Other Musings

Essays and creative non-fiction separate from the Postcard-from-Monadnock series. Many of them are from Jarvis's column, "Off the Highway", which has appeared bi-weekly in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, since 2022.

Other Musings

The Pumpkin Period

Currently, you may have noticed, we are mired in the Pumpkin Period, characterized by the flavor of pumpkin in almost everything.

Other Musings

Fall

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

Other Musings

Quiet Time

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, a pick-up with a bed that

Other Musings

Chicken Barbeque

. . . nothing says community—or, Old Home Day—like a volunteer fire department and chicken barbeque.

Other Musings

Harvest Jitters

For us backyard gardeners, this is the time of year we fear most for our crop. It is not like we have a super abundance to go around.

Other Musings

Visualizing World Peace

Attendees at this year’s [MacDowell] Medal Day, were given white luggage tags and a pen and urged to write our wishes and hang them on fruit trees in the MacDowell Gardens.

Other Musings

Summer People

The July and August people have arrived, bringing with them their patronage of our stores and their vehicles, requiring me to look both ways before pulling out of the driveway.

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.

Other Musings

Calmly on the Waters

Of all the animals we will share property with this summer, we are most attached to the loons. They are the only creature that does not bolt the instant they become aware of our presence.

Other Musings

Total Eclipse

The memory of projecting light on the shirt cardboard stands out only because it was the same afternoon we were taken to see the play, Peter and the Wolf.

Other Musings

Town Meeting

It is Town Meeting season, that time of year . . . for throwing a few punches at your neighbor over the cost of building a new school, apportioning land, and repairing roads so . . . people can . . . get to church.

Other Musings

Moon Walk

I submit our Presidential candidates should be required to spend three nights around a campfire with a view of the sky as part of their spiritual journey to the office.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Other Musings

Docks Out

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 . . . This is usually when remorse settles in about how little time we spent during the season on the pond.

Jarvis Coffin

Summer's End

Back to school always sneaks up on me. I am still not used to the fact it comes before Labor Day--nor am I happy about it.