Chris Bohjalian's Blog, page 13
February 1, 2015
This week's forecast brought to you by the Middle Ages
It says a lot about our respect for meteorologists that once again tomorrow morning we will all pretend it is the Middle Ages and look to a six- or seven-pound rodent to forecast the weather. Moreover, we will not merely ask a groundhog’s prediction for the next day or two … we will ask the little varmint whether winter is going to hang around for another six weeks.
Groundhog Day is, of course, the stuff of legend. The late, great director and screenwriter Harold Ramis crafted a wonderful romance around Feb. 2 starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell: “Groundhog Day.” Men who otherwise know better don tuxedoes and top hats and hang around a place called — I am not kidding — Gobbler’s Knob. And my lovely bride and I first met on Groundhog Day (though not in Punxsutawney, Pa.)
But if the rituals surrounding Groundhog Day are merely a momentary diversion for most of us, how must they feel to actual meteorologists? I have friends who forecast the weather here in Vermont, and so I asked a few to weigh in on the groundhog. Here’s what they said.
•Gary Sadowsky, WCAX-TV: “Groundhog Day is that one day when I can sit back, relax, and let some rodent do my job for me. If he’s right, he can have all the glory. That’s fine. If he’s wrong, then he can take the blame that’s usually placed on my shoulders. And that’s what’s more likely to happen. One of our ‘keeper’ graphics says, ‘Six Weeks Ago, The Groundhog Said …’ We show that one six weeks after Groundhog Day, because his (or her) forecast is usually dead wrong. So, that’s our revenge on the groundhog’s ‘expertise.’”
Gary added that when you study meteorology, “Groundhog 101 is a rigorous, five-credit course. The only prerequisite is to live in a hole in the ground for a year previous to taking it.”
•Tom Messner, WPTZ-TV: “I love Groundhog Day! It’s a celebration of weather. Even better, it promotes a diversion of blame for a change. Even though another long winter is a certainty around here, I prefer to let the groundhog deliver that news. And while predicting weather for the next six weeks is difficult whether you’re a groundhog or a human, I’m confident it takes a trained meteorologist to be 100 percent sure of Vermont’s short-range forecast: Increasing darkness tonight with scattered light toward morning!”
Tom also wondered how in the world the groundhog could fail to see his shadow with all those television lights on him.
•Mark Breen, Vermont Public Radio’s “Eye on the Sky” and Fairbanks Museum Meteorologist: “I seem to waffle on my feeling for this pesky rodent like one of those forecasts between snow or rain. I can’t say I’m jealous. Sure, he has his ‘day in the sun’ — or the clouds – but most years he is soon slumbering without a care as winter finishes up. And while he gets a forecast right now and then, his average locally is 41 percent right, based on February and March temperatures. I can’t say that demonstrates anything in the way of forecasting prowess.”
Mark has taught classes on weather lore at the Fairbanks Museum for over 30 years, and so while he doesn’t have a lot of faith in the groundhog as a meteorologist, he does appreciate the way the animal “exemplifies how some weather lore gets started.”
For instance, the mid-point of winter is near Feb. 2. In addition, European settlers, accustomed to spotting bears and badgers, would see woodchucks emerging from hibernation around this time of the year — though that was often far south of Vermont. “Locally, the mating season occurs later, in March or even early April,” Mark explained. “This suggests we might not want to rely on a ‘foreign’ groundhog, nor should we be checking in February. Perhaps Town Meeting Day would be more appropriate, though that could raise another host of issues that I would not even attempt to address.”
Indeed. Perhaps the healthiest response came from Sharon Meyer at WCAX-TV, who said simply, “I love the groundhog! He’s cute and we need something warm and fuzzy in the dead of winter!”
I agree. And while I understand the little guy has no formal training, I still hope he doesn’t see his shadow tomorrow — and we all savor an early spring.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on February 1, 2015. Chris’s most recent novels include “The Light in the Ruins,” “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” and “The Light in the Ruins.” You can learn more about his books, his cats, and where his travels are bringing him at www.chrisbohjalian.com .)
Groundhog Day is, of course, the stuff of legend. The late, great director and screenwriter Harold Ramis crafted a wonderful romance around Feb. 2 starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell: “Groundhog Day.” Men who otherwise know better don tuxedoes and top hats and hang around a place called — I am not kidding — Gobbler’s Knob. And my lovely bride and I first met on Groundhog Day (though not in Punxsutawney, Pa.)
But if the rituals surrounding Groundhog Day are merely a momentary diversion for most of us, how must they feel to actual meteorologists? I have friends who forecast the weather here in Vermont, and so I asked a few to weigh in on the groundhog. Here’s what they said.
•Gary Sadowsky, WCAX-TV: “Groundhog Day is that one day when I can sit back, relax, and let some rodent do my job for me. If he’s right, he can have all the glory. That’s fine. If he’s wrong, then he can take the blame that’s usually placed on my shoulders. And that’s what’s more likely to happen. One of our ‘keeper’ graphics says, ‘Six Weeks Ago, The Groundhog Said …’ We show that one six weeks after Groundhog Day, because his (or her) forecast is usually dead wrong. So, that’s our revenge on the groundhog’s ‘expertise.’”
Gary added that when you study meteorology, “Groundhog 101 is a rigorous, five-credit course. The only prerequisite is to live in a hole in the ground for a year previous to taking it.”
•Tom Messner, WPTZ-TV: “I love Groundhog Day! It’s a celebration of weather. Even better, it promotes a diversion of blame for a change. Even though another long winter is a certainty around here, I prefer to let the groundhog deliver that news. And while predicting weather for the next six weeks is difficult whether you’re a groundhog or a human, I’m confident it takes a trained meteorologist to be 100 percent sure of Vermont’s short-range forecast: Increasing darkness tonight with scattered light toward morning!”
Tom also wondered how in the world the groundhog could fail to see his shadow with all those television lights on him.
•Mark Breen, Vermont Public Radio’s “Eye on the Sky” and Fairbanks Museum Meteorologist: “I seem to waffle on my feeling for this pesky rodent like one of those forecasts between snow or rain. I can’t say I’m jealous. Sure, he has his ‘day in the sun’ — or the clouds – but most years he is soon slumbering without a care as winter finishes up. And while he gets a forecast right now and then, his average locally is 41 percent right, based on February and March temperatures. I can’t say that demonstrates anything in the way of forecasting prowess.”
Mark has taught classes on weather lore at the Fairbanks Museum for over 30 years, and so while he doesn’t have a lot of faith in the groundhog as a meteorologist, he does appreciate the way the animal “exemplifies how some weather lore gets started.”
For instance, the mid-point of winter is near Feb. 2. In addition, European settlers, accustomed to spotting bears and badgers, would see woodchucks emerging from hibernation around this time of the year — though that was often far south of Vermont. “Locally, the mating season occurs later, in March or even early April,” Mark explained. “This suggests we might not want to rely on a ‘foreign’ groundhog, nor should we be checking in February. Perhaps Town Meeting Day would be more appropriate, though that could raise another host of issues that I would not even attempt to address.”
Indeed. Perhaps the healthiest response came from Sharon Meyer at WCAX-TV, who said simply, “I love the groundhog! He’s cute and we need something warm and fuzzy in the dead of winter!”
I agree. And while I understand the little guy has no formal training, I still hope he doesn’t see his shadow tomorrow — and we all savor an early spring.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on February 1, 2015. Chris’s most recent novels include “The Light in the Ruins,” “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” and “The Light in the Ruins.” You can learn more about his books, his cats, and where his travels are bringing him at www.chrisbohjalian.com .)
January 25, 2015
My father never lost heart -- until his heart gave out
Today is my father’s birthday, but he died in 2011 so it’s really just another day. He would have been 87. But I thought I should give him a shout-out in this space, given the incredible amount of material he provided – never by design – for this column. Certainly my world was diminished when he died, but so was Idyll Banter. In the three and a half years since he has been gone, it has become clear to me just how much it meant to share his perspective from the end of the road.
“End of the road” is, of course, a euphemism. Obviously I meant the Very Elderly Men’s Golf Association in his community in South Florida.
My father figured in this column in two roles: The younger man who raised me, appearing in vaporous memory as a loving father and almost archetypal “mad man” from the 1960s. And then there was the older fellow, waltzing (or limping) into print in diminished health, each step bringing him a little bit closer to the precipice. “Precipice” is obviously a euphemism, too. I meant the restaurant where he and his pals and their spouses would convene after playing golf. I won’t share the restaurant’s actual name because every item on the menu was inedible. Its principal virtue for my father and his friends was that they started serving dinner around noon.
Getting old is rarely easy. As Philip Roth said, “Old age is a massacre.” We all know more or less how our stories end; it’s only the details that vary. And we all know the devil is in the details. My father did many things well at the end and many things badly, but until the very last weeks of his life, he was always unabashedly buoyant and hopeful. I remember when he was struggling back from spectacularly invasive surgery about ten months before he died, he turned to me in his hospital bed, tubes extending into or out of just about every orifice in his body (including a few ones the surgeons had recently created), and said that he was going to take his girlfriend to Italy as soon as he had his strength back.
He had by then as much chance of getting to Italy as I have of summering in Andromeda, but he really believed it. I think that was how he weathered the medical maelstrom through which he sailed the last four years of his life. When I watched him in that period, I was reminded often of the first line of “Disappearances,” one of Howard Frank Mosher’s remarkable novels: “My father was a man of indefatigable optimism.” When I look back on Aram Bohjalian’s numerous appearances in this column, they share that faith in life’s promise and pleasures, despite the reality that his life’s possibilities were growing ever narrower. The golf balls didn’t travel as far. The diet was restrictive. It was impossible to read.
He sure as heck wasn’t going to Italy.
Whenever my father wanted to impart a bit of advice he would begin, “Chrissy, you gotta understand.” Yes, he called me Chrissy. And perhaps because he wanted to dial down the pomposity of his words, a man whose speech could be so precise he did voice-over work for radio and television would transform “have to” to “gotta.” Sometimes the advice was helpful. Often I viewed it the way all grown sons view guidance from their fathers. We smile and then later share the counsel with our wives, rolling our eyes dismissively.
But often in the midst of that advice was his laughter, and until the final months of his life, he laughed a lot. He laughed despite the massacre that loomed. I learned a great deal from my father, which is why he appeared so often when he was alive in this column. And perhaps the best gift he gave me was a positive attitude that is almost unkillable. So even though he won’t be here to join me, again today I will raise a glass to him.
Happy birthday, Dad.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 25, 2015. The paperback of Chris’s most recent novel, “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” arrives in May.)
“End of the road” is, of course, a euphemism. Obviously I meant the Very Elderly Men’s Golf Association in his community in South Florida.
My father figured in this column in two roles: The younger man who raised me, appearing in vaporous memory as a loving father and almost archetypal “mad man” from the 1960s. And then there was the older fellow, waltzing (or limping) into print in diminished health, each step bringing him a little bit closer to the precipice. “Precipice” is obviously a euphemism, too. I meant the restaurant where he and his pals and their spouses would convene after playing golf. I won’t share the restaurant’s actual name because every item on the menu was inedible. Its principal virtue for my father and his friends was that they started serving dinner around noon.
Getting old is rarely easy. As Philip Roth said, “Old age is a massacre.” We all know more or less how our stories end; it’s only the details that vary. And we all know the devil is in the details. My father did many things well at the end and many things badly, but until the very last weeks of his life, he was always unabashedly buoyant and hopeful. I remember when he was struggling back from spectacularly invasive surgery about ten months before he died, he turned to me in his hospital bed, tubes extending into or out of just about every orifice in his body (including a few ones the surgeons had recently created), and said that he was going to take his girlfriend to Italy as soon as he had his strength back.
He had by then as much chance of getting to Italy as I have of summering in Andromeda, but he really believed it. I think that was how he weathered the medical maelstrom through which he sailed the last four years of his life. When I watched him in that period, I was reminded often of the first line of “Disappearances,” one of Howard Frank Mosher’s remarkable novels: “My father was a man of indefatigable optimism.” When I look back on Aram Bohjalian’s numerous appearances in this column, they share that faith in life’s promise and pleasures, despite the reality that his life’s possibilities were growing ever narrower. The golf balls didn’t travel as far. The diet was restrictive. It was impossible to read.
He sure as heck wasn’t going to Italy.
Whenever my father wanted to impart a bit of advice he would begin, “Chrissy, you gotta understand.” Yes, he called me Chrissy. And perhaps because he wanted to dial down the pomposity of his words, a man whose speech could be so precise he did voice-over work for radio and television would transform “have to” to “gotta.” Sometimes the advice was helpful. Often I viewed it the way all grown sons view guidance from their fathers. We smile and then later share the counsel with our wives, rolling our eyes dismissively.
But often in the midst of that advice was his laughter, and until the final months of his life, he laughed a lot. He laughed despite the massacre that loomed. I learned a great deal from my father, which is why he appeared so often when he was alive in this column. And perhaps the best gift he gave me was a positive attitude that is almost unkillable. So even though he won’t be here to join me, again today I will raise a glass to him.
Happy birthday, Dad.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 25, 2015. The paperback of Chris’s most recent novel, “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” arrives in May.)
January 18, 2015
One way to honor Martin Luther King? Listen.
It was twenty years ago that I interviewed Cornel West for a lengthy magazine article. He was only 42 then, but he was already an intellectual rock star and the bestselling author of “Race Matters.” Harvard had just lured him away from Princeton. He’s now a professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary, and back at Princeton as a Professor Emeritus. He was a frequent guest on the Colbert Report until the show ended, and had one of the best cameos ever on “30 Rock.” He explained to character Tracy Jordan – a.k.a., Tracy Morgan – the importance of having black role models other than the Darth Vader and ninjas.
I was terrified before I met West for the first time back in 1995. It wasn’t that I was about to spend the day in Cambridge, Massachusetts with a guy who I knew was way smarter than I was. It was the reality that my mother had died three days before in Florida and I was flying directly from Ft. Lauderdale to Boston to meet him. I knew my game was going to be a little off.
My worries were unfounded. We talked at length off the record about dead parents, and the roles of our own mothers and fathers in who we had grown up to be. I was grieving and shell-shocked, and he was the perfect therapist. But I was there as a journalist and so the two of us talked mostly about the state of race relations in America.
indexTomorrow, of course, is the day we commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr. I saw on the Union Theological Seminary web site that West is teaching a course on King and Gandhi this spring.
King would have turned 86 last week, had he not been assassinated in Memphis in 1968. That was 47 years ago. King has been gone longer than he was alive. I wonder if he would look at the election of President Barack Obama and the promise of 2008 and then at the racist police brutality that ended 2014, and – like many of us – wonder how it all went wrong.
But my sense is that it’s not that something went wrong between 2008 and 2014; rather, it’s that not enough changed between 1968 and the present. Just think of what we witnessed as last year came to a close: women and men lying on the floor of Grand Central in Manhattan or standing on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, the new rallying cry a horrific reminder of a black man named Eric Garner’s last words as a white police officer choked him to death: “I can’t breathe.” Recall the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri in the days before Thanksgiving, after a grand jury chose not to indict the white police officer who killed an 18-year-old African-American named Michael Brown.
Somehow, the legacies of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow are with us still – despite so many white and black Americans who honestly are color-blind. And while there is no easy solution, there is this reality, a lesson I will never forget from West’s “Race Matters:”
“To establish a new framework, we need to begin with a frank acknowledgment of the basic humanness and Americanness of each of us. . .There is no escape from our interracial interdependence.”
If there is any good to come from the tragic and needless deaths of a pair of black Americans that marked 2014, it is the reminder that we cannot stop trying to reach out across the racial divide. It means acknowledging that we have still not brought King’s dreams to fruition – but that we still can.
When my afternoon with West was coming to an end, he shared a story about a man he described as both deeply conservative and a very old friend. The two of them would, he said, sit down and talk, and really “go at it.” And yet they were still friends. “We can learn so much from each other,” West told me, “if we would just take the time to listen.”
Indeed. But if we are going to live up to the promise in King’s vision, we have to listen – especially when somebody is telling us he can’t breathe.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 18, 2015. The paperback of Chris's most recent novel, "Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands," arrives in May.)
I was terrified before I met West for the first time back in 1995. It wasn’t that I was about to spend the day in Cambridge, Massachusetts with a guy who I knew was way smarter than I was. It was the reality that my mother had died three days before in Florida and I was flying directly from Ft. Lauderdale to Boston to meet him. I knew my game was going to be a little off.
My worries were unfounded. We talked at length off the record about dead parents, and the roles of our own mothers and fathers in who we had grown up to be. I was grieving and shell-shocked, and he was the perfect therapist. But I was there as a journalist and so the two of us talked mostly about the state of race relations in America.
indexTomorrow, of course, is the day we commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr. I saw on the Union Theological Seminary web site that West is teaching a course on King and Gandhi this spring.
King would have turned 86 last week, had he not been assassinated in Memphis in 1968. That was 47 years ago. King has been gone longer than he was alive. I wonder if he would look at the election of President Barack Obama and the promise of 2008 and then at the racist police brutality that ended 2014, and – like many of us – wonder how it all went wrong.
But my sense is that it’s not that something went wrong between 2008 and 2014; rather, it’s that not enough changed between 1968 and the present. Just think of what we witnessed as last year came to a close: women and men lying on the floor of Grand Central in Manhattan or standing on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, the new rallying cry a horrific reminder of a black man named Eric Garner’s last words as a white police officer choked him to death: “I can’t breathe.” Recall the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri in the days before Thanksgiving, after a grand jury chose not to indict the white police officer who killed an 18-year-old African-American named Michael Brown.
Somehow, the legacies of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow are with us still – despite so many white and black Americans who honestly are color-blind. And while there is no easy solution, there is this reality, a lesson I will never forget from West’s “Race Matters:”
“To establish a new framework, we need to begin with a frank acknowledgment of the basic humanness and Americanness of each of us. . .There is no escape from our interracial interdependence.”
If there is any good to come from the tragic and needless deaths of a pair of black Americans that marked 2014, it is the reminder that we cannot stop trying to reach out across the racial divide. It means acknowledging that we have still not brought King’s dreams to fruition – but that we still can.
When my afternoon with West was coming to an end, he shared a story about a man he described as both deeply conservative and a very old friend. The two of them would, he said, sit down and talk, and really “go at it.” And yet they were still friends. “We can learn so much from each other,” West told me, “if we would just take the time to listen.”
Indeed. But if we are going to live up to the promise in King’s vision, we have to listen – especially when somebody is telling us he can’t breathe.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 18, 2015. The paperback of Chris's most recent novel, "Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands," arrives in May.)
January 11, 2015
Moscow hospitality worth lots more than the ruble
It’s the week before Christmas and I am in Moscow – the one famous for the Kremlin in Russia, not the one famous for speeding tickets in Vermont. (Okay, that’s not fair. Moscow, Vermont is known for more than just speeding tickets. It’s also known for speeding warnings.)
It’s a Sunday afternoon and I am wandering alone toward St. Basil’s, the iconic church with the candy-colored, storybook minarets. I stop before a series of ice sculptures as tall as basketball centers. I pause to take a photo of what I believe is a magisterial ice horse rearing up on its hind legs. There is a vendor nearby selling Russian nesting dolls, including ones of Putin and Lenin, and he has his young daughter with him. She looks to be seven or eight years old, and she’s bundled up in a pink parka with a faux fur hood.
“Would you like me to take your picture beside the sculpture?” the vendor asks me. He has one of those terrific spy movie accents.
“That would be great,” I say, handing him my iPhone. “Your English is excellent – which is good, since my Russian is non-existent.”
“It’s okay. My daughter’s is better.”
I lean over slightly and say to the girl, “You can already speak English? I am very impressed.”
She blushes and looks down at her boots, but doesn’t say anything. So, I take a few steps back to the sculpture and stand beside it. “This horse is incredible,” I tell them.
The child starts to speak, but stops.
“Okay, what?” I ask. “Is my pose too silly?”
She glances at her father. He smiles and says, “Tell him.”
“It’s not a horse. It’s a unicorn,” she explains patently to me. It is indeed, I see. I had failed to notice its icy horn.
“Oh, thank you for correcting me,” I reassure her. “I’m glad you told me. No need to be shy!”
“You’re a guest,” her father says. “She knows hospitality is important.”
The entire trip was like that.
I had gone to Russia for a few days to celebrate the Russian edition of one of my novels, and so while the visit wasn’t much longer than the journey itself, every moment was pretty spectacular. I didn’t drink as much vodka as I expected, but I drank way more Armenian cognac. And I made a lot of friends, none of whom minded that in some ways I positively exude Idiot American.
I also wondered on occasion if the sun ever shines in Moscow, because it sure didn’t appear when I was there. The skies were gray and almost always spitting snow.
Moscow weather is, of course, famous. It stopped Hitler cold in his tracks and destroyed Napoleon’s army more than a century earlier. Yet the weather was a whole lot better in Moscow than it was in the Green Mountains. When I left Vermont, my house was on its second day without electricity and the trees were struggling worse than Atlas beneath the weight of heavy snow. I must admit, I took pride in the idea that I hailed from a state where the winters make Moscow feel balmy.
But what surprised me most was how festive the city was despite the endless lack of sunshine, the economic sanctions, and the fact that the ruble was about as valuable as Confederate currency. It wasn’t a dour place at all. The Christmas lights, silver and red and blue, were elegant and massive, lining the boulevards and draping the sides of the buildings. People were ice-skating in Red Square. No one seemed to mind when I made jokes about a shirtless Vladimir Putin. (Just for the record, I never ended my remarks by shouting, “Free the Ukraine.” My hotel was near the Lubyanka, the yellow brick building that once housed the KGB. I didn’t want to press my luck.)
And when I think of my visit last month, I recall that father and daughter selling nesting dolls near St. Basil’s. They were one more reminder that even when nations have geopolitical disagreements, there is always room for kindness and courtesy – and hospitality.
Do svidaniya, Moscow. Thanks for the memories.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 11, 2015. The paperback of Chris’s most recent novel, “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” arrives in May.)
It’s a Sunday afternoon and I am wandering alone toward St. Basil’s, the iconic church with the candy-colored, storybook minarets. I stop before a series of ice sculptures as tall as basketball centers. I pause to take a photo of what I believe is a magisterial ice horse rearing up on its hind legs. There is a vendor nearby selling Russian nesting dolls, including ones of Putin and Lenin, and he has his young daughter with him. She looks to be seven or eight years old, and she’s bundled up in a pink parka with a faux fur hood.
“Would you like me to take your picture beside the sculpture?” the vendor asks me. He has one of those terrific spy movie accents.
“That would be great,” I say, handing him my iPhone. “Your English is excellent – which is good, since my Russian is non-existent.”
“It’s okay. My daughter’s is better.”
I lean over slightly and say to the girl, “You can already speak English? I am very impressed.”
She blushes and looks down at her boots, but doesn’t say anything. So, I take a few steps back to the sculpture and stand beside it. “This horse is incredible,” I tell them.
The child starts to speak, but stops.
“Okay, what?” I ask. “Is my pose too silly?”
She glances at her father. He smiles and says, “Tell him.”
“It’s not a horse. It’s a unicorn,” she explains patently to me. It is indeed, I see. I had failed to notice its icy horn.
“Oh, thank you for correcting me,” I reassure her. “I’m glad you told me. No need to be shy!”
“You’re a guest,” her father says. “She knows hospitality is important.”
The entire trip was like that.
I had gone to Russia for a few days to celebrate the Russian edition of one of my novels, and so while the visit wasn’t much longer than the journey itself, every moment was pretty spectacular. I didn’t drink as much vodka as I expected, but I drank way more Armenian cognac. And I made a lot of friends, none of whom minded that in some ways I positively exude Idiot American.
I also wondered on occasion if the sun ever shines in Moscow, because it sure didn’t appear when I was there. The skies were gray and almost always spitting snow.
Moscow weather is, of course, famous. It stopped Hitler cold in his tracks and destroyed Napoleon’s army more than a century earlier. Yet the weather was a whole lot better in Moscow than it was in the Green Mountains. When I left Vermont, my house was on its second day without electricity and the trees were struggling worse than Atlas beneath the weight of heavy snow. I must admit, I took pride in the idea that I hailed from a state where the winters make Moscow feel balmy.
But what surprised me most was how festive the city was despite the endless lack of sunshine, the economic sanctions, and the fact that the ruble was about as valuable as Confederate currency. It wasn’t a dour place at all. The Christmas lights, silver and red and blue, were elegant and massive, lining the boulevards and draping the sides of the buildings. People were ice-skating in Red Square. No one seemed to mind when I made jokes about a shirtless Vladimir Putin. (Just for the record, I never ended my remarks by shouting, “Free the Ukraine.” My hotel was near the Lubyanka, the yellow brick building that once housed the KGB. I didn’t want to press my luck.)
And when I think of my visit last month, I recall that father and daughter selling nesting dolls near St. Basil’s. They were one more reminder that even when nations have geopolitical disagreements, there is always room for kindness and courtesy – and hospitality.
Do svidaniya, Moscow. Thanks for the memories.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 11, 2015. The paperback of Chris’s most recent novel, “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” arrives in May.)
January 4, 2015
Smile: It's January in the Land of the Polar Tomato.
A lot of my friends here in the Land of the Polar Tomato – aka, Vermont – are not big fans of January. Those post-holiday blues, which are universal, are exacerbated by withering cold, dicey roads, and days that are very, very short. Admittedly, the days are growing longer, but those June and July evenings when the sun sets hours after dinner are a long way off.
Certainly when I think of January, I think of frozen pipes and the time I nearly blew up the house running a propane torch over what I thought was a frozen water pipe. Nope. It was an LP gas pipe. I recall ice jams on my slate roof that in the midst of the invariable January thaw become melting glaciers, the water dribbling through the Byzantine inside walls of my house and into the kitchen light fixtures. And I envision the endless treks between the woodshed and the woodstove, and the time I spend feeding the beast and hoping it doesn’t “Chernobyl.” (When a woodstove “Chernobyls,” it melts down. It unleashes a chimney fire. My wife and I use the name of the ill-fated Soviet nuclear plant as a verb – as in, “Honey, the woodstove nearly Chernobyled this afternoon.” It instantly conveys the chaos and terror of a chimney fire.)
And then there are the power outages.
And the wind.
And the shoveling.
And the way the house booms in the night, the timbers expressing their own frustration with the way the thermostat is plunging to ten, twenty, and even thirty degrees below zero.
But I rather like January. Sure, it’s a physically taxing month. It’s also spectacularly beautiful. The sky is cerulean, a more vibrant blue than in the summer. I can gaze for a very long time at the white monolith of Mount Abraham when the sun is setting this time of the year: There is a nimbus along the ridgeline and summit. And the New Haven River is quite literally frozen in time – at least the surface. There are icicles where once there were waterfalls. Meanwhile, the tops of the chairlifts at the ski resorts release you into a world as magic as Narnia. Even a thousand feet below those peaks, where I cross-country ski here in Lincoln, the woods are more than a little reminiscent of the world on the other side of the wardrobe.
But there are other reasons for braving the cold and getting outside. There is the landscape, but there is also the reality that exercise dials down depression. A recent study in Sweden, a country which knows all about crazy short days and crazy cold nights, confirmed the correlation between exercise and contentment.
And then when you return home, there is hot soup. Or there should be. Or warm bread. Hot soup and warm bread never taste better than they do this time of the year. And Vermont weather is the reason why hot cocoa was invented. Red wine, too.
Finally, whether you are inside or outside, it’s important not to hibernate so completely that you don’t see your neighbors. Lord knows I see a lot less of them this time of the year. I recall worrying my first winter in Vermont that half the houses in the center of the village had to be haunted. Days would go by when I would see almost no one in the center of town. But the month of January passes by faster when you are breaking some of that warm bread with a friend. When you are sipping some of that hot cocoa with a friend. And when you are outside on your skis or snowshoes or snowmobiles with a friend.
With any luck, I will be back on my beloved bike in a mere two or three months. Many of us will be planning our gardens. Organizing our summer vacations. Ordering next year’s wood.
The 802 is a pretty remarkable place and I will always feel very blessed to live here. January just demands a certain laissez-faire willingness to roll with the weather – and, yes, a really good parka.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 4, 2015. The paperback of Chris’s most recent novel, “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” arrives in May.)
Certainly when I think of January, I think of frozen pipes and the time I nearly blew up the house running a propane torch over what I thought was a frozen water pipe. Nope. It was an LP gas pipe. I recall ice jams on my slate roof that in the midst of the invariable January thaw become melting glaciers, the water dribbling through the Byzantine inside walls of my house and into the kitchen light fixtures. And I envision the endless treks between the woodshed and the woodstove, and the time I spend feeding the beast and hoping it doesn’t “Chernobyl.” (When a woodstove “Chernobyls,” it melts down. It unleashes a chimney fire. My wife and I use the name of the ill-fated Soviet nuclear plant as a verb – as in, “Honey, the woodstove nearly Chernobyled this afternoon.” It instantly conveys the chaos and terror of a chimney fire.)
And then there are the power outages.
And the wind.
And the shoveling.
And the way the house booms in the night, the timbers expressing their own frustration with the way the thermostat is plunging to ten, twenty, and even thirty degrees below zero.
But I rather like January. Sure, it’s a physically taxing month. It’s also spectacularly beautiful. The sky is cerulean, a more vibrant blue than in the summer. I can gaze for a very long time at the white monolith of Mount Abraham when the sun is setting this time of the year: There is a nimbus along the ridgeline and summit. And the New Haven River is quite literally frozen in time – at least the surface. There are icicles where once there were waterfalls. Meanwhile, the tops of the chairlifts at the ski resorts release you into a world as magic as Narnia. Even a thousand feet below those peaks, where I cross-country ski here in Lincoln, the woods are more than a little reminiscent of the world on the other side of the wardrobe.
But there are other reasons for braving the cold and getting outside. There is the landscape, but there is also the reality that exercise dials down depression. A recent study in Sweden, a country which knows all about crazy short days and crazy cold nights, confirmed the correlation between exercise and contentment.
And then when you return home, there is hot soup. Or there should be. Or warm bread. Hot soup and warm bread never taste better than they do this time of the year. And Vermont weather is the reason why hot cocoa was invented. Red wine, too.
Finally, whether you are inside or outside, it’s important not to hibernate so completely that you don’t see your neighbors. Lord knows I see a lot less of them this time of the year. I recall worrying my first winter in Vermont that half the houses in the center of the village had to be haunted. Days would go by when I would see almost no one in the center of town. But the month of January passes by faster when you are breaking some of that warm bread with a friend. When you are sipping some of that hot cocoa with a friend. And when you are outside on your skis or snowshoes or snowmobiles with a friend.
With any luck, I will be back on my beloved bike in a mere two or three months. Many of us will be planning our gardens. Organizing our summer vacations. Ordering next year’s wood.
The 802 is a pretty remarkable place and I will always feel very blessed to live here. January just demands a certain laissez-faire willingness to roll with the weather – and, yes, a really good parka.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on January 4, 2015. The paperback of Chris’s most recent novel, “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” arrives in May.)
December 28, 2014
Our most endearing trait? Our ability to hope.
This coming Wednesday night, once again – as I do every year – I will be contemplating the irony and wistfulness in the penultimate sentence in “The Great Gatsby:”
“Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . .And one fine morning – ”
Fitzgerald was on to something when he combined revelry with self-delusion. Those emotions are the yin and yang of New Year’s Eve, making the holiday rather Gatsby-esque. We party hard – some of us harder than others – because the night is a tyrannical reminder that we are all another year older, but this time no one is giving us presents to cushion the blow. At the same time, we water (sometimes with champagne) that seed of optimism inside us that we will use the New Year as a reboot. It’s our second chance. Or thirty-second. Or even seventy-second. This coming year we will, somehow, get it right.
It’s rather remarkable, and says something about what is certainly among our most endearing traits as a species: Our ability to hope.
I’ve never stood in Times Square as the ball falls as midnight nears, but I’ve witnessed some pretty wonderful moments on New Year’s Eve: There is my lovely bride diving headfirst – fingernails out – across a dining room table after a spoon in the world’s best card game, Spoons. I should note she was sober. But she is athletic and competitive. She plays to win. We were at a party at friends of ours here in Lincoln.
There are the two bartenders, a man and a woman, at a restaurant in Burlington, spontaneously breaking into dance behind a redoubtable slab of burnished mahogany as midnight peels on my wife’s and my first New Year’s Eve in Vermont. The restaurant has changed hands at least twice since then, but the memory lingers. My wife and I decided the pair was in love.
And there are all of those January firsts when I was a boy and I am surveying our house after my parents’ New Year’s Eve party the night before. There is something reassuring about the debris in the kitchen sink and the living room side tables with half-filled glasses of Scotch. My parents are still asleep, but there had been people laughing into the very small hours of the morning. If I were awake at midnight, my mother would come to my bedroom and bring me downstairs so I wasn’t alone when the New Year arrived. Sure, I was surrounded by grownups, some of whom were seriously soused, but my mother understood something important about New Year’s Eve: It is a holiday about connection. Human connection.
What happens when you spend New Year’s Eve alone? Just before I started eighth grade, my family moved to Miami, Florida. I was home alone that New Year’s Eve, and I consumed a rolling pin-sized tube of frozen chocolate chip cookie dough. I didn’t bother to bake it. I ate it raw.
Let’s face it, we are all a little diminished without each other – and the world but a sad and spinning blue marble. Sartre was wrong: Hell isn’t other people. It’s their absence. What makes humankind so extraordinary is the way we find hope in one another, despite our myriad and constant failings.
And so once more this week we will wake up on the first and we will – Gatsby-like – vow to run faster. We will pledge to stretch farther.
And that’s why the night before, the last night of 2014, I will raise a glass at midnight. I will toast to my family and friends, and to better times for strangers in need. I will hope and pray that this year our annual reboot will succeed.
May 2015 bring us all peace and wonder and joy. Happy New Year.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 28, 2014. Chris's most recent novels are "The Light in the Ruins" and "Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands.")
“Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . .And one fine morning – ”
Fitzgerald was on to something when he combined revelry with self-delusion. Those emotions are the yin and yang of New Year’s Eve, making the holiday rather Gatsby-esque. We party hard – some of us harder than others – because the night is a tyrannical reminder that we are all another year older, but this time no one is giving us presents to cushion the blow. At the same time, we water (sometimes with champagne) that seed of optimism inside us that we will use the New Year as a reboot. It’s our second chance. Or thirty-second. Or even seventy-second. This coming year we will, somehow, get it right.
It’s rather remarkable, and says something about what is certainly among our most endearing traits as a species: Our ability to hope.
I’ve never stood in Times Square as the ball falls as midnight nears, but I’ve witnessed some pretty wonderful moments on New Year’s Eve: There is my lovely bride diving headfirst – fingernails out – across a dining room table after a spoon in the world’s best card game, Spoons. I should note she was sober. But she is athletic and competitive. She plays to win. We were at a party at friends of ours here in Lincoln.
There are the two bartenders, a man and a woman, at a restaurant in Burlington, spontaneously breaking into dance behind a redoubtable slab of burnished mahogany as midnight peels on my wife’s and my first New Year’s Eve in Vermont. The restaurant has changed hands at least twice since then, but the memory lingers. My wife and I decided the pair was in love.
And there are all of those January firsts when I was a boy and I am surveying our house after my parents’ New Year’s Eve party the night before. There is something reassuring about the debris in the kitchen sink and the living room side tables with half-filled glasses of Scotch. My parents are still asleep, but there had been people laughing into the very small hours of the morning. If I were awake at midnight, my mother would come to my bedroom and bring me downstairs so I wasn’t alone when the New Year arrived. Sure, I was surrounded by grownups, some of whom were seriously soused, but my mother understood something important about New Year’s Eve: It is a holiday about connection. Human connection.
What happens when you spend New Year’s Eve alone? Just before I started eighth grade, my family moved to Miami, Florida. I was home alone that New Year’s Eve, and I consumed a rolling pin-sized tube of frozen chocolate chip cookie dough. I didn’t bother to bake it. I ate it raw.
Let’s face it, we are all a little diminished without each other – and the world but a sad and spinning blue marble. Sartre was wrong: Hell isn’t other people. It’s their absence. What makes humankind so extraordinary is the way we find hope in one another, despite our myriad and constant failings.
And so once more this week we will wake up on the first and we will – Gatsby-like – vow to run faster. We will pledge to stretch farther.
And that’s why the night before, the last night of 2014, I will raise a glass at midnight. I will toast to my family and friends, and to better times for strangers in need. I will hope and pray that this year our annual reboot will succeed.
May 2015 bring us all peace and wonder and joy. Happy New Year.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 28, 2014. Chris's most recent novels are "The Light in the Ruins" and "Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands.")
December 21, 2014
The don't make toys like they used to -- thanks heavens
The bug wasn’t Gregor Samsor-big. We’re not talking Kafkaesque.
But in my memory it was the size of a cat. It was vaguely wasp-like – black and yellow – with both a stinger at the rear and an earwig’s pincers emanating from the sides of its jaw. If you packed its bulbous abdomen with D batteries, it would motor across the floor on its six spindly legs with surprising quickness. It didn’t lumber; it scooted. It was the scariest big plastic bug ever, and it was under the Christmas tree waiting for me when I was five.
And those pincers? The tips, though plastic, were sharp enough to pierce skin. I recall cutting myself by accident when I was experimenting to see what else those pincers could pierce. (They couldn’t puncture a Rheingold beer can, but they could strip wallpaper.)
These days, it’s hard to find big plastic bugs that can strip wallpaper. They’re out there somewhere, but by and large they just don’t make toys like they used to. Thank heavens. Sometimes I think it’s a miracle that my generation made it to adulthood. The toys of my childhood? Terrifying.
I’m not referring to Gumby or Hula Hoops or the Etch a Sketch. We can still find those.
I’m thinking back on the ones that maimed and killed and have since been discontinued (or outlawed), but once upon a time Santa Claus left under the tree. In all fairness, of course, this was also an era when I used to sleep on a mattress in the far back of a station wagon on long car trips while one of my parents was driving.
Consequently, Santa brought me a wood-burning kit that could have left me scarred for life. Actually, it could have left me branded for life. One year he brought me the original Creepy Crawlers. Back then, the “Thing Maker” that transformed “plastigoop” into squishy rubber bugs had to have been hotter than a nuclear reactor. (When it was resurrected a few years ago, the cooker was a light bulb.) I was always burning myself. Always.
And, of course, I had my own set of Jarts.
I believe that the original Jarts (or lawn darts) are now part of the standard armaments on military drones. You want to rain down fire and brimstone on a Taliban terrorist compound? Drop a few Jarts. Today’s lawn darts have rounded plastic tips, but the set I had as a kid had thick metal points and must have been a foot long. Then (as now) you were supposed lob them underhand at plastic rings you placed in the lawn, and it was reminiscent of horseshoes. We never played it like that. Never. We’d hurl them as high into the sky as we could, heaving them from elevated porches and second-story windows to give them ever greater velocity as they fell back to earth. Today the Internet is awash with stories of lawn dart cataclysms (and lawsuits), some of which are heartbreaking. Fortunately, lawn darts with metal points were banned in the United States a decade and a half ago.
My sense is that my parents were a lot like Santa, in that they, too, saw the innocent joy to be found in a “toy” oven hot enough to cook plastic. I imagine they loved shopping for me when I was a boy, in much the same way that my wife and I always loved shopping for our daughter when she was a child. Our daughter just turned 21, but it still feels like only yesterday that we would stand amidst the long aisle of Barbies or the special room in that special toy store that had the best princess gowns this side of “Game of Thrones.” There was our daughter’s troll phase, her horse phase, her Barbie phase, her American Girl phase. . .
I miss the toy stores, I really do. I miss needing them. . .
Now, none of this means that Santa is guaranteed to bring your children only safe toys this Christmas. Heaven knows he’s brought wrongheaded ones in the past. (Can you say “chemistry set?”) Based on his belly, he’s not especially disciplined. I’ve never seen a seatbelt on his sleigh. And some people might find an easier, safer way into a house than a chimney. (Not judging.)
But at least he’s a little more careful today than he was forty and fifty years ago – though I did love that big plastic bug.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 21, 2014. Chris’s most recent novels include “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands” and “The Light in the Ruins.”)
But in my memory it was the size of a cat. It was vaguely wasp-like – black and yellow – with both a stinger at the rear and an earwig’s pincers emanating from the sides of its jaw. If you packed its bulbous abdomen with D batteries, it would motor across the floor on its six spindly legs with surprising quickness. It didn’t lumber; it scooted. It was the scariest big plastic bug ever, and it was under the Christmas tree waiting for me when I was five.
And those pincers? The tips, though plastic, were sharp enough to pierce skin. I recall cutting myself by accident when I was experimenting to see what else those pincers could pierce. (They couldn’t puncture a Rheingold beer can, but they could strip wallpaper.)
These days, it’s hard to find big plastic bugs that can strip wallpaper. They’re out there somewhere, but by and large they just don’t make toys like they used to. Thank heavens. Sometimes I think it’s a miracle that my generation made it to adulthood. The toys of my childhood? Terrifying.
I’m not referring to Gumby or Hula Hoops or the Etch a Sketch. We can still find those.
I’m thinking back on the ones that maimed and killed and have since been discontinued (or outlawed), but once upon a time Santa Claus left under the tree. In all fairness, of course, this was also an era when I used to sleep on a mattress in the far back of a station wagon on long car trips while one of my parents was driving.
Consequently, Santa brought me a wood-burning kit that could have left me scarred for life. Actually, it could have left me branded for life. One year he brought me the original Creepy Crawlers. Back then, the “Thing Maker” that transformed “plastigoop” into squishy rubber bugs had to have been hotter than a nuclear reactor. (When it was resurrected a few years ago, the cooker was a light bulb.) I was always burning myself. Always.
And, of course, I had my own set of Jarts.
I believe that the original Jarts (or lawn darts) are now part of the standard armaments on military drones. You want to rain down fire and brimstone on a Taliban terrorist compound? Drop a few Jarts. Today’s lawn darts have rounded plastic tips, but the set I had as a kid had thick metal points and must have been a foot long. Then (as now) you were supposed lob them underhand at plastic rings you placed in the lawn, and it was reminiscent of horseshoes. We never played it like that. Never. We’d hurl them as high into the sky as we could, heaving them from elevated porches and second-story windows to give them ever greater velocity as they fell back to earth. Today the Internet is awash with stories of lawn dart cataclysms (and lawsuits), some of which are heartbreaking. Fortunately, lawn darts with metal points were banned in the United States a decade and a half ago.
My sense is that my parents were a lot like Santa, in that they, too, saw the innocent joy to be found in a “toy” oven hot enough to cook plastic. I imagine they loved shopping for me when I was a boy, in much the same way that my wife and I always loved shopping for our daughter when she was a child. Our daughter just turned 21, but it still feels like only yesterday that we would stand amidst the long aisle of Barbies or the special room in that special toy store that had the best princess gowns this side of “Game of Thrones.” There was our daughter’s troll phase, her horse phase, her Barbie phase, her American Girl phase. . .
I miss the toy stores, I really do. I miss needing them. . .
Now, none of this means that Santa is guaranteed to bring your children only safe toys this Christmas. Heaven knows he’s brought wrongheaded ones in the past. (Can you say “chemistry set?”) Based on his belly, he’s not especially disciplined. I’ve never seen a seatbelt on his sleigh. And some people might find an easier, safer way into a house than a chimney. (Not judging.)
But at least he’s a little more careful today than he was forty and fifty years ago – though I did love that big plastic bug.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 21, 2014. Chris’s most recent novels include “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands” and “The Light in the Ruins.”)
December 14, 2014
Shining a light on the homeless -- one candle at a time
This coming Thursday evening around 5:30, you’ll see a small crowd assembled on the exterior steps of Burlington, Vermont’s City Hall, looking out upon Church Street. Sometimes there are 30 people and sometimes there are 50. It might be snowing, but they’ll still be there.
They’ll be holding candles and doing something poignant and powerful and very, very simple. One by one they’ll be reading the first names of some of the homeless in this area and sharing a piece of their history. Sometimes it’s about how a person wound up without a roof and sometimes it’s about how they were helped by COTS — the Committee on Temporary Shelter. I can still recall some of the names I’ve read aloud from those steps over the years.
And before we read the names, there is music: Betsy Nolan, choir director of the Edmunds Middle School, leads her 18 seventh- and eighth-graders in song. This year they will be singing “One Candle” and the canon, “Dona Nobis Pacem.” Nolan has been bringing the choir to the vigil for eight years now.
“I think it’s a really great event,” Nolan told me. “With the diversity in our school, we have students who come from economic privilege and students who come from economic challenges. It’s a nice way for them to see there are all different kinds of people who need our support.”
It was COTS Executive Director Rita Markley who first approached Nolan about singing in the vigil. Before agreeing, Nolan asked her students if they wanted to participate. She wanted to be sure that they understand the significance of the moment. She has done it this way every year since. After the vigil, they all go out for pizza and discuss the evening — and what they just learned as young adults. “The kids always say it’s awesome that we have an organization like COTS. That’s so important to them,” she said.
But then there was the year when Nolan and the choir members were surprised by the sort of revelation that drives home the fragility of our lives. “I had a choir student whose family had been in one of the COTS shelters. She shared that her family had experienced homelessness and felt so privileged to be able to help,” Nolan recalled. “I didn’t know this about her until we went to the vigil. It was pretty powerful.”
Becky Holt, director of development and communications at COTS, has witnessed the effect of the vigil on people for years now. “I tell COTS stories — that’s what I do. I don’t look at my job as fundraising, but as sharing why the gifts to COTS matter. The vigil is the once a year moment where we literally tell the stories of people helped by COTS. And, for me, it’s the most solemn and important event of the year, because it’s where we reflect and honor our neighbors facing homelessness — the meaning behind the mission,” she said.
In the last year, COTS helped more than 2,000 people. Seventy-eight families — including 127 children — and another 301 individuals stayed at the shelters. An average of 40 people a day visited the Daystation. And that homeless student in the Edmunds Middle School Choir? She was far from alone. There were 172 homeless children in Chittenden County in October.
Who knows what the weather will be on Thursday night. This is Vermont and it can change in a heartbeat. It may be oddly balmy. The air might be still. And Church Street might be a snow globe, the flakes swirling and the gusts off Lake Champlain making it nearly impossible to keep our candles lit.
“It’s beautiful when it snows, but it has a huge impact: The kids are outside and they are reminded that there will be people in the city that night who are homeless,” Nolan said.
Indeed. There will be homeless in Burlington tonight. And tomorrow. And the night of the vigil. But thanks to COTS, some will have shelter. And some will even have homes.
That is the meaning of this season – and why this vigil is always worth watching.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press. Chris’s most recent novel is “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands.”)
They’ll be holding candles and doing something poignant and powerful and very, very simple. One by one they’ll be reading the first names of some of the homeless in this area and sharing a piece of their history. Sometimes it’s about how a person wound up without a roof and sometimes it’s about how they were helped by COTS — the Committee on Temporary Shelter. I can still recall some of the names I’ve read aloud from those steps over the years.
And before we read the names, there is music: Betsy Nolan, choir director of the Edmunds Middle School, leads her 18 seventh- and eighth-graders in song. This year they will be singing “One Candle” and the canon, “Dona Nobis Pacem.” Nolan has been bringing the choir to the vigil for eight years now.
“I think it’s a really great event,” Nolan told me. “With the diversity in our school, we have students who come from economic privilege and students who come from economic challenges. It’s a nice way for them to see there are all different kinds of people who need our support.”
It was COTS Executive Director Rita Markley who first approached Nolan about singing in the vigil. Before agreeing, Nolan asked her students if they wanted to participate. She wanted to be sure that they understand the significance of the moment. She has done it this way every year since. After the vigil, they all go out for pizza and discuss the evening — and what they just learned as young adults. “The kids always say it’s awesome that we have an organization like COTS. That’s so important to them,” she said.
But then there was the year when Nolan and the choir members were surprised by the sort of revelation that drives home the fragility of our lives. “I had a choir student whose family had been in one of the COTS shelters. She shared that her family had experienced homelessness and felt so privileged to be able to help,” Nolan recalled. “I didn’t know this about her until we went to the vigil. It was pretty powerful.”
Becky Holt, director of development and communications at COTS, has witnessed the effect of the vigil on people for years now. “I tell COTS stories — that’s what I do. I don’t look at my job as fundraising, but as sharing why the gifts to COTS matter. The vigil is the once a year moment where we literally tell the stories of people helped by COTS. And, for me, it’s the most solemn and important event of the year, because it’s where we reflect and honor our neighbors facing homelessness — the meaning behind the mission,” she said.
In the last year, COTS helped more than 2,000 people. Seventy-eight families — including 127 children — and another 301 individuals stayed at the shelters. An average of 40 people a day visited the Daystation. And that homeless student in the Edmunds Middle School Choir? She was far from alone. There were 172 homeless children in Chittenden County in October.
Who knows what the weather will be on Thursday night. This is Vermont and it can change in a heartbeat. It may be oddly balmy. The air might be still. And Church Street might be a snow globe, the flakes swirling and the gusts off Lake Champlain making it nearly impossible to keep our candles lit.
“It’s beautiful when it snows, but it has a huge impact: The kids are outside and they are reminded that there will be people in the city that night who are homeless,” Nolan said.
Indeed. There will be homeless in Burlington tonight. And tomorrow. And the night of the vigil. But thanks to COTS, some will have shelter. And some will even have homes.
That is the meaning of this season – and why this vigil is always worth watching.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press. Chris’s most recent novel is “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands.”)
December 7, 2014
White House Visitor Center missed an opportunity and swept Genocide under the rug
You know your moral compass is a little off when you censor a story about a gift to a U.S. president from a group of orphans — even though that story makes your grandparents and great-grandparents look like Mother Teresa.
But this is essentially what the White House Visitor Center did for six days in November. After a year of congressional pressure and the pleas of Armenian-Americans, the White House pulled the Ghazir Orphan Rug from storage and allowed us to see it — but swept under the rug an explanation for its origins.
On the surface, it’s hard to understand why it should have taken such a Herculean effort to allow the rug to see daylight in the first place. Here is the abridged story of the carpet. During the First World War, the Ottoman Empire systematically annihilated 1.5 million of its Armenian citizens, ethnically cleansing its Armenian minority from almost all of what today we call Turkey. Three out of every four Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed. Americans were horrified by the slaughter as it was occurring, and a newly organized American group, Near East Relief, tried to save the survivors of the genocide — including the children, scattered now across the Middle East. The group’s accomplishments, especially the 135,000 orphans it cared for, were breathtaking.
And among the thanks to America from those orphans was … the rug. It was woven by a group of Armenian orphan girls from the orphanage in Ghazir, Syria (now Lebanon) and designed to be worthy of a world leader. It was. It’s massive and beautiful. It was presented to President Coolidge on Dec. 4, 1925. A year later, two of the Armenian girls who helped weave the rug journeyed to Washington and met the Vermont-born president.
Cut to the autumn of 2013. The Smithsonian Museum asked the White House for the rug so it could be displayed. Hagop Martin Deranian had written a book, “President Calvin Coolidge and the Armenian Orphan Rug,” and there was talk of an event. The White House said no. They wouldn’t release the rug. The event was “not viewed as commensurate with the rug’s historical significance,” said National Security Council spokeswoman Laura Lucas Magnuson at the time.
The real reason was likely real politik: We did not want to antagonize Turkey, which, despite all historical evidence, continues to deny the reality of the Armenian Genocide. So even though the rug was a testimony to American ideals at their very best, it was better to let the thing sit and molder.
In the last five months, however, Turkey hasn’t played nice with the U.S. in the Middle Eastern sandbox and our relationship has been strained. So, how did we express our frustration with our ally? For six days in November we trotted out the Orphan Rug. We listened to the appeals of House Representatives — and Armenian-Americans.
But we didn’t want to push this too far, so we put this extraordinary rug in a corner of the White House Visitor Center, rather than the Smithsonian Museum.
And we certainly didn’t use the word genocide in any of the materials explaining why the rug matters. The caption explains simply that it was made by girls “orphaned during World War I.” It was given as an endorsement of “Golden Rule Sunday.” There is no explanation of why the girls were orphaned. Could have been a factory fire. And there was obviously no mention of the 1.5 million dead.
And so as I stood before the rug the other day at the Visitor Center, I was at once moved and enraged. I’m a descendant of survivors of the Armenian Genocide, and the rug’s existence is a reminder of that cataclysmic period in my people’s history when we were nearly erased from the globe. The rug in this regard will always hold totemic power for me. But I was frustrated by the censorship — at the way the rug was made a pawn in power politics. I was saddened that the accomplishments of Near East Relief were not celebrated.
Next April marks the centennial of the start of the Armenian Genocide. I hope the rug will be set free once again, and this time the story behind it authentically and accurately rendered. The orphans deserve better — as do we.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 7, 2014. Chris’s novel of the Armenian Genocide is “The Sandcastle Girls.”)
But this is essentially what the White House Visitor Center did for six days in November. After a year of congressional pressure and the pleas of Armenian-Americans, the White House pulled the Ghazir Orphan Rug from storage and allowed us to see it — but swept under the rug an explanation for its origins.
On the surface, it’s hard to understand why it should have taken such a Herculean effort to allow the rug to see daylight in the first place. Here is the abridged story of the carpet. During the First World War, the Ottoman Empire systematically annihilated 1.5 million of its Armenian citizens, ethnically cleansing its Armenian minority from almost all of what today we call Turkey. Three out of every four Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed. Americans were horrified by the slaughter as it was occurring, and a newly organized American group, Near East Relief, tried to save the survivors of the genocide — including the children, scattered now across the Middle East. The group’s accomplishments, especially the 135,000 orphans it cared for, were breathtaking.
And among the thanks to America from those orphans was … the rug. It was woven by a group of Armenian orphan girls from the orphanage in Ghazir, Syria (now Lebanon) and designed to be worthy of a world leader. It was. It’s massive and beautiful. It was presented to President Coolidge on Dec. 4, 1925. A year later, two of the Armenian girls who helped weave the rug journeyed to Washington and met the Vermont-born president.
Cut to the autumn of 2013. The Smithsonian Museum asked the White House for the rug so it could be displayed. Hagop Martin Deranian had written a book, “President Calvin Coolidge and the Armenian Orphan Rug,” and there was talk of an event. The White House said no. They wouldn’t release the rug. The event was “not viewed as commensurate with the rug’s historical significance,” said National Security Council spokeswoman Laura Lucas Magnuson at the time.
The real reason was likely real politik: We did not want to antagonize Turkey, which, despite all historical evidence, continues to deny the reality of the Armenian Genocide. So even though the rug was a testimony to American ideals at their very best, it was better to let the thing sit and molder.
In the last five months, however, Turkey hasn’t played nice with the U.S. in the Middle Eastern sandbox and our relationship has been strained. So, how did we express our frustration with our ally? For six days in November we trotted out the Orphan Rug. We listened to the appeals of House Representatives — and Armenian-Americans.
But we didn’t want to push this too far, so we put this extraordinary rug in a corner of the White House Visitor Center, rather than the Smithsonian Museum.
And we certainly didn’t use the word genocide in any of the materials explaining why the rug matters. The caption explains simply that it was made by girls “orphaned during World War I.” It was given as an endorsement of “Golden Rule Sunday.” There is no explanation of why the girls were orphaned. Could have been a factory fire. And there was obviously no mention of the 1.5 million dead.
And so as I stood before the rug the other day at the Visitor Center, I was at once moved and enraged. I’m a descendant of survivors of the Armenian Genocide, and the rug’s existence is a reminder of that cataclysmic period in my people’s history when we were nearly erased from the globe. The rug in this regard will always hold totemic power for me. But I was frustrated by the censorship — at the way the rug was made a pawn in power politics. I was saddened that the accomplishments of Near East Relief were not celebrated.
Next April marks the centennial of the start of the Armenian Genocide. I hope the rug will be set free once again, and this time the story behind it authentically and accurately rendered. The orphans deserve better — as do we.
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 7, 2014. Chris’s novel of the Armenian Genocide is “The Sandcastle Girls.”)
November 30, 2014
A friendship born of dueling monsters
Here’s the scene: A conference room in what once was a private home in Burlington, Vermont. The year is 2003. A recently retired direct marketing advertising executive is on one side of the table, a 13-year-old boy on another. They’ve never met and it’s just the two of them. They have to sit there for one hour that afternoon. To break the ice and help pass the time, the boy has brought a deck of Yu-Gi-Oh! dueling monsters trading cards for them play.
“It was torture,” the executive, Bob Hallowell, recalls now with a laugh. The 13-year-old, David Faske, is now 25. He doesn’t disagree. But he is quick to add, “We were two people thrown together in a room for an hour who didn’t know each other. And Bob put a lot of effort into what I liked and what interested me.”
I had breakfast with the two of them earlier this month. Despite a five-decade age difference, the two of them have been fast friends now for 12 years. And it is a friendship that began that afternoon in 2003. Bob had agreed to be a volunteer mentor for Spectrum Youth and Family Services, and David’s mother was looking for a male role model for her teenage son. (David’s parents had divorced when David was a boy.) Bob would mentor David for nine years, often meeting with him weekly, until the younger man turned 22 and was no longer eligible for the Spectrum Mentoring Program. Now the two meet simply as friends.
And both view that friendship as life-changing.
Bob did all the things a mentor might be expected to: He took David fishing. The pair played miniature golf and hit baseballs at the batting cage. They watched dozens of movies together. But he also did the things that made a demonstrable difference in David’s life. Sometimes those things were tangible, such as tracking down David’s birth certificate in Oklahoma for him and teaching him to parallel-park. But sometimes they were intangible – and especially meaningful.
“Bob always gave me lots of good advice,” David told me. “I felt like I was being bullied in high school and so I wasn’t a very good student. Sometimes I wasn’t a very good kid. But Bob was always there for me.”
Perhaps the most important thing Bob did was get David enrolled in the Northlands Job Corps Center in Vergennes. Today David is a crew chief with Green Mountain Flagging. He doesn’t merely support himself, he cares for his younger sister and her two children who live with him. When he graduated from the Job Corps at 19, he had symbols for “Honor,” “Loyalty,” and “Respect” tattooed onto his forearm, and everyday he tries to live up to those words.
Mark Redmond, executive director at Spectrum, says there are nearly 60 adults in the group’s mentoring program, each of them attached to a teenager who could use another grownup in his or her life. He thinks there are a number of reasons why the program can be such a game-changer for an adolescent: “Mentoring gives a young person a positive role model, a person who cares about them and opens up their world to new possibilities. A mentor helps improve [a teen’s] self-esteem.”
From Bob’s perspective, mentoring has always been a two-way street. He believes he’s gotten an enormous amount from his friendship with David.
“Everyone thinks they don’t have time to be a mentor,” he says, “but everyone can find an hour a week. Everyone fears they won’t be good enough or they’ll let the kid down. But all you really need to do is show up. David taught me that. Consistently showing up makes a difference. And now? David’s success makes me feel very, very good.”
Even if, alas, Bob still doesn’t completely understand how to play Yu-Gi-Oh!
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on November 30, 2014. Chris’s most recent novels are “The Light in the Ruins” and “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands.”)
“It was torture,” the executive, Bob Hallowell, recalls now with a laugh. The 13-year-old, David Faske, is now 25. He doesn’t disagree. But he is quick to add, “We were two people thrown together in a room for an hour who didn’t know each other. And Bob put a lot of effort into what I liked and what interested me.”
I had breakfast with the two of them earlier this month. Despite a five-decade age difference, the two of them have been fast friends now for 12 years. And it is a friendship that began that afternoon in 2003. Bob had agreed to be a volunteer mentor for Spectrum Youth and Family Services, and David’s mother was looking for a male role model for her teenage son. (David’s parents had divorced when David was a boy.) Bob would mentor David for nine years, often meeting with him weekly, until the younger man turned 22 and was no longer eligible for the Spectrum Mentoring Program. Now the two meet simply as friends.
And both view that friendship as life-changing.
Bob did all the things a mentor might be expected to: He took David fishing. The pair played miniature golf and hit baseballs at the batting cage. They watched dozens of movies together. But he also did the things that made a demonstrable difference in David’s life. Sometimes those things were tangible, such as tracking down David’s birth certificate in Oklahoma for him and teaching him to parallel-park. But sometimes they were intangible – and especially meaningful.
“Bob always gave me lots of good advice,” David told me. “I felt like I was being bullied in high school and so I wasn’t a very good student. Sometimes I wasn’t a very good kid. But Bob was always there for me.”
Perhaps the most important thing Bob did was get David enrolled in the Northlands Job Corps Center in Vergennes. Today David is a crew chief with Green Mountain Flagging. He doesn’t merely support himself, he cares for his younger sister and her two children who live with him. When he graduated from the Job Corps at 19, he had symbols for “Honor,” “Loyalty,” and “Respect” tattooed onto his forearm, and everyday he tries to live up to those words.
Mark Redmond, executive director at Spectrum, says there are nearly 60 adults in the group’s mentoring program, each of them attached to a teenager who could use another grownup in his or her life. He thinks there are a number of reasons why the program can be such a game-changer for an adolescent: “Mentoring gives a young person a positive role model, a person who cares about them and opens up their world to new possibilities. A mentor helps improve [a teen’s] self-esteem.”
From Bob’s perspective, mentoring has always been a two-way street. He believes he’s gotten an enormous amount from his friendship with David.
“Everyone thinks they don’t have time to be a mentor,” he says, “but everyone can find an hour a week. Everyone fears they won’t be good enough or they’ll let the kid down. But all you really need to do is show up. David taught me that. Consistently showing up makes a difference. And now? David’s success makes me feel very, very good.”
Even if, alas, Bob still doesn’t completely understand how to play Yu-Gi-Oh!
(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on November 30, 2014. Chris’s most recent novels are “The Light in the Ruins” and “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands.”)
