Jarvis Coffin Labor Day Weekend. Already. The steps to our hillside garden are not repaired. The felled wood is not all cut up and stacked. The dock is still waiting to be treated with teak oil.
Other Musings Chicken Barbeque . . . nothing says community—or, Old Home Day—like a volunteer fire department and chicken barbeque.
Other Musings Harvest Jitters For us backyard gardeners, this is the time of year we fear most for our crop. It is not like we have a super abundance to go around.
Other Musings Visualizing World Peace Attendees at this year’s [MacDowell] Medal Day, were given white luggage tags and a pen and urged to write our wishes and hang them on fruit trees in the MacDowell Gardens.
Other Musings Summer People The July and August people have arrived, bringing with them their patronage of our stores and their vehicles, requiring me to look both ways before pulling out of the driveway.
Jarvis Coffin Independent, Inching Forward Soon you have the sense you are talking about the same things, which is when it hits you . . . you have only inched forward.
Other Musings Good, Quality Thunder The rain had stopped and we sat just to watch and listen as the storm’s slashing furry settled to not much more than a purr.
Other Musings A Sensitive Time Those are things you must get used to in New England, learning to be a tough tomato.
Other Musings Spring Cleaning I am vulnerable to every link I come across leading me down another dark tunnel to a free weekly subscription.
Other Musings Liver Free or Die I object to the narrow use we make of the animals that pay the ultimate sacrifice on the way to our table.
Jarvis Coffin Tractor Pull I interview everyone with a tractor and they say the same thing: I love my tractor.
Other Musings Calmly on the Waters Of all the animals we will share property with this summer, we are most attached to the loons. They are the only creature that does not bolt the instant they become aware of our presence.
Other Musings Total Eclipse The memory of projecting light on the shirt cardboard stands out only because it was the same afternoon we were taken to see the play, Peter and the Wolf.
Easter Easter When it comes down to it, nothing unseen fits comfortably into the containers of what is seen. Time is one of those things. And surely you know, Easter is another.
Other Musings Town Meeting It is Town Meeting season, that time of year . . . for throwing a few punches at your neighbor over the cost of building a new school, apportioning land, and repairing roads so . . . people can . . . get to church.
Other Musings Moon Walk I submit our Presidential candidates should be required to spend three nights around a campfire with a view of the sky as part of their spiritual journey to the office.
Jarvis Coffin Mozart on Norway Pond Mozart was with us that day, regretting every other invitation from the concert halls of Europe and around the world.
Other Musings Now We are Nearly to Spring Every year, awakened by the Mourning Dove, I would be glad to stand in that spot for a minute or two.
Other Musings Artificial Intelligence There will still be tasks available to us after AI has it under control. I feel confident about that at the end of a dirt road.
Jarvis Coffin Up Yours As usual, it took a minute when I slipped behind the curtain and unfolded the paper ballot to process all the names in front of me.
Other Musings Winter Enchantment Imagine a place where the leaf action of a spindly plant at the edge of the woods can take center stage each morning out the kitchen window.
Food About Breakfast I stopped ordering scrambled eggs at restaurants, including good ones, long ago. Invariably— as in, every case, every occasion—scrambled eggs come out overcooked and rubbery, sometimes flecked with specs of brown.
Jarvis Coffin Nothing Much Happens If you had to pick one thing to describe rural life, it could easily be that nothing much new ever happens.
