil. It’s widespread. It’s pandemic.

Actually, it is a they.

STINKBUGS.

These six-legged beasts have made themselves at home—without invitation, without cessation, and without a return trip ticket from whence they came.

A few years ago, the abominable scourge was the ladybug—or ladybird beetle. I can’t believe people complained about our overabundance of ladybugs. Growing up, you were lucky if a ladybug landed on you—it was a chance to make a wish, or count its spots to see if a good harvest was coming your way. And as is well known—a good harvest could make or break the day of a seven-year old.

California citrus growers released thousands of the beetles—purchased from our good friends Down Under—and kept their fingers crossed that the clumsy, crimson cutie pies would gorge their tiny bellies on as many aphids as they could muster. They were champions. Our desperate need to send grapefruit for the holidays was saved.

But eventually people complained. (Bet you didn’t see that coming, right?)

Rumor had it that the next idea was to release some parasitic wasp that would in essence sneak up on the ladybugs, inject them with venom, rendering them paralytic and zombie-like, and then lay eggs inside them. Our tiny beetles shortly found wasp eggs hatching and chewing their way out of their own belly.

Yeah, love that fix. Let’s launch a battalion of those wasps to teach our ladybugs a lesson.

The lovely ladybugs are no longer an issue in our abode, but have now been replaced with these malodorous, marmorated, major pain in my backside bugs.

Stinkbugs, so true to their name, are now making a yearly pilgrimage to my neck of the woods to worship something found in all the creases of my curtains, along the crown moldings of my ceilings and embedded deep within my light fixtures. When not paying homage to their transcendental deity, they rejuvenate their shield-shaped bodies by guzzling any sweet, liquid libation they can locate. Gone are my plump figs, my peppers and thick, leafy greens. I am a mecca that provides a free for all service of food, lodging and late night vespers to these party animals. A one stop church and chow, a synagogue and sip, a temple and tipple—I could go on …

I suppose I would have a lot more energy to create a battle plan to reclaim my house and crops if only I were allowed a proper night’s sleep. I have challenged cognitive skills at the best of times, but when paired with a chronic sleep disorder—thrust upon me by the late night riot of cocktails and carousing that these bugs launch into once I’ve donned my nightcap—I am left droopy-eyed, sluggish, and just barely tuned in to the fact that one of them is crawling along the back of my neck as I’m trying to work at my desk. I’m guessing he’s attempting to peek over my shoulders to report back to the others of my annihilation strategy.

They fly, stumbling along in the air, drunk on fig juice and nectar of collard greens. Their buzz is analogous to that of a small child’s radio controlled flyer, and just like the barely airworthy kidcraft, the bugs are likely to fall out of the sky at a moment’s notice. I’m not sure if they suddenly tire of the effort their wings ask of them, or if they have a very low work ethic, or even if their tiny brains stopped focusing on the task at hand and gave up coordinating calculations for lift, thrust, drag and weight, but they plummet and hit the earth—or the person standing between them and the earth–with a crisp thwack. They then are stuck on their backs, stranded by their hefty bulwark, many unable to flip themselves over because Mother Nature did not take into account the overwhelming dullness of mind these creatures possess.

A good number perish this way. No funerals are held. I am both elated and repelled at the sheer number of dead stinkbugs lining the windowsills, scattered across the countertops, or that crunch underfoot when I’m lulled out of bed with the need to use the facilities. I’ve decided to wear combat boots to sleep so that I’m totally prepared should the need arise. Plus, battle waits for no man.

They fall into my cup of tea, dive bomb into my pot of soup, squiggle their way into the folds of my face towel and I am fed up. I’ve lost sleep, my appetite and my appreciation for cilantro—for this is what they smell like when squished.

The only answer is suction.

I stalk these foul creatures like I would conduct a witch hunt—that is if I was an uneducated, fearful Protestant—which I am not. But for the sake of good plot, I pretend to be close. At least for this scenario. It is method acting.

It is me and my central vac hose. We suck them up one by one. Gleefully. Triumphantly. Like a woman possessed. Or getting rid of the possessed.

I fly about the room, cackling maniacally. The witch and her wand.

I cast these evil creatures into the abyss with a parting quote: We are time’s subjects, and time bids BE GONE!!

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what we’re cookin’ in the Scullery (here) and what we all talked about down in the pub (here). And to see more of Robin Gott‘s humor–all from the only pen carved from a human funny bone–click here.

Ding dong, stinkbugs calling on warm, cozy homes (usatoday.com)
Stinkbug salsa for the iodine deficient (chicagoreader.com)
Man finds eight-foot crocodile under his bed (Video) (examiner.com)

1Sep2013

720 hours hath September

Posted in Autumn, Calendar, England, Gardening, History, Humor, Nature by Shelley Sackier

There is something about September.

I wake to the sound of rain splattering on the copper rooftop, slapdash and sporadic, its disordered pattern teasing and anticipatory.

The dove gray skies are a soft, woolen blanket the earth has loosely wrapped about her shoulders. She makes a tucking in gesture, paying no mind to the cold and endless black that surrounds her. It softens her edges, mollifies the barbed tips of clacking seconds as they tick, tick, tick in the foggy background. They slowly transform into a muffled heartbeat. Is it mine, or hers?

My first whiff of wood smoke … I am transformed. A tendril that taps at a memory drawer, unopened for months and stiff with disuse. But once loosened, it spills, like cream over ripe berries, and I do little to halt the movement of either.

There is a tinge to the trees, too early to label as anything more than a lowering of the bright, green flame of searing summer life. The sun has merely stepped back a pace to eye her work in progress and rest on the handle of her proverbial rake. And like all avid gardeners, she finds that there are other projects that catch her eye as they rotate into her field of vision. And with that momentary lapse of intense attention, the products of her efforts soon yellow and wither. No matter, she shrugs. Work will resume next circle round.

It’s now that I brood about in the pantry. I count the beans—for big potted stews which will fill chipped crockery and rumbling bellies. I measure the tea—for ample kettle-fulls that let slip soft wisps of steam carrying somnolent notes of ginger, cinnamon and chicory. I eye the whisky—for the pure pleasure of the oncoming flush of heat. And then I eye the clock to determine how long I must wait for that sweet fever. It’s usually too long. Always too long.

Each year, I am caught unawares when changing the calendar from the eighth to the ninth month. August is so spectacularly hot, so devoid of working people, so filled with the phrase, “We are off for three weeks.” September is for ‘back to business,’ ‘back to school,’ or ‘Back to you, Bob, and that’s a look at our weather.”

It’s a transitional month, a swinging door from a sizzling, smoke belching kitchen to a plush-lined parlor, with hushed library voices and our mental bandwidth slowly revving into gear. There is an observable change in the laundry basket, which once barely reined in an endless mess of cut-off jean shorts and paper thin tank tops and now houses prim white shirts and pleated skirts, ordered and homogenous.

The printer churns a constant stream of schedules, documents, forms and calendars, convulsing with updated information like a Morse code machine relaying movement of troops and coordinated attacks. Paperwork lies across all available flat surfaces, requiring signatures, filing, and the hopefully intended read-through.

With the onslaught of shifting our moods and modes, it does not surprise me that in 1752, when the British Empire adopted the Gregorian calendar, they cut nearly two weeks from their clocks by finishing September 2^nd and then skipping straight to September 14^th. Perhaps it was not simply a method of keeping up with the rest of the world, but also a way to wipe away exhausting obligations. But then again, Britain can be slow to give up commitment and tradition, and their participation in Gregorian reform was 170 years after the first memo landed on everyone’s desk. In fact, a law created in 1307 states that still, should any dead whale be found, washed ashore on the British coast, the head automatically becomes property of the king, while the lucky queen shall have its tail. One must have access to bones for one’s corset, yes?

Thankfully, September is nowhere near the holiday party season, and there is plenty of time to hunt the shores for washed up whale.

But there should also be time for reflection and observance among the business of harvest. The long days of reaping, the field work and preservation may still take place in the sweat of the last shafts of summer sun, but once she has set, there is a thinning of the air. The scent of woodsy autumn appears on a breeze that slowly pushes summer’s plump stars off stage in preparation for the next act: a crisp set of patterns that will pierce the dark, blue skies.

Of course, intermission casts the bright light of the Harvest moon, and she will illuminate your path from field to home and back again. September bathes in that downy, yellow glow, almost as if aware of her age, asking to be seen through a soft focus lens.

Be busy, be effortful, be thoughtful.

Be here now, in September. Before she says goodbye.

~Shelley

The Gregorian Calendar: A Brief History (geography.answers.com)

25Aug2013

A fairly faithful fairy tale

Posted in England, Gardening, Humor, Mountain life, Nature, Virginia by Shelley Sackier

For the last two months I’ve been feeling like I belong in a Beatrix Potter tale. Maybe lodged somewhere in the index between The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin and The Tale of Two Bad Mice. In fact, there are days where I’m so prickly from doing endless loads of laundry that I actually see the bristly, Scottish hedgehog Potter penned into the role of Animal Laundress of the Lake District gazing questioningly back at me from the mirror above my bathroom sink.

But in addition to being Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s doppelgänger, I have, as of late, been boldly playing the role of Mr. McGregor.

He and I share the same love of growing veg, and the same dream of wrapping our soil-stained hands around as many fluffy bunnies as we can throw into a gunny sack.

Real nature lovers, he and I.

First thing in the morning, I am woken by the night patrol shift. Smudge, the charcoal colored streak of flying fur I see only at mealtimes, waits at my shoulder, staring intently at whichever eyelid she is closest to and waits for lift off (or lift up in this case). Now is when she announces, in a slightly bitter tone, that according to the always accurate clock in her belly, breakfast is late. Then, as she leaps from the bed, she throws a quick, “oh, and bee tee dubs, there are rabbits in the garden.”

Covers are jerked off, the back door is flung open, and I sprint in a “Why are my legs not working??” kind of brain fog to scare off those wascally wabbits.

I get there too late and see nothing but cotton ball tails scurry back to their safety zone of immunity in the woods, or the fields, or Russia.

Disgruntled, I trudge down to the sheep barn to further fatten two defunct lawnmowers with a couple handfuls of grain. And by defunct lawnmowers I mean both sheep have decided they do not like the taste of our meadow grass and refuse to eat any more of it. Period.

I have never met, nor ever seen sheep go on a grass strike. And I feel if I were to admit this to any other farmer I would see tears spring to their eyes, and be later billed for the small hernia operation I forced them to have because they split a gut laughing over my fiascos in the fields. Yes, I can hear everyone telling me that I’m further complicating the matter by giving into their demands, that if I refuse them their cereal they will eventually give in to hunger and start mowing again, but I have SEEN these guys hold their breath—and I have no doubt that they would pass out just to prove a point.

Replacing the lid on the grain bucket, I catch movement out of the corner of my vision and turn to see two black pearled eyes blinking back at me on a shelf beneath the barn window. A fat field mouse, pink nosed and whiskered, stands up to his jelly bellied middle, surrounded by tiny shreds of paper towel, pine shavings and my latest issue of The New Yorker. He has made himself a cozy bed in a pocket betwixt wall and shelf. His eyes go wide.

“What?” he says. “I smell winter.”

“Get out,” I poke a rake at his nest.

“Fine, but can you leave the lid off the grain bucket? Now that I have to relocate, it puts a dent in my foraging schedule.”

I sit on the bucket. “Out.”

I watch him scuttle away and my faithful hound and I finish mucking out the barn. As I’m making my way back up the hill to the house, Haggis turns to me and says, “You know there are rabbits in the garden, right?”

“What?” I look at him. “How do you know?”

“I saw them when we came down to feed the sheep.”

I am miffed. “Why did you not run after them?” I shout.

“I was helping you muck out the barn.”

“YOU WERE EATING SHEEP POO!”

“I was helping.”

I stab a finger in the air toward my vegetables. “Go. Run. Now!”

Haggis gives me one of his, You’ve gotta be kidding me looks and says, “I am way too full to run. I could get a cramp.”

Doubly miffed, I march into my garden to see what fresh new destruction has occurred while both my well-fed, well-watered, overly indifferent protectors of the potagé have been enjoying the posh life.

As we near the beds, crows scatter from the blackberry bushes, a mole buries himself beneath the mulched pathway having munched his way through an entire cantelope, and a spindly legged fawn leaps in surprise and springs in misdirected flight toward the trees, still clutching a bright red, juicy tomato in his tiny mouth.

I lean on my trowel and look at the crops.

I think about the endless nagging I do with my children to eat more fruits and vegetables. I write about making good food choices, trying to illuminate the spectacular flavors from the garden and benefits from natural food sources.

I sigh and take down my Peter Rabbit scarecrow and replace it with a Welcome to the Salad Bar sign.

How can I chase away the collective few who have been following my advice all along? It’s absurd, right? I finally have an audience who are all ears and eager to eat what will make them big and strong. It’s now crystal clear to me … my forest friends have been reading my writing.