Jarvis Coffin Labor Day Weekend. Already. The steps to our hillside garden are not repaired. The felled wood is not all cut up and stacked. The dock is still waiting to be treated with teak oil.
Other Musings Chicken Barbeque . . . nothing says community—or, Old Home Day—like a volunteer fire department and chicken barbeque.
Other Musings Harvest Jitters For us backyard gardeners, this is the time of year we fear most for our crop. It is not like we have a super abundance to go around.
Other Musings Visualizing World Peace Attendees at this year’s [MacDowell] Medal Day, were given white luggage tags and a pen and urged to write our wishes and hang them on fruit trees in the MacDowell Gardens.
Jarvis Coffin Independent, Inching Forward Soon you have the sense you are talking about the same things, which is when it hits you . . . you have only inched forward.
Other Musings Good, Quality Thunder The rain had stopped and we sat just to watch and listen as the storm’s slashing furry settled to not much more than a purr.
Other Musings A Sensitive Time Those are things you must get used to in New England, learning to be a tough tomato.
Other Musings Spring Cleaning I am vulnerable to every link I come across leading me down another dark tunnel to a free weekly subscription.
Other Musings Liver Free or Die I object to the narrow use we make of the animals that pay the ultimate sacrifice on the way to our table.
Jarvis Coffin Mozart on Norway Pond Mozart was with us that day, regretting every other invitation from the concert halls of Europe and around the world.
Other Musings Now We are Nearly to Spring Every year, awakened by the Mourning Dove, I would be glad to stand in that spot for a minute or two.
Other Musings Artificial Intelligence There will still be tasks available to us after AI has it under control. I feel confident about that at the end of a dirt road.
Jarvis Coffin Up Yours As usual, it took a minute when I slipped behind the curtain and unfolded the paper ballot to process all the names in front of me.
Other Musings Winter Enchantment Imagine a place where the leaf action of a spindly plant at the edge of the woods can take center stage each morning out the kitchen window.
Food About Breakfast I stopped ordering scrambled eggs at restaurants, including good ones, long ago. Invariably— as in, every case, every occasion—scrambled eggs come out overcooked and rubbery, sometimes flecked with specs of brown.
Jarvis Coffin Nothing Much Happens If you had to pick one thing to describe rural life, it could easily be that nothing much new ever happens.
Other Musings Boxing Day You are entitled to your own set of facts when it comes to the origins of Boxing Day because there are none.
Other Musings Power to the People 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.
Jarvis Coffin Just Like That Thanksgiving, 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.
Other Musings Thanksgiving 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.
Jarvis Coffin Porcupine 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.
Other Musings Vaccine 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.
Jarvis Coffin Crunch Time We can imagine fifty thousand acorns hitting the ground in front and another fifty thousand more behind. A total of one hundred thousand acorns scattered across our parcel in the woods.
