Chris Bohjalian's Blog, page 48

Tinkers by Paul Harding -- this year's Pulitzer Prize Winner

Very big congrats to Paul Harding on winning the Pultizer Prize in Fiction for his novel, "Tinkers."  I had the great pleasure of reviewing the novel for the Boston Globe when it was published in January 2009.

Here is the full review.

Bad Idea History Month

Reason No. 117 for why I love Vermont: No Vermont politician has ever suggested we make April "Confederate History Month."

For those of you whose eyes have been focused solely on Afghanistan, the U.S.-Russia nuclear arms reduction pact and what Kate Gosselin is wearing -- you know, real news -- earlier this week Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell proclaimed April "Confederate History Month." The original proclamation said it was important "to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War," and didn't mention the teeny, tiny detail that a big reason for their "sacrifices" was the enslavement of nearly 4 million African-Americans (or about one-eighth of the U.S. population when the Civil War began).

On Wednesday, the governor admitted this proclamation needed a little editing and added in a "whereas" that said, oops, slavery was a bad thing and we are all the better for its having been eradicated.

Pundits have tried to explain why the original proclamation didn't mention slavery, but my favorite response has to go to the governor himself: "I wasn't focused on that."

Oh.

Not focusing on slavery when one looks at the Civil War is a bit like looking at the peak of Mount Everest and not seeing snow, killing cold, oxygen deprivation and ice as smooth and solid as a bowling ball. And yet, somehow, people do it. One of my favorite books on the conflict is actually not about the conflict at all, but how we respond to the war nearly a century and a half later: "Confederates in the Attic," by Tony Horwitz. Horwitz traveled throughout the South for the book, examining the hold the conflict still has on so many Americans and the way our natural inclination to cheer for the underdog has led some folks to cheer for the South. In one particularly memorable scene, Horwitz finds himself spooning with a group of Confederate re-enactors, trying to keep warm in the damp grass of a faux battlefield one chilly spring night.

I've heard people argue that the Civil War was all about secession and states' rights. It was: A group of states wanted the right to remain economically viable via slavery. And I know that most Confederate soldiers didn't own slaves. I get it. Likewise, I get the whole suicidal valor thing that marked Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. But that proclamation? Needed a little focus.

Now, I have every faith that no Vermont politician would ever want to proclaim April Confederate History Month. Of course, that might not be entirely because we tend to elect such sage women and men here in the Green Mountains. It simply might be that we don't have a lot of Confederates this far north lobbying for such a thing. Who knows? Someday we might elect a politician who wants Vermont to secede from the union.

I have enormous respect for most of my fellow citizens, but Minnesota once elected pro wrestler Jesse "I have never met a conspiracy I didn't believe" Ventura as its governor. South Carolina put the deeply religious (and adulterous) Mark "I'm hiking the Appalachian Trail to Argentina" Sanford into its governor's mansion. And New York has Gov. David Paterson, who has confessed to extramarital affairs and been accused of witness tampering in a domestic abuse investigation. In all fairness, New Yorkers didn't elect him governor; they elected Eliot "Emperors Club" Spitzer, who wound up resigning.

So, who knows what could happen here? We have a secessionist candidate running for governor. I've heard neighbors on both sides of the political spectrum emerge from town meeting muttering that Vermont should secede. This is especially true when either property taxes will go up based on our votes, or the school or town budget will have to be cut -- and one of those outcomes is going to happen at 99 percent of town meetings.

Incidentally, mark my words: Someday someone is going to take those three words above, "Vermont should secede," out of context. They're going to suggest that I have endorsed secession. Nope. I will state this as clearly as I can: I think secession is one of the few ideas as bad as -- well, let's see -- proclaiming April "Confederate History Month."

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on April 11, 2011.)

Bad Idea History Month

Reason No. 117 for why I love Vermont: No Vermont politician has ever suggested we make April "Confederate History Month."

For those of you whose eyes have been focused solely on Afghanistan, the U.S.-Russia nuclear arms reduction pact and what Kate Gosselin is wearing -- you know, real news -- earlier this week Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell proclaimed April "Confederate History Month." The original proclamation said it was important "to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders...

A basket with Peeps, cheeps, and sleep

Once more the Easter Bunny has come and gone, and executives at the factory in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania where the Bunny gets his marshmallow Peeps are now trying to figure out a marshmallow candy shape that's fitting on Mother's Day and doesn't look like Marge Simpson or Maude.

Again this year I asked readers what they would like in their Easter baskets. And while lots of you did want those Peeps, there were others with very specific requests. Here are a few.

· Eileen Fahey Brunetto, academic coordinator at Middlebury College: "I'm getting my braces off on April 13th. What a horrid (though necessary) experience it has been. I don't really need to see those nasty metal bits in my Easter basket after the orthodontist removes them, but I would seriously take that over any wonderful chocolate."

· Dina Olivieri Townsend, aspiring writer and hospitality sales executive in Charlotte: "I would like a tutor to successfully teach my children how to load the dishwasher, use the hamper, and to wear a sweater when it's cold."

· Carolyn Tyler Knight, all purpose Bristol and Starksboro area volunteer: "I'd like a better alternative to the colorful, cellophane Easter grass that you find clinging to everything months later and clogs up the vacuum!"

· Peter Rogoff, Administrator, Federal Transit Administration: "I would like my 12-year-old son to suspend his attitude for one day and go back to being an adoring, respectful little boy." (According to Dad, the lad is actually a great kid who, these days, just has serious 'tude.)

· Claire Benedict, co-owner of Bear Pond Books in Montpelier: "A hedgehog. Do you know how cute a hedgehog is? Better than a bunny!" One of her booksellers is investigating how they can bring a live hedgehog into the store as a mascot. Based on the video Claire recommended I watch of a hedgehog playing with a toilet paper roll's cardboard core, I think they might be on to something. (Yes, there are indeed videos of everything at www.youtube.com.)

· Ruth Calia Stives, a gardener and chef who happens to live a few miles from the Pennsylvania Peeps plant (say that five times fast): "I'd love to find a day of fun and frolic with a three-year-old Jeff (my son, who is now thirty). He's still the most wonderful child a parent could want, but back then he was the personification of joy. I miss that little guy. (Oh, and a Lindt dark chocolate bar would be good, too.)"

· Michelle Demers, teacher and writer in Williston: "I would like poems that make my heart sing."

· Brighton Luke, a junior at the University of Maine: "Maple candy and peeps that have thoughtfully been left open for a few days as I never have the restraint to wait for them to get deliciously stale once they are mine. Some stale Starbursts would be good too. Candy is just better slightly aged. "

· Jesse Hendee, stay-at-home mom: "The feeling of childhood: Being content with bubbles and a kite that you end up flying only once because it got caught in a tree or a power line; slipping on a new pair of rubber boots and slopping around in the mud; and my brother and sister. That would be nice."

· Andrea Miles Martin, also a self-described stay-at-home mom: "When I was little, I always asked for a white kitten in a white box (with air holes, of course) with a pink bow. Which I never got. Now, I'd just like a nap."

· David Reed Wood, pastor of the United Church of Lincoln: "A northwest wind on a warm day with the sap running like the water in the New Haven River, and friends gathered at the sugar house tasting the latest maple syrup produced - after worship, of course. Seems like a great way to celebrate hope and new life!"

I hope everyone got what they wanted. Even Claire Benedict, because what retail operation wouldn't be improved with a wandering hedgehog underfoot and a rolling toilet paper core?

Happy Easter. Happy Passover. Peace.

(This column originally ran in the Burlington Free Press on April 4, 2010.)

A basket with Peeps, cheeps, and sleep

Once more the Easter Bunny has come and gone, and executives at the factory in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania where the Bunny gets his marshmallow Peeps are now trying to figure out a marshmallow candy shape that's fitting on Mother's Day and doesn't look like Marge Simpson or Maude.

 

Again this year I asked readers what they would like in their Easter baskets. And while lots of you did want those Peeps, there were others with very specific requests. Here are a few.

 

·                     Eileen...

End of en era: Video store moo-ving out.

It was over a quarter of a century ago that I went to a video store in Brooklyn and rented a cassette with a movie on it. The film? The 1982 remake of "Cat People" with Malcolm McDowell, Nastassja Kinski, and Ruby Dee. (Yes, even then cats seemed to rule my life.) I had just carted a videocassette player up the stairs to my apartment and my fiancée - now my wife - and I were amazed at the idea that we were about to watch a movie on a television set on our schedule and without commercial interruption.

And when I say "amazed," that's not hyperbole. We popped popcorn. I took the phone off the hook. We turned out the lights. This was a big deal.

A lot has changed since the Mesozoic era of videocassettes. Back then, owners of movie theaters worried that the big screen cinema experience was endangered. Nope. The big screens are doing just fine. It was videocassettes that were done in by DVDs which, in turn, will soon grow extinct.

The latest casualty in the transition to digital video entertainment is a movie rental store in Bristol called Moovies. The name has two "o"s, because this is Vermont, a very small state in terms of population, and so it was important to appeal to cows as well as humans.

Last week, after 23 years in the Addison County village, Moovies shut its door for the last time. Owner David Zullo, who also owns The Marine Collection boat store in South Burlington, said that the business has been declining steadily since 2003 and the store has been losing money for years now. There was a time when Bristol had two video stores competing across the street from one another. Now there are none.

Of course, Bristol also used to have a bookstore. That's gone, too.

Zullo was troubled by the job losses that would result from shuttering the store and contemplated turning the enterprise over to his employees. "But giving them a store that was losing $2,000 a month didn't seem a good gift," Zullo said.

Now, Moovies isn't the only film store to have been done in by cable, movies on demand, the Redbox dollar-a-night DVD rental kiosks, and digital video on computers. Even monster chains like Blockbuster wonder how much longer they can survive, at least in their current incarnations. But Zullo worries that the demise of Moovies means there is a loss of yet one more spot on the globe where people once interacted. "For a while, video stores were community-based. People would run into each other on Friday nights and that socialization - that connection - is lost when you get your movies on-line or through the mail," Zullo suggested.

His store manager, Amanda DeMilt, added, "A lot of people would come in to the store with their kids and get a pizza and pick up a video. It was like a family night. They loved to look at the covers together. And since we closed, a few parents have told me that their kids were really sad. For a while, the store was an exciting place for kids to come and browse."

I know what Zullo and DeMilt mean. We all do. We've all run into neighbors at video stores and shared our opinions about films, just as we have run into people at bookstores and shared our enthusiasm about a particular book.

But my sense is that people are very social creatures. At least that's what I hope. Sure, we need our moments alone in our living rooms with popcorn and family and a movie we've downloaded; but we also need those moments with other people - strangers and friends - and a screen the size of a barn wall. We may download books to our digital readers, but we still love a good bookstore. And, yes, we may get our music a song at a time for our iPods, but the concert business is booming, too.

I am sad to say good-bye to Moovies and I am grateful to Zullo and DeMilt for keeping it open as long as they did.

And now I am interested to see what will come next.

(This column originally ran in the Burlington Free Press on March 28, 2010.)

End of an era: Video store moo-ving out.

It was over a quarter of a century ago that I went to a video store in Brooklyn and rented a cassette with a movie on it. The film? The 1982 remake of "Cat People" with Malcolm McDowell, Nastassja Kinski, and Ruby Dee. (Yes, even then cats seemed to rule my life.) I had just carted a videocassette player up the stairs to my apartment and my fiancée - now my wife - and I were amazed at the idea that we were about to watch a movie on a television set on our schedule and without commercial...

Saving face. Funny Face, that is.

There is nothing more satisfying for a journalist - even a journalist like me whose principal beat is his cats' Olympic medal turd hockey tournaments - than seeing one of his columns make a difference in the world.

This isn't one of those moments.

Four months ago I wrote about a 12-year-old cat named Funny Face who had been living at the Addison County Humane Society for four years. He was one of the cats my wife spent extra time with when she volunteered at the shelter on Tuesday afternoons and she had grown to like the animal a lot. I figured 19 column inches in the newspaper about a cute cat in need of a home would have him living large in somebody's living room within weeks.

Nope. Four months later, Funny Face was still at the shelter, my wife his once-a-week pal, and I was gone on a 24-city book tour.

Do you really need to ask what I came home to when I returned to Vermont? That's right, when I left Lincoln, we had four cats. When I returned, we had five.

Now a lot of people might think five cats are excessive. They would be correct. If you pick up a thesaurus and look up synonyms for "excessive," you will find "extreme," "too much," and "five cats." But you will also find "four years in a cage." Consequently, I was thrilled to come home and meet Funny Face.

Just for the record, neither my wife nor I named him Funny Face. The shelter did. We give our cats far more dignified names. We have one named Seven, for instance. Oh, wait: That was a shelter name, too. They do absolutely wonderful work at the Addison County Humane Society, but perhaps naming the animals isn't their strong suit.

In any case, I got home on a Saturday night after a month on the road and my wife introduced me to Funny Face. I was struck by two things: He really does have a funny face. The gray stripe down his nose makes him look a little cross-eyed and the gray around his eyes and ears looks like a preschooler's Batman mask. Second, he has to be the klutziest cat I have ever met. As he walked along the kitchen counters and - later - the top of my desk, he left a trail of debris on the floor in his wake. Spoons, pens, eyeglasses. In my experience, cats are usually pretty graceful. Not Funny Face. He is a bruiser at fifteen pounds and moves with the elegance of a backhoe.

This may be the result of years in a cage. But he may also have been that kid in cat gym class who dreaded gymnastics and just wanted to get to the free weights. Funny Face may be the powerlifter of felines. Also, he drools when he sits in your lap.

So, does a drooling, spastic cat with a funny face sound like a prize? Well, he is. He is a terrific addition to the tribe and clearly my wife did a spectacular job of introducing him to his siblings. He is adjusting nicely to our other cats. I would use that kindergarten expression, "plays well in the sandbox," but I don't want to encourage my cats to have any more fun in the sandbox than they already do. There has been some hissing, but mostly there has been incredulity. The other four cats simply can't believe they now have a graceless gorilla in their midst.

But Funny Face is smart and affectionate and curious. He has discovered he can make my desk chair spin by jumping onto it from on top of my desk, and so long as he doesn't spin till he vomits, he is welcome to go to town on the chair.

Supposedly, Funny Face was difficult to place because he was a difficult cat. My sense is that with a little patience and a little love, most cats and dogs will fit in just fine. There are still plenty of wonderful animals in plenty of cages. Would you please consider bringing one home - so my wife doesn't?

_____________________________________________________

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on March 21, 2010.)

Saving face. Funny Face, that is.

There is nothing more satisfying for a journalist - even a journalist like me whose principal beat is his cats' Olympic medal turd hockey tournaments - than seeing one of his columns make a difference in the world.

 

This isn't one of those moments.

 

Four months ago I wrote about a 12-year-old cat named Funny Face who had been living at the Addison County Humane Society for four years. He was one of the cats my wife spent extra time with when she volunteered at the shelter on Tuesday...

The real March madness? Mud season.

Eileen Clemens Granfors, an English teacher, will always be grateful to mud season because one year she was able to use it as a teaching moment.

"I stepped out of the SUV to get the morning paper prior to teaching my 7 a.m. class and I sank into mud past my ankle," she recalls. "In typical English teacher fashion, I said, 'Oh, my gracious sakes alive!'"

She wore the muddy shoe to school, but gave up on the sock, causing her students to wonder why she had one bare ankle. "But I did get to use the anecdote to teach interjections. Most of the students would not have used 'Gracious sakes alive.'"

Mud season is like that: The dirt roads turn to car-swallowing slime and you often have to make a lot of lemonade out of the lemons that come with all that muck. I have had shoes sucked off my feet, too.

My sense is that Kari Andersen feels the same way. "I went with my hubby to the boondocks to sell hearing aids and the GPS took us the wrong way," she says, and wound up stuck in the melting snow and mud on a dirt road. She and her husband actually tried to dig out their car with a coffee mug, which is sort of like trying to bail out the Titanic with a mixing bowl. Eventually help arrived in the form of a tractor.

I could identify with both Granfors' and Andersen's experiences: I have sunk knee deep in sludge in what weeks earlier had been a passable road. I have felt my car yanked into a rut and stall, unable to move, like a woolly mammoth or ground sloth caught in the La Brea Tar Pits. Most of us have if we have lived in rural Vermont for any length of time -- or, in the case of Granfors and Andersen, rural California and rural Montana, respectively. Vermont may have a monopoly on phantasmagoric foliage and spectacularly chunky ice cream, but apparently other states have their share of quagmires, too.

And soon enough mud season once more will be upon us all. The sap is running; soon, the dirt roads will grow furrowed. Maple and mud are, of course, meteorological siblings. And the thing about mud season is that while it is inevitable, its effect on our lives can be unpredictable.

Annie DiSpirito Wales lives now in Arizona, but for years she lived in Burlington's South End, which meant that she wasn't living on a dirt road. Let's face it: There aren't a lot of dirt roads left in Burlington. A few years ago, her son's family and her four grandchildren, all between the ages of 3 and 8, lived two doors away. Wales's next-door neighbor also had four children roughly the same age as her grandchildren, plus a dog. One March when the mud in the yard was particularly goopy, she overheard her daughter-in-law and her neighbor shrieking incredulously at their children, "I can't believe you did that! How could you?"

What had the young ones done? The older kids had learned that they could make a mighty impressive adhesive out of mud and dog poop, and had been trying to glue their younger siblings together. "The smell didn't deter them in their quest for learning," Wales remembers.

Indeed, it's not just the roads that are thawing: It's everything that hasn't been paved (The paved roads, obviously, suffer a different sort of indignity: the frost heave).

Nevertheless, it's the roads we think of first when we think of mud season and the way this time of year seems to exemplify a classic northern New England expression when it comes to travel: "You can't get there from here."

Or as my good friend David Wood reminded me, "Why do you think Vermont farmers use their tractors to go everywhere in the spring?"

Enjoy the season. Sure, a road may swallow your socks or shoes or your compact car. But it's also a sign that summer is not far away.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on March 14, 2010.)