One of the best things about winter — yes, there are some — is how clear the sky gets at night.
Disney it ain’t. I think you know what I mean: all those lovely Walt Disney cartoon movies, in which the birds flutter lovingly around the sky, and the fawns gambol in the meadows, the butterflies flit about like ballerinas, and the ever-so-cute bunnies and squirrels and chipmunks scurry — the word probably was invented to describe cartoon rodents and lagomorphs — nearby.
It was the first gray, windy, wintry day, a day that could be in November or February. Such days can chill one to the bone, physically but spiritually, too.
Out here in the woods, if you’re going to watch television chances are you’ll get it via a satellite dish.
This has its annoyances — the “local” stations the satellite company chooses are in West Virginia, for instance. I wonder what television news covered there before they had meth lab explosions to lead the newscasts, but never mind. There’s no television at all when it is raining.
Sitting on a back porch in upstate New York, having coffee and enjoying a beautiful morning, it is as if I’m on a different planet.
The story has it that Townes Van Zandt, the folksinger, was asked how many kinds of music there are. “Two,” was his reply.
Asked to name them, he said, “The blues and Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.”
Pity the poor person who doesn’t live in or near a college town. Autumn arrives and all that changes is the weather. In a college town, there is an air of excitement. The energy level increases. It’s exactly the opposite of the normal order of things, where spring is the time of rebirth. For a college town, it is the fall when everything, yes, springs back to life.
As a public service, I would like to let everyone know that the source of all dust in the universe is apparently somewhere near me.
The shape was tiny but unmistakable to anyone who has spent years watching for turtles while driving.
Somewhere, deep in a box someplace, I have an original, unused ticket for all three days of the “Woodstock Music & Art Fair,” held 40 years ago this coming weekend. I think I still have it, though I haven’t seen it for years. I hope I do, because I paid for it.