In Passing

publisher’s notes

on current contributions

with extracts

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Lloyd Graf

Nighthawks

Urban Naturalist

Winged bug zappers of the Goatsucker persuasion help usher in the Fall  migratory season while throwing a scare into Hogle Sanctuary's insects.

Greetings from a somewhat lapsed Vermont Views' nature contributor.  I last weighed in as Urban Naturalist a half-year ago to report end-of-winter stirrings as wildlife returned to Brattleboro's Hogle Sanctuary amid major trans-boardwalk flooding, 11th hour ice fishing, and seemingly ominous real estate signage near the Eaton Ave Sanctuary entrance. 

I've continued to visit the Sanctuary semi-regularly since that posting, dashing off copious field notes about sightings, but not managing to file completed stories.   The reasons for my siege of writer's block fall under the dreary umbrella of life-stage challenges, residential move-associated fatigue and old fashioned neurotic procrastination.  I offer a crestfallen “mea culpa” and the assurance that my love of subject matter and desire to share experiences with you have not waned in the least.  

I'm writing now in response to an unexpected and highly evocative Labor Day weekend  aerial visitation by a squadron of  Common (so-called) Nighthawks.   For an all-too brief span of days these endearingly zany winged acrobats staged dusk air shows over Hogle Sanctuary's waters and the Eaton Ave/Putney RD corridor.  Beyond entertainment value,  the nighthawk visit was also a probable harbinger of the Fall migratory season, and it brought my urban naturalist past (in which nighthawks galore plied their trade around the city medical centers where I plied mine) into register with my recent focus on the less megalopolitan (sic) environs of Hogle Sanctuary. 

Read the entire article >>>>

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Lawrence Klepp

Wind River

SCREENplay

Wind River is a good suspense movie pervaded by an elegiac mood and an unforgiving landscape, the wintry, mountainous landscape of the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. The suspense starts right away, with a dark-haired teenage girl (Kelsey Asbille) seen running barefoot through the snow at night, clearly running for her life, but who or what she’s running from isn’t shown.

Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), a solidly built, laconic man whose family has been in Wyoming for generations, works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and is first seen carefully aiming his rifle and picking off a wolf as a pack approaches a flock of sheep he’s protecting. All the equations are pretty stark out here, and soon he has a more dangerous kind of predator to go after. As he’s out on his rounds in a snowmobile, he finds the body of the girl, frozen, in the snow.

She’s Natalie, the daughter of his Native American friend Martin (Gil Birmingham), and he visits him to break the news. Stoic at first, Martin finally breaks down. Cory can understand. He was married to a Native American woman, and they lost their own daughter under somewhat similar circumstances a few years ago—she was found dead in the snow after a party that took place while he and his wife were away. It broke the marriage. We see him visiting his ex-wife, Wilma (Julia Jones), polite but distant, to pick up their young son and take him out for some lessons in handling horses. Martin, however, lacks even that consolation. His only other child, a son, seemed to have some promise but has moved in with some local troublemakers who are in and out of jail.

Read on>>>>

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Toni Ortner

A Cross By The Sea

Old Lady Blog

Here is an excerpt from Toni Ortner’s MSS for a book on Georgia O’Keefe.

It has always been there

arms outstretched.

                                    It could be another country or this.

There is no sign of a ship.

A gray day neither morning nor afternoon.

                                    It could be any season.

A high wind whips the waves into whitecaps.

                                   It could be today or yesterday.

Read on >>>>

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Elizabeth Hill

A Man Named Shin

Love In Action

A hug from him is an unforgettable experience. He’d take me into his arms with his heart pressed to mine, and continue to hold on until our breathing synchronized. His soothing embraces felt safe, like those bear hugs my beloved Grandfather gave me when I was a child.

Shin-ichiro Terayama was born in Tokyo in 1936.  He grew up to be a workaholic physicist who ran a successful consulting business. At the age of forty-seven, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer. In spite of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, his cancer metastasized, and he was eventually put into hospice care.

It was during this time in hospice that he decided to try healing himself. He told me that he had gone out of a window of the hospice and climbed up on its roof. There, he made a promise to himself to watch the sun rise every day for as long as he would live.

He sold his business, and returned to playing his cello daily after a twenty-five year hiatus. He intuited that the music might help to raise the frequency of his body’s cells, allowing the deceased cells to receive more oxygen in an effort to slow the abnormal overgrowth of the more dense cancer cells. He changed his diet to vegetarian macrobiotic, which he thought would help his body to be more alkaline that might also inhibit cancer growth. He drank only select mineral water as well to rid his body of toxins.

➤ Read the complete article

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Charles Monette

Full Circle Meander

Meanderings

It’s been roughly a year since our publisher, Phil Innes, challenged me to write a column in witness of continuous visits to one site to get a sense of place.  He suggested that I try a hybrid prose/verse style of writing to enhance the telling.  I liked the idea and began walking Black Mountain and writing a column to chronicle these experiences.  This is my twelfth entry. The writing has brought me to the mountain more often than usual, and I am grateful for that.  It has also made my senses more keen, my mind thoughtful, and perhaps even improved my written expression. 

                                    Thanks Phil.

                   today’s jaunt had me thinking Change

    Arctic warming twice as fast than other points on earth

                     much faster than here in Vermont

          permafrost thawing causing more warming to come 

                            Life once wild disappearing

Funny to think of warming when a cool hint of summer’s end greeted my face and arms as I stepped onto the trail from Black Mountain road.  Crisp and cool and clean, the air was invigorating.   Looking about, I thought… Change is slow on Black mountain.

Although subtle signs were beginning to show, autumn’s approach was slowly accelerating.   I noticed lime greenish acorns spore radically strewn about.  Actually, they seemed to have dropped just recently, free-falling gently to the forest floor… perhaps a little roll downhill upon landing.  Two were pocketed for later scrutiny.

While walking, I realized that stopping to notice, to jot a few notes, had made my ascent effortless…seemingly faster than just trekking straight uphill.  Curious! Mindfulness bred mindlessness.  

Read on >

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Offie Wortham

A Rational Solution to our Dilemma in Afghanistan.

Selected Letters

“Waist deep in the big muddy, and the big fool said to push on.” Does this remind you of anyone in particular? It’s the chorus of a song Pete Seeger wrote in 1967. The song was considered symbolic of the Vietnam War and President Johnson’s irrational policy of escalation, which was widely seen as pushing the country, and the world, deeper into a losing war.

Is our president really getting ready to make the same mistakes this country made in Vietnam? If it is widely accepted that this war will never be won by the United States on the battlefield, why are we getting ready to sacrifice hundreds, if not thousands of American troops in a losing battle? Not to mention the countless numbers of civilians who will be crippled and killed by our hundreds of mindless drones guided by an individual from a cornfield in Kansas.

The United States should begin a massive worldwide refugee resettlement program for Afghan citizens who want to leave the country, now, before it is taken over again by the Taliban. Arrangements should begin with any country that is willing to take in a specific number of refugees. The United Nations should coordinate this effort, and the US and other developed nations could be responsible for transportation, food and supplies.

Vietnam was a shameful time in our nation’s history, and the weekly body count of Americans being killed in the war was the major factor in turning people against the war, even more so than the massive anti-war demonstrations. It took eight more years, after the publication of “Waist Deep In The Big Muddy,” and hundreds of thousands of people on both sides killed, before the United States was forced to admit defeat in April of 1975 when the last two American soldiers died in a tragic helicopter crash trying to escape.

Such a resettlement program will save billions of dollars for the United States, and save thousands of lives. If the Taliban is destined to take over the country, why should we continue to attempt to “sweep back the tide?”  

Offie C. Wortham, PhD

125 Vermont RT 100C

Read on >>>>

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Nanci Bern

Charlottsville

The Heart of the Serpent

An A-musing Life

Walking home from school in 4th grade, I was hit with rocks because I am Jewish. As I turned to see who had thrown them, two boys from my class laughed and ran down the hill to their homes. I will never forget the sound of their self-satisfied churls of hate.

One year before, we had moved to this more stable and better school-systemed NJ suburb from Newark, NJ. We moved there six months before the race riots occurred. Jews leaving Newark was an exodus encumbered with feelings of survival and remembrance, and for many of us, empathy. We saw, up close, the burgeoning tensions and pain that were painting the social landscape with a new layer of anguish.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that we had to uproot, yet again, to a place that was clearly not free of anti-Semitism. It wasn’t fair that those remaining were bound by economic and social default because of the lack of prosperity on soul damaging and economic levels. They were still being subjugated and abused.

My rabbi marched with Martin Luther King. He wrote and rallied and made us all think and act. Social justice is part of the deep breath of Jewish thought. Inhale the Divine and exhale Tikkun Olam-Fixing the World.

I became aware of this at a young age. I was aware that we had to leave because our synagogue was bombed…again. We had to leave because of what was happening to the social matrix. But it was never because of the people. This was a system that was hurting those who had never known not being hurt. We know about this. Jews do not get to be racist. We did not leave because we hated.

My first best friend was black. I remember the look that passed between my mother and Cheryl’s mother as I asked if we could have a sleep over when I was picked up after an afternoon of play in the Newark project housing, not the one family house that we lived in. It told me everything.

Read on >>>>

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Charles Monette

Malvern Hill

Monkey’s Cloak

It was the sixth and last of seven days

The battle for Malvern Hill, July 1st, 1862

McClellan and Lee locked horns in Herrico County

Virginia… up a piece from Poindexter’s farm

Disjointed assaults on the nearly impregnable Union position

Yanks up on Malvern Hill, the favorable ground

Slopes cleared of lumber, greater visibility downhill

Lee orders attacks directly… instead of flanking…

Artillery would clear the way…

Tragic miscalculation

Deadly fire rained thunder down on the Confederates,

Slaughtering them in their charge

5,300 rebel casualties without gaining an inch of ground

Blue bled too… 8,500 in all

Despite the victory, McClellan withdrew

To Harrison’s landing on the James River

Gunboats now protected his army

Malvern Hill lay soaked in blood, pockmarked

Bodies lying there still

[The image: Watercolor by Sneden]

Read On >>

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Offie Wortham

    So Who Came To Your Funeral?

Open Mind

I went to a really great funeral last week. Everybody in the family seemed to be there. It was in sharp contrast to one I had attended less than a year ago. This recent funeral was for an uncle. The previous one had been for a first cousin.

At the large church funeral for my uncle, there had been a genuine sense of loss expressed by hundreds of people, relatives and old friends. At the funeral for my cousin (at the funeral parlor) fewer than 10 people came to pay their final respects.

Same family, quite different funerals. "Why ... ",I asked myself, " ... do so many people feel moved at the passing of one person, but are totally disinterested in the death of another?" How do we decide if we will attend a wake or a funeral? What kind of a life must a person have lived to actually move people away from their busy schedules for a day, or even an evening?

The uncle was a very quiet, gentle, and giving man, who had lived in the same small town in the same house, with the same wife - for almost 50 years! The cousin, who had spent many happy summers with the uncle and his family, was raised only 20 miles away in the center of Harlem, the infamous ghetto in New York City. He became a high school drop-out, an alcoholic, a drug addict, and, finally, a convicted criminal. (It was well known that he had actually spent time in prison; something unheard of in this very middle-class family.) He was one of the few "Black Sheep" in the family, and was actually quite an embarrassment to many of his relatives.

He was not "successful". He did not live in a very nice neighborhood. He had never had a steady job, and he had no education to speak of, and he was supposed to have had a number of children all over the place from various women he had lived with.

As we get older, we tend to get more realistic about the transitory nature of our own existence. We are no more equal at death, than we are at birth. "Who ... "I found myself asking" ...would come to my funeral?" As my relatives and former friends pass judgment on my life, how many will take the time or energy to even pick up the phone, or send a card, much less actually attend my wake or funeral?

Read on >

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Julia Ferrari

REFLECTION

in between

This week I had a dream in which I encountered several mirrors. This led me to contemplate the meaning of Reflection…and what that word may encompass? When we reflect, we pause to understand the reasons, cause, effect or results of something…we examine or “turn things over” in our mind at length, until we understand it. But we are also a source of reflection. Every day, knowingly or unknowingly, we reflect the status of our inner life and attitude to others and ourselves.

    A mirror is both static and changing because it is a tool of reflection. What we see in it is often the result of our inner voice and opinions as much as it is of what is actually there in front of us. We sometimes decry our abilities, our looks, our value and our accomplishments (at times even our very significance) when we gaze into a mirror, flinching at its imperfect image. Yet it is likely not the image but our opinion of ourselves that causes us to see beyond it to more negative thoughts. We participate in the acknowledgement of our accomplishments and beauty to the degree that we are able to stay open to a non-judgmental self view, refraining from unnecessary negativity. Often our thoughts reflect back inner fears that have nothing to do with reality. If so, it becomes time to step away from the critical, debasing self-reflection, and find instead a more tolerant gaze through to ourselves. 

   The Latin word for "mirror" is "speculum," which originally meant scanning the sky. When we speculate, we scan the future for hints of what will come. We speculate about our prospects of getting a new job, on the results of a relationship, or on the outcome of a presidency. That state of reflection upon certain sets of circumstances is fed by our own fears and motivations. Even if we want the job, or the relationship, we can find ways to undermine or spoil its prospects if we keep focusing on the negative, instead of actively participating in building something stable. through small efforts.

Read more >>

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For The Birds

Vermont Diary

Having driven down to New Haven to set my wife on a train for a road trip holiday down to the Carolinas by car, train, car again, I retreated from the 92 degree coastal heat and pollution already at evil level by 10:00am to a remarkable 62 back here in Vermont at noon.

Next day I attended the community kitchen at 6:30 and on coming home noticed that my wife today would be traveling through an area around the Chesapeake Bay where severe thunderstorms and tornados were forecast.

I also noticed that the cats were attendant on the wood-stove, cool this past couple months. In fact a flashlight and careful listening did reveal there was something in it, and being a rational person I deduced it was either a bird which had fallen down the chimney, a mouse or giant vampire rat that had done the same, or a Northern White Gator just waiting for someone to open the door so it could snap a bit before easing itself under the fridge.

As I said, we Vermonters are sober, sensible people, so I waited an hour and a half before rationally concluding that it was in fact a bird, and concocting a plan of how to get it out and not let it loose in a house with 3 cats.

3 Cats now angrily banned upstairs while I tested the tall garbage bag in front of the woodstove so I could open the stove through the bag, and the bird would, grateful for fresh air, drop into the bag, and Bob’s your uncle!

It went off perfectly, I bagged the stove, opened the door of stove, bird came out in two seconds and in two seconds more was flying around the kitchen — hitting one window, then across the room to crash against the other side, then residing puzzled on the draining board. It let me get up close with the garbage bag, used like gloves, and I got it, put it outside on the porch rail.

It cheeped a bit for five minutes, seemed okay and safe, and I went to do something, on return it was gone.

What is the moral of this tale? It has no presidents in it! Whatever this episode might mean to me was gained locally, and with engaged body mind and soul as alternative orientations.

It is just a Vermont Diary entry, and likely more qualified by where one did not put one’s attention, so that ‘just’ is worth a mild emphasis.

Read more Vermont Diary >>

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Alan Rayner

Highland Fling

A series of articles - Part 3

Guest Article

Sunday 11th June

We explore the local area around Tyndrum of woodland, moorland and fast-flowing rivers, enchanted by the calls of Wood Warblers and a misty gathering of Wood Horsetails.

Wood Warblers and Horsetails

The sound of a spinning coin

Making its mind up

Whether to settle for heads or tails

Issues from branches in tall, straight trees

With carpets of Rhytidiadelphus

Sprawling at their feet

Opens the way for a day

Beside rushes of peaty water

From rain-soaked hillsides

A misty gathering of horsetails

With delicately branching sprays

Whorled around tubular stems

Brings to the woodland floor

That same kind of atmospheric drift

Which coats the upper reaches

Of mountains hiding their faces

A black liquid mirror

Fringed by sweet gale

Is the legendary repository for Bruce’s discarded Claymore

It hides its past

While reflecting its present

Gathered together

Standing on ceremony

Read On Here >>>

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Jeri Rose

Jumping Through Time in My Life 

Archetypal Hippie Speaks

<extract>  The gecko has climbed up the empty bottle and is trying to glean something from under the cap. I move slowly to remove the cap and give it access to all the goodies within because though it is empty to me, the bottle is replete with drops that would fill a gecko’s desire. The gecko jumps away even though I move slowly. I get the top off and wait. The gecko returns, but having learned that the bottle is shut, it does not check again to learn that I removed the top. It jumps into my waste can looking for what I have tossed there. I am sorry I did not leave the top off in the first place.

                I think my regrets are a waste of emotion. When I was three, a medical doctor came when I had a cold and gave me an injection. He did not tell me what he was going to do. He put me face down over the bed and dropped my pajamas and stabbed a needle into my buttock. I naturally clenched and there was a silence. He and my mother were staring at his needle in horror because the needle had broken inside my body. I did not know. Then my mother took me to a place. I did not know what the place was. She removed my clothes in this strange place and put me in pajamas. She pointed out that the pajamas were like my own. They were white cotton with cartoon characters. They had feet at the bottom of the legs and a flap over my butt and they closed with snaps. They were exactly like the ones I wore at home. Then a woman came in with a chair on wheels. It had a tall back and seat that were of woven cane. I was told to sit in the chair.

                I said that I could walk. She thought otherwise and recruited another woman to help pick me up and carry me. I struggled mightily and kicked one in the face and they got a couple more to hold me and put me in a crib in a room with lots of other children. They put stuffed animals in the crib with me. I saw that another girl had books. I wanted the books. Another girl said she wanted the dolls a different child had. Everyone wanted to switch what they had. One of the children had been there a long time and a woman came in and wheeled her around the room once in a while to give her a change of pace. I arranged for everyone to give the girl their toys in order and to make exchanges so everyone got the toys they wanted.

Read on >>>>

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Vincent Pinella

John Dante’s Inferno, A Playboy’s Life - by Anthony Valerio

The First Glass

            HELL AND BACK

 In A Playboy’s Life, Anthony Valerio tells the story of an ordinary man who, almost without effort, finds himself in an extraordinary situation. This lively and skillfully written biography takes as its subject John Aimola, a son of Italian immigrants who renames himself John Dante and begins an intense relationship with Hugh Hefner, founder of the Playboy brand. The fascinating part of this book is the way Valerio relates John’s life to the great epic poem of his literary idol, Dante Alighieri, whose Inferno is based on the concept that the punishment for sin would resemble the sin itself.

 John was born to immigrants who settled in Chicago in the early 1900’s. The family wanted their son to avoid the street gangs and mobsters in the Italian section where they lived and sent him to a boarding school run by Benedictine monks. The monks taught The Divine Comedy, the poem about a pilgrim – Dante himself – who must journey through Hell’s inferno before he can attain Paradise. At the school one monk would read the poem in Italian while another used a pull down screen to flash Gustav Dore’s famous illustrations of sinners in the circles of Hell.

 As John grows older he never forgets the monks’ lessons while at the same time he becomes aware after some early sexual encounters that he is attractive to women. John is handsome and good natured and smart and easy to like. After a brief stint in organized crime, and a short career as a bartender, he opens a night club in a poor area of Chicago and calls it Dante’s Inferno. He decorates the walls with Doré reproductions and places ads in Playboy – a magazine he read and collected. One night a curious Hugh Hefner arrives at the club and John Aimola introduces himself as John Dante. Hefner likes him at once and the meeting begins a decades-long friendship which ends when the two men grow older and the Playboy phenomenon subsides.

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Phil Innes

Grey Tower

Write On!

The same guy was sitting on his plastic chair to the right of the main doors as he had done for 15 years. It cost him 35% to beg there, and all due to the dude in the big tower. It was worth it, since people going in and out didn’t nickel and dime, they dropped fives, sometimes fifties.

He saw some characters going in, Indians, he thought, one older guy in a so-so suit and the other in native dress, blue jeans, sneakers but beaded around the neck with couple tattoos too. He didn’t press the alert button.

Inside the guilt foyer this pair showed their papers and were directed to a guarded elevator where one other person waited — he in a suit, grey-to-white, and wearing a cotton tie also in shades of cream and grey, with prismatic tinges.

Read on >

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MM Kizi

Matinicus — The Marvelous Cat

Story Page

A full graphic novel

in slide show format

   Read On >>>