Fourth of July in Two Flavors, or, Joie de Vivre

Dear friends,

Harvard, Massachusetts has a “good, old-fashioned Fourth” of July—homemade floats, marching bands, lots of onlookers waving lots of flags, pie-eating contests, three-legged races—the works. Many’s the parade we marched in, made floats for, and cheered on. On 4^th of July, we felt it was truly our town.

So last year, we trotted over to Randolph village, our new town center, with expectations. We were cruelly crushed. We witnessed a display of militarism and religiosity, coupled with a grotesque array of commercialism with floats from such as the local McDonald’s and car dealerships. Nothing homemade and only one horse. I was outraged and swore never to return.

This year we drove over the hills to Strafford, two valleys to the east, where we go to the Unitarian Universalist Church. Strafford is an exquisite village, with steep rolling hills decked in green fields, church steeples and gorgeous 18^th-century houses arrayed along a common. They have a clapboarded, twenty-four-pane windowed Town House with a very tall bell tower built in 1799 on top of a high, grassy hill overlooking the common. Strafford celebrates on July 2nd.

With our guests from Washington State, we arrived in time to disport ourselves on that high lawn, on a day of extraordinary sunshine and warm blue skies. We were lucky enough to have run into a couple of people we know from church, making the event feel more home-town to us. Is that the parade? we asked them. No, that’s just the high-school band under that tree, playing the same marching tune over and over again. How about that? No, that’s the fire engine just parked over there. The common stayed quiet and nobody seemed to hurry.

At last the parade came, tiny in size but not lacking in spirit. Animals were well-represented by two gorgeous matched black horses pulling a wagon with a bunch of old people from the Senior Center, and an ox team washed and polished to a fare-thee-well. Two entries were outstanding. The Lawn Chair Drill Team approached in circular formation, nine middle-aged women in wigs and grins, holding their aluminum lawn chairs aloft and cracking them smartly against each other’s to make a good noise. At a whistle, they stopped, opened their chairs and threw themselves into them in attitudes of exaggerated relaxation and abandon. They got up and at another whistle looked alert and suddenly threw their chairs with a cry of “Ho!” to their neighbor in the circle, and kept that up til it seemed right to move on. For this they received wild applause, including ours. They were having a great time.

The other delight was the kazoo team. They had a leader in majorette boots and she had a whistle. They marched toward us, maybe a dozen of them, male and female in motley plaid skirts—white and green, yellow and red, very different plaids, and t-shirts and purple triangular hats. They didn’t look Scottish in the least. At a stern whistle from their leader they stopped marching, turned 90 degrees to face us, whipped kazoos up to lips and solemnly tooted an unknowable tune on their kazoos, straight-faced. At another whistle, they turned and marched off to serenade another part of the common. We were practically rolling on the grass laughing. How they could keep straight faces and toot was beyond me. A final eccentricity was that the whole parade went around the common one more time, I guess to make up for its brevity. We did enjoy it.

Games followed and I closely watched the frog-jumping race. Some of the kids brought in teensy frogs, with names like Very Small Paul and Tiny Tim. These kids did not have the competitive spirit, since their frogs could not hope to out-hop the big ones. No-one cared, which I found so refreshing. Highlight of the games was the tug-of-war between Strafford and South Strafford. I could see that South Strafford, where our church is, was outnumbered. At the start of the tug, I overcame my outsider feelings and plunged down the hill to lend my strength to the southern village. “One-two-three—PULL!” cried my team again and again, and we actually were pulling down our foes. So we got cocky and unknowingly quit before the time was up, and Strafford pulled us all right down. It was great fun, even if I was totally anonymous. Turns out Mark and one of our guests ran down to join us, but were too late.

A variety show in the Town House took place that night with really good talent in singing classical and traditional music and guitar work. Fireworks ended the evening, with children in pajamas and all. You would think that would have been enough.

But on the 4^th itself, another gorgeous day, we still felt celebratory. We’d heard that Warren had a famous parade though they are a town as small as Strafford, so off we drove to Warren, over the Northfield mountains to the west. Oo la la. I have to give you some highlights: Disorganization, once again, with no stress. Eventually, a pickup truck loaded with a musician playing excellent jazz piano and a teenage backup band upped the tempo on the street and set us up for roistering. We saw a pyramid proceeding down the street (picture a tiny town surrounded by mountains, big gushing stream going right through it) and a gigantic King Tut head following it. “King Tut for President 2012” read a banner. A giant Alice in Wonderland tea party table followed, peopled with enormous characters from Where the Wild Things Are. An outraged housekeeper for the local ski area stalked by herself holding a trash bin and a dust mop and a sign saying “Down with Dominque/ Arnold/ and all the rest of you—I am a victim too.” She was literally taking it to the streets. Then came a group of lean, strong men in short-shorts, leather chaps of the type loggers use and lots of earrings holding signs that read, “Gay Loggers for Jesus.” They were real loggers, and very gay. We couldn’t figure out if the Jesus part was real, too. In the distance I spotted a giant cigarette puffing real smoke. “Loco Smokehouse” read the sign, and I expected bacon and ham. But no, up came an old Cadillac convertible with a bunch of cheerful old and middle-aged people in it, decked with a sign that said, “Vermont’s First Mariuana Dispensary!” Flanking them was a small troop of really old women, all bearing signs: “Grannies for Ganja!” One young man accompanying them held a sign saying, “This is Vermont. I do what I want.” The whole joyful, blatant display made me gasp and wonder where the cops were. When it was all over, the crowd moved to the area in front of their general store, which has a balcony overlooking the street and the stream. Hot people took turns in the rushing cool water and picnickers ate among the flowers on the banks. Arrayed on the balcony a jazz-rock fusion band with about a dozen competent members started cranking out irresistible dance music and we danced in the street for hours.

What’s not to love?

Love, Josie

Farming Follies

You would think that by now, some 10,000 years after agriculture began, that people would know all about how to grow food. In each region, everyone would know the right way, and the wrong way. But no. We have to learn and learn, adapt and revise and take it all with a sense of humor. After all, we have the supermarket when all else fails. Long may that last!

It’s 7 AM the day after the Solstice, and we’ve got to get the dry beans planted in the middle of the pumpkin field. We have delayed almost too long and they may not have time to mature. The pumpkins themselves are half in; the rest pending a new shipment of seed. That will complete a projected acre of Lady Godivas, grown for their succulent seeds. An acre of pumpkins?! Do you know how many heavy pumpkins that is? What are you going to do with all that? We are looking for a cash crop and Mark hit upon the idea of tasty, versatile pumpkin seeds. “Vermont-grown nuts,” I try, “ tasty, organic and local. Roasted and salted. Toss them into soups, pates, pasta, or in your mouth for just plain snacking…” When you’ve got a product that nobody knows, though, you’ve got to educate the people before they will buy them.. Hmm…Seems dubious. Mark is sanguine. Whew, stay tuned for this one!

The rest of things here look idyllic and often feel that way. Oh, but then there’s the onions….A wide row, a good hundred feet of onions three or four across, and they’re growing beautifully in the sun. I didn’t mulch them upon emergence, though, deeming our supply of mulch hay would have a higher, better use. Boy was I wrong! When my attention turned to getting the garden in with its seeds, seedlings and support structures (a whole debate of its own), the onion patch was overrun. Just finding the shoots growing among the sea of weeds was hard enough. Weeding that long row that seems to stretch off into the distance has taken me hours and hours and hours. I don’t look up as I weed. I pretend I am a peasant in India, and that this is all I do. I just keep my head down and gaze at the promising onions, the soil and the task, cultivating a sort of trance. Some of those weeds are friends that we have learned to eat, like lamb’s quarters—amazingly good. Dandelions and plantain, too. An old Swiss woman took us to her yard and showed us just how many things out there taste much better than we thought. It is a rather warm and secure feeling to know that tasty food exists out there for free should crops fail. But in my onion row, out they go. Next year I know that the highest and best use of mulch hay is without a doubt the onions.

Ah, but the main garden, now. Mowed grass between the rows is a dream come true. Our old garden just had trampled weeds. The multi-colored lettuce is a sea of various greens and the lovely red Merlot variety just gives it that fillip of contrast so pleasing to the eye. Mark’s tomatoes have passed their transplant crisis, now thriving….He started them in the greenhouse on January 23^rd, Brandywines and Mennonites and Peacevines. Put some out in the garden May 12^th—super early. He had laid down black plastic growing cloth to heat up the soil. When the soil was warm enough, he put in about 10 big tomato plants, carefully nurtured in dreams since January. He cut river ash boughs and bent them into hoops and covered them with that white agricultural cloth you see in the fields so the tomato plants had a snug home. A spate of sunny weather and no frost obviated the growing tunnel. But the tomatoes failed to thrive. They grew pale and shivered. Rain and a steady diet of highs in the 50’s came and they huddled against their poles. A spate of reasonable weather around May 21^st—or was it because it was the traditional Harvard tomato planting day?—got Mark out there putting in more of his best tomatoes and peppers from the greenhouse. (He took a big chance on frost not hitting us—it almost did, June 4^th, but landed in a field above us instead.) After Memorial Day we began to put in the rest of the plants, seeded in February and March, according to the typical Vermont planting schedule. So, three tomato planting times took place. Currently, the original settlers from early May are still smaller than the May 21^st batch, which strut their tall green lushness—one is already three feet tall-- and even sport a few little fruit. The later ones are the youngest and in their little 10-inch way, look very promising for September canning, which timing is deliberate and just right. So Mark put in a lot of effort from greenhouse to garden, and what shows up in addition but a host of thriving volunteer tomatoes!

We planted a first batch of potatoes in mid-May, when people around here do so, though we know they just invite the Colorado potato beetles. So that batch grows under the floating row cover, giving the field a rather professional look. The main storage potatoes—Yukon golds, some big flaky whites, some tiny creamy cowhorns, and one other—will go in in July. The bugs don’t come then. And that way we will dig them up out of the dirt, many emerging like big treasures, later in September when the root cellar starts to get cold and ready to receive them. We’re still eating last years’ potatoes and you would never know how old they are when they are on the plate. Sounds grim, tastes great.

First plantings of broccoli, beets and carrots failed, we put ‘em in again. Better now. Why fail? Who knows? We may know someday. Ditto cucumbers, but that was old seed.

It’s all about using the resources particular to this place: the greenhouse, the sun schedule, our living schedule, the soils and insects and weeds that we have right here. Why don’t people know all about growing food? Because of the infinite combination of the variables, the friends and foes and weather for each square foot of ground. Non-organic growers bludgeon the crops into compliance. We prefer to think we are composing a symphony.

Love, Josie

The Slow Living Summit

THE SLOW LIVING SUMMIT

In Brattleboro, Vermont, down Main Street each June people send their young cows in a genuinely cute event called the Strolling of the Heifers. Flower-bedecked Jerseys and newly-washed Herefords placidly “stroll” amidst balloons and jugglers and cheerful people. This year a preceding event in Brattleboro set the heifers in place in an emerging American economy—the kind we dream of and knew in part when we were little-- based on free enterprise, local initiatives, the protection of nature and social justice. The event was a cozy little economics conference called the Slow Living Summit. Mark and I knew it would be good.

I haven’t mentioned our interest in local economics. In my current view, political action is useless at this time when we don’t have access to mass media anymore. Locally, I am too new here to intrude my outsider’s perspective and besides, that path doesn’t call to me anymore. Strategically, it seems that our only avenue to positive change is to get out there and create the society, culture and economy we seek. The megacorporations are currently accountable to no-one, yet they control assets in the trillions and influence the lives of most of us on earth. They have no motivation for anything but profit for their shareholders, indeed, are only allowed by law to pursue that one goal. You all know the list of our economic ills, from the impoverishment of American initiative to the most serious consequence of all, climate change. Note also the enslavement of much of the American workforce to corporate giants whose shenanigans can bankrupt families due to what they claim to be “market cycles.” I think locally-based economies can pose a counterbalance to some of this. Grassroots businesses are accountable to the localities they are based in. They are part of a social web and therefore receive personal feedback from the people they affect. They are more likely to share the values of the people who surround them. Logically they have arisen in response to local needs and tend to address the basics of food, clothing and shelter. The decisions they make are more often influenced by the context they are in, whether they are about the products they stock or the need to protect the quality of life in the community. They understand the fabric of cooperation that makes up a neighborhood and they employ local people. They are local people. And this package adds up to values that help society

Vermont, as you and I know, has made real progress in the area of local economy, and so we went to get an overview from the heavy thinkers. In good Vermont style, they presented their work with a light touch and everyone basked in the optimism. Perhaps the essential question to be answered is, how can people make a living and stay true to their higher values?

I came away from this event cheered about the possibilities for social endeavor and I want to share some highlights. Before I do, though, I should tell you that Bill McKibben came in at the very end of all this fun, having participated in no part of the event. He mounted to the podium and delivered a truly horrifying speech about what is coming at us in terms of climate change. I practically fell off my chair with my sense of loss. The evil fairy had come and cursed the baby princess. What is the use of all of this positivity if we are to be crushed by, say, endless rains during our growing season?

Getting up off the metaphorical floor, I put it all back together. By God, perseverance is what we—people engaged in a social values-based approach-- are all about. We, including our counterparts around the world, all together creating the New Economy, are people who innovate, who create adaptive pathways. If anyone can, we can, and we are. Many of us at this point still have everything the world can offer us—you could see that in the robustness of the participants, the determined optimism and the abundant flow of ideas based in good practice and solid experience.

Presenters as diverse as the Vermont Secretary of Agriculture, and the founder of the Calvert Social Investment Fund and the owner of Pete and Gerry’s Eggs—a $24 million a year enterprise you may never have heard of—numerous financiers, and, of course, Stoneyfield Farms, set forth their business practices and their philosophies. You wouldn’t want me to include all, so here are tidbits.

Common Good Capitalism states that cooperation, not competition, is the prime force in evolution: When you examine anything from a systems perspective, you perceive the whole which the apparently competing parts make up. Think about it. Ecology began to teach us that a generation ago. The pervading spirit of cooperation that identifies the New Economy springs from this perspective. The multiple crises and the destruction of the resource base show us that cooperation is the last remaining way for society to improve. More and more entities, from companies to governments to protesters around the world, are embracing the idea that the common good trumps ruthless individual gain, though it’s rarely covered in the media. Some economists say we’ve got maybe 10% of the American economy, maybe even more; it’s hidden. An example is the new form of corporation, the Benefit Corporation, or B-corp, recently emerging in numerous states. It specifies in its charter that the common good will be the company’s top priority, and profit will be second.

Consider the Crew Fund. This uses the principles of network marketing to create funds for groups of people to administer for the benefit of their communities. You agree to automatically donate $11 a month to the Crew Fund. You recruit as many friends in your area as you can to do the same ($1 of their donation goes into your fund). They recruit their friends. Your group directs the expenditure of loans from your area’s fund. Solicit proposals for a daycare center, or a community garden, or whatever your fund can be applied to that helps the people in your town—things banks never fund and municipalities cannot. Eventually enough money accrues to execute the project. The success draws more people in. If you want, go to www.crewfund.org/terrymollner and check it out.

And how about Gross Domestic Happiness? The concept, invented by the king of Bhutan, jumps to the heart of any economy by measuring people’s well-being instead of economic production. That is, measuring what money is supposed to buy. In Brazil, the United Kingdom and Costa Rica, policy makers are applying these new measurements from the grassroots up. If you like, go to the TED lectures and look up Nic Marks’ talk. It’ll knock your socks off. America is in there, too. A questionnaire that you can take, that originated in Bhutan and is being applied around the world, is at www.glasnerprogress.org/GDH. (Caveat: as I write this, I have no Internet access, so I can’t check on what is at these sites yet.)

Building community is key to raising consciousness and understanding. This means, in your neighborhoods, know your neighbors. From your companies, knit together your customers. Address real needs, not manufactured ones. Learn what your community, however you define it, needs and help it to come about. Practice social justice.

Will such changes be enough? Will they be in time? (One presenter advised us to “walk on two legs,” meaning keep one leg in political movement while the other walks your economic and social aims.) Maybe none of this will save us, though in conjunction with other prongs of the New Economy, such as innovations in more traditional financing, the economic initiatives will be more effective. We’ll probably redefine salvation! We have to begin somewhere, and we have made a good beginning. And what a way to live, what a meaningful bundle of values for the local economies we are developing. Never think that life does not have meaning, if your boat is sailing these tides.

Love, Josie

May Day

It's May Day. May Day May Day May Day.....how could anyone use those words as a signal of disaster? Today the sun is presiding over brilliant green grass as though saying, "Worth the wait, eh? I've been building your character through Yankee denial--you have passed through the bleak April I gave you,, and now--you can graduate to May!" About a hundred daffodils dot the lawn and river bank. Tiny leaves are sprouting on the big wild cherry tree and the willows sport that lime-green mist that tells us to relax, spring has truly come. "You can stop yearning now."

We're eating wild plants: Jerusalem artichokes and cascades of ramps from the river bank. Ramps? They, in case you do not know, are also called wild leeks. They look like lily of the valley leaves, about seven inches long and a glowing, soft green. They taste of onion, maybe a hint of garlic, too. At this tender stage you can use them in salads or drop them chopped and raw on hot pasta. They're so abundant, we are eating them every day. (In the interest of honesty: it's now May 4th and cold rain has returned. At least the plants love it.)

We've begun to work in earnest. Mark rototilled the garden last week. I did a lot of research into companion planting and came up with a yearly rotation plan that bunches plant varieties together that encourage each other. Beets with brassicas, cucumbers with peas, etc. Flowers, too--nasturtiums, zinnias, marigolds I seeded into flats in April and will put out with the transplants. That won't take place for another month! We're not reliably frost-free here until the first week of June. BUT, Mark has begun construction of a tomato acceleration plot. He took river-ash (box elder) branches and bent them into hoops he will cover with white agricultural cloth to make a grow tunnel. And on the ground he pegged black ag. cloth to heat up the soil. He'll cut holes in it for the tomatoes. Those plants are now huge (3') in the overcrowded greenhouse and need to be staked: Brandywines, Mennonites. Also some Prudence Purple tomatoes growing in there, plus celeriac, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, parsley, lettuce, basil, eggplant, peppers, cilantro.....Seeds in the garden are peas, spinach and lettuces. Mark also rototilled the storage-crop field and I, while sick last week, bitterly planted long rows of onion sets. It had to be done. Onions turn out to be the best paying crop in terms of avoided cost. Organic onions are something like $2/lb and we use huge quantities in a year. We are just now about to finish off the ones we grew last year and we are so pleased with how they lasted! And not one rotted. The root cellar performed extremely well its first year.

We have two cellarholes near the house, surrounded by a grove of elm (I don't know how they survive but they are healthy) and crabapple. It might be the site of the first white settlement in this region, in the 1780's. One of the builders found a 1780's penny here, one minted when Vermont was its own republic. I have kept this treasure. One cellarhole is surrounded by ancient lilacs that seem to have been planted when the oldest house was built, and that were allowed to die by the previous owners-- what an outrage. Their trunks are twisted, spiralling brown sculptures about 8" thick and 9' tall. Luckily, their progeny live on and make a beautiful grove. Mark cut out trash trees and I cut interloper bushes and Mark pulled down a particle-board treehouse with the tractor and we hauled a huge amount of brush out of that grove. Now it fans out beyond its ancient trunks in the middle, each living bush pruned and restored and bearing healthy dark-purple flower buds. Our passion for this kind of work just grows and grows.

Love, Josie

p.s. Leonard cheerfully delivered the trailer right on time on April 23rd, with 3" of new snow in it. Mark hasn't tested it yet. Our yard looks more Vermonty. Not shabby, though, thank goodness.

Water

April 10th. What I learned about snow: It falls and settles in the crannies and undulations of the land. You never know just what depth you will encounter. Even on a flat field, you don’t know.

Its melting is unpredictable. Why here and not there. Why this sunny spot still thickly covered? And when the melt comes that ushers in the spring, you can push through all kinds—ice, “corn snow” (which is kerneled), “rotten snow” (which is all structure and no strength), slush and water—in a single brief expedition, as I did today.

I just came back from a walk back into one of my deep places of mind. I went outside after a murky day and roamed in the twilight the great flat flood caused by the roaring snow-melt river. The water has eliminated the steep river banks that carve into our valley floor. Now all is flat, the same level, so water spreads wide and wide. I stood alone in all the water in the expanse of fields under the sky. I took position, not where the river bank usually is, but pushed back by water to where the grass used to be and will be again, and absorbed the roar. The water included my feet in tall rubber boots. Just being there, keeping the river company and vice versa, and witnessing this time in the river’s life and season. When I was little we lived near a river and April was then, too, the time of dangerous fast water and then, too, I used to just stand there and that was enough.

On this walk I disturbed a beaver who flung itself into the water like a kid doing a cannonball, with great splash and no dignity. Out in the current it gave a scolding slap of its tail on the water, then disappeared in the current. Geese flew in, honking on the intake and outtake of breath like an old Model T’s horn, and making their own big splash on the shallow water of one of the new field-lakes. Ducks made their rude complaints as they flew by on their low horizontal trajectory. The water creatures—those adapted to dealing with floods—are out in force. This valley, after the glacier left it, was a gigantic lake called by geologists Lake Hitchcock. It was an arm of the lake that became the Connecticut River —and it was 750 feet deep. It filled the valley to almost to the tops of the hills. This afternoon Mark and I drove the length of it down to Bethel, an eight-mile wonderland of new, graceful shallow lakes and islands at the base of the steep hills. Imagine the watercolors of Turner and the pastorals of the Hudson River School and the English landscape artists, all of which celebrated the great willows leaning out over delicate rivers and lakes.

This river is high. The covered bridge in South Randolph had maybe a foot clearance at 6:30PM. We might get some rain tomorrow—what will happen? Surely they have made that bridge to last. At another point, in the area I call the water meadows though they are usually dry, the water covered the road. A temporary sign proclaimed, “HIGH WATER/one lane traffic” and we drove through on the shallow part, the water splashing over our windshield in a torrent. It was splendid.

Love, Josie

Negotiation With a Local

It’s early in the morning and early in April. At 7:20, the sun has just cleared Tunbridge Hill and flooded the house with long shafts of light. These mornings, the valley trees present tiny lines of light spilling in all directions: each twig is covered in rime and lit by the new sun. Though the fields are still socked in with snow, and the isolated living room I don’t heat is only 56 degrees, I nestle comfortably in here because of the sun’s strong warmth. Beauty is more than what the eye beholds.

We bought a farm trailer this past week, one to pull behind the tractor for manure and such. Here is how it happened:

Brookfield is the next town north, an idyllic dirt-road village with a floating bridge and a great restaurant. A mill pond and its waterfalls and streams flow right through the village. Funky old Vermonters’ crumbling houses sit across the road from new-comers’ revitalizations such as ours. Driving through a month ago, I spotted a rusty old trailer with “for sale” on it buried in the snowpack. Saw another one, too, still mostly submerged. So I approached the house, an enchanting cottage, picket-fence surround, sitting by a stream, little footbridges and all—and stepped onto a rotting porch with two grimy doors. I peered in one and saw jumbles of junk, and chickens milling. I boldly knocked on the other. An old woman shuffled across a wooden floor that had not seen a wash or polish in decades, and opened the door, vacant-faced. I asked about the trailer and she still stood there. “Leonard!” she called weakly, then stepped aside. I saw a brown, gray interior, a round old table heaped with newspapers. On dingy floral wallpaper hung a print of Old Dog Tray, and the obligatory picture of a country lane tilted on its nail. A tabby cat made for my ankles, purring importunately. A tall old man, somewhat toothless, appeared. “$400,” he told me, and “t’other is $600.” He said there’d been a man lookin’ at it t’other day, a rich guy, liked to throw his weight around, and—well I could see he didn’t want that guy to get it. I said we’d come back when the snow had melted off them some more.

Last week we drove up to Brookfield again. We were able to tromp right around the trailers. Mark bent down to peer under the better one and suddenly righted himself, saying, “I’m done.” He was excited—he saw hydraulics. It was a dump-trailer. You know, the little boy’s dream. Bbbbb---dump! And out falls the cargo. We seek out Leonard, who emerges from a horrific barn. Mark tried to talk him down from $600 and Leonard said, “That was Mom’s husband’s. Was the trash man, y’know, took people’s trash to the dump. It’s a good one. I offered the two trailers to t’other guy yesterday for $1500.” Then he looked at us silently. The math didn’t add up. It was drastically in our favor. I said I’d be back with a $100 deposit. We scuttled away feeling guilty. What would happen when I came back with the check? Would he have realized his error? Should I point it out?

When I returned, it was 8:00 at night. The old woman, long white hair falling, answered the door and stood silently. “I’m here for Leonard,” I said. Once again she stepped back and this time she smiled very sentiently. “Leonard’s got to get up for work now anyway, I’ll wake him up.” Leonard emerged in the clothes he’d slept in and coughed, a deep, alarming cough. He spluttered, “Yep. Gotta go to Castings [Vermont Castings wood stove factory]—night shift-- Mom here always gets to stay home.” He cast a little grin at the old woman and I was shocked. The poor man was son, not husband. But he looked so old! Anyway, he gave me a friendly smile and took my check with an air of contentment, saying he could deliver the thing in a week. I can only conclude that he never wanted that rich guy to get the trailer, and wonder what the rich guy did to lose such a good deal.

Note: It’s been a couple of weeks, and Leonard still hasn’t delivered the trailer. Are we really the elect who got the good deal? Stay tuned.

Love, Josie