Chris Bohjalian's Blog, page 35
December 11, 2011
Driven snow? Not so pure.
We are now well into the winter driving season here in Vermont — or what was the winter driving season before we put winter into the dryer and shrunk it. To wit: Annual temperatures across the northeast have risen two degrees since 1970, according to Congress’s Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, while winter temperatures have climbed close to four degrees. South Lincoln, a few miles from my corner of this planet, just had its warmest November on record, coming in at a monthly average of nearly 41 degrees. Eventually, the winter driving season in Vermont may be the Presidents’ Day Weekend.
Fortunately, we’re not there yet. There is still plenty of snow, sleet, slush, and black ice before us.
I remember the first time I tried navigating the Lincoln River Road in the snow. I was driving a 1983 Dodge Colt hatchback. I bought it used and it was the first car I ever owned. I loved it. I drove it even after the passenger doors refused to open from the outside and I had to enter the car through the hatchback and climb into the front seat from the rear. I only bought a new car when my boss at the ad agency where I worked saw me climbing through the hatchback in my gray-pinstripe suit and hinted that I might be sending the wrong message to clients.
For those of you who have never driven the Lincoln River Road, imagine three and a half miles of wooded, two-lane switchbacks linking Vermont 116 and the village center. The road parallels the New Haven River (hence the name), climbing up into the town, the asphalt aligned almost perfectly with the aqua. The first time I drove it in snow I was on my way to Burlington and so I was heading downhill. A big yellow school bus, empty except for the driver, was heading uphill. I was rounding a curve and suddenly my little blue Colt and that big yellow bus were doing the lambada together and creating a patchwork blue and yellow Swedish flag on the sides of both vehicles. The Colt did no damage to the bus and the bus merely creased the driver’s side of the Colt. But it happened fast. One minute I was listening to Morning Edition, and the next thing I knew I was banging against the side of a bus.
For many of us, the winter driving season arrived this year on the day before Thanksgiving. I was driving from Lincoln to Albany, N.Y., that morning to pick up my daughter at the train station, and I counted six cars and pickup trucks off the road, most between Cornwall and Whitehall, N.Y. Here are some of the things I’ve learned, in some cases the hard way, about driving in snow.
* Slow down and don’t use cruise control. Give the car ahead of you plenty of space. If there is oncoming traffic, note the speed of those vehicles: It will give you a sense of the imminent road conditions. Also, if you see the Kia Party Rock Gerbils behind the wheel, give them a really wide berth. Those dudes are just way too cool for school.
* Don’t text when you’re braking. Or accelerating. If you’re even tempted to text ever when you're behind the wheel, put your phone in the trunk.
* Make sure your headlights are on and you have first-rate wiper fluid under the hood. Make sure you are nowhere near any vehicle with Florida plates. I lived in Florida, and Floridians handle snow as well as they do elections.
And the safest thing you can do is this: Stay home.
But when you can’t? Take it slow. You don’t want to tango with a school bus … even if you have a super cool car like a 1983 Dodge Colt.
(This column originally ran in the Burlington Free Press on December 11, 2011. His new book, “The Night Strangers,” was published in October.)
Fortunately, we’re not there yet. There is still plenty of snow, sleet, slush, and black ice before us.
I remember the first time I tried navigating the Lincoln River Road in the snow. I was driving a 1983 Dodge Colt hatchback. I bought it used and it was the first car I ever owned. I loved it. I drove it even after the passenger doors refused to open from the outside and I had to enter the car through the hatchback and climb into the front seat from the rear. I only bought a new car when my boss at the ad agency where I worked saw me climbing through the hatchback in my gray-pinstripe suit and hinted that I might be sending the wrong message to clients.
For those of you who have never driven the Lincoln River Road, imagine three and a half miles of wooded, two-lane switchbacks linking Vermont 116 and the village center. The road parallels the New Haven River (hence the name), climbing up into the town, the asphalt aligned almost perfectly with the aqua. The first time I drove it in snow I was on my way to Burlington and so I was heading downhill. A big yellow school bus, empty except for the driver, was heading uphill. I was rounding a curve and suddenly my little blue Colt and that big yellow bus were doing the lambada together and creating a patchwork blue and yellow Swedish flag on the sides of both vehicles. The Colt did no damage to the bus and the bus merely creased the driver’s side of the Colt. But it happened fast. One minute I was listening to Morning Edition, and the next thing I knew I was banging against the side of a bus.
For many of us, the winter driving season arrived this year on the day before Thanksgiving. I was driving from Lincoln to Albany, N.Y., that morning to pick up my daughter at the train station, and I counted six cars and pickup trucks off the road, most between Cornwall and Whitehall, N.Y. Here are some of the things I’ve learned, in some cases the hard way, about driving in snow.
* Slow down and don’t use cruise control. Give the car ahead of you plenty of space. If there is oncoming traffic, note the speed of those vehicles: It will give you a sense of the imminent road conditions. Also, if you see the Kia Party Rock Gerbils behind the wheel, give them a really wide berth. Those dudes are just way too cool for school.
* Don’t text when you’re braking. Or accelerating. If you’re even tempted to text ever when you're behind the wheel, put your phone in the trunk.
* Make sure your headlights are on and you have first-rate wiper fluid under the hood. Make sure you are nowhere near any vehicle with Florida plates. I lived in Florida, and Floridians handle snow as well as they do elections.
And the safest thing you can do is this: Stay home.
But when you can’t? Take it slow. You don’t want to tango with a school bus … even if you have a super cool car like a 1983 Dodge Colt.
(This column originally ran in the Burlington Free Press on December 11, 2011. His new book, “The Night Strangers,” was published in October.)
December 4, 2011
O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, You really are a cat toy.
At some point this week, perhaps even today, I will stand a live fir tree in the bay window in my living room, my small way of buying my family’s six cats’ affection for another year. Trust me, there is no better cat toy than a Christmas tree. As much as my cats enjoy a rousing game of turd hockey and eating things that will cause them to projectile vomit, they love climbing the Christmas tree far more.
In another life, I wouldn’t mind coming back as one of my cats. Before I figured out how to lash an evergreen to the bay window frames as if it were a suspension bridge, twice my family’s cats managed to topple the tree.
When I was a boy, we did not have cats. We had dogs. Dogs really don’t care about Christmas trees. We had one mutt, Harvey, who was unbelievably loveable but so dumb that I had to demonstrate to him how to go to the bathroom outside. Not kidding. We got him as a puppy when I was twelve years old, and it must have taken us six months to house-train him. Finally, in desperation, I took him outside and started peeing on trees in our backyard to try and give him a sense of what we were after. That Christmas he did indeed take the hint. . .and he peed on the Christmas tree in the living room.
Ironically, it wasn’t a live Christmas tree. When I was a child, my family never had live trees. We had artificial balsams, one green and one white, and we had those classic motorized color wheels: Imagine a plastic wheel the size of a Frisbee, divided into quarters, with each section a different colored pane. Behind it was a small spotlight. The panes were blue, orange, red, and white. You plugged the wheel in and pointed it at your tree, and as the wheel spun, the tree (and your tinsel) would become the color on the wheel.
Except, of course, the color wheel only had the desired effect if you turned out all the lights in the room. Otherwise, you barely noticed the slight color changes. Also, as I recall, you had to seriously blast your Lawrence Welk Christmas album to drown out the thrum of the color wheel motor.
The tradition of bringing an evergreen into the house dates back to fifteenth-century Germany. I am guessing the Germans were looking for really big cat toys.
John Jensen, assistant manager of the Christmas Loft on Shelburne Road, says that even though his store is nestled snuggly in northwestern Vermont, they still sell a lot of artificial trees. They have faux firs that are chartreuse, silver, red, flocked white and green, and one that is bright yellow. My mother would have been in heaven.
Actually, my daughter is in heaven whenever she goes there. It was the first place we went when she came home from college for Thanksgiving break last month. She raced into what the store calls “Center Village,” a massive collection of lit trees, and said, wide-eyed, “This might be my favorite room on the planet.” This year, the Christmas Loft also has trees decorated along the following themes: Roaring Twenties (a black tree with gold and white ornaments), Bohemian Women (pinks and purples and blues), and Cleopatra (Egyptian glass).
Although I applaud themes, you will never see my family trim our tree with lit candles. I have friends who do, but they don’t have six cats. A little flame on a big tree is an episode of “Let’s Play Hindenburg” waiting to happen.
Nevertheless, I can’t imagine my living room this time of year without the magic of an ornate, majestically decorated tree. O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, how loyal are your needles. . .which, in a month, will be clogging my vacuum. In the meantime, I am off to trim a seven-foot tall cat toy. Bring on the color wheel.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on December 4, 2011. Chris's most recent novel, "The Night Strangers," was published in October.)
In another life, I wouldn’t mind coming back as one of my cats. Before I figured out how to lash an evergreen to the bay window frames as if it were a suspension bridge, twice my family’s cats managed to topple the tree.
When I was a boy, we did not have cats. We had dogs. Dogs really don’t care about Christmas trees. We had one mutt, Harvey, who was unbelievably loveable but so dumb that I had to demonstrate to him how to go to the bathroom outside. Not kidding. We got him as a puppy when I was twelve years old, and it must have taken us six months to house-train him. Finally, in desperation, I took him outside and started peeing on trees in our backyard to try and give him a sense of what we were after. That Christmas he did indeed take the hint. . .and he peed on the Christmas tree in the living room.
Ironically, it wasn’t a live Christmas tree. When I was a child, my family never had live trees. We had artificial balsams, one green and one white, and we had those classic motorized color wheels: Imagine a plastic wheel the size of a Frisbee, divided into quarters, with each section a different colored pane. Behind it was a small spotlight. The panes were blue, orange, red, and white. You plugged the wheel in and pointed it at your tree, and as the wheel spun, the tree (and your tinsel) would become the color on the wheel.
Except, of course, the color wheel only had the desired effect if you turned out all the lights in the room. Otherwise, you barely noticed the slight color changes. Also, as I recall, you had to seriously blast your Lawrence Welk Christmas album to drown out the thrum of the color wheel motor.
The tradition of bringing an evergreen into the house dates back to fifteenth-century Germany. I am guessing the Germans were looking for really big cat toys.
John Jensen, assistant manager of the Christmas Loft on Shelburne Road, says that even though his store is nestled snuggly in northwestern Vermont, they still sell a lot of artificial trees. They have faux firs that are chartreuse, silver, red, flocked white and green, and one that is bright yellow. My mother would have been in heaven.
Actually, my daughter is in heaven whenever she goes there. It was the first place we went when she came home from college for Thanksgiving break last month. She raced into what the store calls “Center Village,” a massive collection of lit trees, and said, wide-eyed, “This might be my favorite room on the planet.” This year, the Christmas Loft also has trees decorated along the following themes: Roaring Twenties (a black tree with gold and white ornaments), Bohemian Women (pinks and purples and blues), and Cleopatra (Egyptian glass).
Although I applaud themes, you will never see my family trim our tree with lit candles. I have friends who do, but they don’t have six cats. A little flame on a big tree is an episode of “Let’s Play Hindenburg” waiting to happen.
Nevertheless, I can’t imagine my living room this time of year without the magic of an ornate, majestically decorated tree. O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, how loyal are your needles. . .which, in a month, will be clogging my vacuum. In the meantime, I am off to trim a seven-foot tall cat toy. Bring on the color wheel.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on December 4, 2011. Chris's most recent novel, "The Night Strangers," was published in October.)
November 27, 2011
Black Friday meets Ruby Tuesday. . .and Wednesday Addams
If you’re reading this, it means you survived Black Friday. You think I’m kidding. I’m not. Black Friday can be terrifying. You don’t mess with someone who has stood in line for hours in the middle of the night to get a copy of the new “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” for their Xbox. Quantities are limited and the price is right. Trust me, those people just don’t take prisoners.
Oh, sometimes there is that great Phish ticket line vibe, where people stand and chill and there’s a real peace, love, and tie-dye, “we are the world” mentality. But other times? We’re talking Saigon, 1975, and the fights for the last spots on the evacuation helicopters.
The term Black Friday may go back to the 1989 James Patterson novel, “Black Friday,” which is about terrorists blowing up buildings in and around Wall Street. Given how many books that guy sells – And without vampires! – I think the origins of everything go back to James Patterson.
Or, it might go all the way back to the 1977 movie, “Black Sunday,” about terrorists trying to blow up a Super Bowl crowd. After all, what do Black Friday sales and Super Bowl Sunday have in common? Crowds, tension, and guacamole. (See the Black Friday deals on Emeril’s Kicked Up Guacamole Party Dip Mix.)
According to Wikipedia – the source for all precise, edited, and meticulously vetted information – “The day's name originated in Philadelphia, where it originally was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving.” Thank you, Wikipedia.
In all likelihood, the term’s origins actually come from the idea that retailers have far and away their most profitable weeks of the year in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. They are no longer “in the red.” Now they are “in the black.” My point? Black Friday should not be confused with Cyber Monday or Ruby Tuesday or Wednesday Addams.
The irony, of course, is that to get into the black, retailers are often deeply discounting everything from Hanes underwear (Sear’s) to Sunbeam donut makers (Best Buy). It’s not all about the billboard-sized plasma TVs and the latest gizmo from Apple. (Coming in 2012, the iBall, the iBrow, and the iSore.)
Regardless of how you look at it, however, it is the official start to the holiday shopping season. Unofficially, the holiday shopping season started in August. I was in a hotel gym in Chicago on October 10, and the facility was piping Christmas carols into the room. I’m not kidding. And there is nothing like pumping iron on Columbus Day to the Beach Boys’ “Little Saint Nick.” Someday, the holiday season will begin the moment retailers have finished marking down their returns the first week in January.
When my daughter was little, there were years when I would wander into stores to start shopping in December, and there would be a lot of empty shelves. Or, worse, shelves filled with the toys that nobody wanted. You know, “educational” toys. Things like board games about the Renaissance. Everything Barney. Card games to teach a kid about the Constitution. I remember that among the presents my daughter got for Christmas one year when she couldn’t have been older than five was a collection of Frida Kahlo postcards. I think her mom and I told her it was sort of like a coloring book.
In any case, Christmas is only 28 days from today and Hanukkah a mere 23. Black Friday is in the rearview mirror. So, it’s time to get cracking. Or not. This year, you could be wild and crazy and focus on what Christmas and Hanukkah really mean to you and your family. You could shop wisely and not extravagantly, and you could remember the needy. Would that be as satisfying as being the first on your block to slide “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” into your Xbox?
As a matter of fact, it might.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on November 27, 2011. Chris's new novel, "The Night Strangers," is a finalist this week in the Goodreads Choice Awards in the Horror Category.)
Oh, sometimes there is that great Phish ticket line vibe, where people stand and chill and there’s a real peace, love, and tie-dye, “we are the world” mentality. But other times? We’re talking Saigon, 1975, and the fights for the last spots on the evacuation helicopters.
The term Black Friday may go back to the 1989 James Patterson novel, “Black Friday,” which is about terrorists blowing up buildings in and around Wall Street. Given how many books that guy sells – And without vampires! – I think the origins of everything go back to James Patterson.
Or, it might go all the way back to the 1977 movie, “Black Sunday,” about terrorists trying to blow up a Super Bowl crowd. After all, what do Black Friday sales and Super Bowl Sunday have in common? Crowds, tension, and guacamole. (See the Black Friday deals on Emeril’s Kicked Up Guacamole Party Dip Mix.)
According to Wikipedia – the source for all precise, edited, and meticulously vetted information – “The day's name originated in Philadelphia, where it originally was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving.” Thank you, Wikipedia.
In all likelihood, the term’s origins actually come from the idea that retailers have far and away their most profitable weeks of the year in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. They are no longer “in the red.” Now they are “in the black.” My point? Black Friday should not be confused with Cyber Monday or Ruby Tuesday or Wednesday Addams.
The irony, of course, is that to get into the black, retailers are often deeply discounting everything from Hanes underwear (Sear’s) to Sunbeam donut makers (Best Buy). It’s not all about the billboard-sized plasma TVs and the latest gizmo from Apple. (Coming in 2012, the iBall, the iBrow, and the iSore.)
Regardless of how you look at it, however, it is the official start to the holiday shopping season. Unofficially, the holiday shopping season started in August. I was in a hotel gym in Chicago on October 10, and the facility was piping Christmas carols into the room. I’m not kidding. And there is nothing like pumping iron on Columbus Day to the Beach Boys’ “Little Saint Nick.” Someday, the holiday season will begin the moment retailers have finished marking down their returns the first week in January.
When my daughter was little, there were years when I would wander into stores to start shopping in December, and there would be a lot of empty shelves. Or, worse, shelves filled with the toys that nobody wanted. You know, “educational” toys. Things like board games about the Renaissance. Everything Barney. Card games to teach a kid about the Constitution. I remember that among the presents my daughter got for Christmas one year when she couldn’t have been older than five was a collection of Frida Kahlo postcards. I think her mom and I told her it was sort of like a coloring book.
In any case, Christmas is only 28 days from today and Hanukkah a mere 23. Black Friday is in the rearview mirror. So, it’s time to get cracking. Or not. This year, you could be wild and crazy and focus on what Christmas and Hanukkah really mean to you and your family. You could shop wisely and not extravagantly, and you could remember the needy. Would that be as satisfying as being the first on your block to slide “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” into your Xbox?
As a matter of fact, it might.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on November 27, 2011. Chris's new novel, "The Night Strangers," is a finalist this week in the Goodreads Choice Awards in the Horror Category.)
November 24, 2011
“The Night Strangers,” the Goodreads Choice Awards, and one last chance to vote — and, yes, to vote again
First of all, some serious and heartfelt thanks: Thanks to all of you here on Goodreads who voted, THE NIGHT STRANGERS has made it to the Finals round in the Horror Category of the Goodreads 2011 Choice Awards.
I am thrilled — and deeply appreciative.
This also means that you can vote again (or, in some cases, for the first time).
As they say: Vote early, vote often.
So, IF you read THE NIGHT STRANGERS;
and
IF you liked it a lot. . .
Please vote. Here is the updated link:
http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice...
Thanks again — I mean that.
All the best,
Chris B.
I am thrilled — and deeply appreciative.
This also means that you can vote again (or, in some cases, for the first time).
As they say: Vote early, vote often.
So, IF you read THE NIGHT STRANGERS;
and
IF you liked it a lot. . .
Please vote. Here is the updated link:
http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice...
Thanks again — I mean that.
All the best,
Chris B.
November 21, 2011
Food for Thought: 86,000 Hungry Vermonters
Once again this coming Thursday, a great many American families will gather together in their dining rooms and raise their glasses or say a prayer of thanks that among the plenty on the table before them is nothing made of broccoli and Jell-O.
I have nothing against either broccoli or Jell-O, but as conscientious readers know, when I was a boy my mother used to swirl them together to make something for Thanksgiving that looked a lot like a Bundt cake made of puke. The recipe was pretty simple: Frozen broccoli, frozen creamed onions, and Jell-O. Dump the ingredients in a blender and then pour them into a Bundt cake pan. Chill, serve, and then watch everyone at the table try to hide as much of the mold as they can under the stuffing or mashed potatoes.
As I look back at 2011, I have a great deal to be thankful for. We all do. Yes, I am acutely aware that my mother-in-law, my father, and my godfather all passed away this past summer, but I try never to lose sight of the fact that:
* There is no talk of a reality TV show spinoff, “The Real Housewives of Lincoln, Vermont.”
* Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries may be divorcing, but Kim is still filming the Tyler Perry movie, “The Marriage Counselor.” Life needs this sort of irony.
* Paris Hilton has not been in the news lately.
* Lindsay Lohan has.
* Italy is putting in place the necessary austerity measures to help relieve the debt crisis, but nothing should prevent outgoing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi from someday having his own reality TV show or starring in a Tyler Perry movie or inviting Lindsay Lohan to his villa in Italy.
And, of course, I am thankful that there will indeed be plenty of food on my table this Thursday. Not all Americans can say that. Not all Vermonters can say that.
To wit: Roughly 86,000 Vermonters will depend at some point this year on the Vermont Foodbank or its network partners, according to Judy Stermer, the Foodbank’s director of communications and public affairs. Thirty percent of those people will be children. Rob Meehan, the director of Burlington’s Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, expects 450 people a day will be visiting his facility every single day this week. (In addition, his group delivers food to 140 homebound individuals.)
Meanwhile, the Committee on Temporary Shelter has been busier than ever this past year. Last month, once again, COTS was booked solid: Twenty-five families in its family shelters, all 48 individual beds taken in the men’s and women’s shelters, and another 34 families in overflow housing in motels and a church parsonage. And here is a particularly frightening statistic that COTS director of development Becky Holt shared with me: Last month there were 141 homeless children trying to keep up with their reading and math in Chittenden County schools.
And outside of Vermont? Right now twelve million people face famine in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, a result of drought and political upheaval. There is violence and bloodshed in Syria. And North Korea is still North Korea. Enough said there.
I will always make fun of my mother’s culinary cataclysms and absolutely delightful lack of self-awareness. She died with no idea that her family thought her broccoli mold looked like something the dog ate and gave back. But I will always be grateful that every November she set it before us on the table – and every Thanksgiving I had food and family and a roof over my head.
This year, let’s not forget the Vermonters who are not so fortunate. Happy Thanksgiving.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This column originally ran in the Burlington Free Press on November 20, 2011. His most recent novel, “The Night Strangers,” is a finalist in the Goodreads Choice Awards in the Horror Category:
http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice...
.
I have nothing against either broccoli or Jell-O, but as conscientious readers know, when I was a boy my mother used to swirl them together to make something for Thanksgiving that looked a lot like a Bundt cake made of puke. The recipe was pretty simple: Frozen broccoli, frozen creamed onions, and Jell-O. Dump the ingredients in a blender and then pour them into a Bundt cake pan. Chill, serve, and then watch everyone at the table try to hide as much of the mold as they can under the stuffing or mashed potatoes.
As I look back at 2011, I have a great deal to be thankful for. We all do. Yes, I am acutely aware that my mother-in-law, my father, and my godfather all passed away this past summer, but I try never to lose sight of the fact that:
* There is no talk of a reality TV show spinoff, “The Real Housewives of Lincoln, Vermont.”
* Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries may be divorcing, but Kim is still filming the Tyler Perry movie, “The Marriage Counselor.” Life needs this sort of irony.
* Paris Hilton has not been in the news lately.
* Lindsay Lohan has.
* Italy is putting in place the necessary austerity measures to help relieve the debt crisis, but nothing should prevent outgoing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi from someday having his own reality TV show or starring in a Tyler Perry movie or inviting Lindsay Lohan to his villa in Italy.
And, of course, I am thankful that there will indeed be plenty of food on my table this Thursday. Not all Americans can say that. Not all Vermonters can say that.
To wit: Roughly 86,000 Vermonters will depend at some point this year on the Vermont Foodbank or its network partners, according to Judy Stermer, the Foodbank’s director of communications and public affairs. Thirty percent of those people will be children. Rob Meehan, the director of Burlington’s Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, expects 450 people a day will be visiting his facility every single day this week. (In addition, his group delivers food to 140 homebound individuals.)
Meanwhile, the Committee on Temporary Shelter has been busier than ever this past year. Last month, once again, COTS was booked solid: Twenty-five families in its family shelters, all 48 individual beds taken in the men’s and women’s shelters, and another 34 families in overflow housing in motels and a church parsonage. And here is a particularly frightening statistic that COTS director of development Becky Holt shared with me: Last month there were 141 homeless children trying to keep up with their reading and math in Chittenden County schools.
And outside of Vermont? Right now twelve million people face famine in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, a result of drought and political upheaval. There is violence and bloodshed in Syria. And North Korea is still North Korea. Enough said there.
I will always make fun of my mother’s culinary cataclysms and absolutely delightful lack of self-awareness. She died with no idea that her family thought her broccoli mold looked like something the dog ate and gave back. But I will always be grateful that every November she set it before us on the table – and every Thanksgiving I had food and family and a roof over my head.
This year, let’s not forget the Vermonters who are not so fortunate. Happy Thanksgiving.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This column originally ran in the Burlington Free Press on November 20, 2011. His most recent novel, “The Night Strangers,” is a finalist in the Goodreads Choice Awards in the Horror Category:
http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice...
.
November 14, 2011
Feed a Cold, Starve a Pfever
Okay, ice skating fans and men of a certain age who had serious boyhood crushes on Peggy Fleming: How many of you immediately envision rivers of snot whenever you recall Fleming on ice? Answer: Zero.
Actually, that’s not correct. Someone somewhere made the connection between the Olympic figure skating gold medalist and phlegm. She is the new face of a Robitussin contest: “Does your last name sound like a cold and flu symptom we treat?” Or, as Robitussin explains helpfully on the web site, “Like Fleming sounds like phlegm.” And if your last name does indeed sound like a cold symptom, you could win some free Robitussin.
Now, far be it from me to suggest that any advertising or marketing idea is stupid. As I’ve revealed, long ago I worked for an ad agency in Manhattan, and I was on the “business-building team” that came up with perhaps the dumbest idea ever born on Madison Avenue. Our assignment: Find additional uses for toilet paper. Our solution: Try and get men to use the stuff the way women do – i.e., after going number one as well as number two. We envisioned toilet paper dispensers beside urinals in men’s rooms at airports and stadiums, and an outreach program to daycare and preschool teachers. There was even talk (and thank heavens it never went beyond talk) of an ad campaign with a pun in that tagline that went something like this: “Real men aren’t pea-brains.” Trust me, not even Don Draper or his cohorts on “Mad Men” could have gotten that lead balloon off the ground.
And although I have never been paid to endorse products, I have been used in promotions for items or services as diverse as the Oxford English Dictionary, the Vermont Children’s Trust Fund, the Addison County Humane Society, and Cabot Cheese. I only mention this so you know that:
a) I am completely and totally shameless.
b) I still think Peggy Fleming rocks.
The Robitussin contest includes a list of the eligible symptoms, such as “mucus,” “headache,” and “watery eyes.” So, for instance, if your name is Rick Meowcus, you could get a free bottle of cold medicine that usually costs $7. (Or as Dave Barry wrote on his blog, “Paging Bob Booger and Stella Snot.”) Does a $7 bottle of cold medicine make up for a life with a last name that sounds like mucus? Will, thanks to this contest, Mucus replace Snooki as the new “it” name in baby monikers? Unlikely in both cases. But you never know. Someone in this world is named Jermajesty.
Just for the record, in the Burlington phone book there are no people whose last names are “mucus,” “headache,” or “watery eyes.” We do, however, have a half-column of Flemings, although I doubt many of them were ever tormented by schoolyard bullies for having a last name that was even remotely reminiscent of a cold symptom.
My last name, of course, is unpronounceable, although that “Bohj” at the start can sound a little Klingon if you really put the back of your throat into it. And as Trekkies know, a guttural Klingon hack gives anyone within earshot the impression that you have enough phlegm in your throat to fill a fish tank. (It can also make you sound like an angry terrorist, but that’s another subject.) So, I may enter the contest. After all, the cold and flu season is here.
Of course, it really doesn’t matter to Robitussin if your name is Joan Pfever or Tom Sneezie or Scott Tissue. The first 5,000 people to register their name will receive a coupon for a free bottle of medicine.
And what I did learn from this contest? Peggy Fleming was not merely one heck of an ice-skater: She is an awfully good sport.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on November 13, 2011. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Night Strangers,” was published last month. It's a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Award in the Horror Category.)
Actually, that’s not correct. Someone somewhere made the connection between the Olympic figure skating gold medalist and phlegm. She is the new face of a Robitussin contest: “Does your last name sound like a cold and flu symptom we treat?” Or, as Robitussin explains helpfully on the web site, “Like Fleming sounds like phlegm.” And if your last name does indeed sound like a cold symptom, you could win some free Robitussin.
Now, far be it from me to suggest that any advertising or marketing idea is stupid. As I’ve revealed, long ago I worked for an ad agency in Manhattan, and I was on the “business-building team” that came up with perhaps the dumbest idea ever born on Madison Avenue. Our assignment: Find additional uses for toilet paper. Our solution: Try and get men to use the stuff the way women do – i.e., after going number one as well as number two. We envisioned toilet paper dispensers beside urinals in men’s rooms at airports and stadiums, and an outreach program to daycare and preschool teachers. There was even talk (and thank heavens it never went beyond talk) of an ad campaign with a pun in that tagline that went something like this: “Real men aren’t pea-brains.” Trust me, not even Don Draper or his cohorts on “Mad Men” could have gotten that lead balloon off the ground.
And although I have never been paid to endorse products, I have been used in promotions for items or services as diverse as the Oxford English Dictionary, the Vermont Children’s Trust Fund, the Addison County Humane Society, and Cabot Cheese. I only mention this so you know that:
a) I am completely and totally shameless.
b) I still think Peggy Fleming rocks.
The Robitussin contest includes a list of the eligible symptoms, such as “mucus,” “headache,” and “watery eyes.” So, for instance, if your name is Rick Meowcus, you could get a free bottle of cold medicine that usually costs $7. (Or as Dave Barry wrote on his blog, “Paging Bob Booger and Stella Snot.”) Does a $7 bottle of cold medicine make up for a life with a last name that sounds like mucus? Will, thanks to this contest, Mucus replace Snooki as the new “it” name in baby monikers? Unlikely in both cases. But you never know. Someone in this world is named Jermajesty.
Just for the record, in the Burlington phone book there are no people whose last names are “mucus,” “headache,” or “watery eyes.” We do, however, have a half-column of Flemings, although I doubt many of them were ever tormented by schoolyard bullies for having a last name that was even remotely reminiscent of a cold symptom.
My last name, of course, is unpronounceable, although that “Bohj” at the start can sound a little Klingon if you really put the back of your throat into it. And as Trekkies know, a guttural Klingon hack gives anyone within earshot the impression that you have enough phlegm in your throat to fill a fish tank. (It can also make you sound like an angry terrorist, but that’s another subject.) So, I may enter the contest. After all, the cold and flu season is here.
Of course, it really doesn’t matter to Robitussin if your name is Joan Pfever or Tom Sneezie or Scott Tissue. The first 5,000 people to register their name will receive a coupon for a free bottle of medicine.
And what I did learn from this contest? Peggy Fleming was not merely one heck of an ice-skater: She is an awfully good sport.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on November 13, 2011. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Night Strangers,” was published last month. It's a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Award in the Horror Category.)
November 6, 2011
This Friday, Veterans Deserve a Salute
Among the papers my brother and I brought back from Florida after our father died this summer was his honorable discharge from the U.S. Army. The papers show that he enlisted in the Army when he was 17, weeks after graduating from high school in Yonkers, New York in 1945. It was July. By then the Allies had defeated Nazi Germany and liberated Europe, but we were still at war with Japan. As far as I can tell, my father spent the last weeks of the Second World War in New Jersey, in the early stages of his training as a radio operator.
But the date of his enlistment mattered to me. When he signed up, he had no idea that less than a month later we would obliterate Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs, and Japan would surrender. He was spared combat, but when he enlisted, it seems likely that he had every expectation that soon enough he would be on a troop ship somewhere in the Pacific.
This coming Friday is Veterans Day, a holiday that generations before us called Armistice Day. Originally it honored veterans of the First World War and was celebrated on November 11 because that was the day when that conflict ended in 1918: The armistice officially began on the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was only in 1954, after we had endured both a Second World War and a (and I use this term sarcastically) “police action” in Korea that the word “veterans” replaced the word “armistice.”
My sense is that despite the enormous sacrifices of men and women recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, for much of this country the gravity of Veterans Day has been lost. First of all, most Americans know as much about our nation’s wars between 1917, when American doughboys joined the British and French in Europe, and 1973, when we left Vietnam, as they do the Peloponnesian War. True story: Once, a few Christmas dinners past, my mother-in-law asked her grandson in high school for the dates of either the First or the Second World War. He hadn’t a clue and responded defensively, “Look, I know the First one came before the Second. Isn’t that enough?”
Moreover, unlike most previous conflicts, little has been asked of those of us who were not directly involved in the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The wars ravaged the U.S. economy for the very reason that we tried to fight them over the past decade without raising taxes. So, while sacrifices may loom for all of us. . .little has been asked of us since 9/11, other than taking our shoes off at airport security. Compare that with what was asked of our grandparents between 1941 and 1945.
Finally, there is this damning reality: Last month the Pew Research Center published the results of a survey that revealed the following: Only one-third of Americans who joined the armed services after 9/11 believe that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been worth the effort; likewise, another third believe that the conflicts were in fact not worth the time and the money and the casualties.
To a certain extent, of course, this is all armchair quarterbacking, and my point this morning is neither to celebrate nor condemn our efforts in either Afghanistan or Iraq. (I will, however, admit that I was pretty darn euphoric when we killed Osama Bin Laden last spring.) My point is simply this: This Friday is a day that merits a moment of silence or, at the very least, an acknowledgment of our women and men who are veterans. My father got no closer to combat than the suburbs of New York City, but as a 17-year-old teenager in July 1945, he was willing to enlist when the risks looked far greater than they would weeks later.
And so to all veterans, I tip my hat and I salute you.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on November 6, 2011. His most recent novel, "The Night Strangers," was published last month.)
But the date of his enlistment mattered to me. When he signed up, he had no idea that less than a month later we would obliterate Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs, and Japan would surrender. He was spared combat, but when he enlisted, it seems likely that he had every expectation that soon enough he would be on a troop ship somewhere in the Pacific.
This coming Friday is Veterans Day, a holiday that generations before us called Armistice Day. Originally it honored veterans of the First World War and was celebrated on November 11 because that was the day when that conflict ended in 1918: The armistice officially began on the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was only in 1954, after we had endured both a Second World War and a (and I use this term sarcastically) “police action” in Korea that the word “veterans” replaced the word “armistice.”
My sense is that despite the enormous sacrifices of men and women recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, for much of this country the gravity of Veterans Day has been lost. First of all, most Americans know as much about our nation’s wars between 1917, when American doughboys joined the British and French in Europe, and 1973, when we left Vietnam, as they do the Peloponnesian War. True story: Once, a few Christmas dinners past, my mother-in-law asked her grandson in high school for the dates of either the First or the Second World War. He hadn’t a clue and responded defensively, “Look, I know the First one came before the Second. Isn’t that enough?”
Moreover, unlike most previous conflicts, little has been asked of those of us who were not directly involved in the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The wars ravaged the U.S. economy for the very reason that we tried to fight them over the past decade without raising taxes. So, while sacrifices may loom for all of us. . .little has been asked of us since 9/11, other than taking our shoes off at airport security. Compare that with what was asked of our grandparents between 1941 and 1945.
Finally, there is this damning reality: Last month the Pew Research Center published the results of a survey that revealed the following: Only one-third of Americans who joined the armed services after 9/11 believe that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been worth the effort; likewise, another third believe that the conflicts were in fact not worth the time and the money and the casualties.
To a certain extent, of course, this is all armchair quarterbacking, and my point this morning is neither to celebrate nor condemn our efforts in either Afghanistan or Iraq. (I will, however, admit that I was pretty darn euphoric when we killed Osama Bin Laden last spring.) My point is simply this: This Friday is a day that merits a moment of silence or, at the very least, an acknowledgment of our women and men who are veterans. My father got no closer to combat than the suburbs of New York City, but as a 17-year-old teenager in July 1945, he was willing to enlist when the risks looked far greater than they would weeks later.
And so to all veterans, I tip my hat and I salute you.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on November 6, 2011. His most recent novel, "The Night Strangers," was published last month.)
November 2, 2011
2011 Goodreads Choice Awards
So, THIS was a pleasant surprise: THE NIGHT STRANGERS is a finalist in the Horror Category of Goodreads 2011 Choice Awards.
I must confess, I did not see that coming
And what thrilled me the most was this: The process.
According to Goodreads' Jessica Donaghy, "We analyzed statistics from the 87 million books added, rated, and reviewed on the site in 2011 to list 15 books in 22 categories--that's 330 nominations. We did not consult a panel of experts or form a secret committee of publishing insiders. Readers know what's good and what's great. These nominations are based on a book's number of ratings and average rating as pegged by the more than 6 million members on Goodreads."
So, I am profoundly grateful to a LOT of Goodreads readers. Thank you.
And because I am so deeply appreciative, I am going to be REALLY presumptuous and ask a favor.
IF you read THE NIGHT STRANGERS;
and
IF you liked it a lot. . .
Please vote for it
NO pressure -- I mean that! -- but here is the link:
http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice...
Thanks again -- all of you rock.
All the best,
Chris B.
I must confess, I did not see that coming
And what thrilled me the most was this: The process.
According to Goodreads' Jessica Donaghy, "We analyzed statistics from the 87 million books added, rated, and reviewed on the site in 2011 to list 15 books in 22 categories--that's 330 nominations. We did not consult a panel of experts or form a secret committee of publishing insiders. Readers know what's good and what's great. These nominations are based on a book's number of ratings and average rating as pegged by the more than 6 million members on Goodreads."
So, I am profoundly grateful to a LOT of Goodreads readers. Thank you.
And because I am so deeply appreciative, I am going to be REALLY presumptuous and ask a favor.
IF you read THE NIGHT STRANGERS;
and
IF you liked it a lot. . .
Please vote for it
NO pressure -- I mean that! -- but here is the link:
http://www.goodreads.com/award/choice...
Thanks again -- all of you rock.
All the best,
Chris B.
October 30, 2011
Resurrecting my childhood ghosts.
It’s a paperback that cost 45 cents when it was brand new. It’s a little more squat and wide than a traditional mass market edition, and has a red moon and a black bird on the cover. I wrote my name atop the first page with a blue Magic Marker, the ink bleeding through the thin sheet onto page three, and the letters are evidence that my mother was on to something when she would insist that our dog had better handwriting than I did. It is one of the only books from my childhood I still own.
The paperback is Washington Square Press’s “Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe.’’ The bird, of course, is a raven.
I loved Poe when I was a boy. I loved all ghost stories. In addition to that paperback, the small bookcase by my bed - where I kept the books that mattered to me most, as well as the toys with serious totemic value, such as my Star Trek phaser and communicator - held such short-story collections as “Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me’’ and his “Not for the Nervous.’’ When I was a little older, I would add to that shelf such novels as Shirley Jackson’s absolutely terrifying masterpiece of madness and things that (quite literally) go bump in the night, “The Haunting of Hill House’’ and William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist.’’
And when I wasn’t reading the likes of Jackson, Blatty, and Poe, I was likely to be in front of the television set watching horror movies on “Chiller Theatre’’ or “Creature Features.’’ (Unfamiliar? Watch the “Chiller Theatre’’ opening on www.youtube.com. It still freaks me out.) I actually looked forward to movies with Vincent Price.
Consequently, sometimes I am a little mystified that so little of my own work this past quarter-century has even flirted with the Grand Guignol. I have written 14 books and well over 1,000 newspaper columns and magazine articles, and only once - in 1991 - did I try to write the sort of ghost story that had enthralled me as a boy.
Part of the reason for this, I imagine, is that in college I found myself reading all Fitzgerald all the time. Or all Hemingway. Or all Oates. One year I read almost nothing but Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Pushkin, Gogol, and Tolstoy.
And then my wife and I moved to Vermont in our early 20s.
Writers talk with an agonizing amount of hubris about how or where we found our voice, but the truth is that I did indeed find mine in Vermont. The earliest of my books that I allow to remain in print are the novels “Water Witches’’ (1995) and “Midwives’’ (1997), both of which feature northern New England as a pivotal character and have a distinct Vermont sensibility; neither book would exist had I not wound up in a Green Mountain village.
But I never stopped reading ghost stories. Why would I? Why would anyone? They’re great amounts of fun and they allow us to escape from the things in this world that really should scare us - i.e., global climate change, government default, and the percentage of network programming that now involves amateur dancing. Is a ghost story frivolous? Certainly some people think so. When was the last time one won a Pulitzer Prize?
Moreover, there was always a door in the back of my mind: One very specific door. It came with the 1898 Victorian my wife and I bought when we moved to Vermont. It sits in a dank corner of the house’s largely dirt basement, along one of the basement walls. It’s about 5 1/2 feet tall and 3 feet wide. It’s made of wooden planks, and when my wife and I moved into the house, it was nailed shut. Yup, nailed. There was a moldering pile of coal beside it, so I told myself it was just an old coal chute - although I never found the opening above ground.
It would be years before I would have the courage to pry it open. Behind it, I discovered, was an area the height and width of the door and about a foot and a half deep. The back wall was made of wood, and behind that there seemed to be nothing but solid earth. It looked nothing like a coal chute. It did, however, seem like the perfect spot to wall someone up alive, so I quickly nailed the door shut and vowed never to go near it again. I kept my fingers crossed that the walls upstairs would not start to bleed.
But, even then, I had the sense that the door was the opening to a novel. I let the seed germinate and eventually, years later - when a pilot ditched a plane safely in the Hudson River beside Manhattan’s iconic skyline - it took root.
I had my ghost story, a tale that hinges upon a basement door. And a plane crash in Lake Champlain. And the specters that haunt a northern New England Victorian - an almost archetypal haunted house with a history.
Is this a departure for me? Perhaps. But I never want to write the same novel twice. At the same time, however, it feels like a homecoming, a chance to experience once more those chills I got from books as a boy.
Think back to that 45-cent paperback Poe. His tale “The Cask of Amontillado’’ sits between pages 7 and 15. And in the top right-hand corner of page 7, in a blue magic marker that bleeds through the pages, is a line of stars and an exclamation point.
(This essay originally ran in the Boston Globe on October 30, 2011. Chris's new book, "The Night Strangers," was just published.)
The paperback is Washington Square Press’s “Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe.’’ The bird, of course, is a raven.
I loved Poe when I was a boy. I loved all ghost stories. In addition to that paperback, the small bookcase by my bed - where I kept the books that mattered to me most, as well as the toys with serious totemic value, such as my Star Trek phaser and communicator - held such short-story collections as “Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me’’ and his “Not for the Nervous.’’ When I was a little older, I would add to that shelf such novels as Shirley Jackson’s absolutely terrifying masterpiece of madness and things that (quite literally) go bump in the night, “The Haunting of Hill House’’ and William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist.’’
And when I wasn’t reading the likes of Jackson, Blatty, and Poe, I was likely to be in front of the television set watching horror movies on “Chiller Theatre’’ or “Creature Features.’’ (Unfamiliar? Watch the “Chiller Theatre’’ opening on www.youtube.com. It still freaks me out.) I actually looked forward to movies with Vincent Price.
Consequently, sometimes I am a little mystified that so little of my own work this past quarter-century has even flirted with the Grand Guignol. I have written 14 books and well over 1,000 newspaper columns and magazine articles, and only once - in 1991 - did I try to write the sort of ghost story that had enthralled me as a boy.
Part of the reason for this, I imagine, is that in college I found myself reading all Fitzgerald all the time. Or all Hemingway. Or all Oates. One year I read almost nothing but Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Pushkin, Gogol, and Tolstoy.
And then my wife and I moved to Vermont in our early 20s.
Writers talk with an agonizing amount of hubris about how or where we found our voice, but the truth is that I did indeed find mine in Vermont. The earliest of my books that I allow to remain in print are the novels “Water Witches’’ (1995) and “Midwives’’ (1997), both of which feature northern New England as a pivotal character and have a distinct Vermont sensibility; neither book would exist had I not wound up in a Green Mountain village.
But I never stopped reading ghost stories. Why would I? Why would anyone? They’re great amounts of fun and they allow us to escape from the things in this world that really should scare us - i.e., global climate change, government default, and the percentage of network programming that now involves amateur dancing. Is a ghost story frivolous? Certainly some people think so. When was the last time one won a Pulitzer Prize?
Moreover, there was always a door in the back of my mind: One very specific door. It came with the 1898 Victorian my wife and I bought when we moved to Vermont. It sits in a dank corner of the house’s largely dirt basement, along one of the basement walls. It’s about 5 1/2 feet tall and 3 feet wide. It’s made of wooden planks, and when my wife and I moved into the house, it was nailed shut. Yup, nailed. There was a moldering pile of coal beside it, so I told myself it was just an old coal chute - although I never found the opening above ground.
It would be years before I would have the courage to pry it open. Behind it, I discovered, was an area the height and width of the door and about a foot and a half deep. The back wall was made of wood, and behind that there seemed to be nothing but solid earth. It looked nothing like a coal chute. It did, however, seem like the perfect spot to wall someone up alive, so I quickly nailed the door shut and vowed never to go near it again. I kept my fingers crossed that the walls upstairs would not start to bleed.
But, even then, I had the sense that the door was the opening to a novel. I let the seed germinate and eventually, years later - when a pilot ditched a plane safely in the Hudson River beside Manhattan’s iconic skyline - it took root.
I had my ghost story, a tale that hinges upon a basement door. And a plane crash in Lake Champlain. And the specters that haunt a northern New England Victorian - an almost archetypal haunted house with a history.
Is this a departure for me? Perhaps. But I never want to write the same novel twice. At the same time, however, it feels like a homecoming, a chance to experience once more those chills I got from books as a boy.
Think back to that 45-cent paperback Poe. His tale “The Cask of Amontillado’’ sits between pages 7 and 15. And in the top right-hand corner of page 7, in a blue magic marker that bleeds through the pages, is a line of stars and an exclamation point.
(This essay originally ran in the Boston Globe on October 30, 2011. Chris's new book, "The Night Strangers," was just published.)
October 23, 2011
So grateful to occupy Vermont
Earlier this month I was at the single digit A gates at Washington’s Dulles Airport late on a Saturday afternoon. There are few airport concourses in this country more reminiscent of the American embassy in Saigon in 1975 – as South Vietnam is collapsing once and for all – than this corner of Dulles: It is a massive human scrum of people desperate to get out, surrounded by turbo prop jets and gate agents herding travelers to different planes through the same door. And, sure enough, that afternoon all of us traveling to Burlington were loaded on to the plane that was going to. . .Buffalo.
I haven’t been to Buffalo since before my daughter was born. I figured I was due. Or, perhaps, being sent to Buffalo when I wanted to go home was some sort of karmic retribution for making a joke last week in this column that people should call my next-door neighbor, Rudy, with their home winterization questions. Apparently, people really did call the poor guy. I wasn’t expecting that. Only I’m supposed to call Rudy and drive him crazy.
Fortunately, before we took off, someone at the airline figured out that we had been ushered aboard the wrong aircraft, had us exit the plane, and then put us back into that innermost ring of Dante’s inferno: The pig corral of single digit A gates to wait, while a disembodied female voice from on high told us that we would board another aircraft. . .soon.
Frequent flyers know that “soon” usually is the airline euphemism for “you’re not going anywhere for hours, so boot up your laptop and try and find wifi.” The word “soon” all too often means “creeping delay.” I thought there was going to be a rebellion, a spontaneous “Occupy Gate A1A” movement. And, unlike most of the “Occupy” movements, we actually would have had a specific demand: Take us to Vermont.
Just for the record, my sister-in-law, Cecilia Blewer, is participating in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. I know this because she was quoted in the “Huffington Post” the other day, apparently with a broom in hand, sweeping in Zuccotti Park so the city sanitation workers would not have a pretext to evict the protestors. “There’s always work to be done,” she told the Huffington Post reporter. Indeed. It is worth noting that my sister-in-law has single-handedly won more blue ribbons for potatoes and phlox from northern New Hampshire’s Haverill Fair than the entire “Occupy” movement combined, but – as far as I know – has never swept her own kitchen. She’s brilliant and eccentric and I love her, but housekeeping isn’t exactly her strength. I didn’t even know she knew how to use a broom.
In any case, eventually we did climb aboard the correct aircraft and the wait was no more than half an hour. And because the airlines pad their schedules like an Eddie Murphy “Papa Klump” fat suit, we landed in Burlington only 35 minutes late. Not a big deal.
What was a big deal was this: We landed in Burlington from the northwest, heading north up Lake Champlain, the city just to our east, and then dipped our wings and descended over Winooski to the airport. Most of you know that landing well. In the decades I’ve lived in Lincoln, I’ve experienced it hundreds of times. But we were landing at twilight and when we emerged from a layer of clouds, the city’s lights were just starting to sparkle and there was still a halo of red to the west. The Queen City looked radiant, downright luminescent, while the hills in the distance still had a phantasmagoric trace of autumn in the trees.
It reminded me of the miracle that air travel really is, even when it begins at gate A1A at Dulles – and how grateful I am that for roughly a quarter-century now I have occupied Vermont. It was great to be home.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on October 23. His new novel, “The Night Strangers,” was published earlier this month.)
I haven’t been to Buffalo since before my daughter was born. I figured I was due. Or, perhaps, being sent to Buffalo when I wanted to go home was some sort of karmic retribution for making a joke last week in this column that people should call my next-door neighbor, Rudy, with their home winterization questions. Apparently, people really did call the poor guy. I wasn’t expecting that. Only I’m supposed to call Rudy and drive him crazy.
Fortunately, before we took off, someone at the airline figured out that we had been ushered aboard the wrong aircraft, had us exit the plane, and then put us back into that innermost ring of Dante’s inferno: The pig corral of single digit A gates to wait, while a disembodied female voice from on high told us that we would board another aircraft. . .soon.
Frequent flyers know that “soon” usually is the airline euphemism for “you’re not going anywhere for hours, so boot up your laptop and try and find wifi.” The word “soon” all too often means “creeping delay.” I thought there was going to be a rebellion, a spontaneous “Occupy Gate A1A” movement. And, unlike most of the “Occupy” movements, we actually would have had a specific demand: Take us to Vermont.
Just for the record, my sister-in-law, Cecilia Blewer, is participating in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. I know this because she was quoted in the “Huffington Post” the other day, apparently with a broom in hand, sweeping in Zuccotti Park so the city sanitation workers would not have a pretext to evict the protestors. “There’s always work to be done,” she told the Huffington Post reporter. Indeed. It is worth noting that my sister-in-law has single-handedly won more blue ribbons for potatoes and phlox from northern New Hampshire’s Haverill Fair than the entire “Occupy” movement combined, but – as far as I know – has never swept her own kitchen. She’s brilliant and eccentric and I love her, but housekeeping isn’t exactly her strength. I didn’t even know she knew how to use a broom.
In any case, eventually we did climb aboard the correct aircraft and the wait was no more than half an hour. And because the airlines pad their schedules like an Eddie Murphy “Papa Klump” fat suit, we landed in Burlington only 35 minutes late. Not a big deal.
What was a big deal was this: We landed in Burlington from the northwest, heading north up Lake Champlain, the city just to our east, and then dipped our wings and descended over Winooski to the airport. Most of you know that landing well. In the decades I’ve lived in Lincoln, I’ve experienced it hundreds of times. But we were landing at twilight and when we emerged from a layer of clouds, the city’s lights were just starting to sparkle and there was still a halo of red to the west. The Queen City looked radiant, downright luminescent, while the hills in the distance still had a phantasmagoric trace of autumn in the trees.
It reminded me of the miracle that air travel really is, even when it begins at gate A1A at Dulles – and how grateful I am that for roughly a quarter-century now I have occupied Vermont. It was great to be home.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on October 23. His new novel, “The Night Strangers,” was published earlier this month.)
