# jarviscoffin.com
> Fiction writing, and essays on rural living from the Monadnock Region in southwestern New Hampshire. By Jarvis Coffin, author of "Calmly on the Waters."
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).
## Pages
### About this site
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/about/
Last updated: 2026-07-27T20:23:05.000Z
This is home to most of my writing (novel work, excepted). Subscribing to my newsletter, [*Postcard-from-Monadnock*](https://postcard-from-monadnock.ghost.io/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)*,* is *free*, as is access to my other musings ([*Columns and Other Essays*](https://www.jarviscoffin.com/tag/othermusings/)) on rural life in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire*,* notably my *Off the Highway* column, which has appeared in Peterborough's [Monadnock Ledger-Transcript](https://www.ledgertranscript.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com) since 2022\. 

The [Fiction Workshop](https://www.jarviscoffin.com/tag/workshop/) section hosts my short fiction--published, unpublished, and, when it seems useful, and right, in progress. The section is available with a paid subscription ($5/mo, or $45/year), reflecting the interactivity I hope to provide to readers who want to be more involved with my writing process and ambition for my fiction pieces. 

Don't forget to check out my [*Calmly on the Water*](https://www.jarviscoffin.com/calmly/calmly-on-the-waters-3/) page, storefront for my essay collection (also available on [Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jarvis-Coffin/author/B0H15ZHYJ6?ref=ap%5Frdr&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ccs%5Fid=4e3aa6b9-cfe6-4f43-b4af-1e1c1c16fbb6), and through the publisher, [Bauhan Publishing](https://bauhanpublishing.com/shop/calmly-on-the-waters/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)).

If you subscribe today, you'll get full access to the website as well as the *Postcard from Monadnock* newsletter, emailed monthly. Paid fiction subscribers will receive notice anytime new content is published.

## About me

For thirty-five years, I was an advertising sales and media executive. In 2011, my wife and I purchased the [Hancock Inn](http://www.hancockinn.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com), New Hampshire's oldest inn, which we ran until 2022\. Today, I write full-time, fiction, plus essays about rural life in Southern New Hampshire. 

### About the people you will meet here

They are like you, drawn to stories about our shared experiences. If you like what you read, tell a friend. There is always strength in numbers.
### Other Musings
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/
Last updated: 2026-07-02T10:27:22.000Z
Other Musings is home to columns and essays that have been published elsewhere, notably Jarvis's bi-weekly column in the [Monadnock Ledger-Transcript](https://ledgertranscript-nh.newsmemory.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com).
### Calmly on the Waters
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/calmly/
Last updated: 2026-07-13T18:28:46.000Z
A collection of Jarvis Coffin's seasonal essays, published by Bauhan Publishing, June 2026
### Fiction Workshop
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/workshop/
Last updated: 2026-07-25T18:00:55.000Z
_This page is for paying subscribers only._
## Posts
### Pocketknife - Part Six. The End.
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/workshop/pocketknife-part-six-the-end/
Last updated: 2026-10-04T09:30:23.000Z
Mother lives in a retirement community about twenty minutes away, and I visit every week. I have lapsed recently, distracted by my father’s reappearance and agreeing with Claire that nothing could be said until we were able to peer deeper into the mystery. Mother has called a few times over that time, generally for computer or telephone support. She is very independent, but technology defeats her. I let Claire do most of the talking.

I park the car, walk through the sliding doors of the independent living community, and wave to the receptionist. She is on the telephone, and waves back. I scoot by.

The door to my mother’s apartment is open a crack. I knock, poke my head around and call hello.

“Look who’s here,” Mother says, speaking to her corgi, as I come in and head towards her sitting room on the far side of the open kitchen. She is at her desk, on her computer.

“Say hi to George,” she says to the dog lying under the table in front of the couch. The dog lifts its head. Mother smiles at me.

“Hello,” I say, giving her a kiss. “Sorry I have been so absent. How are you? You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she answers. “I’m writing Mary.” She points to the computer. Mary is her sister in Pennsylvania.

“How is Mary?” I ask.

“She has a cold,” responds Mother.

My mother’s apartment is neat and organized. Clutter exists only around her desk. Post-it notes line the wall in front of her, filled with computer passwords and random email addresses. Every day, she shares articles and pictures with friends via email, many examples of which are printed and scattered on the desktop. She hands me one.

“Read this from your cousin in Texas,” she says. It is a lengthy piece from the *Wall Street Journal*.

“I’ll take it with me,” I say.

“No. Don’t take it. I’ll email it to you. Give it back. I want to show it to Gretchen.” Gretchen lives across the hall. Gretchen does not use email.

Mother seems bright today. The mood has been dark the last several visits, overshadowed by the death of my father. She is still thin, the result of supporting my father through the last two years of his life. He spent the final six months on the nursing floor, where she sat beside him for hours at a time, eating the same cold, dismal food they serve in the ward.

“You seem well,” I say.

“Very well, thank you.”

“I’m checking in. Won’t stay long. I’m writing a story.”

“Oh, what’s it about?”

“You will have to wait and see.”

“Well, come with me, Mr. *Always-in-a-hurry*. Please help decide what to do with the remainder of your father’s things.”

We head through the living room toward her bedroom.

“Do you want any of these?” she asks, pointing to an assortment of my father’s hats hanging on pegs he put up on the back of the apartment door. There are a couple I will take if the size is adjustable.

Mother swings open the closet. Claire and my sisters-in-law dealt with my father’s wardrobe soon after his death, taking most of it to the Salvation Army. A few items are still hanging in the closet.

“These,” she asks. “Would they fit you?”

No. My father was appreciably larger than I am. (Which was still the case, I could point out.)

“Come over here,” and I move to where she is standing by the closet. “Up there,” she says, looking to the far end of the shelf, where a pile of old sweaters remains. “Look underneath,” she says.

I step into the closet and rummage under the sweaters to find a long leather case. I pull it out carefully, but a few sweaters fall to the floor. It is a shotgun case.

“How have we not seen this before?” I ask, alarmed.

She shrugs. “The girls didn’t get to it the first time around,” meaning Claire and my sisters-in-law.

“It’s not even supposed to be here, Mother. They don’t allow *guns.”*

“It belonged to your great-grandfather. Your father was attached to it.”

I will take it with me. I do not hunt, but one of my brothers does. He will be delighted, assuming it is in decent condition. I place the case on my father’s bed.

Mother says, “Come sit next to me.” We go over to her bed and sit, our backs to the bedroom door, looking out the window to the lawn behind their building. There is a bookshelf along the wall under the window and a small chair upholstered in a bright floral pattern in the corner, near the foot of her bed. She is looking at the chair, which I am not eager to have if she is about to ask. But she does not ask. Instead, she says, “I have a story for *you*.”

I smile. I nod. I wait while she twists her wedding band, which is loose around her finger.

“I woke up several nights ago in the middle of the night, as I always do, and your father was in *that* chair,” she says, pointing with a stab of her finger.

I would accept a claim from my mother, under any circumstance, that she had seen an image of my late father. But, of course, I have seen him too. It appears he is haunting the earth with some mandate to make contact, administer to children, accept invitations, and leave hints of himself in a chair. Perhaps it is all for fun, a jolly escapade. Or, is he lost? Is he trapped? He seemed to be neither when we were at dinner together.

I embrace the news, calmly. Compared to my experience, her apparition is a cloud in the sky. Her countenance is peaceful. There is a faint smile on her face. It is clear why her spirits seem so bright this morning. I am glad for her.

“That’s beautiful, Mom. What was he doing?”

Her eyes are still on the chair. “Nothing. I woke up, and he was sitting there. He was much younger, had his hair, very handsome. He was quite still. I wasn’t sure if he was looking at me. Sort of through me, like he might be thinking.”

“What did you do?”

“I said, ‘George?’ But he didn’t answer. He just sat there for several minutes. I wasn’t a bit frightened . . . which was interesting. I pulled myself up in bed, so my head was against the board. And I just looked. He looked wonderful. It made me quite happy.”

In that instant, I decide not to impose on my mother’s vision. How would we reconcile the comfort granted her by my father’s incorporeal presence with the action of three boys splashing in a lake, a young bride with ribbons in her hair, and a lamb dinner at our house?

I put my arm around her and squeeze. “Then what?”

“Then nothing,” she responds, softly. “He was just there. I wasn’t conscious of him leaving. I must have gone back to sleep. I’ve prayed for a sign, George. He was so sick. I wanted so much to know that he was okay. And there he was. Not sick. So handsome.” Her voice trails away. “It’s a miracle,” she says, and I do not disagree.

“You should have called me,” I say, aware of my double standard.

“I couldn’t decide how to talk about it. Then I decided it was private. Between your father and me. I wanted it for myself for a little while. I thought he might come back. Now I’m telling you.”

“May I tell Claire?”

“Everyone may know. I told Gretchen this morning. She’s Catholic, so she’s very pleased.”

We sit quietly, my arm still around her. A minute later, she gets up. She stops at my father’s bureau, pushes a few things around, and asks if I want any of the stray items. Not especially. I helped myself to what I wanted months ago, and now I have her vision of my father in the chair, which seals it. Claire will be agape. I can hardly wait. Yes, it was him. He was here. And he left with his knife. I do not weigh what has become of it since. Took it with him, where it sits on his bureau at 119 Maple Avenue, I suppose.

But I have not lost my mind.

Mother is rummaging through the drawers of his shaving mirror that sits on top. It is a small, brown pedestal with three inlaid drawers and an old mirror above, secured by carved posts on either side. The mirror itself is so old it barely offers a reflection. She removes a few items from one of the drawers, a length of a leather shoelace, a watch, and a couple of old presidential campaign buttons.

“Here,” Mother says with a jolt, feeling around in a different drawer and withdrawing something hidden under the fingers of her hand. “Your father’s pocketknife!” she smiles, handing the knife to me. “Look, it has your initials.”

### End
### Golden Tigers
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/golden-tigers/
Last updated: 2026-10-03T11:41:22.000Z
Golden Tigers

0:00

/442.84800453514737

1×

Racquets, the precursor to the game of squash, is played on a large indoor court with high walls. When struck from near the back wall, the small, hard, white ball arcs leisurely toward the front sixty feet away, making a distinctive *thwack* when it gets there, like a rock (because it is like a rock), before beginning its still leisurely, graceful return toward the players. If this is your first time in a racquets court, you feel poised and ready, racquet back, feet planted, until, as the ball approaches, you realize it is moving at missile speed. You spin and slash at it as it rockets by, sending it, if you can, on its way once more toward the future. It will be back, of course. Always sooner than you think.

This image replayed for me over the course of my 50th high school reunion last weekend in St. Catharines, Ontario, all of us returning members of the Class of 1976 wondering where the time had gone. Once upon a time, fifty years stretched out in front as a number close to infinity, meaning that light from back then could have been just arriving as we gathered for the opening luncheon. After fifty years, we had to give our eyes time to adjust. We had to squint.

“I’m Jarvie,” I would say, using my childhood name, the one that was made to stay home after high school. With my mother and the puppy.

“Hi Jarvie! Of course” (but not really). “It’s Bill. Bob. Tim. Liz. Dave. Nancy. Buck. Jim. Jamie.”

Yes, I can see you all now. Can you see me?

A 50th reunion class has standing on alumni weekends. As a group, we were introduced repeatedly as the Golden Tigers, a synthesis of our golden years and the school’s tiger mascot. The men among us were given a special, commemorative necktie. The women, scarves. The weekend coincided with the school’s birthday, now 137 years old, which was celebrated, enthusiastically, by lower and middle school children. We were ushered across campus to stand in the back of the crowd and watch them dance and sing, and generally make noise. Like we would have, and did. The headmaster made his remarks, and then directed everyone’s attention to us for a round of applause.

“Special welcome to the Golden Tigers! Fifty years!” he said, extolling the school’s place in our hearts, its lasting connections, and enduring traditions, the reasons we were there. The boys and girls (because many of them *were* boys and girls) gave us a passing glance and offered polite applause.

I suppose you remember what it was like to take account of alumni returning to school, high school or college. Nowadays, in the States, at least, many reunions are scheduled for early summer, after students have gone home, most people’s suspicion being that the development people want you for themselves, undistracted by anything except the need for a “Second Century” campaign. The timing is a shame. But once upon a time, reunions happened while school was in session, and as students, we’d also nod, graciously indifferent, at the returning classes who passed by, holding doors for them, and giving directions, mostly to restrooms (“washrooms” in Canada). I was one of those needy people last week, my blood pressure medicine doing its job as a diuretic.

I am still seeing those young faces turned our way. Perhaps, in their minds, they are still seeing me—*us*, the *Golden Tigers*. I believe they are, being not so different from us. They saw out to infinity, far, far away, gave it a glance and polite applause.

They have not played racquets.

We enjoyed a cocktail reception before dinner the first night in a familiar room, now a small theatre named for a distinguished former English teacher at the school. The school sprinkled the event with prefects, upper-school men and women who circulated in small groups, pausing to engage with us and answer questions. A couple of my classmates and I were feted by three young women, who explained their uniforms and the achievement badges—more like pins—that decorated their lapels and answered our routine questions: campus life, where they were from, how long at the school? (For the better part of their lives in two cases.) Who could help but smile as they wandered away, heads bopping together in a fast debrief.

I see you. Can you see me? I am that person you are, who was in this room, as you are, who answered the questions you answered when it was my time to do so. I am still that person. Inside.

In our day we called teachers at our school masters, hence headmaster. I remember being sent on an errand to one master’s apartment in my dormitory, to collect some item on his behalf. Inside I discovered several birthday cards. It must have been his birthday that day, or around then. One card has stayed with me. It read, *Happy Quarter of a Century!* The master had evidently turned twenty-five, and I thought, being fifteen, wow. A quarter of a century. That puts things in perspective. He was old. Wherever he is—and most people last weekend thought he was still around, maybe in British Columbia—he’ll be almost eighty now.

Wow. Eighty. Old.

*Thwack*.

I’d like to make it back to school for my 60th. I’ll be almost eighty. I have no anxiety about the age. I might need some help getting upstairs to that same small theatre, if cocktails before the first night’s dinner are in the same place. I hope they are. I didn’t think anyone else needed to know at the time, but I had a first kiss in the closet of that room fifty or so years earlier, when I should have been asleep in my dorm room. And yes, a few more followed. It’s still a part of me always worth visiting.

Feet planted. Racquet ready.
### Pocketknife - Part Five
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/workshop/pocketknife-part-five/
Last updated: 2026-09-27T10:53:27.000Z
My father is dead, I recovered his knife. But he is here, knife in hand.

_This post is for paying subscribers only._
### Sweater Weather
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/sweater-weather/
Last updated: 2026-09-22T15:54:30.000Z
Suddenly, it’s sweater weather, that marvelous time of year when the shirt from yesterday or the day before will work just as well hidden underneath the extra layer of clothing. Throw a sweater on over the T-shirt and you are dressed for success.

My sweaters live on a shelf in my closet. There is no room for them in the two old bureaus I have for the rest of my clothes, which have roles assigned to them by the wardrobe police—summer clothing drawers, and winter clothing drawers, each of them sorted top to bottom beginning with socks, then to shirts, and finally, trousers and jeans. Most everybody does it this way, I guess. Smaller drawers seem always to be at the top, larger ones at the bottom. Why? I submit socks ought to be closer to where the feet are, and I would be glad not to always have to dig around the bottom drawer for the bulkier khakis and jeans, bearing in mind that pulling out one pair frequently results in one or two others tumbling onto the floor behind them.

I have acknowledged in this space before that I have more articles of clothing than I need because I hold on to them. Tattered shirts and sweaters I have had for years that I might have been wearing on the first date with my wife, or at the hospital the night the baby was born. Getting rid of them feels like abandoning a pet alongside the road.

So, the sweaters live on a shelf in the closet. As of the end of last season, per the wardrobe police, they were neatly folded and ordered by weight and fabric (cotton, wool, llama, recycled roofing shingles . . . I’m never sure what they’re made of) into stacks, side by side. But now, within only hours of sweater season arriving, the orderly stacks are a jumble, cottons already finding their way onto wools, sleeves untucked and dangling down to where they risk being hooked by wire hangers.

Frustrated and late for an appointment, I made an illegal U-turn once in downtown Stamford, Connecticut, turning around in front of a police car idling on the side of the street. I was distracted. He was sitting right there. He didn’t even have to pull out in pursuit. Simply flashed his lights and stepped out of the car, collected my license and registration, checked on my driving record, and came back to the window.

“Gotta pencil?”

“Pencil, Officer?”

“I want you to write 100 times, ‘I will never be stupid enough again to make an illegal U-turn in front of a police car.’”

I am already bracing for the wardrobe police who can never fathom why my sweater shelf is always in such disarray. What is required to choose a sweater, carefully remove it from the stack, and return it, folded, to a safe and orderly position on top? Why must the shelf of sweaters always appear as if cats have been living there?

I don’t know. It’s boring. I suppose it’s the same with removing trousers from the large bottom drawer of the bureau. My father, who spent some time in Korea with the Marines, used to say, “See the hill, take the hill,” interpreted often as “See the leaves, rake the leaves,” or “See the bed, make the bed.” I see the sweater, I take the sweater.

The wardrobe police use a step stool to gently and carefully remove and replace sweaters on their shelves. Granted, there is a lot to admire about their shelves, which could be open to the public as a curated fashion exhibit. Colorful, rational, detailed. Carefully and slowly crafted. A picture.

And one reason I’m always left waiting in the car.

Happy first day of fall.
### Pocketknife - Part Four
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/workshop/pocketknife-part-four/
Last updated: 2026-09-20T11:32:37.000Z
Can two snowflakes be identical? The answer is no. There are more design possibilities among trillions of snowflakes each winter than atoms in the universe.

_This post is for paying subscribers only._
### Pocketknife - Part Three
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/workshop/pocketknife-part-t/
Last updated: 2026-09-13T09:30:06.000Z
_This post is for paying subscribers only._
### Pocketknife - Part Two
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/workshop/pocketknife-part-two/
Last updated: 2026-09-12T21:24:07.000Z
I am old now and dream in reverse. I would be happy to be in the seat of the car behind my father, to be lifted on his shoulder, to scurry to his call. But the way is blocked. My childhood has new owners.

_This post is for paying subscribers only._
### When the Time is Right
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/when-the-time-is-right/
Last updated: 2026-09-05T09:30:38.000Z
When the Time is Right

0:00

/395.293537414966

1×

At the edge of the pond, the leaves on the small maple tree are turning red. You have heard of this tree before, perhaps. The tree that by choice or agreement is the first to signal the onset of autumn around the pond. In the years we have lived here, it has remained mostly the same, not growing at the pace of the others, wedged where it is between the shore and the larger trees that hover over it. It tilts to one side. Not even a straight tree. It is the water boy, the assistant junior manager, the kid in the mailroom. Except, once a year—this time of year—it is invited to throw out the first pitch. After which, back to the bench.

It will be a few more weeks before the more mature trees, some of them also maples, begin to flourish their colors, and we arrive at the time when we feel most rewarded for living in this part of New England, after cold winter has led into mud season, passed into black fly season, then hot summer, and finally into fall. There is no perfect place to live in the world. Wherever we are, nature uses a measure of force to control our gait. Don’t think the horse is the only one with the bit in its mouth, or the dog with a collar. We are leashed with the rest of them. But here, we can run free for a while when autumn rolls around.

At home, we can head back into the lower woods and the untamed areas near our cabin, to bring up the logs and limbs that remain from the winter job of felling, hauling and splitting ash trees. We managed to stack over five cords by May 1, when we gave up the task because our boots were sinking into the mud caused by spring runoff, and the black flies were emerging from the native soil. It is possible now to drive the little engine that could, our fifteen-year-old John Deere D100, with its green wagon, to collect the balance of downed wood and cart it to the splitter as a start on next year’s heat. We are in step with nature, submissively by its side, on pace to keep a year ahead of our winter fuel requirements, while having the summer for mowing, planting, and harvesting.

The potatoes are out of the ground, as is the garlic. The green beans are still proliferating, along with the carrots. Our tomatoes are gone, but there are mountains of them at local farm stands. I wonder sometimes why I bother to grow our own vegetables when there are so many capable growers nearby. For that reason, we don’t grow squash anymore, such as zucchini, although my wife would like to look out the window at pumpkins lolling in the field.

We occupy ourselves with less common farm stand produce such as the garlic and potatoes, plus leeks and onions, things that we use regularly in cooking, not only for their own sake, but as additions to whatever else we’re making. People may think a potato is a potato, or an onion an onion, but they are not. You will know the difference the first time you try to slice them. They don’t so much resist the cut as make you feel you have struck the ball with the sweet part of the instrument—the center of the racket, the meat of the bat. One can *feel* freshness.

Which I guess is the reason to grow your own, bearing in mind it will disclose heartache as well. This year, there has been plenty of it. The tomatoes, for instance. For the second year, they occupied an unprotected outpost near the edge of the woods that receives nearly constant sunlight during the growing season. They had only their wits and sour green fruit to beat off the attack of porcupines and raccoons at night, and were no doubt covetous of the fence that went in for the young strawberries we planted near them this spring. The tomatoes survived, sorely damaged, but delivered on their promise. Next year they will have a fence, in addition to our respect.

The fruit trees, likewise, have experienced relentless pressure from porcupines. The trees are fenced, but the rodents can climb and dig. They tear at the bark, pull at the branches, and swipe at the fruit, knocking it to the ground for transport. Every night before bed, Huckleberry and I patrol the perimeter with a powerful flashlight and mark the territory. But we know with them that the art of defense is to keep awake.

So they wait.

But it was a good summer. The level of the pond remained above the second step of the dock ladder. We have seen it below the third. The grass on the top lawn survived the sun without shifting down to brown in too many places. In its fifth year, the open field we created out of the forest behind us is increasingly democratic. The dominant party remains the black-eyed Susans, but purple coneflowers are a strong minority that should need no one’s help getting on the ballot next year. Loyalists have been sneaking in Queen Anne’s lace. And there is a fringe group of wild bergamots, which always look like they’ve just come from the pub. I used to have an office in the old Grand Central building, looking up Park Avenue in New York. The hum of activity that reached me from twenty floors below is the hum of bees in our field. The drone of industry that never sleeps.

After two years convalescing from brown leaf spots, the winterberry bush at the corner of our cabin is already geared for the holidays, thick with berries that should ripen red as a bright cheek on a frosty day. I imagine it can’t wait.

Hold that thought. When the time is right, I’ll send you a picture.

---

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2026/09/COVER-PHOTO-1.jpg) 

#### 

My first published collection of essays, "Calmly on the Waters" helps support my work, and keep you warm at night. Thank you.

[To purchase "Calmly on the Waters"](https://buy.stripe.com/4gMeVc1WK9RT8khcpc5Rm05?ref=jarviscoffin.com)
### Ready. Set. Hike.
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/ready-set-hike/
Last updated: 2026-08-25T09:30:00.000Z
The ConVal football team was on the practice pitch as I drove by the other day, players scrimmaging with helmets on, and coaches buzzing around them like worker bees around a hive. Suddenly, I felt the arrival of fall and the start of a new year. Fear not, a good stretch of summer remains. Temperatures are cooling, but the sun still beats down at noon, and the water remains inviting for anyone who wants in. But there was the football team mustering for pre-season practice—last year’s juniors this year’s captains; last year’s potentials, this year’s starters. For me, as always, it signaled the beginning of the new year—the *actual* new year, when each person’s token has a chance to advance one or two squares on the board.

Think about it: The official start to the new year, January 1st, brings nothing to the table. It lands with a cold thud after the holiday season. For many, it portends the drudgery of winter until spring. By comparison, summer vacation ends in renewal in the form of new jobs, new apartments and neighborhoods, new classrooms, lingering summer romances, new arts seasons, and the return of industry as prospects and customers emerge from their summer campgrounds. You can keep the champagne and fireworks on December 31st if you like as the hard stop after the holidays. My preference would be to anoint the third Monday of August as the official New Year’s Day. More logically, September 1st.

Anyway, I welcomed the return of ConVal’s football team to the field, and I resolved to attend a home game this fall. I have no dog in the fight. My children were not raised around here, but I think sitting in bleachers along the local gridiron on a (preferably) sunny afternoon, bundled in a sweater or light jacket, is about as much a reason to live in this part of the world as any. I can sit high up in the back, with a broad view of the field and the team boosters below, watching them root for their own, which is always part of the show.

As it happens, my 50th high school reunion is this fall. It means that fifty years ago—before the parents of the ConVal football team were born, and while most of their grandparents were still walking around in short pants—my instinct for this time of year was being infused with the sight and sound of wind sprints and whistles, and senior boys wandering back to locker rooms looking larger than life in shoulder pads. At reunion weekend, alumni (it was an all-boys school at the time, not today) would swarm back to campus, pulling their station wagons up to the edge of the football field to tailgate and tell stories. Is it any wonder that the appearance of returning fall athletes affects me in the same way that the dwindling daylight hours are affecting our hummingbirds? They are thinking about heading back to Panama, or wherever they winter. We can tell. There are three of them now throughout the day, bulking up on the flowers we set out for them at the start of the season.

I wonder if the prospect of the trip fills the hummingbird with the general sort of satisfaction I get from the sight of young people arriving back on campus for practice. Soon it will be school bus drivers rehearsing routes. Cars on the highway loaded with belongings for a first year at college. Church choirs returning to sing hymns. Two lanes open on freshly paved roads. So many new beginnings.

It’s that time of year. What can I say? Ready, set, hike.
### Another Deluge
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/another-deluge/
Last updated: 2026-08-11T09:30:37.000Z
Last week, we drove through the Hudson River Valley, doing our best to dodge the final few punches of a storm that dropped twelve inches of rain on our destination in the Catskills. The Catskills, you may know, are the result of millions of years of sediment from the bottom of ancient streambeds piling up, lifted by tectonic action, and carved by glaciers and water. The net effect is that the Catskills don’t gradually rise or slope downhill to rolling farm country like the Adirondacks, or our Grand Monadnock. The Catskills simply end in places, terminating in a cliff face. On an average day, the effect is dramatic winding up route 23 from Palenville, through Kaaterskill Falls, climbing past treetops. Add a torrent of water cascading over mountain edges from above and around you following twenty-four hours of continuous, heavy rain, and the effect is Jurassic.

By the morning after our arrival, Catskill and Hudson River Valley locals were referring to the storm as a one-thousand-year flood event, up from the usual one-hundred-year event. They got that idea from unnamed experts. I may not have made anyone feel better expressing sympathy for their ordeal, pointing out that it was a year ago, at the *same* time, when Hancock was deluged by a storm that sat over town for hours, ending with accumulations of eight to twelve inches, and washing away our roads with glacier-like ease. I have already entered “heavy rain” in the calendar across the last week of July 2027, conscious that one-thousand-year events are now part of the active roster.

Around here, we will need to harden our roads. In the Hudson River Valley, they will need to harden their basements and farmland. The wipers beat steadily across our windshield for the duration of the four-hour drive, and we made reasonably good time until we started across the river valley—in places, more river than valley. In the hamlet of Craryville, traffic took turns using one lane to pass through fast-moving water spilling over the banks of Taghkanic Creek. As we crept along, we encountered an older man, hat, coat, Wellington-style boots, making his way back across the road in front of us after conferring with utility people working near their emergency trucks, yellow lights flashing. He reached the right-hand side of the road, and the water topped his boots. Several more strides, dragging his legs through the surf, and he was at the side door of his farmhouse, where the water was admitting itself without invitation. My wife took a picture. OMG, is the useful, modern abbreviation for what she had to say.

We enjoy the wind whistling through our house, and sunshine through the windows. But water that finds its way inside is on the order of a snake slithering across the floor. Or mice in the walls, or spiders in the corners. As we would be hearing footsteps on the gravel path, we are awakened abruptly at night by the eerie drip, drip, drip of rain that finds its way past the chimney flashing to splash on the mantle. We have always had a penchant for old houses, which often means dug basements. “Does it flood?” I learned to ask. “Sometimes,” the sellers learned to answer. I left hip-waders at the top of the basement stairs in one house to rescue what was adrift when it flooded—which was always after an inch of rain.

It is a clear day as I write this. But I have emptied the rain gauge twice in the past week of three inches of water. That’s six inches total against July’s average, in these parts, of three, to three-and-a-half. Out west, they are still trapped in severe drought conditions. But according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, gradually things are improving. Much of the East Coast is forecasted to emerge from drought conditions this month, including New Hampshire. We can hope relief comes soon to our western neighbors so they can worry less about fires.

Interestingly, by the late Jurassic period, sea levels were upwards of 250 feet above where they are today.
### An Old Canoe
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/an-old-canoe/
Last updated: 2026-08-01T09:30:08.000Z
An Old Canoe

0:00

/310.58714285714285

1×

I walked dogs with a good friend for many years, and he took me on several excursions away from the usual places, on off-trail gems that he had frequented going back to his days as a teenager—a long time ago. Most of us know the pleasure of introducing our past to partners and friends, or our children. Who has not diverted to drive by the house where they grew up, maybe with someone else in the car. The action goes something like this: *Slow down, so we can look,* which allows time for everyone to get what they can from the place before it is left behind again.

Over the years of walking, my friend sought advice on a guidebook he was going to produce detailing his catalogue of “hidden” trails. He described it at length. I encouraged him throughout. Finally, he announced there would be no guidebook. What was the point of a guidebook of *hidden* trails? How would others know them, as he wanted them known, without him, as it were, behind the wheel? And what of the effect of so many more feet trampling over his secret treasures?

I use this to explain my decision not to share where I have found an old canoe. Not in a place that my friend showed me, though we walked nearby many times. It is down a ravine, upstream from rapids running through dark woods, at the edge of the sort of water where a canoe ought to belong—where one *is*, in fact, and has been for so long that it has gone from belonging to becoming, dissolving into the spot where it was left.

It would have been no easy task to get it there. There are other places I know where I wish I had a canoe to take on the water. We hiked to one of them this morning, mostly uphill, maybe a mile to the end, where there is a large pond with lilies flowering on the surface. Alas, there was no chance to drift among them. All we could do was stand on the shore and look, prevented from experiencing it firsthand as a parade of young mallards was able to do, keeping a safe distance on the far side.

A mile-long portage with a canoe would take some muscle—more muscle than I have anymore, even as one of two doing the carrying. The first summer camp experience I had was in Algonquin Park, one hundred eighty miles north of Toronto. I was ten, and everything I learned about canoeing, I learned there, in heavy wooden canoes. We were taught to kneel in the boat—there were no seats—with both occupants of the canoe paddling on the same side so that the canoe never traveled flat, but heeled to the side, like a sailboat, our bottom hand gripping the blade of the paddle so that our fingers swept underwater on each stroke. This was how Indigenous people canoed, we were told. And this was how we would do it, making sure the paddles never sent reverberations across the water by striking the gunwales. Because canoes prefer a world without uproar.

When it came time to portage, the camp’s older boys and counselors, high school and college-aged, carried the canoes, solo, on their backs, a towel across their shoulders on which to rest the center thwart, while they held the canoe in place by holding the front thwart. I weighed, maybe, fifty-five pounds when I was ten. I was awed by those displays of power, following those boys with my pack as they hiked nimbly over trails with the boat on their back. One of them would be all I needed, today, to help me stow a canoe in the reeds of a hidden pond, deeper in the woods, offering me the chance to hop across nature’s boundary. How like having wings to be able to venture to the middle of undisturbed waters.

I wonder if the canoe against which I have rested a couple of times expected to live out its days on this shore. Where is the person who once embarked with it on those waters? Gone to the city, perhaps. A thousand miles away. Swept downstream by life’s disturbances, and forced to kick off the ruby slippers. They left no guidebook or journal. But it must have been someone like me, who desired a hidden canoe to hop across nature’s boundary, who was intrepid enough to get it there, and young enough, such that the canoe has had time to grow old and gray, with grass up through the floor, and acorns piled in the corners.

Still, it manages to say, *Slow down. Take a look*.

And a heron takes off.

[For sale: “Calmly on the Waters”](https://www.jarviscoffin.com/calmly/calmly-on-the-waters-3/)
### A Midsummer Journal
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/a-midsummer-journal/
Last updated: 2026-07-28T09:30:19.000Z
I have reached the point in summer when I am tired of mowing the lawn—tired of conducting routine maintenance across a landscape that is burned out, anemic, and sloughing off space to various weeds and crabgrasses. It is not like pruning lilacs or weeding the vegetable garden, both of which can be restored, much as we can when dressed in a clean shirt after a cool swim. Mowing the lawn cuts it down to size, but changes nothing with respect to its general unruliness.

The lawn always looks promising when I fire up the machine in May, as if the limestone and organic fertilizer have finally succeeded in imbuing the favored grasses with the strength to persist against their more aggressive neighbors. But halfway through the summer, the walk around the yard pushing the mower is a forced march through sad neighborhoods in need of resources from outside—bags of lawn treatment which we won’t provide to our precious grasses living beside a pond. I should get over it. I had an Uncle whose standard for his lawns was simply, “Just so it’s green.”

There is mid-summer trouble elsewhere. It appears our Macoun apple tree has become the latest target of porcupines. In two weeks, they have thinned the canopy to half its former fullness. Yes, there is a fence around the tree. But some individual with admirable initiative decided to climb the fence, and there is no telling how many others were on hand for the demonstration. Fortunately, they seem to focus on one tree at a time, so the adjacent apple and the peach have been spared—for now. I have repointed the fence, driving in two additional stakes. I have placed solar-powered, overnight lights around the perimeter. I have hung Irish Spring soap—a hack someone shared years ago—from the branches. The area now smells like the inside of the Turo rent-a-car our son arrived in for a visit last week.

We have been cheek to jowl with porcupines this year. Funny how these things come and go. Last year, I’m not sure we saw one. Now, three or four evenings a week I run into one or two—the same one, or two, I imagine—while conducting my rounds with Huckleberry after dinner. After two trips to Concord to have quills removed, Huck seems to have lost his taste for porcupine. I kid you not, more than once this summer I have caught up with Huck standing nose-to-nose with one of the rodents around our raised beds. I call him off, and then escort the varmints off campus or up a tree, whichever comes first. A week ago, I ambled behind one youngster who detoured up the sad, dead oak in our field to the first convenient limb, maybe seventy feet off the ground. I stood beside him in the early going, trying to explain as he climbed past me at eye level, that the effort was unnecessary. Just, please, walk home, wherever that is. And don’t chew on the raised beds. But you can’t reason with some animals. Porcupines especially.

Where reason has failed, we have a bounty of black-eyed Susans in our field that has come to our rescue at least once: during an intractable summer moment involving a toy truck and cup of backgammon dice under the uncompromising control of our three-year-old grandson. I called on the flowers to placate his despairing six-year-old brother. Together, we cut a handful to present to his grandmother, who beamed with delight.

I know what you’re thinking. Not every problem can be solved with flowers. Right. Sometimes, we have to hope the answer is soap.
### Pocketknife - Part One
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/workshop/pocketknife/
Last updated: 2026-07-25T18:05:32.000Z
*Pocketknife was my first piece of short fiction after I turned my attention to writing full-time. It occupied my attention through the fall of 2022, and started making the rounds of literary journals in January, 2023\. My editor, Erik Klass, liked the piece a great deal--still his favorite of mine, I think--and through his service, SubmitItnow.com, he included* The New Yorker *and* The Atlantic *on the submission list.*

*It has yet to be accepted for publication, anywhere. Part of the reason is that, originally, it was about 15,ooo words--really long for short fiction these days. Most journals are looking for stories under 5,000\. I retooled it a year ago to get it under 10,000 words and submitted it to a few places on my own. No luck. I'll try again, but the right answer for the story might be to go longer, not shorter. Erik had suggested at the beginning that it could be a novella. I will post it here in several parts.*

*I'm still in love with the concept, imagining seeing my father again, some time after his death, as his active, younger self, married and parent now to other children.*

_This post is for paying subscribers only._
### The Deep Green
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/the-deep-green/
Last updated: 2026-07-14T09:30:33.000Z
It is the season of deep, forest green crowding toward the center of every open space, encroaching from all directions, even upward from the ground. I weed the garden in the afternoon, and the next morning reinforcements have arrived. Each year at this time, I am reminded of the exuberance of plant life, determined to elbow its way to the front of the line. You should see me with a whip and a chair, at the center of the yard, snapping at the hemlock, beech, and birch limbs that taunt me. I mowed the lawn this morning through the inconvenience of their ever-extending branches scraping my back, poking down the neck of my shirt.

Our gravel driveway has three weeks of growth across its surface. It is a bearded driveway. It is past the point where we can pull the crabgrass, common plantain, and pineapple weed by hand, as we have in the past. They keep appearing. They keep advancing. One answer is to give up. Let the driveway go to seed. Except I’d be flinging gravel in every direction with the mower, and enough gravel finds its way to the lawns because of runoff and snowplowing. For about $150, I can buy a weed burner torch and backpack that holds a tank of propane—basically, a flamethrower. How does that seem to you, if I should decide to walk around with a tank of propane on my back to put down a driveway weed rebellion? I have never imagined carrying a tank of propane on my back. It feels oversubscribed. How about just a small, convenient propane torch, such as I’d use to caramelize the top of a crème brûlée? I have one of those in the kitchen.

The ferns are our greatest rival. They had overrun the place by the time we arrived many years ago, wiping out what had been—we’re told—lovely gardens, along with beds of myrtle (with pleasing blue flowers), and pachysandra. They overwhelmed everything between us and the waterfront, including azaleas, and highbush blueberries. We have established a certain amount of control, but they hang on in places. Their root systems extend like a web, making it nearly impossible to separate them from supply lines. These days, we use the string trimmer to suppress them. But legions of ferns are camped at the boundaries as an ominous warning that when we falter and fall they are ready to repossess the fine, open spaces.

Which means overrunning, again, the gardens we husband that are home to flowers and vegetables unable to defend themselves. The black-eyed-Susans have burst forth in the last week, taking over for the retreating lance-leaved coreopsis, lupine and sweet William. The slender stalks and leafy greens of the onions, garlic, and potatoes already have us anticipating the harvest. Inside the raised beds, at least, we can bar the door to the uninvited.

It is raining hard right now, and I can feel everything around us gathering strength. The air is cool and light while the rain falls, rinsing away the humidity. In short order, it will stop, and the woods will be thick and tangled with moisture, like wet hair, and have the same damp heaviness of the room after the shower curtain is swept aside. From where I sit, my view of the trees across the driveway is blocked by rhododendrons and a fan of lower beech and hemlock branches. I am looking at a wall of deep, forest green, against which my whip and chair seem poorly matched. I am far less inevitable than what confronts me. If I sit and wait, it will eventually swallow me.
### This Fourth of July
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/this-fourth-of-july/
Last updated: 2026-07-04T09:30:39.000Z
This Fourth of July

0:00

/344.76691609977325

1×

I am celebrating this Fourth of July vicariously through my brother, who recently announced his candidacy for New Hampshire state representative. I can’t vote for him, or contribute to his campaign because I don’t live in his district (although my wife and I have volunteered to stuff envelopes). But, really, is there a better way to celebrate our independence than to run for office? Voting is a close second—definitely easier—but turnout, especially for state and local elections, is so poor it never makes me feel particularly good about our democratic stewardship. You may feel the same. I have an idea, though, which is that to get a seat on the lawn to watch fireworks every year you have to present a sticker they give you at the polls saying you voted. Maybe a sticker like the one on your windshield for the dump. Thus-stickered, you can use the beach, park downtown, and enjoy the local recreation facilities. Forget about being recognized as a resident taxpayer. Did you *vote*? No sticker, no pickleball.

I like that idea, even as one who would have been deprived of a parking space some years. I’ve missed plenty of elections along the way. I always travel with my bag of excuses, but there is nothing in it for failing to vote. I harbor some worry that if I get to the gates of heaven, St. Peter may say, “It says here you lived in the United States of America. Nice. Did you vote?”

Anyway, my brother is running for state rep, and we were at his launch event last week. It was a crystal clear day, seasonably warm, and the gardens of the person hosting the occasion were splendid enough to be a distraction. There was lemonade, iced tea, and cookies, and other provisions set up in the barn and under a tent. White, plastic, folding chairs were arrayed on the lawn for, I’m guessing, fifty or sixty people, with many more standing behind.

I took many pictures (of course), and tried to shoot a video of my brother’s pitch-perfect speech (of course), showing everyone paying careful attention, not spilling their lemonade. Making my exit, saying goodbye, I searched for my brother, who I spotted at a table, under a tree, listening intently, one-on-one, to a gray-haired gentleman wearing a baseball cap, gesturing slightly with his hands, as if enumerating his points—just as my father used to do around the kitchen table: “First, you’re going to clean up the mess in the basement. Second, you’re going to go to your room and give me 250 words on personal responsibility. Third, you may come back down here for dessert.”

I was moved to take a picture of that conference, my brother leaning slightly across the table with the goal of conveying his commitment to hearing that person’s point of view. I wish I could share it with you. (If you haven’t noticed, I don’t generally use names or faces in these postcards in deference to people’s privacy.) Understand that there was quite a buzz of people mingling around them as the kick-off was breaking up. Plenty of schmoozing and chattering, shaking of hands and slapping of backs, campaign-style. All good. But in the center of the frame was my brother across from a potential constituent, who had obviously sought this audience, and it said everything about the task ahead of him as a candidate—the many audiences, points of view, and arguments for and against that he will encounter on the way to the polls in November (he is running as an Independent, which is the kind of person he’s been as the third child since age six. So no primary).

The task is to listen, and it is the same task all of us confront every Fourth of July since the signing of the Declaration of Independence—which was revised repeatedly to address the concerns of various states. Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted against the Declaration on the first pass. New York also because its delegates had instructions to continue pursuing reconciliation. South Carolina agreed on a second pass in exchange for language more accommodating to slavery—a concession with terrible consequences—but which allowed the Declaration to survive as our manifesto. It changed the world. Today, it perseveres in changing us.

What good thing isn’t like that? What good thing fails to persevere against our will? What good thing can even be recognized as good except in contrast to our will?

But every Fourth of July, at least, we confront the goodness of the Declaration and our shortcomings compared to it. Be glad it’s only once a year. Every day I confront my shortcomings in relation to my dog—unreservedly loving, eager, nonjudgmental, thankful for whatever goes into his bowl. Huckleberry wouldn’t understand voting. He would vote for everybody.

Happy Fourth of July.
### Calmly on the Waters
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/calmly/calmly-on-the-waters-3/
Last updated: 2026-07-13T19:08:05.000Z
[Purchase "Calmly on the Waters"](https://buy.stripe.com/eVq6oGfNA1ln2ZXah45Rm03?ref=jarviscoffin.com)

**Calmly on the Waters** (Bauhan Publishing | June 2026 | $22.00 trade paper, illustrated) is Jarvis Coffin’s first collected volume of essays. For more than a decade, as co-owner with his wife of New Hampshire’s oldest inn, The Hancock Inn (now, The Inn at Hancock), Coffin offered a steady sense of place in conversations with travelers from around the world, and in popular, monthly pieces sent to the inn’s guest list.

In this collection he gathers a selection of essays rooted in life beside a pond in the woods of southern New Hampshire. Quiet, attentive, and occasionally humorous, these essays invite readers to slow down and observe a world reachable “on two feet, or by canoe, or by car, with no more than a tank of gas.” Written against the backdrop of deep winters, uncertain springs, brief summers, and colorful autumns, *Calmly on the Waters* is organized by season, following the rhythms that shape daily life in rural New England.

[Sy Montgomery](https://symontgomery.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com), author of *The Good Good Pig,* wrote: 

> As the town’s innkeeper, Jarvis Coffin perfected the art of hospitality—and here in these pages, he welcomes readers to our our town. Hancock, New Hampshire, abounds with fall foliage, snow, ice, mud, black flies, ticks, spring birdsong, summer fireflies, ponds, woods, and quirky human and animal neighbors. His acutely observed essays—sometimes funny, sometimes surprising, always delightful—give you a feel for the place I love most in this sweet green world. 

Mel Allen, author of [*Here in New England*](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=here+in+new+england+mel+allen&hvadid=713635689761&hvdev=c&hvexpln=67&hvlocphy=9002377&hvnetw=g&hvocijid=15488156798893451163--&hvqmt=e&hvrand=15488156798893451163&hvtargid=kwd-2434134135106&hydadcr=22569%5F13730725&mcid=dc4978783dd336ccb404d2ecba1565e3&tag=googhydr-20&ref=pd%5Fsl%5F5xhem2b4fx%5Fe%5Fp67)*,* said:

> As both features editor and then editor-in-chief of *Yankee* magazine, I had the pleasure of editing Edie Clark’s essays of her life at her rural New Hampshire home. Her “Mary’s Farm” column became beloved by tens of thousands. When I read Jarvis Coffin’s *Calmly on the Waters,* his collection of essays from his own rural New Hampshire Eden, I know the pages will also resonate with anyone who believes that close observation of the natural world can be a balm for the soul in our turbulent times. What makes Coffin’s essays so readable is his light humor and gentle touch. “I am awed by life’s persistence, which even in the smallest of creatures always appears greater than mine, carrying knowledge as deep or deeper,” he writes. The reader will want to join Coffin and share in his awe as the New England seasons come and go. This is a book to connect with all of us, wherever we live.

*Calmly on the Waters* is available at many New England bookstores, on Amazon, and from here, directly, using the purchase link above. Books ordered directly from this website benefit from free shipping and can be signed, per a buyer's request.

Thank you! 

[Purchase: "Calmly on the Waters"](https://buy.stripe.com/eVq6oGfNA1ln2ZXah45Rm03?ref=jarviscoffin.com)
### With Our Grandchildren
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/with-our-grandchildren/
Last updated: 2026-06-30T09:30:54.000Z
Somewhere along the line, a person and place become one. I have two places—two versions of me—one being a small town in the northeast corner of the Catskill Mountains called Tannersville, and the other, what used to be a small town just over the border in Canada called Niagara-on-the-Lake. I have not been to either of them in years, but it doesn’t matter. At the end of my life, if I were to be gathered to my ancestors, like Old Testament heroes, it would be to either of those places.

It is not hard to encounter people around Monadnock who are here because they are one with the region. The place knows them by name. It knew their parents and grandparents, it delights in their new generations. When I arrive in Tannersville, the ghosts of three generations welcome me. Likewise, in Niagara. If I am there with my children and grandchildren, we are six generations, altogether. The familiar landmarks, the stones underfoot, each street corner and lamppost, embrace our return with a murmur of welcome.

I am thinking of these things after a week with our two oldest grandchildren here at our cabin on the pond. Only one of them was around when we bought the place, which was early in our tenure as innkeepers. For a long time, they were closely guarded around the water and woods. But now—ages thirteen and ten—they are emerging from under our wings to explore. Loading them into boats, our granddaughter with me in a canoe, and our grandson, independent in a kayak, we circumnavigated the pond, and I delighted in stopping to allow them to forage along the shore, and climb the rocks, christening them as explorers do—Eagle Rock, Shark Rock, Picnic Rock (which may have been my suggestion). Casting off his restraints, our grandson paddled far ahead, occasionally looking back to make sure the distance between us was widening, which meant, to me, getting nearer his own place in the world. I was careful to appear engaged elsewhere, pointing in every opposite direction, on the hunt with his sister for sunbathing turtles and water snakes. But I watched him. I watched him move away, toward the things I’d love us to share, perhaps including *this* place.

They hiked to Juggernaut Pond, drove to Flume Gorge, planted beans, bought strawberries, *made* ice cream, spent a rainy day at a museum, anchored a rubber raft to the floor of the pond, sat up straight at lunch with great-grandmother, fended off ticks, and tried to do the same with school summer reading. Along the way, they were in the car when it braked for a doe and her fawn, a bear, and a *moose.* A New Hampshire driving trifecta.

When does a person become also a place? I can look across the room and see a picture on the wall of me riding shotgun on a farm tractor with my father in the Catskills. I am maybe five. Younger than my grandchildren. I don’t remember the tractor ride, but if looks don’t lie it left a mark. In my last column, I wrote about the banana ice cream at Avondale in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Follow me through the door of the place today, but don’t ask what flavor I’d prefer. If not banana, you would have to wonder what meaning life has ever had for me.

After a loaded week, characterized by adventure, I am curious about the meaning that may be developing inside our grandchildren. Watching them hop among the rocks, hunt frogs, I am curious about what lifelong attachments are being created, what is beginning to harden apart from their personalities. I am hoping they will carry something from this week, from this place. Maybe, hopefully, because it means a part of me will be carried with it.

*Published in The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, June 2026*
### National Ice Cream Month
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/national-ice-cream-month/
Last updated: 2026-06-16T09:30:33.000Z
I’m getting ready for National Ice Cream Month, which is July. Whatever your politics, however disaffected and anti-everything you may feel, hope is present in a cone, a cup, or under a mountain of whipped cream and hot fudge sauce, cherry on top.

I try to eat ice cream every day. I have shared this interesting fact with many people and, so far, no one has ever said, “Me too.” I don’t dwell on the feeling of loneliness this creates. I have my family to fall back on. My brothers are probably good for a dish of ice cream most days. My children were raised to be vigorous ice cream eaters. This time of year, no one in the family is likely to drive past a roadside dairy bar with a giant soft-serve cone or plastic cow in the parking lot, as long as a respectable hour or two has passed since breakfast.

Then there is this hopeful [news](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ice-cream-bad-for-you-health-study/673487/?gift=qPWZuOc2F5sUg62LqxgHkF6mim4CFjjQd-N3bVNyVzE&ref=jarviscoffin.com), which someone stumbled across and sent to me in the last couple of weeks: an article by public health historian David Merritt Johns in *The Atlantic* back in April 2023, reporting on a 2018 Harvard graduate student study connecting a half-cup of ice cream per day to a lower risk of heart disease among diabetics. The experts leered, of course. The data was scrubbed. The result was the same.

“This was obviously not what a budding nutrition expert or his super-credentialed committee members were hoping to discover,” Johns reported, quoting his source, who said, “He and his committee had done, like, every type of analysis—they had thrown every possible test at this find-ing to try to make it go away. And there was nothing they could do to make it go away.”

Works for me. I am not presently diagnosed as a diabetic. Consult your doctor, all ye diabetics. But maybe check out the April 13, 2023, issue of *The Atlantic* online.

The science is very good for New England, which, you know, consumes an average of almost twenty-three quarts of ice cream per person every year, compared with a national average of fifteen quarts. It’s a solid number . . . if you’re happy as a piker. A quart of ice cream around our house makes it a week. On day four, someone will usually notice a shrinking supply and say something. Day five, bright-colored Post-it notes go up on the fridge door. Day six, there better be a quart backer in the freezer by close of business. That puts me at around 240 percent above the national average—which will explain my feeling of loneliness. It’s lonely at the top.

In 2025, according to the website [*Dairy Herd Management*](https://www.dairyherd.com/news/business/sweetest-states-where-america-loves-ice-cream-most?ref=jarviscoffin.com), Vermont had more ice cream shops per 100,000 residents than any other state in the Union. New Hampshire was ninth, with more than fifteen shops per 100,000\. Rhode Island was the only other New England state in the top ten, rank-ing third. It falls to another nutritionist graduate to understand why three itty-bitty New England states have a giant “Nutty Buddy” enthusiasm for ice cream. I’m just glad I live here.

That said, I don’t gravitate to New England ice cream flavors such as Moose Tracks, Pumpkin, Campfire S’mores, or even Maple Walnut. I grew up in an age when milk was delivered and left in a box on the doorstep, the only telephone was mounted on the kitchen wall, and we put chains on our tires in winter. It was a less complicated time. I like maple walnut, except too often the walnuts are soggy and soft. My go-to is simply chocolate chip. If I can see the container and the ice cream has the right faint yellow color, with evidence of tiny seeds, I will buy the banana ice cream. Technically, my favorite. But honestly, no banana ice cream has ever matched what we could get as children at Avondale in [Niagara-on-the-Lake](https://www.niagaraonthelake.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com), Ontario.

Speaking of which, is there anyone anymore choosing to mount a bicycle and pedal home while eating a medium-sized ice cream cone? I suspect it’s a lost art. Even bike riding has become such serious business today. I’m anti that.
### The Valedictorian
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/ode-to-an-oak/
Last updated: 2026-06-06T09:30:00.000Z
The Valedictorian

0:00

/356.6555328798186

1×

Four years ago, just about now, we cut down an acre of woods to open up some sky, and make room for vegetable gardens and wildflowers. As the trees fell, peeling away the forest layers, larger specimens emerged from behind the tangle of lower story growth. At the end, we chose one particularly handsome oak, standing ninety to hundred feet tall, being, thus, ninety to hundred years old, with a broad canopy, and strong limbs. It stood above the rest, with a view of the world, and a firm hold on the answers. We chose it as our signature tree, as a centerpiece of the field—as our Honoree. We voted it valedictorian, and class president.

Today, it is dead, the consequence, I am sure, of a broken heart.

Not everyone has given up hope. We have an expert coming back this week to examine the tree and, possibly, to start an intervention to get it to draw up nutrients from the ground again, which says to me the tree went on a hunger strike. If so, we watched it happen beginning in July last year. Gradually, over several weeks, we noticed the leaves start to curl and brown. We needed binoculars to assess what was happening at the top. I stood, looking through them repeatedly, until deciding it was some sort of blight—an insect, perhaps. A tree that had stood that long made it hard to presume to know more than it did about the situation. Out of respect, we left it alone.

By winter, the oak had failed to shed all its leaves as the rest of us were expected to do, whether shedding our leaves, or taking down screens, hauling out boats, or unpacking our woolens. It seemed opposed to all activity. Shut up and shut down. The experts counseled wait and see. Trees are vulnerable to stress. It had been a stressful few years for the oak, watching its neighborhood swept away, replaced by grasses and gardens that invited machinery in the form of lawn movers, tractors, and weed trimmers. Wait until spring was the consensus.

Spring is behind us. With my binoculars, I have looked hopefully for signs of recovery. I have stood under the tree. Examined the bark. I have talked to it. I have given it hugs. I said to my wife, “I think it looks better.” But no, it does not. It looks the same as a stopped clock, the hands in the same place every hour. Its complement of shriveled brown leaves lasted through every winter storm, and spring rain. We had a nor-easter blast through last week that stripped young, green leaves off the oaks nearer the cabin to the extent that we used the blower to rid them from the porch. All the while, our honoree refused to part with any of its remains. It clung to those dead leaves at the top like a weasel.

What was on the mind of this tree? What sadness? What amount of loneliness? Were there not so many others of its kind still around it, many of them new faces that had been hidden for years by the presence of its neighbors?

Except it has been four years since a squirrel jumped onto its branches. The hawks stop by, even an occasional osprey, both of which value its qualities as an observatory. But no one thinks to make a nest. For the squirrels, the solitary tree offers only one way up or down, with no escape left or right. For smaller birds, its branches are too close to the sky.

We know a lot more today about the hidden underground network on which trees rely. Mushrooms play a significant role. Also, particular pheromones that can warn of danger. I fear the spirit of our oak collapsed like that of any shut-in.

Am I making too much of this poor oak? I am not. I impart to this giant everything it is due because of its miraculous ascent to the top of the canopy against a billion odds, and now, its choice to turn its back on our tribute. Four years as the center of attention in the field has been enough, I guess. Like any sad elephant in a ring. Why do we insist?

It will cost, us, of course, if we can’t talk it back from the edge when the forester gets here—if we can’t pump a little enthusiasm for living into it. We will wait until the other plants have tucked in for winter, and for the ground to freeze, then bring in other experts with their cranes and saws and chippers to dismantle our oak, and grind away its stump. We will burn the wood or ship it off, as we did most of its neighbors. It will be gone.

I don’t regret clearing the land for our field. It is habitat for countless creatures, decorated by brilliant wildflowers, and open to the sky. Our garlic is thriving in the raised beds, as is our strawberry patch. Other things are growing. Falsely, I had hoped the oak would be pleased to emerge from those around it, to be the one left standing, singled out as a monument of its kind.

Wouldn’t you know, I mistook my ways for its own.
### Here We All Are
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/here-we-all-are/
Last updated: 2026-06-02T09:30:26.000Z
It is finally, fully green around the pond, where we live. The woods are hidden now by thick foliage. Even the ground is being erased by the ferns and other understory plants that seem to actively resist your intrusion as you step cautiously to retrieve the baseball you’ve been tossing with a child. You alone must retrieve it, of course. What sensible child will volunteer to step across the lawn’s boundary to search with its hand beneath an underworld of vegetation teeming with what slithers, inches, and crawls?

The woods are resurrected and alive. Until recently, I might have seen to the neighbor’s house or up the side of the hill. As of today, a curtain has been drawn, as across an exam room. The message is clear: wait outside, we’ll fetch you when the baby is born. Which is exactly what’s going on—new life arriving inside tunnels and nests and burrows, hidden and protected by the woods.

Most nights, the peepers drown out every noise. At other times, we listen for the sound of any rustle coming from beyond the reach of the porch lights. Nothing jump-starts the imagination quite like the sandpaper sound of trampled leaves, or the snap of a twig. In our open field, with a few fruit trees, we are treated occasionally to the sudden snort of a deer that comes close enough to be surprised by a whiff of us. Yellow eyes of raccoons, the fat shadow of a porcupine skirting the grass, the screech of owls, the heavier crunch and crash of whatever else is out there. For the next few months, we will be curious neighbors to the muffled sounds and brief glimpses we get of creatures darting in and out, busy under the tent.

For now, I don’t venture into the woods after dark, or paddle on the pond in a canoe. I know the beavers are working. I know the loons come out to rumble. I know the snakes are sneaking up on the frogs. The rest are coming down to the shore to congregate for a cool, evening drink, moose perhaps, bears, the coyotes, certainly. The animals that live in the woods, on or beside the pond, have mostly bequeathed the daylight hours to us to avoid unpleasant consequences. Past sundown, the shoe goes on the other foot. Everywhere, everyone is hungry. I am fair game at night. Rightly so.

No sense of personal space exists with the ticks, black flies, and mosquitoes—soon, also, the greenheads. It is eat or be eaten every moment. I massacre them. They swarm me, relying on their infinite numbers. They dive bomb the net over my head hoping to find a vulnerability, perhaps where it opens around my neck, always tempting. They slip through cracks around the window screen, hitch a ride on a pant leg, piggyback on the dog. We are not safe from their advances even in our bed.

It is June. Here we all are. If you live in town—any town—you may be noticing it is harder to find a parking space, or that someone is in your seat at the bar. At home, we are swerving to avoid hitting toads and garter snakes with the lawnmower, stepping quietly onto the porch to so the mallards don’t panic, frantically trying to keep weeds out of the gardens. Happily, among the latest arrivals to our little patch of woods are the dragonflies, which devour black flies. I am watching them right now, appearing like a line of motorcycles coming through town on a bright summer day.

Of course, we don’t get too many motorcycles out here. But we did have a bald eagle spend a few casual moments on a rock in our cove yesterday afternoon.
### I Wuv Woadwork
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/i-wuv-woadwork/
Last updated: 2026-05-19T09:30:42.000Z
Hancock’s public works team has been “reclaiming” Kings Highway near our house. I was not sure what “reclaiming” meant when signs went up a week ahead of crews and machinery arriving, but certainly the road had been in the iron grip of nature for the last couple of years—buckled, cracked, slowly being pulled to pieces by the earth underneath. I gather now that reclaiming means taking back control from nature’s opposing forces. The machines arrived, gobbled up the broken pavement and graded, rolled, and watered the resulting dirt surface. The road is going to remain that way, unpaved, until next spring, when the machines come back and coat Kings Highway with pavement.

It is roadwork season. Wherever we go around New England, at some point we will be down to one lane. With that in mind, I would like to know the system flaggers use to manage stop and go to traffic. Is it by time, or number of cars queuing to pass? Or the requirements of crews and equipment at any given moment?

My late father-in-law insisted that if you put a human in charge of traffic flow, there will be a back-up. I have not experienced anything, ever, to disprove him. This includes law enforcement personnel forced into a traffic cop role when the streetlights are out. We can figure it out on paper, programing lights at multi-way intersections to make an orderly go of it, but give us a whistle and a Slow/Stop sign, and half mile backs-ups will follow.

In service to the common good, I try to smile and wave at the flaggers as I (eventually) go past them. This is because having an abused flagger can mean nothing good for the orderly flow of traffic. There is a lot of frustration they can take out on a line of cars stuck in summer heat if an impatient driver gets ugly with them. On larger scale projects, where one can’t see the other, flaggers have little clip-on walkie-talkies. If one has a nose out of joint, who’s to know on the other end if they are allowing traffic to back up to the state border.

Here is a quick road construction story: A few years ago, you may recall, there was a big project on route 9 through Granite Gorge. We became conditioned, heading to Keene, to drive around it via route 101, but it didn’t always make sense. Or, sometimes, we forgot. During a particularly complex construction period, we were inching our way through the gorge with our three-year-old grandson in the car—our first, and at that time, only grandchild. He taught us that having small children in the car can make a big difference, surviving roadwork season.

He was strapped in his carseat behind us, next to his mother. You may remember it was a challenging, two-year (more?) project. I don’t know where we were headed, but time was a factor as we were herded from one lane to the other, then back. SLOW, then STOP. At last, we were in sight of the heavy machinery, the trucks, the bulldozers, the front-end loaders, and a crane. It was noisy and dusty. My wife directed us to roll-up the windows. Frustrated, she said, “I hate roadwork,” which prompted a reply from our grandson that survives today as our “Easy” button when stuck in traffic.

“I *wuv woadwork*,” he said, as we came alongside a huffing and puffing big dozer.

On cue, the flag person flipped her sign. STOP.

*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, May 19, 2026*
### Burn, Drag, Split, Stack
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/burn-drag-split-stack/
Last updated: 2026-05-05T09:30:24.000Z
Swifty Corwin was here mid-February to drop six trees threatened by disease. We chose to keep the wood for our use next year as fuel, which means that since the snow melted, we have been burning, dragging, splitting and stacking the wood with enough intention to wear holes in two pairs of gloves.

A pile of wood—branches and brush, or full-grown timber—imposes its presence. It will not move out of the way. It can stop a truck. It will hold its position unless some heavy force is applied to it. We drag the brush, or burn it. We haul the limbs. We lift the logs. We split them by hand, with a maul, or with our 25-ton wood splitter. We could leave the pile to rot in place, but we would rot before it.

Unyielding as it is, we have been in a hurry because of the approaching growing season to have the trees sorted according to their primal cuts—logs and fat limbs for the wood stoves, branches for fencing, brush to be burned or ground for chips along our paths, or mulch around our gardens.

The constant presence of the felled trees, outside on the ground, made the two months since mid-winter speed along. It was like having a car waiting for you at the curb. You called the taxi. The taxi arrived. The taxi waited. It was there every time you looked out the window, causing you to check your watch. When you finally climbed aboard, you were confronted with how much time had ticked away on the meter because of your goodbyes and thank you’s at the door. In our case, two months, waiting mostly for the snow to melt.

Now we are trying to stay ahead of the forest understory, the ferns, and bramble, growing up around the project, obscuring our footing, hiding loose limbs. Plus, there are so many other things to do—plant lettuce, thatch the lawns, shake out the rugs. The birds are building nests feverishly, but I’ve decided they are no busier than we are. It’s not clear when they take a break, except when sleeping. But do they have a project list? It strikes me that they have an enviable workflow, all on one line: arrive, forage, build nest, incubate, wean, wait until the weather turns, head south. Our workflow spreads across a matrix. Right now, the wood demands our attention (we think of it as heat). But the line below “wood” (or heat) is “equipment maintenance,” which is necessary to the “wood” project, and also to projects under “agriculture,” such as planting and seeding. We have had to divert attention to the usual equipment servicing and repairs coming out of winter—new mower blades, oil changes, fuel filters, and the like.

“Seasonal wardrobe” has its own line. Things have to come and go from storage. (I wish I could get rid of that line by molting.) The line for “nesting” includes retrieving porch furniture, washing windows, and putting up screens. Then, of course, there is my writing—the ubiquitous “other” line—which is impacted by external, publishing matrices, attached to deadlines. All the while, free-ranging across the matrix, is our young dog, Huckleberry, workflow’s antihero. A creature of habit, with no respect for process.

But the wood pile. We’re almost there, and it will be about five cords, plus numerous limbs for use as fence posts or railings, and smaller wood for kindling. We will have the summer to lean up against the stacks, absorb their fragrance through the open windows, and regard them like we might our wine cellar—if we had one.

Until then, the taxi’s waiting.
### Going Out with the Ranger
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/going-out-with-the-ranger/
Last updated: 2026-05-02T09:30:26.000Z
Going Out with the Ranger

0:00

/350.71122448979594

1×

I purchased a new truck bed this week for our 2011 Ford Ranger. The original bed has been rattling in place for a couple of years, rusted out at the front. I had a bed liner installed when we bought the truck, shortly after we closed on the purchase of the Hancock Inn (now The Inn at Hancock). For the last couple of years, the liner has been the only thing preventing stuff in the bed—driveway stone, or loam from the farm store—from falling through the holes in the floor.

I may not be the only person to have traded in an Acura TL for a Ford Ranger pick-up, but there can’t be many of us. It seemed sensible before coming to New Hampshire, and taking over an inn, to have a workman-like vehicle, as much as a tractor is sensible if you own a farm. Hancock has seventy miles of roads, half of which are dirt roads. The TL would have hated that after years of suburban living and carwash memberships. Our parting was bittersweet, but if you offered me the chance to trade back, I would not (neither would the TL, I’m sure). Certainly not while we’re still in New Hampshire. I love the Ford Ranger. Too bad Ford ruined the model with its newer, beefier designs, casting it more in line with the larger F150s. Ford’s small truck replacement—the Maverick—is front-wheel drive, with a short, four-and-a-half foot bed, and a four-door, SUV cab. By all accounts, a smooth ride. But, not a truck.

Here’s the thing. My goal is to go out with the Ranger. Not *in* it, mind you—which would serve no one—but out together as we shift down, tow less, and go slower uphill. Until we are both finally off the road. I’m sixty-eight. The Ranger is fifteen, with about 107,000 miles on it. Not bad for age fifteen. It has been around the Northeast many times, back and forth to Kentucky, Pennsylvania, even to New York City. But most of the miles we’ve shared have been around the Monadnock Region. They don’t make Ford Rangers like they used to, and I want to keep it until we become a one car family, which means—you know—when my wife and I shuffle off to the institution.

The passenger side door has rust damage at the bottom. There is a substantial dent over the left front wheel, which happened nearly the day we bought it, turning into a granite post while I was backing up. I don’t see the dent when I’m driving. The gray paint didn’t chip. I can always pick out my Ranger from others in the Market Basket parking lot. I’ve left it alone. Also, the smaller dent behind the left rear wheel where a Massachusetts state trooper crunched me edging along in traffic. We sat for an hour and a half in the breakdown lane of Route 128 waiting for his patrol sergeant to show up, but we parted friends. The inside of the cab could always use a vacuum. The cloth of the driver’s seat upholstery has a tear after years of me in the saddle.

The Acura TL could never have tolerated life with those scars. Now, I have purchased a scrap, six-foot Ford Ranger bed from Florida to replace the original… and it’s gold colored. Under similar circumstances, the TL would have refused to come out of the garage. But the Ranger—bless it—won’t care. Which is the thing you get attached to about trucks. I worried about the Acura’s self-image, passing the latest models of gleaming sedans and SUVs in suburban Boston. I would occasionally tune to the opera channel on Sirius radio to indulge its pretenses. The Ranger may be proud of its Ford Motor heritage, and the replacement bed is a genuine Ford part, but the truck is a mutt today. And like any mutt, all it wants to do is please you.

We have to wait and see how everything looks when Haley’s Garage gets the old bed off the Ranger. I was told the procedure could take a day, maybe two, depending on what they find. I’ll be a nervous wreck, worrying about the downside possibilities, finding out the frame is also rusted out, or that this or that else is also broken. I know the Ranger is getting old. Aren’t we all? If I should be fortunate enough to have many more miles to travel over the next ten or twelve years, I would like us to drive them together.

The waiting room at Haley’s has the feeling of a thrift shop, full of hand-me-down comfort, treated with Luna’s fur, the shop’s attentive golden retriever. A thin wall separates it from the garage and the sound of pneumatic impact devices, metal on metal, and rock radio, perhaps echoing any orthopedic operating theatre. I don’t know. I won’t wait around. I’ll go home and wait by the telephone.

When the Ranger comes out of it, I plan to get the new bed painted the same gray as the rest of the body. I’ll get the rusted patch on the passenger door fixed at the same time. We’ll go to the car wash, use the vacuum, then head to the drive-thru for ice cream. The Ranger and I know every ice cream spot between here and Troy, New York. There are still many others we want to search for.
### Grits Just Come
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/grits-just-come/
Last updated: 2026-04-21T09:30:42.000Z
If you emailed me a month or so ago and haven’t heard back, good luck. I have a backlog of 10,659 email messages sitting in my Apple mail account and another 8,668 in my Yahoo account. If I had to guess, ninety-five percent of all those messages are of no value. The remaining five percent keep me up at night, worrying that I’ve forgotten someone because the way the email rolls in these days, if I don’t take immediate action on a personally relevant message, requiring a response, it will disappear from view within an hour, buried under nonsense. At my age, my mind can’t keep up. On good days, I can hold a thought for as long as it takes to walk from one side of the room to the other. Otherwise, forget it. So, if your email came in, let’s say, before Easter, you will have to hope in the power of resurrection along with those of us who do.

Obviously, something needs to be done. I would like to put the responsibility on the purveyors, but what chance is there of any restraint where they’re concerned? I hear from Donald Trump, personally, almost every day. Or his son. Or the Speaker of the House with a message requiring an immediate response. Minority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer (he calls me, Jarvis, I call him, Chuck), is always sharing things, confidentially. Both he and Hakeem Jeffries. And it’s always on matters of urgent concern. They don’t know urgent: I’ve got a mountain of downed ash trees that need to be split and stacked before black fly season. And the dog needs to be fed.

My point is, there is no getting rid of the rest of the purveyors if the President, et al, can have unrestrained access to my inboxes, like it or not. How can I expect support from government when it is a chief malefactor?

Granted, some of my clutter—maybe a lot—is self-inflicted. I subscribe to a variety of alternative news sources to help prevent the big box media companies from taking over the world. (I recommend, *Tangle News*, *The Free Press*, *The Global Post*, and *Delayed Gratification*). So, yes, I’m guilty of leaving the door open to the equivalent of the neighborhood cats. And there they are, every morning when I come out of the bedroom, sprawled across the sofas, stretched out on the kitchen floor, purring sweetly, awaiting my attention. My meager subscription fees result in an astonishing amount of information that sloshes into my inbox. I can’t keep up.

Time for a purge. Time for spring cleaning. Except I know it will all come back.

Years ago, a friend moved to Atlanta for work. He told the story of colleague hunched over his computer, seemingly intent on some laborious task.

“I’m trying to get rid of all these *grits*,” his colleague explained, when my friend asked what he was doing.

“*Grits?*”

“You’ll figure out soon enough that when you order breakfast around here you get grits. Even if you don’t order them, grits just come. Same with email. Email just comes.”

There are definitely things I want to read piled-up in my computer inbox. My wife will tell you I have a similar pile of magazines. I would like to read them all, too. My habits are bad, I guess. My routine needs adjusting. My eyes are bigger than my stomach. How do people have time for social media under these circumstances? I don’t know.

I’m going down to the pond to say hello the loons who appeared this afternoon. Can the blossoms be far behind?

*Published in The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, April 21, 2026*
### Bridge Out
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/bridge-out/
Last updated: 2026-04-16T18:21:02.000Z
The bridge over the MacDowell spillway, connecting Vatcher Road and Windy Row, is closed indefinitely to anything but foot or bicycle traffic, cutting off one motorized route of escape from Hancock in the event of a zombie apocalypse. Otherwise, we shouldn’t be too inconvenienced. For the foreseeable future, Vatcher will be a dead end. I am happy for the people who live there, less happy for the people who will have to absorb the diverted traffic passing through their neighborhoods.

I stopped using the spillway bridge a few months ago as talk circulated that its condition wasn’t funny anymore. It’s been a nasty looking crossing for years, eaten by rust, and restricted to one-lane of traffic. It hardly contributed to the scenic route of travel, back and forth to West Peterborough. I have no real fear of bridges, but it will be forty-three years in June that I drove with my wife across the Mianus River bridge on route 95 in Cos Cob, Connecticut, on the way back and forth to the New York Hospital to deliver our first child. A week later, the northbound lanes (as I recall) of the Mianus bridge fell into the river, taking cars and trucks with it. Everyone was of the same mind after that catastrophe: bridges are not meant to fall down.

We have lived through a couple of bridge replacements in Peterborough the last few years. The Main Street bridge was finally rebuilt after being on the endangered list, and then the route 101 bridge. Next up, hopefully, will be the route 202 bridge crossing the Contoocook River, which has been on the red list for fourteen years (since 2012). The 202 bridge is a state bridge. Maybe it is the same elsewhere, state-to-state, but New Hampshire’s red listed bridge report was twelve pages long at this time a year ago, bridges in our Monadnock region buried among them. It amounts to a schedule of major repairs guaranteed to stretch across generations of workers. Indeed, when the state gets around to the giant undertaking of fixing the 202 bridge, potentially moving it downriver, it will unquestionably rely on young workers who were born the year—or later—it went on the naughty list.

I think we should not build any additional bridges until after the next epoch, whatever that is. Maybe after the next ice age. It is clear we can’t afford to maintain the ones we have with preventive maintenance. Someone may hasten to tell me there is no such thing as preventive maintenance with respect to steel structures spanning open spaces. The only solution to old steel is new steel. Old bridges will always be left to carry on until they die. In which case, okay. Fine.

This is, more-or-less, a column about the weather, and other things I can comment on by looking out the window at a pond and the woods. Occasionally, however, I have to shop for groceries and gas-up the car. In this watery part of the world, that means crossing bridges. When those are suddenly left for dead, they become part of the natural order of all things—the things that happen outside my window as they enter the world, endure for a time, and perish.

Huckleberry and I walk regularly in the woods behind Vatcher Road and along the MacDowell spillway. He will be most interested to walk across the bridge the first time and sniff the other side—which he has only, ever, been able to admire from the near shore.

This was a good idea, he’ll be thinking as we cross. Why haven’t we done this before?
### Caught Flat-footed
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/caught-flat-footed/
Last updated: 2026-04-04T09:30:47.000Z
Caught Flat Footed

0:00

/346.2529931972789

1×

The birds are all back, and I had forgotten how bossy the robins can be. Not with each other, but with me. With us. They have this capacity to give you stern looks. They are incredibly sensitive to motion, and have acute hearing, which they use to prowl for worms. One morning this week, just after dawn, I got up and crossed the hall into our den to sit and read. I fetched a pair of glasses off the bureau we have there, switched on a light, stepped toward the chair, and outside the window a fat robin started yapping at me—as in, “Turn off the damn light!”

You think I’m making this up. Without taking its eyes off me, it took two or three hops in my direction. It was clearly a confrontation. I wasn’t sure why it was making a fuss, until I realized that Mr. and Mrs. Robin had set up house again in the rhododendron outside the window. Last year, they switched lodgings because, we thought, they had grown weary and frustrated with the rhododendron, always having to bolt from the nest whenever someone came or went down our walkway—which, you know, in our case, was constantly. So they moved to the garden shed. Further away from heavy traffic, but still not ideal because I was in there regularly—daily—as well. As usual, the individual guarding the nest would storm out of the shed, perching nearby to yell at me, often with the support of its mate, until I collected the things I needed and moved on.

Here’s the problem now: the tarps are down around the shed. Snow remains a possibility around here (it’s snowing now) and there have been other things on our mind. Thus far, the tarps have not been the most important thing to do in a day. Had I known they were coming . . . well, of course, I knew they were coming, just not exactly when. Had I known *when,* I might have removed the tarps.

Too late. We will be tormenting each other for the next several weeks, as nests get refurbished and eggs hatch. And we will suffer from being thought of as dangerous, rather than beneficent caretakers, good property managers. Welcoming hosts. You would think after years of living side-by-side, over more than a few generations, there would be a better sense of partnership.

Except, yes, the tarps are still around the shed.

We were also caught flatfooted by the returning eastern phoebes who snuck in sometime this week before we had a chance to close their campsite, which is above the outside, front door light. It is prime real estate, for sure, sheltered under the section of roof that extends out over the door. By late in the nesting season, the phoebes are more relaxed about our comings and goings, and they don’t persecute us in the same way as the robins. But the porch light suffers mightily from the enzymatic action of their digestive systems, so that by the time the children move out, light from it is seriously compromised. My wife summed up the situation perfectly when we realized, too late, they had moved in: “Oh shit,” she said.

It is only April 3rd. There was still a foot of snow on the porch two, maybe three weeks ago. We are still using our wood stoves. As recently as last week, it was so icy I was sorry I was not wearing crampons on my boots walking Huckleberry through the woods. Yet, nature’s race is renewed.

Speaking of which, a fox dashed out in front of Huckleberry and me on the walk where I was wishing I had crampons. I saw it only from behind, as did Huck, and it was resplendent from that view, all bushy red tail and pointed ears, and quick as lightning. There was no preventing Huck from tearing after it. Shouting after him was useless (more useless than usual). He was gone like a shot, thrilled with the prospect of a decent chase that would not end with someone going up a tree—which is the problem with squirrels and chipmunks. The fox was a gift of creation. I hollered, “No! No! No!” but the two of them were in the vice grip of evolution as hunter and hunted.

Only the fox would understand the stakes completely, which worried me as I walked along, anxiously alert for ferocious noises. Huck eats kibble out of a bowl aromatized by warm water. Was he thinking play date? Would he be expecting the same reception he was used to getting when meeting other dogs on the trail (I chase you, then you chase me)? Cornered, unable to climb out of reach, I feared the odds would switch in favor of the fox as an experienced survivalist with, surely, a few close calls to its credit. Huck does not think about survival. He thinks about comfort, one pillow or two. I had to hope that he would be spared a confrontation thanks to the skills of the wily fox to avoid capture.

Happily, a quarter mile farther on, Huck caught up with me with the joyful air of a boy who had jumped from behind a tree to scare the girls. But there had been no screaming.

It’s April. The race is on. In the grip of evolution.
### How Was Your Winter?
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/how-was-your-winter/
Last updated: 2026-03-24T09:30:10.000Z
Huckleberry and I hiked out to the secluded Shattuck Pond last week, which is about a mile from our back door, up the hill and through the woods. It has been closed to us since heavy snow accumulated, although I can’t remember how long that’s been. By now, the snow has disappeared from a good portion of the trail. The rest has a few inches. Where it drifted, the boots sank above the ankle. A snowshoer had been through recently, and those tracks were helpful as stepping stones. I tried to keep to them in snowy areas while Huckleberry skated across the crusty surface all around, and bounded left and right, deeper into the woods.

Having these trails reopen is the same as being able to use a road you’ve had to drive around while the bridge was out. Expelled by deep snow, we must detour onto the roads, where Huck needs a leash—not due to traffic, which is modest, but because of his bias for diverting to visit houses. Two years ago, unleashed, he drifted into someone’s yard as they were coming out the kitchen door and slipped past to go inside, causing an unwelcome delay.

The trails are reemerging. Yes, we sometimes snowshoe during the season, but our range is restricted by my age: I don’t plow through snow like I used to. And spry as he is, Huck is also held back when the snow is up to his belly, as it was through a good portion of February, into early March. He likes to fly, and deep snow restricts his air time. Frustrated, he will turn back to the road after several leaps and bounds if the snow is especially deep.

So we made it out to Shattuck, slogging part of the way, and the water was cascading from under and around the beaver dam, tumbling downhill in sheer delight. There are not many happier sounds, I don’t think, than swiftly moving water, unless it is through your basement. Out in the open, where it should be, the surge of awakening water gives notice that everything is getting ready to roll out of bed. Submitting himself to that enthusiasm, Huck jumped the stream and charged up the hill on the other side. I remained behind, at the edge, looking over the dam, across the silent pond, following the still white slope of Thumb Mountain to where it met the blue sky. I thought of all that melting snow beginning its journey to the sea.

We weren’t the first since the melt began to appear in that spot, I’m sure. But possibly the first of those who can be counted on as regulars when conditions permit, like French trappers returning to proven hunting grounds after the mountain passes clear. Except, I am only in the casual business of walking my dog. I let the feeling of welcomeness develop inside me, shifting my gaze around the scene of familiar woods, which peered back at me.

“Look who’s here,” the woods said. “How was your winter?”

We are eager to turn our attention to other trails that have been closed to us, trading places with the snow at the top of the hills, to check on things. I don’t expect to find anything new. To the contrary, I hope to find it all the same.

I’ve heard the sap has been slow this season. I mean, it was cold, cold through January and February. Now that the water is running, the sap may follow. There may be more snow, but it won’t be allowed to lie around. Things are stirring. The covers are rustling. Nature is up, padding across the kitchen floor, and reaching for its apron.

Time to put the kettle on.
### March Madness
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/march-madness/
Last updated: 2026-03-10T09:30:54.000Z
I have always questioned the virtue of awarding an extra hour of evening daylight to March. I feel sure the month was as surprised to get the win as April was the loss. We are not quite prepared for the added benefit around here. It’s like having guests arrive early to the party while you’re rummaging in the closet for what to wear. And it strips poor April—saddled with high expectations for spring—of its one ace. If you ask me, an extra hour of sunshine at the end of the day to monitor the increasing dampness of mud season isn’t much of a payoff.

We are back to darkness when Huckleberry jumps off the bed for breakfast. I follow, cautiously, conscious that he is black as night and will be lurking near my slippers. If he had more wit about him, he would move out of the way. So my first steps of the day are noncommittal. I shuffle my feet until I bump into him, at which point I am able to spur him forward toward the kitchen, where we can get a light on.

The trouble doesn’t end there. In the warming temperatures, the yard and driveway are melting. After breakfast, Huck goes outside, trotting past the perimeter of porch light to sniff around the slippery field, and edge close to the awakening creek. One of us must be there with a towel when he returns.

It is the time of year when I wish we had a house in the desert. There won’t be much to do here for the next several weeks. Below four or five inches, the ground will be rock hard. I could be splitting wood, as smoke still curls from the chimney, but how much harm would it do to wait another month? We have oodles of dry kindling. More than anything, the driveway could use a break, giving it a chance to drain. The muddy tracks vehicles make will harden and remain until the plows return in winter to scrape them away.

Arizona would be nice or New Mexico. We were in Sedona, Arizona, ten years ago, around this time. Red rock country. A chance to awaken our prehistoric roots. We took a side trip to the Grand Canyon and hiked down the Bright Angel Trail for a stretch before retreating to the tour bus. I remember the clear nighttime skies offering brilliant views of the stars. Borrowing from the place we stayed, which had an amateur astronomer setup with a few telescopes every evening in the parking lot, we brought home the idea of stargazing events in the field behind the Hancock Inn (now The Inn at Hancock), which we owned at the time. It was a noble effort, but they don’t have cloud cover in Arizona—or mosquitoes. Around here, winter would be a better time to be outside stargazing (except travelers don’t feel it’s a better time to be in rural New Hampshire).

We’re not going to Arizona. Or Florida. Or the Caribbean. We will waken to our homesteading roots. There is too much brush to pile and wood to split and sand to sweep off the walkways as the snow retreats—assuming it retreats. Which is the other reason to stay nearby: it is a tricky time of year weather-wise. Another Nor’easter could develop, bringing dangerous winds and, at this point, heavy snow, snapping tree limbs, hitting wires, cutting power. Try as we might, we could not shrug off knowing winter had staged an encore while sitting poolside in the southwest with our umbrella drinks.

Under those circumstances, are we going to cheer swapping morning for evening light right now? Piffle. To what purpose? It has no affect on the birds or growing season. We get to watch the icicles melt.

Arizona, you know, eschews daylight saving time.

*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, March 10, 2026*
### To Explain
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/to-explain/
Last updated: 2026-03-07T10:30:33.000Z
To Explain

0:00

/318.0175283446712

1×

We all have a lot of “what ifs” and other things on our plate right now to worry about. On the outer edge of those concerns is an insect less than half an inch long, eradicating the ash tree. There is nothing much we’ve been able to do about it. The emerald ash borer beetle has been lethal in greater than 99% of cases, and there is no end in sight.

Working in deep snow, our forester was here a couple of weeks ago to take down four ash trees invaded by the beetle, plus two maples in the way of the felling. The two-person crew arrived with chainsaws and a big orange tractor, plus a hundred feet of chain for use dragging the trees through the woods to where they could be cut into eighteen-inch logs and left in a pile: the point being that we wanted to keep the wood for heat in the winter.

Our property between the cabin and the pond slopes down abruptly. So, all the action took place below us. The trees in question grew on the slope to the side of the house, which was the worry as they succumbed to the beetle. They were destined to topple over.

My attention stayed on the tractor. The terrain is uneven down there, deeply rutted in places by roots, and downed timber in every direction—all of it hidden under snow. The early going was a nail-biter. The two young men, one of them piloting the tractor, hung in patiently as the tractor rocked forward, backward, forward, backward, gradually making it to where it would be able to support removal of the trees.

(I believe I’ve mentioned my interest in owning a draft horse. The charm of the idea returned on this occasion.)

Anyway, the trees came down, and the tractor hauled them by chain through the snow to level ground, close to the driveway, where they were portioned. My big task, beginning shortly after this postcard makes its rounds, will be to split the pile of portioned logs and stack them for next winter. I have decided this must be done by May, ahead of the planting, gardening, and mowing season. The timing will be good for seasoning the wood.

We don’t get many regular visitors this time of year, apart from the plow guy. More than one couple, in fact, has submitted their preference not to be invited back until after mud season. But a few unsuspecting people have found their way down the driveway since the trees came down, and stood to admire the pile, which is (I should say at this point) about four cords.

Because this is New Hampshire, you can squeeze twenty minutes of conversation out of four cords that need to be split and stacked. The nuance of discussion comes down to the kind of wood and the manner of splitting. In this case, the wood is mostly ash, and the wood intelligentsia will tell you that ash is easy to split; therefore, use a maul and split by hand.

Two hundred feet away, however, is our gasoline-powered, twenty-five-ton log splitter. When the snow melts, I can reach the pile with our lawn tractor and attached wagon, load the logs, drive them back, heave them onto the splitter, and so on. The result is fewer calluses on the hands, although more lower back pain. The forest crew recommended whacking the logs in two with the maul then lifting the halves into my little wagon for transport to the splitter, where we could splinter them to matchsticks if desired. There would be no escaping all the bending and stacking, but we *could* make it easier on ourselves in that way in their professional opinion.

Huckleberry, who stood with me through most of that conversation, has moved on in his mind to spring. He has had enough of winter and deep snow keeping away the visiting summer traffic and squirrels, which are spending most of their time in the canopy. First thing in the morning and last thing at night, he stands outside and barks for ten minutes in search of other life. The closest he gets is the barred owl when it happens to be conducting a similar search. An exchange between the two of them has taken place a few times recently. Huck is the only one who thinks it may be building toward a relationship.

But in another month, spring may have arrived at the edge of the lawn, where we are looking forward to the crocuses. We planted more last fall. We will see how many of them make it. Also, daffodils. We added a few dozen of them in the field as early arrivals, ahead of the wildflowers. Soon enough, the world will bud.

Except returnees are going to notice the ash trees are missing. The very branches where fathers courted mothers, and later supervised the first flight of youngsters, will be gone, as well as the byways used by other creatures to climb around the property. I fear their looks behind my back, at the mountain of logs and the splitter, and the cords of stacked wood. And me, with a maul in my hand.

It was a beetle. The size of my little finger nail.
### Too Bad You missed It
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/too-bad-you-missed-it/
Last updated: 2026-02-25T11:25:15.000Z
Over the recent long weekend, I watched our visiting nine-year-old granddaughter step off a shoveled pathway into the deep, powdery snow of our yard. Tentatively, like entering dark pond waters, probing for bottom, she lowered the boot of her first foot through the snow’s soft surface until it disappeared, coming to rest somewhere below. Then, with intention to preserve the snow’s unspoiled surface, she swung her other foot over the bank, planting it next to the first. She stood for a moment, looking as if she had dropped from above, snow up to her knees, and beamed.

“Careful,” I said with a smile. “If you fall into one of the drifts over there, we might not find you until spring.” It was all the encouragement she needed to head directly for them. She had arrived with her brother from Philadelphia with a goal of disappearing into powdery snow, such as our icy winter temperatures had provided. They left behind a few inches at home, but it was unfriendly snow—wet, heavy, and crusted on top. Buried alive in New Hampshire until spring was the better offer.

I remember the feeling, hearing there would be snow overnight, and going to the windows in the morning to open the shades, seeing the ground covered, and the air still thick with delicate flakes. My brothers and I would be compelled to stop for breakfast, but quickly outside, setting up toboggans for races downhill. They were doing the same in Hancock the weekend our family was here, conducting the cardboard sled races behind the meeting house for the annual Winter Frolic, under perfect conditions.

As for me, which is what I want to tell you, I ended up last week flat on my back in the deep snow, staring at the tops of trees. On our morning walk, Huckleberry had “alpined” over a large bank created by plows at the end of the driveway, and I had followed, accustomed to hiking over such piles, which were usually compacted into crusty mounds of snow and gravel. Instead, given the weeks of bitter cold conditions, the hill crumbled under me so that I had to scale it on hand and knees—even thinking I might be forced to retreat to find another way around—until finally summiting and tumbling down the far side.

I had been similarly prostrate, many times, years ago—at the end of a toboggan run—and understood, instinctively, that getting slowly back to my feet would plunge me deeper into the powder. Special care would need to be taken to keep snow from getting under my collar, down my glove, in my boots. But the sky above was a perfect blue. The air was calm. I was dry. I folded my hands across my chest, and lay still. And, thus, in those few minutes, I was possibly as comfortable, and at rest, as I had been in fifty years. Blanketed by silence. The only thing I would have added to the moment was a kaleidoscope of snow from above. In which case, you would have seen me with my tongue out to catch the flakes. I thought, Huck will notice I’m missing, at some point, and come back. I’ll wait. I am happy like this.

I heard the sound of a squirrel jumping from one branch to another. Too bad, Huck, wherever you are. You missed it.

*Published in the* Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, *February 24, 2026*
### Winter Distemper
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/winter-distemper/
Last updated: 2026-02-09T19:58:07.000Z
Various small malfunctions are ganging up on us right now. As my wife exclaimed the other day, Why is everything breaking!

I’ll start with the ceiling fan, which is only a couple of years old. It has stopped. It could be the bearings (manufacturer says, unlikely), a failed capacitor (more likely), bad wiring (we have the finest electrician), a stuck reversing switch, or maybe dust. If it spins at all, we hear it grind.

The problem is, the fan is out of reach. It required scaffolding to install. So, the manual’s help section is of no immediate use. It is like having a kite caught in a tree. The bother of it is that the hot air from our wood stoves and boiler can loiter at the top, avoiding any real work. It feels intentional given the recent subzero temperatures. It feels like the propensity of French transit workers to strike in the busy season. Perhaps we have a French fan.

Next, the Keurig coffee machine, which had just undergone a descaling operation with proper descaling solution. Every precaution was taken. It died on the table. We hastened to the Keurig website for countermeasures, only to discover other users reporting the same thing—end of life following a descaling operation. For weeks, the blinking “DESCALE” button had been flashing, alerting us to the issue. I guess we got there too late. We took it to the dump, where they cut off the cord, and pitched it in the bin.

The small knob in our Subaru that controls the side view mirrors has been mysteriously pushed into the dashboard panel. We take turns driving that car, of course, which involves adjusting the mirrors regularly, and it was a surprise when I went to do so last week and discovered the knob shoved into the panel. I tried to pinch the end to draw it out. I put my hand under the dash, behind the knob, to push from behind. No luck.

How did this happen? It’s not possible to slam into the knob with a knee, entering or exiting. We would have noticed, anyway. What about a blow from a package? Unlikely. Even slinging a package in or out from the passenger seat would require arcing it past the wheel. Maybe the dog did it, which is the default explanation for any damage around the house. But the dog does not enter or exit through the driver door. Left alone in the car, he is buckled in the back.

I replaced the thermostat in the den yesterday. It had stopped responding to temperature readings, allowing the boiler to run wild.

The switch on our table-top, decorative ceramic Christmas tree fell apart putting it away for the season.

I reached for one of my go-to coffee mugs last week and the handle came off.

The check engine light came on in the truck, which turned out to have a bad thermostat of its own.

I think the deep freeze we have been experiencing is making everything irritable—plastics and ceramics more brittle, thermostats and ceiling fans overly burdened, other machinery lethargic and ill-tempered. Now that it is February, we are supposed to be turning the corner to spring. Daylight is increasing, new life is issuing in burrows and dens, the chickadees and nuthatches are starting to sing. But we are still in the icy grip of winter, and around our house, it seems, reliable partners have been calling it quits. Any night now (they always wait until the middle of the night), I expect the smoke detectors to start issuing low battery alarms in common cause with the other householders.

With that in mind, we are going around offering everything more encouragement, proactively replacing batteries, dusting and cleaning, polishing, lubricating, testing, showing we care. Both vehicles could use a car wash and a vacuum. A new coffee machine has arrived, which has been a positive distraction involving a good deal of meet and greet. We brought in a blue electric kettle, matching the decor. The additional splash of color has also helped boost spirits.

New beginnings are a reminder that spring is somewhere around the corner.
### Frozen
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/frozen/
Last updated: 2026-01-31T10:30:18.000Z
Frozen 1 30 26 259 PM

0:00

/332.8782993197279

1×

We are worried about a pair of Eastern Bluebirds we saw on the branch of an ash tree outside our window last week when the temperature was hovering around four degrees. Their cinnamon chests were puffed up to down vest proportion, and it seemed possible they were hoping for an invitation to come inside. A quick search online told us that the winter range of the bird has been drifting northwards, so no need to panic. It is not uncommon anymore to see bluebirds here in January as a function of our gradually warming winters.

Tell that to the bluebirds. These creatures mate for life, and it occurs to me that, this cold winter, one of them may have begun questioning the wisdom of remaining in New Hampshire for the season. Domestic bliss could be at stake. I try not to be sexist, but I suspect it was the male who argued for sticking around when the other bluebirds were heading to South Carolina. Save the miles and the calories, he would have argued. I am being that way about heating with wood, keen to save on propane. Plus, wood is renewable. But it is cold in the corners of our cabin, and there is all the schlepping and wood debris caught in the carpet. I feel sure one bluebird is reminding the other that keeping warm uses vital calories. And, how many calories are available to keep warm outdoors, in four degrees, when you weigh only an ounce? Where is an out-of-town bird likely to *find* new calories in this weather!

Etc.

Irony is at work in global warming, tempting bluebirds north for the winter to be sandbagged by frigid temperatures. A good portion of the country is in the frozen zone because warm air has opened the gate that would normally hold back the arctic air, so it is having its way with us—which would be fine if it would stay through summer to help with the fires and oppressive heat that is troubling many regions.

I can’t remember a stretch of cold like this. I have been through ice storms that took out the power for a few days. The cold will get after you in those circumstances, following you indoors. I arrived home from boarding school one winter vacation after such a storm and crawled under the covers in my bedroom where the temperature had dropped to the mid-thirties. I have a clear recollection of lying on my back, a maroon red sort of eiderdown pulled up to my chin, and a cold nose. My mother stood over me suggesting I might be more comfortable downstairs, in a sleeping bag in front of the fire. I was happy to be in my own bed after months away, and more interested in the sight of my frozen breath dissipating overhead. The temperatures were, at least, in the thirties, and the family was successful over the course of the outage keeping the pipes from bursting by holding candles to elbow joints of the copper baseboard heating. We would have been doomed if temperatures had remained as they are now, in the single digits, for days.

The leaves of the rhododendrons are folded as tight as a cocktail umbrella. It is the only plant I know that looks unhappy in the cold. Its countenance shivers and complains. If my wife is reincarnated as a plant, it could be as a rhododendron—lovely blossoms, evergreen, hardy and tenacious, quite miserable in bitter cold. The spruce and the hemlocks, on the other hand, standing among their barren hardwood neighbors, project the sure-footed confidence of fishermen in rough seas. It is the cold that sets them apart. They like it like this, same as the moose.

In the icy cold, the snow has remained light and easy to shovel. It slips through my gloved fingers like sugar, and squeaks underfoot. Plenty still clings to the hemlock branches, but drifts away as powder if a breeze comes along, which is a net positive. In warmer conditions, snow from branches can drop directly between the collar of your coat and your neck if you happen to be underneath, and there are few things more distracting. It was a common torment as children to have someone sneak up and slip a mitten full of snow down your back. Everything would have to come undone in that instant to purge the melting ice before it reached your belt line.

At least daylight now extends past Huckleberry’s supper time. We can feel more secure he won’t run into porcupines or coyotes. I don’t think much about the danger from coyotes. We are surrounded by them, but Huck would represent an elevated risk compared to rabbits, voles, squirrels and such. Or house cats. But, let’s face it, with his dog friends, Huck is a trial, jumping, barking, nipping at their heels to get them to run. A bit of a brat. He would be the same with coyotes, I’m sure, and they’d have none of it. Happily, he is back indoors before it is dark, chased in by cold, not coyotes.

It is dark now, and Huckleberry is curled up inside. The wind is banging against the windows in defiance of our warm cabin. We haven’t seen the bluebirds in a week. Maybe tomorrow.
### Report from the Outside World
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/report-from-the-outside-world/
Last updated: 2026-01-27T16:50:14.000Z
This is my annual report from the outside world after our most recent road trip to Louisville to visit our son and help hang pictures in his newest apartment. Four trips, three different apartments, the same two dozen pictures and prints, plus a wide screen TV. Also, a set of curtains this year. I can’t wait to go back next year, but I have made clear I’m done with apartment setting-up if he has moved again. He is now living with his girlfriend. They seem serious about each other. We have no issue with them behaving like grown-ups in that regard, but it will now include hanging the pictures, rolling out rugs, and moving the couches going forward.

I love road trips, and we have managed, after four times to Louisville—a thousand miles each way—to scout out interesting stops for meals and overnights. It takes patience, trial and error, and a burning desire to stay away from Waffle House, Chipotle’s, and fast food, generally. Still, until you are safely within the city limits of your destination, off the highways, and away from the malls that grow alongside them like Japanese knotweed, you are at the mercy of the drovers—the dealership and casino billboards, the stoplights, traffic lanes for left and right turns only, the drive-thru’s (“Welcome to Starbucks, would you like to try a caramel macchiato? ”), and stadium-sized parking lots.

You do not have to go far to experience America’s commercial sprawl. A drive through Nashua will do it. But along 101A in Nashua there are, at least, countless boutiques tucked-in among the big box stores and chain restaurants. One can achieve a sense of place in Nashua. I am reporting that this is not the case across hundreds of miles of road, heading west. The next place off the highway is like the last place. Same food, same cheap lodging, same amusements—and the same American worker, with only a name tag as a token of belonging.

What pride or inspiration is likely to be created for a person working behind the counter of another megamart that has no local roots, no special craft, no long-term stake in the community? Regarding Nashua, we buy dog food occasionally at Food for Pets, which is along the strip we slog through headed to route 3\. The store has been there, maybe, forty years. One afternoon last year, my wife was standing at check-out waiting while a woman paid for three large bags of dog food, plus additional treats and toys. She comes down from Maine. She lived in Nashua, shopped at Food for Pets for years, and won’t give it up.

In contrast, franchises siphon money from the neighborhood, dole out wages and taxes, and send the profits to Texas, or California. Or China. Someplace else. I can understand why it is hard for the young person bagging my items for the road to smile. I get a mumbled, “Thanks for shopping PetSmart. Have a nice day.” What a drag.

Except for those sanctuaries we have discovered along the way, we drove two thousand miles through an unimaginative, impersonal wasteland. Once upon a time, it was the aggregate of those sanctuaries that characterized a creative and pluralistic America. Today, much of America feels like DSW Shoes, Homewood Suites by Hilton, Walmart, and Outback Steakhouse. What have any of them done for us, culturally, except diminish our expectations for quality and service? Did we think a Target in every town would bring us closer together?

Which is why it’s great to be home, in a place that still appeals to the imagination.
### Deep Winter
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/deep-winter/
Last updated: 2026-01-03T10:30:28.000Z
Deep Winter

0:00

/384.8909977324263

1×

The year 2025 went out with a howl. I understand that some of you may be thinking how, metaphorically, the year howled start to finish, but I refer to the howling winds that have been our regular companions for weeks, this past week being no exception. It has been a steady barrage of wind, gusting to twenty-five and thirty miles an hour, the sort of wind that occupies your thoughts, and raises your voice.

I believe the culprit has been warmer temperatures to the south unsettling the polar vortex, allowing arctic air to leak into New England. It has led to uneven temperatures that are seasonal for a few days, then frigid, swept in and out by the wind. The pattern feels unusual. It feels windier than last year, which someone may be able to confirm. But, definitely, it feels windier than last year.

If you live in the city and keep losing your hat going around the corner, you may be similarly awake to the feeling of more wind in your life. We live in a clearing in the woods, surrounded by hemlocks, spruce trees, and tall white pines. The wind whips through them, making noise like the shaking of heavy blankets. The sound comes closer at night, rattling the windows. I lie in bed thinking about power lines, road access, which trees can reach the house or garage if they are battered to the limits of their endurance.

I have always imagined trees favoring the wind as a form of calisthenics. In an otherwise stationary existence, except for what we don’t see happening underground, why shouldn’t they welcome the wind for the chance to loosen the joints and swing with a neighbor? But everything has its limits, and I have watched through the glass doors of my studio the nearest crop of tall hemlocks get tossed to and fro, and dipped to the dance floor. Put to the same strain, my dates used to excuse themselves to find their friends. The hemlocks, very much the favored partners of a winter wind, have no such option. They must dance on, and by morning, they have had enough—branches on the ground, others looking limp. Now, after weeks of it, I sense they shudder as they hear the wind coming down the hill.

This week, with more wind on the way carrying a full manifest of frigid temperatures, we were being warned about accumulating ice on the trees as a result of rain that crept in during a warm interval. The start of the week was particularly sloppy. When temperatures started to fall in the afternoon, the unpaved roads, like ours, were coated in glare ice. I discovered this heading out in the truck, turning onto the road from the driveway, and sliding sideways into the opposite bank. It is difficult to see glare ice at first, which is clear as glass, like black ice on a paved road. And once you’re on it, steering and braking abandon you.

In my opinion, the prospect of an ice storm is more fearful than a blizzard. Both impede travel. Both impact the power grid. But nature, overall, is more vulnerable to ice than snow. While we must dig our way out of a blizzard, we can, at least, dig. We can only wait for ice to melt. If it remains cold, as it has this past week, the ice will grind away, in demoralizing fashion, continuing to exact a toll on the trees, severing limbs, even after the storm has passed.

Fortunately, in the few hours before the heavy gusts and cold arrived earlier this week, the temperature climbed back to thirty-seven on our outdoor thermometer, enough to dismiss the ice that had formed in the freezing rain through the previous day. By nightfall, relieved of that burden, the trees were able to confront the return of their tormenters, bending and dipping, hopefully not breaking.

The presence of all this ice on the road, the driveways, and footpaths, has brought out the traction sand. No one really uses snow melt or salt around here, except the highway departments, which apply some sort of chemical to roadways. We learned a long time ago that salt, etc., melts the ice, which refreezes unless one has been diligent enough to scrape and cart it away. But you never get rid of all the moisture that remains. Sand on top of ice is the best answer. During acute episodes, such as we’ve had, sand goes down by the shovel full. We called a vendor this week to come look at our furnace which was having a temperamental moment (it’s entitled, after several years of trouble-free performance), and his question ahead of the service call was, “Are you sanded?” That’s experience talking, this time of year.

We are halfway through winter, and just settling in. The distractions of the holiday season always help the first half speed by. Now, the long month of January stretches out in front. It is deep winter. Wind and cold without colorful lights, ribbons, turkey, stuffing, or chocolate yule logs. A month from now we may begin to think about spring, ordering seeds, and notice that it remains light at five o’clock.

For now, our collars are up. I turn my head to catch the wind from behind, and must kick the sand off my boots before going inside, where it still accumulates in dry clumps on the doormat. My wife has requisitioned one of the garage mats, and ordered another online. The vacuum cleaner stays where we can reach it, enjoying an everyday appliance status equal to the toaster and coffee maker. Everything is being done to keep winter outdoors.

While it goes on, I’ll take a break to wish you Happy New Year. Thank you for reading.

Please remember to wipe your feet.
### What’s in Your Pocket?
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/whats-in-your-pocket/
Last updated: 2025-12-29T18:55:34.000Z
The year 2025 is nearly in the books, and you will have to decide where you want it on the shelf—up high with others, collecting dust, or at eye-level, subject to regular attention. I’ll probably have it waist high where I don’t have to look at it every day, but where I can reach it without bending. It can join years like 1968, 1954, 1942, 1929, 1917, plus 1861 and 1776, the crown jewels of national division. By comparison, 2025 will be on a far end of the shelf.

How do we get through these days? Well, it’s like what Alfred Pennyworth says to the future Batman: “Why do we fall down, Master Wayne? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” Do it enough times in a row and it becomes strength, not weakness. As a country, and democracy, I think we come to feel that way about our episodes of divisiveness—maybe not those who live through them, but those who live later, despite, or because of them. We are those people, every one of us.

Except, it is not simply the journey we share that keeps us going. It is the things we carry in our pocket. I thought, then, that as the year closes I would ask a portion of the community—my community—to put a few of the items from their pocket on the table. What are you thankful for, I asked? What travels with you?

The items won’t surprise you, living together in our corner of southern New Hampshire. For starters, they include the splendid beauty of the land, the crisp, white winter, and cozy wood stoves. It being winter, people are thankful for warmth. There are people without warmth, and there were times when warmth for everyone was harder to come by. I learned that in 2025, we still don’t take warmth for granted. It says to me, you can take the person out of the cave, but we are still primal. I am thankful for that, in case I should be tempted to turn my back on nature.

Respecting which, plenty of responders are thankful for the companionship of furry creatures such as their dogs and cats, along with the natural wildlife. Many are thankful for morning walks (there are many morning walkers), good health, personal mobility, and fresh food. People are thankful for not being hungry, which many acknowledged others are. So, they are thankful for food pantries and other services.

Not much happens around here, someone wrote, and they were thankful for that. Several of the retirees on the list (and because it’s my list, there were lots of those), echoed the thought. Not having to leave the house on a snowy morning, having the resources to carry on in retirement, having the time to read the newspaper, and experience the moments that once flew by. To be with friends and family.

Friends and family take up the most room in everyone’s pocket. Grandchildren, in particular, poke out from everywhere. They can never fully appreciate the value they create for those who have them. I was a grandchild once. The telephone on the wall would ring, mother would answer, “Hi Mom,” and we’d scatter.

“Wait! Come say hello to your grandmother.”

I am thankful I had to do that.

There were plenty who wrote the same. I am thankful for my parents, several shared, who led me in right directions, who got me here. Who taught me “to love my neighbor.” I am a neighbor, so I am thankful for that.

I am thankful for this newspaper, and the space it gives me to write, and you, when you have a chance to slow down and read it. And for everyone who responded to my invitation with, “Thanks for asking,” or “I’m glad I did this,” or “I better stop here. But I could go on.”

Go on, we shall, with what’s in our pockets. Mine and yours. When we get together in 2026, let’s remember to put them on the table.

Happy New Year!

*Published in the* [*Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*](https://ledgertranscript.com/2025/12/26/thankful-community-pockets-2025/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)*, December 30, 2025*
### Gripped by Vortex
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/gripped-by-vortex/
Last updated: 2025-12-16T15:13:58.000Z
Feeling like you are in the holiday vortex? Here is Merriam-Webster’s definition of vortex: *Something that resembles a whirlpool.*

It is the season when I feel the undertow of email offers, direct mail catalogues, and the bombast of television commercials. They won’t get me. I have lashed myself to the knowledge of our storage unit containing all the stuff we have no room for at home—clothes, furniture, paintings, books, bicycles, cookware, and appliances. Our grandson wants an electric keyboard to begin piano lessons. I would like to give him the one we purchased for my youngest son *twenty-five* years ago. It never led to any concert recitals. But, by golly, it survives in storage! Who knows, this could be its break-out moment. (Except we would have to get it to France.)

Less imaginary than the holiday vortex, right now, is the *polar vortex*. We are definitely in the grip of that. We shouldn’t be surprised it’s cold outside. We live in New Hampshire, right? But beginning in January last year, bitterly cold weather—single digits, down to zero—has been more commonplace. At home, we had to supplement our firewood supply last February with BioBricks (think, wood pellets) because it had taken more than expected to keep two stoves running to that point. I heard others say the same thing when we emerged from our dwellings in spring.

If you don’t know, the polar vortex is a mass of frigid air that hovers over the poles, kept there by the trade winds. Occasionally, warm air from below manages to disrupt the trades enough to cause the vortex to “wobble,” which is the technical term science uses in this case. The vortex goes from being a stable cold air mass over the pole to a punch-drunk fighter meandering around the ring. If the vortex wobbles enough, it can divide in two, sending one half of itself to Siberia, and the other half to us (so that it feels like Siberia).

They are saying 2024 was the warmest year on record, globally, beating out 2023\. Ironic, that the incidence of warmer weather is triggering the extreme cold winters for us in northern parts of the hemisphere. Unfortunately, for fans of 2024, the year may not hold the record much longer. The polar vortex has wobbled especially early in the 2025/2026 winter season, implying that when the results are in, 2025 will have been an even warmer year.

Locally, we should be concerned that one vortex does not fuel another. This holiday season—*every* holiday season—it is important we don’t wobble on the importance of shopping local. As a former retail owner, we dreaded the arrival of frozen temperatures on business. Cold and bitter wind were always impediments to store traffic, more so than snow (unless it was a blizzard). A little snow this time of year is festive, the perfect thing to accompany the sound of store bells ringing as you go through the door. But when the windchill is -10, Amazon can seem like a cozy alternative to bundling-up, warming the car, and trudging between neighboring boutiques.

Don’t let them get you. There is nothing as cold as an empty storefront, and it is going to be cold enough around here for a while without any more of those. So bundle up. We live in New Hampshire, right?

*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, December 16, 2025*
### A Conversation With My Boots
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/a-conversation-with-my-boots/
Last updated: 2025-12-06T10:30:02.000Z
A Conversation With My Boots 12 5 25 1218 PM

0:00

/338.82260770975057

1×

The boots came out of the basement closet this week, along with the crampons, scarves, waterproof gloves, wool hats, and winter jackets. It is always a pleasure to see them again, like the sweaters that waited out the summer, jammed in drawers. The chance to stretch out, experience daylight, greet the shorts and t-shirts as they go by to take their place in the vacant bureaus, contributes to a feeling of happy reunion for a day or two around the house.

The return of the winter articles always means there is snow on the ground. Until then, we have clung to the last days of autumn by dressing in fleece jackets and baseball caps. Last week, despite cold temperatures, various middle schoolers were at the bus stop in shorts and sweatshirts, and I was walking with Huckleberry in hightop sneakers, wearing a light parka.

That ended this week with our first snowstorm, nearly eight inches. I sat, watching out the window, as the tips of green grass, and the trunks of fallen trees, disappeared under a white blanket. We may not see them again until spring, four or five months from now. And, in the way that nature can abruptly unpack the seasons, temperatures also plunged, down to single digits yesterday. At the start of the week, the pond was open water. Today, it is frozen over, brilliantly white above; inky black below.

I have been partners with some of my winter clothes for years, together with them since my children were small. Once more, we are going to depend on each other to stay warm outdoors, remain in good repair, and reach our destinations. No doubt, we will meet friends along the way with *that old hat of theirs* on their head, and the stories to go along.

My boots, adjusting to the upstairs surroundings, decide to comment: “You rearranged the living room.”

True, earlier this summer.

We go to fetch wood from below the porch, where it is stacked beside the outdoor furniture. The boots ask if we sit down here in the summer. The question surprises me because, wedged between woodpiles, there is clearly not space for the tables, chairs, and couches except as they are, arranged in tight rows. But what do winter boots know about summer porch furniture?

I respond, “No. We move the furniture upstairs. Another pair of shoes helps me with that. The same ones that help me split and stack the wood.”

“Sounds like a lot.”

“Yes, but you help me shovel snow, as you did today, which is rugged work of its own kind.”

Later, we hike through the deep snow while Huckleberry charges back and forth. The boots are all business at these times, plodding forward like draft horses, saddled with crampons that grab the ice underfoot. It is their first day out of the basement closet, and they haven’t lost a step.

I say, “Looks like almost eight inches. Maybe ten in spots.”

“Easily,” comes the muffled response.

“Forecasters are saying it could be a very snowy winter. Something about La Niño trade winds, which makes for colder, wetter conditions where we are.”

“Mmmm,” is all I get in return.

Part of our contract is that I slather the boots with wax, which I haven’t done yet. It prevents chapping. The boots will be wet when we get home, which means drying before waxing. They are not as happy to sit in front of the wood stove as the hats and gloves. The heat from the stove only makes the chapping worse. So the problem is that I forget about them before I go to bed. Morning arrives, and there is no time to wax and wait as the leather absorbs the effects. Thus, the cycle repeats.

“Remind me to get the wax when we get home.”

“Good plan.”

We march along.

I have a new, blue, wool sweater that belonged to a friend of mine who died this year. With our dogs, we were frequent hiking buddies. His wife, with whom we have become close, gave it to me. They were married for only two weeks before he departed, reconnected after living separate lives since high school, and after his first wife’s death two years ago. Gradually, his widow—our friend—is picking up the pieces. Some of it will go into drawers and basement closets. The blue sweater has come to me.

“Do you remember Rick?” I ask, stopping and looking around for Huck.

“Sure. And the two goldens. Lots of time walking together.”

“He died this summer.”

“Oh, hey, I’m sorry. Terrible news. Gosh.”

“His wife gave me one of his sweaters.”

“Do you have it on?”

“No . . . No, I haven’t felt up to that. I’ve seen a picture of him wearing it years ago.”

“So it’s an old sweater.”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s going to have a lot to say, maybe.”

I pause to clap my hands. Huck appears, I pitch him a treat, and he races away again. The boots shuffle around, packing snow under foot, waiting for marching orders.

Finally, I answer them. “I know, maybe lots to say. And I’m not ready for that.”
### Shop and Drop.
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/shop-and-drop/
Last updated: 2025-12-01T19:28:33.000Z
Thanksgiving has passed and, as noted in this space, it is now permissible to bring forth the holiday decorations, crank the carols, and indulge in the making of shopping lists for young and old. Our lists include shopping for children and grandchildren who relocated to France in August 2024\. At this time last year, our thought was to send them a jug of Hancock’s Longview Forest Products’ maple syrup, certain to be among the things most missed about home. Rookie mistake. As I recall, the U.S. postal service was willing to get it there for around $600\. So it stayed here, and we put together a medium box of less important, but festive items, which made it to them toward the end of January after a stint, lasting weeks, in French customs that cost them fifty Euros in import duties. This year, we are “Venmo-ing” cash.

I am a terrible shopper. I don’t like shopping, unless it is for groceries. I can spend hours shopping for groceries, especially if I am dropped into something like a cheese emporium, with cured meats, marinated olives, spices and fresh bread. Deposit me there, go off, fetch me before closing time. Currently, we are not abundantly supplied with those sorts of outlets in our region, but I can get along fine for a while at our local markets. Otherwise, to be dragged into dress shops, antique stores, toy stores, and the rest, sets a timer going, the ticktock of which my wife can hear. It’s extraordinary. At the moment the clock starts to sputter between tick and tock, she will say, “Time to go.” With this power, she can get me through three stores in one outing.

As a bachelor, however, I was regularly in the stores on Christmas Eve. On one occasion, in the stores *after dinner* on Christmas Eve. When you shop like this, as I do, you rarely win prizes for Best Overall Present at the holidays. People get things from me that they already have two of, that don’t fit, need batteries, or are missing the remote. More than once, it has been explained the present for a grandchild was not age appropriate. “She’s two. This is for eight and above! It’s on the box.”

Oh. Well, I thought, since the kids in the picture were having fun . . .

Shopping online is merely the distinction between drudgery and tedium. And it does nothing for the local economy. A forced march through a store is drudgery. Following the rabbit down one hole after another, online, is tedium. In-store, there is the chance for conversation, meeting a friend or neighbor, inclusive of the shopkeepers, most of whom are known to us in a small town. Online, the closest thing to conversation is chat, which is not conversation. It is dialogue, generally regarding size and availability. Afterward, there’s a follow-up questionnaire asking how the dialogue went. I hesitate to think how things will go if we evolve that way, offline. “Thanks for coming to Jim’s birthday party last night. For training purposes, please tell us, on a scale of one to five, how was your experience?”

This year, like most years, I have promised to shop early, to get out there with time to make well considered, meaningful choices capable of making a happy difference in the lives of the receivers. Role models would include the young children who showed up at the All Saints church Holiday Kid Shop during Peterborough’s annual Holiday Stroll in possession of their list of relations, with neat boxes they’d drawn beside each name for check marks. Done, and done. Those are people I can learn from.

For myself, at my age, I have adopted the rule I first heard espoused by my late uncle: anything for me must be consumable. I do not need new clothes—no more sweaters, shirts, ties, winter jackets, boots, (okay, maybe sometimes socks), etc. No gadgets, pots or pans, or lawn equipment. Nothing, thank you, except what is edible, drinkable or readable (per Uncle’s rule, books are consumable). We are in outgo mode. I am, at least. Not my wife. I wish to heap gifts on her, as much as I can—provided they can be exchanged.
### Bare Trees
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/bare-trees/
Last updated: 2025-11-18T19:01:40.000Z
Well, except for the orange leaves of the beech trees and a few yellow ones on the birch, the forests are mostly bare now. I can see to the pond from the window where I write. And I can see all the dead wood lying on the ground, some of it in the same place as always, slowly dissolving back into the soil, eventually to become loam. I don’t believe in reincarnation, but there is something of it in respect to plant life, apart from the progeny that sprout from seed. Whatever springs up from the forest floor will carry with it the essence of the surrounding soil as it grows. What is terroir—in wine, or Parma ham, or Kentucky bourbon—if not some form of reincarnation?

There are also the new trees on the ground. More than a few were added to the detritus following the windstorms the past few weeks. So far, only one tree across the driveway, which I was able to drag and roll to the side by hand. But from the same vantage point, looking out my window, the top half of a large hemlock has snapped, and its spire thrust into the ground. I don’t like looking at it. It looks like a pulled thread in the woven fabric of limbs and branches. A particularly sour note in the midst of things. Unfortunately, the break is too high for me to do anything about it, and hacking away at what I can reach does not promise to spring the rest of the tree from where it hangs without the chance it falls on me. It may have to remain there, forever—my forever—or until more wind finishes the job.

Anyway, I am always a little stunned to confront the destruction on the forest floor after the leaves have come down, and the undergrowth has subsided. The snow will arrive and cover it up again until spring when the sensation will renew for me, briefly. For now, I walk or drive past the woods, and consider the fallen. According to the internet, it takes the average hardwood between forty-six and seventy-one years to decompose (an oddball estimate that could have been rounded to fifty and seventy years without misrepresenting the facts). At that rate of decomposition, and from the look of things, it stands to reason there is as much lumber on the ground as not.

This makes the scene of a forest laid bare unique within the broad canvas of nature, which does not usually confront us with the piled-up carcasses of once living things—not, at least, in the normal course of business. The coyotes are out there. I have never tripped over one left behind. I have never stooped to collect a former crow, or fox, or porcupine from our lawn. Or anything, unless it was alongside the road, destroyed by a car. Most of nature’s remains become food for those remaining. The trees also, of course, are eventually devoured by countless tiny eaters. Nature sweeps up after itself.

The unfiltered peek into the bare forest produces a certain comfort in me each time during the year. Evidence of the struggle spreads in every direction. I know nothing of the choices and politics of trees. But clearly, we are in the same fight together. To be in possession of a truth they do not know will not give me an outcome any different from theirs.
### Standard Time—Sort of
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/standard-timesort-of/
Last updated: 2025-11-04T10:30:54.000Z
We welcomed the return of standard time this past weekend. It is dark now for the evening commute, evening news, dinner, and homework. At the other end, it will be light once more for people getting up by 6:00 a.m. until early sunrise finally sinks below the horizon sometime in December.

I find the darkness this time of year comforting. It transports me to my starting-out days in New York City, surrounded by city lights, which have always stimulated the world’s imagination. Cities may snarl at you nine to five, but they smile at night, pressing the hustle and bustle into something that eventually sparkles. I remember standing in the doorway (as close as I ever got to the inside of his office) of the creative director of the ad agency where I worked, on the fringe of a group of senior colleagues looking approvingly at print ads in the immaculately white office—white walls and furniture (the Director’s thing, obviously)—with the glittering darkness outside framed by the windows. It was quitting time. The work was good, the client happy, and the mood jolly.

It left a mark. I am still enchanted by the same frames of darkness outside while sitting inside next to a warm wood stove with the evening ahead of me. It is a different feeling than I experience during daylight savings time because, in the summer, once driven indoors by nightfall, not enough day remains to stoke the same amount of contentment—most of which I will have spent outdoors, anyway.

Of course, “standard time” is a misnomer. Time is far from standard around the world. China, you may know, has only one time zone across a country that could accommodate five! In its westernmost parts, sunrise will eventually near 10:00 a.m. before heading the other way. At the poles, where the lines of longitude converge, every time zone is represented, which is incongruous with the fact that the sun at each pole, north and south, rises and sets only twice a year. Accordingly, life near the poles more-or-less dispenses with time. The time just *is*. Australia, on the other hand, decided on six time zones, two of them conforming to daylight savings time, the other four, not, and three of them choosing to further adjust the clocks relative to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)—formerly, Greenwich Mean—by thirty and forty-five minutes. In summer, when it is 11:00 a.m. in Sydney, it is 10:00 a.m. in Brisbane, which is east of it—like having it 11:00 in Chicago, when it is 10:00 here. I love the Australians. Always ready to save the important questions for when they’re having a good kegger. I also love the Nepalese because in Katmandu right now is 12:42 a.m. against my 2:57 p.m. Nepal is another one that has a forty-five-minute offset from UTC.

Navigation came early to the world, and sailors developed the method of counting knots, uniformly tied in a line that trailed behind the boat, to measure speed. In this country, at least, it was the railroads that created the need for a uniform understanding of time to avoid having trains collide on the track. But at the end of the day, time, as measured by clocks, is a human fabrication, useful for scheduling arrivals and departures. We don’t need it to tell us when to sleep or wake, or eat, or get the crops in, or take the dock out.

That said, our dog Huckleberry is punctilious. At 6:00 a.m. he wants breakfast. At 8:00 a.m., his morning walk. After lunch, he expects to follow me to the studio where he can lie in the sun that comes through the sliding doors until 5:30 when it is time for dinner. Pencils down. Chop, chop. My wife says he has become a total “stress case.” Released into the wild, I wonder how he would explain his former life to the coyotes he fell in with: “At 6:00 it’s breakfast, at 8:00, we walk . . .”

“Oh, wow, dude, how did you manage to keep it together?”

How indeed.

*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, November 4, 2025*
### Good Luck, Little Buck
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/good-luck-little-buck/
Last updated: 2025-11-01T09:30:27.000Z
Good Luck Little Buck

0:00

/370.03022675736963

1×

We hit the brakes driving home in the truck the other evening to allow safe passage for a handsome, six-point buck. He was on the left when we came around the corner, about to step nonchalantly across the road in front of us. If we had come to a stop a hundred feet in front of him, I’m not sure he would have moved from his original position. He was a pretty chill deer. My wife said, “Better be careful, Mr. Deer.”

Good advice. Deer season starts today in New Hampshire, and this is no time for attitude if you are a handsome buck. It varies, region to region, but in our part of the state the season will run this year until December 7th. While it goes on, we will be wearing fluorescent orange hats and jackets outdoors. Our dog, Huckleberry, who customarily wears a bright orange collar, will now don an orange vest. Before our walk yesterday morning, we dressed him with it for the first time this season, and he looked sharp. We call him Orange Lightning as he bolts through the woods. Together, we will stay away, as much as possible, from the environs open to hunters for the next month, moving to another location if, when we arrive, a truck is parked there already.

I have never had much interest in blood sports, but I don’t object to them provided hunters intend to eat what they kill, a fair standard, I think. The key word is “hunt,” because there may be instances where an animal is dispatched for reasons apart from food—a fox in the hen house, for example. I go along with protecting the chickens, even as Mr. Fox was doing what came naturally. But if you are going into the woods to bag a deer, a moose, even a bear, I hope the plan is to serve it at the table—mine if necessary.

Around here, the hunters I know are very much that sort. They all have their secret jerky recipes. And they are committed conservationists. I learn more about the woods and the animals that live in them from my friends who are hunters than those who are hikers like me. Their wisdom comes from the hours of stalking and waiting, mostly off-trail, in a tree, or hollow, looking and listening. We hikers breeze by a lot of things. I will pick a place in the woods to sit for ten or fifteen minutes—longer if I have gone to the trouble to climb a tall hill or mountain. But what is ten minutes to a thousand acres? A jot of time. One leaf that falls to the ground.

The desire to stay in one place long enough to grasp its routine is a constant with me on my walks. Alas, for most (all) of my excursions, I am accompanied by Orange Lightning, who is against abiding. We must always be on our way. The hidden creatures of the forest, I’m sure, are appalled by his running around. It’s clear he can’t catch a thing while chasing squirrels up a tree. They all scatter for the same reason people avoid the obsessively talkative person in an airport lounge—“Hey, how are you? What’s your name? Where you headed? I’m Huck—call me Orange Lightning—Over there’s my owner. Ooo, wait. Where’d he go?”

For a few years, when my wife and I owned an inn, we hosted an Annual Game Dinner, which took place over the winter, bringing together the area’s sportspeople (yes, there are women who hunt and fish). Attendees would contribute their bounty, bringing it to us ahead of time. We would convert it into a menu, starting with passed hors d’oeuvres, followed by a three-course dinner. There was generally salmon from Alaska, and trout (often as pâté). Local venison, of course, pheasant, moose, bear (twice, I think), and elk. One regular participant always contributed his special wild boar sausage—from actual wild boars.

If you want to know where the rubber meets the road in the culinary world, it is in preparing and serving the proceeds of people who have, very likely, spent days isolated in the cold, beginning at dawn, fumbling home after dusk, in hope of a split second opportunity to procure fresh game for themselves. It is one thing to disappoint a guest with an overcooked slice of meat from an animal that arrived by truck. It is another, to disappoint a guest with an overcooked slice of meat from an animal they carried out of the woods on their back. Receiving a prized loin of moose one year, the contributor said, “If you overcook it, I’ll . . .” Etc.

I took no offense. To the contrary, we embraced the chance to honor both the hunter *and* hunted, which is a sentiment that develops in us—carnivore or not—the closer we get to our sources of food. It is worth repeating in reverse: that the honor we give to our food *decreases* the farther we get from its source. It does. It just does. And I won't argue about it.

For deer and their pursuers, those proximities will get especially close beginning today. After two days of rain, most of the leaves are down. Cover is compromised. Temperatures are forecasted to remain in the forties. It will be cold and wet, for everyone hunkered in the woods.

After breakfast, Orange Lightning and I will seek a well-groomed trail. We won’t plan to sit and stay.

Good luck, little buck.
### Holiday Megalopolis
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/holiday-megalopolis/
Last updated: 2025-10-22T13:06:43.000Z
We have entered the dreadful holiday season. But let me explain—I love the holidays. It is the impertinent arrival, *weeks* ahead of time, of lawn ornaments, store window displays, catalogues, and email “spam” holiday promotions that rub against my anticipation of those special occasions. The effect is like a hard rain falling on our driveway, washing some of it into the ditch.

Halloween, for instance. You may know that Halloween is now the second-largest commercial holiday behind Christmas. October 31st is still days away, but I have been driving by front yard gravestones, zombies, plastic pumpkins, dangling skeletons, for weeks. Far be it from me to bite anyone in the neck, draining their enthusiasm, but in this part of the world, I contend that Halloween should not rise from the infernal regions until, at least, our docks are out of the water. As it is, we were barely back to work after Labor Day when the candy corn appeared on the shelves.

It is within the power of marketing to transform any inherently good and joyful thing into one of those over-muscled people, slick with oil, wearing a Speedo. The Super Bowl has become this, but, mercifully, we don’t get to know the contenders until shortly before the event, which confines a lot of the pre-game hype to two weeks. No such “Who’s it going to be?” restraint exists in the case of Christmas. The only question becomes, how early will the commercial season begin? (I predict right after the last carved pumpkin gets tossed into the woods.)

You’ve asked yourself, I am sure, when did it become okay to launch the Christmas holiday before Thanksgiving? Once upon a time, the deal was: Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, at the end of which Santa comes riding in his sleigh, officially signaling the start of the shopping season.

We do better with those boundaries. Scarcity is also a powerful marketing tool. Too much of a good thing can obscure its fine qualities. In this part of the world, where spring fades to summer, fades to fall, fades to winter, we know the value each season creates for the next. If global warming allows summer to extend its influence, I won’t be counting myself lucky. I will miss sweater weather, and cozy wood stoves. A source of my identity will have been wiped out—never mind what gets wiped out in addition.

Speaking of which, the propane heater in my studio is coming on now. (I am wearing a sweater.) *Studio* is the name we give the space above the garage—a name I’m getting used to, instead of *office*. I had an *office*. I did *work* in my office, which included writing, but in the form of memos and business proposals. I do not write memos or business proposals anymore. I write essays about how the holiday marketing megalopolis is connecting Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas in the way that Boston connects to Providence. My writing output, today, seems inappropriate to having an office. As a semi-retired person, an office would imply having a room to scope used tractors on Facebook Marketplace, and pay the electric bill. The word studio does a better job of attaching to my ramblings about holiday commercial excess.

Anyway, the heater is coming on, and the door must be shut, which means Huckleberry and I have lost a bit of independence. He must now wait at the door to come in or out, and I must get up to do it. This condition will last until at least mid-April, and it gets tiresome, compounded by the fact that Huck does not cry or wail at the door to come in. I have to check periodically to see if he is there. Sometimes I don’t hear his footsteps, and discover him shivering patiently in the dwindling afternoon light. I should get one of those Apple security cameras to mount in the hallway that can broadcast his presence to my laptop. I’ll wager I can pick one up as part of some pre-holiday, gizmo sale in a matter of two or three more weeks.

*Published in the* [*Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*](https://ledgertranscript.com/2025/10/19/holiday-season-commercial-excess/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)*, October 21, 2o25*
### Thanks for Working Today
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/thanks-for-working-today/
Last updated: 2025-10-08T17:27:08.000Z
Since we were together last, I attended a college reunion of sorts in Schenectady, New York. It was the 200th anniversary of the fraternity I belong to, and let me point out, I was around for the 150th.

On the appointed evening, there was the obligatory reception and dinner, which followed the group photo of all three hundred attendees. Now, *if* you bunch together over three hundred people—fraternity members, or otherwise—and release them at once to a cocktail reception, it is the equivalent of aiming a cannon at the bar and shouting “Commence firing!” I know this. I am a former professional. If you are the barkeepers, you must be well dug in, with adequate ranks of people nearby to hand you munitions.

As a former professional, I had understood the precariousness of the situation before the photo and positioned myself at the edge of the group to allow for quick movement to the bar once the order to commence firing had been given. A perky, bubbly bartender handed me my beverage with barely a moment wasted and wished me good evening. She was ushered away in tears not long after.

I watched from around the massive charcuterie table, as the advancing company of three hundred piled up at the bar. A classmate appeared and announced we had a disaster on our hands. Senior council members and event organizers began huddling in corners, under the big tent. And eventually, reinforcements, called up from the college’s sizable food service staff, arrived to augment the caterers.

What happened? Well, this is the point I am here to make—*ten* employees of the catering company had called-out of work that day, leaving them severely short-handed, unequipped to open the planned-for, second bar. And the point is, had this happened *here*, where we live, as it sometimes does—who are we kidding: as it *often* does—the event would have remained a disaster, without the resources of the college, and larger Schenectady community to rescue it.

I have a queer thing I do, especially on weekends: I thank waitstaff, cashiers, and other people in mostly unskilled, hourly jobs for working. I say, “Thank you for working today.” The young people in these jobs generally respond with a hearty “Of course! Thanks!” The older people, who have been legging it out in these positions for years, glare at me.

Workforce is a crisis in the Monadnock region. Nothing gets better (e.g., housing, school enrollment, tax burdens, etc.), until we solve the workforce problem. In turn, workforce is held back by housing, tax burdens, the threat of darkened elementary schools, etc. It’s turtles all the way down. But we could begin to help by saying thank you, as a dividend, for coming to work, for supporting our local businesses, and helping to keep them rolling.

I was being glib earlier (during the entertainment portion of the essay). In truth, my core ached for the caterers. Been there. Lived through that. I was ready to jump behind the bar and start pouring (oh yes, as were others). And it was not so much pity for the caterers as it was pity for the team members, the ones who came to play, who got punished by the absenteeism—and reduced to tears.

Years ago, when my wife and I owned the Inn at Hancock (at the time, the Hancock Inn), and the Hancock Market across the street, one of our wholesale grocer delivery trucks arrived past closing at the market, late by hours, late again, late, late, late. I was forced to leave my position behind the Inn’s bar, go open the market, and stow the groceries. The next day, I was very (very) unpleasant to our account manager. He was apologetic, but in response to my admonition to get himself reliable drivers, he said something important—for all of us. He said, “Jarvis, we’ve been in business in this region for forty years. We have scorched the earth for a hundred miles in every direction and, now, there are no more drivers to hire. We’ve been through every one of them.”

Welcome to rural New England. I reject all hostility to development in our towns for this reason: our team lacks depth, we have no bench. I celebrate every private and public investment intended to attract visitors and give them reasons to return, and we hope, stay.

And I want to thank the people who show up for work, keeping hope alive. Maybe you would join me?

*Published October 7, 2025 in the* [*Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*](https://ledgertranscript.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)
### Of Free Will and Graders
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/of-free-will-and-graders/
Last updated: 2025-10-04T09:30:24.000Z
Free Will and Graders 10 3 25 123 PM

0:00

/326.9339909297052

1×

We live along a dirt road, and the big news this week was the town arriving to grade it. This happens once in the spring and once in the fall. Sitting outside on our porch, we can usually hear the machine coming from where it turns off the state road about a mile away. It makes the usual sound of heavy equipment, coming slowly, doing the best it can in a high gear that is asking it to hit notes out of its range. This time, the giant grader was accompanied by two dump trucks, which hurried back and forth to the public works shed, fetching loads of dirt and gravel for renewing the road’s surface. They were putting finishing touches on the job this morning when I walked past with Huckleberry on a leash. It is hard to carry on a conversation with a heavy equipment operator with diesel engines running, and him, in this case, high up in the cab, but I think he said they had put down somewhere between four and five hundred tons of new material, on a road not even a mile long.

It has been years since they have gone to that trouble, at least longer than we have been living here full-time. So, I wonder how long four to five hundred tons of crushed stone and dirt will last before regular grading is no longer adequate for filling in potholes. Six months out of the year there are only two houses that use the road, ours being one of them. A total of four cars that drive up and down, maybe twice each day. Snow, ice and rain are the real actors in road drama, particularly *dirt* road drama. Four to five hundred tons of earth sounds like a lot to me on a short road. To snow, ice, and rain, it may sound like breakfast cereal going into a bowl.

Autumn in New England is one of nature’s big moments. The woods are thick with hardwoods such as birch, maple, and oak. And now, their lush foliage is being slowly strangled as sap is cut off to the leaves to deprive them of vital nutrients, scheduling them to die, and drop to the ground. Gruesome, in respects. But in fact, it is a miracle of evolution that will allow the tree to divert those nutrients to its roots for winter, while releasing the leaves to carpet the forest floor to feed and shelter animals that will till it back into the earth over time.

Free will has its detractors when attached to the idea of a Creator. I just think of free will as evolution, and evolution as the Creator’s plan—the plan being, give life time, and it will find the answers. Like today’s trees, which knocked out the answer in about thirty-five million years. This is how I will be saved when I need to start collecting the leaves that fall on the lawn (where I do not wish the forest to populate). The answer will be my gasoline-powered, blower backpack. Did you know that the average mature hardwood tree of the maple, or oak variety will yield, conservatively, 100,000 leaves? We have scores of those trees bordering our green spaces. As I write, a light breeze is sending baskets-full of the earliest, yellow ones floating past my window—maybe fifty to sixty thousand since yesterday. I plan to mow the lawn tomorrow, then power up the blower to sweep them into the woods, where they can achieve results for the crickets, spiders, centipedes, and whatever else is happy and profitable under the leaf bed.

We have the wood stacked that, we hope, will heat the cabin through March. We made it only to President’s Day weekend last year, so I got busy earlier this year harvesting timber from around the property. It takes me a minimum of a week to dispense with a tree, start to finish—felling, cutting up, dragging brush, splitting and stacking. My wife and I budget about two hours a day to tend the property, but on any day, those two hours might be required for other work besides logging. So, it’s a slow but methodical process. In all, I’ve put up about three and a half cords. Small house, two stoves, only one of which we will have going at a time until the temperature outside drops below twenty degrees. At that point, it really requires both stoves working to keep the cabin above sixty-five, throughout.

There are few things in life more satisfying than piles of well stacked firewood. I am surrounded by them right now. I lean against them, and smell their sweet fragrance. You can compare it to the satisfaction of having a room of well-stocked bookshelves. But imagine removing books from the shelf, one after the other, and burning them, until no books are left. You can compare that to the sense of loss we feel as our woodpiles get smaller over the winter.

Fortunately, the woods have a plan to help with that. They are experts at renewal. We’re getting better at it, too, thanks to the evolution of dump trucks and graders.
### Autumn Hugs
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/autumn-hugs/
Last updated: 2025-09-24T22:03:56.000Z
On my way into the local market two afternoons ago, I parked the truck behind a car with Connecticut license plates in front of the Inn, and swept passed an attractive woman entering a navy-blue SUV from Pennsylvania. Two out-of-state license plates in one milk run to town. You know what that means: it must be autumn, our Shangri-La moment, which attracts pilgrims from everywhere to witness nature at its sensuous best. Work has stopped for many of the plants and animals, the next generation of biting insects are larvae at the bottom of ponds and rivers, and it is warm enough for tomatoes on the vine to keep ripening. The conditions are ideal for flip-flops by day, and sweaters at night.

The fall colors—the “La” in Shangri-La—are emerging in the usual way between our cabin and the pond. One small, scruffy maple, close to shore, is already barn red. It is always the first to tear away the ribbons and paper to unwrap the change in season, to the consternation of its neighbors, I believe, who are only beginning to slip into something more colorful. It is a maple tree not unlike my grandchildren—in the car before everyone, ready for the fair, with no regard for feeding the dog, turning off lights, or closing doors.

Fall has arrived, and we should hope, so will the pilgrims. We are as well-prepared to greet them as I can remember in the years we have been here. In Hancock, the local businesses are fully open, and producing pheromones attractive to pilgrims. I feel the same about neighboring villages, including Peterborough. Wandering in and out of shops, the scent of it all is good. The goal is to avoid startling the out-of-town herds with the smell of, *How does one get through the winter?* If we can get a few of them to settle here, tell their friends, bit by bit, we may be able to keep all of our schools and shops open.

It is more complicated at home, where I am convinced my wife has developed Seasonal Adjustment Disorder (SAD). This is more about darkness, I think, than cold. We climbed Thumb Mountain last week on a crystal clear morning and sat for a while. I was careful not to depart too much from discussion about the panoramic view of Mt. Monadnock and surrounding hills. We busied ourselves identifying the distant bodies of water, supported by Google Maps. But there was no avoiding the carpet of red leaves already on the ground at the summit. “Ugh, look at all these leaves on the ground!” said my wife.

Secretly, she loves the fall and winter. We became entangled with each other through the fall and winter (how could she not love them?), and so many of my fondest memories are of her dressed in bright snow garb, wrapped in scarves, her head tucked down inside high-collared coats. “Oof, it’s cold,” she would say, once she was close enough for a hug—and, to this day, I have found a hug to be the best antidote for SAD.

Hugs are a great antidote for every manner of despair—seasonal, economic, *and* political. I don’t know anyone right now who does not need a hug. With that in mind, may I request that if you encounter one of the herd from “away” this season—a fall pilgrim—coming or going from one of our shops or restaurants, don’t sweep by. Hug them.
### Local Newspapers Are Our Best Defense
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/local-newspapers-are-our-best-defense/
Last updated: 2025-09-09T17:33:40.000Z
I am guessing you don’t know that *The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript* is between editors. The former editor departed a few weeks ago for other pastures. So now, the newspaper and community await a new hire.

It is always, in my opinion, a twice-weekly miracle that the *Ledger-Transcript* reaches newsstands, and our mailboxes, in two sections, covering several towns, their governments, schools, sports, businesses, events, and personalities. They do it relying on a small, determined, but revolving staff of people united, presumably, by an interest in gathering and distributing the news. I am not writing a personal tribute piece, here. You can look up these people on the newspaper’s website. It won’t take you long. It’s a short list, anchored by a publisher who has—mercifully—been doing this long and steadily enough to keep the trains running on time, even in between editors. Tip your hat to them if you pass on the street. Or not. Your choice. But at a minimum, *buy* the paper. Doing so, will help keep the country running.

Our nation is divided. Polarized. Half of the people feel it is marching toward fascism. The other half believe it is being rescued from communism. The irony is that neither fascism nor communism have much use for divided opinion, and we can’t really be either unless, and until, all the newspapers go out of business. But that could certainly happen. The last time I checked, which was only a few months ago, newspapers were still failing at the rate of about a hundred a year. Mostly smaller newspapers, but the Washington Post could go at any time if Jeff Bezos gets bored with losing $50 to $70 million a year.

There are many reasons for the demise of newspapers. Money, of course: it is excruciatingly expensive to gather, print and distribute the news. Plus, twenty-four hour cable news, leading to changing audience behaviors going back decades such that today’s young consumers haven’t grown up with a newspaper habit. They may not have experienced a newspaper delivered to the home. Does any kid with a bicycle have a newspaper route anymore? And so on.

At the same time, technology—we’ll get to the internet in a moment—has made the rise of the national newspaper possible, a space created by Gannett (*USA Today*), but now dominated by *The Wall Street Journal* and *The New York Times*. Apart from cutting into local and regional news business, it has meant consolidation in the sources of political opinion. See also: cable news, which is, today, much less about the news business than the opinion business. Truth is, the opinion business is cheaper—one well-compensated talking-head can attract as much, or more, audience than hard news, and—this is important—more reliably. Any given day, the news may not be interesting. But most days, Rachel Maddow, or Sean Hannity, will have us in our Barka Loungers right through the commercials.

Here is the bit about the internet: it does all the above, learns a great deal about you in the process, and follows you to bed at night. Enough said.

All of us have existed inside our silos since birth. Formed and shaped by experiences and opinions of those closest to us. But leaving the house each day, it used to be that you had a reasonable chance of being hit by an errant fact or opinion—as a business traveler in a new town with only the local paper to read, or a viewer of one of only three TV news networks (which were more practiced in objective news reporting). There’s basically no chance of being similarly struck these days. I sold newspapers over the counter for a few years as a local market owner. I confirm that non-New York Times readers would rather chew an arm off than buy that paper, even if it was the last one in the store. Same in reverse. I heard “I don’t read communist/fascists newspapers” so many times I decided that when one of those forms of government eventually takes over, it will be short work getting us to toe a party line. Surely, their administrators already know this.

So, where is our final line of defense under the circumstances? The local newspaper. The one outlet currently accountable to the melting pot of local community—the last place where we *have* to be in the same room with each other to debate school budgets and new bridges. The one outlet that best serves us by reporting both sides, giving room to all voices. Like ‘em or not. And still the one place to read about, and see pictures of our children, mothers, neighbors, and responders, keeping it real.

Be on the lookout for our new editor. Be grateful we’ve got one. And buy local.

*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, September 9th, 2025*
### Ever Seen a Lizard Dressed as a Wizard?
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/ever-seen-a-lizard-dressed-as-a-wizard/
Last updated: 2025-08-30T09:30:35.000Z
Ever Seen a Lizard 

0:00

/380.4327664399093

1×

It is the end of summer and we are left with a few open questions: have we put up enough wood for winter? Will the tomatoes finish ripening? For the second year in a row, can I skate through until spring without staining our two wooden porches? And, the most nagging question, have we ever seen a lizard dressed as a wizard?

That last question sounds foolish, of course. Don’t take it too seriously. Don’t suppose we are invested in an answer, or open to online comments telling us that lizard wizards do not appear in cold climates such as New Hampshire’s. But a week after our grandchildren, ages five and two, left to return to France, it remains the most nagging question because it was put to us over and over again—I’d say, fifty times—by the song, “Down by the Bay,” played on our grandson’s new toy record player, which my wife purchased for him as a late birthday present.

*Down by the bay*

*Where the watermelons grow*

*Back to my home*

*I dare not go*

*For if I do*

*My mother will say*

*Have you ever seen a lizard dressed as a wizard?*

*Down by the bay*

. . . Or countless other rhymes that young and old can conjure: Lama/pajama, goat/boat, parrot/carrot. My wife was so affected, she was blurting out new rhymes from her side of the bed at night. The song intends that; it’s suitable for campfires. Anything goes, until you run out of rhyming energy. In which case:

*Did you ever have a time when you couldn’t make a rhyme?*

*Down by the bay*

“Down by the Bay” was popularized in 1976 by the singer/songwriter, [Raffi](https://raffinews.com/us/raffi/concerts/?ref=jarviscoffin.com). But the song is far older than that, coming from England or Scotland. No one knows its true origin. I suspect it was aliens that visited earth, maybe the ones who developed [Stonehenge](https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/?ref=jarviscoffin.com). Just another puzzle with no real answer, designed to taunt us with the possibility that elsewhere there are wizard lizards, along with bears combing hair, who travel space/time, sharing silly rhymes, which we could too, if we all had ruby slippers.

I have been thinking back to what I may have listened to over and over at age five. Isn’t it funny that I can’t remember, despite knowing there must have been something equivalent to “Down by the Bay”? I remember listening to Beatles albums over and over. But not incessantly. I was twice as old, by then. I'm sure my parents must have read me the same stories, repeatedly. For example, “Huge Harold,” by Bill Peet:

*When Harold the Rabbit was tiny and small, his feet started growing and that’s about all.*

What I remember most about the book, apart from the opening, was how my father loved it. He spent summers on a farm in upstate New York that had a couple of red barns like the one in which Huge Harold sought refuge and was saved by the beneficent farmer, Orville B. Croft, who shouted to the hunters,

*He’s in here, and here’s where he’ll stay. You’re not coming in, so be off on your way.*

Orville B. Croft: a man who took a stand. I own a green wool, Filson Mackinaw hat that I refer to as my Orville B. Croft hat. It is the same boxy shape, with the visor and ear flaps, as depicted in the illustration of him leaning out the barn loft window, resting on arms serenely crossed, easing his neighbors on down the road. I tell people I could walk through the winter cold wearing nothing but that hat, which, let’s face it, is not simply about its ability to trap the hot air escaping from the stovepipe of my head, but the warmth generated by memories of the book, my father’s shoulders, and my lama pajamas.

I am not interested in the science of these things. Science is not the concern of *Postcards from Monadnock*. Wonder is; more specifically, wondering. Someone knows why children will invest in the same thing over and over in the same sitting—the same video, picture book, song. The same person may be able to tell me why “Down by the Bay” has been stuck in my head for a week, when I’m sure it departed from my grandchildren’s by the time they reached the bottom step of the basement playroom to encounter new objects of worship. They are high-topping through the early stages of growth, behaving like the dragonflies I see out the window, which dart left, right, up, down, backward, forward. Capture. Capture. Capture. Hop, hop, hop.

Six months from now, of course, the toy record player, which made the transatlantic trip back to France, may be a relic, overlooked in a corner of the room, along with “Down by the Bay.” So goes celebrity. So go the centers of all attention.

I think we have nearly the wood we need to get through winter. We are focused on deploying the small limbs and branches that have accumulated from the cutting and splitting to build dead brush fences along the edges of the field. Besides which, brush just happens around here. Putting it to work as fences seems like a good idea. I may get to the porches for staining, but there is a longer list that includes reorganizing the tools in the garage. Boring, but necessary. As for the tomatoes, these days the sun is not getting around to their bed until later in the morning, having sunk below the tops of the white pines. I can’t change that fact. For the tomatoes' sake, we will have to hope the warm temperatures keep up.

Never mind. What real importance attaches to those questions compared to seeing a lizard dressed up as a wizard? Down by the bay. Where the watermelons grow.
### When the Inspector Calls
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/an-inspector-calls/
Last updated: 2025-08-08T19:37:26.000Z
Our insurance company sent someone around to inspect the property recently, which generally means trouble. If you send someone to inspect something, it rarely results in full marks. A singer’s got to sing, a dancer’s got to dance, and an inspector's got to find stuff. I remember, once upon a time, telling our food safety officer at The Hancock Inn, as he moved about the kitchen and bar areas, humming a tune, that all I really wanted in life was a perfect food safety rating. He stopped humming and gave me a hard stare. I think he may have been deciding if I was serious (I was). “That’ll never happen,” he said.

Sure enough, we received notice from our insurance company a week ago that we needed to replace the roof of our garage, which is also where I have my office for writing columns like this one. The roof does not leak, there are no cracked or missing shingles, and while there is a little moss growing in places nearest the gutters, I sort of like the old cottage look it helps create. But, fine: in truth we have been talking about replacing the garage roof to match what we put on the main cabin several years ago, a more aesthetic than functional improvement, which is the reason we have been kicking the issue down the road.

The insurance company has been very generous with the time they are allowing us to make the improvements before they move out—which is how it feels after all these years of being a commercial, as well as residential customer, offering regular displays of affection by paying them on time every month. Kind of like being told, ‘You have nine months to prove you can give up gambling, or I’m leaving.’ But things don’t get cheaper the longer you wait, so we are efforting the roofing along now.

The project has to wait, however, until after our forestry team can get here to take down the hemlock tree towering over the garage, which has developed a split running down the middle to where I can reach up and touch the bottom of it between the two trunks of the tree. I have no idea how long it has been like that. I noticed it around the time we got the insurance letter. Our forestry team is two weeks out, which matches the schedule of the roofer. Hopefully, we will have the pleasure of having them each, more-or-less back-to-back, in logical order. But this makes it, ‘I’m leaving if you don’t stop gambling,’ at the same time the bookie is threatening to drop a tree on our house.

It does not end there because we were advised by our auto service friends that the Subaru will need rear brakes and tires in the next thousand miles. The news came with the receipt for repairing the wagon’s hatchback, which had not been closing all the way. My wife showed me the note the next morning before we jumped in the car to go to market, and, promptly, the rear brakes started squealing.

Most people get lost the first time trying to find us here in the woods, including the nice insurance inspector, who drove past the driveway a couple of times before deciding, ‘Well, this must be it.’ We could put a gate up at the end, but, for sure, unplanned expenses will get through to catch us sitting in our deck chairs, waiting for the water to boil to make Kraft mac & cheese.

We expect the dog trainer in another hour to work with the ebullient Huckleberry. I am going to ask if he can get Huck to bark at the threat of incoming capital requests. That was the other thing the insurance company sent along after the inspector’s visit—a dog questionnaire. There was no pretending we didn’t have a dog, not when it greets you by nearly jumping through the open car window. The questionnaire asks, “How is the dog restrained when outside?” I thought about answering, by gravity. In truth, Huckles has eight satellites tracking him through his GPS collar, which send down lightning bolts if he crosses the fence line. This is the technology I would be interested in deploying against expense lines that decide, on their own, to go over the limit.
### The Culmination of Days
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/the-culmination-of-many-days/
Last updated: 2025-08-02T09:30:13.000Z
Culmination of Days 8 1 25 313 PM

0:00

/367.0580725623583

1×

We have been mourning the loss this week of our Canada goose gosling, the only child of a pair that have been regulars on the pond for a few years. It was worrying when they appeared several weeks ago with only one fluffy youngster between them, down from how many we can’t know, maybe just two. But each morning and evening they would paddle past our dock in single file, keeping eyes on our Number One nature lover, Huckleberry, and while the adults took turns acting as sentry, they would forage for tender shoots underwater.

Over the weeks, we watched the gosling shed its yellow fuzz for the formal gray, white, and black uniform of its troop, get big enough to fall out of line with its caregivers, and venture deeper into the reeds. Flight training couldn’t have been far off. Soon enough, the threesome would be leaving for warmer coastal climates, with reliable sources of food for the winter.

But at the start of this week, early in the morning, before six a.m., as light was filling the sky and turning up the color on the trees and water lilies, I heard a splash, accompanied by an unnatural sound—loud, but muffled, as of someone throwing a sheet over someone else and stifling their cry. The geese erupted in frantic squawks, by itself not unusual (geese are alarmists), except that the squawking continued well past the alarm stage, and past what would seem reasonable for two geese squabbling. One goose stopped squawking, giving more voice to its distraught partner, who honked until it was hoarse—until anyone could have understood its anguish. *‘Help!’* it was screaming. ‘*My baby!*’

In reaction, Huck and I went down to the dock to get eyes on the situation. Without the binoculars I failed to bring along, the state of things on the far side of the pond where the commotion took place was difficult to assess. The loons were closer, already on their way to the scene. But through the morning mist that still lay in patches on the water’s surface—no doubt an accomplice in the bloody action—I counted two, not three, of the typically inseparable geese.

It is August, the culminating month of the year, in which the aspirations of every living thing in our part of the world are collected. The seeds are bearing their fruit, the fawns are losing their spots, the cubs have grown, the people have gone on vacation, and when they return, the children will enter new grades at school. Meanwhile, our Canada geese will fly home alone. They will join in a wedge with others, aware of the looks they may get, and be grateful that questions don't get asked. Because who doesn’t comprehend? Who doesn’t, at least, understand? For them, the ride home this year will be quiet.

What was one gosling against so many? Eagles and hawks from above, snapping turtles from below, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, from the shore. As I say, we were hopeful as the weeks clicked by, and junior grew to adolescent size. Then this, whatever *this* was. A thief. A pirate. Some wily and lightning quick predator crouched in the shallows, behind the purple reeds, hungry, with things of its own to look after. It was nearly August, and the time left for it to get fat was dwindling.

We are lulled by a sense of peace and quiet around the pond. We do not think much about the fish that fall prey to the loons, or the squirrels snatched from their nests by owls, or the frogs swallowed by snakes. Do these things make it a violent world? The ash trees are dead thanks to the emerald ash borer. The porcupines are eating our pear tree. I am busy stamping out the ground ivy that is choking our lawn. And most of it happens with the subtlety of a summer breeze until we are jolted by a splash and the anguish of a caregiver, and reminded that life has made provision for everyone—itself, most of all.

The adult pair of geese reappeared the next evening, landing in our cove from someplace which may have offered a change of scene, and perhaps short-cut grass. We were having some wine and nibbling on Goldfish crackers at the end of the dock, and we watched and waited as the two made their way over to the rock, a safe distance away, that we call, Goose Rock—their rock—where only a short time ago three of them had padded around, pausing to take naps, slipping in and out of the water, looking very much like anybody’s family.

I pitched a few Goldfish in their direction, as an offer of condolence—as a special treat—as an alternative to being able to run my hand over the top of their heads and down their long neck and pat them tenderly between the shoulders of the powerful wings, which if they had been a little closer might have landed the blow that sent the predator running. They never touched the Goldfish, but, remarkably, they swam to us, maybe sensing the invitation. Huckleberry quivered at the edge of the dock. We quivered a bit ourselves in our wooden Adirondack chairs as they got close, not close enough to stroke their necks, but close enough to hear them cluck and to feel their trust, as neighbors who will let you use their telephone if a tree has come down across the lines, and your power is out, and who will pour you coffee (or pitch you Goldfish) while you figure out your next move.

It is August. Time for the county fair, the prize pig, the wagon full of corn—the culmination of so many days. And the time for starting over.
### When the Rain Came
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/when-the-rain-came/
Last updated: 2025-07-25T18:07:35.000Z
I have always proudly promoted the idea, to people visiting our area, that Mount Washington has the worst weather in the world, with the whole of New England following closely behind. There are colder, warmer, drier, and wetter spots around the globe, but as a rule, with respect to the fair weather return on a ski or beach house rental, or the average incidence of cloudless, crystalline days, or the annual likelihood of experiencing both tropical heat *and* arctic cold from the same spot on the front porch, the weather here is ludicrous, and Mount Washington is our poster child.

Accordingly, it was no surprise that when I asked one of my gathering AI helpers what the “official”, one-day record for rainfall was in New Hampshire, the answer was 11.72 inches atop of Mount Washington in 1946\. And I got a boost from that because in the same way that an athlete might measure their performance against a current record holder, I wanted to know how well we did at our cabin in the woods recording eight inches of rain as a result of the storm that sat over Hancock for two hours a couple of weeks ago. It turns out, we can run with the big dogs.

New Hampshire’s Department of Transportation and Hancock’s Department of Public Works won’t think I am being funny. They were out the following day—Sunday—frantically filling in the canyons left along the roads after the rain swept the shoulders downhill, cutting off driveways and collapsing the asphalt in places. Monday morning, I passed a bucket line of orange DOT trucks loaded with sand to stabilize the situation down route 123\. The response and repair was impressive, but obviously not permanent. There will be more to do.

I felt better about our driveway as a result of all those orange trucks. We were running with the big dogs, faced with how to recover gravel that had washed to the bottom of the creek bed, leaving sizable trenches behind. The truth is, I don’t try to fetch gravel back from the creek anymore, where it has become the sort of gravel I consider untrustworthy—the sort to keep escaping. We fire up the John Deere lawn tractor, attach the “thatcherator,” and drag the driveway until the crown is loose enough to rake into the spaces abandoned by the escapees.

But, hey, eight inches of rain (someone else reported 11, others, five or six) in roughly two hours. Can we have an amen? I was paying careful attention to the weather radar after I woke to the fact that the torrential downpour was continuing long past what we expect from a downpour, which has always been, *down*, and *pour*, as in, duck and cover, in and out, catch and release—two-step processes of short duration. After an hour of downpour, downpour, downpour, the red-orange dot inside the green circle indicating a severe thunderstorm had not moved from above our cabin. I kept zooming out on the screen to see where the holdup was down the line, over by the coast, maybe, where some white, puffy cumulus clouds might have broken down. I was a New York City commuter for years, experienced at being stuck between stations because of equipment failure up ahead. Watching the red-orange dot slowly rotate in place on the map, I suspected equipment failure up ahead. Another hour went by before the problem, whatever it was (they never tell you), was cleared, and the dot moved on.

When it was over I did the math: at an average of ten inches of liquid equivalent, per inch of rain, we would have had eighty inches of snow because of that storm, eclipsing the current, one day record of 49.3 inches that fell on Mount Washington, our hero, in February 1969\. You might worry that eighty inches of snow in one afternoon favors the return of glaciers. On the other hand, it gives those of us with runaway gravel driveways something to look forward to. As the old joke goes, *Where did the rocks come from? Glaciers. Where did the glaciers go? Back to get more rocks.*
### Les Grandes Vacances
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/les-grandes-vacances-2/
Last updated: 2025-07-15T18:07:35.000Z
My son’s family is returning in August from France, where his company moved him a year ago. They will be around for three weeks, and by “around”, I mean appearing and disappearing as they try to touch various bases, presenting themselves to family and friends scattered throughout New England. His older sister is hoping to intersect with him when her two children get out of summer camp so the cousins—her children, his children— can see each other. Everyone will be bouncing between points in Maine, in addition to Boston, Scituate, Nelson, and Hancock. We intend to remain motionless while this goes on to avoid collisions, with an expectation that the orbiting bodies will alight, if only briefly, to feed on what we can provide.

Family vacation is complicated, a full troop movement. It requires planning, logistics, and frequent snacks (an army marches on its stomach). Most of the complexity has disappeared for us as grandparents. We simply watch and wait, answering the emails.

The absence of my son and his gang over the last year, not here for any of the holidays or birthdays, is having its effect on planning. There is less elasticity in the process: not seeing them this visit may mean not seeing them again for months, or even a year. I understand there are families that live like that routinely, by choice, or because someone is in the Navy, on a submarine, or moved to Australia. We may need to settle into such a routine, resetting our expectations. But for the moment, our clan is unpracticed that way. We are used to regular visits.

I don’t know what we would do if France did not have so deeply rooted in its culture *Les Grandes Vacances,* which sends the country into a state of hibernation every August. Shops close for the month, along with schools, daycares, camps, and companies. Even big multi-nationals, such as the one my son works for, enter a stage of torpor, during which time productivity slows to the equivalent of ten heart beats per minute. Like a hedgehog. Thankfully, Les Grandes Vacances gives all of us with some claim on my son and his family’s precious time at home, a few bites at the apple.

At a particularly high arc in my corporate career, back in the days of chasing rainbows, I remember taking a meeting with a fellow from France in my New York office. Big, corner office, with a small conference table, a couch, and chairs, in addition to my desk. Two or three telephones scattered around the room. Very swell. Very self-important looking place. I have no idea what the meeting was about. I do know I was not happy trapped in it. I sat there acting as pleasantly as possible, but contributing nothing to the conversation that might extend our time together. Soon enough, my guest took account of my detached interest, the peeks at my watch, the looks back over at my desk, and brought the meeting to a close. He finally got my attention, however, when he paused on his way out to say, in his pleasingly accented English, “You know, you must stop and smell the roses sometimes.” After a glance around my office, casually dismissing my trappings of power, he departed, sliding past my assistant in the doorway. “What was that about?” she asked.

At that moment, I decided he was speaking for his whole country, which had striven, gained and lost, again and again, over centuries, until it settled into Les Grandes Vacances, quite content to let others chase balls, having nothing of urgency left to prove. The school year in France, we have learned, reflects the same attention to the scent of roses: six weeks on, and a week off throughout the academic year.

France has paid a price in the number of billionaires for all this vacationing: sixty-eight billionaires in its population of sixty-eight million people, compared to 902 billionaires spread across our population of 340 million. One billionaire for every million people in France, versus almost three, per million, in the U.S.

I don’t imagine any of the people loading the troops into the back of the van for their eagerly awaited August destinations care about that statistic. Nor any of us who wait patiently for them.

*Published in the* [*Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*](https://www.ledgertranscript.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)*, July 15, 2025*
### Riding with Mom
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/riding-with-mom/
Last updated: 2025-07-05T15:52:50.000Z
Riding with Mom

0:00

/398.26569160997735

1×

First, let me address myself directly to my mother, who keeps a scrapbook (more like a folder) of all these postcards, plus my newspaper columns that have run bi-weekly in the *Monadnock Ledger-Transcript* for three years, ignoring that my website—which you may be on right now, certainly if you are listening to, rather than reading this installment—is a warehouse of those writings. Occasionally, she will ask for a copy of such and such an essay and I will send it by email. She is rounding third for age ninety this fall and is of the scrapbook era, which came before Pinterest and the Cloud, and experienced as its last, great, technical improvement, self-pasting pages, patented in 1873 by none other than Mark Twain.

Hello, Mom. This is about your recent battle with cancer, but not the cancer, or the chemo or radiation, and their debilitating side effects, which you endured with strength and patience. This is about the immersive experience my brothers and I enjoyed riding with you to and from treatment, five days a week, for seven, or so, weeks. Call it two months, not including the preliminary appointments for examinations and second opinions, which were, let’s say, another two months. It is about those miles, over six hundred, give or take, and those hours, two hundred, at least, including wait times and trips to CVS and the markets.

This is *my* story about that. Don’t try to stop me.

We were raised by stories, my brothers and I. Parables, in response to life’s recurring questions. There were the formative stories touching on duty, honor, integrity, personal aspiration, disappointment, manners. The normative stories concerning honesty, kindness, charity, sportsmanship, sharing. And the impeditive ones, the quick fixes to help navigate the obstacles—the bumps in the road—resulting from the friction caused by such things as love, joy, anxiety, and heartbreak. Point to any of them, and there is a likelihood I can pull from my mind’s repository an applicable narrative, a teachable moment that I can rehydrate and bring to life.

Regarding life’s disappointments, I can open to the story about the parachute doll my mother left behind at a roadside gas station, dropped to her while she waited eagerly on the beach, from an F7F by Marine pilots training for World War II near Cherry Point, North Carolina. It was too late, and too far down the road, to go back and recover it. There was a war on. Gasoline was at a premium. My grandfather had orders to get to California ahead of shipping out for the anticipated invasion of Japan, and the family had to get home. Mother was nine, and all seemed lost.

And the cautionary tales. As a young man, I never climbed into the seat of a vehicle when I was not mindful of the story of the two brothers, one just out of college, destined for law school, contemporaries of my parents, who died together in a car going too fast around a curve, someone else behind the wheel who was chasing thrills, showing off, possibly laughing all the way. And survived. Or of the offending driver’s father, who put on a suit to appear at the home of the dead boys’ family to . . . to what? To gather up a few pieces of everyone’s broken world by offering his presence. He said at the door, “I’m not sure I’ll be welcome here.” How else to begin?

Mamie Small was my occasional nurse as a baby. Or nanny, if you prefer. My father’s nanny before me. Experienced as they come, she, nevertheless, allowed the edge of a glass she was holding at a relaxed moment, with me cuddled in her lap, to come where my teeth, just showing and sharp as razors, could bite off the rim. Into my mouth went the swollen knuckle of her arthritic finger, so I could not swallow or chew (except her knuckle, which I mauled), while a finger from her other hand, her glass dropped to the floor, fished out the dangerous shard. I have never been tempted to offer a sip to any infant from a glass, as a consequence. But I have known what to do if that sort of trouble arose in my presence.

I do not have any personal memory of Mamie Small. But the sense of her countenance was with me all through my years of child-rearing thanks to the stories. On the occasions when she would arrive to take charge of me, I would cry—I’d wail—following her around my parents’ apartment, as if I might succeed chasing her away. And I would stand at her side, still carrying on, gradually resigning myself to her presence as she changed into her uniform until, finally, my sobbing over, she would look down with tender indignation, to say in her Scottish brogue, *Shame on, you. Shame on, you, Jarvie Coffin.* I would be glad to hug Mamie today as one from whom I inherited good guidance, who never let me take some things too seriously. 

We have heard, my brothers and I—now wives, even grandchildren—those stories a thousand times. We have waited, not always patiently, through them for ages, standing in the doorway, hats, and coats on, ready to leave. Smiling. Thinking of our next appointment. Worrying about the callback number, letting the dog out, getting the groceries home.

*I’ve probably told you this before . . .*

Yes, you have, a thousand times.

Civilizations have stood for centuries, grown wise and prosperous by rehearsing experiences from their past. In some cases, it would have been good for them to write it all down. I guess I’m thinking about that. Six hundred miles, two hundred hours, not all of it mine, but all of it from the same storybook, without distractions. So many, many wonderful stories. Riding with Mom.

Lucky are we.
### Cue Summer
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/cue-summer/
Last updated: 2025-07-16T18:43:57.000Z
There is not enough closet space in our cabin to accommodate our seasonal wardrobes, that is, our separate fall/winter and spring/summer collections. I feel like a putz mentioning it. How many sweaters or cotton shirts does one person need? If we could simply divest ourselves of three-quarters of our clothing, we’d have enough closet space to remain comfortably and semi-fashionably dressed year-round. But that’s the thing: we have a problem divesting. I wouldn’t say we hoard, which, to me, would imply we are also obsessive gatherers; I haven’t purchased a new shirt in, well, years. Instead we save. We keep. My flannel shirts, when they come back to me each fall after banishment to self-storage, return with my remembrances. They are not simply articles of clothing, they are vaults, holding the passage of time. But this year, this season, unfortunately, it has been announced that one of those flannels may have nothing more to give after thirty years. Holes in both elbows, a collar so frayed it is nearly detached from the whole garment. My wife has said it is time to say goodbye. It may already be gone. (I have not dared look carefully to see if it has come up from the laundry, where some clothes go to die.)

Anyway, it has been a turnover season of false starts because of the recurring cold and wet conditions. The flannel shirts, wool sweaters and corduroys got to enjoy a few extra weeks at home as we gradually reintroduced the light sweaters and khakis. Then, suddenly, the push was on to swap out everything and the flip-flops rocketed to the top of the shoe pile.

Was there spring? I would say there were spring days. The daffodils came up, the leaves appeared, the mud eventually abated, all causes for some celebration. But spring is a reluctant actor here, with a walk-on role. It has no dramatic lines. It is given instructions to cross the stage with a placard for the audience to see that reads SPRING, while the action goes on behind it.

I was keen to plant strawberries this season, which enjoy cool weather. I bought the first batch locally. They looked dry on opening and, ultimately, proved dead after a couple of weeks in the ground. I followed up by sourcing replacements online, which took over three weeks to get here, by FedEx! In all, about five weeks of anticipation. On the day the new batch arrived, looking only slightly more viable than the last, the temperature had shot to eighty from the previous mid-sixties, and subsequently, increased to the nineties. I should have waited until fall. But one can be lulled into thinking summer will never arrive, what with the cool, wet weather lingering. What a difference a day can make.

So summer, in sandals and a toga, stormed in right on cue, making a grand entrance with record heat. Uncanny. Someone knows their business. It is not going to help my strawberries, but the beans and zucchini are applauding, along with the tomatoes.

Ah well, I am glad to have my shorts back, outfitted with remembrances of their own. A light-weight favorite for hiking arrived with a pocketful of last season’s dog cookies. The pair I wore to my brother’s for cocktails over the weekend held a five-dollar bill. Even a summer shirt I slipped on this morning had something to share: a packet of those plastic dental picks I always find useful

As I say, they are vaults. 

*Originally published in the* [*Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*](https://www.ledgertranscript.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)
### Blindfolded Canoe Racing
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/blindfolded-canoe-racing/
Last updated: 2025-07-16T18:44:48.000Z
Shortly, I will head down to the town pond to watch a group of people race around a course, two to a canoe—one in the bow, blindfolded, with a paddle, and one in the stern, giving directions. Humorously, or not, the set-up is a metaphor for life, and a brilliant fundraising event for a local community center, an organization in business since 1996 to overcome metaphors with action.

The weather is not great, but I expect a crowd. Last year, one bystander told me he would pay to watch the race, which develops into a cross between Pin the Tail on the Donkey and bumper cars. Contestants negotiate their way around the course the same way a person would walk a straight line after stepping off a merry-go-round, except the paddlers never really get their bearings. Chaos prevails. Everyone has a good time. The community center benefits from its biggest fundraiser of the year, supporting its program for teens.

I am more used to auctions, bake sales and golf tournaments as fundraisers, most of which grow featureless after years of the same-old-same-old. It is hard to imagine the frivolity of blindfolded canoe racing wearing out in the same way. There is something about blindfolded anything we love that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom: you do not see chickens daring each other to cross the road blindfolded.

I dove into the internet for only as long as I could hold my breath, and caught video of blindfolded pumpkin carving, knife throwing, card tricks, motorcycle riding—the gamut. Continuing to hold my breath, I watched a blindfolded guy attempting to set the Guinness Book of World Records for using a chainsaw to slice through apples he held in his mouth. Internet surfing time was running out—I needed to come up for air—so I only saw him cut through five or six, but I had the same question you may have: did someone already hold the blindfolded apple-chainsawing record? If not, slicing *three* apples would have sufficed, yes? He had a basket of them on the table ready to go. I do not understand some people.

(I digress, overwhelmed by the same feeling I always have after a few minutes of allowing the internet to pass me along like a crowd surfer over a mosh pit, sort of trapped and reliant on the pulsing throng below me, imagining the chickens on the side of the road shaking their heads.)

The point is, tying a blindfold around our head yields amusing, sometimes sensational results, and the dedicated people at the local center, who think creatively every day about how to engage communities, have picked a winner.

There were twenty-eight canoe teams, spread over five heats, that raced to the delight of probably a hundred spectators. Teams from churches, local businesses, the police force, from the teen center, itself, with names such as Good and Evil, Wise Quackers, and The Brown Knights (winners of the paddle-off between heat winners in a time of 4:17); in canoes tricked-out with balloons and streamers and pie plates, or as galleons. Always, there are a few accomplished performances from disciplined teams that paddle more or less directly around the course. The majority, however, criss-cross, cross back, cross over, over and over, until determinedly arriving at the finish, happy to have their blindfolds removed, trying to assess where they have been.

Metaphor for life? Why not? A good time for a good cause? Definitely.

*Originally published in the* [*Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*](https://www.ledgertranscript.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)
### Eat, or be Eaten
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/eat-or-be-eaten/
Last updated: 2025-06-07T09:30:27.000Z
Eat or be Eaten 6 6 25 431 PM

0:00

/334.3643764172336

1×

Like you, I brake for garden toads scrambling to get out of the way of the lawnmower. I do the same for the garter snakes that slither after them. I had a toad up against a stonewall this morning that was trying desperately to make it to a higher crevice. I drove around, giving it some berth, and will have to go back with grass clippers to even the uncut patch that remains (although, seriously, that is not going to happen; it will wait until next week).

But you understand. I do not like to mow, shoot, drown, hit, or smoosh any little thing if it can be avoided. I am known to release beetles and bugs into the wild, shoo wasps out the window, help caterpillars across the road. Maybe I hope it adds to my total score when life is complete, and atones for my cruelty to small creatures as a boy: for instance, the summer afternoons I spent experimenting with sunlight and a magnifying glass to frizzle ants. Or the vacation a friend and I decimated the sand toad population of a Lake Erie beach in Canada with firecrackers. In those days, if I saw a spider in my room I would thwack it unhesitatingly with the heel of a slipper, provided I could reach it without risk of something grabbing me by the ankle from under the bed.

I am all about live and let live these days, with one—well, two—current exceptions: ticks, and mosquitos. Black fly season is over. I suppose they died by the dozens by my hand while they were around the past several weeks, but they are so small, and swarm in such numbers, that we cover ourselves in long pants and shirts, with nets over our heads, to simply avoid them. A few unlucky ones find their way past the protection and get crushed against my neck or forehead. Last week, someone said it looked like I had been bitten by vampires given the amount of small, incisor-like marks on my neck following an afternoon working in the garden.

When it comes to my sense of compassion, my red line (no pun) is the bloodsuckers. Think of it this way: they are the only animals in the food chain that continue to stalk us. Around here, we live surrounded by bear, coyote, bobcats, moose, but unless we are caught, accidentally and awkwardly, with one of their children, they leave us alone. Live and let live. The bloodsuckers never accepted that sort of liberal weenie nonsense. It is eat, or be eaten.

So be it.

Among their kind, what is mostly left to contend with for the balance of the summer are the mosquitoes and ticks. The mosquitoes have just arrived. Their noise, alone, drives you to distraction, especially after dark. Zzzz, Zzzz as they float in, bouncing, weaving, flying very much like they are over the legal limit, making them difficult to swat, midair. So, I let them land, at which point, preoccupied with drilling, they are defenseless. Poor mosquitoes. They care more about the survival of the species than the individual. They flood the zone, hoping one or two will manage to safely land, feed, and escape without getting plastered. And plaster them I do.

But the tick. The *tick*. A part of me thinks we will all be working for them some day. There is no way to assess their personality. They may be very pleasant to one another, passing in the tall grass, catching a ride on the same host. Fish and game rangers say a moose can be infested by 100,000 ticks over the course of a season, meaning ticks must have learned to get along and avoid territorial disputes. With us, however, they are only, ever, unpleasant; the sort to sneer—thanks to their built-in numbing agent— *this won’t hurt a bit*.

Right now, it feels like several are crawling over my body. Thank goodness I work alone because I am disrobing regularly in anxious search of the creepy devils. Every year at this time I get slightly psychotic imagining things all over me, which is one reason I suggest ticks may eventually succeed in driving us mad enough to enforce their will, trapping us inside, handing them the outside world. You may already know people who will not take summer walks in the woods, or go on picnics. I do.

Lyme disease is the thing, of course. Not only are ticks preloaded with an anesthetic, many are preloaded with disease. Skillful. Diabolical. I ask you, where did all that anger come from? Anger that leaves behind a skin rash the size of your fist.

So be it.

Into the fire, down the drain, under my foot. I am for “all creatures, great and small.” I do not bring a sense of dominion over all others to my place in the natural world. I take what I need, honoring it best I can, and leave the rest that we might go along and get along. But everyone has their limits. The moose certainly must. If they had opposable thumbs, 100,000 ticks might face serious reprisal, bringing them to the bargaining table, we could hope. Who knows? The tick I pulled from a leg this morning was prepared to leave its head behind. I mean, who does that?
### Thinking About Our Vietnam Veterans
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/thinking-about-our-vietnam-veterans/
Last updated: 2025-05-20T18:09:38.000Z
A thirteen-year commemorative period honoring those who served in the Vietnam War winds-down this year. It will end November 11, Veterans Day. The Commemoration was authorized by Congress, given over to the Secretary of Defense, and signed by President Obama in 2012\. It led to an extended timeline of events around the country, all of which I am finding out about today. Right now, for instance, at the State House in Concord, there is an exhibit honoring a prior visit to New Hampshire of a touring version of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington, D.C., one of our nation’s most stirring monuments in a collection of stirring monuments.

For thirteen years the commemoration has been going on. I am just finding out about it now. There is something wrong with that, I confess.

The Vietnam War ended before I was ever eligible for the draft. For us, it ended on March 29, 1973, when the last U.S. combat troops left the country. For the Vietnamese, it ended two years later, when the North Vietnamese overran the South, a moment that was framed in our collective consciousness by a photograph (courtesy of Dutch photographer, Hubert Van Es), of frantic South Vietnamese trying to escape aboard a helicopter on top of the Pittman building, headquarters for our CIA. You can dig around for the history as I have done. The picture caught one moment in what was, at the time, the largest helicopter evacuation in history. In a day, over one thousand Americans, and 5,500 people of other nationalities were airlifted out. I retreated to that image in my mind during the debacle in Afghanistan (over 124,000 were evacuated from Afghanistan over seventeen days, but there was an airport to work with). My takeaway was simple—bad wars end badly. Forget about who is in charge.

As with other large-scale conflicts, I think everyone in this country was touched by Vietnam. To begin with, military conscription—the draft—focuses the mind. Younger generations are used to limited conflicts in far-a-way places that do not really change the beat of life here every day. The draft was a steady drumbeat in the lives of all of us, even the ineligible. And there was the size of the engagement. At its peak, in August 1969, there were 543,000 military personnel in Vietnam, including my cousin (did not return) and my brother-in-law (did return).

For most of the time Vietnam raged, we lived on a nice, dead-end lane in suburban Connecticut. I was a boy, not even a young man. I threw myself into harm’s way by racing downhill on my bicycle, hands free. (We did not wear helmets in those days. Or spandex.) There were, I recall, twelve houses on the lane, most of them filled with kids like me, except one. One house had an older brother—just, you know, an older brother. A phantom. No longer rode bikes. Drove a car. Came and went places without needing anyone’s permission. Had his own money. Got drafted. Sometime later, an army green car came slowly down the lane—maybe we had to pull over on our bikes—maybe we watched it drive by—I do not know or remember—and pulled in at the house of my friend and his brother. The grown-ups who saw it all knew what it meant. The story sticks with me.

Vietnam changed our country. It was toxic. But I believe, fifty years later, we have it to thank for the parts of us that are better than we were. For one thing, we have learned to show respect to our service men and women who, in too many instances, were reviled when they got home from ‘Nam. Can you imagine? After what they had been through? We yelled and threw stuff at them. They bore the brunt of our self-loathing at the time, when we were divided over foreign conflict and race, mostly. The experience taught us it was wrong to do that. Ever. For any reason. Not when people have fought and died.

I am glad to have the chance to squeak that in before the thirteen years are over. Thank you, Vietnam veterans, and all veterans. Happy Memorial Day.

*Published in the* [*Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*](https://www.ledgertranscript.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)*, May 20, 2025*
### (Human) Nature
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/human-nature/
Last updated: 2025-05-10T09:30:21.000Z
Human Nature

0:00

/343.28083900226756

1×

We left a month ago to visit my son and his family in Paris. We charged around seeing as many of the sites as we could, visiting Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, following in the footsteps of the “Lost Generation” of writers on the Left Bank, and stopping in countless boulangeries, pâtisseries, boucheries, fromageries, and chocolateries. I have not been many places in the world. But I have been all over these United States and there is nothing to compare to the food emporiums of France, which are commonplace, one after the other. I believe we could experience a cultural revival in this country if we could just have bakeries on every other block and bread that is lying fresh on the counter each morning. Culturally, we keep looking in the wrong places, Hollywood or Wall Street. Trust me, it is about the bread, the tip of a fresh baguette poking out the top of each bag as you pass your neighbor on the street. Fresh bread says, have a great day.

It hardly seems a month ago, but that is because we have been back only two weeks and it has been a race to pack up winter and unpack spring. There are deadlines this time of year, mostly as regard the lawns, getting them thatched and raked. Also augmenting the garden soil with compost and loam, fertilizing fruit trees and shrubs, and planting and transplanting, if that needs to be done. We divided and moved several Sedum, and planted a young, flowering pear tree. The lawns have yet to be cut because in the short time they have been eligible it has been raining, a steady rain for the last five days. We brought out the rain gauge a day ago and it has recorded an inch, already. More inches came before. The small island in our cove we nicknamed Goose rock, because the Canada geese park there for a couple of days every spring and fall, disappeared underwater during the deluge. That does not happen every year.

But everybody is back, which made returning from France a happy thing despite pangs of homesickness for the family. It is possible to leave the Pond while it is still mostly winter and the neighborhood quiet, and return two weeks later to discover spring emerging and the crowd returned. This is true for the road we live on, along which Huckleberry has been allowed to run free all winter, criss-crossing with nary a look in any direction. Now, he will be on a leash for the summer until we get to the trail at the top of the hill. Good thing, because on our first outing that way since getting back, two trucks drove by, roofers and contractors on their way to perform whatever chores were scheduled to get the lake houses up to snuff. Daydreaming with one hand on the wheel and the other holding a cup of coffee, their reactions would have had no chance against a dog jumping at the window for a free ride.

Outside our window, nature is done whispering. It clamors. The Spring Peepers are chorusing as if their lives depended on it (because they do), each male doing its best to outshout its rivals in the interest of attracting a mate. Over the top of them, the vibrato horn of Loons warns of predators. Their caution might attach to the pitched voice of two Osprey circling overhead, although the Osprey's devotion to a fish diet generally mutes the reaction of the pond dwellers. As likely, the trumpeting Loons are dueling males--by now, the females have arrived from winter camp. And skimming the vegetation at every level, White-throated Sparrows, Blue-headed Vireos, Blue Jays, and more.

We brought ourselves and devices to the porch with our cocktails on one of those nights shortly after we got home to read up on the day. What was the point? Nothing was more interesting than the news in front of us, as you can hear for yourself.

New Recording 3

0:00

/30.014666666666667

1×

I am given to wondering sometimes if a Loon floating on the water on a cool summer evening can experience fulfillment in its surroundings; or is that a gift only we possess? I think, why not fulfillment for a Loon? Anthropomorphizing (I do so regularly), I imagine the Loon, watching me pause to stretch behind my wheelbarrow and shovel, ask, why shouldn’t he have what I have? Fulfillment, indeed, after thirty million years.

I think, what is the Louvre to Spring Peepers? 

It is many choristers, thick as frogs, at the Mona Lisa.

“Travel,” read the sign on a Seine River cruise boat, “is the ethic of caring for the world.” I see (human) nature, everywhere I go. 

And a desire for fresh bread.
### Reach Out and Grab Hold
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/reach-out-and-grab/
Last updated: 2025-05-10T20:07:32.000Z
I have seen the Mona Lisa and, just downstairs from her, visited the Venus de Milo, two extraordinary women attracting millions of people every year to their home in the Louvre. It is challenging to get near enough, or stay long enough, to know either of them well, but the community of people they bring together inspires me on its own. In that respect, I am a globalist. I enjoy being surrounded—truly surrounded—by people from around the world, all of us single-minded regarding one thing, in this case, art. Something we can agree is beautiful, even if we do not understand it. Something that brings us together.

A slogan on the side of a Seine river tour boat captured the sentiment for me perfectly: “Travel is the ethic of caring for the world.” I recall this feeling visiting the shrines of the Holy Land in Israel two years ago only months before war broke out. Bus loads of people—*bus after bus load*—queuing to visit ancient churches and temples and historical landmarks. We stood in line with Ethiopians, Europeans of every sort, other Africans, Asians, Australians—the lot. We smiled and chatted as best we could, filled with the same sense of anticipation, like children on a field trip. War, when it happens, is a hard rain on such a parade.

Any dissension is. When I think of the pleasant half hour we spent snaking through the line into Notre Dame with a young family from Barcelona, I am ashamed of the blistering discord in our country, and sad about it anywhere.

I propose this: Go somewhere. Encounter other people. Think of it as rubbing ointment over the skin rash that afflicts us right now. Work down to what lies underneath, the protein, and muscle that allow us to remain upright. Get in line to experience something beautiful. Window-shop. Go inside. Go next door.

Nine million people will walk past the Mona Lisa this year, pausing to capture the moment on their mobile devices. As many as seven million will gather around the Venus de Milo. You do not have to be one of them to be strengthened by those numbers. They confirm that there is ample connective tissue to keep us from falling apart. Just reach out and grab hold.

The French President, Emmanuel Macron, announced at the beginning of the year that the Mona Lisa would be getting its own room, downstairs at the Louvre, perhaps by 2031\. It will come with a new entrance to the museum, with a separate entrance fee for people coming to see the famous painting. The goal is to relieve the long lines and crush of the crowds viewing the artwork, which, by now, undermine the purpose of having a museum, directors say.

Yes, perhaps. But Macron spoke rightly during the announcement. He said, he was “humbled” to stand in front of the masterpiece. I felt the same, being there when I was in the thick of the crowds. Ethics, including the ethic of caring for the world, boil off impurities leaving humility behind in the pot, which is a soothing balm for applying all over.

I was sorry to have to leave France and its one thousand years of history. We had to get home to the dog and spring clean-up and did not want to miss the daffodils. But I think we will seek-out local museums this summer and join a nature outing or two, to connect with others, to reach out and grab hold.

Published in the *Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*
### Foreign Correspondence
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/foreign-correspondence/
Last updated: 2025-04-07T20:20:06.000Z
We are off to France to visit a son and his family, who were relocated by his company at the end of August for a stint at headquarters in Paris. What a project getting four people, inclusive of two children, ages four, and one, plus two dogs, and most of the furniture across the Atlantic. The only things they left behind were two cars, which they sold within minutes using Craig’s List. At the other end, it took six months to lease a car in France, a function of the slow pace of immigration paperwork qualifying them for driver’s licenses, a prerequisite of having a vehicle in that country. Conveniently, public transportation will get you about anywhere over there. But it is the luggage that accompanies small children these days, the collapsing and uncollapsing of strollers, and the hoisting of it on and off buses and trains, that wears you out in the absence of the back of a car with which to transport it all.

From the start, they have produced a weekly podcast chronicling the adventure. Email me if you would like to subscribe (address below). The first few months of installments may cure you of any desire to attempt a similar high-wire act. At last, they have settled into a routine—the children are attending schools and daycare (crèche, en Français), they are learning the language, they have made friends, are going to children’s birthday parties, walking to the bakery every morning for fresh bread with all the other Parisians, and they have a car. We are going to see how it gets done.

It means we will miss mud season. Most of it. What a shame. If we are lucky, by the time we return the driveway will be firm enough to support the car without dissolving under the wheels into deep tracks that harden like lava flows as the soil dries out. That would be a relief. It is demoralizing to drive over bumps and potholes, literally unsettling. The frost heaves are already jarring the teeth. We are not built to bounce along. And a shovel is barely any use as a repair tool once the driveway is mostly stone again. 

I suppose I could take a moment to reflect on the amount of water the ground holds to have it behave as mud until the tundra defrosts—likely, several hundred thousand gallons across our few acre parcel. Sorry to say, I am not enough in awe of that fact to treat the mud with any favor.

When we return, we will be up against what has to be done in the form of raking, blowing, and planting. My father insisted that no matter the winter, the lawn would need to be mowed every year before the end of April. His precept was true for us until last year when I did not need to mow until the first week or two of May. Yet, provided it does not *snow* in late April, there will be things of an immediate nature to do when we get back, and I will be worrying about them while we are away. Washing windows, grooming the lawns, mulching around the shrubbery. One cannot just bop off to France without thinking about readiness for the change in season. It is a never ending thing here.

Mud season makes it as good a time to travel as any. On this occasion, especially, I look forward to exchanging a few smiles with the French people as we struggle to speak their language, pointing out things we would like to sample in their grocery cases, or seeking directions to relics of their thousand-year history. I look forward to inviting any of them, who seem interested, to visit us in Monadnock. They should come in winter, I will explain, for warm stove fires and pot roast. Or summer, for chicken barbecue. Or autumn for the colors, of course. Just not mud season.

I will write you from France. À bientôt!

*(*Published in *The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript,* April 8, 2025*)*
### Tell Him Not to Feed the Bears
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/tell-him-ot-to-feed-the-bears/
Last updated: 2025-04-05T09:30:05.000Z
Do not feed the bears 4 4 25 539 PM

0:00

/444.33408163265307

1×

We saw on the weather report earlier this week that parts of southern New England might touch eighty degrees. Good for them. In contrast, it was raining ice here, and I do not mean sleet. I mean that while our southern neighbors were digging out summer shorts and tee shirts, we were having an ice storm. We lost power the first day, mid-morning. Got it back late that afternoon. Lost it again early the next day, and I knew it might take a while for it to be restored because, by then, there were many more little blue dots on the outage map that our utility company, Eversource, posts online.

The first thing I do when we lose power is walk down the driveway to see if the culprit is a tree across lines on our property. If not, I continue down the neighbor’s driveway opposite ours, which is rarely used during the winter. Eversource will do the same when they get here, drive around, aiming powerful searchlights into the woods if it is dark and the middle of the night. I figure the least I can do after bringing them out on a weekend (seems it is always a weekend or at night when we lose power) is give them a head start.

The suspect the first day was a tree that had fallen on wires about fifty yards off to the left of the neighbor’s driveway, heading uphill to service lake houses a quarter mile away, as the crow flies. I hiked in to get a closer look and take a picture, which I did from a distance, but water prevented me from reaching the exact spot. I would have had to retreat and approach from a different angle if I wanted to get underneath it, which I did not. It would be up to our Eversource rescuers.

An hour or so later, the rescue truck arrived. In the time it took me to pull on my boots and a coat, the service representative had hoofed it to the edge of our field to look up and down the lines. I wandered over with my picture of the offending tree.

“Yeah, I tried to get down that driveway with the truck and sank in the mud,” the Eversource fellow said, examining the picture. “I’ll have to walk in.”

If his partner in life is anything like my partner in life, he hears “Be careful” each morning going out the door. Well, there was an ice storm going on, and I was fearful just walking around the yard with two dogs on leashes. We were babysitting a couple of golden retrievers that I knew would dash for water if they saw it. We are surrounded by water this time of year, so it was nip and tuck staying on my feet as they tugged me across the icy terrain toward the creeks. As I headed out the door, my wife said, “Don’t break your leg.”

I worried about our Eversource friend getting to that place in the woods with the necessary equipment, including a chainsaw. Three or four hours after sharing the picture with him, power had not come on. I felt it meant the trouble was more extensive or the decision had been made to wait for better conditions. Hopefully, not an accident. On the way to run other errands and to ease my concern, I ventured down the neighbor’s driveway, this time by car, to see if the subject tree was as before.

There was no evidence of any utility trucks, no distant sound of squawk boxes, or idling engines when I reached the spot from earlier in the day. Leaving the car behind, it was quiet as I crunched along, pushing aside branches burdened by ice that went *snap, snap,* as the frozen coating broke apart. The air was warmer. There was a layer of fog hovering over the ground—not mist, but denser fog. It is neither like winter nor spring under those circumstances. The air smells musty. There is no hint of floral or green. I wore a fleece jacket and a baseball cap. My hands were bare, without the need of gloves, even handling the frozen brush. But because of the ice, everything was fragile. When I stepped on a branch, it did not bend; it broke. Crunch. And around me, I heard ice and small limbs crash to the ground.

Getting to where I could look up the line headed toward the lake, you might imagine my surprise seeing a lone repair person strapped in around the top of a pole in the distance methodically restringing wire, his boots hidden below the layer of fog. By pure chance, I had arrived to find him there, hours after my first report. I would have been as surprised (and delighted) to spot a moose given the location and lack of disturbance—no trucks, no red cones, no radios, no partner standing around. I am not sure that it was even the same person with whom I had shared the picture. Who knows? But there he was, busy pulling, twisting, adjusting, exchanging one tool for another from his leather belt in an easy motion. I thought it looked like he was enjoying himself, as if this was why he got into the business of being a line repairperson in the first place—to be up a pole, eye level with forest wildlife, nobody else around, working above the clouds, with time to think about anniversaries in his life, and daydream about cabins on a lake.

It took a while, but he spotted me and waved. I cupped my hands around my mouth to shout.

“You okay over there?” I yelled.

He nodded vigorously a couple of times. Then, “What about you? You okay?” he shouted, which I took to mean, nothing to see here, pal. All good. Doing my thing.

“Thank you,” I called.

Twist, twist, pull. He slid something back into his belt and, with the free hand, gave me the thumbs up.

Maybe I have shared this: by the end of every winter, I am always expecting a nice Eversource representative to show up and apologize that they will no longer be able to support us and others around here, living as we do in places where trucks cannot reach the power lines. We had an incident in November that brought the utility trucks out—on a weekend, at night—and I hustled out to show support.

“I can show you where those lines go,” I said to the young man in a white hard hat, his beam scoping the field.

“I know where they go,” he said. “I’ve been here before. We *all* have.”

I doubt that is true for every place they might go, given the rarer incidences of power outages in the bigger communities around here, some with lines underground. We rarely lost power at the Inn over the years. Now that I think about it, I cannot remember an Eversource repair person coming to the place except to install equipment.

But they have *all been* to the pond. And maybe it is among the things adding adventure, even satisfaction, to the job.

I wonder how it works back at dispatch.

Squawk. *Who’s near Old Town Road? . . . Hello? . . .What’s up? . . . Anyone?*

*Yeah, we can be there.*

*Who’s with you?*

*The new kid.*

*Oh, perfect. Tell him not to feed the bears.*
### Annual Meeting
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/annual-meeting/
Last updated: 2025-03-20T19:03:07.000Z
Annual town meeting season has come and gone, just as warming temperatures and bouts of rain have converted the snow into runoff along the roads and through the woods. Our property is surrounded on three sides by creek. By summer, one of them pretty much shuts down except for when there are thunderstorms and associated downpours. The others keep trickling enough to swamp your shoes if you miss trying to hop over them. Today, however, we could be using those running downhill to careen by kayak to the pond. When we crawl into bed tonight with the window open, we will be comforted by the babbling white noise of the water’s movement, letting us know nature is reopening for business. It is back to work time.

I expect this is why town meetings are in March, because of the likelihood that travel by horse was easier. With favorable temperatures and more daylight, it was time to assess the roads, the school, and meeting houses, getting it all done before planting season. 

The timing of town meeting is not subject to the same worries today. It is mostly immune to the impact of nature, encumbered only by man made things such as gym class, yoga, ski weekends, basketball games, grocery shopping, maybe having to work on Saturday. Whatever those things, in our town, and towns around the region, turnout for annual meeting hovers around ten percent. And it is perplexing, always, that ten percent of the people have discretion to spend one hundred percent of the money.

By the time we left the western suburbs of Boston many years ago, the local town meeting was going on for four nights. An even smaller fraction of the community—albeit, several hundred people, requiring the high school gymnasium to accommodate them—made the decisions for the balance. I had joined others in believing town meeting had outlived its practical function in that part of the world and that it was time to switch to representative government, with a mayor and elected town council. It has not happened, of course. And there would be no facility for a legislative body of seventeen thousand if suddenly everyone in the old neighborhood decided to show-up and vote—which only means suburban Boston will *never* get closer to the democratic ideals of town meeting, only further from them. 

In contrast, I delight in explaining to people from the old neighborhood that the nearest stoplight to our house is seven miles away . . . a flashing light. Maybe twice a year, I have to hit the brakes pulling out of our driveway because—*what the?*—another car is going by. People allow their dogs to walk off leash on our dirt roads. So, here, in towns throughout our region, the ideal of legislating as a community should be as easy as crossing the road. 

No one expects one hundred percent voter participation. Things do come up. Thirty percent, roughly equal to the turnout earlier in the week to cast ballots on the ConVal issues and choose elected officials, including Select Board members, would be reasonably better than ten. There is an adage, you know, that the founding of this country was achieved by one-third of the population: one-third supported separating from Britain, one-third were opposed, and one-third could not bear to be in the room with either of them. Probably, the ratios are the same today: one-third to the right, one-third to the left, and one-third—the “exhausted middle,” as someone called them—stuck between. I favor more of the middle people showing up for the effect they have on the arc of every debate. They flatten it, removing some of the highs and lows. There are coffee and baked goods, they should know. In Hancock, there is a maple syrup report. But I will embrace more participation from any constituency if it shows that, as a team, we came to play. 

For now, it is back to work.
### Daylight Savings for What?
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/daylight-savings-for-what/
Last updated: 2025-03-09T18:51:34.000Z
Daylight Savings for What?

Are you happy that it is daylight savings time now? I am never sure this early in the year. At the moment, there is nothing the additional hour of light is making possible for me outside. The porch furniture is down below under a plastic tarp, the pond is frozen solid, and the snow is piled high along the driveway. I have grown used to an earlier dinner and reading books by the wood stove as dusk settles over the land. The extra daylight is making me nervous, as if I am squandering it being inside. At the other end, it is dark again at six in the morning and I am lingering in bed!

I might feel differently down south. I might feel differently about March overall, which occupies such a dreary spot in the year north of the Massachusetts Turnpike. South of the Pike, March heralds spring blossoms, which I will accept are worthy of extra daylight when they finally arrive. But here, we get to look upon the persistence of winter and transition to mud season. For us, it would make more sense to set the clocks *back* another hour, until April, allocating the extra sunlight to where it would do the most good, at the bus stop, and sparing us the sight of a season growing old and damp. The poetry of our spring has less to do with flowers opening than snakes shedding skin. We molt. The sensible thing to do is hide.

Of course, I am not a skier. For many of them, March represents a premium opportunity to hit the slopes shorn of the extra outwear, which must feel liberating. Therefore, yes, if it is going to be warmer skiing let it also be sunnier. The equation balances in a way that watching our backyard emerge from its winter hibernation covered in soggy debris does not. Wait until the grass greens up, then switch on the lights.

Which is how it was until 2007, as you know. Beginning in 1966, clocks did not spring ahead until the last Sunday of April. In 1987, Congress adjusted it to the first Sunday in April. But in 2007 they did what they have done to us today (in a burst of government efficiency), adding an extra hour of daylight to a time of year that, with few exceptions, results in no tangible benefit.

I was a New York City commuter for years, mainly to either northern Fairfield or Westchester counties. I like the country, which is why I live *here*. I was willing to ride the train for an hour and a half getting to and from my mid-town offices. For much of the winter, it would be dark when I left for work and dark when I got home. One mid-winter Saturday, a friend showed-up at the house while we were having breakfast.

“Nice tree on top of the garage,” he said. We trooped outside. It was a large limb, not a tree, but a portion had pierced the roof in a far corner.

My wife at the time, with her mind on our newborn daughter, had failed to mention it. It being dark at my comings and goings, I had failed to see it. We had a detached garage with a light, but who wants to use the light on a cold morning when it means having to leave the car to turn it off after backing out. Better to fumble in and out.

The limb had been there for the week. I cannot tell you if it was early March, but I can tell you I was worry free for the duration. Ignorance was bliss. Nothing could have been done in the meantime unless by someone else, and those were not the days of affording someone else. My friend and I spent a jovial morning climbing around the roof, removing the limb, and applying a temporary patch to the hole. I think we were all together again that night for dinner. We usually were and had the episode to celebrate.

An extra hour of daylight would have wrecked the whole thing. Including the chance to tell you about it today.

*Published in the* [*Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*](https://www.ledgertranscript.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)*, March 7, 2025*
### 800 Words on Maple Syrup and Wiper Fluid
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/800-words-on-maple-syrup-and-wiper-fluid/
Last updated: 2025-03-01T10:30:29.000Z
800 words on maple syrup and wiper fluid 2 28 25 311 PM

0:00

/292.75421768707486

1×

Where we live, there are two things worth paying attention to that signal a change in the weather this time of year. One is the amount of windshield wiper fluid dispensed while driving. Temperatures are moderating and snow melt on the roads is creating a damp glaze thrown back at you by vehicles in front. Fifty percent of the roads around here are dirt, including the one we live on. The surface of those is getting soft. As temperatures climb, they will turn to mud for a while, which means a steady application of brown paste to the car, kicking up to the windows. 

You can go to the car wash if you like. Yesterday there was a line outside our local one of at least ten cars. I moved on in the truck, but my wife took our Subaru through and crept back home to preserve the appearance of cleanliness for as long as possible. It makes no difference to the car, of course, except maybe as a rust preventative. It is mainly a mental thing. An old friend used to say a clean car drives better, and I agree with him. A clean house feels better to live in. A cake sometimes looks too good to slice. There can be something in the value of appearances.

The second thing worth paying attention to is maple syrup buckets appearing on the side of trees. I passed several this morning driving with Huckleberry to the rail trail for our walk. Warmer days and cold nights mean the sap is beginning to run, the first agricultural product of the year.

Is anything more iconic to New England than a maple syrup bucket hanging off a tree? Lobster? A lobster boat? If I was still an innkeeper I would point to the country inn as the most iconic feature of New England, which I am sure I have before. Maple syrup buckets are up there.

Sadly, most buckets have been replaced by blue plastic tubing snaking through groves of trees. This is much easier on the syrup producers, but it is a spiritual letdown for the rest of us. Tubing will never rise to the iconic bucket level, enticing the senses in the same way as the uncut cake or clean car against a drab March exterior. It belongs in the same category as telephone poles and wires. We may not be conscious of them every moment, but when we are, we do not say, admiringly, what a lovely stretch of telephone poles and wire. 

The person who introduced the idea of using gravity to deliver sap directly to the sugar house through a network of tubes probably got a medal. I am delighted for that person. It was a good idea. I am just saying . . . well, you know what I am saying. And we *cannot* do without maple syrup.

Regarding the other necessity of windshield wiper fluid, our Ford Ranger offers what the manual refers to as a “courtesy wipe” after calling for a squirt. Pushing the button dispenses the washer fluid while the blades sweep twice. There is a pause, followed by a third, “courtesy wipe.” It was a new feature to me when we bought the truck nearly fourteen years ago. I was unused to that sort of bold innovation from Ford. But it succeeds at catching the bothersome thread of fluid that always drains down from the top of the windshield after you have cleaned it. 

You may be thinking, is he really postcarding about washer fluid behavior? But you know the thread I mean that intrudes from just above the one o’clock radius of the wiper arc, the one so pervasive Ford engineers designed a solution. Yes, I am postcarding about it. In fact, if I were standing in front of a writing class I might send them home with an assignment to return with five hundred words on windshield wiper fluid. 

I could manage such an essay recalling a few winter episodes on the upstate New York thruway in my old Chevy Vega, or Ford Gran Torino (bigger on the inside than my dorm room), having *failed* to pay attention to the wiper fluid, looking through the equivalent of a muddy basement window, white-knuckling as close as possible to the tractor-trailer in front to try and capture the spray coming off its wheels. Or pulling onto the shoulder and dosing the windshield with handfuls of snow. Or, on slower roads, even grabbing snow off the roof of the car while driving and applying it as best I could before flipping on the wipers. 

There you have it, two unlikely partners this time of year to tell you the seasons are changing. For good reason, they both come in jugs.
### Lost in the Woods
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/lost-in-the-woods/
Last updated: 2025-02-28T17:33:49.000Z
I am watching the snow rise like steam off the pond. This is a day of wind gusts nearing fifty miles an hour, and the effect is to make the pond seem like a cauldron covered in frothy, white foam that flares off the surface. 

It has been cold since the start of the New Year. Whither went the January thaw? I distinctly remember two mud seasons before we got to the real one last year, and while mud season is a scourge, a periodic thaw corrects for accumulations of snow on the roof and stubborn ice on the footpaths. We have both things, which means our footpaths are well-sanded, as are the rugs in the cabin. Hopefully, the snow on the roof is blowing off in some quantity while the wind howls.

The end of February is when we start anticipating spring, thinking about ordering seeds for the vegetable gardens, yearning for forty-degree days to get into the shed to see what sort of winter the mice have been having. We are barely at the melting point.

Not that I am altogether complaining. I like these arctic scenes. I am drawn to the harsh demand winter makes on us to stay warm, or else. Summer here makes no such demand. It offers the choice to stay warm or simply get comfortable, with a dip in the pond or beside a fan. It is easier to get along with, which is why we like it. It incubates new life. Winter’s offerings are starker. And on some level, it must be why we live here, in winter at least: for the chance to feel more alive.

For example, there is the possibility of getting lost in the woods with a dog for a couple of hours, in freezing temperatures, trudging through twelve inches of snow after diverting recklessly onto a new path without snow shoes. I did this last week. Somewhere along the way, you wonder how much daylight remains. How much available signal and battery is on the mobile device? Being confused about where you are is no fun, even in places that qualify as the local neighborhood. Winter will make it more interesting.

In my case, last week was the result of a short stretch of bad decision-making. I was not truly lost; I had passed familiar landmarks half an hour before. As usual, however, I stubbornly refused to backtrack, even as the time closed in on when I was expected back in Dublin to collect my son-in-law from the [Dublin School Nordic Center](https://www.dublinschool.org/athletics/nordic-center?ref=jarviscoffin.com). I slogged forward, hopeful the end was around the next bend in the woods, which is probably what they tell you not to hope for.

Tired and wet, if I called my wife without knowing where I was, or where I would arrive, it might have created a panic and expended valuable battery life. I opted for ignorant bliss. I texted my son-in-law instead to say I would be late, underestimating by nearly an hour, pinning him down in anticipation. He was the one freezing, not me. When I finally emerged on a road—not where I thought I would be, but knowing where I was—I called for rescue, sending it to Dublin while Huckleberry and I kept hiking (in all, close to six miles). 

When the truck arrived, son-in-law occupying the passenger seat, we climbed into the bed for the trip back to the car at the trailhead, by now, not far away. So that was something. I had not ridden in the back of a pick-up for a while (fifty years?). It was a first for Huck. For him, a very alive moment!

The son-in-law was generous in response later at home, warming by the wood stove, drinking bourbon. They live where it mostly rains and rarely snows. 

“You promised a winter weekend experience,” he said. “You delivered.”

*Published in The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*
### Walking on Ice
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/walking-on-ice/
Last updated: 2025-02-08T22:33:27.000Z
I fell through a thin patch of ice close to shore that must have been healing over after a beaver punched an exit. On balance, the ice on the pond where we live is several inches thick following the frigid temperatures of the last month. But there are a few spots where runoff from the hills is active all year that the beavers seem intent to keep open for foraging. Their tail tracks are obvious in the snow. And it is a curious thing how those tracks will sometimes dead end in the middle of the pond, where there is no possible way one has come up through the ice and there is nothing out there to drag home. It suggests they get that far and change their mind. Although I would expect to see evidence of a retreat going right or left indicating they turned back to shore. Instead, the track just ends. Picked up by helicopter, maybe. Or drone. Commando beavers.

Whatever, clearly, I was not alert to traces of their activity when my left snowshoe fell through. Not deep. Maybe a foot of water, five or ten yards from land. I lost the shoe in the muck, so I had to sit down—carefully, so as not to cave-in more ice—and fish with my ski pole to retrieve it. Afterward, I trudged the short distance home with a cold, wet boot.

It had been a beautiful walk around the pond none-the-less, about a mile-and-a-half if my Apple watch is accurate. While I circumnavigated, my trusty walking companion, Huckleberry, bounded ahead, darting into the woods, popping out at a distance, racing back for a cookie to keep up his strength.

It is a superior feature of winter to be able to step onto a frozen pond or lake, and we have many of them. It is liberating. The rest of the year we must rely on boats or snorkels, reminding us of our limitations. Paddle in summer or walk in winter to the same spot on a pond to embrace the view of hills rising at the far end, and I believe you will acknowledge the experience is different, apart from the cold or snow. Being there without the benefit of man-made contraptions is like having a temporary pond pass that reads, Admit User Backstage.

It means the ability to poke into the nooks and crannies of the pond that are inaccessible the rest of the year because the water is too shallow and bog-like, or thick with bramble, with no good place to park a canoe. Along our stretch of shoreline, it means easy access to high growth blueberry bushes we keep pruning. I tried reaching them one spring wearing blue jeans, a long sleeve shirt and high boots to protect myself from the emerging undergrowth and swampy conditions and wound-up stepping on an underground nest of bees. I’ll start on them in another few weeks from the frozen water’s edge with a Yeti thermos of decaf—or something— by my side.

 In the meantime, the grandchildren are planning to be here for the long weekend. They have been taking skating lessons back home, so we are grooming an ice rink. A few days of warmer weather, maybe even a little rain, then cold, would help. The forecast offers the possibility of meeting those requirements.

We play hockey. Everyone against the dog, who speeds and slides across the surface after the puck. If he gets it, he buries it the woods. So the stakes are high. Last year, Huck recognized the advantage of covering our four-year-old grandson, which smoothed his road to victory after successfully retrieving and decommissioning three pucks. The four-year-old will not be on the ice this year because of previous commitments, though we could benefit, as always, from his enthusiasm. Frankly, he appeared to take as much delight in Huckleberry’s successes as our own, which helped everyone go away happy.
### February
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/february-2/
Last updated: 2025-02-02T11:26:51.000Z
February

0:00

/313.5602947845805

1×

We made it. February. Now the year can really begin. 

Poor January goes on forever, although it would remind us it is one of several months with thirty-one days, including its closest neighbor, December. The difference is that December is filled with holiday anticipation and ends with a party. January is filled with tiresome resolutions, increasing cold, mostly darkness, beginning to end.

Here is a plan. Swap January and February in the calendar. Just the number of days. December finishes with champagne, hugs, and kisses, but rather than looking ahead at thirty-one days of “No Drink January,” it will be only twenty-eight.

(Someone must have thought of this.)

 It leaves us with two, thirty-one-day months back-to-back; however, these days, the time changes in early March, and even as we drag ourselves out of January the days are getting longer, and more or less warmer. We can handle thirty-one days in both February and March. 

Anyway, here we are in February. I have to think about going back to work outdoors. Depending on snowfall, it is time to start harvesting firewood for next year. We have a plan to thin a patch of wood along the driveway to allow more light and give us a peek at our field as we approach. There are no particularly large trees in the designated area—everything around was farmland at one point—but there are a few with enough girth to yield a cord or two of decent logs. 

Have I written you to say we have been heating with wood this year? Over the summer we put up about three and a half cords. It will not get us the full distance to April, which was the stated objective; we will have to supplement the supply in another couple of weeks from outside sources. Or burn propane. But we made it through what we hope will be the coldest months. 

I was sharing our wood-heating credo with someone recently. He said, “Oh God, we did that for a few years. All I did was think about wood.” True enough. I think a lot about wood. I walk every morning with Huckleberry and while he crisscrosses the trail in front of me, I admire the standing dead trees, seasoned and ready for the stove. We are typically miles from home during our walks. None of those trees are coming with us. I merely covet them. 

On our patch of land, I have taken down the standing dead timber that is not already home to various creatures and cut up most of what is burnable lying on the ground. Now, I am compelled to go after new stuff, which means balancing care of the woods with our desire for heat, sun, and sky. We think about that.

Fortunately, this harvest season should be less back-breaking because the work will take place along the driveway. I can pull the truck up to the job site. Scavenging for dead wood, as we have been doing, means fetching it from where it falls, usually in inconvenient places barely reachable by small tractor, and downhill from the splitter. We rolled a lot of heavy logs over the undulating forest floor last year to where we could load them into the little green John Deere trailer. 

Yes, we think a lot about wood. 

I think about thinking about wood and question what I thought of before. I can tell you: getting to the commuter train on time, beating the traffic, having enough for tolls, finding parking, the confrontations that might be ahead of me. I thought about happy and unhappy customers, how much time I had for lunch, and seeing my family at the end of the day. By comparison, thinking about wood does not seem so bad. On the other hand, people who cleared this land two hundred years ago—all day, by hand, using axes and oxen—might disagree. Rolling out of bed to catch a train might seem like a very good way to earn a living. 

 And then what’d you do, besides talk? 

Retirement often presents us with opportunities for redemption. I am happy to be thinking about wood.

*Anyway*, it is snowing outside and there is a high wind advisory for the next several hours ahead of a front that is bringing sub-zero temperatures for another day, or so. The surface of the pond is smooth and white under a dust storm of snow. It was the same earlier in the week when I decided to wade into it with Huckles for our walk. He charged ahead as he always does, thrilled by nothing but running room until he disappeared into a swirling white cloud whistling around the top of our cove. He was back in an instant, ice crystals around his nose and eyes. I was so amused. *Holy mackerel!* describes the look on his face.

I laughed. “C’mon, ya sissy. Feel lucky I don’t hitch you to a couple of stumps that will need dragging from the woods.”
### Our Town
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/our-town/
Last updated: 2025-01-24T19:53:54.000Z
The Barrymore Theatre in New York City seats about one thousand people. On the night we were there, recently, it was full, everyone having paid a lot of good money to see [Our Town](https://www.ourtownbroadway.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com), [Thornton Wilder’s](https://www.thorntonwilder.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com) classic American play about—well—us. Not *us* exactly, of course, but *all* of us as seen through the window of a small town in southern New Hampshire. Our town.

 The play did not disappoint. It never does, whether on Broadway or a high school stage. It was a pleasure watching professional actors dig into the roles, but they did not reveal any more about the play or its messages, which can rise to the surface just as well with the high schoolers. Maybe more so given that we are called to appreciate the moments as they fly by, and those high school moments do fly by. Thornton Wilder asks us to consider that as we sneak peeks at our mobile devices while the real action takes place in front of us, at the table, or across the room.

 On this occasion at the Barrymore, however, I was on a slightly different message wavelength. We were upstairs in the mezzanine where ticket prices were more affordable, so I had a good view of the entire house. I kept thinking, here I am managing to escape the winter woods for a couple of days, order a couple of macchiatos, contemplate a drink at a bar serving until 11:00 p.m., visit some friends and family, and all these people are paying what it costs to buy food for a week—not less, I promise—to hear what Mr. Wilder can share with them about life drawing on his experiences in our small corner of the world. 

 I am sure there were many people in the audience from small towns like ours. But they were indistinguishable from the rest, so, for me, it was one thousand New York City theatre-goers with the equivalent of their faces pressed against the glass, making personal connections thanks to depictions of a community that runs on a first-name basis. In this way, any small town can teach the world by slowing life down to an observable speed. I went to New York for a short ride in the fast lane, like taking a few laps in a sports car. Instead, my own world stared back at me. 

 Which had my mind drifting to the famous picture, called [Earthrise](https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/apollo-8-earthrise/?ref=jarviscoffin.com), taken by astronaut, William Anders, from Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve, 1968\. Wikipedia has a transcript of the banter that day between Anders and fellow astronauts, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell:

*Anders: Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! There's the Earth coming up. Wow, that's pretty.* 
*Borman: Hey, don't take that, it's not scheduled. (joking)*[*\[1\]*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise?ref=jarviscoffin.com#cite%5Fnote-AmerExp-1)  
*Anders: (laughs) You got a color film, Jim?* 
 *Hand me that roll of color quick, would you...* 
*Lovell: Oh man, that's great!*

Photojournalist, [Galen Rowell](https://aboutphotography.blog/photographer/galen-rowell?ref=jarviscoffin.com), would call it the “most influential environmental photograph ever taken.” Fifty-years later, William Anders would say, “We set out to explore the moon, and instead discovered the earth.”

 We went to New York to see a play and instead discovered our town.

*Published in* [*The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*](https://www.ledgertranscript.com/Jarvis-Coffin-Off-the-HIghway-59062261?ref=jarviscoffin.com)
### Wood Heat
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/wood-heat/
Last updated: 2025-02-01T12:19:19.000Z
We have been making a serious effort to heat with wood this year. It is a small cabin and if we didn’t cut anything down we could probably stay ahead of our requirements relying exclusively on what falls in passing storms—two trees so far this winter, already. The wood is not the best. Often, disease contributes to the collapse. But it burns and heats. And the price is right.

 Heating with wood is a complex business. Conducting additional research on our stoves at the start of the season, one manufacturer described the process as more art than science. We identify with that now. For starters, there are the different kinds of wood to consider. We have mostly oak, beech, maple, some birch, and plenty of pine. The usual for these parts. A great deal of what falls is pine. We are burning a batch of it for the first time this year after two years of seasoning. Another medium-sized pine uprooted in the high winds that went through a week ago. We will cut it up, stack it to the side, and have it for kindling when it is dry. 

 Beech is not especially competitive in our woods. It dominates the understory until crowded out by oak and pine. Birch litters the ground, mostly gone by, and not worth splitting. But the bark makes an aesthetically pleasing, waterproof covering for the stacked wood. Oak is the champion, followed by maple. They topple less frequently, so we cut more of them, which makes room for promising young adults. 

 We have two wood stoves. One is a Fisher, a plain, cast iron box. No windows. No jewelry. If it was not already posted to our basement it would be working for the railroad, powering a steam engine. It is an overachiever, delighting in work, with a bias for results. Upstairs is the Vermont Castings unit, our princess. Two doors, a lovely window, plenty of shiny brass hardware, a removable ash tray, and—importantly—a catalytic converter, which is little like endowing a wood stove with a uterus. It burns the smoke and breaks down other byproducts of the fire before exhausting the result up the chimney. And it is fussy. It requires warming to a high temperature and wood at the proper humidity. With that, it is still hit or miss; probably, because we are not so artful at present. The fire will occasionally burn too slowly and the window display a sooty dissatisfaction, forcing us to disengage the converter by opening the damper until the moment seems right again sometime later on.

 The real complexity associated with our transition to wood is agreeing on how to configure the house during the day. We have lost our heating zones created by the basement pipes that extend in all directions. There are only a few such zones but we have more appreciation for their significance today. I argue for leaving the bedroom doors, and such, open, allowing stove heat to reach every extremity. Unquestionably, this results in an uneven level of comfort, with places near the fires warmer by several degrees—more explicitly, places farther from the fires, colder. But, I argue, colder or not, it reduces our dependence on nonrenewable resources and saves money. 

 My wife is more dependent on heat and contends that closing doors to the other rooms improves the comfort level in the primary living space, which is what matters. Opening the doors siphons heat from where it matters without doing much for the cold corners of the building where it matters *less*.

 Yes, but cold or not, the corners are still warm enough to prevent the furnace from kicking on.

 Shut the doors and the furnace will have only a small job heating a few small rooms. And we can be warm where we are.

 Maybe we move to the basement with the Fisher stove where it is more than comfortable and rely on the rising hot air, plus radiant heat in the floor, to keep upstairs modestly comfortable until, like, we need to be upstairs for other reasons.

 I’m not moving to the basement.

 What about the loft? The loft is really warm. Let’s sit in the loft. It’s the perfect winter room.

 You go sit in the loft. I’m turning up the heat in the kitchen.

*Published in* [*The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*](https://www.ledgertranscript.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)*, January 21, 2025*
### Home Again
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/home-again/
Last updated: 2025-01-04T10:30:57.000Z
Home 1 3 25 421 PM

0:00

/347.7390702947846

1×

If you have four long, skinny legs and are only two years old, running as fast as you can is the most fun thing to do. We are just back from a week-long visit to Louisville, Kentucky, to visit our son and offer a stream of advice setting up his new apartment, during which time Huckleberry was restricted to leash walks around the city and its river parks. No running. 

 For people, downtown [Louisville](https://www.gotolouisville.com/neighborhoods/downtown/?ref=jarviscoffin.com) is a dog-walking paradise of greenscapes and pathways. For a dog, it is a melting pot of smells, discarded food crumbs, and passing pedestrians that enrich life as much as a trip to the museum. It is also thick with unsuspecting squirrels, accustomed to restrained dogs, at which to lunge with giddy delight and watch scramble. “City squirrels,” Huck’s eyes sparkled, looking back from the taut end of his rope. “Love ‘em.”

 Despite these sidebars of experience, on his first outing after returning home, Huckleberry shot from the truck down the trail like any animal from a cage—zero to free in less than a second, bounding into the snowy woods, running zigzags, jumping, twisting, kicking like a horse. Not a squirrel in sight because they saw us coming. (Country squirrels.) He offered a piece of performance art called “Back Home,” a redeeming work to compensate for earlier toy-shredding, slipper-chewing, pillow-destroying performances.

 We are happy to be home, also a bit forlorn as one is after visiting children, or as we were after visiting parents back in the day. A tad homesick. One child in Louisville, another now in Paris, another in Philadelphia. Dispersed points of light glowing in the distance. But we are glad to be home. We said so a few times last night. Glad to be home. And this morning, Huck’s energetic performance asked, how glad? *This* *glad,* his feet on the passenger door armrest, nose pushing into the cracked window opening? *This glad,* by then, squeezing between me and the steering wheel of the truck in anticipation of a fast exit? What about *THIS GLAD*, out the door, at full speed down the trail without so much as a ready, set, go?

 It is good to get out of the woods now and then. Even Huck would agree. We ate delicious Cuban food one night in a raucous [Cuban restaurant](https://www.labodeguitademima.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com) where musicians bang drums at tableside if it is your birthday. We sampled a smorgasbord of cured meats at a restaurant fittingly called Cured. We had fried chicken. It being Louisville, we drank [bourbon](https://bourbonism.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com), some of it distilled and bottled across the street from where we stayed. I enjoy bourbon. It occurs to me that I do not know where else one can go, except wine country, to experience a wall of one type of beverage—a wall of bourbons, end to end, floor to ceiling, sometimes wrapping to a second wall. I can only compare it to waiting for my wife while she hunts for the right pair of black flats in a shoe superstore. It is immersive. A deep dive. We emerged with a couple of specialty brands to keep us warm through the winter.

 On the way home, we spent New Year’s Eve in Buffalo, New York. I used to live in Buffalo. The city has recovered from its rustbelt days and, despite a steady rain, was humming for the holiday. We were not quite as humming, in bed by nine after nine hours on the road and an early, celebratory [dinner](https://buffalochophouse.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com). But we were up at midnight for the fireworks that erupted in the square next door and boomed for fifteen minutes or so. It was very special to experience a live fireworks display from bed.

 I forget how many radio stations there are in the world. At home, depending on the weather, I can hit the scan button on our receiver, and it will do laps up and down the dial looking for a signal. Headed to Louisville, I thought it would be nice to steep myself in a little [Buffalo Bills](https://www.buffalobills.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com) talk radio. No idea how many miles we drove before chasing one down—it felt like nearly Erie, Pennsylvania—but at some point, after pausing ten seconds at 90.3, then 90.4, followed by 90.5, I suggested to my co-pilot that we needed to hurry the process up or we would be listening to Cleveland Brown’s talk radio. 

 At present, in my space over the garage, writing you this postcard, the only sound the airwaves are making is the rustle of branches. And Huckleberry, after his run, is asleep on the couch, his head on a pillow, soaking up late afternoon sunshine coming through the window. Light snow is blowing. My timing is such that I think a bourbon will be in order when this is finished and recorded. I will associate that bourbon with the comforts of our wood stove and the snow and early sunset. The dog, as well, who will be curled up on the floor somewhere after we step across to the cabin. It equals home in the winter. 

 People in Louisville will need to come here to discover what that is about.
### November
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/november/
Last updated: 2024-11-30T10:30:34.000Z
November 11 29 24 349 PM

0:00

/318.0175283446712

1×

November scored first this season with one power outage, one tree down across the driveway, and five inches of snow. 

The outage happened while we were away for the night, which made it impossible to know how long it lasted. When we got inside, the cabin was cold, in the low fifties, so it had been a while with outside temperatures in the forties. 

Without fail, it takes me a few beats to realize the power is off when I encounter it after an absence. We arrived in the dark and expected mostly darkness; it was seriously dark—even at six o’clock, a moonless, cloudy night. But there were a couple of clues that should have tipped me off. One was the red trouble light on the generator, obvious as we turned into the driveway. I said to my wife, ‘Rats, the generator is down,’ without being instantly aware it meant down trying to restore power. The front porch light was the other clue. I said, ‘Rats, I thought I left the porch light on,’ failing to connect *no* light with *red* light, meaning no power. I treated each clue as a separate incident. I gathered bags from the back of the car while my wife fumbled in the dark for the garage light switch. ‘We’re out of power,’ she said, finally connecting all the dots. 

The tree fell while we were walking Huckleberry. We strolled out the driveway free and clear; when we returned half an hour later our passage was blocked. It was windy at the time, gusting to forty miles an hour, which always puts me on edge. So many trees lead a hardscrabble life. I am often overwhelmed by the overcrowding and disease that can afflict them, and every windstorm takes out a few. The fallen tree was rotten in the center from top to bottom. A careful study of its canopy may have revealed the distress, but I walk so as not to trip and fall, with my eyes down or forward. This tree had had enough, and over it went. We did the only decent thing: cut it up, split and stacked it, making us competitors with the woodland creatures that would have harvested the tree for food or shelter. But I imagine the tree feeling better about being converted to firewood, rather than peat. I mean, those are the instructions I have left for when I topple over.

As I have probably described, people around here are anticipating winter by at least August. The clearest sign is the piles of firewood delivered to driveways. If you purchase wood much later, it will likely be green. New people to the area learn that quickly. Apart from smoldering fires, they bear the indignity of late-arriving wood piles obvious from the road. (Unavoidable, of course, if that is how the real estate dominoes fell.) It reminds me that, as a boy, I went one summer to a camp in upstate New York with a form of initiation along the lines of those late-arriving wood piles. Within the first week, new boys would be referred to the infirmary to be treated for “earlobes.” The record is silent on what villain stumbled across the fact that fifth and sixth graders are universally ignorant of earlobe anatomy, but the little lambs, such as me, would be led to the infirmary where complicit nurses would decorate their lobes with curlicues of iodine. If you have not been dosed with iodine, recently, I remind you: it does not come off easily with soap and water, only with time or rubbing alcohol. 

Anyway, despite the anticipation, the first snowfall results in plenty of scurrying around, compounded when it arrives on Thanksgiving, a holiday with a long ‘to do’ list already. Now, one must add to the list installing tarps around the open shed where the power equipment is stored, buying new snow shovels, fetching traction sand, covering a few pieces of outdoor furniture that, minus snow, have been warm and cheerful places to sit in the afternoon sun, and getting plow stakes in the ground. 

It was a race getting prepped for snow *and* Thanksgiving. But this morning you should see it—white woods, a stripe of snow down the north side of every tree, across each branch, especially the pines, which are robed in the stuff, their arms hanging down under the weight like woodland clerics. 

And I saw a moose, a cow, while walking up the road behind the cabin. She was on the ridge twenty yards to the left, aware of me before I was of her, watching me carefully with the slow turn of her head. I wish I had something I could have presented her as a prize for being my first moose sighting in ten years on the pond. A ribbon. I had a pocket full of dog biscuits. I could have offered a few of those.

Rats, why didn’t I think of that?
### Election Day
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/election-day/
Last updated: 2024-11-22T17:28:19.000Z
Why would anyone in the world want to be an American, faced with the task every four years of choosing a president, these days the most powerful person in the world?

 People on the outside have no idea. They cannot fathom the stress. The emails, the polling, the debates, the texts and robot calls, the signs and bumper stickers, the arguments, the pundits and editorials. The neighbors. It goes on for two years. Finally, as the process compresses into the final weeks and days, we confront decision-making time, aware that there will be only one winner. One side will be disappointed, even angry. We know the feeling, having settled scores between people over the course of our lives in business and life. Separating the children, awarding contracts, agreeing with one person, but not the other. Having held the short end of the stick ourselves along the way.

 But it is election day. We wanted this job and we got it. Coping with the stress and misgiving comes with the territory. “The price of greatness,” Winston Churchill said, “is responsibility.” He was talking to us. 

 Of course, Sigmund Freud said, “most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.” Those people don’t live here, or they don’t vote. 

 This has been a tiresome eight years of contention. We have not been well served by the political parties, national media and pundits, which profit from having us slightly afraid of each other. National politics is a brutish business that relies on rhetorical high voltage to keep us fenced behind our positions. That goes for everyone in the value chain. If I had my druthers, CNN, MSNBC and FOX News would be clearly labeled as entertainment, with appropriate warnings up front similar to, “Professional driver on a closed course.”In other words, don’t drive like this at home. In other words, some program content intended to make your motor go. These properties are not in the business for the reasons they should be, which is objectively reporting the news—sadly, a shapeless, unsatisfying existence for many national news organizations that is hard to translate into reliable audience ratings. They have determined there is more to be gained by being *in* the fray rather than above it—for them, that is; not us. For one thing, they can skip a lot of news gathering in favor of one person at a studio desk, smiling for the camera, opining on events, posting on social media. Making motors go. 

More affordable. More entertaining. Not news.

 The national newspapers are similarly dividing, as revealed each day by their front page stories. Communities (nations) benefited in the days of two newspaper towns when the competitive requirement was coverage: which paper got the story, first. The race for best coverage is over, and the benefit to us, lost. Too expensive. Today, the internet gets the story first, providing reports of, maybe, a couple of hundred words followed by an avalanche of spurious commentary. Meanwhile, the national newspapers assemble themselves to appeal to their base, burying the lead if it is antagonistic below the fold, or on page three or four. 

 All of this changes if we, the electorate, decide to invest more in knowing what “they” know. If we read two newspapers, not one, alternate our broadcast viewing (if we think there is anything to be gained from soundbites), and stay the hell away from the internet, knowing that it is optimized by algorithms to feed us based on our behavior—which is the thing that amazes me; that anyone would have their hand out as the giver explains, “You know this stuff is addictive, right?” 

 Ironically, exposing ourselves to a variety of sources, for and against, helps us relax. Armageddon, you may find out, is not in anyone’s plans. Not that Armageddon will not come someday. But it will be because of what we ignored, not what we knew. It is another irony that I find the people most comforting to talk to about presidential politics are the people in the business who are closet to the truth, and also the ones fiddling with it. They know both sides, which is the only way for them to be effective in their jobs.

 Surely, that must apply to all of us. 

(Published in *The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript,* November 5, 2024)
### Thump, Thump, Thump
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/thump-thump-thump/
Last updated: 2024-11-02T18:18:49.000Z
Thump Thump Thump

0:00

/346.2529931972789

1×

All the leaves are down and the sky is gray. Not exactly how the song goes, but you get the idea. Our neighbor across the pond has headed home to New Mexico, which leaves just three of us at the water’s edge to fend together through winter. [*The 2025 Old Farmer’s Almanac*](https://www.almanac.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com) is forecasting kinder, gentler weather: cold, but not as cold; snowy, but not as snowy. So far, they are on track. Earlier in the week we woke up to a light layer of snow on the ground. A few days later, temperatures were in the mid-seventies. We have settled into the mid-fifties since. I am afraid to start planting spring bulbs for fear they will think about growing.

 But we have gone through one pile of wood stacked in the basement heating the cabin by stove, which is our intention for the season. It is not simply the cost of propane; it is the uncertainty of delivery that rattles the nerves. The trucks eventually make it through the storms, slowly backing down the driveway—even narrower than normal because of snowbanks—but, if the generator has been running for a day or two because the power is out, tanks can be perilously low. More comforting to keep them near full strength, much as we can.

 We have two wood stoves. Upstairs a Vermont Castings model, that is quietly ornate, with a couple of bells and whistles, including a catalytic converter. The converter burns the fuel more efficiently, trapping excess heat from going up the chimney, leaving less ash. It has fine brass hardware and a window in front through which to view the fire. Downstairs is a Fisher, a burly, cast iron box that is all business: no viewing window or brass hardware. All iron muscle. While the temperatures are moderate, down in the low forties at night and fifties during the day, the Fisher heats the place on its own. The hot air rising via the stairwell holds the temperature upstairs at sixty-seven or sixty-eight and over seventy downstairs. We take stock of the fact the manufacturer extolls the two cooking levels on top of the stove, molded as if they had tugged on the top and bottom ends of the letter Z to extend it. This is no suburban woodstove, comfortable around children or pets. It likes life in the woods and the idea of steam rising from a pot.

 The moderate temperatures have me procrastinating about putting the vegetable gardens to bed. In my earliest years as a gardener, I embraced the practice of turning plant remains back into the soil: the stalks of tomatoes and beans, carrot tops, and the spent leafy parts of potatoes. I cut it all up and till it by hand into the ground, which is why I procrastinate. It is not without its exertions. This year we have our new asparagus patch. The foliage has to be cut back to the root, and then, because this is New Hampshire and the *Old Almanac’s* prediction of moderate temperatures simply means relatively less biting cold than usual, I will cover the patch with straw. The young asparagus has thrived this year, as experts said it would in a raised bed. We are hopeful that some will be harvestable next spring. There are stalks that will be in their third year.

 By now, the sun is not getting much above the white pines after it makes its way around the sky to our side of the pond. The cabin faces due east. On clear mornings, once it crests the hill, the light is straight on and blinding through the windows while we have our coffee. By ten or eleven, it has moved to the southern end of the pond, high enough to peek over the smaller trees and dry out the cushions on the porch if it rained overnight. It spends the early afternoon running its fingers through upper branches behind us until it reaches the openness of our field. Usually, at that time, I am here, in the studio above the garage, doing what I am doing now. The sun pours through the sliding glass doors, spills over the floor, and each day it does resolves every question about having a dog.

It is not in me to get down on the floor with him right now. It would not bring me closer to the contentment he is radiating from his spot on the rug, stretched out in the sun, and warm to the bone. Too close and I might erase it. I might disturb his dreams, which have triggered a twitch in his paws, and a few thumps of the tail. The thumping tail is the best. He must be happy. What a pleasure to know, unscripted. It has to be a memory of some sort—of a walk in the woods, a swim. Breakfast? Am I in his dream? Is it me he thumps his tail for? When he wakes up, I will give him a cookie as a reward for being happy. A total surprise. Gee, thanks, he will think. And, maybe, gosh, what time is it? 

It is getting time to turn the lights on. The sun is sinking below the hills behind us and, now, Huckleberry is stirring. Tomorrow we fall back to standard time so it will be nearly dark by this same moment and colder. Below freezing tomorrow night, in the twenties. 

But we have our Fisher stove, and the next stack of wood, and the Huckle-Buckle. 

And all of you.

Thump, thump, thump.
### The Pumpkin Period
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/the-pumpkin-period/
Last updated: 2024-10-23T17:56:44.000Z
There have been five mass extinction events in the history of the world: The Ordovician-Silurian Extinction, 440 million years ago, Devonian Extinction, 365 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic Extinction, 250 million years ago, the Triassic-Jurassic Extinction, 210 million years ago and the Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction, 65 million Years Ago. I am occasionally driven to think about those events plodding my way through evolutionary periods of another sort. Currently, you may have noticed, we are mired in the [Pumpkin Period](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=pumpkin+flavored+products&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&ref=jarviscoffin.com), characterized by the flavor of pumpkin in almost everything, a consequence—it must be—of sediment from a giant pumpkin asteroid hitting the earth sometime in the last several years when no one was paying attention. 

There are pumpkin Cheerios, pumpkin Oreos, pumpkin protein shakes, pumpkin beer, pumpkin lattes, muffins (of course), jellybeans, popcorn, butter, dog treats (as if Huckleberry would notice), recipes for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. You get the idea. The only thing that may be safe are eggs. As for other proteins, someone has already conjured a pumpkin barbeque sauce to slather over meat, fish and poultry. 

For younger people who may not be aware, the current Pumpkin Period is the fifth such evolutionary tract of time over the last generation. I can recap the others, beginning with the [Chardonnay Period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chardonnay?ref=jarviscoffin.com#:~:text=In%20the%20late%201980s%2C%20a,that%20fashions%20were%20changing%20again.) that lasted roughly through the 1980s. This was a time of America’s early ascendency in wine, led by its rich, buttery, cocktail party chardonnays that became omnipresent and inescapable. 

The Chardonay Period was followed by the [Blackened](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/174668/blackened-seasoning-mix/?ref=jarviscoffin.com) Redfish Period, which sent waves around the globe, blackening other fish, meats, chicken, vegetables, tacos. It may still be possible to purchase blackened whiskey. Blackened-everything permeated the menu strata to the lowest levels.

On its heels was the [Pesto Period](https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/top-10-ways-use-pesto?ref=jarviscoffin.com), an age of (mostly) green, garlicky sauces, pastas, crackers, and dips that exploded onto grocery aisles and into pantries. For a while, we were awash in pine nuts and basil.

And then, in a flashback to episodes of the Ordovician and Triassic periods, the world was covered by [molten chocolate cake](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=lava+cake&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&ref=jarviscoffin.com). Lava-like desserts erupted everywhere, leading to a long period of tremulous activity that has finally retreated to the core. Meaning, we do not see it anymore, or pesto at every party, or blackened sirloin on every grill, or cloying chardonnays that beg for a cleansing sip of any neutral grain spirit.

But, alas, it is clear as I drive around Monadnock that we are in the thick of Pumpkin Period. I like pumpkin. I revere it in pie, and its seeds, toasted and sprinkled over salad. I like it carved into jack-o-lanterns, or as an occasional crock for soup, provided it is autumn, cold outside, and dark early. While I suppose I could also like pumpkin popcorn, pumpkin beer, and pumpkin muffins, nature has let us know numerous times, there are limits. It can cope with only so much. Too much pumpkin and we could lose our taste for it entirely, which is what took down the molten cakes and pesto’s that were once so populous on earth.

So, I avoid it. Almost impossible, but I try. There was nothing I could do about a pumpkin cheesecake that was put in front of me recently except dive under the table, or pretend my mother was calling. I felt I should do neither. I came home with a 12-pack variety of Long Trail beer and three of them were pumpkin. I drank the last harvest IPA over the weekend. Only the bottles of pumpkin ale remain.

I rely on science but it is not particularly helpful predicting the end of these episodes. I estimate we are at least five to seven years into the Pumpkin Period with maybe three to four to go. 

I put the question of what might be next to my AI pal, ChatBrutus, who spun something related to sustainability and local food. For itself, ChatBrutus fancies a curry. That tells me something. It tells me to anticipate good curry showing up in the prepared food sections and drive-throughs in the years to come.

*Published in the* [*Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*](https://www.ledgertranscript.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)*, October 22, 2024*
### Michaelmas
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/michaelmas/
Last updated: 2024-10-05T09:30:18.000Z
Michaelmas 10 4 24 407 PM

0:00

/304.64283446712017

1×

 We celebrated [Michaelmas](https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Michaelmas/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)—the feast of the Archangel St. Michael, as well as his compatriot Gabriel (I think also the other Archangels)—by pulling up our carrots. While we were at it, we pulled the rest of our potatoes. We have a good basket of each now, mellowing in a cool, dark corner of the basement.

Pulling carrots on September 29th (Michaelmas) is a [Scottish](https://www.nts.org.uk/stories/st-michaels-day-and-michaelmas-traditions?ref=jarviscoffin.com) tradition. So is stealing your neighbor’s horse, with the proviso it is returned by the following night. You should also eat a goose fattened on the spent remains of your field. 

The last goose I cooked was for a Thanksgiving in Boston after travel plans were dashed by a snowstorm. We trudged through the weather to a local market, thankfully open, where goose was the only remaining poultry. That was thirty-five years ago. I may advocate for a goose at Thanksgiving or Christmas this year in addition to whatever else. Why turn our back on goose? It is delicious, even as it is somewhat labor intensive dealing with the amount of fat the bird releases in the pan. Applied to roast potatoes, however, the fat transforms ordinary to extraordinary. Ditto duck. In his cookbook, *I’m Just Here For the Food*, [Alton Brown](https://altonbrown.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com), describes being “chronically depressed” over how little duck we eat compared to chicken. We could do as well to think about goose.

It is late harvest season. Within the last week, the color of the trees has started to pop. Last evening, we sat down by the pond, which was smooth as glass, and marveled at the vivid yellow, orange, and red reflections on the water. There are plenty of people around here who love winter most of all, for its beauty, along with the skiing and snowmobiling; but autumn is unquestionably the thing we do better than anyone.

Apples are still on the trees. I am thinking we should pick them before someone else does. A bear has wandered across the property twice in the last few weeks and bears are supposed to be partial to apples. They can also make short work of the thin wire fencing around the trees that we use to discourage deer, porcupines, and other apple pickers. 

I have written to you about bears in these postcards before. Honestly, if you are not forced to be eye to eye with them, they can be cuddly looking. And their minds always seem elsewhere, a result of their strength and size, perhaps: unperturbed, they just show up in the yard or on the driveway. They might be surprised—oh look, a house. Where did that come from? Winnie the Pooh was like this, head in the clouds. Maybe [A.A. Milne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.%5FA.%5FMilne?ref=jarviscoffin.com) had the same sense of them. Thinking about it bears never give an indication of being busy or in a hurry. Everyone else that crosses the yard is possessed of a purpose. They are working. Hurrying. Even deer, which are constantly on the lookout. I imagine bears occasionally bumping into trees, daydreaming through the woods.

September was a nearly perfect month of weather here. After a humid, wet summer, we were treated to clear blue skies, sunshine, and temperatures in the low eighties. You could say it was like being in southern California, except for our denser green landscape and smaller reptiles.

Nothing recommends September more than the absence of mosquitos and various biting flies. This year was an especially bad year for deer flies, or greenheads, as people call them. They were murder against Huckleberry during our morning walks in August. Remarkable how fast they found him and closed in around his eyes. Earlier in the season, faint clouds of black flies would be obvious outside the door, waiting while we put shoes on. The deer flies did not congregate, similarly. So who knows where they emerged from? Overhead, protected by cloud cover, until dropping to engage like [P-51 Mustangs](https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/north-american-p-51d-30-na-mustang/nasm%5FA19600300000?ref=jarviscoffin.com). We learned there were fewer of them if we avoided the woods and kept to the roads, which was good for Huckleberry’s leash-walking skills. With autumn, we are back to racing through the understory, chasing squirrels up trees. Very soon, Huckles will start wearing his orange vest for hunting season, his forest superhero costume. 

He is looking at me right now holding a bone in his mouth, one of those peanut butter-stuffed jobbies. The message is that the peanut butter is gone and he wants to take it outside to bury it. Unfortunately, this is why he has nothing to chew on or play with inside. The bones have disappeared under the rhododendrons or down by the water, and the stuffed animals have been disemboweled and their plastic squeakers sent out with the trash as so much medical waste. 

The answer is no. Bone stays here. Too bad, so sad. The goose is cooked.
### Fall
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/falling-acorns/
Last updated: 2024-09-25T17:51:52.000Z
Within a second of its release from a branch, an acorn falls to earth at the rate of approximately thirty-two feet per second, or about fifty-seven miles per hour. How do I know this? I looked it up on the internet. There was the answer—which has me thinking that we must be nearing the fulfillment of Google’s ambition to catalog all of the world’s information. How much more in the way of interesting but semi-profitable information can people want to know beyond the velocity of an acorn falling to the ground? 

 The oak trees are spawning, letting go of thousands of little brown nut packages with cute caps like so many preschoolers in uniform. The noise they make cascading through the trees tells you nothing about their size. No one would blame you for thinking a large animal is moving through the understory the way acorns slap the leaves and bounce off the woods around them as they hurtle to the ground. Our oak trees stand among maples, various pine, beech, and birch, all of which rely on seed pods that find their way gently to the ground without leaving a mark. They must find the acorn-bearing process burdensome. What a racket, and, oh, ouch. 

 For the chipmunks, squirrels, and blue jays, acorn season is a shopping bonanza. Black Friday. Also for the hawks, foxes, bobcats, and others that prey on shoppers. Within the perimeter of our dog Huckleberry’s GPS collar there are no chipmunks or squirrels; leastwise, any with time to stop and forage on the ground. But this might be interesting. Our porch is approximately thirty feet wide, a little less than the distance a falling acorn would travel in one second. My wife would need to volunteer, but I believe if she had a chipmunk coddled in her hand at one end of the porch, and I released Huckleberry from the other end, we could document him traveling as fast as an acorn. In which case—exactly how these nomenclatures get established—future online inquiries might refer to acorn velocity as approximately one Huckleberry per thirty-two feet.

 Anyway, inside the Huckleberry perimeter, there are few foraging animals unless they can fly (up). Immediately outside the perimeter, congestion is exaggerated as everyone arrives in response to the acorns. In your mind, compare it to what happens around the average farm stand with a wagon full of corn on the cob. We have been scrambling to understand the different animal noises; a few, it turns out, are from the chipmunks, which have vocalizations to denote danger overhead, property rights, and “for a good time call.” We have had one hawk more-or-less in residence all season. Now we think there are two; a problem, normally, but not during a chipmunk jamboree. The owls, also, seem to be doing well judging from the forest noises after dark and celebratory hoots that follow. Coyotes behave similarly, from what I understand. Their ancient, eerie howls are usually in response to a successful hunt or happy return of their members to the fold. We have had a lot of coyote howling the last few weeks. 

 All in all, harvest season, I guess. 

 By the way, raise your hand if someone on a Zoom call has ever reported that a bat is flying around the room behind you. Not likely, unless you have left the porch door open that is adjacent to a bat house and failed to notice the sunset. It is easier to rescue a bat from a confined space than a bird, perhaps because bats can “see” an open door or window better than a bird, which insists on overcoming the problem by flying up. 

 The normally mobile Huckleberry watched the whole thing without moving a muscle, intrigued, possibly, by the idea of little chipmunks with wings. If it flies up, however, it is not worth getting off the couch.
### Quiet Time
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/quiet-time/
Last updated: 2024-09-20T17:25:59.000Z
I finally went to the trouble of getting a canoe onto on body of water known as Carpenter’s Marsh. Getting there requires four-wheel drive and something to port the canoe, a trailer for instance, or a rack, or, since this is [New Hampshire](https://www.visitnh.gov/?ref=jarviscoffin.com), a pick-up with a bed that can accommodate a ten-foot canoe, six feet of which is going to hang off the back. My brother is an avid outdoors person, and he has the whole package—four-wheel drive vehicle, trailer, and a beautiful, refurbished canvas canoe. But it was my idea. I had to call him to propose it and set the time, and give directions. This is what I mean by saying I finally went to the trouble. Plus, I helped unload the canoe and get it in and out of the water. 

 Anyway, it was a beautiful morning, and even though we were probably as long picking our way down the access road as on the water, we felt put down in a place without access roads, remote, unspoiled, characterized by a scarcity of people. 

 A Bald Eagle soaring overhead kept us company for half the journey. We idled for a while to cast a fly line in the water once or twice (because you never know). I asked my brother what fly he was using. “A white one,” he answered, which described the seriousness of the adventure. We were not there as hunters or prospectors. We were drifters, passing through, with no claim on the place. 

 When the bottom of the marsh came up to meet the bottom of the canoe we sat still again, keeping track of the eagle until it banked toward bigger waters and bolted from view. That is when my brother said we would need to return to the spot in spring when the birds were back.

 Birds? Back? Well, yes, I suddenly realized, since he chose to mention it, that no sound except the breeze competed for our attention when we stopped talking. There was the eagle, we flushed a few mallards; but the only animal movement as we slowly paddled back was a turtle, which kept an eye on us until we were a canoe length away, and – blip –disappeared below the surface without a ripple or noise to tell where it had been.

 Moments ago, a couple of Mourning Doves were pecking a few feet from me on the gravel driveway. In the background, two loons are calling back and forth. A few chickadees or nuthatches, not sure which, are chattering. Otherwise, the air over the field in front of me belongs to the dragonflies, a few hardworking bumblebees enjoying a late-season burst of red clover, moths, butterflies, and flying grasshoppers. By some arrangement, they have rights to the place now, like the adult groups that take over the summer camps after the kids have gone home. 

 Between now and the end of October, the [Pack Monadnock Raptor Observatory](https://harriscenter.org/conservation-research/wildlife-research/birds/pack-monadnock-raptor-observatory/about-the-hawk-watch?ref=jarviscoffin.com) will be open as Harris Center naturalists and volunteers monitor the migration of the eagles and thousands of hawks heading to Central and South America. Afterward, it will be down to us year-rounders, which means smaller lines at the feeders, no waiting for a table, once again knowing everyone in town. And quiet time.
### Labor Day Weekend. Already.
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/labor-day-weekend-already/
Last updated: 2024-08-31T09:30:46.000Z
Labor Day 8 30 24 157 PM

0:00

/350.71122448979594

1×

 Labor Day Weekend. How did that happen? 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. The side of the house has not been stained, as it was supposed to be by this time *last* year after construction on our new porch was complete. The Sunfish has not moved from its winter position on shore; its sails are rolled up and stowed in the rafters of the garage. I have not paddled on the large lake nearby with the canoe; we made only one of the Thursday Farmer’s Markets on the town green; there are only a few weeks left in the fishing season, which may not give me enough time to dig out my equipment, buried someplace in the basement. 

Labor Day Weekend, already. How did that happen?

I did turn sixty-seven this summer, which is at least something. I am now the age my father was when my parents moved to this part of New Hampshire. His age at the time stands out for me because the move here was the last stop on a journey that started in New York City, went to Connecticut, rattled around western New York, and came back to New England, the final port of call. 

Back then, he probably felt as well as I am fortunate to feel these days. In typical fashion, my parents had bought a farmhouse needing a lot of work. Dad slept on his Marine Corp cot before Mother arrived with the furniture, keeping the builders busy filling dumpsters and revitalizing the property. He loved setting up camp, even at sixty-seven, which seemed much older to me than it does now, as we learn.

Most days, I do not feel or seem much older, standing, brushing my hair in front of the mirror. Side by side with old pictures tells a different story. The real shocker is Facetime, video calling, which is almost exclusively with the children and grandchildren. I guess it is the striking contrast between my image and theirs. How must they see me? As I saw my grandparents, I suppose—warm, interesting, slower-moving people with pills by the bedside. Grandchildren cannot see the fun we had doing the same things they do, or how we are filled with anticipation for what we hope they get to do. Maybe when they are sixty-seven, God willing, they will look back and see us differently, as people who had adventures, successes and failures, good friends and parties, told jokes, who set up plenty of camps along the way.

So, I turned sixty-seven but fell short on other summer accomplishments. Am I taking more naps? Definitely. That might have something to do with it. A better excuse is that my wife was working full-time until earlier this summer, which left me as primary caregiver for Huckleberry, our seventeen-month-old labrador retriever mix of dog and espresso. All spring and early summer, we were training Huckles to a [GPS fence,](https://www.halocollar.com/shop-wireless-dog-fence/?nbt=nb%3Aadwords%3Ag%3A11141217337%3A114937786771%3A666665935594&nb%5Fadtype=&nb%5Fkwd=halo%20collar&nb%5Fti=kwd-314700222140&nb%5Fmi=&nb%5Fpc=&nb%5Fpi=&nb%5Fppi=&nb%5Fplacement=&nb%5Fli%5Fms=&nb%5Flp%5Fms=&nb%5Ffii=&nb%5Fap=&nb%5Fmt=e&gad%5Fsource=1&gbraid=0AAAAACRuGBY9FC2ajI8UYP%5FM5vdTxBHWx&gclid=Cj0KCQjw28W2BhC7ARIsAPerrcLkSr7OLBh-sQPYq%5Fu44IKG5B-FQGYPpLX-%5FZjA-FtBJA-eEoi5a80aAk9gEALw%5FwcB&ref=jarviscoffin.com) meaning a collar that communicates with eight satellites to track his position relative to an invisible boundary around the property. Approach the boundary, the collar starts to beep and whistle. Cross the boundary, the collar uses static to send a message that chasing the fat squirrel will not be worth it, nor visiting the neighbors. It works well, despite the forest cover, but it took time to tune instrument and animal to each other. I could not turn my back while it was going on. Outside projects meant keeping him inside or tethered to a line. But it got done. Huck can now trot out the door and as long as there are no porcupines inside the GPS boundary, we are pretty much good to go. 

You may be thinking that time remains to cross a few more things off the list. Yes. Thank you. The priority is firewood. A local landscaper has been telling me that we have a lot of standing, dead wood that we can burn immediately. I am heads down gathering that, which is nearing a full cord. Using my handy wood moisture meter, I can report the wood is very dry, as predicted, below ten percent, which experts say is almost too dry, subject to burning too fast. Fine. Last year’s wood was too wet. Too much smoldering went on, which we will hear about when the chimney sweeps arrive for their annual visit in another month.

We have to accept that the Sunfish is not going to get out on the pond this year. The water is getting cold, anyway. There is discussion about oiling the dock when it comes out, but that might not be until mid-October. Staining the side of the house has to be next, after firewood. September should be fine for that, as well as canoeing on the lake, and fishing if I can get organized.

A woman was fishing in front of the house a few days ago with this marvelous rig, part kyack, part float boat, with foot pedals for propulsion. I ran down to the shore to get a closer look and make inquiries. 

Reception to my new boat idea was cool when I got back to the house. 

“Do you know where your fishing stuff is?’

“Downstairs.”

“Where would we store the boat?”

“How about, next to the Sunfish?”

Grandchildren take notice. At sixty-seven, we can still be children.
### Chicken Barbeque
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/chicken-barbeque/
Last updated: 2024-08-30T18:36:06.000Z
It is [Old Home Day](https://www.nhpreservation.org/blog/old-home-days-in-new-hampshire?ref=jarviscoffin.com) season in New Hampshire, and a centerpiece is the Volunteer Fire Department chicken barbeque. Fifteen dollars gets you a half chicken, potato salad, and cole slaw, a roll, slice of watermelon, and a can of soda. Fire department volunteers pitch the tent and set up the grill on Friday, then start cooking late Saturday morning to begin serving by four in the afternoon. Afterward, they clean the whole thing up so that apart from the tent that will still be standing in the morning, the place is spotless. Like it never happened. Four hundred and fifty dinners handed out with kids and dogs running around and a band playing in the background. 

Like the fire department doesn’t do enough already. Shouldn’t we be cooking for them? Where did the volunteer fire department barbeque come from, anyway? Growing up, we used to look forward to the Labor Day weekend chicken barbeque hosted by the volunteer fire department in my grandparent’s town in upstate New York. Later, living in western New York, a similar hoe down, also around Labor Day, took place in our community south of Buffalo, though in this case it was catered by [Chiavetta’s,](https://chiavettas.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com) a family business that has been grilling chicken in backyards and parking lots for seventy years relying on their secret, amazing barbeque marinade. (Available online. Good idea to always have a batch around.)

I am not sure it is clear to anyone when fire departments got into the chicken barbeque business. They have been going on for years to help raise money, but at fifteen dollars a plate, probably the only ones making real money are the chicken farmers, or—more likely—the grocery wholesalers. This time of year, they sell a lot of chicken. 

 But nothing says community—or, Old Home Day—like a volunteer fire department and chicken barbeque. You can separate them, of course. You can need the fire department *and* chicken barbeque. Together, however, they bring everyone to the table, generally celebrating the waning days of summer—the harvest season—which is why many of them take place around Labor Day weekend. 

Except that somewhere along the line Labor Day weekend was decommissioned as the official end of summer in New England. Now, students are pulled back to school the last week of August, rather than the first week of September. In our district, that will be tomorrow, the 28th. Meaning, three days of school, followed by the long weekend. Frankly, it does not feel like the sort of process improvement paying big educational dividends downstream. 

I go on this rant every year at this time. Consider what many of us remember about Labor Day, which included parades, road races, and miles of traffic on the highways, the clearest indication that it was time for everyone to get back to it. Labor Day weekend gave us closure. The last few nights of shrinking daylight hours to be outside after dinner rather than in our rooms doing homework. We were filled with anticipation and some regret as we headed to the volunteer fire department’s chicken barbeque. But there we found our neighbors, caught up on their summer stories, played some games, ate some watermelon, and came away ready.

All of which was worth waiting for. All of which was brought to term by our local volunteer firefighters. And quite a few chickens.

*Published August 27, 2024 in the* [*Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*](https://www.ledgertranscript.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)
### Harvest Jitters
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/harvest-jitters/
Last updated: 2024-08-13T18:03:38.000Z
I knew a very good and capable man a generation older than me with wonderful gardens around his farm in upstate New York. In the high summer months, arriving up the driveway for a visit, we were guaranteed to find him bent over behind the tall grasses and flowers with a trowel or clippers. He was the first person I knew to experiment with soap bars impaled on stakes as a way to ward off deer. I am not sure how well it worked, but after a blazing hot afternoon last week collecting fallen fruit, and erecting chicken wire fencing around our fruit trees, I dug into his playbook, hanging Irish Spring on our fruit trees, which a source said could be especially effective. We will see. 

 The day before, all had been well. Then, overnight, some marauder picked the Empire apple tree nearly clean of its bounty, disfiguring several branches in its voraciousness. It could have been anybody: squirrel, skunk, racoon, porcupine. Search online for apple tree bandits and the animal kingdom is substantially represented. (Who doesn’t like apples?) Our suspicion defaulted to deer.

 Next day, wire fences in place, we were still losing apples dangling close to the fence line, but the tree damage was minimized. We hate losing the fruit. We are more concerned about losing the tree. Allowing it to grow is the long term plan to provide enough apples for everyone. 

 For us backyard gardeners, this is the time of year we fear most for our crops. It is not like we have a superabundance to go around. There were eighteen apples left on the persecuted tree when I checked last evening, probably not enough to get us all the way to harvest season—*any* *of us*. Shortly, the overnight attention may turn to the nearby Macoun tree, which is thriving, laden with fruit. 

 I remember trying to grow corn, three or four rows of it, living in suburban New York. I learned an important lesson, which is that everyone is watching. And everyone, it turns out, is a pretty astute gardener, with an ability to discern when the vegetables are going to be at their earliest, succulent best. In the case of my attempts to grow corn, the deer and raccoons were always one day ahead of me. As in, tomorrow, children, we will have corn from the garden. Except that the observant forest dwellers would carry off most of it that very night. Without the desire to build a large, fenced area in my suburban yard, I gave up growing corn.

 By comparison, we have been doing well growing things here in rural New Hampshire. Perhaps there is so much habitat that the pressure is reduced to pilfer the raised beds of lettuce and carrots, and whatnot. Our vegetables have been unmolested for the third year in a row. Very lucky. 

 But apples and peaches? Different altogether. Everyone knows a delicacy when they see it. If we could prevail on the deer, and whoever else, to take the long view, allowing the trees to mature past the point where delicate branches snap, easily, and a plentiful amount of fruit is available to share, we could live super-harmoniously. 

 In the meantime, we are negotiating with our dog Huckleberry to give up his spot at the end of our bed and sleep outside at night. Just until October.
### August
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/august/
Last updated: 2024-08-03T09:30:02.000Z
August 8 2 24 309 PM

0:00

/304.64283446712017

1×

August, and about the time of year I begin looking forward to winter. More precisely, about the time when I begin to *let go* of the flourishing spring and summer seasons. For one thing, nature is not flourishing anymore, in the sense of being full of energy, new life, and growing. These are the sultry days of deep summer. The new broods of ducks and geese on the pond are nearly as big as their parents and paddle past us with smug expressions, heads aloft, skipping out of line with the grown-ups. I think of them as eager to get on with the big trip south they have been hearing about since day one. They are ready. “Wanna fly.” 

 We are waiting for the fruit on the apple and peach trees to ripen, which it is doing without urgency, growing fat in the heat, hanging idling, unaware that eventually, the tree will dismiss it to the ground with a sudden plop. Off you go. Good luck. We remember the excitement over the spring blossoms. All the work since has been happening in the basement, unseen but important—like most basement work.

 Yellow, Black-eyed Susans, and Queen Anne’s Lace are what remain of native perennials in our field and along the roadsides, surrounded by the spent flowers of pink clover. Phlox blooms are arriving, getting more plentiful around the property every year. But, mostly, we have been preoccupied with dead-heading plants, such as the mountain laurel, the hostas, and the daylilies. Their flowers have come and gone and what remains has folded into the dark green tableau of the season. I could not tell you at this point which variety produced which color flower. I will have to wait until next year to be reminded.

 The one thing left to bloom before the autumn colors take center stage will be the white and blue wood asters, which are among my favorites because they are the late bloomers. I am a fan of late bloomers. Ask yourself, where are all the early bloomers from high school? (Folded into the tableau with the rest of us.) 

 The lawn has burned out in the usual places. I am down to cutting it every seven or eight days instead of every four. By mid-month, it will be every ten days; well-timed for when I am tired of cutting it altogether. 

 I am at the point of letting go of spring and summer.

 I had an Aunt afflicted by seasonal affective disorder, appropriately (and neatly) known as SAD. Not I. I have had enough of cutting lawns, raking leaves, shoveling snow, and dodging black flies in time for rescue by each new season. Having said that, autumn is the only season that has me slightly panicked when it comes to an end, which it does abruptly, generally with one significant downpour that strips leaves from the trees. We say there is no spring in New Hampshire, that we go from winter to summer with an intervening mud season. But there are crocuses, then daffodils, then buds on the trees, and birds returning. Winter rolls into spring. Summer rolls into fall. Fall just ends. Most years we wake up one morning, the leaves are gone, and the wait for snow begins, which is like anticipating highwaymen you have been told are riding toward the village. We wait and watch from indoors.

 I woke up at four-thirty yesterday morning and it was dark. The last time I woke up at four-thirty in the morning—not too long ago—it was light, and the birds were active and singing. I am glad that it is dark again at four-thirty in the morning. If you have to get up that early, your reward should be darkness. Where is the return without it? If you are climbing back into bed after only a moment, it should still feel like nighttime. If you are beginning an early commute, it should feel satisfying to be across the starting line as you drive past your neighbors' dark houses.

 A few times when we were young, my father collected us from bed in the morning for a ride on the commuter train and a visit to his office in New York City. We would go to lunch, then be placed on the train home where my mother would be waiting to collect us. Of all the impressions left by those occasions, one looms larger than the rest: it was *dark* when we got up, as we ate a hurried breakfast, and left the house. As children, nothing ever separated my father’s world more from us than the fact he was up before sunrise and gone before we were downstairs. Once a year we would be allowed to step across that boundary.

 It is the time of year I begin to let go of the spring and summer seasons. But there is plenty else I can hold on to.
### Visualizing World Peace
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/visualizing-world-peace/
Last updated: 2024-07-30T17:54:15.000Z
This year’s winner of the [MacDowell](https://www.macdowell.org/?ref=jarviscoffin.com) Medal was [Yoko Ono](https://www.facebook.com/YokoOno/). Yoko, age ninety-one, could not be there, but she was on the other end of a video stream watching the proceedings. We were prompted to wave a couple of times, and while not quite like having her seated on the dais, the roughly 1,100 in attendance can add Yoko to the list of people they have streamed with over the last couple of years, certainly since the pandemic. One of the world’s most recognizable and respected interdisciplinary artists, Yoko will think that’s cool, that we were all connected that way. I am going to say the same. It was cool to share her orbit for an hour, even via bits and bytes. 

 For the rest of the year, a lot of the art happening at MacDowell goes on unobserved, quietly and intently, as it has since 1908, when the first two resident Fellows arrived. We are offered glimpses of it at MacDowell Downtown, part of Peterborough’s [*First Friday*](https://www.facebook.com/FirstFridayPeterboroughNH/) events, March through November (usually at the [Monadnock Center for History and Culture](https://monadnockcenter.org/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)) when volunteers among MacDowell Fellows make themselves available to share their work and answer questions. They are a reminder that observed, or not, MacDowell artists—300 of them per year—are always in our orbit, which should force us to think about the total creative industry that has had its start (or finish) here over the last century. How much would it be? Would it paper the world? Fill every concert hall at once? As sculpture, reach the moon?

 Yoko Ono has one project, the [Imagine Peace Tower](https://www.imaginepeacetower.com/light-house/?ref=jarviscoffin.com), that is 12,000 feet tall. Therefore, my answer to the above is, yes, and it does not begin to include the works of countless other artists and performers here, and throughout the world, producing the music, painting, writing, sculpture—everything—that keeps us from going over the edge. Apart from what faith we have in our creator to make us behave well toward each other, it is the artists that save us from the infernal regions by shoring up our humanity. 

 Yoko’s Imagine Peace Tower for instance. Created in memory of John Lennon, citizens of the world are invited to send their wishes by postcard, email, or X to Imagine Peace headquarters in Reykjavík, Iceland. So, attendees at this year’s 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. The tags would be collected and sent to Yoko, with assurances she would read them and send along to Reykjavík. 

 Any wish. Any wish at all. Thoughts of the Presidential race popped up, but that felt too much like arguing. Poor choice for a peace tower. I thought of health for the family. But it felt wrong not to include the health of everyone’s family, around the world. And is hard to defy the aging process. If it is before you to write a wish for submission to Yoko Ono for inclusion as part of the Imagine Peace Tower project, why punt with an answer that lands short of the goal line? I went for universal world peace.

 Growing up, Yoko was always a mystery to me as that dark, speechless character sitting next to John Lennon. A Beatles intruder. But there I was, writing *PEACE* on a small tag, tying it to a tree with approximately six hundred other wishes waving in the breezes, all of them destined for a care package going back to somewhere near the North Pole, where Santa Claus lives—as may cross your mind, awkwardly picking your branch on the tree—and reindeer fly—smiling gently at the person beside you, careful not to spy on their wishes—and have you feeling slightly squeamish about lending yourself to fanciful possibilities such as *universal world peace*. 

 Except, yes, there is a Santa Claus, Virginia, as the great [Francis Pharcellus Church](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis%5FPharcellus%5FChurch?ref=jarviscoffin.com) wrote in the New York Sun. “You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which . . . . Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance can push aside.” 

 Call it, the stuff of art.

 Thank you MacDowell. And, congratulations Yoko (hope you can read my handwriting).
### Summer People
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/summer-people-tag-othermusings/
Last updated: 2024-07-17T17:41:17.000Z
In the last two weeks, I have had to slam on my brakes a couple of times exiting our driveway. Most recently, following someone to town who had been visiting us; I had to wait for two cars to pass before I could pull in behind. We regard that as congestion along the dirt roads where we live.

 The July and August people are here. Our local markets and restaurants are busier, and I enjoy seeing strangers in the aisles, frequently just browsing or gawking at the smallness of our grocery boutiques. There are very few of that sort left in the suburbs and big cities. They have been replaced by Whole Foods and Wegman’s. So, the small grocers do attract the interest and curiosity of visitors. I remain one of those curious people when I travel through rural New England, always keen to pull into the local market or inn, if there happens to be one.

 Against the odds, we insist on keeping our country village stores alive. The practical reason is that the supermarkets are twenty to thirty minutes from those of us in the smaller towns. Realizing you are short of milk or eggs, and that restocking will mean a forty-five minute, even hour-long round trip to the nearest Shaw’s or Market Basket, is the definition of discouragement, especially if you are held up by traffic at the end of your driveway.

 The impractical, but maybe more important reason is the extent to which these country markets contribute to our sense of community. They are, so we are. There are better and worse supermarkets to shop at, but what do they say about us or the places we live? How do they contribute to our identity? If you live in a community with a Whole Foods, it says real estate is expensive and you can afford to live there. But the experience is the same inside. Same soundtrack. Same sushi. It is more and more like shopping on Amazon Prime. 

 Anyway, where was I going with this? 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. All good. All fine. A seasonal phenomenon among people conditioned to seasonal phenomenon. 

 But may I say something about motorcycles? I have not been on a motorcycle since I was probably twenty years old. It was someone else’s. He drove it early one spring from New York City to college upstate, arriving half-frozen to death. It took a day to thaw him out. Afterward, we all had a great time riding the motorcycle. It is very liberating, a feeling of being one with the road. In New Hampshire, riding without a helmet, I suppose it feels even more like being one with the road. (That may not have come out right. But you get what I mean.)

 At my age, I have no desire to climb back on a motorcycle. I do, however, have a hankering for a Vespa, which is a scooter—more like me. “Gotta scoot,” I could say when it was time to go, and mean it.

 But motorcycles. They are inherently loud. Why is it necessary to make them road-rumbling, window-rattling, heard-you-as-you-crossed-into-New Hampshire-from-Massachusetts louder? 

 We know many of the old guard around here from our days as village grocers. Once upon a time, I asked one of them, whom I particularly admire, if he had big pipes on his motorcycle when he was young. A few bikes had just thundered down Main Street, halting conversation, sending shockwaves against the buildings. He smiled and said, oh yes. We all did. 

 Is it a guy thing? I am a guy. I do not believe I have ever turned my head to follow in awe the path of a motorcycle down the road thinking, golly, I wish I could be that loud. Who could be so desirous of everyone's passing attention? 

 Of course, I have a newspaper column dedicated to people’s passing attention. Okay, fair enough. Worse, I plan to still be making noise with it in the winter. 

 But, you get what I mean.

 Gotta scoot.

 (Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, July 16, 2024)
### Independent, Inching Forward
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/independent-inching-forward/
Last updated: 2024-07-06T09:30:28.000Z
Independent Inching Forward

0:00

/340.3086848072562

1×

No Fourth of July fireworks in town this year, which put the kibosh on our friends’ annual porch buster that a good portion of the Main Street and neighborhood crowd has been coming to for years. Their porch looks over the town pond, you see, from which the display launches, very professionally, special fireworks barge and all, lasting nearly thirty minutes. Across the pond, the hill going up behind the Meeting House offers equally fine viewing for the fifteen hundred, or so, people (basically, the size of the resident population) that attend from here and elsewhere; meaning, that for one shining moment, Fourth of July gives us a New England summer population to write home about, inclusive of extra duty police and bumper to bumper traffic.

 (It is nothing compared to stretches of Route One in Maine, of course. I remember taking over an hour to drive from York Harbor to Ogunquit, which is less than ten miles. We agreed, that day, to prohibit travel to my wife’s parents except in the off-season.)

 I do not believe it was the crowds that did in this year’s celebration. From the start, the fireworks have been run by volunteers and paid for with donations, not taxes. I recall boxes on the front desk of our inn and the market placed by volunteers to collect the contributions. 

 I think the event got too big. Other towns cut back their fireworks show, driving more families with their blankets and coolers to our hillside. Also, I remember discussion last year, or the year before, of how competitive it had become booking the fireworks display companies. In this part of the world, you have to work top, down, beginning with the Boston Pops extravaganza, followed by places on the Cape, a few along the crowded coast of Maine, the beaches of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and so on, until getting to hamlet-size venues such as ours, overrun by fifteen hundred revelers. 

 So, we are taking a breather. But it is a shame to be without our friends’ party because it is normally the first summer event—after school ends and before summer camps begin—when you get to see people you have not seen since the holiday season. We run into each other over the winter, in the aisles of the market, or at the town dump on Saturdays, but not when small sandwiches, cheese trays, and assorted cookies are present. And our friends always have plenty of shrimp cocktail.

 The ability to host a good portion of a town when entertaining is an indication you live in a rural place. If one decent-sized back porch, along with kitchen, living, and dining room, is enough space to gather a representative slice of the active population—a couple of Select Board members, a church minister, or two, the police chief, a fire captain, librarian, a few of the younger people, plus the neighbors up and down the road —you are in the country. 

 People may attend that you see, regularly. You skip over them to catch up with the passing ships, and soon into those conversations, you have the sense you are talking about the things you discussed with them last year at the same time, which is when it hits you that, heck, you have only inched forward. You are a year older, three-hundred-and-sixty-five days have passed, but mostly you have been occupied with keeping things as is. The roof is still on the house. Both cars are still on the road. If you get up in the middle of the night you can find your way in the dark. Everything remains familiar. Hopefully, no one was seriously hurt or injured, and that is the main thing; although, these are gatherings when you learn someone was diagnosed with something over the winter, which is why they are not there. The wife is across the room, surrounded by others who have not seen her since the news broke, hearing details. She is brave-faced. Getting out and coming to the party because the other one wants her to—can’t stay home all the time; you need to be with our neighbors and friends. 

 Another month and we should be through it, she explains.

 The retirees have been traveling. You get the stories of Italy, Egypt, the river cruises; lots of places you would like to see. You get the winter skiing stories, and if someone is renovating a kitchen, or building a barn, you get those stories. The kids are one grade ahead of last year, although I am always surprised by college graduations. I was only hearing yesterday they had gone off to college when, suddenly, I am confronted with the fact they are done.

 We will have to wait now for Old Home Days in August, the next great gathering. Parades, contests, displays, and the Volunteer Fire Department chicken bar-b-que. Not much will have changed in a month. Some of the conversation will be about Fourth of July fireworks and which towns—not ours—had them. One or two brave souls may use the occasion to start drumming up support for fireworks next year. 

 I can go either way. After sunset on the Fourth, battling mosquitos, I sat outside and listened to the booms coming from someplace over the hills. When my wife got home from work, she watched the Boston Pops display on television. They were fitting ends to the day, but I probably missed the cheese board more than the fireworks. 

 For now, I am still independent, still inching forward.
### Good, Quality Thunder
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/good-quality-thunder/
Last updated: 2024-07-03T17:42:54.000Z
Last week we sat on the porch as it was getting dark listening to the sound of rolling thunder. The atmosphere was unsettled after a week of scorching heat. Rain came down in sheets, carrying away the driveway gravel with it. Towering thunderclouds in the distance tempted me with the idea of climbing them. I have always had the fantasy of seeing small cloud people busy on the tops of puffy clouds as I flew past them by jet. I imagine families of them traveling the world on their particular cloud, coming near enough on occasion to other billowing clouds to have a jamboree. Such was the view from our porch: a sky full of fat clouds, looking like stacks of marshmallows, miles high, offering the potential of grand hoedown.

 There was lightening in the area. Honestly, we should not have been outside. But we were undercover, somewhat below the eaves of our cabin, the storm moving away from us by then, the spectacle worthy of a Thomas Cole painting. 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. “That’s good, quality thunder,” my wife said, as it rippled around us like a prowling cat.

 I was sorry the grandchildren were not here for it. Their June vacation with us came and went with nothing but clear skies and hot temperatures, suitable for doing everything outdoors especially swimming and boating on the pond. More confident swimmers this year, they left wet footprints and damp towels everywhere they went. They spent hours in the water, with flippers and goggles, exploring the reeds, making hooting noises I could hear through their snorkels when they saw fish.

 But what is a summer vacation in New England without the sound of good, quality thunder bouncing off the mountains or glassy lakes? What is it without a memory, or two, of being pushed offstage by the sudden entrance of nature in full uniform, to watch it parade by from the windows or screened porch, or sheltered in the car with all the windows rolled up?

 The consequence is that the jigsaw puzzle on the downstairs table is no further along than when they arrived. I am not walking on Monopoly pieces or finding pink five dollar bills between the sofa cushions. We did not go bowling.

 We did go for walks. We did carefully inspect kayaks and canoes for dock spiders. We ate plenty of ice cream, though very few green vegetables. And we doated on the puppy, Huckleberry, who has since been a state of decline, once again alone with old people who insist on walking from place to place instead of running. And who do not climb rocks, or fit comfortably, all together on the couch, while watching *Chitty Chitty Bang Bang* before bed*.*

 Summer has settled in. The woods are dense and breathing. I am waiting for the corn and tomatoes now.
### A Sensitive Time
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/a-sensitive-time/
Last updated: 2024-06-19T19:19:44.000Z
It is a sensitive time right now waiting to see which plants will emerge and do well this season, and which will not. My attention is primarily on our tomato babies (as we have been calling them). We started a dozen from seed in the kitchen window in early spring and they showed good promise, poking out their little green arms early, and stretching to junior size over six weeks until it was time for outdoor acclimating. There were a few warm days but it stayed cool most of the time, and cloudy. Those are things you must get used to in New England, learning to be a tough tomato. 

 Out of a dozen, we have maybe two tough tomatoes. All of them have been full-time in their raised bed for a couple of weeks, and many are resisting—as in, what was the matter with the kitchen window? We are cold and wet and miss our window mates. We would rather be houseplants.

 It is true, nights have been in the fifties. We woke up to the furnace running a few nights ago. Daytime temperatures have not climbed particularly high, thanks to ongoing cloud cover. We are still wearing sweaters in the evening if we are outside. (I am considering getting one now, and it is mid-afternoon.)

 After our morning walk, Huckleberry and I stopped by the garden beds to check on things, beginning with the tomato babies. As I say, two of the dozen are forging ahead, getting on with it. They have set their roots, and are thrusting upwards, beginning to add tiny branches. I count seven others in various stages of denial. I am urging them to perk up. It may climb back into the eighties next week, which should help.

 Sadly, if you are doing the math, three of our tomato babies have perished. I am concerned enough about the others that I may augment with plants from away to serve as encouragement.

 Elsewhere, the green beans are making a good showing. Beans are fairly reliable. It is too soon to say with the onions and shallots. It has only been a little over a week. We are waiting for most of them to break through.

 I have added additional rows of lettuce after a poor start a month ago. That will have been my fault: I was careless planting earlier rows, which may have been too deep.

 Potatoes—russets and reds—are in, as of the same time as the onions. No sign of them yet. Carrots, which I sowed a couple of weeks ago, are making a break for it. Their wispy, green threads are just beginning to show. We had a bumper crop of carrots last year, harvesting them just ahead of mealtime up until the first hard frost. They are in a different bed, this year. We will see how they like the new digs.

 It was the gladiolus that had us most concerned. I planted six to start with. Only one had emerged after a few weeks. I blamed myself. I planted them too deep, not deep enough, in the wrong spot, without enough light, in ground that was either too sandy or not sandy enough and drained poorly. They had been perfectly good bulbs going into the ground, full of hope, and packed with colorful possibilities. What had happened? Too shy maybe. By then, too weary. Who knows? But, at last, today, four more shoots have appeared in the places I put them, so we have five out of six accounted for, and I am mostly spared my guilt of being a lousy gardener.

*Published June 18, 2024 in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*
### Spring Cleaning
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/spring-cleaning/
Last updated: 2024-06-10T15:06:10.000Z
I am something of a content junkie. It borders on hoarding. It may be out-and-out hoarding, who knows. It is some sort of condition, for sure, because I am faced with clearing out the piles of subscriptions, online and print, that are stacked up around me—mostly in my email inbox—unread, out-of-date, extraneous stuff by now, and I am having a hard time parting with any of it. 

I blame winter for how bad it has become. Shorter days and longer nights, with fewer chores to do, winter is the time for reading in front of the fire. Easy enough to do with just a book, but if it happens to be reading on my iPad, then I am vulnerable to every link I come across leading me down another dark tunnel to a free weekly subscription on writing, publishing, the media, gardening, cooking, finance, world affairs, national affairs, or dog behavior.

Here’s a sample from this morning:

*The Wakeup*, which is a daily digest from The Ankler, a pithy, Hollywood business-insider report. The lead in this morning’s email: “Where I was starting to get a little concerned that Hollywood had run out of ~~reboots~~ \[sic\] reimaginings from the vaults, given our great progress so far this year. But don’t worry America! PEACOCK has ya covered, announcing **a new reality show with Paris & Nicole** (if you have to ask for last names, you’re just too young).”

 Do I need to know about a new reality show with Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie? Heck no, except as grist for a book (fiction) I am writing about the media industry. I keep thinking I should hold on to my Ankler subscription for that reason. At best, I skim it.

*Investopedia Pre-Market.* Self-explanatory. Arrives around eight a.m. every day.I read maybe one out of ten of them. Today the headlines include President Biden’s new tariffs on the Chinese, stock rallies at AMC and GameStop, Home Depot Q1 results. (I deleted it.)

*Poem-a-Day*. A feature of the Academy of American Poets. I do not write much poetry, but I thought I ought to confront myself with the art. Most of it goes right over my head. This morning’s offering: “When The World Falls in Around You or, Vows to My Palestinian Wife on Our Wedding Day,” by Lehua M. Taitano. It is one of those that I will have to read several times for the meaning to wash over me. It has a remarkable structure. Honestly, though, I can’t invest the time. Have to get this column done and spread more pine chips. Which is how it is every day. But still, I think should make room for poetry each morning. Shouldn’t we all? 

*Write or Die*. Support community for writers. Sometimes funny. Frankly, the email has turned into a promotional vehicle for writing and publishing seminars. This one can probably go.

*Politico Playbook*: This is a keeper. Everyone should subscribe to *Politico’s Playbook*, which arrives every morning, high-topping it across the national political agenda. Irreverent, remarkably impartial, I learn more from this about what is going on in Washington than any other source. From today: “Let the Show Votes Begin.” It is campaign season, and as one senior Democratic aide reportedly tells Politico, “We’ve done all the bi-partisan things we have to \[for the year\].” 

Great.

There are many more: a newsletter by someone I knew in the old internet advertising days called *The Future Does Not Fit Into Containers of the Past* (obvious, I would think), Astral *Codex Ten* (I know, right? What’s an Astral Codex Ten? It was someone’s recommendation.), and *The Wrong Side of History* (flooding in and I have yet to read one. Another recommendation.), plus assorted columnists from the New York Times, the Atlantic, The New Yorker, and all the publications I stopped subscribing to that keep gnawing at me to resubscribe. 

There is not time to digest all of this stuff. As it piles up I feel worse about what I am missing. I need an ignorance-is-bliss-pause in the action. And, by the way (or, btw), I do not really use social media, which I could not imagine fitting into my content day.

I am watching the black flies swarm outside the window. They are waiting for me. They know I can’t stay inside all day reading and writing. There is a pile of wood chips that says so. 

There is just no escaping the swarming and gnawing.

*Published, June 4, 2024 in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*
### June
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/june/
Last updated: 2024-06-01T09:30:41.000Z
June 5 31 24 404 PM

0:00

/379.00002267573694

1×

It is June 1st and I am about finished cleaning up from the effects of winter. Yesterday, I had the Thatcherator out, the name John Deere gives to the rake you can pull behind your lawn tractor. I used it on our driveway to gather back some of the gravel pushed around by the snowplow and grade the ruts left by mud season. John Deere does not say anything about being able to use the Thatcherator on gravel. I was hesitant about doing so when I tried it last year, but it worked like a charm without appearing to damage the tongs. It takes several passes up and down but, when finished, it is hateful to think of driving on it. Like cutting into a newly frosted cake; or a fine lasagna. You just know the first cut is going to subtract from the vision you have of the thing. 

We woke up this morning to pouring rain. Corey’s Septic truck arrived soon afterward to administer biennial service. “There goes your driveway,” my wife said. 

We have the rhododendrons to fall back on. The blossoms have been bulging for a few weeks and are beginning to pop. I wish I could count them for you. There will be hundreds upon hundreds. Pink and red. Except it may be pink and pinker. I struggle to know the difference between pink, red, and orange. I will say to my wife, “Who’s that woman in the red shirt?” 

“You mean, pink shirt.”

We have several substantial rhodies that are many feet tall and wide. “Priceless,” was how our landscape guy referred to them when his crew was reinventing the driveway a couple of years ago. His work may have something to do with the bounty we are seeing this year. There is a little more light coming through, and, following his instructions on feeding the new plantings he put around the house, we have been tossing some food to the rhodies. 

I never thought much about rhododendrons when we lived in suburban Boston. They resisted sculpting and were more muscular than their delicate counterparts along the manicured walkways. Those plants craved attention. Like runway models. The rhodies were happier left alone, sort of gangly and awkward. Against our wooded backdrop in New Hampshire, it is a different story. Here, things can be themselves and just grow, which suits the rhododendrons. This year, the forest will delight in their colorful show.

We added a fifth garden bed in the field last weekend using hemlock boards, the organic alternative to pressure-treated, which we all fear can leech nasty, chemical things into the vegetables. To extend their life, we were instructed to burn the inside and bottoms of the boards using a torch. It essentially caramelizes the wood—think, crème brulee—sealing it against bug invaders, and whatever else. It is not indefinite, but maybe we get ten years, versus six or seven, before the wood has to be replaced. The fifth bed will assume responsibility for beans and carrots previously assigned to its neighbor, which is now home to asparagus. Elsewhere, two short rows of lettuce are in, as well as the tomato plants we incubated in the kitchen window, which seemed eager to get outside now that temperatures at night have been (mostly) above fifty. Tomorrow, I will plant potatoes and onions.

Our dog, Huckleberry, was forced to watch the garden project from the porch, which, for a sixteen-month-old puppy who loves nothing more than bounding through tall grass, was like carving a steak under his nose. But Huckles has developed a problem: he visits the neighbors, which takes him off the reservation. Perhaps I have explained that there are no lights we can see after dark unless, during the summer season, our immediate neighbor is on campus. Retrieving him from there is no problem. Retrieving him from anyplace else means getting in a car. Worse, someone else may need to get in a car to bring him back.

Our solution to this problem is to train him to a GPS collar that works substantially the same as the old Invisible Fence set-up that relied on burying a wire around the property. We live on the edge of a pond and Huck is mostly Labrador retriever. Laying wire across the bottom of the pond so Huck can swim is not an option. Building a fence, even down to the shore of the pond, is also not an option for the reason that Huck could swim around it. GPS would seem to fit the bill. 

Without distraction, GPS is working fine. But, ha ha ha, *everything* distracts a puppy—a falling leaf, a buzzing bee, a passing scent. If a squirrel, chipmunk, or weasel of some sort (there was one of those last week), comes within line of sight, Huck is at the stage where he will launch across the GPS boundary regardless of knowing it means turning to stone.

I do not know how this came up but we were on the Rocky Mountain Soda website recently where they are extolling their Hayden Huckleberry Soda. My wife started scrolling. Huck was lying on the floor nearby, dreaming of the chase. I was fidgeting with whatever. 

“You have to hear this,” she said. “Whereas just about every other type of fruit and vegetable has taken to domestication without much fuss the wild huckleberry wants nothing to do with being tied down. Researchers have in fact been trying for many years to domesticate the wild huckleberry with little success. Your best chance of copping some is still to find them in the wild.”

And you would try and tell me there is no such thing as pre-destiny after naming him Huckleberry?
### Liver Free or Die
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/liver-free-or-die/
Last updated: 2024-05-08T15:52:59.000Z
I have on my food critic’s hat today, although I am not about to start criticizing anyone’s cooking. I am thinking about the upcoming growing season, about the availability of local produce and vivid colors on the plate. At the same time, I am thinking about regionally raised and slaughtered beef, poultry, lamb, and pork. It is this that has me donning my critic’s hat. Not because I object to meat-eating. I do not. I object to the narrow use we make of the animals that pay the ultimate sacrifice on the way to our table. If we used more of them, I feel certain the supply of locally produced meats and poultry would increase, which would be good for all, including the animals, for the time they are with us.

 My wife and I drove to Quebec City recently. On the way, we listened to Bill Buford’s book [*Dirt*](https://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Adventures-Training-Looking-Cooking/dp/0307271013?ref=jarviscoffin.com), which came out a few years ago. In his self-deprecating style, it chronicles his adventures moving to Lyon, France with his wife and two small children to work in a French kitchen, as the French masters do, for a (frequently) uncompromising and abusive Michelin star chef. The book is an amusing look back at the nights and weekends Buford spent peeling and chopping bushels of carrots and artichokes and peas (yes, peeling the skin off the individual peas), under the glaring eye and insistence of various Sous Chefs. *Précisément, monsieur!*

 The menus and preparations in the book are classically French: heavy, saucy, thick with cream and butter. Your doctor would not want you to eat that way every night at home. But no part of an animal is overlooked, not the stomach, heart, lungs, kidneys, liver. Right down to the squeal of the pig, as they say. They eat it all. 

Before finding his way into a Lyon kitchen, Buford does other things such as work for a baker and then a butcher. Working for the butcher, he describes the ritualistic process of dispatching a prize pig with a sharp knife and collecting the blood (his job), which is promptly converted into *Boudin Noir* (blood sausage), but not before he is obligated by his experienced and mischievous colleagues to taste the blood for seasoning. With everything to prove, he obliges, and to his surprise, it is rather warm and delicious.

 This is a family newspaper. I should be careful about using gruesome images. Except that we have become squeamish about our food thanks to how remote the processing has become. Father does not head to the barnyard in the morning to bring a fresh chicken back to the kitchen for dinner with instructions to one of the children to pluck and clean it. I have done some upland game shooting. I can gut and cut up a bird with anyone. But I admit I have never decapitated a chicken, although I was in the company of my father when he did (farm boy that he had been), and I have never brought a spoon of properly seasoned, fresh pig’s blood to my lips or dined on braised beef lung soaked in onions and milk. (Beef/pig/sheep lung is illegal in the United States, making it hard for us to produce our own Haggis, which is a personal favorite alongside a dram of scotch.) 

 I did own a restaurant and a market, and over the course bought and attempted to sell greater percentages of the whole (local) animal from either the meat case or menu as, for instance, savory pies like steak and kidney and venison and trotter (pig’s foot), or country pâtés. We made a meatloaf with beef heart that was delicious. For a while, we featured skinned, whole rabbits in the market case (*Lapin au Vin,* anyone? Tastes like chicken). Someone walked in one day and commented, “That’s a little tough to face first thing in the morning.” All I can say is, thank goodness we had a large freezer section. 

 The shortlist of books I would like to write includes one that will call on our years of innkeeping. Something light-hearted that celebrates the richness of hospitality, which is a stew of experiences and personalities. In that book, I intend to go on at length—light-heartedly—about children who are brought to restaurants with no range of culinary motion. They live in the equivalent of a food closet (is that light-hearted enough?), confined to grilled cheese, pasta with butter, or fried chicken fingers, plus maybe a few apple slices and bananas. I have grandchildren accustomed to the same small spaces, kept there by “I’m-too-tired-to-argue-about-what’s-for-dinner” syndrome. A pandemic, if ever there was one.

 This pandemic is murder on the global climate, which is impacted grotesquely by the methane gas of factory farms. But there are extensive forms of a cure. I give you one example: an affordable, protein and vitamin-rich meal of New Hampshire beef liver and onions, bacon, red wine reduction, puréed potatoes, and summer squash right out of the garden. Good for you. Good for everyone.

 *Bon appétit.* 

(Published May 7, 2024 in the [Monadnock Ledger-Transcript](https://www.ledgertranscript.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com))
### Tractor Pull
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/tractor-pull/
Last updated: 2024-04-27T09:30:22.000Z
Tractor Pull

0:00

/436.90369614512474

1×

Swifty Corwin dropped off two loads of pine chips a few weeks ago from the job he was doing at our neighbors through the woods, Paul and Robbie. I wandered over while that was going on with the idea that Swifty would be looking for a home for the chips, as most of the foresters are when they have an order to cut down more than a tree or two. The job next door was several trees, mostly white pine, a couple of them upwards of eighty or ninety feet tall. 

So, first off, I was wanting to get Swifty’s attention amid all the commotion that goes along with a big tree job. The chainsaws that are doing the work, the tractor that is hauling logs and brush relying on a hydraulic claw, the crane being used for the really heavy lifting and to hoist a lumberjack to the tops of the trees so they can be taken apart in pieces; and the chipper, the loudest noise instrument, which chews tree limbs to tiny bits, shooting them into a dump truck. Swifty seemed delighted with my proposal when we got near enough to each other to be heard. I got two thumbs up.

Secondly, though, a large tree-clearing job is all action and adventure, as I have somewhat just described. Guys dangling near treetops by rope and the crash and thunder of big pines hitting the ground, plus the nerve-wracking proximity of buildings and electrical wires. It is kind of primal. Not at all like watching someone write computer code or even build a house. Precise, sometimes tedious activities. I have never seen a beaver take down a tree. I wonder if it would generate the same earthy, muscular feeling. Like fire. I can stand around and watch a fire, even in the fireplace, with the same primal intensity that I can watch a couple of people fell a two-ton tree, feeling the weight of it in the soles of my feet when it hits the ground.

After making my bargain with Swifty, I hung around the action for a while with Paul, wishing I had my grandchildren nearby, particularly—given his age—the three-and-a-half-year-old. He would be captivated and, if I were holding him up, his arms might be wrapped around my neck for security. Like a koala baby. Primal.

Back to the wood chips. At the outset, the two loads were piled higher than my head, maybe by a foot. I have whittled (no pun) that down by about half, loading them shovel-full by shovel-full into the green wagon of my John Deere lawn tractor, driving them to where they are needed, as mulch around the rhododendrons and azaleas and along the path to the pond, and spreading them with a garden rake. Which is fine. But I wish I had a bigger tractor with a bucket on the front. Less shoveling and easier on the back, sure, but about half the time required to complete the work compared to how I am doing it now. 

Neal Young has a great line in his live, Rust Never Sleeps album: “When I get big I’m going to get an electric guitar. When I get *real* big.” This approximates my ambition for a proper tractor. I interview everyone with a tractor and they say the same thing: love my tractor. A friend described her husband’s affair with his tractor by saying he would set the dinner table with it if he could. 

I love my truck. I could easily love a tractor. The thing is, tractors are expensive, even used tractors. And then, where do we put it? The local John Deere dealer explained that tractors are outdoor equipment. They can be left outdoors. What about winter, I asked. “It’s winter now,” he replied (as it was, the time I visited). “Please notice we’re outside with all the tractors.”

Early on, when we moved into our pond cabin to live full-time after exiting the innkeeping business, there were many improvements we felt needed to be made, inside and out. These items pushed the idea of a tractor to the periphery. It is creeping back. Mud season is a prime reason because with a proper tractor, one with a front-end loader, and an attached landscape rake or grader, we stand a chance of reclaiming the driveway that gets washed away in heavy rain and pulverized by the tires of not just our vehicles, but FedEx and UPS trucks, the propane deliveries and, most powerfully, utility trucks that show up (six times this winter and early spring, I believe) to restore power. By necessity, they drive over everything, including the softening fields, rocking back and forth a couple of times to unstuck themselves.

The John Deere dealer suggested we could do without a backhoe, which he said was the least used piece of tractor equipment. Customers try to return them. But we could use a backhoe to cut swales to catch the driveway run-off before it goes into the woods or stream. For slightly more, the backhoe could include the “thumb” accessory allowing me, I would think, to grab logs or brush, moving them here and there. Very helpful given our wooded environs. There are claw grapples available, which might be the better option, given how much downed wood there is every year. In that regard, there is also a small woodchipper attachment. 

What about a snowplow? Hmmm. Include a snowplow in the package and drop the snowplow guy. That sounds financially rational. Someone I know has a pallet fork attachment, useful for getting underneath heavy objects, although I believe he uses it mainly to create a portable work surface by dropping a few boards across and raising it to a level where he is not having to bend over to, say, sharpen the teeth on his chainsaw. Brilliant. How did people survive before?

They sell post-hole diggers. There is no fencing around the property, an obvious consequence of not having a tractor with a post-hole digger. 

I would like a canopy for protection from the hot sun. I can clip a fan to the corner. Cup holders, I assume come standard. I have not seen anything about icemakers or stereo equipment, but how can there not be? I can put a dog bed in the front loader as a way to keep Huckleberry from running circles around the equipment while I am dragging the field. Some farmer has to have thought about that for his dog. I will ask around.

As my father always said when wish lists appeared before him, "Christmas is coming." It was his way of saying, let’s move on.
### Calmly on the Waters
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/calmly-on-the-waters/
Last updated: 2024-04-23T13:49:21.000Z
It looked hopeless outside after the most recent snowfall had melted. (Note: I do not tempt fate by presuming we have seen the last snowfall of the year, only the most recent*.* It is still April, a moody month, antagonized easily by any presumption about its intentions. If you live around here, do your part: don’t start sending boots and gloves to the basement yet.) It was still wet and damp under the trees at the lawn’s edges, which were matted and tangled, like someone’s sweaty head from which we will need to comb the leaves, sticks and twigs. But after a few days of sunshine and warmer temperatures, the grass is getting green and the little red buds are out on the trees. 

 Most importantly, the loons are back. The mergansers came through, followed by the buffleheads, the single wood duck that always shows-up for a day, other ducks, notably mallards, the Canada geese and, finally, for us, the loons. And once the loons arrive it seems everyone else is uninvited, particularly their diving competitors, the mergansers and buffles. 

 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. To the contrary, they will generally paddle over in an effort to be neighborly when it happens we are down on the shoreline. They as courteous to Huckleberry, our exuberant little black dog, who hops from one shoreline rock to the next to get better views of them. They seem to enjoy his hopping and occasional slips and falls into the water. They take up a position about twenty yards offshore and watch, exchanging amused glances. 

 Why is the loon the only animal we see that does not run and hide when we approach or so much as step out on our porch? A partial answer may be that they do not carry the memory of us hunting them in their DNA. But that cannot be the whole answer. What sort of fearful memories of us would robins, or phoebes, or any of the myriad songbirds have (we feed them, after all), yet all of them high-tail it the instant we slide open a window. 

 My wife is doing what she can to dissuade two robins from building a nest again in the rhododendron along our front door path because we know it will lead to a very unsettled incubation period. Everyone will be a nervous wreck by the end, including us. The children will be born feeling on edge. We will use the door at the other end of the house (not convenient, frankly), to try and minimize the disruption, but, even so, will need to traverse the driveway to get to the cars, meaning, *vroosh,* as we go by. We will forget and use the wrong door, carrying the trash outside to the bin and, *vroosh* again; whoever is on the nest will race to the nearby hemlock. It rattles the nerves. This will happen dozens of times a day, you understand. Out the door, *vroosh*. In the door, *vroosh*. Pick up sticks, *vroosh*. 

 Fox, racoon, possum, deer, bear (thankfully, so far), even colleagues at the top of the food-chain such as hawks and eagles, bail when they see or hear us. Owls are a slight exception. I have encountered owls who will remain impassive as I stroll along the driveway in the evening, allowing me to pause and study them for a short while.

 But the loons. The loons will fall in line behind our kyacks, pop up behind us as we are floating on our foam noodles, divert to swim closer if they see us on the dock. Personally, I think this depth of comfort and self-confidence derives from a record of 30 - 50 million years of existence that our—well, you decide, but a call it 300,000 years--cannot match. We worry about climate change. If a loon could talk I would expect to hear, “Baby, let me tell you!” 

 I recognize that loons can be hard on each other during mating season and they clearly do not like eagles. They hold certain opinions and report their grievances. But I take comfort in the overall affability they project after surviving so many eons. Time has not made them more mean-spirited. They have arrived to float calmly on the waters, bidding us a chance to do the same. Someday. 

(Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, April 23, 2024)
### Total Eclipse
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/total-eclipse/
Last updated: 2024-04-15T16:02:53.000Z
What was it like to be working in the yard, or noticing from in front of the kitchen sink that it was getting dark early outside because a solar eclipse was sneaking up on you where you lived? We have had the know-how to anticipate eclipses for almost three hundred years, but for a good portion of that time word traveled slowly. As with the weather, which people have been trying to predict accurately since before the Babylonians, there have been experts around who could read the signs, but for the rest of us, it was the Old Farmer’s Almanac, red skies in the morning or red skies at night, and Grandfather’s aching knee.

I could swear there was an eclipse over our house in Connecticut when I was a boy because I remember building a pinhole projector using a couple of shirt cardboard. There is no record of an eclipse at that time, so I must have been running some other experiment. Maybe just observing the sun, although why would that have been interesting, looking at a small circle of light on a gray surface? There were plenty of more interesting things to do with sunlight relying on a magnifying glass to burn holes in leaves and things. I confess that various small bug-like creatures were sacrificed that way in the interest of science. It is hard to look back on. 

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*. Funny how these associations persist, perhaps inaccurately, but it is how they are filed in my head. “Bring all that cardboard inside—don’t leave it on the lawn—get ready, we’re leaving for Peter and the Wolf.” It was an afternoon performance. The highlight was the actor who played the wolf. He came out on stage ahead of the show, sat at a table, and while talking to us, describing the upcoming action, made up his face, slipped into a furry sweater, pulled on furry pants, and disappeared under a wolf’s head. When he appeared later, menacing and devouring, no one jumped out of their seats or started crying.

The next total eclipse of the sun visible in the U.S. will be in August of 2044, but it will be remote to us, arriving from Greenland via Canada, running out of gas mid-afternoon after traveling over only three northwestern states. If I happen to be here, I will have to watch it on television, or whatever we are watching things on by then. A virtual reality headset, maybe, providing a thoroughly immersive eclipse experience, as if I was there. Can’t get to the eclipse because you are eighty-seven years old? We’ll bring it to you.

It is not the same as standing in your garden as the sun is slowly blotted out overhead. Search as I did online, I could find no reference to when a total eclipse would be that personal for us again in New England, only that the last such event was a century ago. Fair assumption it will be another century, making it a once-in-two-lifetimes occasion. 

For that reason, I was resolving not to miss it by choosing to be away or napping on the couch in the basement, as has happened with other phenomena such as asteroid displays that invariably occur after midnight. But, then, the call came to help with the grandchildren for two days in Boston, presenting me with a simple choice between natural wonders. It won’t be a total loss, eclipse-wise, but it will shave off a few percentage points of totality—the technical term, you know when speaking about eclipses. 

I am more attached to the totality of my experience with the grandchildren, knowing each day that goes by with them will never come around again. Plus, if I am still here in 2044, I will need their help with the virtual reality headset.
### Easter
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/easter/
Last updated: 2024-03-30T09:30:50.000Z
Easter 3 29 24 646 PM

0:00

/336.00002267573694

1×

In the Western church, it is Easter Weekend and March 31st is one of the earliest dates on which Easter can land, as set forth by the first ecumenical council of the church, called the Council of Nicaea, which met in Turkey in 325 CE. 

 Let’s start there. Turkey, 325 CE. According to the history books, over 300 Bishops attended (with entourages), some coming from as far away as Spain. I try and fathom the journey. We are coping with mud season here, where it is hard enough to get out of the driveway, which is soft, with a few inches of slush. The truck must use four-wheel drive. Travel may have been easier in 325, relying on beasts of some sort—camel, horse, oxen—for which hill and dale (and mud) posed no special problem. There were good Roman roads. But it took time. I suppose on arrival attendees had the satisfaction of knowing they could unpack and genuinely recover from the arduous journey given a program that would last from May through July. It is an example of how sped-up our lives are thousands of years later that until I started traveling with my wife, I never thought of using hotel room bureau drawers. I lived out of the case. I flew in. I flew out.

 The Council convened thanks to Emperor Constantine who determined, after the Edict of Milan in 313 CE had relaxed restrictions on all religions, that the Christian sect was a mishmash of beliefs and practices. One does not need to be an emperor to appreciate the sort of chaos that can result from growing rivalries between religious groups. You are thinking we could use Constantine now but be grateful he did what he did in 325\. He called the meeting.

 (Let me pause to say I am pretty confident you have not looked up any of this recently. It seems a good time to do it, now, so allow me.)

 The Council of Nicaea did several things. The critical outcomes were a creed (the Nicene Creed) and a decision about Easter, i.e., *when*, because at that point Easter was being celebrated at different times around the empire. It was early days in the history of the church, but, still, a couple of hundred years had passed. Behaviors were in danger of becoming fully entrenched.

 Many in the world, most particularly, in this case, the Jewish community, relied on a lunar calendar to order their feast days and worship. Passover, to which the story of Christ’s passion and resurrection are joined, was, as it remains, determined in relation to the Spring Equinox. It was the obvious place for the bishops to begin, with the outcome that Easter would be on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox. 

 Except it is *so* much more complicated given the precise timing of an equinox and differences between Gregorian and Julian calendars where seconds, leading to days, go missing over the millennia. If you want to take a merry ride into the question, I recommend [this](https://www3.nd.edu/~pantsakl/Archive/dateofeaster.pdf?ref=jarviscoffin.com) from Notre Dame. At some point, you may just throw up your hands and be glad other people are working on it.

 Anyway, March 31st is one of the earliest dates that Easter can arrive. The earliest is March 22nd, which hasn’t happened since 1818 and is not going to happen again until 2285! The last time Easter landed on the 31st was 2013\. Before that, 2002\. About every ten years since the dawn of the 21st century. After this weekend, however, Easter will not reappear on the 31st until 2086\. I must delight in thinking about my grandchildren around the dinner table with *their grandchildren* on that occasion.

 If you worship God, it is good to have a long view, and along the way, take baby steps. He said to Moses and Aaron (Exodus, Chap. 12, 1-6), “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you,” going on to dictate the ritual of Passover, taking a lamb on the *tenth* day, slaughtering it on the *fourteenth* day. In this way you stay on the path, you follow the trail markers. Every seven days, you stop and rest. Left foot, right foot, left foot.

 Even so, it is devilishly difficult (no pun). Our calendars do not agree. The orbits of our celestial bodies are all elliptical! Time shifts. Our memories are wiped away. 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. 

 Fortunately, there was a meeting and when it was over everyone went home, leaving a trail behind them for us to follow, left foot, right foot, left foot.

 Happy Easter!
### Town Meeting
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/town-meeting/
Last updated: 2024-03-27T18:49:42.000Z
It is Town Meeting season, that time of year toward the end of winter when there is more daylight and maybe less snow and you can get to town and back with a horse and wagon after throwing a few punches at your neighbor over the cost of building a new school, apportioning land, and repairing roads so things can get to market and people get to church. 

I don’t know, really, but it sounds like that would have been the idea when things first got going.

Town Meeting is a uniquely New England custom. The practice followed a few pioneers out west but may have substantially perished there as a result of the distances between ponderosas. Westerners had more room to roam. And it became the Wild West. They walked around with guns, defending their stakes by relying on them, until the arrival of more women and children and rules of law and order. Here, in New England, Town Meeting has remained the principal form of local government. 

 Of course, for those of you who have not experienced Town Meeting in thickly populated settlements around, say, Boston, I confirm that as of ten to fifteen years ago it was getting clunky. Meetings were stretching across three to four weeknights, addressing the concerns of twelve to fifteen thousand residents, very few of whom could invest the time to participate because of needing to work late, being stuck in traffic, taking kids to band practice, or helping with homework. In our town at the time, Town Meeting was broadcast on the cable access channel, which was useful. We had it going in the background during homework, dinner, tub, and bedtime. When there were big issues, we could anticipate when to jump in the car—one of us, at least—race to the venue, park (at the farthest end of the High School lot), check-in, mingle, wait for the issue to be called and vote. Then go home. A friend finally said, enough, we need a mayor, someone we can hire and fire if we choose four years later. Town Meeting had become inaccessible to a representative majority. I agreed. By now, they may have figured out how to use technology to allow people to participate from their living rooms, certainly fine if the voting is secure, though there is no avoiding the irreverent Town Meeting parties and beer cans tossed against the TV screen.

In our town in Southern New Hampshire, the usual rabble gathered on the first floor of the Meeting House on the third Thursday of the month to consider a new bridge (really a large culvert), some updates to zoning ordinances (for instance, acknowledging our reliance on modern equipment such as renewable energy systems), and shifting money around for rainy days. No car dealerships to worry about, or office parks, not much traffic congestion to speak of, no exceptions requested for heavy industry. None of that. The Moderator–the *presider*\--read the maple syrup report, respectfully submitted by our local producer. Syrup makers started tapping early because of mild temperatures in January. Happily, no one raised the specter of global warming because some things are better left to the nether regions of government, where mud collects. Every article passed with unanimous consent, in an atmosphere of constructive engagement. The chair of the Select Board was given a bouquet and a standing ovation for her twelve years of service as a Select Board member. A lifelong resident, speaking to the question of the new bridge, recalled rumbling over the bridge before this bridge as a boy, which he took to go fishing with his father up on Willard Pond. He proposed a return to the thick timbers of those days for all the memories they provided, which people seconded as worth having. The Moderator recommended the coffee, tea, and baked goods provided, as always, by the Volunteer Fire Department. After two hours the meeting adjourned, although I drove by an hour or so later to fetch groceries and there were still people mingling out front catching up on other news and business.

Somedays it works just fine. It can be done. 

(Published, March 26, 2024 in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript)
### Moon Walk
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/moon-walk/
Last updated: 2024-03-12T14:04:41.000Z
The evening routine of many forest animals was disrupted recently by a column of fifty people hiking through the woods over crusty snow aided by the light of a full moon. Organized by the [Francestown Land Trust](https://francestownlandtrust.org/?ref=jarviscoffin.com) and [Francestown Conservation Committee](https://www.francestownnh.org/conservation-commission?ref=jarviscoffin.com), the outing, “Moonlight Hike/Snowshoe,” stepped off from the front door of Tim and Amy Coffin’s house (yes, my brother and sister-in-law, which got us a front-row parking place), following a path across their large open field to the trail Tim has cleared through a thicket of trees, connecting, after about a quarter mile, with Joslin Road; then to Bullard Hill, and back to their house where cakes and crumbles waited with hot drinks. In all, about a mile-long loop. 

 It was a jolly parade and I could not help thinking what the neighboring creatures thought as we marched along. (“Are they leaving?”) I sympathized with those inhabitants trying to get some sleep, or getting ready, after dark, to head out with the grocery list. I am writing this a few days after the event and I am sure the forest is still buzzing. I am. A walk in the woods at night always spikes the senses. We should do it more often, as a way to shake us from our sheltered (literally, of course) worlds. 

 We stopped a few times to look up at the Moon in its full, reflecting brilliance. At the moment, it is roughly 252,000 miles from Earth, which is close to its maximum distance. But it loomed large and luminous enough to cast shadows on the ground. If you have not brushed up on moon facts recently I can help. The Moon reflects only one-tenth of the sunlight that hits it. The balance is absorbed by its dark, volcanic surface. One-tenth of the light that hits the Moon, therefore, is enough, with a few headlamps, to allow a large group to meander over uneven backyard terrain from 252,000 miles away. 

 This is another thing we should do more often, which is wade into the large numbers that contribute to our existance. There is no harm being in awe of the fact that a fraction of sunlight bouncing off an object hundreds of thousands of miles away has enough intensity to draw us outdoors at night. 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. 

 The moon has been compelling us in different ways for millennia. A few people on the walk noted that at the very moment we stood underneath squinting at the surface, a new lunar vehicle was parked near the moon’s south pole to spend seven days testing for evidence of ice, which could be converted to water for crops and hydrogen for rocket fuel. The possibility would have seemed very far-fetched one hundred years ago, when there were more abundant views of the heavens and more people inclined to spend time observing them. 

 Our attitude toward the moon has changed from those days. It is less about adventure travel. We have been there, after all. It is not cheese. Instead, slightly disturbing, we imagine the Moon (and Mars, if you are Elon Musk) as sanctuary in case, you know, we have to get off our planet. Good stewardship is really something we should be ready to carry with us when that time comes, if it does. Which is an important reason to be grateful for the Francestown Land Trust and Conservation committees’ evening Moonlight Hikes.

*Published in the* [*Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*](https://www.ledgertranscript.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)*, March 12, 2024*
### Mozart on Norway Pond
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/mozart-on-norway-pond/
Last updated: 2024-03-02T10:30:57.000Z
Mozart on Norway Pond 3 1 24 110 PM

0:00

/422.0459183673469

1×

How are things where you are? In the North, we are grinding our way through winter. It will not be long until spring. In the South, perhaps you are experiencing the influx of spring-breakers. It will not be long until the tourists and snowbirds go home. The sun is higher in the sky. The light does not hit the couch as it passes by the glass doors of the studio. Huckleberry has moved down to the rug to catch the rays. I can leave the thermostat at sixty and it will warm to seventy inside, no problem.

We got a lift here recently when Mozart rose from the dead in the form of an ensemble of sixty singers and accompanying musicians presenting his Requiem Mass, his final work, incomplete at the time of his death at the age of thirty-five and finished by Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Mozart's widow, Constanze, who curated Mozart's work after his death, [maintained](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem%5F%28Mozart%29?ref=jarviscoffin.com) her late husband was deluded by sickness and frailty into believing he had been commissioned to write the requiem for his own passing, although the piece was really for a German Count named Franz von Walsegg to honor of his deceased, young wife. 

If it has been a while, here are the first strains of the Introitus (click the play button below). Please imagine a few hundred of us snuggled in the simple white pews of the Congregational church in town, in wool skirts and brown trousers, flannel shirts, or cable knit sweaters. We have been outside carrying in wood, walking the dogs, ice fishing on the pond, watching children sled down the hill. We have left something on the stove or in the oven for dinner because Mozart is scheduled to come alive at four in the afternoon. The appearance will be brief, not much over an hour. The cars of the musicians and chorus have lined Main Street for a month in front of Jody Hill Simpson's house, the conjurer of this magic, the woman who over the years has turned our neighbors--the people we pass in the market, who we see at the dump--into something unexpected, something that should not belong here. Something from away, from a place like Germany, from people such as Dame Margaret Price, the Rundfunkchor Leipzig choir, Maestro, Peter Schreier, and the Dresden Orchestra. Something, believe me, that sounds like this:

Introitus Peter Schreier Dresden Orchestra

0:00

/125.33190476190477

1×

Half the glory of eventually settling into one of the nooks and crannies of the world is the chance to spot treasure outside your door each morning. A pot at the end of the rainbow. Who does not know this? Retirement is the growth industry where we live and why not? We sometimes lament the aging demographic, the shortage of workforce, the lack of housing and the inherent problems of rural living, but tribute should be paid to the fact that after years of dues-paying and squeezing onto elevators, waiting in line, and rising early to meet the bus, there are places–small, quiet places like ours–that will receive you with a clap on the back, a hot cup of coffee and free newspaper to read while you relax. Gold. 

Jody Hill Simpson and her husband, Rick, were easing off the fast lane more than a dozen years ago when they arrived here from Boston, where she had founded the children's chorus, PALS, in 1990 (now, [Voices Boston](https://www.voicesboston.org/?ref=jarviscoffin.com)). With a gift for coaxing wonderful sounds from people, young and old, who might not have discovered those gifts on their own, she rallied experienced and inexperienced choristers to be part of a new creation, [Music on Norway Pond](https://www.musiconnorwaypond.org/?ref=jarviscoffin.com), to sing accompanied by world-class musicians from Boston and elsewhere. Ambitious programs have turned into more ambitious programs, augmented by more virtuoso artists from away, without losing sight of the *fun* that must be had, allowing the setting– our nook– to dictate the context of each performance: it is community art, after all. Home-grown, like our summer vegetables. So much better for you, body and soul.

Mozart was with us that day, regretting every other invitation from the concert halls of Europe and around the world. He sat in the balcony, stood behind the choir, waved his arms in time with Jody Hill Simpson and erupted into shouting and applause with everyone else at the end. The last I saw of him he was still on the front steps of the church, hugging and greeting everyone before they reluctantly headed home for their suppers, treasure in hand.

Requiem Communio: Lux aeterna - Berlin Philharmonic

0:00

/173.87104308390022

1×
### Now We are Nearly to Spring
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/now-we-are-nearly-to-spring/
Last updated: 2024-02-20T17:52:40.000Z
One thing about writing a column every two weeks is that time falls away in chunks, like wedges of an iceberg dropping into the sea. It was February 6th when this column ran the last time. Here we are now with just over a week remaining in the month. It will be March when we meet again, the middle of March the time after that, by then nearly spring (officially) and light until 7:00 p.m., thanks to daylight savings.

 This morning walking Huckleberry I heard a Mourning Dove. Apart from dates on the calendar, the coo of a Mourning Dove is my sign spring is on the way. I could drive you to the spot on Pin Oak Lane, just after the bend in the road past the Germain’s driveway (which I hurried past because those boys tended to knock the books out of my arms and trip me from behind walking to the bus stop), where I became conscious of that dove sound the first time, aware also it was February, over forty degrees, and feeling the brunt of winter was behind us. Every year, awakened by the Mourning Dove, I would be glad to stand in that spot for a minute or two. 

 But it is time to think ahead to the vegetable garden. I may have reported last year that we did quite a bit of work around the house, replacing the old wooden porch with a composite one and adding a bay window over the sink that calls out to incubate tomato seedlings and bell peppers, and maybe eggplant. We have two grandchildren arriving for the weekend and this will be a perfect project. We will drive to the farm store, gather our small growing pots and soil, select our seeds from the rack that spins round and round, and make a mess on the new granite countertops spooning soil into pots and burying seeds one knuckle deep. Then—the best part—water it all carefully in the sink using the spray nozzle. This will require a stepladder. Afterward, you understand, we can share photos of the progress as the plants emerge, harden outdoors, and move to their final home in the raised beds. Their mother, I will point out, used to follow me to the garden when she was no more than two. While I cultivated she would stand by the peas, pull apart a few young pods, pluck the peas from inside one at a time with little fingers and munch away. Gardens are as good for growing children as vegetables.

 The grandchildren are coming from Philadelphia because they are hoping for snow, which is worrying. As I say, it is feeling more like early spring. Pardon the pun, but have you noticed that “mud season” is getting squishy? It was reliably an end-of-March, beginning-of-April event, but I think we have had two episodes, so far, this year. The ruts in our driveway, currently frozen in place, attest to it, as do the sides of our boots and bottom of the dog. Mud season is spreading like a rash. 

 If you are very young and used to only sweet cherry blossoms and daffodils for spring, mud might be interesting. As another project to make up for the lack of good sledding, I will suggest making as many impressions of our feet as possible down the middle of the driveway, to be preserved by the freezing temperatures at night. We can inspect them each morning, and when the children have gone, we will have those prints as a parting gift while out for our early walk.

 So that you know—maybe you do know—it is hard to be responsible for the weather. We experienced this as innkeepers and the anxiety has not lifted. Delivering clear skies and moderate temperatures were usual guest requirements. Vibrant fall colors were a must-have. And, oh, sometimes the sad, disappointed faces. In any event, we had our backup activity plans for the grown-ups, just as for the babies, which, well, you know, were often the same. 

 See you again in *March*.

*(Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, February 20, 2o24)*
### Artificial Intelligence
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/artificial-intelligence/
Last updated: 2024-02-13T19:51:11.000Z
My Apple Watch changed its face again this morning to show me GMT. I have never known a moodier instrument. My preferred choice is a forest green analog face that Apple designers call, Metropolitan. Regularly the watch dumps it for something else. Photos are a favorite. I will retrieve the watch in the morning from where it has been recharging and gone will be my Metropolitan look, replaced by scrolling pictures of the family. Can you blame me for wondering if this is how it entertains itself through the dreary night while feeding—by looking at family pictures and keeping up with whatever else I snapped during the day? Some of what I shoot is incidental. Over the weekend for instance: bar codes, wine labels, a pair of mittens left behind by a grandchild. I suppose, for an interested watch with time on its hands, those things reveal what it missed tucked under a shirt sleeve– the things I worked on, the things we had to drink, the people who came to visit. Today, it displays evidence of cabin fever. The watch seems to want a change of scene, hinting at GMT. 

Sorry. No.

I had to give bad news to another device this morning that was trying to offer help with a financial software package that had gone through an update and deleted an important account. I got a barrage of questions from the CHATbot and numerous suggestions; unfortunately, all of them missing the point. I could feel its pain passing me to a human, though it followed up by gamely asking how well it had addressed my concerns.

Not well. To begin with, I responded, you did not solve the problem. You are very quick, very fast, but in a way that peppers me with incorrect possibilities. You should listen more. I can be that way myself. I understand. I can turn out answers with the best of them. I have had bosses, teachers, family—heck, about everybody—hold up their hand against me in mid-sentence to say, stop! Listen. You need some of that drummed into you. So, overall, five out of ten. Since you asked. And the five is for being available in one minute instead of forty-five compared to your human counterparts, who are never as eager to help, I admit, which is the worrying thing. You will get better at it, I know. But them? What is the future of them?

I brought out the snowshoes this morning and trudged through the woods with Huckleberry. We had about eight inches overnight. The puppy had to bound his way around, which was marvelous for expending energy. He is crashed on the couch next to me. 

The woods are a make-believe image of white. Narnia and Zhivago rolled into one. I expect a faun to step into a clearing and play the flute. The hemlocks swing their branches slowly back and forth, lumbering to buck some of the snow weight, which makes the wires to the cabin shudder every time a breeze’s worth falls on them. I am holding my breath the power does not go out, as it has in the neighborhood according to Scott, who plows the driveway.

Amazon Alexa says very cold nights again for the next few days, confirmed by Weather Live, my weather app. When Huckleberry recovers we will fetch a couple of armloads of wood to add to the pile. 

I will also put sand on the walk, which I shoveled earlier. It is beginning to freeze. 

I need to drive stakes in the ground to mark the well cap for the plow, as Scott suggested. 

I should sweep around the wood stove.

I plan to be back here above the garage again tomorrow to write.

The future? 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. There is no replacing that I have to walk the dog, shovel, carry wood, drive plow stakes, sweep, or my choice to write. 

The hemlocks? They wait for spring.
### Up Yours
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/up-yours/
Last updated: 2024-02-03T19:08:29.000Z
Up Yours 2 2 24 602 PM

0:00

/315.0453741496599

1×

This was our fourth Presidential primary season since moving to New Hampshire. They start months in advance, flag for a week or so ahead of voting in the Iowa caucuses, then rumble over the finish line with a battery of cable TV commercials, personal texts (*Hey, Jarvis, show your support by donating $5)*, emails and calls to the mobile telephone. Any year there is an incumbent in the race the roster of candidates is cut in half. This year, with the mantle of incumbent resting on two of the candidates, there were even fewer in the herd capable of attracting attention. 

However, the actual number of candidates was still overwhelming. 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. Who *were* these people? How did they get *here*?

In New Hampshire, the answer is that they paid one thousand dollars. One thousand dollars gets you into the primary race. Joining the general election is more complicated. It requires three thousand signatures, fifteen hundred from each Congressional District. (We only have two districts. So, basically, nearly everyone in the state has to agree to let you run in the general election.)

With my little yellow pencil in hand, I scanned the list, conscious of people shuffling past outside my booth. If there was a year when I might have been tempted to signal my displeasure with our political parties by filling in the oval next to a long shot, this would have been it. I happen to have used my independent status to vote in the Republican primary. There were twenty-four on that ballot, none terribly colorful (unless you count the front-runner). They were (I have done the research since) business types from around the country, spending hawks, citizens, probably fine members of their community, with grown children asking, “President? Seriously?” 

Not surprisingly, the Democratic side had more colorful entries including the perennial New Hampshire primary candidate, Vermin Supreme, who wears a rubber boot on his head. He got one percent of the vote. 

There was John Vail of Easton, someone I might enjoy having lunch with. Nice smile. Apparent sense of humor. He advertises being a Christian and a Socialist and makes clear on his website that he is not an “ideal” candidate. But he has something to say, and I have surely spent a thousand bucks less fruitfully along the way. He got one percent of the vote, the same as Vermin.

Candidate Paperboy Love Prince did not score even one percent of the primary vote. I have been to Paperboy’s website, featuring a disturbing graphic of a pink, anatomic form marching at you, but also, if elected, a multi-point plan. A guaranteed right to housing is a big deal for Paperboy, stemming from his experience living in New York City. Mr. Love Prince is also deeply invested in climate control and the environment. He intends to make water “a central issue for humanity.” That should have netted him more support in New Hampshire. And who would disagree? Not all is pie-in-the-sky. According to his website, Paperboy founded OurFoodNYC, a mutual aid group that has distributed over four million in free food across the five boroughs. I will wager it a singular accomplishment among all candidates.

Do you remember the comedian, Pat Paulsen? A regular candidate for President, he said, “All the problems we face in the United States can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian.” And “I’ve upped my standards. Now up yours.”

Paulsen used to get occasional airtime on the three networks, which was what we had for television then, with the consequence that large portions of the country would gather in the same place a few hours a day for news, weather, and entertainment. It strikes me that you have to dive into a slate of long-shot candidates to benefit from the sort of social intervention that Paulsen provided to the Presidential election process every four years. Of course, there was the Tonight Show, once the only late-night game in town, which was often credited in those days helping the nation end the day laughing . . . together.

These days, programming is too partial across every platform. In places, partial just to you. So, these days, consensus is unnecessary, allowing partisanship to flourish unrestrained. And nothing imposes its will harder on laughing together than partisanship, which does not welcome humor at its expense. 

I am grateful New Hampshire makes it easy for the solemn and the silly to join in the race if only to save a spot for those who can remind us to smile at ourselves--or by golly, that we can run for President.
### Winter Enchantment
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/winter-enchantment/
Last updated: 2024-01-24T21:51:41.000Z
The rhododendrons have been having a time of it. This morning their leaves are open and flat in moderate temperatures. A few days ago, they were curled tight in the cold. I wonder if the process is a burden—furling and unfurling, like sailors at sea who have gone below to rest only to be recalled to the deck to reset the sails because the wind has changed? All the energy the plant expended through the growing season, finally setting buds for spring, with the expectation of a winter nap. The rhododendrons are keeping busy with only a week left in January. 

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. Such is our place this time of year in rural New Hampshire. We check the rhododendron leaves for the first indication of the weather while we make our coffee in the morning, and we scout for footprints left behind overnight in the snow. A few chickadees may appear to peck the ground, particularly along the edges of the driveway where it has been plowed. A red or gray squirrel may scurry from the base of one tree to another. Any other action will attach to the wind, rain, or snow. 

We had a few generous days of snow last week that made the woods white and warm under its blanket. I felt its protection as I walked the dog down the driveway, each of us making quiet footprints. It buries the seeds and acorns, hides the voles, muffles the hunter, and turns to water in the spring. The dog bounded away, and I stood looking where he went, feeling my voice could reach him for miles, carried by the quiet. 

Here is a thing about me: I like the open country in summer, rolling hills and fields with tall grasses swept by comfortable breezes. I miss the farmlands of upstate New York where I lived for many years. But in winter, give me woods with snow on the trees and over my boots. I know about snow’s inconveniences. They are made up for by the moments of beauty and solitude. You will not get me south for that reason. I prefer what I get by peering into the forest, half hidden underneath a snow-laden bough of hemlock, to idling with the cartop down, nine deep at the traffic light in the Florida sunshine. I can wait for July.

This is how it came up with my son over the weekend: he asked, do you like it here in winter (which may have been code for *Are you two fine here in winter*?). Yes, I answered, I like it. I get to this point in the year, once winter has truly arrived, and I like it even better than the summer. I said the same thing to the wonderful people who sold us our property when they asked the same question, how do you like it in winter? 

I like it better.

I can see what you mean, my son acknowledged by the end of the weekend, looking at the blowing strands of snow slide across the frozen pond, and diamond sparkles of early morning sunlight pierce through the trees, while I knelt beside the stove to stoke the fire. 

Summer is love. Winter is enchantment. For as long as I can, I will cling to both.

*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript,* January *23, 2024*
### About Breakfast
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/about-breakfast/
Last updated: 2024-01-12T18:55:52.000Z
Here we go, another Presidential election year and you may be around the kitchen table at night discussing what needs fixing. How about we start with breakfast?

My wife and I are just off the road from a drive to Louisville to visit our son who works there in the hotel business. We set off the day after Christmas in a car loaded with valuables for his apartment and one-year-old puppy, Huckleberry.

A road trip with Huckleberry is a column by itself. The headline might be “Pup Cup,” the name Starbucks gives to the small container of whipped cream it hands out at the drive-through that dispatches in every direction once it reaches the dog’s nose. You have to be into that much dog excitement to agree a storm of whipped cream is worth it. An example would be the young man who gleefully handed us the pup cup before sunrise one morning as we struggled to keep Huck from leaping out the driver’s window. “This is the reason I work here!” he said, Huckleberry howling in the background.

I wish I was as moved by our own breakfast experiences. What happened to that important part of the day? It is a rhetorical question. The demise of breakfast happened a long time ago. I do not want to spin this sociologically—two working parents, early morning bus stops, everybody on the go—or nutritionally: I am not interested in how many essential vitamins and minerals you can squeeze from a pouch into your mouth. Unless you are orbiting in space without access to a stove.

This is a quality issue. And mostly, it regards how to cook an egg.

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. I understand some people like eggs this way, the way Mom made. Or Grandma. Some people like steak well done. My dear, late father-in-law was one, a true Yankee. As a youth, he hunted squirrel and possum, cooked, and ate them in order to not go hungry. He insisted I cook his steak until I could scrape the grill clean with it. I understand. To each their own. Except these days, there is no available option for a gently scrambled egg, rich and velvety with butter. It has gone off the market. It is no longer for sale.

A poached egg should feature a firm white wrapped around a creamy yolk (hint: to achieve consistent results, you must use a pot with gently boiling water deep enough for the yolk to drop *through* the white), and if it arrives in a small dish, it should not be sitting in a puddle of water. This is the breakfast thought of the day: a poached egg should not be served in a bath of tepid, gray water. The universal breakfast equation will be brought closer to balance if we simply eliminate water from a dish of poached eggs. Use a slotted spoon. Reach for a sheet of paper towel.

I will say that I enjoy a three-egg omelet, cooked on a griddle, folded into thirds, with veg, ham, and cheese. This is my go-to if I am traveling and stop at a diner. The requirement is American cheese, which is applied in thin squares, will melt uniformly, and offset the inevitable dry eggs. Other cheeses, pre-shredded from a bag, tend to be unevenly distributed by busy cooks, and congeal in clumps. Besides, bagged cheeses have no flavor, cheddar or otherwise. Go for texture. 

At each hotel, the breakfast buffet was dominated by the make-your-own-waffle iron. It is a triumph of fun over (real) food. Yes, the kids luv ‘em, slathered in butter and “golden” corn syrup. But submerge one of those waffles in water and you will understand why everyone is hungry again in an hour. 

This is more-or-less a friendly column that steers clear of sharp criticism, which I am not qualified to offer in most regards. Breakfast is an exception. I do not wish to throw any hotel brands under the bus—my son’s included (who was brought up a breakfast snob and is tormented by their offering)—but it does not matter, pick any of them. The pretense of a decent breakfast is gone. Vanished. Today, you are invited to nuke your plastic-wrapped breakfast sandwich, carry it to your table with coffee, or tea, crunchy green and orange melon squares, maybe yogurt, plastic fork, spoon, knife, and listen to Good Morning America.

What a way to start the day. 

The drive to and from Louisville is two days for us. We left New Year’s Eve, got home late afternoon New Year’s Day. As previous owners of retail businesses, we are in the habit of thanking people for working weekends and holidays, in markets, at restaurants, wherever. “Hey, thanks for working Sunday,” we’ll say. We made a couple of incidental stops New Year’s Day. One was a pet store. We needed something else for Huckleberry to chew on after he ate the arm rest in the back of the Subaru. 

“Thanks for working New Year’s,” I said to the woman at the counter, who scowled and answered that she only got two days off a year. Ouch.

We stopped later at a fun-looking store that advertised lunch. There was a large bell at the front, the sort you ring for service. But a big one, a caricature of the device. My wife chirped, “What a fun bell!”

“I *hate* that bell,” the guy at the counter said. Ouch.

What needs fixing? Start with breakfast.

(*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, January 9, 2024)*
### Nothing Much Happens
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/nothing-much-happens/
Last updated: 2023-12-30T13:38:47.000Z
The local utility company, Eversource, is swapping out telephone poles in the woods around us. We needed that. 

 Nearly two years ago we got the attention of a service person who was onsite to update household meters shortly after we had cleared about an acre of land. The clearing had exposed lines dangerously low to the ground as a consequence of being strung, long ago, between poles too far apart. By long ago, I mean over fifty years, when it was farmland, and they were using small, twenty-five-foot poles not much bigger around than your leg. I never knew this, but telephone poles have a “born on” date, the term this service worker used. The low wires caught his eye, and I followed him around as he inspected poles on our property. He was an affable guy, with a genuine interest in the historical record, snapping pictures of the metal numbers and disks on each pole with his iPhone. 

 “This one is almost ninety years old,” he said slapping the pole in the corner of the lot that had always listed to the side with the transformer. It is set next to the creek that runs along the back of the field. Spring and fall, the water comes over the top of your boot if you are wandering around out there. 

 He must have showed the pictures to the right person, because two days later a white SUV appeared out of which stepped a guy in crisp khakis, clean shirt, a good pair of boots, and Eversource parka. He marched out to the middle of the field and stood there looking both ways for a while, then over to the corner pole, then followed the creek into the woods toward our neighbor’s property. I had a good vantage point on all this from my studio and saw him reappear on the driveway further down, which is when I threw on my coat and went to meet him.

 He introduced himself as an engineer. Whereas the service worker was happy to have me follow him around it was clear the engineer was not. Not if I was going to start asking engineering questions. I retreated. By the time he left, he had driven a few wooden stakes into the ground, wrapped colorful tape around poles, and affixed little red flags to them. We would be getting more than one new pole.

 Nothing happened for a year. Then, early last spring, a red bucket truck came down the driveway towing a big pole. Very big. Nearly twice the size of the toothpicks we were used to. 

 “How tall is that?” I asked, anxious about the idea of this substantial totem going up in our new field. 

 “Forty feet,” answered one of the installers. “Minimum requirement. They don’t even make those little ones anymore,” pointing to a toothpick. 

 The bucket truck got stuck repeatedly trying to get to the position where the engineer had guided them with a stake and flag. The crew was on site for the whole afternoon. They left behind deep tire tracks, but the height of the new pole all but caused the previously low hanging wires to disappear from view. Honestly, as the sun hits them, they vanish. It is brilliant.

 So, after coming to us that day two years before, we imagine the engineer drove his SUV down other dirt roads, hiked a short way into neighboring woods, planted other flags, and determined the need for general renewal. Finally, several crews descended this month with a brief to replace *thirty* poles, including four more around us. And this time, they arrived with half-tracks suited for rolling around the woods. 

 If you had to pick one thing to describe rural life, it could easily be that nothing much new ever happens. I can’t imagine dropping what I was doing to engage men and woman planting new telephone poles when we lived in suburban Boston. Life there went on against a background loop of change that continued without notice. The only time a utility company worker ever got my attention was when an unfortunate squirrel shorted the power line as it scampered home. The resulting explosion brought us all outside to meet the repair crew, which quickly diagnosed the problem, pointing to the charred, smoking remains of the poor creature on the ground. A veritable fossil at that point, it fell to me to remove it with a shovel, becoming the only sort of thing to punch through the dull routine of change we were used to.

 Comcast has added to the frenzy of thirty new telephone poles by arriving to string cable. It presents some sort of paradox, because the last time I experienced the arrival of cable to my door was in New York City, in 1979, when it reached East 79th street from across town. Moments away from 2024–almost fifty years later—it is happening again. Five hundred channels, twenty-four seven, over hill and dale to the woods of southern New Hampshire, where nothing much new ever happens. 

 Do we need that?
### Boxing Day
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/untitled-2/
Last updated: 2023-12-29T15:18:52.000Z
Our European cousins, as well as others around the world, have a few priorities straight. One of them is Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. In this country, we scurry back to work. But, elsewhere, Boxing Day is a national holiday that offers an extra day to come down from the frenzy of the season. It is programmed with sporting events such as rugby, soccer, and cricket (in the Southern Hemisphere). And shopping. The equivalent of our Black Friday.

 This is not to ignore that many people are on vacation this week. Schools are closed. But it is satisfyingly different to have a bank holiday, lessening the horse trading that must go on about who will cover the office, and pressing us together for one more day. At least until all the boxes are broken down and readied for recycling, the dishes put away, the pie gone, along with the leftover turkey or roast. 

 You are entitled to your own set of facts when it comes to the origins of Boxing Day because there are none. I will save you a trip to Wikipedia, which seems to come down on the side of those who say the name derives from a tradition of presenting a box to employees and contractors with a tip for services rendered over the year. Alternatively, food: household staff would have the day off after working the holiday and be sent to the relatives laden with the remains of their employer’s feast, in boxes, from the day before. 

 No children or grandchildren at home with us for Christmas this year. We had our fair share at Thanksgiving, and they went off to the in-laws this time. We slid in around my brother’s table, next to nieces and nephews who are accomplishing wonderful things in the world as public school teachers, policy advocates, and financiers.

I am learning to let go of the idea I know more than these young people, despite having accumulated a lot of knowledge over the years. They argue points one after the other, rat-a-tat-tat, while I wander the dusty shelves of my mind in search of references I can bring to the discussion. Here is one, I will think, except that in the moment it takes to retrieve the item from where it is buried among the stacks in my memory, the conversation has moved on and dessert is on the table. This may be one reason why older people embrace dessert the way they do. We have come to terms with no longer being part of the problem-solving set. On the other hand, there is pudding.

Next year is a Presidential election year. My New Year’s resolution is going to be seeing as many of the candidates as I can when they come through the state, always a unique opportunity for us in New Hampshire. It will be a year for escaping the filters by trying to hear from them firsthand. 

The national broadcast filters are particularly stingy with what they report. I encourage anyone who asks (and plenty who don’t), to stay away from places like MSNBC and FOX unless they are content to remain in one lane and let it take them wherever it goes—which is nowhere new, since the only pursuit of those outlets is preserving the size of the viewing audience. Partisanship turns out to be the easiest and cheapest strategy for that, but it is not especially good for us.

If you are lucky enough to live in a town with a local newspaper like this one, you can rely on balanced reporting. Economics is a driver here, too. Small communities struggle to support their local papers which must, of necessity, respond to the needs of the whole. It leads them to be deeply invested in reflecting the lives and sensibilities of the entire neighborhood. The result, the experts say, is social cohesion. Judge for yourself. I think it works.

Between now and the New Year there is more time for revelry. I expect we will be in bed before the ball drops, but a fast compilation of things to remember 2023 by will include the March snowstorm, a trip to the Middle East, fear for the Middle East, rain, bridge work (is forever), puppies are more work than babies, and that, all in all, we can’t think of someplace we would rather be. 

It goes in the box with the rest of the season’s precious gifts.

(*Published December 26, 2023 in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript)*
### Power to the People
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/power-to-the-people/
Last updated: 2023-12-12T15:29:05.000Z
Thank you to Eversource which was back again for the second week in a row to restore our power, this time at two-thirty in the morning. We have a generator that comes on automatically under the circumstances, but you could easily miss noticing it sound asleep in the middle of the night. Especially when muffled by snow and wind as it was, and on the opposite side of the house.

It is a peculiar thing to wake in the middle of the night conscious that something is different. I am sure you know. 

It was not the background noise of the generator I noticed first. Nor the present darkness because the lights were off to begin with. I think it was the click of the electrical panel in the basement when the generator kicked on. Probably years ago, as a young, first-time homeowner with sleeping children down the hallway—newly responsible for things that go bump in the night—my subconscious classified sounds made by an electrical panel as important, with instructions to *wake him if necessary.*

So, I think that is what woke me. A couple of blinks of the eye later I clued to the distant generator. 

Drat.

I sat up in bed, felt around the side table for the mobile phone, surfed to Eversource, entered my number, clicked Power Outage, got up to stoke the wood stove, and waited for the telephone to ring, which it did in about five minutes. “Hey, hello,” said the Eversource agent. (He really said that. Very cheerful.) No power? Did you hear a loud bang? Could you maybe check your meter outside and tell me what it says? (Nothing.) Okay, two crews are mobilized (he said that, too, which is like hearing the cavalry is coming). They are marching to Francestown (he did not say “marching”). Then, on to you!

At some point, we are going to be on a first name basis with these people. As I mentioned, this was the second week in a row they came to the rescue. It is possible, instead, that a representative will reach out eventually to explain that if we continue living where we do, we will have to survive by generating our own electricity. Enough of sending people to hike through snowy woods in the middle of the night. Which dooms a good portion of New Hampshire, of course; but the point is, we are grateful. 

Two trucks came down the driveway, search lights probing through the trees, men dismounted and scouting on foot. They found nothing, determined the wires had been shorted by an unknown falling branch, and turned the power back on. The electrical panel clicked. The clock said two-thirty. They drove away.

I wonder how far it will be in the future when the notion that we delivered electrical power around the world by stringing wires over hill and dale will seem archaic. We are at the dawn of artificial intelligence. It is a good problem for the deep minds, which I discussed with my friend, Chat Brutus, this morning:

**Me:** What do you think is the likelihood we'll conduct electricity someday without wires?

**Chat Brutus** (edited down by me for space considerations. Brutus is excitable and gets chatty): While there are still technical and practical challenges to overcome, the likelihood of conducting electricity without wires in the future is promising. 

**Me**: Do you think AI can help speed up that eventuality?

**Chat Brutus**: Absolutely. Here's how:

1\. Design Optimization.

2\. Simulation and Modeling

3\. Energy Efficiency

4\. Material Science

5\. Automation of wireless power transmission systems, ensuring optimal performance and safety.

By leveraging AI technology, we can accelerate the development and deployment of wireless electricity transmission systems, bringing us closer to the realization of this exciting technological advancement.

**Me:** Thanks, friend.

**Chat Brutus:** You're welcome, Jarvis! If you need anything else or have more questions in the future, don't hesitate to reach out. I'm here to help.

There you have it. Though, as always, I am left wondering how I feel about another “exciting technological advancement” versus rescue by two guys gamely clomping through snowy woods in the middle of the night. I suppose the answer is I am moved to write about the one today and question what there will be to write about the other tomorrow.
### Just Like That
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/just-like-that/
Last updated: 2023-11-29T19:05:20.000Z
Just Like That

0:00

/364.553288

1×

The Thanksgiving dishes are barely put away and just like that the holiday season is on us, inclusive of two inches of snow that fell on southern New Hampshire last week. We went to a comedy show earlier in the year at the Colonial Theatre in nearby Keene, and one of the performers (Ken Rogerson, a very funny guy) opened with a jab at New England weather. Pulling on your clothes in the morning, he explained, the day outside looks bright and clear. Except that in the time it takes to *bend over and tie your shoe*, it starts snowing outside!

True, amplified by the fact that the southern border of New Hampshire is a weather line. I collected my son from Logan airport on the snowy day in question and drove home through light drizzle unimpeded until we hit the higher altitudes of the hills around us, whereupon we crept the last several miles through near-blizzard conditions.

The first snow of the year reduces us to feeling clumsy and awkward behind the wheel. We are all Californians at that moment. It takes a few attempts to get our snow-driving game on. Likewise, true for the state highway departments, apparently bent over tying their shoes as we slid gingerly down the western slope of Temple Mountain that night—snow accumulating on the roads, obscuring the lines, and coming straight at our windshield.

Concentrating fully to keep from going off the road, my son and I swapped snow-driving stories of the past. Coming of age in Western New York, I have many of those. They are made more electrifying by the nature of the vehicles we drove in those days, which were big, spongy, eight-cylinder cars with rear-wheel-drive, handed down from family or friends, possibly with one headlight not working, and no such thing as intermittent wipers. My good friend had one of those cars. We called it Big Moe.

I can’t help it; I still pump the brakes despite modern anti-lock systems. You had to be there, road-tripping back to school in the dark after a weekend of no sleep, in blinding snow, unable to see past the end of an enormousfront hood, trying not to spin off the New York Thruway.

The snow delighted our visiting three-year-old grandson and nine-month-old puppy Huckleberry, who stepped cautiously from the house into the white stuff. There is nothing burdensome about snow when you are too young to be asked to work a shovel. Over the course of a full morning playing outside making snow angels, tracking ‘wild animal’ footprints, and building a snowman, the only inconvenience of the arriving season for our grandson was a sock that kept slipping to the bottom of his boot. Admittedly, that is irritating. And you know that once a sock has shimmied off a foot it is permanently broken no matter how many times you stop to remove the boot . . . pull up the sock . . . replace the boot . . . brush off snow pants . . . and carry on your way. We proved this again but heard nothing from him about going inside. Snow here today could be gone tomorrow.

Anyway, Thanksgiving—*poof*—and just like that our inboxes are full of Black Friday offers. The world is released to fill the airways with carols, string holiday lights, and buy Christmas trees; although when I see the SUVs with trees strapped to the roof at this stage, I think of the profusion of dry pine needles on the floor several weeks from now.

We live among the pines and will cut down a small one in another couple of weeks. We will keep it up for at least the twelve days of Christmas, more likely for another week after that. So almost a month. There will be very few pine needles afterward on the floor, the benefit of a tree straight from the backyard.

My late, great, mother-in-law was one of those people who would have her holiday shopping finished and wrapped by Halloween. She chipped away at it all year. I am one of those people who will open a bag of peanuts in the check-out line of the grocery store and finish it before I get to the register. How, then, can I be expected to buy a present in March and wait to give it to someone in December? Inspiration does not work that far in advance for me. I may lose or forget I have the item as a consequence of hiding it well enough to remain undiscovered and out of the way. Dogs can evidently remember the location of up to twelve bones they have buried in the ground. Each morning I am responsible for gathering a set of car keys, a mobile telephone, and my wallet—things I use *every* day—and it is a circus show.

I have a friend whose wife does not cook, as in never. Nor does he. Neither of them cooks. They go out for dinner every night. (No kidding.) He hides presents for her in the oven. My situation is different. My wife is the only person who knows where every item is in the house (except my keys, phone, and wallet, although she tries). She sorts, folds, and puts away my laundry. She uses every closet to its maximum fill capacity. She loves baskets and boxes and squirrels everything in them. I have one place I can possibly hide something that might escape her attention and that is this studio where I write, but it is exactly in this place that she discovered an old present for my daughter tucked into the eaves that was to have been under the Christmas tree two years ago! “What’s this?” she asked. We had to open it to find out.

The Black Friday deals keep extending, which suggests there are others like me, slow to get their holiday shopping act together. The wood is stacked, the outdoor furniture stowed, the window screens are off. But the holidays always sneak up on me. Thanksgiving comes and goes, and just like *that--*I have to find my wallet.
### Thanksgiving
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/thanksgiving/
Last updated: 2023-11-27T16:23:34.000Z
We will collect our fresh turkey from the local market today and dry brine it. This means rubbing it inside and out with a concoction of kosher salt and spices and popping it in the refrigerator, uncovered, until Thursday morning. The arid environment of the fridge will help dry out the skin for extra crispness on roasting day.

You probably know this, but brining poultry, or pork, adds flavor to the meat through osmosis. The salt draws moisture out until the muscle tissue calls for some of it back, whereupon the flavor of the brine sneaks in. Neat trick. Kind of a culinary Trojan Horse. With a wet brine, the reverse osmosis pulls in added moisture in addition to flavor. Sounds good, but a wet-brined turkey means a very large pot, full of a brining liquid that has been boiled and cooled, and ample space to accommodate it in the refrigerator. We are a two-refrigerator family, with a small one in the basement for extra freezer space to store stocks and sauces. Even with the extra space, a wet brine is a commitment of available resources. And it is a bit like cheating, drawing in that extra juiciness. 

Not to digress, but if you buy a wet-brained product from your butcher, be aware you are paying for the extra weight of that water. Better to make a one-time investment in an instant meat thermometer, temp frequently, and don’t overcook the bird. (Be careful of those plastic pop-up, “know-when-it’s-done” things, which will frequently result in an overcooked turkey (or chicken). You may already know that, too.)

It will be a smallish group at our table. I think there will be eight of us, one of whom will not have turkey because he is only four months old, and a singular eater. By his presence and that of his three-year-old brother, however, our small group will be four generations deep, which may top the list of things to be thankful for at Thanksgiving. There is also the bounty of the table, the natural beauty of where we live, our neighbors and friends, and the intimate sense of community we enjoy in this discreet corner of New England.

That sense is acute at the moment because I am writing from Los Angeles, city of almost four million angels. We rented a car and in an overt display of our rural conditioning, keep saying, ‘holy cow’ each time Google Maps reveals it is going to take an hour to get to a destination only a dozen, or so, miles away. In return, we are entertaining the LA locals by pointing out that the nearest traffic light (merely a flashing light, we stress) is seven miles from the end of our driveway.

But there we were yesterday, amidst four million people, standing in a long line at a popular breakfast place, when my wife blurted out, “Wait, stop her!” When I didn’t respond, she stepped out of line to hurry after a woman wearing a broad, white hat, whom she recognized as a regular guest at the Hancock Inn over the years we owned it. *More* than a regular. In 2011, our first summer as innkeepers, she was the sole guest the night Hurricane Irene blew through. The three of us dined in the old tavern as the lights flickered and the storm lashed against the building. It was a sort of shipwreck experience, alone on a desert island, that left behind a special attachment. 

Thereafter, for over ten years, she would stay a night when arriving to open her house on Highland Lake for the season, and stay another at the end, before heading home to California. She was among those by whom we kept track of the seasons, by whom we marked time as innkeepers. And at odds of four million to one, we were back at the table with each other for breakfast, admiring the breathtaking view of the Pacific from her porch along the boardwalk of Hermosa Beach, and fending off her generous insistence we bail on the hotel and move into her guest room for the balance of the weekend.

A year and a half after selling the inn we are asked almost every day do we miss being innkeepers. No, we do not. It is hard to feel wistful for the long hours and seven-day work weeks. But we are thankful for having *been* innkeepers in many small ways and, sometimes, as you see, in big ones.

May you come together where you are. Against all odds, may the world do likewise. May we be thankful at once, everyone, everywhere, someday.

(*Published November 21, 2023 in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript.)*
### Porcupine
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/porcupine/
Last updated: 2023-10-28T09:30:01.000Z
Porcupine

0:00

/344.76691609977325

1×

It is that time of year when daylight is being squeezed at both ends in a hurry. In another week, we will revert to standard time by returning an hour of sunlight from the end of the day to the start. For now, we are up before dawn.

This past Tuesday we were up especially early. Both of us had early morning meetings, Marcia’s in Boston. You would not have called the time pre-dawn, wherein the color of the air is faintly gray. It was black outside. It was very much nighttime. That was our first mistake—everyone who works nights was still working, doing their thing, as budgeted.

Nine-month-old Huckleberry, our puppy, was going with the flow, unperturbed at being dragged from bed for breakfast at five-thirty and thus out the door for his morning constitutionals in the pitch darkness. It was unusual for that portion of his daily routine, but what did he know? *I’m just a Rat Terrier/Labrador mix*. *I wouldn’t think there was much to do at this time of day, but someone must have a plan.*

I had switched on the outdoor lights. That may have been the second mistake. The intention was to scatter any animal that might have been foraging in the yard, but porcupines do not scatter. At best they amble quickly, which is no match for a dog designed for agility and coiled to spring at a moment’s notice. 

Exposed, the porcupine had ambled to hide underneath a thicket of rhododendrons. The movement was enough to catch Huckleberry’s attention and, to be clear, that was the porcupine’s mistake. We might all have done better if the porcupine had remained still, in the shadows. Huck is not a big fan of morning. He will commit to the outdoors for most of the day, working the field for chipmunks and squirrels, but, initially, he prefers breakfast, a brief potty break in the yard, and then indoors. Heaven to him at that point is climbing back in bed to wait for the sound of the kettle whistling, signaling coffee time. 

Going forward, I want to stress this for any porcupines that may be reading this postcard: Huck does not sniff around first thing in the morning. Remain calm. Stay put.

Such an appeal is too late for what happened Tuesday, of course. The lights came on, the porcupine made a break for it, Huckleberry jet blasted to the scene. When he could not rat terrier his way into the twisted knot of rhodies, he hurtled around the perimeter yelping, barking, jumping madly. What the porcupine made of the commotion, I do not know. My understanding is that coyotes howl and sing *after* they have made a kill or when they are reunited following a night of independent, stealthy hunting. Huck behaved as if he was going to bring down the animal by screaming at it. 

Marcia saw all this come together through the window. I was in the shower barking on my own over the sound of the water and ceiling fan: “What the h- - - is going on? Can *we* get the dog inside!?” 

(I use “we” frequently when I mean “you,” as in you, Marcia. I feel it helps neutralize the presumption of command and preserves the sense of partnership. Typically, Marcia will respond, “*We* are working on it!” which I know means *she* is working on it without any help from *me*. This is an example of having good communication in a relationship.)

Fearing the worst, I was hurrying to wrap up in the shower, cutting short a few steps like drying, which was a third mistake. Nothing slows down the process of changing more than wet arms and legs. Luckily I did not crash to the floor pulling on my right trouser leg which got stuck on a heel. Marcia had grabbed Huckleberry’s harness, leash, training clicker, treats—everything she could get her hands on—and rushed to the scene to try and walk him back from the edge and get him inside.

That was the fourth and final mistake. The porcupine might have remained hunkered under the rhododendrons but for the arrival of human reinforcements. Seeing Marcia, it waited the few instants it took for the circling dog to reach the opposite side from where it hid and headed out for the nearby tree line. 

I am reminded of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf at the moment when the poor duck in her excitement jumps out of the pond and runs. Impulsive bad decision. The wolf closes in and gulps down the panicked bird in an instant. The circumstances were somewhat reversed in this case, although the porcupine probably did not feel that way. It had been anticipating a peaceful end to its night of foraging, thinking about heading home, when it was assaulted. 

Porcupines, according to my brother, have only two predators: fishers and humans. Everyone else pays high a price. If a coyote makes the mistake of tucking into a porcupine it will starve, unable to chew. Fortunately for Huckleberry, he has access to twenty-four-hour urgent care. 

By the time Marcia had led our bewildered puppy back to the house I had one shoe on and was working on the second. She held him tight around the collar while he fussed and gnarled as if trying to remove peanut butter from the roof of his mouth. It ought to hurt, but Huck was not whimpering. I think he just could not decide what had happened. 

I drove him to Concord. They kept him for an hour. We drove back with him sleeping it off on the passenger seat. Three hours later he was looking out the window of the den toward the scene of the crime and I knew what he was thinking: next time will be different.

07 Peter and the Wolf Op 67 VII The Duck Is Caught

0:00

/75.37333333333333

1×
### Vaccine
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/vaccine/
Last updated: 2023-10-10T15:32:07.000Z
*(Originally published March 29, 2021 as a Postcard from the Hancock Inn)*

Our turn for a first COVID vaccine was yesterday, three days after we became eligible to register for the shot in New Hampshire as members of category 2B. 

In our corner of the world, the vaccinating is taking place at the Keene State College Athletic Complex and being administered by Monadnock Public Health officials, escorted by the National Guard. 

The process was running like clockwork despite the presence of a few glitches with a new system in use on everyone's Apple iPads, of which there were enough for every volunteer, National Guardsman, and Healthcare worker combing the parking lots. 

"The last system had plenty of glitches," noted the volunteer who arrived at my car window, bundled against the cold weather, plugging away on her iPad with fingers temporarily pulled from her wool mittens. "Those were *old* glitches. These are *new* glitches. It's all good," she said, smiling broadly.

"Are you ready?" she beamed, which made me suddenly think of closing my eyes and tapping my heels together three times. 

Then jab.

"Car flashers on, please. Lean on the horn if you feel faint or are struggling. Wait fifteen minutes and drive home safely." Lastly, she said, "Congratulations, George." (My first name is George, but I am only ever referred to as George by the government.)

When she was forty-three years old my grandmother contracted polio, often called Infantile Paralysis because it mostly attacked children. We suspect she was passed the disease by someone in the acting troupe she was part of that summer, where it was common for the women to share lipstick around the dressing room.

I have heard the story of that fateful day many times, of how my mother stood at the door to my grandmother's room and was told not to come in. Next, the stretcher down the stairs into the back of a waiting ambulance and my grandfather, pacing the front hallway, chain-smoking, no doubt running scenarios in his head. What now?

You may be interested in these facts about polio from the MedLife website:

About twenty-five percent of people infected by the disease suffer minor symptoms such as sore throat and fever, with some pain in the arms and legs, stiffness in the neck, and headaches. Those people typically make a full recovery in a couple of weeks. More interesting is that nearly seventy percent of those infected by polio remain asymptomatic. 

My grandmother did not fall within the ninety-five percent of people with no, or minor symptoms. She would spend the next six months in an iron lung in the adult polio ward where she was likely the oldest patient, receiving Last Rites from a Catholic priest along the way. She emerged at the end an invalid, but gallant and full of life, a columnist afterward for the Buffalo Courier-Express, among other things, and we enjoyed happy times with her over the many years that followed.

I have this personal connection to vaccines. When the polio vaccine came out my mother, aunt, and uncles were among the first to receive the shot--among the first, I tell you, after six thousand years of polio's recorded torment. Dr. Jonas Salk was a hero in our family. Sitting in the car yesterday, waiting as the teams moved down the line of vehicles, I thought back to standing in the hallway outside my first or second-grade classroom in Westport, Connecticut, waiting as the nurses moved down the line of children dispensing sugar cubes laced with the polio vaccine. I remember the cube. I remember its slightly pink color. I remember it going into my mouth. I knew it was important. I knew it was important to my mother.

My wife and I took two cars to the vaccination site yesterday needing to divide and conquer afterward. She was ahead of me in line and first to pull away. She stopped alongside to check how I was feeling, which was fine, as was she. We were filled with the anticipation and excitement of hugging grandchildren. Hugging everyone. Beaming. All good. 

She drove on. I took up my telephone to text Mother. 

*One shot down,* I typed.

*Great! Thank you,* was her reply.
### Growing Tucker
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/workshop/growing-tucker/
Last updated: 2026-07-24T18:22:41.000Z
Growing Tucker *was completed in December, 2o23\. It came together quickly, and was accepted for publication in the February 2024 issue of* [Down in the Dirt Magazine](https://scars.tv/dirt/dirt216feb24/Where%5FIcarus%5FWent.htm?ref=jarviscoffin.com). *Not the prettiest website, or most appealing name, but* Down in the Dirt *is well-established and--bless their hearts--creates space for many first-time and emerging writers.* 

*There is so much more to say about the experience my wife and I had as innkeepers and restauranteurs. And it was the kitchen where so much of the love and heartbreak was created. I can't wait to write more.*

_This post is for paying subscribers only._
### Crunch Time
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/crunch-time/
Last updated: 2023-09-30T09:30:41.000Z
Crunch Time 9 29 23 1116 AM

0:00

/384.9404081632653

1×

There is a more notable risk of twisting my ankle these days as I prowl around the property. At least it feels that way. The oak trees are shedding acorns by the bushel and the lawns, the driveway, in particular the narrow path to the pond, are thick with the little wooden stones that press up against the ball and heel of the foot and pitch and roll under the arch. The evidence is everywhere that it must be a mast year, the mysterious season every two or three years when oaks release acorns like a dog shaking water off its back.

A shallow dive into the interweb on the subject reveals that a huge oak tree can drop as many as ten thousand acorns on these occasions. 

What means “huge?” Without turning around, swiveling my head only one-eighty, I count ten large oak trees. There are several more along the arc of rotation behind me. Are they huge? They are very big, at least. If one fell and hit the house we would be homeless. Hopefully no worse. 

Discounting huge by half we can imagine fifty thousand acorns hitting the ground in front of me and another—who knows—fifty thousand more behind. A total of one hundred thousand acorns scattered across our parcel in the woods. 

How many will grow into mature trees? 

Among the first fifty thousand? Not one. Over a hundred species of animal are known to eat acorns and a solid portion live here. Deer, raccoons, possums, mice, voles, squirrels, chipmunks, turkeys, crows, woodpeckers. We share the same address. We will take out what they do not, with the lawnmower or by crushing them under our car tires or with garden clippers to preserve our pond view, giving room to our azaleas, blueberry bushes, and mountain laurels. The slaughter will be immense. 

Behind me, it will be substantially the same, though there are portions of the property we have designated as untouchable, leaving it to nature. Within those confines—and I do mean confines*—*a few lucky acorns may eke out a future. May push past another upstart. May topple an older relative. May, after years, finally reach the sky. 

Just a few, out of so many bright prospects. 

I will not be here to see it. I envy those that will. The trees, that is. I envy the trees that will be around for another century, the oaks among them. Considering the odds, they deserve it: a lingering chance to catch the morning sun, the evening breezes, the squirrels tickling their skin, the birds that return year after year to raise their families. 

*What is it* to remain in one place and experience that place over many years? Not like we do, mind you, always rushing about. Yes, I know many people have lived somewhere for years. But I ask *what is it* to be *rooted* to a place? To know that place only. 

I drove by a house where I once lived and there was the tree I remembered in the front yard, grown to a commanding size, with limbs that extended over the rooftop. A different swing set was in the back. Different cars in the driveway. Different plants against the house. There was a new garage off one side. Indeed, the house was barely recognizable from the one we lived in. But I knew the tree, and I was drawn to the question would it know me? After all these years, if I had stepped out of the car and walked around to the curb, giving it a good look, removing my hat, exposing my balding head, holding my arms wide as if we might embrace as old friends, would it have known me? Would the sap in its veins have jumped, and its branches fluttered? Would it have gasped, Oh great mercy, look who’s here?

All the questions I would have had about the old neighborhood. All the answers it could have given. Should I not believe it would have known as much about the world from where it was, as I could have told it from where I had been? I had been gone forty years from that place and around many parts of the world. My experience spreads across a large canvas. Its experience runs deep as a well.

It is near time to walk across the lawn to the house, treading on acorns, to feed the dog. I move under the watchful eye of every rooted thing around me, which sees me swept along like last year’s leaves. I comment on their struggle. Perhaps they are sorry for my own. A wanderer. Without anchor. A type of gatherer. Such a lot of busyness mixed with noise. We come and we go, leaving footprints and maybe a few verses behind.

A poem, then, to close, but not mine. It is from a rooted friend.

## ***Ode to an Acorn***

By ChatGuru

*In the forest's embrace, small and round,*

*The mighty acorn rests upon the ground.*

*A promise of strength, hidden within,*

*A tiny seed, where dreams begin.*

*From towering oaks to a sky so blue,*

*It holds the secret of life anew.*

*Nurtured by earth, kissed by the rain,*

*It grows with hope, breaking free from the plain.*

*In its shell, a future unfolds,*

*A tale of resilience, yet untold.*

*Patiently it waits, in winter's cold,*

*For the warmth of spring, it will behold.*

*With roots that anchor, deep and strong,*

*It stands tall, amidst nature's throng.*

*From a humble seed, a legacy so grand,*

*The acorn's journey, across the land.*

*So let us cherish, this small marvel we see,*

*The acorn's significance, for you and me.*

*In its humble form, there lies a power,*

*A reminder that from little, greatness can flower.*

>
### Docks Out
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/docks-out/
Last updated: 2023-09-25T17:48:20.000Z
Notice has been given by the nice people that handle the in and out of our dock that the time for out is upon us. Beginning in another couple of weeks they will start making the rounds to button-up the shoreline for winter. 

This is usually when remorse settles in about how little time we spent during the season on the pond. Our engagement peaked in June when the grandchildren were here, which is the last time I tossed a fishing line in the water or slid on the rubber flippers hanging in the shed by the water (the prior owners called it the oar house . . . yuck, yuck), or brought a picnic down for lunch. 

The grandchildren left, the rains came, and poof. 

It rained hard again yesterday. The water level is up to the top step on the dock ladder and the surface of the water is littered with debris off the trees from gusty winds. 

The wind drives me indoors more than the rain. I ventured out a couple of times yesterday to prowl the yard, mostly to get the puppy, Huckleberry, up from the couch to go about his business, with short walks down the driveway and to the water. The rain slapped the side of my face. Somehow, wind is exhausting. It is an antagonist, like a gang of rustlers riding into town. You can see the dust kicking up in the distance and when they finally thunder in the best bet is to retreat indoors while they clatter around, bang windows, swing doors, (oar house doors included), hurling things from one side of the street to the other. Afterward, will be the time for rakes, brooms, and baskets to carry the detritus away.

It is still breezy down by the pond where I have come to compose this garble. The sun goes in and out as the clouds get swept across the sky, causing me to lose sight of what I am garbling in the glare. This is a first for the season, sitting by the pond to write. Normally, I pad over to my studio above the garage and write indoors, looking at the driveway. 

Why write indoors you might wonder, when there is a dock and Adirondack chairs nearby and a pond to muse over? Isn’t that what writers do? Sit under apple trees, by seashores, or with a view of the mountains. Actually, most of them write anywhere they can, including cupboards and basements. It is simply the dock alarm bell ringing in my head. It spurs me to react the same way Huckleberry does when another dog comes over and makes a grab for the bone he has ignored for weeks. Suddenly, the bone is his most prized possession. I am giving the dock its due.

But I think I began by writing that dock-out time was when remorse for the missed opportunities of the summer *usually* set in. It is different this year because of all the rain. It is hard to feel entirely responsible. In July and August, we bailed out the canoe more times than we paddled in it. We bailed again this past weekend and finally brought the canoe up on shore in a partial act of surrender. 

There is also the fact our cabin was undergoing some renovations. That sort of disruption affects everything, like having house guests for two months. Yard work stalls, housekeeping goes by the boards, no one else comes over, we barely go to the post office. It did not help that one of us, my wife, was working nights and weekends at the Peterborough Players Theatre which greatly impacted canoe cocktails. Probably, that had more to do with it than anything. And for that, I am entirely responsible because someone around here has to work for a living while the other is musing by the pond.

Maybe when the dock comes out I will coat it with teak oil. 

Can you believe it is the end of September?
### Neighbors
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/workshop/workshop-2/
Last updated: 2026-07-24T18:21:16.000Z
*This was an attempt at flash fiction, usually anything under a thousand words. I haven't done much with the story, which goes back to June 2023\. It is unpublished. Rereading for the first time in a couple of years, I'm still attached to it, although it might be better with the cat as narrator. I may try that when there's a moment.*

_This post is for paying subscribers only._
### Summer's End
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/summers-end/
Last updated: 2023-09-13T15:38:26.000Z
I feel sure the hummingbirds were gone by the end of August last summer. But here we are, getting close to the Autumnal Equinox, September 23rd, and two of them are hurriedly feeding at the annuals we set out for them in May.

If you thought likewise in the spring about purchasing hummingbird-friendly plants, then you are probably sensitive to their need to bulk up body weight by twenty-five to forty percent before the arduous journey back to Central America. 

I have been thinking about that. Most days, I am about two hundred pounds. Were I required to achieve similar weight gains over the four months of late spring and summer before walking to Mexico for the winter, I would have to tip the scales at between two-fifty, and two-eighty, which would be a chore. I would need to spend all day eating, as the hummingbirds do, who forage between fifteen hundred stops. I would require, really, only one stop: the couch, with large sandwiches and ice cream.

The particular plants over which the hummingbirds hover have trumpet-shaped red flowers, and they are growing thin and tired. They can’t do the job of nourishing the birds much longer, whose little heart rates will rise to over twelve hundred beats a minute, and wings flap fifteen to eighty times per second en route south. 

I think it must be the rain in July that has pinned them down. Not simply the amount of rain but the fact it fell in torrents. 

There is also the question of the bats. I watched them against the blue-gray twilight sky last night while grilling chicken and wondered how they were doing ahead of departure time. They must have been similarly impacted by the wet weather and difficult flying conditions. I was struck by how high up a few of them were flying, at least three or four stories above. They seemed to be working in layers. Someone may know the answer. Do they organize into flight patterns that way? A few flitted overhead, within range of a tennis racket, others circled several yards farther up, while the rest looped in acrobatic fashion near the top of white pines. What was up that high? The mosquito action was down low, where I was standing, which was as near to the grill as possible to discourage the little blood suckers. 

At the end of a summer with a month of record rainfall, the feasting is good for bats. But it is the *end* of the summer. We have already had cool nights needing extra blankets. It has been warm since, but the clock is ticking. The bats may need more time to bulk up before hibernation. 

In other news of things that must, by necessity, get done in the summer despite the weather, the local high school parking lot project appears to have been completed in the nick of time. Mountains of sand and asphalt managed to get rolled into a level, hard surface in time for the buses to arrive despite tropical rains. From the outside, it looked like a squeaker. But driving past the lot a couple of weeks ago suddenly it was full, my cue that the new school year had begun.

Back to school always sneaks up on me. I am still not used to the fact it comes before Labor Day, which had for decades signaled the official end of summer--nor am I happy about it. I recall Labor Day picnics, parades, swim races, farewells to summer romances, new shoes, traffic stretching for miles at New England toll booths, all of it emblematic of migration. A symphony of movement we made with other species. All of us getting organized, ready to travel, changing plumage, closing up camp.

Who reinvented back to school for us in New England, taking up the Labor Day finish line by loading in a few days of school in August? The end of summer here—short as it is—deserves a decent pagan festival heralding the harvest and celebrating the work that went into it, literally and metaphorically. Nowadays, the end of summer coasts to a stop, short of an official finish line, making it hardly worth getting off the couch to fetch a sandwich.

*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, September 12, 2023*
### Fiddleheads
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/fiddleheads/
Last updated: 2023-09-18T17:08:12.000Z
Hancock’s Fiddleheads Café reopened Memorial Day weekend after a winter hiatus, during which time owner Sherry Williams continued her search for a buyer to fulfill her retirement goal, having worked might and main at the business for eighteen years.

Ownership events occurring with small, rural businesses in New England towns breed anxious moments for people in those communities. A single café or market (or inn) may be all they have that provides some vibrancy to Main Street or saves time driving elsewhere for shopping and congregating. The businesses may also have historic significance. They may have been at the center of town for a century or more, raising issues of preservation and stewardship. Will a new owner know these things? Will they embrace them in the face of the usual business challenges around here, including winter?

Fortunately, experts in these regards stepped up to acquire and manage Fiddleheads, beginning with Hancock resident Eleanor Briggs, who purchased the business for the second time to give it a soft landing and leased the name and building to Samantha Rule, who arrived in town after successful stints with two Harrisville treasures: the General Store, which she ran for eight years, and Aldworth Manor where she was Chef. Both individuals are perfectly tuned to the importance of community in a part of the world where communities are small and stand-alone.

I attended Grandparents Day at our grandson's school in Wayne, Pennsylvania, a few weeks ago. Some of you may be familiar with Lancaster Avenue, which we relied on over a few days to get us around Philadelphia's Main Line. We were in Wayne and Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Radnor, Ardmore, Villanova—all over the place—as I rode along with my daughter between pick-up and drop-off at schools and whatever else. It was a punishing collection of traffic lights, road work and pedestrians. And, these days, even after spending years in that area, I lost track quickly of where I was at any given moment (unless I was waiting at a light next to Villanova University).

The fact is, the Main Line is all one town. One giant community. One monument to suburban sprawl. Wayne, Pennsylvania, was an outpost on the Main Line once upon a time. Not anymore. It looks like the rest of them. It merges seamlessly with the towns around it. Same glass buildings. Same Starbucks. Same Whole Foods.

Spend enough time in those suburban megalopolises, as many of us did carving out careers and raising children, and places like ours, in rural New England, are a tonic. There are obvious reasons—the landscape, rivers and lakes, the undulating country roads, the quiet, and the absence of traffic lights (but not road work)—and the less obvious: the happy surprises. The pop-ups.

The happiest of those surprises may be encountering a café in a small town, with a decent array of baked goods or other morsels to eat, things to drink, and a comfortable place to sit, inside or out. A few locals, on a first-name basis with the people behind the counter and with each other, drift in and out while you sit at the table and think about what it would be like to live there.

California has winding roads and small cafes in small towns, but I do not know anyone who goes there to experience them unless they live there. People travel to Napa to be delighted by a new red or white. Or along the coastal highway to watch the sunset over the Pacific. If you have not experienced them, I recommend either adventure for a taste of grandeur. A blood orange sun sinking on the horizon of a vast ocean or waves of vineyards carefully pruned and manicured. It is rich, which is precisely how to think about it. You can look, but you cannot touch.

We share what we have here differently in small, unique packages curated over the years by people who live above the store in towns along the way.

And as long as the chain of those people remains unbroken, everything else about us survives.

See you some time at Fiddleheads.

*Published June 6, 2023 in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*
### The White Wood Aster
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/the-white-wod-aster/
Last updated: 2023-08-30T16:10:42.000Z
The White Wood Aster is blooming, generally the last plant of the season around the property to issue its flowers, white daisy-like creations with a pale yellow center. For years, I mowed them down or weed-whacked them. They grew around the edges of the woods, not looking like much: spindly stems, jagged-edge leaves, pronounced veins that made them appear wilted. Not especially elegant. But I fell behind with the landscaping, which allowed them to propagate, and at the end of the first summer, after we moved to the Pond for good, we had a white border running around the yard, arriving just as we were beginning to lament the end of the growing season. Perfectly timed to lift our spirits. Now we cultivate the darlings.

There is a metaphor for life in that, which I invite you to dig out if you wish. I work at metaphors, these days. All of them arise from the natural world. I am reading a book by Rebecca Makkai, a marvelous author, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist. The book is, “I Have Some Questions for You,” which you may have read. In one scene she describes the light coming through the windows of her old school. “It was different there,” she writes, “older, passing through centuries before it reached you. Outside in winter, it came down in needles; inside, it fell like soup.”

I have no idea what that means. But I have experience living as a young student in the sort of old building she describes, with light passing through dusty, lead-framed windows, sunk into thick stone walls, like castle walls, and she nails it. Great metaphors make you feel something.

Anyway, I am very protective of our Wood asters now, though they are not, in fact, Asters. They are cousins. They are Eurybias. We do have proper Asters. We have both the Whorled wood aster and the blue wood aster. The Whorled wood is plentiful around us. The other is not. I have lost track of it, actually. It is around here somewhere, but I forget where. I have an app, you see, that helps identify plants and over the past few years I have snapped countless pictures of the perennial population around us so that the catalog is now overwhelming, and locations not well documented. Not documented at all, I am afraid.

The plan is to retrace my steps around the property—about four acres—to make careful notes of the more desirable varieties. I am thinking particularly of the Common buttonbush, Trailing lantana, Carolina rose, Sweet woodruff (which I would like to move to a couple of places that need ground cover), Pink lady slipper (these are cropping up around footpaths; the dog wiped out a couple of them this summer), and red raspberry.

The raspberry is particularly frustrating. Who would not want to cultivate raspberries? We have Velvet leaf huckleberry and California blackberry plants (also Allegany blackberry according to the app). I know where those are and have pruned along the way. But I have not found the raspberry, albeit after a superficial search a few weeks ago. But I have the picture, evidence that it is here.

We also have the little wild strawberries that grow like a net through the grasses of one particular hill. There was not a good crop of them this year, perhaps because of the rain. Last year, our six-year-old granddaughter filled a pint container with them.

I doubt there is anyone who does not have something to say about what all the rain we had this season did to certain plants and crops. The lettuce in our gardens has overachieved. It has been bountiful. Big red and green leaves billowing over the frames of the raised beds. The carrots have also done well and the potatoes. I am going to start plucking beets soon. The tomatoes on the other hand are weeks behind. There are blossoms and a few walnut-sized fruit dangling from the stems. If we get tomatoes at all it will be the end of September. I have heard this from many people.

Last year we did not have any water. This year we had too much. Nature has a wonderful way of evening the score. You win some, you lose some, some get rained out. But you dress for them all, as a friend says.

There is a metaphor in that, which the White wood aster knows.

*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, August 29, 2023*
### Green Tomatoes
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/green-tomatoes/
Last updated: 2023-08-26T09:30:47.000Z
Green Tomatoes 8 25 23 404 PM

0:00

/4:46

1×

I am featuring an image today of our 2023 tomato crop. If you look closely you can make out two small, green globes of fruit about the size of a tomatillo. A smaller, marble-sized compatriot is emerging above them. A few blossoms hint at the arrival of more.

Unfortunately, we are nearing the end of August. Last night temperatures fell into the forties. The same is expected tonight. The sun is laboring to rise above the Eastern White Pines and Hemlocks, and in a few short hours, maybe five, it will sink behind the tree line on the opposite side of the field. It is almost noon and only now has bright light begun to bathe the plants.

I have commiserated with my fellow backyard gardeners, all of whom report the same: good lettuces, no problem growing carrots, onions, certain squashes, potatoes have come in okay, but the tomatoes are still on the first lap. They will not make it around before time runs out for growing.

It was the same last year. Except that last year, we had no rain. This year, we had nothing but rain. More than a foot of rain dropped on New Hampshire in the first two weeks of July, on the way to a record of over seventeen inches for the month. By comparison, Florida had slightly over eight inches.

It is tough to be a tomato in New England. When you think about it, the things we are good at growing here live in the water where the climate is fairly predictable (for now). And maybe blueberries. But lobster, scallops, and cod are our champion agricultural products. I could include apples, which seem synonymous with the region, but they have more to do with Canada and New York. Further, there are so many designer apples today that the fruit emits a California vibe. Like avocados.

In the spring, we planted two apple trees, an Empire and a Macoun. Both varieties were developed at Cornell’s agricultural extension in Geneva, New York, the town where I went to college. I had no idea apple development was taking place nearby. Made no difference, except I might have been surprised to learn people in such and such a building were inventing apples and thought, really? Like, for work? But I am delighted to have the specimens we have on the property for the connection they provide, providentially, with those days. The older I get, the happier I am to have markers of the past around me, old friends, or fruits. I am the steamer trunk, plastered in travel stickers.

I will add that something ate the apples of the empire tree. One day last week there were five or six and the next day there were none, save for two small ones left on the ground, not much bigger than golf balls.

I overlooked the sugar maple on our list of champion agricultural products and its gift of maple syrup. Quebec produces more maple syrup than the rest of the world combined. None of it flows this way. It is met at the border by supplies of our own originating from down the street in every direction.

The sap is going to run each year, rain or no rain. It is only a question of how much the trees will surrender to the tap. Longview Forest Products is a significant producer based in our town, three to four hundred gallons a year.

At Town Meetings each March it is the quaint custom to receive the syrup report from Longview’s chieftain. How is the sap running? What can we expect versus last year? Then we break for hotdogs served by the volunteer fire department.

All governing would benefit from standard breaks for hotdogs and syrup reports.

I am not a huge fan of fried green tomatoes, but I will try them again this year. Other things we may do is pickle them or—better idea—make chutney. The plants have been in our garden, getting wet, plugging away under mainly overcast skies since the beginning of June. We will use them, one way or the other. I read you can put green tomatoes with other unripe fruits, such as bananas or apples, and they will ripen together. Who discovers this stuff? People in such and such a building in Geneva, New York? More likely people who grew food for their own survival. They had some green tomatoes, apples that had been knocked off the tree, whatever else. Left them on the counter for a few days and things got better.

Tossed them with some maple syrup. Kept on going.

As shall we.
### Sentimental Lights
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/sentimental-lights/
Last updated: 2023-08-16T17:37:37.000Z
You may have missed that the incandescent lightbulb slipped into the annuls of history a couple of weeks ago. By pure accident, we were in the Milford Lighting store the morning the long-anticipated regulations went into effect. An older customer was lamenting the end of the incandescent with a store employee, which brought it to our attention. 

How fortuitous to be present at that moment in a sort of lightbulb shrine. I looked around for a tribute in the form of a timeline on the wall with the names of Thomas Edison, William Sawyer, Albon Man, Joseph Swan, and any others that had pecked away at incandescent light for years. Maybe some prosecco or canapes on a table with a lightbulb motif as a centerpiece. There was none. A missed party opportunity. Oh well.

Not everyone is celebrating. Many people regard the light from an LED (light emitting diode) as icy cold with a tendency to produce an annoying hum, particularly on a dimmer switch. We are in the process of remodeling our kitchen and installing new light fixtures overhead and under the cabinets. All LED, of course. We ask for “warm” LED fixtures and are satisfied with the quality of the light, which feels soft enough and subdued. Mercifully, our ears are not pitched to the hum they can make. I guess we are used to them. After buying the Hancock Inn in 2011 our friend and general contractor, the late (and great), Gary Voss, who shepherded us through the first year of facilities management, ran around the property on a mission to swap out every incandescent bulb for LEDs. If I take a minute, I can probably count how many bulbs that would have been, but never mind; it was a lot, and the energy savings were material. And guests—most of them—managed to leave feeling warm all over.

The desire to bring light into our dwelling places traces the arc of civilization, beginning with a fire in the room. It was a noxious solution up until Count Rumford, a New Hampshire person (and British loyalist), introduced the smoke shelf in chimneys around the time of the Revolution.

Candles have been around for thousands of years, therefore also the smell of wax. We burned whale oil for about one hundred years, nearly as long as we relied on the incandescent bulb. It did not hum, it burned clear and bright, lasted a good while, but smelled like fish (and was a poor reason for sacrificing a whale).

Kerosene followed and back in the day, we had a few of those lanterns in the house for when the power went out. It was slightly thrilling when they were brought up from the basement. Brass ones, I remember, which emitted an oily smell in the initial puff of black smoke until you got the wick just right. It smelled like history, like walking into an Adirondack cabin belonging to someone who has lived there for years, wears old sweaters, and lights the stove burners with kitchen matches.

Once upon a time light crackled and you could smell it. It cast wavering shadows, which a lightbulb never did. I can conjure an argument for why our collective imagination, the state of romance, and all the poetry in the world have suffered since the advent of incandescent light, which did away with dark corners, dancing silhouettes, and faces veiled in some mystery. And gave us realism.

I don’t mourn its departure. I don’t think Mr. Edison would either, given the advances represented by the LED. Inventors are attracted to efficiency. “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles,” Edison famously remarked. LEDs are seventy-five percent more efficient and last up to twenty-five times longer than their older relations. Having left behind the sentimental light of our past, we might as well get something more besides. The savings seem real.

Prosecco? Canapé? Let me light some candles.

*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, August 15, 2023*
### Bear
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/bear/
Last updated: 2023-08-25T20:35:30.000Z
Bear 7 28 23 1203 PM

0:00

/5:47

1×

I was eleven years old when I saw my first bear, which was lying on the ground next to a dumpster, shot by Algonquin Park rangers called in by my summer camp to settle the dispute they were having with the animal over the disposal of kitchen refuse. The counselors positioned it this way after breakfast: go back to the cabin, brush your teeth, put on good shoes, we’re going bear hunting.

Not likely a sanctioned event. The counselors were high school seniors or young college students with a thrill for adventure and tantalizing junior campers. We did as we were told and followed them to a place we would not have ventured, the crusty, badly-kept, back-of-house, smelly outflow point of camp. And there was the bear. Flies buzzing around, teeth in a snarl, fierce-looking. A scavenger, by then. Unwittingly drawn into the line of fire by easy pickings from a can.

I was too young to process feeling bad for it. Today they might have tried to trap or sedate the animal and relocate it. Or not. Big black bears and small young campers are a poor mix, but the issue was more likely disgruntled kitchen staff, up at night to the sound of crashing dumpster lids and angry having to clean the yard in the morning. If you have had a dog or raccoon go through your trash you have an inkling of the problem. A bear through a dumpster is a sizeable mess.

Fifty years later I saw my second bear, a small cub that darted across our driveway at the Pond as I drove in. The foliage was thick around the house in those days, and it disappeared quickly from sight. But, hey, a bear.

I will point out that bears do not cause excitement around here as much as moose. Moose are very shy, very large, and have plenty of habitat to remain hidden. They do not sniff out bird feeders, gardens, or blueberry bushes. If you are intent on seeing one, visit Pittsburgh, New Hampshire, and its stretch of Route 3 known as Moose Alley. Every evening the massives come out to graze along the roadside to benefit from the salt put down in winter. Down here, the forest comes to the edge of the road, resulting in not much grazing property and probably not much salt. So, the moose stay away, and—better for everyone—off the roads.

Well, now, here we are today, and it is getting hard this summer to go out the door without running into a bear. An overstatement, of course, but consider that I had seen two bears (one an ex-bear) in the previous sixty-one years, and over the last month, I have seen three. Or, more likely, one bear, three times—maybe, the adult version of the cub I saw cross the driveway five years ago.

Two of the three instances were fleeting. We flushed the bear going about our business and it charged away. The third instance was different. The third instance was a David Attenborough moment. My mind replays it in slow motion. I had been sitting ten minutes earlier in a chair within petting distance. But I had gone inside to shower and change. I peeked outside to check on Huckleberry, our dog, curled in his usual spot at the edge of the lawn, sniffing the breezes of a pleasant summer evening, when into the frame, as if being leash walked down the driveway by someone who would emerge next from behind the rhododendron calling, “Come meet Sally,” padded a large, brown-nosed, fuzzy, perfectly huggable, black bear.

Uh-oh. The dog.

Most days (this was a Tuesday), it is possible to wander around all four acres of the property without clothes on. We are in the woods, on a pond; our immediate neighbor is typically here on weekends and, even so, we might not disrupt her if we happened to streak to the garage to fetch our mobile phone from the car. You would have to hike in to catch us fully exposed, but don’t bother—we are usually, always, fully dressed, boots on, except in the rarest of circumstances, and I can name one, which is when a bear wanders into the yard just as we are about to step into the shower and the dog is outside.

I scrambled for Huckleberry’s treats and training clicker and hurried out the door, as is.

Dogs go straight to Heaven because they are nonjudgmental. But they are sticklers for routine. Bust the routine and their anxiety levels spike. I think this explains why Huck, reacting to my sudden appearance and obscene departure from the normal course of business turned immediately to look behind him. He had seen enough Westerns. Sure enough, there was a bear.

And off they both went, disappearing from view.

I cannot say what happened, but there was no yelling or screaming and Huck was back in a minute, jaunty, tongue dangling, prancing up the stairs to the door, turning to me with a look to say let’s get you inside.

I am curious about this bear and fancy a similar encounter at another point. An amiable Ursus Americanus who appreciates an evening stroll on the driveway, who is mannerly enough to avoid making a scene, being more concerned with when the blueberries will ripen.

By chance, I ran into one of our local police officers who first worked for Fish & Game and I gave her the low down on our encounters. Yup, you have a new neighbor, she told me. There ought to be room for everybody, but if it becomes a nuisance, call us.

I would rather not. I remember how it ended the first time.
### The Children are Back
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/the-children-are-back/
Last updated: 2023-07-20T14:05:48.000Z
This Postcard started out with the title, *Summer Vacation*, a reflection on the crowds along Main Street (around here, more than a dozen or so people at one time) until the sound of children's voices, from the beach, bicycling past the Inn, milling in front of the Market, brought us to realize that the story is more particular than that: after a long year of pandemic, study at home, keeping within their bubbles, the children are back and have burst onto the scene with wonderful commotion.

This is true at the Inn where whole families have returned, not just one masked parent and child visiting a school or an isolated grandparent, sliding in for breakfast and then out the front door. We have had to dig out the booster seats and the puzzles and other assorted games and - we had forgotten about this because it had been a while - head out to the fishpond to issue cautions about jumping around the rocks, throwing stones, falling in the water!

We are asked frequently if children are welcome at the Inn. The answer is yes for the reason that in our own lives, as children, inns were magical places. The touchstone is probably The Oban Inn in Niagara-on-the-Lake. We visited Niagara almost every summer growing up. My mother's family had gone there for many years, as did many people from Buffalo. Visits always included a dinner or two at The Oban, as well as the Sunday brunch, which featured a dessert buffet that had the most delicious soft meringues with whipped cream. Pavlovas they are called. My brothers, cousins and I would have eaten them by the handful if allowed. Today, the Pavlova makes regular appearances on our dessert menu at the Hancock Inn. Now you know why.

The Oban burned down years ago. It was rebuilt and thrives today as the Oban Inn and Spa, but we chose not to go in when we were in Niagara the last time, several years ago. What would have been the point of disturbing our memories of the old building? The narrow hallways blanketed in worn oriental rugs, the twists and turns, flights of stairs, the nooks and crannies, fluffy, cushiony furniture into which you could disappear if you jumped and landed the right way.

I can remember standing no taller than the height of the bar where we would check in with the grown-ups having cocktails before dinner.

Don't run around, we were told. Stay out of the dining room. Dinner will be in ten minutes.

We ran everywhere.

Our own family has been visiting the Inn this summer, including our two oldest grandchildren who are seven and five years old. We had not seen them in a year and a half! Apart from the two days we take off at the start of a week, Marcia and I were working for most of their visit, but my daughter had been clever enough to invite a friend with her two children to join her at the Inn for most of the visit, which eased the pressure all the way around.

The children ran everywhere, and with each speeding step through the hallways I heard while chopping vegetables below in the kitchen I composed a prayer that our grandchildren would have memories of the Inn like those that have lasted with me of the old Oban. They are touchstones. They are warm and happy memories, the sort of things to want for your grandchildren.

One particular story about the family's visit and this Postcard can come to a close.

It is about Charlie, one of the friends. Charlie is six and while he was here, he became enamored of the chess board we keep set up in the reception area. It is a fine chess board with polished, wooden pieces, some of which are horses and others are castles. If you have not been around a chess board in your lifetime the beauty of the game from the outside can entice you, which is what happened to Charlie. He wanted to play if only someone would teach him.

This was Charlie's quest over the course of his visit, which went unnoticed by us until one morning, before breakfast, when I was walking through the reception area, switching-on lights, opening doors, there was Charlie at the chess table sitting opposite an older gentleman, one of our other guests, studying the board. Charlie's sister and our grandchildren had gathered around.

I felt it necessary to probe the situation.

"Is everything fine here?" I asked.

"We're playing chess," Charlie answered enthusiastically. 

I looked at our guest. He smiled.

"It's not every day you open the door to find someone standing there asking if you would like to play chess. I decided I should not let the opportunity pass," he said.

There you have it. Magic.

*First published August 2, 2021, as a Postcard from the Hancock Inn*
### How's Your Back?
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/hows-your-back/
Last updated: 2023-07-02T17:51:38.000Z
Tip O’Neill, the legendary former Speaker of the House, regularly observed that all politics is local. So aptly enough, when shaking hands with constituents at home, he would always ask, “How’s your back?” calculating that half the world suffered from periodic back pain.

That includes me now since crossing into my sixties. It does not happen a lot, but it comes with no warning and as a result of the smallest infraction, such as bending to fetch a carrot from the refrigerator, using a trowel to dig a hole for bulbs, exiting the car.

Two weeks ago, I was putting our twenty-eight-pound puppy into the truck—as I have done repeatedly since his arrival in April—when I felt the spring go. A day or so later, I thought I was better enough to take a shovel and plant half a dozen Lilies of the Valley, and I felt another spring go. Maybe two. I let it rest for a week, popping Advil, until our three-year-old grandson came to visit over the past weekend. I was back to full strength, with just some lingering discomfort in the lower back after sitting for a long while, especially noticeable when driving. We had a lovely day around the property, down by the pond, hob-knobbing with loons, playing with the puppy, watching a nature film about snakes. We went for a walk down the driveway before dinner, which had been freshly raked by the orange tractor he had crawled on earlier. Halfway back, he asked to ride on my shoulders.

You can see it coming, me hiking the lad up over my head, who is heavier than the puppy but not heavier than the large bag of organic fertilizer I carry out of Agway on my shoulders. I saw it too. But I did the calculation quickly: do I lift the boy and carry him on my shoulders or say, sorry, Granddad has a bad back?

Every time I see him, I think he is an inch taller. That will include seeing him again next week if it happens. I will say to Marcia, good Lord, he’s an inch taller than last Saturday. It is a rate of growth in adverse proportion to the time I have left to carry him on my shoulders safely.

So up he went, fingers in my hair, drumming my forehead, tickling my ears, expounding on the world from new heights as one might from the top of Monadnock.

I was fine until about three hours later.

It turns out that *everyone* has an opinion on back pain. Why not? One out of two people are affected. Lie on a couch, lie on the floor, pillow, no pillow, use heat, then ice. Sit straight, feet flat. Lose weight (thanks, Mom). Hydrate. Work the core. Acupuncture. Chiropractor.

I am scrambling to apply these prescriptions. I have to be in shape for the end of the week because our granddaughter is arriving, and she wants to fish. She has been saying this since Christmas. That means digging for worms, getting in a canoe, paddling a canoe, casting, reaching with our nets for the fish we catch, removing hooks and releasing the fish, getting out of the canoe.

The lawn needs to be cut. It is growing furiously because of the rain (at last) and application of organic fertilizer. The peas are climbing and need more support, the lettuce and beets need thinning, another row of green beans should go in, my sister-in-law brought us some beautiful perennials, not all of which are in the ground, and the wood I split at the end of last month needs stacking.

My wife says stress is a factor. Does any of this sound stressful? It is not. Not in the least. That said, my go-to for stress is ice cream, which is pertinent: unlike most foods, you can eat it lying down (sorry, Mom).

*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, June 20, 2023*
### For the Art
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/for-the-art/
Last updated: 2023-09-13T18:47:48.000Z
It has been a year of writing full-time. How did that happen?

_This post is for subscribers on the Fiction tier only._
### Winter
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/winter/
Last updated: 2023-06-13T19:01:05.000Z
Winter arrived with a vengeance this weekend. There was not much snow, but it was heavy snow, and winds gusted over twenty miles an hour, causing trees and limbs to fall over the roads and power lines, leaving many without electricity.

In the midst of this, before the end of dinner service on Saturday, Marcia headed home to Hunts Pond with Potter, our golden retriever. Barely thirty minutes later, I looked up from the cooking line, and was Potter back, sniffing his way across the floor on his way through the kitchen. 

"Trees and wires are down just before our driveway," Marcia reported. "We're staying at the Inn tonight."

That put me on edge. I don't like leaving my house alone in a crisis. It comes from the ice storm of 1973 (or thereabouts) when I was a boy, which left a good portion of southern New England without power for days. Shelters were set up in the high school, and neighbors evacuated to them with their small children and the elderly. We stayed put in our house. My brothers and I were old enough to carry wood and help our mother tend fires, while my father went room to room all day and night, carefully positioning candles near the elbow joints of our baseboard copper pipes to prevent them from freezing.

This was in a day before generators, and wood stoves were common in places like southern Connecticut. It was before the talk of global warming. The week of that 1970s storm was bone cold--a half gallon of milk left on our kitchen counter during the night froze by morning.

But we never lost a pipe. Said my father at the time, never leave your property to fend for itself.

So around ten this past Saturday, after dinner service, I got into the truck and headed to the pond with the idea of hiking through the woods to the house, to check the generator, make sure nothing was on the roof, that there was no water coming in. I would stay at the house. Marcia would stay at the Inn.

It was still windy when I set out, and the snow was swirling. The roads were terrible. Halfway up the hill, the state road was blocked on the right by a fallen tree. I drove around it.

The snowplows had been out at least once or twice before things started caving in, so the road to our property was open to the spot before our driveway, where it was, as Marcia reported, impassable.

Leaving the truck in the road with the lights on, I headed into the woods to pick my way around the impasse. Everywhere was the sound of cracking limbs and the occasional crash of something hitting the ground. I got to the driveway relying on my mobile phone flashlight. Fallen branches and tree debris littered the ground. I cleared a few aside. More cracking. The lights of the truck were now out of sight. Then a crash and a thud that you could feel in your feet as something hit the ground to the left of me. I became conscious of creatures in the forest, in the way you feel something following you through a darkened, empty house. 

Then I heard the voice of my father: get back in the truck, stupid.

Winter has arrived, and it tingles. It draws on all our senses. For one thing, a good portion of it is dark. We are compelled to spend more time feeling our way forward. It is quiet. We hear the absence of noise and any small rattle from within it. It is cold, transforming everything--the ground crunches, our breath crystallizes, the water freezes.

Anyone can do summer, we explain to our houseguests at the Inn. If you want the real deal when it comes to New England, you must come in winter. Only in winter can you experience the connection with the place, the hardships that existed in the day and the comforts. It comes from treading carefully over the ice, woolen mittens, scraping windshields, hats, snow down the back of your neck, sweaters, wind lashing the windows, but finally, just when it has gone dark at four in the afternoon, fuzzy slippers in front of the fireplace.

"How'd it go?" Marcia asked when I got back to the Inn. 

"I didn't make it."

"Thank goodness you're back. I'll get your slippers." 

*Published as part of a collection of Postcards from The Hancock Inn, December 2020*
### Our Inner Loon
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/our-inner-loon/
Last updated: 2023-06-13T18:02:48.000Z
Hidden in the morning mist of Hunts Pond are two loons that must be thinking about leaving for their winter saltwater environs now that the first snow has arrived and temperatures are in the low double-digits.

We love the loons. They tag along behind the fishermen's canoes and paddle over to us when they see us on our dock. They exude the sort of confidence that derives from an estimated thirty to fifty million years on earth and a portfolio of skills won over time, transferable to air, land and water (freshwater or salt). Remarkable really. They are among the Eagle Scouts of evolution. They are ungainly on the ground, not graceful fliers, but clearly, loons opted for diversification, perhaps because it made sense to hedge their bets at a time when volcanoes were still erupting and meteors plummeting to earth. 

Today the loons spend most of their time floating on peaceful waters, which is something that would never have been allowed in our houses. "You can't simply float through life," the parents would have exclaimed. "Honestly, are you going to just keep floating along?"

Yes, well, a few more hundreds of thousands of years and maybe that is exactly what we will do. On peaceful waters.

For now, with our coffee in the morning or a glass of wine in the evening, we get in touch with our inner loon by watching them float along. Deep in the night, we hear their plaintive call echoing back to the beginning of noises. *Hallooo*, they wail. Are you out there?

We will miss the loons. Winter will sweep them away until April, replacing them with the sound of owls at night and coyotes, which offer similar echoes from our past. We will set up our game camera on the edge of the pond for the winter, which captured a bobcat commuting across the ice and the ghostly images of coyotes steps from our door.

Yes, they are out there.

May you float on peaceful waters this fall season where you are, out there.

*Published as part of a series of* Postcards from The Hancock Inn*, November 4, 2020*
### Snow Haves and Have Nots
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/snow-haves-and-have-nots/
Last updated: 2023-06-13T17:10:06.000Z
You probably know this, but it has been snowing a lot out west. We had dinner with friends a few nights ago. One of them is leaving next week for Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to ski for a week with his two sons, who live out west. They are all accomplished skiers. One of the boys—at twenty-eight, not so much a boy—is a freeride skiing coach, meaning he mentors other skiers in the art and safety of skiing unmaintained trails. Think extreme skiing, cascading down through the woods, dropping by helicopter, or hiking uphill (they call it skinning) for the thrill of one pristine ride down.

As of March fourth, Jackson Hole had over four hundred inches of snow, one hundred and forty percent of the annual average. When you read this, the total will have surpassed four hundred and fifty inches. In six days recently, they had sixty inches of snow. Park City has a base of one hundred and thirty inches. At the base of Alta, there are one hundred and seventy-eight inches. At the top of Kirkwood Mountain, south of Carson City, are two hundred and twenty inches of snow. But at the *bottom* of Kirkwood, there are one thousand, one hundred and seventy-one inches, which may be easier to think of in feet: ninety-eight.

Kirkwood has ninety-eight feet of snow.

The Eastern White Pine is the tallest tree species in New England. It can grow to one hundred and fifty feet. We have several of them outside my window, and I imagine them buried to their necks in ninety-eight feet of snow. In my imagining, they will be completely buried by the end of the season if the snow continues as it has out west, providing a unique opportunity along the way to trudge across the yard in my snowshoes and cut them back at the top. Unfortunately, the chainsaw is in the barn, which is (in this imagined instance) under seventy feet of snow. So . . . not worth retrieving.

People out west would not find this funny, of course, because their houses *are* buried.

Meanwhile, my brother is ticking a box on his bucket list skiing the Alps in Austria, where the lack of snow is described as extreme. According to CarbonBrief.org, the average length of snow cover in the alps is at a six-hundred-year low. Some resorts were forced to close this winter. The base at many of them is around forty inches, coming close to the base of many of New Hampshire’s ski areas, hovering between twenty-five and thirty inches this year.

I am sure Austria is glad to have my brother there with his family helping them through the season. We get pictures from the top of the mountains, and it looks beautiful, but the lack of snow is evidently worrisome. The local talk is turning to water come spring and summer: if there is not enough snow in the winter, there is not enough snow melt in spring for the people and farms downstream.

The line between the snow haves and have-nots is sharp this year. We met our friends outside of Boston, where there was no snow. We went further south to Foxboro, and the land was barren and brown. At each stop, we described getting a foot of snow last week during the storm. “Yeah, all we got here was rain,” was the discouraged reply.

Why go to the trouble of getting ready for winter—raking leaves, splitting wood, putting up the storms, pulling out the gloves, boots and sweaters—to have it hand you only cold and wet?

But then there are ninety-eight feet of snow out west. Buried homes, abandoned vehicles. It is a “once in a generation” winter season.

And elsewhere, a six-hundred-year declining average snowpack.

Winter. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

*Published March 14, 2023, in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*
### Where Have You Gone, David Crosby?
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/where-have-you-gone-david-crosby/
Last updated: 2024-07-08T19:54:08.000Z
David Crosby died the week before last. I liked his music. I respect that he was a two-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Five albums to which he contributed are among the five hundred greatest ever recorded, according to Rolling Stone magazine. In his book, Waging Heavy Peace, Neil Young wrote that no one was ever more enthusiastic about touring and performing than Crosby, which shows up in the videos I have seen over the last several days paying tribute to his work. Crosby is the ebullient one on stage, strumming and grinning, his long brown hair flowing out behind him. He was reportedly working on a new album up until the day he died at age eighty-one.

What is important now is that I need to rehabilitate our stereo system. We have an NAD receiver and a pair of Morel bookshelf speakers in lovely walnut casings. The receiver seems fine. The speakers need new components, and we must purchase a new turntable. This is the time. I have said the old stereo would be a winter project. It is winter now, with over a foot of snow on the porch outside the sliding glass doors of my office. And David Crosby has just died.

Crosby was an iconic figure of the counterculture age. The Beatles may have ushered in a new generation, but they were unaware of it until later. Early on, they hewed to standards set in the fifties, wearing matching jacket and tie uniforms, and remaining rigorously clean-cut, even with the longer hair. Ultimately, they were carried out early by the tidal wave of change they propelled. Behind them, riding the wave, came David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Mama Cass, and others. They became the new age icons—the age of Aquarius, the Summer of Love, the hippie generation. The boomers. Whatever. Us. Me. Those born to it and shaped by it.

In the eaves under our roof at the cabin are boxes of old record albums. Once upon a time, I explain to the boys and girls, we had libraries of records that followed us like our libraries of books. You got to a new place—dorm room, apartment, or house—and in came the stereo, followed by the milk crates of albums. All of it was assembled where space allowed, usually in a closet or on shelves. Wires traveled from the closet around the room's perimeter, along the walls and behind the furniture to connect to the speakers.

The albums were a source of interest and conversation. We thumbed through them at parties, comparing collections to our own. My music-loving friends would have hundreds of albums. Modest aficionados, such as I, would have scores, maybe one hundred.

Today, we can fetch any recorded song by relying on the world wide web. The question we might have asked while thumbing through records, “Hey, do you have . . .?” is gone from the lexicon. It has been replaced by, “Hey, play . . .” On command, in a moment, we can retrieve any song off any album, ever.

The loss of David Crosby has me worried about this. What replaces, in this day and age, the first album cover of Crosby Stills & Nash, the one that was part of virtually every record collection in those days, with the picture of the three young men on a beat-up red couch, a guitar in the arms of the guy in the middle, all of them in blue jeans and boots. I have seen this album cover repeatedly this week in connection with Crosby’s demise. No surprise. I saw it everywhere for years. If a picture is a thousand words, it tells you what you need to know about David Crosby, his life, and times. And mine.

What compares today? What do we hold in common? What is going into boxes in eaves under the roof? Things appear and disappear so fast in this information age, buried in seconds by more stuff, turned to mulch with every page refresh. In a content world built around sharing, there is very little to hold on to.

I worry this is why we hear about so many people being lonely.

I will get my stereo to the shop, and when it comes back, I will crawl into those eaves, retrieve my album boxes and search—the old fashion way—for Crosby Stills & Nash. Then I think I will invite a few people over to listen and share.

*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, January 31, 202*3
### A Few Words from Dr. King
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/a-few-words-from-dr-king/
Last updated: 2023-06-04T18:35:09.000Z
We have despaired the last couple of years over the cantankerous nature of our politics. I will tell you it was worse in 1968.

I was upstairs in my room doing homework when the telephone rang. There were only two telephones in the house, one in the kitchen and one in my parent's bedroom. My mother answered the telephone, the one in the bedroom, where she was—I distinctly remember—folding laundry.

The call was for me. It was my friend Mark (I cannot remember his last name). Mother handed me the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Jarvie, hi, it’s Mark.”

“Hi, Mark.”

“Someone just shot Martin Luther King.”

I do not know what possessed Mark to call me that day with the news. We were both ten years old, still scribbling in the margins of our social studies books, not particularly concerned with social justice except as it impacted life on the playground. There were no black Americans in Wilton, Connecticut, at the time.

My mother went immediately to the television set, saying to me, “Why did he feel he had to call you with such dreadful news?”

It remains a mystery. But that is where I was when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Robert Kennedy would be cut down a few months later. The Democratic Convention in Chicago that summer would turn to riot, Nixon would be elected, the war in Vietnam would rage on.

I have no standing on the matter of racial injustice. I come from a privileged class. Sifting through the rhetoric of the past couple of years, however, we hear inklings of a new kind of oppression—cultural oppression—leading to angry voices, intractable politics, new kinds of fear, all of it tempting violence in the public square.

On the occasion of the holiday in his honor, perhaps it is a good time for a few words from the man who walked (many walks) this ground before, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

*Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.*

*Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.*

*I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.*

*I refuse to accept the idea that the ‘isness’ of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal ‘oughtness’ that forever confronts him.*

*Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.*

This holiday weekend is a memorial to Dr. King and a reminder of our ongoing struggle as a nation to overcome prejudice. In that respect, it is worth identifying with the holiday as the one uniquely dedicated to our diversity and our travails and successes holding it together. “We may have all come on different ships,” Dr. King said, “but we're in the same boat now.”

It is worth celebrating.  
  
*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, January 17, 2023*
### Migration Time
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/migration-time/
Last updated: 2023-06-04T18:15:30.000Z
October, and we are anticipating the loons’ departure from our waters. We are hoping for another few weeks of their company, but we check each morning, through binoculars if necessary, for a sign of them floating against the shoreline. The good news is that ahead of leaving, they seem to congregate on the pond, three and four at a time, which adds to the overnight sound of their voices, a mournful chorus echoing the beginning of time.

From the woods behind them, we can hear the owls more clearly now that the chattering of songbirds has abated, many of whom have already fled south. Those that remain go about their business quietly, having discussed and decided the crucial questions of life earlier in the summer. It will be the unique and solitary sound of the owl serving as our closest friend over winter, with little else to keep us company except for footprints in the snow and a few ghostly pictures from our wildlife cameras strung around the trees.

Migration. How the Water Rat hated it. “Why this craving for change? Why not stay on quietly here, like us, and be jolly?” he lamented in Kenneth Grahame’s classic, *The* *Wind in the Willows (1908)*. “Why do you ever come back, then, at all?”

Shortly after arriving in New Hampshire years ago, I was making conversation with a long-time member of the community and asked, “Do you go south for the winter?”

“Certainly *not*,” she answered, emphatically straightening herself to full height.

But it tempts other mortals. “Ah, yes, the call of the South, of the South!” twittered the swallows in Grahame’s book. “Its songs its hues, its radiant air!”

The beavers on our pond will remain under the ice for the winter, going from the darkness of their lodge to the darkness of the frigid water and back again. It is hard to imagine any creature that could be happier for radiant air in the spring. Polar bears have nothing on the pond beaver. Around here, the black bears will sleep, as will the bats that made a temporary shelter for the summer under a piece of loose siding on our garage. Other creatures will hunker under the snow or withdraw to their dens for long naps between occasional expeditions for food.

We are happily distracted by the blooming fall colors. Everyone wonders how this year’s foliage will turn out following the drought. Meanwhile, the migration goes on around us - the “daily shrinkage in the stream of comradeship,” as Grahame described it, taking place while our attention is elsewhere as if nature means to sneak away. Soon enough, the leaves will be down and the trees bare, which is when it will hit us: we are done for the year. The party is over. The music has stopped, the stage is empty, and the house lights have come up. The animals have left the building.

We will miss the loons, beavers, eagles, and general uproar. Like the grandchildren when they come and go. But Mole consoles us, as he did his friend Rat. “…He turned his talk to the harvest that was being gathered in, the towering wagons and their straining teams, the growing ricks, and the large moon rising over bare acres dotted with sheaves. He talked of the reddening apples around, of the browning nuts, of jams and preserves and the distilling of cordials; till by easy stages such as these he reached midwinter, its hearty joys and its snug home life.”

The temperature is expected to drop to thirty-two tonight for the first time this season. A short glass of Calvados in front of the wood stove might be the snug thing to enjoy.

*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, October 11, 2022*
### They're Baaack
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/all-creatures-great-and-very-small/
Last updated: 2023-05-27T09:30:33.000Z
Theyre Baaack

0:00

/6:54

1×

It is nearly June and just about everyone is back. Holdouts are the dragonflies and bats whom we are particularly eager to have return because they will come between us and the black flies. But it has been on and off cold—again in the thirties tonight—which is not good for bats. We wait to see if the colony of them will move into the bat house we hung over the loose garage siding we sealed with steel wool last fall. 

The black flies came early this year. The adage has been Mother’s Day through Father’s Day, but I think they were here right after Easter. We live in the woods by the water, prime conditions for the little bloodsuckers. The past couple of weeks have been good for watching them swarm outside our windows. They fill the air like sparks from a fire, dancing and zigzagging. You would not notice a few of them or even two dozen, but there are hundreds. Not enough to call it a cloud, but enough to want to push your way through using your arms, as along a busy sidewalk. And, of course, they surround you again with your very next step.

I wonder about the ones that hover over our back porch. Are they waiting for us to come outside? It could be a while. We are having lunch. In the meantime, would it not be more profitable for them to head to the pond or deeper into the woods? Obviously, it is a numbers game: as a species, they survive en mass. They are everywhere. Still, what has caused this bunch to be assigned to our porch? Why do they hang around the window? They would have better luck coaxing us outdoors if they disappeared for a while. Run and hide.

Like their cousin the tick. (Probably not really a cousin.) I have never seen a tick in the wild, have you? This time of year, I spend hours outside, wading through bramble, pruning bushes, mowing lawns, digging in the garden. I am always on the lookout for ticks. Never see them. Not until we are sitting down later in the day, showered, clean clothes, flip flops on our feet, admiring our handiwork in the yard. That is when we are suddenly conscious that something is stealthy wriggling up our shin beneath the pant leg.

Which leads to creepy-crawly syndrome, a spring affliction in this part of the world. Almost everyone I know suffers from this debilitating condition at some point during the season. I have it now. We had people for dinner last night, during which I excused myself to duck into the bedroom and remove my shirt to see if there was a tick going up my back. (There was not.) Any of them, when they said they needed to use the restroom, could have instead been partly disrobing to check for bugs. Gorillas sit in circles picking insects off each other with their dexterous fingers. It nearly comes to that here at this time of year in our book clubs, bridge groups, and morning coffee clutches so distracted are we by the sense ticks might be scampering up our neck to the relative safety of the hairline.

The first moth of the season has attached itself to the screen over the kitchen sink where the lights are on most often during the day. It is motionless. In another month or so an army of them will camp next to the outdoor light by the kitchen door. As we enter and exit, they will scatter and fly around our heads, which Marcia cannot stand. She turns the light off to encourage them to depart and bangs on the screen, then sends me out ahead. I do not mind moths except for the ones that get into the bedroom at night and flutter underneath the lampshade while I am trying to read. It has to be an intense arcade experience for a moth to find itself in that situation. A bit like cage motorcycle riding. Glaringly bright while doing death-defying laps above a white-hot bulb. Crazy.

Our new puppy, Huckleberry, was on the ground near the corner of the garage earlier this week intent on something between his outstretched front paws, occasionally getting his nose in close and digging around. It was carpenter ants, a new discovery for him and an unhappy one for me. A bucket line of them from the ground to someplace under the roof line. They have not been in evidence since, but sympathetic as I try to be to all creatures great and very small, I called the pest company, which will be here next week.

I did, however, rescue a black beetle from Huck yesterday. Another new discovery for him, which he was flipping onto its back with his tongue, pinching it between his front lips, rolling it around in his mouth, but choosing not to eat it, which was good.

“We’re going to put this over here,” I said, bringing it to the edge of the woods, and sending it down the slope.

Did you know, according to [Insectidentification.org](https://www.insectidentification.org/beetles.php?ref=jarviscoffin.com), that if every member of the animal kingdom were lined up, every fourth one would belong to a category of beetle? Just as well to treat them with respect.

Which reminds me of a favorite poem:

> FORGIVEN

> By A.A.Milne

> I found a little beetle; so that Beetle was his name,  
> And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same.  
> I put him in a match-box, and I kept him all the day ...  
> And Nanny let my beetle out -  
> Yes, Nanny let my beetle out -  
> She went and let my beetle out -  
> And Beetle ran away.  
>  
> She said she didn't mean it, and I never said she did,  
> She said she wanted matches and she just took off the lid,  
> She said that she was sorry, but it's difficult to catch  
> An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.  
>  
> She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind,  
> As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find,  
> If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid -  
> And we'd get another match-box and write BEETLE on the lid.  
>  
> We went to all the places which a beetle might be near,  
> And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear,  
> And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout:  
> "A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!"  
>  
> It was Alexander Beetle I'm as certain as can be,  
> And he had a sort of look as if he thought it must be Me,  
> And he had a sort of look as if he thought he ought to say:  
> "I'm very very sorry that I tried to run away."  
>  
> And Nanny's very sorry too for you-know-what-she-did,  
> And she's writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid,  
> So Nan and Me are friends, because it's difficult to catch  
> An excited Alexander you've mistaken for a match.
### Getting Out More
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/getting-out-more/
Last updated: 2023-05-24T18:46:13.000Z
By now, you know the world is divided into two kinds of people: mountain people and water people - although a friend suggested that the difference is between mountain people and people beguiled by *horizontal plains*, which could include anyone from Kansas.

But in our house, the distinction is between people who like the mountains and those who prefer the ocean. I am a mountain person. My wife, Marcia, is a water person. And the deal was that after finishing the course as owners of the Hancock Inn, we would redeem some of the time remaining for an ocean view.

Marcia has embraced a view of Hunts Pond in Hancock instead. It does not come with distant horizons, but it does come with morning mist, loons, bald eagles, the occasional otter, beavers, and lovely views of Skatutakee and Thumb mountains. Everyone can be happy.

We have spent most of our time by the pond this summer since selling the inn this spring. People ask, are you going to take a trip and get away for a while? It is not like that, we explain. When you live above the store, you are never home. If you go upstairs, it is to rest. So, after many years of being above the store, we are enjoying being home, squeezing an inn’s worth of furniture into a small cabin, establishing gardens, and cutting down the understory of growth around the property that has come up since we bought it several years ago. We have been away, you see. We don’t plan to go anywhere except to see our grandchildren.

In the meantime, there is catching up to do around the Monadnock Region. We are getting out more. Over the past couple of weeks, that meant a hike for me up the back of Crotched Mountain with my brother, Tim. He and his wife, Amy, live in Francestown. We stepped off one early afternoon and hiked up to the Old Mountain Road, then up the Summit East trail. We followed that across the top to Upper Link, walked Shannon’s trail to Lower Link, then to Summit West, which we took down to Scot’s trail and finally out to Joslin and Farrington Road. Later, sitting around their house, joined by Marcia and Amy, enjoying a bit of dark rum with slices of lime, and waiting for the charcoal fire to mellow, Tim announced we walked seven miles. My brother is an inveterate hiker. Seven miles is an average hiking day for him. It took me a couple of days to recover.

It was worth it. Each peak of Crotched offered spectacular mountain views, the sort to cause an ocean person to cross the aisle. The region would welcome more rain, but the sunny, high-pressure days are great for summit vistas. We were able to see Boston on the far horizon. We had great views of North Pack, Pack Monadnock, Temple and the Grand Monadnock. Sitting on the outcrops, we looked down into the valleys at small farmhouses and distant villages, roads that disappeared below the foliage, and at turkey vultures, surfing the updrafts in wide, lazy circles below us.

The four of us had a casual dinner that night. As the sun set, we could make out the outline of Crotched against the darkening sky. An ocean person will point to an island on a map and say, I have been there. Mountain people will stand at the base and respond, I have been to the top. Each always has thoughts of returning. I am sixty-five. I cannot say for sure when I may be back, Dear Crotched. There are still many mountains nearby that I would like to climb.

*Published September 13, 2022 in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript*
### Home
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/home/
Last updated: 2023-05-23T20:51:37.000Z
We are back from a ten-day trip to Israel with a church group pulled together from parishes in Boston, New York, and Nashville. The link between the churches is the priest who organized the trip back in 2021, just as we were hoping COVID was retreating, which it did not. The trip was pushed back until this year.

Most of our time was spent in Jerusalem, the sacred home of the world’s three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (in historical order). Approaching in our tour bus for the first time, we saw a city built into the hills, buildings and houses placed side-by-side in random close order, animated by Islam’s gold Dome of the Rock, the signature feature against a blue-gray landscape. We might have been approaching Philadelphia along the Schuylkill River, or Allentown, maybe. Or coming through Yonkers on our way into Manhattan. Dense, urban, made of limestone and cement, the ancient city splayed out to the farthest horizon.

The spiritual heart of a Holy Land pilgrimage, of course, is old Jerusalem, home to the Temple Mount, the place of the Dome, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Western Wall, and Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The old city is divided into four administered sections or quarters: respectively, the Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Armenian quarters.

Particular places are guarded by Israeli police or defense forces (IDF) or Arab police, most of whom look to be about eighteen and, when no one is looking, are checking their mobile phones. We went in and out of the West Bank during the trip, crossing zones A, B, or C, which delineate where Israeli Jews with passports or Palestinians with identity cards can travel. Steel and glass checkpoints with gates guard access to each zone. Except for the machine guns, it is like crossing the border into Canada.

Sharing news of our trip with people ahead of time, you could see expressions of worry cross their faces. It is not like telling people you are going to France. It is a place that relies on machine guns, after all, to help keep order at particular flashpoints. And for several weeks beforehand, Israeli streets had been clogged with protesters trying to head off the government’s plan to revise rules around their Supreme Court. We visited the Israeli Museum across from the seat of government, the Knesset, on a day when there were no protests. There was still a roadblock, inconveniencing drivers and causing delays to the extent that our cab driver was forced to let us off in front of the Knesset. It gave us the opportunity to walk to the museum, enjoy the warm, sunny day and the gardens on either side of the thoroughfare in full bloom.

We walked past one protest later in the week. About a dozen ultra-orthodox Jews shouting with bullhorns (they must keep them in the hall closet) across the street at a dozen Arabs who paid little attention. The children continued to chase each other around in circles on the lawns in front of their apartment buildings.

I prayed at the Western Wall, wading through the Jewish faithful, finding an open spot, unmolested—unacknowledged, really—observing young men clap each other on the back to say hello, passing the time of day as if they had bumped into each other at the market.

The next day we walked the Via Dolorosa, sharing the crowded alleyways with Muslim pilgrims on their way to the Al-Aqsa Mosque for the first day of Ramadan.

I was moved by a sense of adventure in a strange land, by calls to prayer drifting from loudspeakers in Arabic and Hebrew, by the beauty of Christian churches, Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian. And by history.

People were helpful, though they struggled with English. But I always felt safe.

Then we got home. Some of us to New York, some to New England, and others to Nashville.

We got this email from one of our fellow pilgrims in Nashville: *My daughter's family in Nashville attend church with one of the little girls who did not survive, and one of my daughter's best friends had a daughter in that classroom, but thankfully she survived.*

We got this from another one: *Two parishioners who teach at the Covenant School (including one of our life \[sic\] best friends…) work at the Covenant School and survived the shooting. They are deeply traumatized as you can imagine.*

Finally*: a friend (who teaches at the Covenant School, where the shooting occurred) tweeted: “I am safe, but not all right – not sure if I will ever be all right.”*

I feel I know a little about why such terrible things happen in Israel. Religion gone wild. Zealotry. Tribal antagonisms dating to the time of the Canaanites. It is hard to regard the issues as excuses for slaughter in this age, but they do not exist in the shadows. Heading home, we were asked to pray for Jerusalem, this crux of conflict for so many, many years.

But I struggle to know why such terrible things happen in Nashville, Uvalde or other places in our country. In schools? Against children and teachers?

I know what the matter is with them. What is the matter with us?

We made a couple of friends in Jerusalem. I guess the thing to do is ask them to pray for Nashville—and Michigan State, Oakland, Half Moon Bay, Monterey Park, Enoch City, Huntsville . . .

*Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, April 11, 2023*
### Saving Huckleberry
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/saving-huckleberry/
Last updated: 2023-05-23T20:34:27.000Z
We have a new puppy, a black lab mix rescued by an organization called For the Love of Labs that we collected from a foster home in nearby Richmond, New Hampshire. He is now twelve weeks old with a shiny coat, long legs, webbed feet, a shortish lab nose, sharp little teeth that desire to sink into everything and an acute fear of missing out (FOMO, for the social media hipsters): he follows us room-to-room to guard against the chance of any new adventure breaking out in his absence. His name is Huckleberry.

Huck fills the space left behind by our golden retriever of many years, Potter, who died in his sleep last summer at the age of thirteen after a full life living at the Hancock Inn. For Potter, the inn came with many daily admirers and complimentary breakfast each morning. Huck may not grow up with as much attention around him, but his new life does include breakfast (currently, also lunch and dinner), and there is a pond for swimming, a field for running, plus other creatures great and small, many of which he will have to learn to stay away from.

Life without a dog for nine months had advantages, mobility among them. Go anywhere, anytime, without having to provision for the animal. We spent a lot of time thinking about that particular luxury. Now we do not so much as travel from one room to another in the house without Huckle-Buckle scampering behind. And the doors to unoccupied rooms are closed, and the way to the basement is barricaded to limit his ability to make his own adventures. We are experiencing the cloistered life again.

Also, the dogs sleep on our beds. Sorry, it has always been that way. As a boy, I had a dachshund named Suzanne, named for my grandmother (who seemed honored by the attribution). Every night, Sue Sue burrowed under the sheets to sleep between my feet. I remember the waking-up moment in the morning when she would wriggle up from the darkness, poke her head out to look at me, take her first breath of fresh air, and sneeze. Potter was eighty-five pounds. He did not burrow to the end of the bed; he camped on top. The extra legroom had been nice since his departure. Huck will likely grow that large, but he curls into a ball between our heads for the moment. Occasionally, he stretches out his neck and lays it across mine, as new puppies do lying beside their mother, twined together into a ball of fur.

Then there are the plaintive puppy eyes that catch you at different times during the day with their entreaty, are you done yet? Those eyes never grow old; they grow more penetrating and plaintive, especially when they can barely see before them. Huck’s sharp eyes have drilled me twice while writing today. He has padded over to sit at my feet, head turned up, eyes looking into mine.

Are you done yet?

Not quite. There is the matter of PetFinder.com, which we used for the first time to find Huckleberry. We have had dogs for the last twenty years, our first in 2000, in the nascent days of internet search engines. We rescued from a local no-kill shelter and acquired Potter from a nearby breeder. We returned to that shelter for this next puppy chapter in life, but they no longer permit out-of-state adoptions. We surfed Monadnock shelters and humane societies but needed a wider net. This pushed us to PetFinder, a pet search engine. We plugged in our parameters (puppy, New England, whatever else) and—shazam!

We thought it might be hard to find a puppy. It is not. It is worse than that. If you released into the open all of the dogs up for adoption on PetFinder.com, you might be able to witness the result from space, like the stampede of wildebeests on the African plains, except that they would be dogs without the skills to survive in the wild.

Where do they all come from? Sadly, it appears the answer is not simply boy and girl dogs. They come from puppy factories and neglect.

The math is straightforward: one male and female dog yields four to six new dogs, which can produce another twelve to eighteen new dogs, in turn yielding a potential thirty to forty more dogs, growing to an animal crisis in just a few short generations because who is going to care for those puppies? Our house is already cordoned off, we are not traveling, we take turns going here and there, we are squeezing back into bed, and I need to wrap up this column shortly because I owe Huckle-Buckle a little playtime. There is not enough human patience in the world, including here, to save all the dogs.

But if you have the tiniest room in your heart or home to take one, it has its rewards. No one else in life will follow you wherever you go without question.

And please, let us know. Huck needs playdates.

*Published in the [Monadnock Ledger-Transcript](https://ledgertranscript-nh.newsmemory.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com), April 25, 2023*
### Beneath the Canopy
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/beneath-the-canopy/
Last updated: 2023-05-23T20:36:23.000Z
This is the time of year when we are confronted with the grinding reality of life in the woods. The snow is gone, and the forest floor is a bare, spongy, wet, leafy, gnarly carpet of decay. A few green shoots are coming up from below, primarily ferns. The earliest buds on the trees are getting plump—my grandfather used to say the trees are getting “fuzzy”—and in a few cases beginning to leaf out, although the difference between where we are, five hundred feet above Peterborough and deeper into the woods, is significant: Peterborough, even main street, Hancock, is experiencing green. Not here. As I tap away on the computer (which is nearly a week before this column goes to press), it is still mid-April where we are.

Out the windows of our cabin is a scene of destruction. Limbs and trees that came down with the last snowstorm are on the ground with those that have been there for, well, ages. I have decided to build a road (more like a cart path) from the driveway into the woods that loops around the cabin so I can drive the John Deere lawn tractor, fitted with trailer, to collect debris. The dragging of brush and carrying of logs is otherwise all uphill. It is very uneven and littered terrain, so this will not be easy. But in the immediate area around the cabin, which has been thinned over the ages with views to the pond, it would be nice to have a cleaner landscape, sanitized as it would be from what life is really like beneath the canopy.

Beneath the canopy, very little grows straight. Every bit of ground is contested. Every angle of sunlight is made available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Everywhere there are predicaments—youthful beech trees that have gained a toehold in a stand of large red spruce that will stymie their future; white and yellow birch bent over the edges of every clearing, extending their limbs so far it looks as if they are begging for alms of sun. (They look exhausted and old before their time.) Hemlocks invaded by the woolly adelgid. The sprouts of maple trees in the thin soil on top of rocks, in the gardens, along the pathways.

Then there is me with my chainsaw, which cleared away half a dozen saplings of various sorts from the perimeter of the yard this weekend, and my clippers which freed an azalea from the clutches of a highbush blueberry.

I spent a lot of time with the blueberry bushes the past few days in the rain. We have dozens of them around, many close to the pond, and they suffered from neglect for years while our attentions were elsewhere. I estimate it will take another season to prune them all as the dense thicket of shoreline growth fills in this summer, cramping access.

I wish I could speak with them about their incessant and careless growing behavior. I wish I could talk to them all—the azaleas, mountain laurels, blackberries, and huckleberries. Also, their larger neighbors the beech, oak, maple, the pines. I would explain that, sometimes, too much growth is reckless. Sometimes big enough is big enough. Are these new shoots out of the ground necessary? What about these limbs that are now strangling other limbs and these branches that are overwhelming the fruit of other branches? If you were not so fixated on growing yourselves, maybe there would be more to share. Maybe so many of you would not be on the ground. I can point out that the blueberry bushes, whose growth was cut back early last spring, produced plentiful fruit. We agreed on a plan. There were reasonable expectations. We did not overreach.

If you spend enough time with a pair of hand shears in the woods, nature will get inside your head. I have seen it happen, people talking to plants. Then the mind wanders from shoots and limbs to debit limits and dust bowls, quarterly performance reports, bank crises, inflation rates, and rising oceans. The grinding reality of life we share beneath the canopy.

*Published in the [Monadnock Ledger-Transcript](https://ledgertranscript-nh.newsmemory.com/?ref=jarviscoffin.com), May 9, 2023*
### The Player's Punch
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/player/
Last updated: 2023-05-23T20:04:14.000Z
The Peterborough Players had its annual auction gala last week. My wife, Marcia, works for the Players—her retirement job from innkeeping—and I sit on one of the Board committees, which means we were there, bartending, serving cocktails and Players Punch, the signature drink of the evening, a limey, frothy, pineapple concoction with cherry and umbrella. People mingled cheerfully, waiting for the doors to open to the main event, enjoying the warm temperatures and passed hors d’oeuvres (from Sunflowers Catering and the Optimist Café). There were enough of us under a tent behind the rehearsal hall to stretch the attacking lines of black flies and blunt their advances.

Auctions are oxygen to many non-profit organizations—theatres, churches, community social clubs—and the people that organize them, soliciting, collecting and promoting donations, should be granted sainthood and go straight to Heaven when the time comes. The dust will not have settled for long behind this year’s Player’s auction before a committee of volunteers will have to start meeting to consider next year’s auction.

In pastoral places like Monadnock, assembling auction items demands creativity. The number of residents with Nantucket beach houses that might tempt a bidder under the spell of a pineapple umbrella drink is not high. Why would it be? They live *here.* They own lake houses. And the person that can afford to take a flyer bidding on a beautiful lake house for a weekend has their own next door.

So, our auctions feature a full day of tree work, fine furniture by local craftspeople, culinary experiences donated by area restaurants and chefs, curated collections of wines unavailable through the state store. Red Sox tickets (which is like winning a trip to the big city).

Sit through any community auction, and you will learn something about its people. It occurs to me at this moment how it might have been a good idea to encourage people who were staying at the Hancock Inn while we were its custodians to attend a local auction if they were interested in learning more about the region as a place to live. We got dozens of those visitors every year: candidates for jobs, applicants to schools, relations from elsewhere considering a move to Monadnock to be closer to family. They always had one question at breakfast that no one could really be trusted to answer objectively: what was it like to live here?

We should have thought of referring them to the Player’s auction, where they might have experienced some of the camaraderie, the restaurants, a few of the artisans, the duel over a day of tree work (trees are to us as ice is to Eskimos), even the Red Sox (yes, this is Red Sox nation). A perfect cultural snapshot. And, of course, the narrow road down to the Player’s gray barn, home to professional theatre for *ninety* years.

The Monadnock region has seen better days of higher enrollments. Right now, employers need workers, hospitals need doctors and nurses, schools need teachers and students. Restaurants need diners. Inns need guests. Local stores and markets need shoppers. Only more people, of one sort or another, will do anything to fulfill those demands. But only the answer to the question, “What is it like to live here?” will do anything to bring more people.

We have our answer, and it is a good one. It is worth bidding on wherever you go, however you can. Early and often.

> This column appeared in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, May 23, 2023
### Thank you, Puppy
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/thank-you-puppy/
Last updated: 2023-05-15T15:32:56.000Z
Thank you Puppy 5 2 23 1131 AM

0:00

/6:18

1×

Our golden retriever, Potter, died nine months ago this week. He was spending the night with his friends Joel and Leslie, who had cared for him regularly over the years in New Hampshire. He was as much at home in their house as anywhere.

We had gone to Boston to help with the grandson, and at eleven the first night away Leslie called, distraught and in tears, to say they had come out to the kitchen to discover Potter peacefully departed on the floor, in his usual spot, in his usual posture, stretched out, head tilted in the direction of traffic, positioned to keep an eye on the proceedings while out of the way.

We gave him a small eulogy on our Facebook page (maybe the last time I posted anything), which received a chorus of responses, the consequence of living in a small town where everybody knows your name and working at the front door of an inn with thousands of visitors a year. Someone asked if a postcard was to follow, as in a Postcard-from-Monadnock, and I said no: what else is there to write about the unquestioning love and loyalty of dogs?

But now we have a new, fourteen-week-old puppy, a Labrador retriever mix (of what we are not sure, maybe Boxer), and we are up in the night, looking for our slippers in the morning, putting sofa cushions up high, replacing iPhone cords chewed to bits despite countless chew toys on the floor, being mobbed by children we meet shouting, “puppy!”, getting kisses and cuddles and yelps of despair if we so much as leave the room.

Suddenly, we feel Potter, our most trusted friend, ebbing away. We feel the length of his shadow getting smaller as the radiance of new dog spreads over our days. The memory of him has been our only companion since the reality of him went away; it is beginning to dissolve as new reality leaps into our lap and licks our face.

We are resisting this dissolution as much as we can.

This is Potter’s rock I point out to the puppy at the edge of the pond. We cut a path to it through the shoreline bramble so that Potter, aching and lame, could wade in and out of the water without having to hump it over the bank. Each evening a year ago, he would step in from the rock deep enough for the buoyancy to relieve his tired legs while we sat on a bench nearby and watched the sunset against the opposite shore.

This is Potter’s bone, I say to the puppy, who discovered one while we were pruning the high-growth blueberry bushes. Potter helped me like you are helping me when I worked in the yard, keeping watch for unusual things.

That is Potter’s spot in the sun you are enjoying. You may find, as he did, that it is the perfect place after breakfast to watch squirrels jump tree to tree, fish rise in the pond, and the Phoebes dart back and forth from their nests under the porch beneath your nose.

We went for our inaugural walk with Gulliver and Molly early this morning, two Golden Retrievers that had been walking buddies of Potter for years, at a time when he was the grown-up in the pack, mannered in his behavior along the trail while they—the exuberant Gulliver in particular—cut left and right, leaping in circles around him. Today, our new pup whirled around them, biting their fur, tumbling under their feet. These are Potter’s old friends, I explained.

The pine box with Potter’s ashes is on a shelf in our living room. It needs to be placed next to the boxes holding the remains of our prior dogs, Hazel and Maggie (Mag-pie), down in the basement, in the TV room where we are together regularly. We brought them with us when we moved to the inn and found places for them on the shelves alongside the books. We never gave thought to bury them while at the inn, knowing that someday it would not be ours. We talk about selecting a location here, but there is the matter of winter: it is hard to abide the idea of them outside in the cold while we sit around the wood stove where all three delighted in curling up on the floor. 

And we have not finished balancing accounts.

God willing, I have a lifetime to try and make good on my obligations to humankind, but the dogs are never around long enough to even the score. Break open a package labeled DOG and out pops love and loyalty. Fully assembled. Plug and play. While the batteries hold out, it will fetch, carry, chase, snuggle, run, jump, cock its head, raise its ears, eat what is placed before it, and meet you at the door, happy. Then it is gone.

Our new puppy waits for me by my side while I write. Every now and then, he lifts his head. Time for a walk or a swim? What about a catch? I have a tennis ball. I have *three* tennis balls! Would you like to rumble on the floor? Okay. Whenever.

I am behind already with this dog of fourteen weeks. How much time do I have if all goes well? Ten years? Twelve? I can never catch up.

I collected Potter from Joel and Leslie’s at one in the morning. Joel was waiting and helped me get him into the back of the car. We embraced, and I drove to the all-night emergency vet in Concord, holding Potter's paw over the seatback and repeating, “Thank you, Puppy.”

He waits as the new puppy waits, and I let the memories of him pile on. You have gone on for almost a thousand words, they pantomine. Pencils down. Enough said. You want to do something for me—for us—for all of us? It’s a nice day. Take the new dog for a walk.

Okay. Thank you, Puppy.

**Huckleberry**
### Pilgrimage
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/pilgrimage/
Last updated: 2023-05-15T15:34:20.000Z
Pilgimage 3 31 23 1043 AM

0:00

/6:56

1×

We have been away. We joined a group of thirty people drawn from churches in Boston, New York, Nashville, and friends from other places and flew to Israel for a proper pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

We learned that pilgriming is a grind, as it has been for millennia. For us, it is ten hours to Israel if you get a direct flight. Boston has one such flight a few times a week. New York has several. But if you come from Nashville or other smaller cities, you will make multiple connections.

If your direct flight from Boston is canceled, as ours was on the original outbound leg, you will need to boot it to New York the next night in time to catch an eleven-thirty plane that arrives in Tel Aviv the following afternoon around five p.m. By then, you are a day behind the rest of your group, making it necessary to hire a car to chase them two hours north to Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, catching them just before the end of dinner.

There are no direct flights to Boston coming home, so it is four and a half hours to Amsterdam, with a three-hour layover, followed by seven and a half hours to Boston. The return leg ran like clockwork for us, on time, with no cancellations. But with transportation and three hours at each airport, it was a straight twenty-four hours of travel to reach home.

Then there is the touring part. The essence of Jesus Christ’s ministry took place around the Sea of Galilee, and in Jerusalem, and within those places, there are numerous points of interest and meditation. Visiting one or two a day would suffice, but pilgrims must consider the odds of ever returning halfway around the world to see what they would miss by discriminating between the sites. So, tour operators pack it in. The wake-up call is at six a.m. each day, followed by breakfast in the cavernous dining rooms downstairs, side by side with fellow pilgrims from around the world. (The Sous Chef of the kitchen was mingling with the crowds one morning, and I asked him how many people they were serving. Eight hundred, he answered.) It is all buffet, all the time—breakfast and dinner—helping to move everyone through with alacrity.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2023/03/IMG_4070-1.jpeg)

Following breakfast, there is a pitstop at the room to collect badges, touring guides, keys, ponchos (it rains in Israel), whatever else, and then to the buses—long, white, cushy, airconditioned Mercedes-Benz coaches with smiling Arab drivers that say good morning and thank you and guides well versed in scripture and archeology. Our guide was an Arab Christian named Manuel. Dark, muscular, with a closely cropped beard (like almost everyone in the Middle East), and maybe in his mid-forties. He was a committed ambassador for his land.

“Christians are leaving our country,” he said in his thick Arab accent, explaining how people are tired of the conflict. “We need them to stay.”

Each day we visited three or four sites in the morning and three or four in the afternoon, arriving back at the hotel (“*Oh*\-tel,” in Manuel-speak) around five-thirty p.m., in time to splash some water on the face, have a cocktail in the lounge, graze the abundant, unchanging buffet, attend a short service of evening prayer, enjoy maybe another cocktail and go to bed.

Repeat for ten days. Travel home for twenty-four hours. Go, pilgrim.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2023/03/IMG_4278.jpeg)

A scale model of the Second Temple built out of limestone, with a view of the East Gate, which Jesus entered on Palm Sunday. The Israeli Museum.

Others we met had come farther, from Ecuador, South Korea, Nigeria (in wonderful blue costumes), New Mexico, Washington state, and all over Europe. There were rows and rows of white buses wherever we went. In the morning, large clusters of visitors would gather in the hotel lobbies to check out, surrounded by a wall of luggage, ready to make their way to the next destination. It reversed in the evening as new crops of travelers arrived with their black suitcases and backpacks, filling the hall again and crowding the elevators.

I am thinking of it now, the enormous tide of pilgrims in and out. It stays with me, washing over my thoughts about our trip. I will remember the streams of people ahead of us down the footpaths, all of us coming behind those who excavated the caves of worship centuries before, who wore away the marble steps of churches, rubbed the bronze off statues, and kept the roads open to the Cross. The strong current of people; unremitting, like water bound for the sea.

I was compelled to make one trip to Disney when my youngest was probably in fourth grade. I had dodged it until then, being against the spectacle and crush of people, never mind the cost. I admit we had a fine time, helped by Dad’s Rule Number One, which was that any choice of ride or attraction was acceptable during the day until six o’clock when it would be time for dinner in a decent restaurant with a full bar.

I am done visiting Disney. Surely others are not. But invoking the image of tides of pilgrims in the Holy Land invites comparison to the tides of pilgrims that venture to Disney, or Buckingham Palace, the Grand Canyon, or Fenway Park, and will do so again. What is the difference? I have friends that would say none. Build it, and they will come—to be entertained, astonished, or faithful.

Yes, we are reliably that way. What of it? The glitter of Disney, the majesty of the Grand Canyon or the mercy of Golgotha? The presence of many pilgrims makes the cause just--sometimes unto more than a thousand years.

> Matthew, Chapter 11

> 7 As John’s disciples were leaving, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: “What did you go out to the desert to see? A reed swayed by the wind?

> 8 If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes live in king’s palaces.

> 9\. Then what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.

> 10\. This is the one about whom it is written, “I will send a messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.”

Go, pilgrim.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2023/03/IMG_4392.jpeg)

My Ecuadorian friends in line at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
### Spring Feverish
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/spring-feverish/
Last updated: 2023-03-04T10:30:40.000Z
Spring Feverish 3 3 23 1053 AM

0:00

/6:17

1×

We bent over the computers and transmitted an order for six trees this week—two apples, one peach, two mountain laurels, and one winterberry holly. God help us; it is March, and we are beginning to think about spring. Next week, daylight savings time will return, perhaps for good, if the House of Representatives follows the lead of the Senate and votes to eliminate standard time.

Are you clear on that? Standard time may be leaving, may be going away. It is a bit of a blow. It means I may not have occasion from now on to think at least twice a year of the Reverend Dr. Aaron Manderbach, the gentle country minister of Saint Stephen’s Church in Ridgefield, Connecticut (*Your friend and Pastor*, he wrote in my confirmation bible when I was twelve), who was the first person I remember explaining “spring forward” and “fall back,” which he did each season from the pulpit, beholding the congregation over the top of his wire-framed glasses. This was before self-adjusting clocks and iPhones. With standard time gone, I will not be able to look out the window and state definitively to Marcia, “Imagine, next week at this same time, it will be dark.” I will miss that. I will miss the sense of pulling up the ladder behind the summer and fall and letting it down in spring.

Anyway, the fact that it will be primarily light until almost seven o’clock in the evening in another week aggravates the expectation that spring is around the corner. So do the Pileated Woodpeckers, which have returned and are hammering the trees, introducing some life back into the woods. They are quiet today because it is snowing. Maybe the rat-a-tat-tat brings snow down on their tufted heads, something they learned is a nuisance early in life, like snow down the collar of our jackets.

In addition to the trees and shrubs we ordered, we have ten pounds of wildflower seeds in a box next to me. It is close to the time when we can sow those directly into the snow, allowing them to find their way to the ground as melt occurs, with snow cover offering protection from birds and squirrels. It is a question of what amount of warm-up will follow ahead of how much more deep freezing. This winter has been warm overall. Very slushy. We lost most of the snow cover in early to mid-February. The top layer of ground thawed, so there are deep ruts in the driveway from mud. Had we distributed the wildflower seeds over the field ahead of that, they might have germinated in places and been destroyed when the cold and snow returned. A repeat of that warming and cooling cycle between the beginning and end of March or mid-April is possible. So, for the moment, we will resist the urge to slice open the box.

Seeds for the vegetable garden are the next consideration. I have started tomatoes, broccoli and peppers indoors in the past, but today we live in the woods. While plenty of sunshine comes through our cabin windows, it comes through them one at a time. I would have to spend the day ferrying emerging shoots from one patch of light to the next.

One spot offers a solid three to four-hour option—barely enough—which is the floor inside the glass doors of the studio where I write, above our garage. Unfortunately, our generator does not protect the space. Power outages (have I mentioned the four so far this year?) are still possible. And the temperature up here is uneven, regardless. When the propane heater comes on, it blasts warm air until it feels sauna-like. Then it cools until it is cold.

The house plants that share the studio with me do their best to remain cheerful. I am nursing one of them—a kind of Aglaonema with broad green leaves and veins of white in a big blue pot—back from near extinction after a three-day outage in January when temperatures were in the teens. Only too late did I think of carrying it to the main house. One morning it was completely withered. We go back, this plant and I, to nineteen eighty-seven, practically the lifetime of my older two children. It is a grandparent to our grandchildren. We have moved together seven times, and I have promised, this is it. A few new, healthy shoots are emerging in the pot, a few others are hanging on from the frozen episode, small and curled; the rest I had to purge. Admittedly, it is not the first near-death experience for this long-time housemate. I was a bachelor for some of those years. The plant attended all the parties, drank vodka with the rest of us (someone said it was good for them), and endured periods of neglect when my attention was elsewhere.

Anyway, I think I will start a couple of flats of vegetable seeds in the studio. That will perk everyone up.

The stream that runs through the property is moving, filling with snow melt, another indicator of longer days and shorter nights. We transplanted four small rhododendrons last summer to its banks, two on each side, as a marker for the culvert underneath the driveway. The deer ate the leaves of three of them a couple of months ago. The leaves are supposed to be toxic to animals, but what am I to say? I eat plenty of stuff past the Use By date on packages rather than waste it. Dead of winter? Hungry deer? Green leaves? We are hopeful that the plants will renew in spring. Rhododendrons are tough.

Anyway . . . I have to go shovel snow. There is another winter storm warning tonight through tomorrow. Wind gusts of up to thirty-five miles per hour. Which means I should bring more wood inside for the stoves.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2023/03/Shutterstock_1429907063-2.png)
### Snail Salad
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/snail-salad/
Last updated: 2025-04-08T19:31:41.000Z
Snail Salad 2 16 23 251 PM

0:00

/6:04

1×

The title of this postcard is Snail Salad, which aficionados will recognize as an Italian delicacy called scungilli, made from conch or whelk—that is, giant sea snails. It is straight-up more interesting to use snail salad as a title because scungilli will mean nothing to many people, and it is entertaining to imagine myself at the table with my grandchildren, bargaining with them to finish their *snail salad* when the odds of them finishing anything other than pretzels and chips is many to one.

“What is *this* stuff, Granddad*?”*

“Ocean gummy bears.”

My children read these postcards (maybe), so I acknowledge that the two-and-a-half-year-old is willing to try anything for the first time. He was filmed recently devouring escargot (think, garlic + butter + whatever), but I know how these things change. My oldest grandchild used to devour my scrambled eggs when he was two. Nyet, today. Anyway, snail salad is too much fun to say.

Also, delicious to eat. Last week, I drove to Providence, Rhode Island, for lunch with a friend and longtime business colleague who lives around the corner from several excellent restaurants. He took me to a small, very comfortable Italian place with Jamaican servers who barely spoke English but had big, beautiful smiles.

A specialty of the house at this Italian restaurant is scungilli. I had never had scungilli. Now I plan to learn how to make it at home. It is pretty simple. You can purchase the mollusk in a can. Add celery, salt, pepper, a few other things, maybe olives if you like, some lemony dressing, and there you have it. Delightful.

Driving home from my lunch, the pleasantness of the time washing over me, I thought about the idea of scungilli on the table here in Monadnock. I owned a restaurant in the region, with my wife, for over ten years. Scungilli never entered our frame of culinary reference, despite conch being a reasonably common coastal ingredient in New England. Yet there are plenty of people around with adventurous enough palates that make me think it might be a welcome addition, particularly in the summer months, as something lighter that is *not* a Caesar salad.

Our restaurant went through a few iterations over the course of our stewardship. Mostly it was about supporting area growers and farmers, which, of course, would not elevate snails to our attention in the ordinary course of business. When we thought of seafood, we defaulted to cod, scallop (a bivalve mollusk, come to think of it), and trout. Never snail, although I suppose escargot may have appeared on a few Monadnock menus over time.

We did try and champion various organ types of meat—offal—as a way to advocate for eating the “whole animal.” We bought half cows across the street at the Market, which we also owned for a while, and they arrived with the heart, kidneys, liver, suet, etc. Offal did not sell well at retail, but we would bring them across the street to the Inn and convert them into pies and meatloaf. Occasionally, we sold more beef liver with onions, apple-smoked bacon and port wine sauce than steak of the day. But it required a couple of beef liver fans to be in the house, who dove at it.

If I get around to writing a book on the innkeeping days, there will be a long chapter on food. I think our food habits have calcified. We are not terribly adventurous. I do not know who ate the first sea mollusk, smashing it with a rock to extract the animal from within, but I posit they were hungry. We are not quite that hungry anymore. If liver is the only thing in the house, someone goes and gets a pizza. It may be a form of progress that we are not limited to food we must cultivate on our own, but ironically, it has not made our diet more diversified. If the only thing we like is boneless chicken breast, it can be boneless chicken breast again for dinner. There is no opportunity to say to the children, sorry, what’s available is the animal's heart and these green beans from the garden. Lean, tender and juicy, along with crisp and delicious. Or you can go to bed. In that respect, we do not savor important cultural connections with the past.

I am reading a book by Clinton Bailey, Bedouin Culture in the Bible. Dr. Bailey lives in Israel and has been an activist for Bedouin rights since 1978\. He is an expert. It is a scholarly journal. I read it slowly. But it is fascinating. (To explain, we are planning a trip to Israel in a month, and Dr. Bailey is a lifelong friend of my mother.)

No surprise, the semi-nomadic life of Bedouins over four thousand years has been hard-scrabble. It has made them, as it does of many people leading hard-scrabble lives, fiercely proud. We may wonder why they do not walk to the nearest bus route at the edge of the desert, but they do not. Instead, they regard the rest of us with levels of disdain. Case in point, the food. It turns out that yeast does not travel well by camel. Bedouin bread, therefore, is made with two ingredients, water and flour, and it is typically baked on hot coals in a sand pit, covered by other hot coals and more sand. The result is cracker-like. In Dr. Bailey’s narrative, he offers examples of Bedouin chiefs and poets over the years pouring contempt on the “soft bread” of the “settled life.”

That would point to me, I guess. Soft bread. Settled life. In my defense, it now includes snail salad.
### February
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/february/
Last updated: 2023-02-04T10:30:21.000Z
It is February. Just like that. I walk back across the driveway to the cabin from my office over the garage at five thirty, and daylight still blankets the sky. In another month, we will be thinking about resetting the light timers. I am writing this on Wednesday. Punxsutawney Phil is scheduled to be lifted from his tree stump tomorrow morning to look for his shadow, with an arm around his middle and a hand under his rump, whereupon we will know if winter is set to carry on for six weeks—in Pennsylvania.

On the banks of the pond in New Hampshire, winter just got here. Punxsutawney Phil would be struggling to crawl through a foot of heavy snow with an icy crust we can nearly walk on. The rhododendron leaves are folded up very tight this morning. I could pluck one and slide it into a cigar tube. It is forecasted to be twelve degrees tonight, and the temperature is headed down for the weekend. Saturday, the high will be six degrees. Nose pinching cold. This is good because, at those temperatures, I do expect to be able to walk across the top of the snow pulling a cart of firewood to replenish supplies in the basement.

We have gone through more wood than usual by this time of year, heating the cabin through four separate power outages. The last one was a week ago, a shorter downtime of twenty-four hours compared to the two and three-day interruptions that came before, beginning around Christmas. The problem has been the heaviness of the snow. Very wet, large flakes accumulate on the branches, weighing them down, eventually causing many to break. The scene it creates, however, is magical. For a few days, we occupied the world of Zhivago. We lived in a snow palace decorated to the top in white. It could have been Narnia. A faun might have come trotting down the driveway under the canopy. I can share a picture of our lamppost, looking as if it were buried in meringue.

The biggest concern with power outages is propane. We have a generator. It guzzles between two and three gallons of propane an hour, which compares to the average of about eight gallons per day under normal conditions this time of year, relying on wood stoves for part of our heat. If the power goes out with less than half our two one-hundred-gallon tanks remaining, and it is windy, and if the storm is going to rage into the night when it will not be safe for utility crews to work, and persist for a while the next day making clean-up slow and difficult; and if hundreds of customers are out of power, including those who live in built-up neighborhoods, with children, commutes, and more important obligations than may appear to apply to a cabin on a pond in the woods—we start to worry about running out of propane before help arrives. This is the scenario that has replayed itself four times this season.

Otherwise, no problem. The generator runs about everything when it is on, which is maybe six or seven hours a day (eighteen to twenty gallons of propane). We cook on propane, the wood stoves easily maintain a sixty-eight to seventy-degree temperature, and hopefully, the internet persists, which it has, so far.

I made three trips to Boston last week, where there is no snow—enough to speak of. The line between the snow haves and have-nots is abrupt this year. Snow on the ground ends soon after crossing the border into Massachusetts. Lunenburg, on the border with New Hampshire, was only partially snow-covered, and poor Lunenburg is reliably pummeled by weather. It seems to be on the dividing line, north and south, between encroaching systems—meaning, if the forecasters say the storm will stay to the south of us, Lunenburg gets it. If the storm comes through us, Lunenburg still gets it. It suffers particularly in ice storms. I know this because I have traveled through Lunenburg, to and from Monadnock, for years. It has cute white houses with green doors and screen porches, a country market, churches, a bandstand on the town green. And a hearty appetite for weather.

It was a slow start to winter in November and December. It was warm deep into the fall. That tells you winter is going to linger. It is here, finally, and will stay like your old college roommate did on the couch. There may even be a dreaded April snowstorm.

No one has their arm around my middle, feeding me carrots for this opinion. I am no expert. But we will see what the Big Guy says tomorrow.

\[Update: Phil saw his shadow. Six more weeks of winter. I am betting with the rodent.\]

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2023/02/IMG_3851.jpeg)
### Ice
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/ice/
Last updated: 2025-04-08T19:25:32.000Z
A couple of people went through the ice last week on a nearby lake. They were rescued, thankfully, but it always sends a shock and a reminder.

It is ice fishing season, or it is supposed to be: within a day or two of these people falling in, the temperature had climbed to over fifty degrees! The snow melted away, leaving just sand on our stone walkway, which had an easier time riding into the house on the bottom of our boots. (I am encouraging us to do morning stretching exercises on the floor. You can feel the sand on the rugs long before you can see it. I will say that.)

Perhaps the unlucky souls who got very cold and wet were impatient to fish. They have augers, and it may have seemed fine where they drilled the first couple of test holes, but lakes and ponds can be tricky around here. Most of the water bodies are the result of dams built in the last century. The water flows underneath the ice in unpredictable ways. We live on such a body of water, and I have never walked directly across the broad middle, even knowing the ice is four feet thick near our shoreline. Our pond gets to a depth of nearly sixty feet out there someplace. Water pours over the spillway of the dam all winter long. There are better, narrower places to cross.

We will do that when the time comes because venturing onto the frozen pond with two feet is liberating. It is a marvelously open space, like a winter field. Blazingly bright and antarctic on a sunny day and wild as the northern tundra in wind-driven snow, which will have you conjuring a team of dogs quivering to pull a sled. We have canoes, kayaks, and a small sailboat to enable our enjoyment of the water in summer in addition to swimming. But we are land animals; it means more to walk on the water. And a few times a year, we get to do that, which is when I take out my mobile device and snap a selfie. 

Here I am, on top of the pond. 

Circumnavigating the pond on foot is how we have grown to know it. You can get only so close to the pond’s edges by boat in the off-ice season. Protruding limbs and bramble get in the way, the shallows of mud, nesting ducks. Thick foliage hides whatever else. But free to walk the shore from the water’s edge, we ‘hop on/hop off' to poke around the banks, wander upstream, and discover new clearings and hidden networks of stonewall.

When it was suddenly fifty degrees several days ago, I grew hopeful that we would be able to skate, in addition to walk, on the pond. The rise in temperature turned the snow-covered surface to water. Had a few--maybe more--days of freezing temperatures followed without snow, we might have had quality pond ice, which is superior to the artificial ice of indoor rinks. Artificial ice is noticeably softer when you skate on it. True, charging down the rink and abruptly turning your skates sideways to stop will shave a snow cone’s worth of soft ice in the direction of your friends and impress the girls, but do not think yourself that sharp. Pond ice is the hard body. The distinction is valid for all ice machines, by the way. For this reason, we are happy to use ice cube trays at home in our freezer. Removing and refilling them requires dedication, but it is a small price to pay for ice that does not melt so rapidly in our cocktails. 

Winter sports fans around here are willing to pay an even higher price shoveling rink-size parcels of a pond for skating. They must be at it quickly following snowfalls to minimize the melting and freezing underneath, which is what pebbles the ice, making it bumpy. Some roll out hoses at night to flood the surface and roll them up again. In the dark. After work. In the winter cold. Where there is no available lake or pond, there is a long tradition in places of building rinks out of spare lumber scavenged from home improvement projects. I remember this in Buffalo, driving past houses, the front yards of which had been converted to hockey rinks.

The pond has been making its whale noises this week, a groaning, haunting sound that echoes under the ice. Presently, I will drop a couple of small cubes in a glass from our trays in the freezer. I will pour my libation and wait for the sound of the cubes to start cracking, which they always do as they are forced to give up their frozen-ness for liquid again. It is a lot of this or that for water—frozen, not frozen, almost frozen, cold, hot, boiling, steam. No wonder the ice cracks and groans. I do not go through nearly the same number of contortions on an average day, and I crack and groan.

It is another reason to treat the ice with respect.
### Happy New Year and a Half
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/happy-new-year-and-a-half/
Last updated: 2023-01-07T10:30:56.000Z
New Year feels more like the middle of the year to me. The feeling derives from measuring time in school years and the passing of summer vacations. I went to boarding school. I remember the last two weeks of August shopping for new shoes, name tags going into clothing, having farewell encounters with summer friends by the lake or around the pool, with nothing left to say when it was time to go home except I’ll see you at Christmas. Maybe I will. By then, who knows? Everything started over in September.

I became aware of time in those boarding school days. I tracked it carefully, in increments of school semesters, between seeing my family again. Homesick at the outset, I would count the weeks until the next break—usually five or six—while lying in my dorm bed, staring at the ceiling, hands behind my head. For many years afterward, what took place inside those blocks was fresh in my mind. It felt possible to recap my life five weeks at a clip going back to age thirteen. Give me a minute, and I might be able to recall a few bundles of it today.

Time carries us along as a passenger when we are young. We reach out our hand, someone takes it, and off we go, being deposited at stops and appointments along the way. Then we get calendars. It is interesting how our first many years seem to go on forever when we are less aware of time and its uses. These postcards I write draw on childhood experiences as if they were a bottomless trove of memories. In truth, I have been a grandfather now for nearly as long as I was a child. The oldest grandchild will be ten this year. On his bed, staring at the ceiling, his memories stretch back until they disappear into the fog of his beginnings. It seems infinite. Perhaps it is. It is a minute ago to the rest of us with calendars.

Vacation people divide into two main camps: July and August. We were always August vacation people, specifically the last two weeks of August. This added to the sense of September as the start of the new year. Loading up the family car with the duffle bags, fishing rods, tennis rackets, coolers, and bicycles, tossing in stray foul weather jackets and umbrellas, and assembling the pets—these were watershed moments. Summary moments. Ultimate moments. They were the wrap-up to the year, which was coming to a close, punctuated with a firm period of the family together.

Family vacation is a postcard musing on its own. But here is a quick story: we had two cats, Currier and Ives. The names were Marcia’s idea. Typically brilliant. Ives was like a dog—affectionate, needy, responsive. Currier was like a cat—aloof, disparaging, you-sit-there-I’ll-sit-over-here, thank you very much. The car was loaded. Ives was in; Currier escaped under the house we had rented in the mountains. We crawled on our bellies, made trails of Meox Mix, made concession after concession with no response. We could see Currier under the house. He could see us. He simply licked his paws. A true Freedom Caucuser as ever was. In the end, we left. Marcia had to drive back the three and half hours the next day to retrieve him when we knew he would be sitting at the door, angry about a night without dinner and a comfy spot on the chair.

We do not take family vacations anymore of that sort; the children drive the crowded SUVs these days loaded with modern appliances such as video screens, sliding doors, and built-in coolers. We are not in school, but the grandchildren are, and our schedules remain somewhat fixed to theirs. Schools and summer vacation. When can we hope to see everybody? What grade are the children going into? Goodness, they are so grown-up. Are you excited, we ask? No? Oh, well, still, third grade is a big step. My third-grade teacher was Ms. (we called them Miss) Anthony. I was as tall as she was, which is about how tall you are now. Isn’t that funny? She was really short.

That is what I remember from truly long ago. And way back then, one thing is sure, I never fathomed the year Two Thousand and Twenty-Three. Orwell had only recently fathomed Nineteen Eighty-Four. What person or child had their eye to the glass to see as far ahead as Twenty-Twenty-Three?

But here we are, thank goodness. Happy New Year! Happy New Year-and-a-half! May it be filled with warm memories bouncing off your ceiling, may your children and grandchildren strengthen and prosper, your pets come when you call them, and everything fit back in the car when it is time to go home.
### No More Work Tonight
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/no-more-work-tonight/
Last updated: 2022-12-24T10:30:46.000Z
At around three o’clock on Christmas Eve afternoon, my father would lead my brothers and me into the living room, motion us onto the sofa or a place on the floor, pour himself a glass of wine, settle into the armchair next to the fireplace and start reading Charles Dicken’s, *A Christmas Carol*—all three ghosts of it and not any of the abridged versions. It was light outside when he began and dark outside when he finished. Along the way, my mother, knocking around the kitchen, would bring us eggnog and require us to pause for dinner. We would fetch pillows, change places, lie on our backs, flip to our stomachs, change again, ask for more dessert, stare into the eyes of the dog. But we remained in the audience. At the same point in the story every year—the end of Bob Cratchit’s eulogy for Tiny Tim—my father would start crying while reading, “I am very happy . . . I am very happy.”

> *“I know, my dears, that when we recollect how patient and how mild he was although he was a little, little child we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it.”*

> *“No, never, father!” they all cried again.*

> *“I am very happy,” said little Bob, “I am very happy!”*

I tried to carry on this tradition with my children, but each side was overwhelmed by the commitment. My copy of *A Christmas Carol* extends to two hundred pages. It is ambitious bedtime reading. I stepped down to an abridged recording of the story narrated by Paul Scofield that lasts about one hour. We relied on that for years until the children were out of the house. I have an unabridged version, also narrated by Scofield, that I will listen to today as I take my turn knocking around the kitchen. I have things I have to do ahead of the celebration tomorrow. I can listen. It is especially comforting to me that way.

Where do images in your life take you? When the *Christmas Carol* narrative reaches the tremulous sounds of Marley’s ghost ascending from below, I will be transported to our old house in Westport, Connecticut, built sometime in the seventeen hundreds, with an imposing front door knocker, wide, creaking floorboards and a fireplace in nearly every room. I will be in my room as a young boy, in the bed nearest the door. Marley will come up those stairs:

> *“The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant’s cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.”*

> *“The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.”*

My oldest grandchild is nine. It is getting near the time to draw him into our traditions. Those have to be blended with the customs of his father, our marvelous son-in-law, which I do not believe include, *A Christmas Carol*. It is only required, from our end, that a version dutiful to the text reaches him before the Muppets movie. But nothing—Muppets or Albert Finney—has ever managed to capture Dickens apart from Dickens:

> *“. . . he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.”*

For Christmas, I want to be able to write like that: solitary as an oyster, carrying my own low temperature about me.

Christmas was not the extravagance in nineteenth-century England or America that it has become. The German custom of a Christmas tree was just beginning to find its way into homes elsewhere in the world. Charles Dickens invented the Christmas familiar to us with his story. A prophet of sorts, shaped by his experiences as a boy working in the squalid conditions of a shoe factory while his father did time in debtor’s prison, conditioned by his careful observations of the yawning gulf between rich and poor at that time in England.

> *“What’s to-day!” cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.*

> *“Eh?” returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.*

> *“What’s to-day, my fine fellow?” said Scrooge.*

> *“To-day!” replied the boy. “Why, CHRISTMAS DAY.”*

> *“It’s Christmas Day!” said Scrooge to himself. “I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. ”*

We will attend church tonight. Many Protestant churches have been throwing in the towel on Christmas Day services; it is not possible to compete with the excitement of what is under the tree and the subsequent push to gather up the boxes, paper, and ribbon ahead of more family for lunch. I am okay with that, making way for families and friends gathering together. In the church where we celebrate, we will bring presents for the collection—socks, warm sweaters, gloves— in a small effort to share something with those who have much less. Tomorrow is reserved for other aspects of our celebration, including roast beef, creamed onions and, of course, plum pudding, the one time of year that we set dessert on fire to the delight of children at the table.

> *“Heaped up upon the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam.”*

May your holiday chambers be filled with the warmth of family and friends, of “seething bowls of punch,” good memories and joyful hope for the coming year.

Merry Christmas.

> *“Yo ho, my boys!” said Fezziwig. “No more work to-night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let’s have the shutters up,” cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, “before a man can say, Jack Robinson!”*
### All Bluster. No Snow.
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/all-bluster-no-snow/
Last updated: 2025-04-08T19:16:43.000Z
December 10th, still no snow. We had a smattering that stayed on the ground a few weeks ago, but it is gone. After much rain and temperatures in the mid-forties, the grass is greening up. We have ten pounds of wildflower seeds from Vermont that we would like to distribute across our field, around the stone wall in the middle, but it might germinate under current conditions. This means sprouts poking up from the ground, unaware that the sun will not climb above the white pines on its short journey around the property to cover them in light. The sun is weak against the dark and cold right now. It is powerless to rescue young sprouts out when they shouldn't be.

A stretch of high winds brought back the warmer weather. They arrived with fists flailing, knocking down tree limbs, rustling up the leaves, slapping tarps covering the woodpiles, whistling through the bedroom window we leave open a crack at night. The particular ruckus went on for two to three days. More wind at the start of the week brought down another tree across the driveway, which makes seven trees across the driveway this year.

The matter remains unsettled. The wind of one front continues to whip up against the other. They make footprints on the pond's surface as they lunge, parry, and riposte. We watch from our kitchen window. A gust hits the water, sending tight waves rippling over the surface. Another smacks the surface nearby, and another plants itself to the right, followed by another that beats the water to a foam. And then they are off, chasing each other through the treetops.

The squirrels hide. Everyone does. The chickadees and the nuthatches stay home. The trees curl their roots to avoid toppling over, keeping a watchful eye on their neighbors. They worry about the older community members nearby, especially the birch trees. The poor birch trees. They never seem well. They do not grow tall enough to compete with the other trees for sunlight. They must reach for it from the edges, bending as far as they can from beneath the canopy, and it is never far enough. One birch has finally keeled over onto a smaller beech, which now has the burden of growing up while supporting its defunct neighbor. The beech appeals to me to do something about it as I walk by. It has seen what I can do with a saw. Maybe I will.

At the moment, I am more worried about the porcupine. I ran into him two evenings ago as he was foraging on the lawn around his usual time. He is large and black except for the gray points at the end of his quills and the whiskers around his chin. After the usual pleasantries, I noticed his left hind leg was tucked under his side, obviously damaged. He moved away slowly on three limbs. He picked a path through the brush pile at the edge of the lawn and half slid, half dragged himself down the embankment into the woods. I fetched a flashlight and followed his movements for a short time, which I know he did not appreciate. Then I pitched him an apple. We do not have a dog at the moment, although we did—Potter—who mercifully never showed any interest in the porcupine, despite a couple of encounters. One had to be willing to run and jump to attract Potter’s interest. Where is the sport if you curl up like a ball and lay still?

The bats who made a home for the summer under a piece of loose siding on the garage departed weeks ago. It is prime bat real estate facing due south. High enough, warm enough, and cramped enough for daytime coziness. Tomorrow I will fill the void with steel wool to block their return to the space. However, we have a bat house to make good on their need for accommodations. Are you familiar with bat houses? They can be found in the same aisle with pet rocks. We purchased one twenty years ago at a garden center, thinking how adorable. Goodbye mosquitoes. Except that the probability of bats taking up residence in a prefab unit is approximately one percent.

But now—*now*—twenty years later, we have the opportunity to hang our bat house immediately over the blockaded entrance to a known summer colony. It will seem slightly different, slightly refurbished, when they return. How will they not be pleased otherwise? Same bat location. Same bat coziness.

It is suddenly quieter outside. Getting dark. And it is colder. A gentle breeze is tickling the branches. This morning when we woke up, the weather suggested snow flurries on Sunday. Everyone may be finally worn out. In which case, let it snow.
### Happy Thanksgiving
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/happy-thanksgiving/
Last updated: 2022-11-24T10:30:46.000Z
I shared George Washington's 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation two years ago at this time as part of the series of postcards I sent regularly to the Hancock Inn community. I have been drawn to it since as the holiday approaches.

My inbox is awash in turkey, stuffing and pie recipes. It has been for a month. Next week it will be leftover turkey and stuffing recipes (there is never leftover pie by *next week*). It is the same every year at Thanksgiving--how to achieve the perfectly moist, crisp bird--plus the traffic on the way to Grandma's, waits at the airport, green bean casserole, and arriving Christmas catalogs.

Washington's proclamation must be worth renewing at least as much as all that. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

*By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.*

*Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor-- and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.*

*Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be-- That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks--for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation--for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war--for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed--for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted--for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.*

*and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions-- to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually--to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed--to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord--To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us--and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.*

*Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.*

*Go: Washington*

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2022/11/thanksgivingproclamation.jpg-1.webp)

Courtesy of www.mountvernon.org
### Election Notes
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/election-notes/
Last updated: 2022-11-12T10:30:14.000Z
My first experience with elections was in fifth grade. I ran for student council president and won. My friend Eddie Kellogg (not using real names here) was so upset about losing that he cried and cried. Eddie really wanted the job. I knew that. He was a popular guy and ran a strong campaign. I believe he had campaign buttons, which means he had plenty of help from someone at home. But he was so distraught that our homeroom teacher sent us down the hall to the principal’s office. I felt bad. He was crying. The Principal was trying to resolve the situation and probably thinking, who thought it would be a good idea to have ten-year-olds form a student government? Consistent with that question, I resigned and conferred the presidency on Eddie, who stopped crying. This was, of course, a straight-up disenfranchisement of the voters, but the Principal embraced the bargain with a pat on the head and ushered us back to the classroom.

I ran for student government again in middle school, in grade seven. I made posters with a big, beautiful star that I painstakingly drew using a ruler and yellow marker. I distributed them throughout the building, attaching them with masking tape to the cream-colored cinderblock walls. I do not remember my slogan, but later in the day, someone said, “I didn’t know you were Jewish.” Evidently, I had chosen the Star of David as my symbol. I lost anyway to David Stepan, whom I maintain won because he was the only seventh grader with a girlfriend.

Samantha “Sam” Gibson set the finest example of politicking I saw in those days. It may have been the year after my hand-off to Eddie. Sam was a very cute sixth grader. That might have done it for her, but she had more to offer. The school organized an assembly in the cafeteria one afternoon for candidate presentations. We sat cross-legged on the floor, grades four through six, with the teachers arrayed around the room on plastic chairs. The contenders took turns stepping onto the wooden roll-out stage to make their pitch. The only memorable address—it has lasted a lifetime—was Sam’s. Others may have promised more recess, more ice cream, more snow days. Who knows? What is there to run on when you are ten, paraded everywhere in a single file, without any discretion over budgets? Sam strode to the stage, alluring as always. She asked everyone to stand. We did, teachers included. Sam took her time looking around the room with a smile while we fidgeted in place. A few giggles poked through the suspense. Finally, she said, “Thank you. Please sit down.” We did. Sam said, “As I’ve just demonstrated, people will respond to my leadership.”

Sam won in a landslide.

I relocated to Canada for high school, where I lived under an autocracy, the old British schoolboy system of masters, new boys, old boys and prefects. And corporal punishment, including strikes with a slipper for being out of bed after lights and straps across the wrist for more egregious offenses such as leaving campus off hours and without permission, stealing, smoking, and other ruinous conduct.

Honestly, we had great fun. Along the way, the school brought in a capable headmaster (British, by the way) tasked with dragging the institution into the twentieth century. I joined other senior fellows opposing the move (there were no women yet, although that was planned for the next year). We brought a signed petition to a meeting with the Head to document the student body’s preference for the status quo—the old ways, the ways we knew, the ways of our traditions, the ways incorporate in our fight songs and chapel hymns.

I made many mistakes over many years. I go back to that meeting with the headmaster as the one where I was, in addition to all else, on the wrong side of history. It left its mark. The school flourishes today as a multi-cultural, internationally recognized place of learning.

Where is Sam Gibson today? She might be in Congress, for all I know. It would do to have her leadership skills at work there, getting people to stand up and sit down, when required.

Where is Eddie? I hope his passion for serving in government has not diminished. Maybe he has worked on a Schoolboard or Select Committee. I would be surprised to see him pop up on a list of Presidential candidates at this point, but if elected, it would be great to get a note from him on White House stationary, “Thanks for giving me my start in fifth grade.”

I do not know what happened to David, but I used to see his parents when I moved back as an adult to the town where we grew up. His mother was one of the first women ordained in the Episcopal church, which was probably controversial then, but I had no idea. She had done so many things around the church over the years that becoming a priest seemed the obvious next step.

The headmaster who rejected our petition and spearheaded change at my high school died several years ago. We kept in touch through alum functions. Before he died he co-wrote a volume on the one-hundred-plus year history of the school. He would say that knowing history is a good way to stay on the right side of it.

I have one of his business cards that reads simply, *Teacher*.
### Wine Country and Other Places
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/wine-country-and-other-places/
Last updated: 2022-10-29T09:30:38.000Z
We were on the road this month, attending class reunions and memorial services. It was a catch-up across the board. In our case, we were constrained from traveling as innkeepers for many years. In others, the pandemic clamped a lid on reunions and memorial services.

It was good to get out and see the country. We made two trips across New York, once to Canada (high school reunion), once to Geneva (college reunion) and Ithaca (son at graduate school). And then to Maine.

My high school is on the Niagara frontier. They started planting grapes there for wine when I was a boy. As a college student in the Finger Lakes – still pretty much a boy - I remember the vineyards going in along the shores of Lake Seneca. No one paid much attention in either case. It was only a few vineyards. There were no bus tours or tastings. The output for years was limited to ice wines and sweet Rieslings.

Today, the vineyards of Niagara and the Finger Lakes dominate the agricultural and commercial landscape, and there are many varietals. We enjoyed reds as much as whites. There are buses everywhere. Plus, restaurants, bed and breakfasts, guided tours, no parking signs, people from around the world, and kiteboarders. We spent an hour or so each afternoon outside our hotel at the top of Lake Seneca, wine glasses in hand, watching kiteboarders careen across the water, occasionally launching in the air to twist and turn. I approached a tall, blonde, athletic-looking fellow packing up his rig to inquire about the sport, but I think he was Swedish. We managed to say hello and goodbye.

Niagara-on-the-Lake, in Canada, was like Hancock, NH, when I was a boy spending a couple of weeks there every summer - small and neighborly. We could be independent at young ages, going everywhere on our bicycles. It remains possible to go everywhere on a bike in Niagara, except the sidewalks. The sidewalks are now full of pedestrians that stop every ten feet to peer into the windows of each tempting shop. I bought an Irish cap to replace the one I purchased in the same store years ago, and Marcia picked up relish and chili sauce from Greaves jams, which has been there forever. But the owners do not live above the store anymore. Above the store is now Greaves Sweet Escape luxury accommodations for $527 a night in high season. If the price does not overwhelm you, do it. The location is perfect. The pictures look great. Careful swinging the door open in the morning, so you do not hit anyone on the sidewalk.

Then it was Maine for memorial services. Freeport and Damariscotta. Lobster, the ocean, more amazing restaurants and shopping possibilities. But it is the rugged coastal landscape that stokes the imagination in Maine and the classic farmhouses with attached barns. We have a few of those in New Hampshire but not many inland. I think it is more about the wind than the cold because it gets colder in our part of the country than it does along the seacoast. I would have no objection to stepping through my kitchen door into the barn to fetch an armful of wood as opposed to going outside.

The memorial services were about family. In one case, we had waited two years to celebrate the life of an aunt. She died pre-vaccine. As a choir member for most of her adult life, singing hymns brought her joy. She sang hymns driving in the car to the market. When her brother was dying - my father - she led hymns for us around his bed. Thus, we waited for a time when we could comfortably gather to sing hymns to celebrate her life, which is what we did that afternoon for a solid hour. Hymn after hymn. It was great fun, precisely how she would have wanted it.

The other memorial was also for an aunt who died earlier this summer. She lived in Peterborough for the last several years of her life, which allowed us to reconnect after many years. I spent a lot of time in her house as a student at that Canadian school because she lived in Buffalo, and I would visit on long weekend vacations rather than try and make it back and forth to southern Connecticut, where my family lived at the time.

The service for her was in a little brown church that you could imagine as a picture in a children’s storybook. Cozy. Warm. Muted. Casual around the room's edges with tables of books, stray articles of clothing left behind, and a spare space heater. A man played the piano in the corner. The minister, in jacket and tie, was a fine Yankee gentleman. Because it was not obvious, I asked him about the church's denomination. “Whatever the minister of the time wants it to be,” he said.

From the church, my aunt was taken by the immediate family to be buried on an island next to her late husband. Not bad at the end of a full life to exit through a small church in a small Maine town to rest on a quiet island.

We drove home on Sunday from the second trip to central New York, the last one of our month on the road, past the wine country around Ithaca, through rolling hills of farmland to Route 88, up to the New York Thruway, dodging tractor-trailers and mobile homes on our way East to Albany, then Route 7 into Vermont, up the mountains, down into New Hampshire, across to Keene and in under the canopy of the forest to our cabin on the pond.

Everyplace else is tempting. It is raining now. I have put the plants from my office over the barn outside on the porch for a drink and to have a change of scene of their own. I wonder if they imagine living outdoors. At the moment, they are huddled together, enjoying the rain.

All that is left is orange on the trees. Orange leaves and needles carpet our driveway. I am going to fetch wood from outside and bring it inside. 

I am not going anywhere else today.
### Pot Roast
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/pot-roast/
Last updated: 2022-10-15T09:29:59.000Z
This week I came across writing advice that said never begin a story with the weather. Well, it is raining and windy, and the leaves are falling steadily. We arrived home last night from out of town, and the lawn was as we left it. By the close of business today, it will be eligible for raking.

In tandem with the wind, rain and falling leaves, the Hunters' Moon was this past Sunday, October 9th. The Hunters' Moon, also called the Blood Moon (because of all the hunters), refers to the first full moon after the Autumnal Equinox. Traditionally, it signals the onset of fall and colder weather.

This story is about pot roast, and any story about food is also about the weather. Subscribers to this postcard who were guests at the Hancock Inn, which my wife Marcia and I owned for ten years, know that pot roast was a staple of the dining room menu. We inherited that fact when we purchased the Inn, and we did our best to honor its place in the hearts of diners, including those who would order it in July and August, with the air conditioning at full blast and the climate more suitable to outdoor grilling and sauteed, crisp green vegetables from the garden.

We confess that braising beef in the summer months, when working muscles such as the bottom round and chuck were better suited to flavorful grinds and sauces, slightly tormented us. Roast turkey with sage and sausage dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and gravy is delicious any time. But it is just not right in August after swimming in the lake all afternoon, sitting at the table wearing short sleeves and sandals. At least not here, in Monadnock, the heart of New England, particularly if you plan to remain through winter relying on comfort foods of that kind and the associated squashes and root vegetables.

Anyway, we made a lot of pot roast over ten years - at least fifteen pounds of it a week or roughly seventy-five hundred pounds of it over our tenure as innkeepers. Probably more. At one point, I suggested getting bomber jackets for the gift shop with little portions of flying pot roasts on the lapel. Marcia nixed it.

As chef at the Inn, here is how I prepared the pot roast. It is a two-day process.

> 4 - 5lbs of bottom round or chuck. I prefer chuck. More fat. But it can fall apart if you overcook it.

> Vegetable oil (grapeseed or canola, preferred because they have higher smoking points)

> A large onion or two, a few carrots, and celery chopped.

> 2-3 (or 4) Garlic cloves peeled and sliced

> Tomato paste (or canned whole tomatoes, also good. It is up to you.)

> Bay leaves

> Parsley

> Peppercorns

> Red Wine

> Beef/Chicken/Vegetable stock, or water (water is just fine)

> Corn Starch

> **Preheat oven to 325.**

> Lightly salt the meat on all sides and bring it to room temperature before cooking (about an hour).

> Heat a large casserole or Dutch oven with 2-3 tablespoons of vegetable oil to almost smoking. Carefully place the roast into the pot (use tongs, if possible. Place, do not drop, so you do not splatter hot oil), and brown thoroughly on one side or more. \[The standard for browning meat is changing. One well-browned side is fine. You are looking for the fond on the bottom of the pot.\]

> Remove meat to a platter, and carefully pour out the fat. Add another two tablespoons of veg oil and reheat to almost smoking.

> Add chopped onion, carrot and celery. Saute until soft.

> Add Garlic cloves and stir for 1-2 minutes until fragrant.

> Add 1-2 TBL of tomato paste. Stir.

> Add 1.5 cups of wine and allow it to reduce until almost evaporated.

> Return beef to pot and add stock or water to cover three-quarters of the beef.

> Throw in a few Bay Leaves, about one dozen Peppercorns and several sprigs of Parsley.

> IF you are using a can of drained whole tomatoes, add them now.

> Bring to a simmer/low boil. Cover and pop it in the oven to cook for about three and a half hours. A fork inserted into the thickest part of the beef should go in and out without effort. Check the roast periodically. If it is boiling hard, turn the oven down to 300.

> Remove the roast from the oven and let it cool on the stove for half an hour in the pot. If there is room, put the whole thing in the refrigerator, uncovered, and leave it overnight. This will add flavor. Otherwise, extract the roast from the pot and strain the liquid into a heat-proof container. Toss the leftover vegetables. Refrigerate the strained liquid and the roast.

> **Next day**, skim and discard the fat off the top of the braising liquid and pour liquid into a pan, reserving about 4TBL (one-quarter cup). Bring liquid to a boil and start to reduce. Taste the reduction frequently for flavor and to make sure it is not getting salty (remember, the beef was salted before cooking). When the liquid has reduced by about one quarter, and the taste is rich enough, mix the reserved 1/4 cup of liquid with 2-3 TBL of cornstarch until smooth, then slowly whisk the cornstarch mixture into the sauce. Bring it back to a boil. It will thicken. Simmer for several more minutes. Season to taste. Slice the roast (at a bias for pleasingly large slices) and immerse in the sauce. Warm until hot in the oven or on the stovetop.

Mashed potatoes are *not* a required accompaniment to pot roast. The combination of pureed carrot and parsnip is actually better; more assertive. Any of the arriving squashes, such as acorn, butternut or kabocha are excellent. Polenta is very good and, of course, noodles or pasta. You want something that will add support to the luscious reduction sauce you made with the corn starch, which any of those things will do, with the addition of a sturdy, late-season green such as kale or chard. 

The only requirements are a sweater and warm socks, perhaps a warm fire, and a bright Hunters' Moon. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2022/10/tempImageXXHF6Z.gif)
### A Respectable Bird
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/with-the-turkeys/
Last updated: 2025-05-21T20:01:10.000Z
I am sure the first wild turkey I saw generated as much surprise and delight as a bear does today strolling across our driveway. I spent the initial portion of my life in Wilton, Connecticut, which was very rural then (my father waited for the train to New York each morning with less than fifty other commuters around him), and there was not a hint of gobble-gobble in the woods or fields around us. It would have been as likely for an Albatros to fly overhead.

Well, I nearly ran over half a dozen turkeys with the truck this week, picking my way past gaggles of them as I traveled home from the market a mere three miles away. They gather along the shoulder of the road, you know, and a few will dash for the opposite side as you approach. Another dozen were leisurely pecking their way down the side of our driveway when I pulled in. This is the flock that lives with us, in and around our property. We have watched the poults grow up. My wife, Marcia, has kept count of them, more-or-less, monitoring their survival. And they seemed to have survived well, all of them; it has been a bumper year for turkeys.

So where did all the turkeys go once upon a time? Five minutes of research says they were hunted away, popular forever as food because of a diet rich in nuts and seeds. Back in an era when everyone may have had a shotgun leaning against the front porch rail, hunting could have substantially reduced the turkey population. I can tell you today, though, our friends in Monadnock who are avid turkey hunters will need only a net.

Legend has it that Ben Franklin advocated for the turkey as our national symbol. You have heard this, probably. It implies that turkeys were in good supply at the country’s founding. But Franklin’s advocacy for the turkey is fake news, unfortunately (all fake news being unfortunate, even turkey news). According to History.com, he was part of the committee given charge of designing the national seal, but early proposals derailed, and it was not until later that the Continental Congress settled on the bald eagle. Franklin lamented the choice because he felt the eagle was a “bird of bad moral character.” A scoundrel, in his opinion, a poacher and scavenger, “too lazy to fish for himself.” In contrast, the turkey was an American original and a “much more respectable bird,” he wrote.

Concerning bald eagles, the population next door to us on Lake Nubanusit seems to be doing very well. They visit our small pond regularly, and while we see them scavenging like crows along the road, and it is clear the loons detest them, they fish very well and make it look easy.

Quick story: not too long ago, we were paddling our canoe on the pond nearby another with two fellows who had been out fishing all morning. Around lunchtime, the resident loons made us aware of a bald eagle circling above. The loons are always the first to shout, “EAGLE!” Perhaps attracted to the fishermen’s canoe, the eagle made a couple of low approaches, swooped down just off their port bow and – *splash* – hit the water, and with giant wings beating, lifted-off carrying a large squirming fish. Then, it arched gracefully upwards and away to a tall white pine on the shore to enjoy. When the action was over, one of the two fishermen in the neighboring canoe called to us, “He did that just to spite us!”

The first hints of fall are here. The birds, except the loons, do not wake us up in the morning. The robins and hummingbirds are gone. The raptors are on their way. The trees are starting to change color, and temperatures at night dip into the low forties. I am back to wearing sweaters at night and in the early morning. At this point, what is left still growing in the garden will not mature and ripen, so in the next couple of weeks, we will turn it back into the soil and cover it with straw. I take the snowblower to the small engine shop for its annual check-up this afternoon. Afterward, we will come back to split and stack more wood.

As a friend used to say, “It’s down to you and the turkeys,” referring to last call at the bars. Very well. Winter will be here before we know it. Last call for nuts and berries. We will stand with the turkeys. They are respectable birds.
### A King's Highway Runs Through It
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/a-kings-highway-runs-through-it/
Last updated: 2022-09-17T09:30:05.000Z
I have lived close to a King's Highway most of my life. Charles II ordered the first such highway built in the mid-1600s from Charleston, South Carolina, to Boston, Massachusetts. The path evolved into the Boston-Post Road and Highway Route 1, stretching from Maine to Florida. Someone must have walked or ridden a bicycle the length of that historic road and published a travel log. It will not be me to do it if not. But it is a worthy quest.

Almost one hundred years later, another king, perhaps George II, built a highway crossing New England from Portsmouth to Vermont. We live along the remaining elements of that King’s Highway in the Monadnock Region. It is a quaint, tree-lined road, partly paved, mostly dirt, leading out to Nubanusit Lake, past a farm or two and the Harris Center for Nature Conservation and Education. We brake for turkeys on the King’s Highway today.

I went to school in Canada for five formative years and got used to the Queen’s picture on the currency, driving along the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW), turning right on Queen Street to school, and praying for Her Majesty each day in Chapel (yes, *each* day and twice on Sundays). At school banquets, we made a toast to the Queen. The first instance of that for me was the Lower School Cross Country banquet. Once everyone was assembled, the headmaster stood at the head table, and everyone stood with him. Not a word was spoken. I followed along. When the room quieted, the headmaster announced, “To Her Majesty the Queen.” All arms went into the air holding a glass of something, probably milk. “To the Queen,” we all responded and sat down.

I have a Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Medal Award from those days. The late Prince Philip founded the Edinburgh program around the Commonwealth to help inspire young people to do great things. My great thing was finishing a semester-long first aid class run by St John’s Ambulance, a Canadian organization that provides first aid training and assistance. The very proper, very stiff instructor stood erect at the head of the class each week, in uniform, hands folded behind his back (what the heck, he may have even had a riding crop), facing a room of high school boys with whom he did not share a sense of humor. He endured, and we got medals. “Bloody kids,” I expect he said to his wife at night.

In 1976, a friend and his family generously invited me to the Olympics in Montreal, which Queen Elizabeth attended along with Prince Philip. Their daughter, Princess Anne, was an equestrian competitor in those Olympics, and I believe it was at an equestrian event where I got to see the Queen. The scene was hive-like: a throng of people around the Queen, moving as a hive with the Queen at the center. Like bees. Trying to watch her daughter compete in the event must have been very hard.

While watching the hive pulsate across the hill in front of us, I commented to my friend on the important role I felt the Queen played in the world. “Really?” he responded with a smirk, “She’s not the richest person in the world.” His comment landed on me with a thud. But, yes, I was grateful to have a wealthy friend invite me to the Olympics. We went into Montreal a couple of evenings and drank gin and tonics for eight dollars each. This was 1976, I remind you. At college, in those days, we drank gin and tonics during happy hour for a dollar-fifty. In 1981, I stayed at this friend’s bungalow in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, and was up at four in the morning to watch Charles and Diana marry. My friend slept through it.

Today, the Queen lies in state while hundreds of thousands file past her in tribute, not to her wealth or power, but her decades of faithful service up to her final days. Enough has been said and written about that. The people of the realm and worldwide can put aside their differences about monarchy to come together around the indisputable fact of Elizabeth’s sense of duty to the very (very) end.

The Guardian of London suggests that every nation in the world is going to want to send someone to the funeral. Stripped of its power over centuries in favor of constitutional government, sequestered in its castles, fed what to say in matters of state, and derided as a circus act, the British monarchy draws us to it. Why? Perhaps for the same reasons we are drawn to the great pyramids. It is a marvel, constructed over the ages, pummeled by the forces of nature.

Still standing.

We are not ticketholders but stakeholders in these things. Keep Calm and Carry On reads the grocery tote we keep in the car. We do, or we try. We carry on. We feel our way forward. We follow the course. And a King’s Highway runs through it.

The Queen is dead. Long live the King.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2022/09/Crown.jpg)
### The Meeting House
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/the-meeting-house/
Last updated: 2022-09-03T09:30:32.000Z
The town helped put to rest a young man, forty-one years old, at a service this past week in the Meeting House. It was the second nearly standing-room-only service for a young, departed person in town this month. The other was a wife and stepmother of two, fifty-five, who was an active member of the Congregational Church community until the end.

A meeting house is one of New England’s most iconic symbols: plain, white, colonial structures with large windows, broad steps leading up to large, welcoming front doors, and typically, tall steeples that jut heavenward. They were erected as the first order of business in a new community, at the center of town, on the village green, where horses and wagons had room to mingle and wait while the people went inside to pray.

Space inside a meeting house is traditionally divided between the church sanctuary and the secular space for town functions. This is the case with ours. The Congregational Church occupies the main floor of the building, which is upstairs. The first floor is for general use by the town. The building belongs to neither church nor town; rather, it enjoys “common undivided interest in the whole,” which is the language that helped quiet the argument that people were being asked to pay taxes to support a church. That was back in the nineteenth century, and the courts, dealing with early tests of the Constitution, ordered the property and functions of meeting houses separated. Frugal Yankee farmers took a shortcut, built a second floor and designated it for worship.

The sanctuary of the Congregational Church in our Meeting House is beautiful, in its Puritan way, and spacious. A white-painted, conservatively ornate ceiling, white pews, wood trim, and cushioned benches; a simple bronze cross on the wall in front; organ and organ pipes, and expanses of windows on both sides, welcoming light. It is no dark place of worship. There is room for the whole town, as would have been necessary back when the *whole* town went to church on Sunday. Unfortunately, this place of prayer, like many around the world, has fallen on harder times because of competing distractions for people’s attention Sunday mornings and a small village population. Churches are retail businesses, after all, dependent on the same thing as a country store or inn -- volumes of shoppers, lodgers, or communicants.

And these places can seem less and less important as life trickles out of them while life carries on around, just fine. Until it is not, *just fine*.

Several years ago, our town had to confront the need for significant structural improvements to the Meeting House. It was pointed out that “common undivided ownership” meant a shared burden between town and church. The town rarely used the space on the first floor, run down and uncomfortable as it was. There were not enough church parishioners to foot the bill or even half of it. At the town meeting to decide the issue, there was a good deal of back and forth, and small amounts of finger-pointing about the wisdom and justice of borrowing a lot of money to improve something people weren’t using. It took an older, tenured gentleman of the community to finally stand up and explain that if you want to get married, the church will marry you. When you die, the church will bury you. It does for us. We do for it. That is how we stay together as a community.

Such commentary may have been on the mind of more than one person during the service this past week and the one a few weeks earlier. The cars were parked the length of Main Street, and in all the available spaces along the beach at the pond, in front and behind the Town Hall across the street, and at the Post Office next door. The line of people waiting to sign the book of condolences was out the door and down the steps to the sidewalk. Some dressed in jackets and ties and dresses, some in blue jeans and suspenders, some had just come from the garden, some had thought of nothing else all morning, waiting at home until it was time for the service. They filled the sanctuary early and greeted each other in whispering tones. Everyone was there you thought would be there, and plenty you did not. It was a good portion of the town, plus others from farther away, surrounding the center row of pews over which were draped purple velvet banners embroidered with the word RESERVED. They waited for that dreadful moment when the family -- mother, father, sisters, and more distant relations -- would be ushered to those reserved seats. Visibly saddened. Tired. Worn down.

You may have had the experience where you live of running into someone you know from church or school in a supermarket or a restaurant. Out of context, there can be a gap in recognition, a brief, blank look. My wife and I had that experience regularly as innkeepers, encountering people away from the inn. Not locals, but people from elsewhere around the region. We developed an easy response standing in line at the supermarket, for instance, when someone lifting groceries from their cart to the conveyer turned to see us behind them, and it was clear they were scrambling to make the connection: “Hancock Inn,” we would say. “Oh, yes, of course. How are you?” they would answer.

There was no missing context in the Meeting House at these services mourning the passing of our neighbors. Normally reliant on a small flock of Congregationalists to mow the grass, sweep the walks and keep a light on, the balance of the parish population filed in, at home, as people belonging, congregants of a church elsewhere, perhaps, but today, congregants of the town, conducting town business in the place for such business - as for 200 years - the Meeting House.

It does for us. We do for it. That is how we stay together as a community.
### Old Home Days
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/old-home-days/
Last updated: 2022-08-20T09:30:05.000Z
When you read this, our small town should be in the thick of its Old Home Days celebration. For us, it is a tradition that pre-dates the idea put forward by New Hampshire's Governor Frank Rollins in 1899, when he proposed an Old Home Week to encourage people to return to the rural countryside of their youth. Our festival started in 1879 as an [annual family picnic](https://memory.loc.gov/diglib/legacies/loc.afc.afc-legacies.200003289/?ref=jarviscoffin.com). It grew to over 500 attendees before the town decided to fold it into Governor Rollins' grand initiative that was taking root in New Hampshire, New England, and elsewhere.

The industrial revolution of the late 19th century was in full swing in 1899, adding to the ravages caused by The Civil War on the nation's rural farming populations. People were leaving for the big cities and the factory farms of the west. Governor Rollins had been lamenting New Hampshire's population decline for years. So at a Sons of New Hampshire [dinner](https://www.nhmunicipal.org/town-city-article/old-home-day-summer-tradition-rich-new-hampshire%E2%80%99s-roots?ref=jarviscoffin.com) in Boston, he proposed throwing a party, inviting the state's native sons and daughters home. 

Every time I hear that story, I imagine myself listening to the Governor's remarks over brandy at the end of dinner and questioning the efficacy of his proposal. Governor, how? There is no Paperless Post. How will we reach the people that have moved away? There are no airplanes or paved roads. How will our native sons and daughters get here in a timely fashion? It is 1899, the *fat cat* middle of the subsistence wage era of Robber Barons! What chance will our former neighbors and friends have of keeping their factory jobs if they cut out for a New Hampshire holiday? "With your permission, Mr. Baron, I'd like to use my accrued vacation time for a trip to New Hampshire for Old Home Week. I'll need an additional week to get there, plus a week to get back."

. . .

But Old Home Days flourished and survived in response to the Governor's appeal. He wrote:

> "I wish that in the ear of every son and daughter of New Hampshire, in the summer days, might be heard whispered the persuasive words: Come back, come back. Do you not hear the call? What has become of the old home where you were born? Do you not remember it - the old farm back among the hills, with its rambling buildings, its well sweep casting its long shadows, the row of stiff poplar trees, the lilacs and the willows?" ([https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/old-home-daysbriefhistory/](https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/old-home-daysbriefhistory/?ref=jarviscoffin.com))

Can such poetry ever cause the cement and steel of the city to resonate as much as the lilac and willow of the old farm? You decide. But home they all came. 

The weather for the weekend is supposed to be grand—sunshine and [still dry as a bone.](https://www.jarviscoffin.com/water/) The festival is well scripted: ice cream social to start Friday evening; the annual 5K Betty Pels *Run for the Honey* road race in the cooler temperatures of Saturday morning, followed by the parade down Main Street with prizes for best floats (some very serious floats). There will be face painting, art shows, the library book sale, rock climbing, a pie-eating contest, the Temple, New Hampshire [band](https://templeband.org/?ref=jarviscoffin.com) (the nation's first town band), Kid's Fun Run, and the Volunteer Fire Department's chicken barbeque. 

The place to be over all others will be the banks of the pond for the Synchro Sisters water ballet. It is the sort of inspired performance that maps to the days of putting on plays and puppet shows in the backyard, recognizable to everyone at the time as both fun and valiant, a neighborhood game of inclusiveness, not execution, for which the crowds always go crazy.

What has become of the old home where you were born? 

Shake it out. Shake it out. Come back. Come back.
### Corn on the Cob
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/corn-on-the-cob/
Last updated: 2024-07-25T19:30:12.000Z
At this late stage in life, I do not expect to be answering penetrating interview questions such as, “What makes you different?” But at this stage in life, without much to be gained or lost, I would be tempted to answer as follows: “I serve corn on the cob as a separate course between the main meal and dessert, with a budget of three ears per person, minimum.”

And I have these corn rules:

1\. Use a knife to spread a pat of butter over the corn. Do not roll it on the butter stick. (If the corn is especially young and delicious, skip the butter. Sprinkle salt.)

2\. Eat the corn as you would use a typewriter, left to right, by row.

3\. Use a corn scraper if you wish. Or, with a sharp knife, slice down the middle of the kernels to tenderize the rows (optional).

4\. Do not be tempted to buy corn from away. Buy New Jersey corn if you are in New Jersey. Buy New Hampshire corn if you are in New Hampshire.

5\. Do not buy New Hampshire corn before August 1st (subject to future climate changes).

It is corn season, and it will be over sorrowfully soon, after which no substitute will do. We will have zucchini all winter, hydroponic lettuce and tomatoes, kale, broccoli, carrots, onions, and potatoes, snow peas if we want, and crates of squashes. We can make them all passably good with the proper addition of salt, pepper, and cooking time. We can do no such thing with the dry, cellophane-wrapped corn on the cob that sometimes appears in the supermarket off-season. If we need corn in the winter, it will have to be canned or frozen.

I am passionate about corn on the cob. We will have it for dinner three to four nights a week during the season. I will sacrifice the daily dose of ice cream I require to keep me calm to embrace the additional 90 calories of another ear of corn, knowing that it is here today and gone tomorrow.

In his classic, Cooking from New England (Harper & Row 1989), Jasper White dishes up a recipe for corn on the cob. It is my favorite recipe, ever, from any cookbook for its no-nonsense direction. I reprint it here as a public service:

---

 *How to Cook Corn on the Cob*

*No vegetable, or for that matter any food, is better than corn on the cob at its best. Here is the right way to cook it.*

*Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to boil. Husk the corn and take a bite out of one of the ears. If the corn is very sweet and tender, it will need only to be heated through. In this case, add the corn to the water and remove from heat. After 3 minutes, remove the corn and serve at once. If the corn is not sugary and is a bit starchy, boil for 5 minutes before removing from heat. Only tasting the corn will tell you how long to cook it. Overcooking dilutes the flavor and ruins the texture of the corn.*

---

Corn season is a tough time to be asked to someone’s house for dinner. Well-meaning cooks will serve a grilled protein (delicious, for sure), perhaps a fresh, green vegetable, and a single ear of corn, rolling around on its side of the plate, rapidly losing heat, sloshing in the barbecue sauce.

When my daughter was a child, she objected to one food touching another on the plate. She has two children now who have adopted the same affectation. I never understand it. A meal is a symphony of well-blended flavors. But there is an exception, which is corn on the cob. It is a soloist, so good (“\[no\]…food is better”) it deserves to be savored alone. Hence it comes as its own course in our house, plucked from the boiling water, piled on a warm platter, and covered with layers of tea towels to trap the heat. Then, depending on the size of the party, after one round the water is brought to a boil again, and in less than five minutes, more corn arrives at the table.

What drives this reverence for corn on the cob? Great taste, yes. Scarcity because the time for corn on the cob is fleeting. But, mostly, corn legend. My grandparents had a farm, and on the farm was a garden, and in the garden was a corn patch, and from the patch, when dinner was practically on the table, someone would be sent to fetch the corn. And the goodness of the corn in those days was legendary, passed down through the generations with corn stories. A particular story has always stood out wherein, on one occasion, enough corn was fetched and served that the spent ears covered the distance across the dining room and living room - from one end of the farmhouse to the other - as they were placed end to end on the floor.

What is corn on the cob to me? The legend of that party.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2022/08/tempImageRQ9HpK.gif)
### Water
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/water/
Last updated: 2022-11-22T16:13:09.000Z
We could use more rain in our part of the world right now. All of New Hampshire is experiencing a moderate drought. Portions of the Monadnock Region are diagnosed with severe drought, which is where we are, although our community does not show up in the severe drought area on the map.

We did all this tree clearing and landscaping on our property ([Sexy Woods](https://www.jarviscoffin.com/stories/)) to make way for a few raised garden beds and tall grasses, but it is parched earth right now. Shoots of grass and wildflowers are barely emerging. Honestly, I do not know how the plants are managing it. There are a few inches of good loam under them, but it is dry, dry, dry. Such is the tenacity of life.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2022/07/tempImage8toCAn.gif)

Dry, dry, dry

One person in town reported to us that the town reservoir is down 18 inches. Pretty significant for July. Given the countless lakes and rivers and small population density, we do not tend to worry about water in this state, but there is no upside to taking water for granted. Before coming to New Hampshire, we lived in the western suburbs of Boston when the population exploded, including the arrival of new businesses such as car dealerships and supermarkets. Back then, people were already standing up at town meetings asking, "What about the water supply?" Well, we were in that old neighborhood again this week, and the signs were everywhere along the roads - *No watering between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.*

We are on well water here, at home. I have relied on well water most of the places I have lived, apart from the years outside of Boston and in my post-college urban days. When we moved here, we had to search for the top of the well, which was buried. The former head of the town's department of works accomplished that using divining rods he kept in his truck. That is some trick finding underground water with a divining rod, but he did. He dug out around the well cap and determined we were getting four to five gallons a minute. "All you need," he said.

It was not always thus with the wells in my life. In the Westport, Connecticut days, we had a shallow, dug well outside the kitchen door. A cement cover was over the top with an iron ring set in the center. My father would occasionally lift the cover to inspect below. Once or twice, he had to remove an unfortunate animal floating on the surface whose watery end would be brought to our attention by the odor that eventually emanated from the tap. Of course, mother would have been mixing the water with baby formula and whatever else up to that point. “But it never seemed to do you any harm,” she said over the years.

The Westport well ran dry in the early 1960s after a prolonged drought. Mother was in the shower for the final gasps, a rusty sludge that drained from the showerhead over her hair and body. She had to traipse next door to rinse.

We would be without our water for the next *six* months while we waited for the Bridgeport Hydraulic Company to come through, extending the town water lines along our road. (There are many words I do not know and cannot pronounce today. But *hydraulic* is a word I learned early.) Two adults, three small children, a dog, a cat (I think), and no water. I was on a boat with my brother this past weekend, and as we flipped through some memorable times, he said, “The image of the hose running from our house in Westport to our neighbors is etched in my mind.” Mine, too. We were both under seven years old. The neighbors were on town water, but the house was part of a development. And it wasn’t right next door. The hose was several connected hoses that had to be pulled the length of our property, past gardens, over a stone wall, and across to the neighbor's outdoor faucet. Frost season arrived, then winter, so each night after commuting home from New York City, Dad would have to curl up the many hose lengths and bring them inside. The process reversed itself in the morning and required that we leave the water on at a trickle to prevent freezing.

Those were the days.

The first house I owned also had a well. A family friend familiar with the property cautioned me a few times before signing papers to get the well tested. The real estate agent successfully dodged those requests. We would have bought the place anyway, but the well was also shallow and sputtered maybe one and a half to two gallons per minute, meaning that flushing a toilet and running the laundry simultaneously would drain the well. So outside I would go to lift off the cover of the well pump chamber, climb down into the pit, and prime the pump manually.

Possessed of such memories, it does not occur to me to call upon our current well to water our parched field. We have tomato plants in the raised beds and eggplant, lettuce, carrots, and a few other things, and we dowse those by hand. Otherwise, we will allow nature to run its course.

Which is not a bad feeling, you know. There is something rewarding about leaving nature to do its own thing. We hope there will be a field of waving grass across our driveway in two or three years, but the struggle for it to grow and the struggle on our part to wait should result in more respect for each other as independent partners in the fabric of this place.

Still, it is hard not to feel a twinge of guilt while watering the raised beds standing amidst our parched field. We hurry the process along to minimize any lasting resentment.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2022/07/water-well-2.0.jpg)
### Seasonal Returns
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/seasonal-returns/
Last updated: 2025-06-06T20:55:23.000Z
This year, two seasonal delights returned to us in the Monadnock Region after absences caused by the COVID pandemic: live performance theatre at The Peterborough Players and Fourth of July fireworks.

I can trace many steps in time along the path left by firework displays. The trail goes back to Compo Beach in Westport, Connecticut, where we lived in the early 1960s when Westport was not much bigger or busier than the rural environs of Southwestern New Hampshire today. We played and swam along Compo Beach, flew kites, and once a year took our blankets and went to watch the fireworks. The exciting part, which I imagine continues today, was seeing the displays happening on the opposite shore, along the coast of Long Island, across the Sound.

We migrated from Westport to Wilton, Connecticut, another small country town at the time, and their Fourth of July firework display on the high school field. The shows probably were not much, but we did not know or care. It was dark. We were outside in our pajamas, already dressed for bed. We sat at one end of the athletic fields and pinned our eyes on the shadowy figures of volunteer firefighters in the distance, moving around with small torches that would suddenly flare when they touched a fuse. Then, we would follow the thin orange trail of a rocket shooting into the sky, wait for it to explode into colorful bright lights, and brace for the sonic boom.

I cannot sit through a firework display without channeling the boyish enthusiasm of my parent's close friend Harry Polhemus on those Fourth of July nights in Wilton. The Polhemus family was our usual company at the event. Children the same age, frequently at each other's houses; kids on one blanket, parents on the other, side-by-side for the fireworks. And Mr. Polhemus narrated the show, beginning to end.

"Next one is for *you,* Bobbie!" he would call out to my mother. Then, up would go the rocket, burst, boom, and we would all commend mother on a magnificent display.

"Now you, Jarvie!" I would wait, hoping for a glimmering spectacle followed by an especially loud retort.

"Hurray!" everyone would shout.

"Who's next?" Mr. Polhemus would ask, carrying on.

So it was this past weekend, during the town's very fine display, that as the rockets streaked into the sky, I silently assigned them to someone, beginning with Mr. Polhemus.

Elsewhere we were back in the Peterborough Players theater last week for a production of Cabaret, the season's grand opening show. It is hard to think of an industry more impacted by the pandemic than live theater. Movie theater-goers could retreat to Netflix. But live theater was shuttered. The Players managed to put on an outdoor performance of Our Town last summer on the lawn behind Peterborough's town hall, which was splendid. But we have waited two years to get back into the theater, albeit with masks.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2022/07/5ED6F300-3C13-474C-A8F1-F188C822E125_1_201_a.jpeg)

Inside the Peterborough Player's barn theater. Courtesy of Peterborough Players.

The Peterborough Players is a professional theater founded in 1933, dating to the earliest days of Summer stock. New England did not invent the Summer stock theater, but we successfully co-opted it. For one thing, we have many barns, and summer stock owes much of its endearing quality to the intimate performance setting of a barn. The Peterborough Players is no exception. To get there, follow the country road down to the grey barn. There will be volunteers wearing yellow vests to park you. In case of a fire emergency, as you will be told just before the performance, exit the barn, go to your cars, and wait. Do not start driving away. The country road can only accommodate traffic in one direction, and it is rather important the firetrucks have the right of way if needs require.

We left the New York area in the early 1970s and moved to Buffalo. Thereafter, my father, born and raised in Manhattan, became a devotee of what he called second cities. The offerings of life are more appreciated in second city places, he maintained. In respect of which, I submit the small New England town and its professional theatre. At the end of every show at the Peterborough Players, there is a standing ovation. Every show. Are all those performances worthy of standing ovations? (Naturally.) But the ovation is as much to say to the actors - most of whom come from places like New York, where they hope to have long and heralded careers - thank you for coming and putting up with the black flies and mosquitoes. We *so* appreciate it. Please come again next year.

We were all on our feet at the end of Cabaret, applauding and cheering. The production of Cabaret was worthy of a big city. It was that good, as are most of the Player's shows: marvelous orchestra, beautiful, rich voices, great acting, staging - all of it. There was not an empty seat in the house. We were grateful for the performance and to be back in our barn theater in communion with our neighbors.

Seasons are important to us here in New England. We say so all the time. So it is good to have a couple of them back after an extended absence. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2022/07/3D3E9031-D823-49C1-B3B4-0F5EE9C12F19_1_201_a.jpeg)

Members of the Cabaret cast at the Peterborough Players. Courtesy of Peterborough Players.
### Sexy Woods
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/stories/
Last updated: 2022-06-25T09:30:23.000Z
Swifty Corwin was here last month with his forestry equipment and crew to clear about an acre of our land for vegetable gardens and a small meadow, and thin other portions by removing the understory of smaller trees and saplings. This second part is called “glading,” as in creating a forest glade. In the UK, they call it woodland pasture or parkland. Swifty calls it “sexy woods.”

From start to finish, it took three days. There were chainsaws, a tractor, a chipper capable of devouring whole trees, a truck with high walls designed for hauling the woods chips, a stump grinder, and a remarkable machine called a skidder, which moves around the forest on treads, piloted by someone standing on a lip at the back, operating a hydraulic arm with a steel claw that can lift bundles of lumber and feed them into the chipper.

It is hard to go off and do something else in the presence of such excitement. It is equally hard not to meditate on how clearing the land was accomplished 200 years ago - when whole mountainsides were being cut down! The answer was likely draft horses, the skidders of the day, and teams of people. But, otherwise, to pull up to a neck in the woods back then, in a wagon with your family aboard, and the need to start farming to feed yourselves - with one or two axes, a saw, a chain, a horse? It had to have meant chopping, sawing, and clearing every day for weeks leading into months.

Whenever we hear a chainsaw in the woods around us, we think, “Wonder who is working on what?” And then, “Wonder how long it will go on?” We are especially conscious in reverse when the sound of the saw is of our own doing because all of us are reluctant to disturb the peace around here. Back in the day, though, the chopping and sawing must have been relentless. After all, as a new nation, we cleared the land to the Mississippi. Chop, chop, chop. Saw, saw, saw. The sight of horses dragging timber through town must have been a constant. One of our local foresters has explained that the lack of right-angled intersections in the town is the result of roads that were placed over the byways created by horses pulling trees behind them. The horses veered with their burdens right or left. They did not make sharp turns.

These meditations were rewarded by the remnants of a stone wall that Swifty’s work revealed in the middle of our cleared space. As many times as we had walked the woods ahead of the project, envisioning outcomes and discussing boundaries, we had never noticed the pile of rocks for what it was, an archeological reminder of our intrepid forebearers. I think New England’s stonewalls are its most iconic feature. Ask me to choose between autumn colors and stonewalls, and I will choose the walls. They tell stories. We plan to pile the stones again and set a picnic table nearby, inviting more stories.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2022/06/tempImage5M46TS.gif)

A creek separates and runs along two sides of the clearing. A few mornings ago, a bear was foraging along one branch, enjoying a cool drink of water. We have four different habitats now on our slice of land for our forest-dwelling neighbors, such as the bear: the pond, the portion of deep woods we leave unmolested, the glade, and the cleared field. There is also the lawn around the cabin, which is home to bugs and insects, toads, and garter snakes, some of which must slither for their life during the summer when the lawn mower goes by.

The challenge will be sharing the vegetable garden with these neighbors. We will have to erect a fence, which will need to be maintained, and, frankly, is never so nice a thing to look at. My father was always of the view to leave out the fence and grow enough for everyone, specifically as regarded corn. But he was mostly a suburban gardener. We can experiment with his sort of largesse, but we are greatly outnumbered. And we don’t know to what extent bears like vegetables in the way they like birdseed or blueberries (we have blueberries that grow wild). We *do* know they have little regard for fences.

Right now, we are waiting for our next partner in this field-clearing process to come with his machines to spread out the wood chips Swifty’s crew left behind and cover it all with loam, which is akin to topsoil. Then we can plant the field grass and erect our raised beds. It will be a year before the thing is substantially up and running and working as part of the whole.

But, already, we anticipate the stories.

0:00

/

1×
### The Incredible Revelation
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/the-incredible-revelation/
Last updated: 2025-06-06T20:55:05.000Z
In my inaugural postcard here two weeks ago, I said I would share the first story I remember writing, The Incredible Revelation. It is featured below. It survives because of the generous support it received from my seventh-grade English teacher, Ms. Persons. (And my mother, it should be said.) Every 12-year-old should be so lucky to have that sort of boost in life.

The Incredible Revelation is part of a collection of other things I have carried with me through many chapters of life. They are in a leather box on top of my bureau. The box has survived dorm rooms, bachelor pads, numerous moves, children, and, so far, grandchildren. Sadly, the box is deteriorating. I have allowed it to dry out over the years, unfortunately.

There are no rules for how things win entry into the box. My Great Aunt handed out First Day of Issue stamps as birthday presents. They went into the box. One stamp commemorates 100 years of Intercollegiate Football (September 26, 1969). I wonder if it is worth anything more than the six cents now that it is over 50?

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2022/06/tempImageUefTsC.gif)

There is a zippo lighter given to me by my maternal grandmother engraved GJC from COG. GJC is me. COG refers to Cross Old Gamper, a nickname we gave to my grandmother without cause, I assure you. She was never cross.

A letter from my paternal grandfather is tucked in an envelope postmarked on August 27, 1957, eight days after I was born. It contains a few prescriptions for life. At the time, he was two years younger than I am now! Also in the box is a letter he wrote in 1913, while at the Choate School, to his father. That document is 109 years old. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2022/06/tempImagexMkU0Z.gif)

I have a picture of my first wife taken while at college and a book of matches from our honeymoon. There is also a letter from her father, which he wrote me shortly after we were married. The marriage did not last, but essential parts did, as they will forever.

There is a red paper heart inscribed by my wife of nearly 29 years, "I think you are magnificent." I found it after opening my suitcase on arrival in London, where I had gone to meet with investors after a dreadful start in our first year as a public company. It was a long week, but it helped to know I had her heart in my pocket.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2022/06/tempImageeVhXwh.gif)

To be clear, I did not have the dream described in The Incredible Revelation. I dreamt up the idea, responding to something my mother had said. My paternal grandmother read it and suggested I might be nuts. She got over that worry. We parted the very closest of friends when she died, which was April 26, 1995\. The parking lot receipt from the hospital that day is in my leather box.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2022/05/Incredible-Revelation_Page_1-4.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ce/29/ce29a6c0-b797-453e-b7c7-962425930bfa/content/images/2022/05/Incredible-Revelation_Page_2-3.jpg)
### Swimming Close to Shore
URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/untitled/
Last updated: 2026-07-23T19:46:24.000Z
I have just retired after nearly 11 years working with my wife as an inn owner and chef in New Hampshire and 30 years as an advertising salesperson in the media business. My goal now is to live out my days as a writer. I am going to write every day, for as many years as I am able.

All I have ever wanted to be is a writer. The desire dates to seventh grade English Class and the teacher, Ms. Persons. I wrote a story called The Incredible Revelation that I typed out on a little orange typewriter in my room. First I showed the story to my mother. I remember her saying, "You wrote this?" It was mother's idea to show it to my teacher. So I brought it to school and dropped it with Ms. Persons on my way to another class. Later that day as I was moving through the corridor between classes Ms. Persons was waiting for me outside of her room waving my story high in the air with a big smile across her face. "You have *made* my day!" she announced in the crowded hallway. She published my story in the school paper. 

And that was that. I was going to be a writer. 

\[I can share The Incredible Revelation next. I have the original, of course. After 53 years it has picked up some convincing wear, and developed a nice, faded patina!\]

Funny how things change. I fell in love in college and was probably influenced by the sense of responsibilties that might derive from commitment and possibly marriage. I wanted to follow my friends that were becoming stockbrokers and bankers and real estate salespeople to New York. My family could not afford to keep me in some sort of bohemian existence there (or anywhere) while I pursued writing. I was not keen to work nights in a survivor job like waiting tables; I had been a waiter and bartender through college, also a reporter for the local radio station. Missing all the fun while working nights and weekends was over for me. I *would* get married a couple of years later, becoming a provider. My father counseled a professional compromise between my creative ambitions and three squares on the table: advertising. I took his advice and landed a junior account executive position in a good New York ad agency and the rest...

...was all good. I departed the ad agency business after a couple of years because I did grow weary of the number crunching that defaulted to the junior account person. By then, however, the agency had invested considerably in my professional training, including extensive coaching on effective business writing, which proved invaluable throughout my career. I remember my first boss giving me a writing assignment. "Write a memo," he said. I presented a two or three page treatise on whatever-the-topic. "Excellent writing," he remarked. "But nobody is going to read it." Thereafter just about everything I wrote began, "The purpose of this memo is..." And if it did not begin that way explicitly, it began that way in my head. 

I tacked away from advertising to print media. By then, a mere two years into my career, I was a business person, raised by account executive wolves. So my entry into print media was as an advertising salesperson. I loved it. I worked for magazines and newspapers, hanging around the printed page, occasionally rubbing shoulders with real writers, taking customers to lunch. For one three-year stretch in my ad sales career I reported to an editor. He would mark up my letters to clients and prospects, which taught me a great deal. He was a stickler for the word *that* versus the word *which,* which he felt was overused*. That,* in his estimation, was to be applied to matters of fact. You can see his influence above in the second paragraph:

> *I wrote a story called The Incredible Revelation* **that** *I typed out on a little orange typewriter in my room.* 

Some may quibble. Whatever, *that* has been *that* for me ever since.

In 1995, with three other guys, I started an internet ad sales company to represent the abundance of new content sprouting up on the world wide web. Thousands of web sites. Tens of thousands of web sites! In those days there were no Word Presses or Ghost.orgs - or Facebooks, or YouTubes or Twitters. Web publishers had to be html coders, building web sites from scratch. And build them they did, from A to Z. Most of these web sites were small, but they were (and remain) the crill of the internet, the essential nutrient of life forms much bigger themselves, such as Google.

The internet experience accounted for about half of my years as an ad sales person. For all of it I had a front row seat from which to watch, and occasionally act in, the premiere of a new information age. If you describe yourself as a content junkie, as I might, it was a trip. I think it will be worth writing about some day, but in a different space from this. 

This space, I say, is for musings on life, love, food (another passion, which is how we became innkeepers, and I, eventually, the chef) and the weather. I grant you it is a somewhat all-inclusive list if you consider the size of each bucket - *life, love, food, weather* \- but it will be absent some things. There may be sad moments, and muses of regret, but I doubt there will be hateful moments, and I will avoid laying out any personal angst, though I am not without it, naturally. As I muse on life, I may muse on death. But there will be no musing on politics or world events. We will find what we need here in the Monadnock Region of southwestern New Hampshire, in its small towns, markets and cafes, its country inns, and among its people who have been neighbors for years. 

I remember a new priest to our parish, back when I lived in Connecticut, getting into the pulpit for his first sermon and after saying good morning and offering hope that the words of his mouth and the mediations of his heart would be pleasing to the Lord he began by placing his hands on the edge of the pulpit and leaning out towards the congregation to say, "I suppose I should start by telling you what I *believe*."

Consider this that sort of introduction. I have always wanted to be a writer. It was a lack of genuine artistic commitment, the allure of other shiny things, the family, fear, being perfectly content otherwise, plus whatever else - which was not all bad - that kept me from it until now. It was not the fates that did it, but the choices I made. But I have managed to stay close to the shoreline of my writing ambition. Within sight of its beaches. And if you know the pleasure of warm sand under your feet and the sun on your back, then you know how I feel right now.