Deaths In The Family

So it was a warm day today, warm enough to go out without a jacket, so it was a day to inspect the bees.

One hive was a buzz, they were doing their thing of cleaning house, which means sweeping out the bees that didn't make it through the winter. The other hive all was still, which I half expected, as the lid of that hive came off one morning, and I assumed they got hit with chill (even though there was a weight on the lid).

I began to disassemble the still hive, slowly removing each layer. A few bees came over to investigate, but I assumed they were from the other hive. As I removed each layer, I discovered more and more dead bees. Now, I can't say I was really attached to them, unlike the chickens I hadn't attempted to name the bees (although a few were called Bob, Beatrice, Barney, Betty, etc. as i saw them, but they do all look pretty much alike). Taking out each frame and seeing more bees stuck to the wax cells immobile and greyish was pretty horrifying, especially as the other hive had those brownish-yellowing girls all buzzing about and doing their thing. As long as one hive survived, I will go forward and get another colony of bees as soon as the weather gets warmer. This year, I'll monitor more carefully, get better hive tops and grow from my experience. One only learns by doing, but at the expense of all those little lives, it is a karmically painful lesson.

With so much death and destruction on the planet, it almost seems foolish to be lamenting the deaths of bees -- Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East, Africa -- so many places human beings are dieing - greater tragedy. Even on an individual basis, when not factoring in the numbers of people there are many situations worth mourning more than the bees.
I walked past Lenox Hill Hospital this week, thought of poor Natasha Richardson who died there and welled up with tears. I met her once, a long time ago, and she was warm and lovely. To lose one so kind, charitable and talented is truly a great tragedy. My heart goes out to her entire family, for the loss of this irreplaceable soul on this planet.

I can buy another box of several thousand bees.

The seeds are waiting for the ground to warm up so we can start the next Spring adventure.

March Madness

Haven't blogged in a while -- life and facebook taking up too much of my time. The snow and ice have finally melted, winter is over and Mud Season has arrived. The roofer drives his truck across the side lawn and tracks so deep I could plant bowling ball sin them appear. The mud is so wet, the cats come in and soon every counter they can sneak onto reveals their fiendishness...tell-tale paw prints. Did I mention it's muddy out there? All of my black shoes are now brown shoes. The ground is so soft the back fence gate isn't holding tight in its anchor and the goat can but the door open....which means the roofer has to watch those horns and run up the ladder -- serves him right for putting those ruts in my lawn.

So the roofer starts replacing the roof: removes the asphalt shingles, removes the metal roof under them and finds the cedar shingles dating back to the 19th Century -- good-golly! He also finds that thanks to a bad repair job the back of the house has sunk 5.5 inches, and has bowed out 3 inches. So now there are chains pulling the side walls in, and an almost six inch gap between most of the first and second floors of the back of the house. (was there a budget for this job? yes, when we started). At least all of the beams have now been sistered and the back door has been replaced (3 weeks with a plywood wall in place of the back door was fun). Now all the wood siding that had to be removed has to be replaced and the last section of roof still has to be installed. As grandma would say back at the shtetl (her shtetl house was probably built after this house was) OY!

Meanwhile, I lost my key to our mailbox, but OK, we still had one key...then David goes away for a few days and takes his keys...oops, now I can't get into the mailbox, but wait! -- this is Cuddebackville/Godeffroy (yes the two towns are small enough to share a zip code) -- so I tell our letter carrier my predicament and she offers to just drop the mail off to me at work instead, it's virtually on her way home, anyway. I LOVE LIVING IN THE COUNTRY!!!

Meanwhile, it's warm enough that the chickens don't need the electric heater under their water and I just have to try to not get stuck in the mud as I walk to the barn to collect eggs each morning....Did I mention it's so muddy that our black dog has turned brown?

I am hysterically writing the historical notes for the exhibit I am curating -- the deadline looms larger than the Hollywood Hills, but isn't that appropriate as the exhibit is "The Star Is Born: The History of the Movie Star in America from Florence Lawrence and Valentino to Heath Ledger"? I'm even editing the poster copy at the same time...I need to get the walls spackled and painted, then set up the exhibit, after I'm finished putting it together (bit by bit, dot by dot -- and that is the state of the art) (5 points if you get that reference).

It's been raining, everything is wet, I feel wet to my bones, even the firewood is damp from the air, which makes for not hot fires in the stoves and mud everywhere. Have I mentioned it's muddy? I forget...must be part of my March Madness. Speaking of madness, next week is St. Patrick's Day (St. Paddy's for short, NEVER St. Patty's) and even though I will be in NYC, I promise not to drink any green beer. Maybe I'll write more on this next week if I steal a few more minutes.

Took my car to the car wash, came out nice and clean, drove three minutes, it was covered in mud...better than salt and sand, I guess. have I mentioned it's muddy out there? The mud is like sand from Coney Island, it keeps appearing in the strangest places long after you've been in the house.

To quote W. E. Coyote: "Hello, my name is Mud."

The Russians are Comming, The Russians are Comming!

So in all the TV chatter about Tom Daschle and his tax evasion/withdrawing from nomination problems, one commentator said that he was not only going to have his cabinet position, but was also to be the new Health Czar.

Can we stop this crap? Please? First of all, the word is Tsar. That's how the Russians pronounce it T-sar, not zar, so there is no way to pronounce czar that reflects the actual pronunciation.

Now we have to stop the rest of the crap. (note I'm watching my language, unlike the last blog, and not saying "shit", but using the polite version, "crap") We have appointed drug Czars, Energy Czars, and plenty more I can't think of yet, and we still have drug problems (i.e. prescriptions still cost too much, too many drugs are over-prescribed, the street drugs aren't as pure as they used to be and are also more expensive (so I'm told)), and still have energy problems (i.e. We're running out of oil, people think windmills are ugly, at my age I'm lucky I have the energy to get through a day without a nap) with no end in sight. Maybe that's because we are appointing czars, not Tsars.

If we appointed a few Tsars, maybe things would get cleaned up. Remember, friends, the Tsars were pretty awful tyrants. Despots. Supreme rulers who believed they got their powers from God. Just the other day our local PBS channel showed Dr. Zhivago. Great movie, better book (I had tea in Pasternack's house outside of Moscow in the early 90's, but I digress) and there's that one scene where the communists are having a peaceful march through the streets, playing music and carrying banners. Zhivago watches as the Tsar's mounted police charge them with swords flailing, trampling and cutting every non-violent protester they can. This is what Tsars do.

Let's get a drug Tsar in position in Washington and he can order the troops to go into every suburban high school and kill every pot smoking and cocaine snorting teenager, go into the better neighborhoods and kill the meth and e taking party boys, and go everywhere and shoot up the heroin users (pun intended).

Let's get a real Energy Tsar and he can order troops to shoot every driver of a big gas guzzler, kill that damn teenage girl who refuses to turn off the lights when she leaves the room, waterboard oil company executives for not developing new technologies, or for hoarding reserves, or whatever it is they do or don't do.

Maybe we could appoint a marriage Tsar to protect the sanctity of Marriage. Let's see, put up in front of a firing squad for abusing the sacred vows between one man and one woman: Zsa-Zsa Gabor, Elizabeth Taylor, Brittney Spears, and especially that lesbian couple from Massachusetts -- they really have some nerve fighting for the right to get married and then not staying married to set an example for all these straights who can't figure it out. Hell, even my mother was married twice and that was a loooooooong time ago. -- Sorry ma, but I think, we've got to back you up against the wall, put that blindfold on, that cigarette in your mouth and...no, wait, no cigarette.. our new Tobacco Tsar won't allow that.

We need to stop the war on drugs, the war on poverty the war on crime, the war on Christmas, the war on peace (sorry Tolstoi) and all these Czars/Tsars and maybe try to come up with some new, less despotic, less violent ways of handling our problems. Of course, Russia did get rid of their Tsars, and it didn't help them much. Just go watch Dr. Zhivago, if you don't believe me.

P.S. Maybe I'm thinking about the Tsars so much because there's still so much snow and ice here on the farm with the thermometer hovering at 11 fahrenheit that I feel like I'm in Siberia.

Parental Advisory: some language may not be suitable for young children

So, I'm driving in the car today, and I'm not getting my usual stations in on the radio and I say to myself, "Self, Obama is now president, you listen to conservative talk radio." So I turn to the only station I know and Rush Limburger is on. I rarely listen to him, but I've seen his picture and read interviews (but I've never read his police reports for his drug dealing, I admit), so I know a bit what he's about.

He's ranting about the closing of Gitmo, reading the Dick Morris column about how Obama will turn our nation into a socialist, or at least democratic socialist nation, an editorial from the Daily Mail of London opining that this will be the end of the United Staes, etc. He takes a call from a woman in California who says, "as an American citizen, I am offended that he would close Guantanimo." She wanted to know how he could just free all those terrorists, and why isn't he doing what he promised and giving her health care and paying her mortgage? She admitted sarcasm. Limburger railed about how obama is going to give everyone a "welfare check" of $1,000. He went on and on. I was thinking, "W-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-ell, a lot of the people held in Gitmo were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, in the U.S. one is innocent unless proven guilty by a jury of one's peers, I could actually use some healthcare, government welfare to individuals is so much better and more cost effictive to government welfare for corporations (Exxon, Haliburton)...but I wasn't insane with rage yet.

He talked about how the U.S. elected Obama because he was intelligent, and if anyone saw him on TV talking about his signing statement is was abvious what an idiot he is. he doesn't know anything....This from a man who admires G.W. Bush!...but I wasn't filled with rage, yet.

Mr. Limbaugh then began talking about the economic situation in the U.S. and the government bailout of the banks (since when don't these conservatives like government helping big business?) and he says, "next, we'll talk about the banking queen, Barney Frank." That's when I began to turn red, and remembered all those pictures of Limburger with a huge smile and his big cigar posed at his mouth and thought, "Boy it sure looks like he's happy to have that huge phallus-like thing in his mouth." I'll be he'd much rather have a hard cock in his mouth than those dried out leaves. Now I know why Al Franken wrote the book "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot." I want to know who that fat fuck Limburger thinks he is calling Barney Frank names. Who does ABC radio let him get away with this shit. Why can he say that and stay on the air, when Imus got thrown off for offending African-Americans? Why does Obama get elected president the same day they make marriage for all Californians illegal, and why does Rick Warren, who fought hard to achieve that dubious milestone get to speak at Obama's inaugural ceremony? Who the fuck do these cocksuckers think they are keeping the real cocksuckers from having the same rights that they have? ooooops did I really say that?

Boy Under Wire

I just finished watching the film “Man On Wire,” the documentary about Philippe Petit’s realization of his dream to cross between the towers of the World Trade Center on a tightrope in 1974. It is a wonderfully made film that I thoroughly enjoyed, but it brought back a very personal memory. While I was at Sarah Lawrence College, Petit came to perform. A huge group of us gathered in front of the performing arts center to watch him. One of the features of this building is a large metal column that supports a staircase in front of the main entrance to the theater and dance section of the building. As part of his performance, Petit tied a think rope around this column, about six feet above the ground.

He then chose five or six volunteers to hold the other end of the rope as taught as they possibly could. Petit looked through the rest of us in the audience, spotted me and beckoned me to step out of the crowd. He placed what I remember as a small folded towel on my right shoulder and had me stand so that the rope rested on the towel. He had those standing behind me pull taught again. He tested the rope, went over to the far end of the rope and hopped on. Philippe told me to look at in his eyes. It was quite difficult.

Difficult, because I wanted to watch his body, his feet, his arms as he stepped, hopped, danced, bounced on the rope as he entertained. Difficult because the tension on the rope dug into my shoulder, even through the towel. I kept moving my eyes from his eyes to his amazing feats and each time we re-made eye contact he softy asked, “are you all right? Are you okay?” and I would reply as softly, “yes.” It was an amazing connection for me. He wasn’t high up, but I knew if I slipped, if I faltered, then he would come crashing down on the stone pavers below. I knew I had to stay with him, be where he was to make it possible for him to display his talents. I was concentrating so hard, I was almost in a hypnotic state. If one of the people behind me lost their grip for a second, there were others to maintain the tension, if I screwed up, the rope would turn from a taught cable able to support a human being to a floppy coil on the ground.

I always dreamed of running away with the circus as a boy, perhaps that is why I worked as a magician and clown through my high school years, performing at birthday parties and charity affairs. Those few brief moments “working” with Philippe were as close as I ever got to the big top. When this film came out, I learned he lives near Woodstock, so he is actually not very far from where I live. I’ve met many celebrities in my life, worked with some incredibly talented actors, singers, dancers, chefs, but there was something ineffable about those few moments holding the rope for Philippe Petit, and they will forever remain a special part of my life.

Service with a Smile

So I walk into the post office the other day, the one in Huguenot, not Cuddebackville, (check the map! http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Huguenot%2C%20New%20York%2012746&rls=com.microsoft:*&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl (slide the bar on the left down a little to zoom out) my house is under the second f in Godeffroy) and an older gentleman in a cap and plaid shirt/jacket is complaining because he can’t get his hand into his P.O. box. There was all this stuff around the edges of the inside of his box and he couldn’t get his mail. One of the women behind the counter explained that he had said that he kept scraping his hand on the inside edges every time he went to grab his mail, so they fixed it. They cello-taped cotton balls all around the edges! We all had a good laugh!!!! These are the same people who will cover me and still send my mail out if I am short the postage money, because they know I’ll be back and am good for it. Now the women in the Cuddebackville post office are every bit as accommodating, but that office closes from 11:30 to 1:30 every day for lunch, which of course is the time I usually want to mail things, so….I wind up south, not north more often than not. Not long after we moved here, someone sent us a letter addressed to “Seth & David Cuddebackville, NY 12729” and they delivered it to us. They can do it with every address here. Yes there are only a little over a thousand people living in Cuddebackville and Godeffroy (the one post office serves both towns, since the Godeffroy postmistress retired and they couldn’t use her living room for the post office any more –that was against regulations, though someone told me she was happy to rent that part of her living room for the purpose.

Having recently experienced airport hell as we travelled from San Diego to New York through snowstorms Christmas week, with lost baggage, other people’s baggage coming to us, etc. It is good to be reminded that customer service with a smile (and a joke or two) still exist in this country. One wouldn’t know it from the air lines that raise fares, cut services and flights and generally expect you to thank them for treating you badly. Remember the days when air travel seemed like first class even when you flew coach? When flight attendants smiled? When passengers didn’t push and shove on the jetways afraid the planes will take off without them, even though it’s 20 minutes to departure time? When they loved to fly and it showed?

Did I tell you about the two different neighbors who arrived with their snow plows as we were taking our baggage from the cars? They knew we were coming home that day, and since there had been a snowstorm, wanted to make sure we could get in the house. Go ahead you city and suburb folks, ask me again why I live in the country!

The Man Who Fell for Eartha

Driving home from work I listened to Eartha Kitt. I hate how all of the legends that I grew up knowing are one bu one departing this earth. Like most my age, my first encounter with Eartha Kitt was when she played Catwoman on Batman. My father taught me more about her: his Aunt's husband was a major investor in "New Faces of 52" the Broadway show that made her a star (and had my friend Ellen's mother, Faith Stewart-Gordon in the chorus).

I bought her albums, I went and saw her at The Ballroom, at Cafe Carlyle, any chance I could get. Then there was that one special night: It was partner David's birthday, and we had planned to see Eartha at the Carlyle. Unfortunately, her night off was the same as David's and we had to cancel the plans. David had a friend, Jon, who worked with her on tour and remained friendly with her, and we were all going to go and have a drink with her afterwards. We were bummed.

We planned to just have a dinner party instead. I had graduated from cooking school and was eager to show off. We invited Jon and a friend of mine for a small party. A few minutes after David left for the matinee Jon called. He told me that he was bringing a guest to dinner and that it was Eartha. I scrambled to get the house spotless and really pull out all the stops.

When David got home, things were buzzing. A few minutes later, the doorbell rang and I asked David to get it. I heard the door open and David call out "Oh my God! Eartha Kitt's come to dinner." And so she had.

We had no dining room or real table to eat at and usually gathered around a huge square coffee table. Eartha pulled off her boots, sat on the floor at the table and we spent the next six hours talking politics, theatre, anything and everything. We were all overwhelmed by her intelligence, her intensity, her warmth. She admired a wooden bird my father had carved, and I had Dad send her one the next day!

Just a few years ago, David was hired to design the hair and provide the wigs to the Off-Broadway musical "Mimi LeDuck," in which Eartha was starring. It was another chance to ge to know her. She liked the wigs David made for her for the show so much, she ordered more after the show closed.

It's odd that most of the people around here that I encounter don't have any idea who she is. I'm feeling old, very old...how can one compare an Eartha Kitt, a Hermoine Gingold, a Marlene Dietrich to Britney Spears, Kindsay Lohan or any of these contemporary "performers"?

If you don't know about her look up what she said a luncheon held at the White House by LadyBird Johnson.