I do love January — so much progress in so little time! I spotted 20 plates this month. Not a huge haul, but not bad — and having Louisiana show up so early in the year? Wow. Louisiana and Texas look like they’re bumping butts on the map, don’t they?
An email update from the Vineyard Gazette implied that in January we recognize almost everyone we see on the road. This is hyperbole and has been for a long time. Maybe 20 years ago I’d recognize most of the people I saw in Cronig’s in January, even if I didn’t know their names. These days I’m not in Cronig’s very often, but when I am I’m lucky to recognize anybody.
Last night, though, I attended the first of a six-part series on America’s Music and I recognized at least three-quarters of the people there. Really recognized them, as in knew their names. When I stop by the Black Dog Café for breakfast or a cookie or a muffin, I usually recognize at least half the people there, and most of the rest look vaguely familiar. But when I had Thanksgiving dinner at the Harbor View, I didn’t know anyone other than the three people I went with.
The license plate map says that plenty of people on the roads in January are from out of state, and I say that plenty of people with Massachusetts plates haven’t had them long. When Mass. plates were all numbers or 3 digits + 3 letters, it wasn’t hard to pick out the sequences that were issued on the island or on the Cape. When the numbering moved on to 4 digits + 2 letters, then 2 digits + 2 letters + 2 digits, then 3 digits + 2 letters + 1 digit and other weird combinations, it got harder and harder to see the patterns and I gave up.
It being about 18 degrees F (–8 C) out, sunny, with a brisk wind blowing, I thought it was a fine day for the beach, so Trav and I went for a sunset walk at Lambert’s Cove. Before I got into horses, Rhodry and I were regulars on that beach. Before Rhodry, I roamed around that area frequently with the late Mary Payne and her dogs. A key scene in Mud of the Place takes place there. (Pixel, Rhodry’s alter ego, scampers up one of the long stairways and disappears among the summer homes on Makonikey.)
In late 2011 and early 2012, I attended several town meetings to support dogs’ access to Lambert’s Cove Beach in the summer, but I’m not sure Travvy had ever been there. If he hadn’t, I probably hadn’t either, not in almost six years.
The most obvious change was the signage. There’s a lot more of it. Most of it is about dogs. Poop bags are now provided, and a very small receptacle for disposing of them. I didn’t take one — I’ve always got at least one in my pocket — but I appreciated the offer.
Here’s Trav at the point where the trail through the woods opens onto the beach.
No beach is so perfect that it can’t be improved by a fuzzy butt in the foreground.
Would you guess that this dog doesn’t like to get his paws wet? He played chicken with the waves and even wooed at them. Since he was on his longline, I could keep a dry distance away.
Tuesday a woman I know was found dead on Lambert’s Cove Beach.
The editor in me wants to change that to knew: Tuesday a woman I knew . . .
The writer says stet. Till the moment Sharon died, the present tense is true.
Sharon with puppy Joe Pye, Crow Hollow Farm, winter 2000/2001
I knew Sharon in my born-again horsegirl days. We were barnmates at both Red Pony Farm and Crow Hollow. Her horse was Liatris, call name Lia, a chestnut Hanoverian mare. Sharon was, as another barnmate frequently said, “a beautiful rider.” Beautiful meaning both excellent and looks great in the saddle. Sharon and Lia rode upper-level dressage. My own preference was trail riding, but I’d drop whatever I was doing to watch them practice side passes and extensions and collections in the indoor at Red Pony or the ring at Crow Hollow.
Sharon also had serious chutzpah. When the Herrmann family’s Lippizan troupe performed on the island in the early 2000s, she managed to wrangle a lesson from Gaby, the troupe’s leader. Afterward she circulated a gorgeous photo of herself on one of the white stallions.
Sharon was less than two years my senior, but she seemed much older, or at least more mature, and not because of her spectacular, prematurely white hair. I was a newbie in the Vineyard horse world. Sharon was one of the most accomplished riders around. I did my own chores and plenty of work exchange to make horsekeeping (barely) affordable. If Sharon ever mucked out a stall, I didn’t see her doing it.
Our relationship got off to a bad start. Shortly after she arrived on the island, my mare, Allie, became lethargic. She ran a high fever. She was my first horse in 30 years, and I was scared to death. Sharon took me aside. My horse should be quarantined, she said, and if her horse got sick she was going to sue me. Allie recovered quickly — what she had was probably shipping fever –no one else got sick, and despite our proximity Sharon and I never became more than nodding acquaintances.
Our paths did cross often during my early horsegirl years, much less often after that, though most of the time we lived in the same town. While I was still on the horsegirl grapevine, I heard bits and pieces of Sharon’s life. She was, it seems, on a rocky road. She eventually sold Lia and, I think, got out of horses. So, eventually, did I. Earlier this winter we did greet each other in passing while shopping at up-island Cronig’s.
When someone you know turns up dead on a beach in your town, well, you think about your connection to that person, however tenuous it was. Foul play is not suspected, say the state police. Accident? Suicide? A little of both? Sharon was the kind of thin that makes one think of anorexia, bulimia, or treatment for life-threatening illness.
Sharon’s ex-husband — he was ex by the time I met her — is a well-known artist and fisherman. He, according to the Martha’s Vineyard Times, is taking charge of the funeral arrangements. But Sharon, again according to the papers, was estranged from her family, had been for at least 20 years, and had “no known relatives,” as far as the state police have been able to discover.
Martha’s Vineyard is not an easy place to live. For a single woman it’s harder, and for a single woman with no family connections it’s close to unimaginable. But I have no trouble imagining why a woman might estrange herself from her family, and none of what I can imagine suggests an easy life.
There but for fortune, think I, and that poem of John Donne’s comes to mind not because it’s a cliché but because it’s true. Any woman’s death diminishes me because I live on this island. The bell keeps tolling, but will it ever wake us up?
Ordinarily I arrange my day to suit myself. Being summonsed for jury duty means arranging it to suit someone else. Lately I’ve been writing first, then going for a walk with Travvy, then turning on the computer, answering email, and playing on Facebook — after which I get down to (paid) work.
I was due at the courthouse at 9:15. Trav and I usually head out around 9. Something had to give, and since Trav and I need our walk, what gave was the writing. I checked email first, headed out with Trav around 7:40, and got back around 8:30.
Dukes County courthouse, Main Street, Edgartown. No, I did not take that photo today.
The courthouse is in Edgartown, the county seat of the County of Dukes County. Yes, that is its official name. Jokes about the Department of Redundancy Department are quite common in certain quarters. If you live in West Tisbury, Edgartown is somewhere between the New York state line and Nebraska. Much to my surprise, I got there in 20 minutes and easily found a parking spot on School Street. The sign said One hour parking, violators will be towed, but it being January, I ignored it.
The security people at the door recognized me from my appearances as a mediator. I liked that. Another courthouse staffer checked my juror questionnaire and pointed me toward the jury room. I liked that too. The jury room is around a couple of corners, down a flight of stairs, at the end of a narrow corridor. No way would ever I find it on my own.
Since being summonsed last fall, I’ve mentioned it to a bunch of people. Hell, I’ve bleated it on Facebook. A surprising number have replied with condolences and/or advice on how to get out of it. The number is not surprising because it’s large — it isn’t — but because my friends and acquaintances, though diverse, tend to be a fairly civic-minded lot. They vote. They look askance at people who don’t.
Me, though I’ve been a regular voter for the last few years, this was not always the case. I’ve blogged against compulsory voting. But I didn’t bitch about being called for jury duty, even though because I’m self-employed, no one was going to reimburse me for lost work time if I wound up on a jury. Maybe this is because I have no trouble imagining myself a defendant and wanting to be judged by a jury of my peers.
As on my previous visits to the jury room, Joe Sollitto, clerk of courts, came to brief us prospective jurors and to show us a short film about jury duty. From the start the film made the connection between jury duty and voting. John Adams said they were the most important obligations of a citizen. “Representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty,” he said.
Well, yeah, John, but let’s look at who was allowed to vote in your day, and who wasn’t. How could a woman, or a black person, or a landless person be tried by a jury of his or her peers if women, people of color, and landless people weren’t allowed to vote or serve on juries?
The film addressed this. The first black men were admitted as jurors in Massachusetts in 1860 — progress! — but it wasn’t until 1979 that the Supreme Judicial Court of the commonwealth prohibited the use of peremptory challenges for the purpose of excluding black jurors. Women did not become eligible for jury service in my state until 1950. That’s the year before I was born, people. A while ago, sure, but not exactly ancient history.
In the early 1980s, Massachusetts pioneered the “one day/one trial” system. The idea was to reduce the burden of jury service so that fewer exemptions would be necessary and a more diverse pool of people could serve. It seems to have worked.
As I see it, when you vote, your tally is one of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, and that’s all it is: a mark on a ballot. When you’re a juror, you’re one of six or twelve, and what you think and say can make a big difference.
Not long after the film ended, Judge Gregory Williams, first justice of the Edgartown District Court, came down to give us the news. There had been no civil cases on the docket, he said, and only one criminal case. The principals in the criminal case had elected to go with a bench trial, in which the judge alone hears the evidence and decides guilty or not guilty. We jurors, therefore, were excused. We had done our duty and would not be called again for three years and a day.
Joe Sollitto had already told us that if we got a parking ticket during our jury service, his office would take care of it. But, he said, you have to have received it today, January 14, and in Edgartown.
It seems jurors have been known to come in to fix tickets received the previous weekend, and in another town.
Malvina Forester hadn’t got a ticket. She hadn’t been there an hour, and besides — would they really ticket us in January?
Common comedy scenario: Weirdly behaving person is asked what day it is and who’s the president of the United States. If WBP can’t answer correctly, she’s thrown into the loony bin or the drunk tank. If she’s already in the loony bin or the drunk tank, she isn’t let out.
This elicits, at best, a pro forma chuckle from me. As a freelancer who prefers a free-form schedule, I often need a calendar to remind me what day it is. And during the Bush II administration I was so far gone in denial that if someone asked me who was the president of the United States, I might have stared at them blankly or said “Jimmy Carter.”
My grasp of what constitutes non-weird behavior is sometimes shaky. Freelancing and living on Martha’s Vineyard will do that to you.
So several weeks ago I received a jury summons. The report date was January 14, 2014. I locked this into my memory bank as Monday, January 14. Monday = beginning of the week. Makes sense, right? I went around telling people I had jury duty on Monday.
This morning I wrote for an hour and a half or so. I’m always pretty drifty when I come out of the writing zone, and this morning I was in pretty deep. I turned on my laptop (I was writing in longhand). The familiar calendar gadget in the upper-right corner of the desktop said
Saturday 11
January 2014
Saturday the 11th? It couldn’t be Saturday the 11th. Monday is the 14th. Yesterday must have been the 11th.
The computer must be wrong.
Ummm — no. Computers screw up, but they don’t screw up dates. When they start screwing up dates, we’re seriously screwed. Remember all that panic about impending Y2K?
Maybe my jury summons was for Monday, the 13th? I consulted the reminder notice, which I’d affixed to the fridge so I wouldn’t lose it or forget to fill out the form on the back. Nope: it was indeed the 14th. Note, however, that the notice didn’t specify the day of the week.
Maybe today was actually Friday?
Usually I’m at least dimly aware of the high school freshman next door getting off to school at an outrageously early hour, and of her younger, middle-school sister setting off at around 8:10. This morning I’d been too deep in the writing to notice much of anything.
My Vineyard Seadogs wall calendar agreed with the computer: it was Saturday the 11th. My little desk calendar, however, insisted that the 14th was a Monday, so if today was Saturday it had to be the 12th; if it was the 11th, it had to be Friday.
School buses (file photo — but you figured that out from the leaves on the trees, right?)
This was just too weird. Time to go for my morning walk with Travvy. Travvy doesn’t care what day it is. I could sort this out later.
Our walk took us past the West Tisbury School. Three of the four buses were in their regular places, but that didn’t prove anything. By 9:15 on a school day morning, they have finished their rounds and been back on the lot long since. Could it really be Friday?
No, it couldn’t. The school parking lot, filled to overflowing from Monday through Friday, was nearly empty. It was definitely Saturday.
By the time Trav and I got home, I’d realized that it was entirely possible that my summons was for Tuesday, January 14. I dug through a short stack of unfiled papers and found my original summons. Sure enough, it said TUESDAY, JANUARY 14.
My little desk calendar, however, was most definitely wrong. It benefits the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary and features lots of nice photos of Vineyard birds, all by Vineyard photographers. Maybe they could use a proofreader?
February and subsequent months seem to be OK. I’ve corrected January so I don’t screw myself up again.
Yesterday I drove a friend to a medical appointment in Sandwich. Sandwich is on the Cape. Yes, indeed, gentle and ungentle readers: I went off-island.
Since the ferry reservation was for the 9:30, Trav and I left for our morning walk a little after 7. Usually I write till 8:30 or so, then we walk. Trav usually comes with me on one-day off-island jaunts, but it was 14 F (-10 C) out and he’d wind up spending a lot of time in a parked car. So with some trepidation I left him at home with his Kong Wobbler and two peanut butter bones (marrow bones slathered on the inside with peanut butter, then frozen). I’ll spare you the suspense: when I got home seven hours later, the apartment was intact and he was fine.
The Island Home (Steamship Authority photo)
Not only was it cold, the wind was blowing like a banshee. Vineyard Sound was pretty rough, and to make it worse, we were on the Island Home. The Island Home looks like the control tower at the county airport slipped its mooring and went to sea. Imagine an elephant doing the butterfly in a shipping lane. As the ferry crashed into what seemed like every trough between the white-capped waves, seawater would fly up and splash the windows at the front of the snackbar area, which is where I and Hekate O’Dell (my laptop) were sitting. Some of the water froze to the glass before it could fall away.
We do like to joke that the Island Home is so top-heavy it could blow over in a gale, and I’m told that it has more weather cancellations than the other boats. Conditions yesterday morning might have been pretty close to its limits, but I must admit I enjoyed the ride. (When a jet I’m on wobbles or, gods forbid, hits an air pocket, I’m always sure we’re all about to die.)
On the other side, my friend and I had a very satisfying breakfast at Persy’s Place. Our very nice server assured me that he did not wear his cargo shorts outside. Persy’s is a very good breakfast or lunch stop if you’re traveling to/from. It’s at Inn on the Square, near where Route 28 splits and just across the road from what has to be the cheapest full-serve gas station in Falmouth.
Even the most expensive gas in Falmouth is 60–70 cents cheaper than the cheapest gas on Martha’s Vineyard, so before going off we let our tanks get as low as we dare so we can gas up on the other side. This strategy doesn’t save more than $7 or $8 on your average fill-up, but it makes us feel frugal and clever. With our savings we can buy a beer on the boatride home. This trip, I did the deed at the self-serve Hess station in Sandwich, just up Route 130 from the eye clinic.
Our return reservation was on the 3:45, but my friend was done in time for us to make the 2:30 on standby. With a bona fide medical letter, you can generally jump the standby queue, but in this case there was no need: the boat sailed barely two-thirds full, if that.
A trio of smoker’s mitts
En route to Woods Hole, we stopped at the Christmas Tree Shop in the Falmouth Plaza so I could buy some new smoker’s mitts. A former barnmate turned me on to these years ago. In sub-freezing temps, they’re the only things that both keep my hands warm and leave my fingers free to manipulate snaps, hooks, and dog treats. And they’re cheap! Only $7.99 a pair! Their only liability is that, being fleece, they aren’t waterproof, but I always take my gloves off to do water work anyway, no matter how cold it is.
Wonder of wonders, I found them PDQ and bought three of the last four pairs. Glovewise I should be set for the next five years at least.
The stuff at Christmas Tree Shop is so cheap that it has to be seconds or discontinued lots, either that or it’s made by underpaid labor in deplorable conditions. I studied the label in an attempt to ascertain where my suspiciously cheap gloves were made. It didn’t say. It did say that the label had been printed in Taiwan. It also included this interesting note:
The paragraph circled in red says: “A security device has been incorporated into this tag to help ensure it is a genuine Thinsulate™ Insulation hang tag. Reproduction of this tag is illegal and strictly prohibited by law.”
My eyes spied no security device. My fingers couldn’t feel it. What was it? I can only trust that it did its job of ensuring that my tag was a genuine Thinsulate™ Insulation hang tag. All three of them are now in the trash.
The day’s next success came after I got home. A little background: Morgana V, my venerable desktop computer, runs Windows XP. Microsoft is ending support for WinXP in early April; my tech-savvy friends tell me that without security and other updates any WinXP machine connected to the internet will probably soon run into trouble. Well, on one hand, this was no big deal. For the last three and a half years my primary computer has been Hekate the laptop, running Windows 7. Hekate, however, won’t play with my venerable HP LaserJet 1200 series printer. So replacing Morgana meant replacing the printer too. Visions of financial hemorrhage were dancing in my head, even before I learned that I’ve got some expensive dental work in my near future.
“New” HP 1320 in the foreground, old HP 1200 in back. Spatial arrangements remain to be worked out.
Then a couple days ago I was skimming the notifications for MV Stuff 4 Sale, the astonishing virtual yard sale that takes place on Facebook (it now has almost 4,200 members, by the way, up from 2,344 a year ago) and what should catch my eye but a used HP 1320 LaserJet printer. A little back-and-forth with the seller established that the HP 1320 connected to a USB port and played with Windows 7; in other words, it was a suitable companion for Hekate O’Dell and, I hope, my next computer. It also included a nearly new toner cartridge. The seller kindly brought the printer by after work and swapped it for my $50 bill.
I finished off the day by driving into town to see The Lion in Winter at the Vineyard Haven library. It was 12 F (-11 C).
Crossing Vineyard Sound, breakfast at Persy’s, three new pairs of gloves, a computer problem solved, and a good movie to top it off. It was an altogether satisfying day.
WARNING: You’re going to have to use your imagination on this one because I didn’t have my camera with me.
Cricket, June 2012
Over the holidays I’ve been looking after a neighbor’s critters: one dog, two cats, and five hens. I feed them all, go walking with the dog twice a day, let the cats in or out depending on which side of the door they’re meowing at, shut the hens in at night, and let them out in the morning. Night before last we got about eight inches of snow. The last day or so we’ve been in a deep freeze.
Ordinarily the hens would be free-ranging around the neighborhood during the day, eating bugs ’n’ ticks ’n’ stuff. Since the snow is up to mid-breast on them, they’re staying in the little coop, where they’ve got cracked corn, some kibbly-looking stuff that’s supposed to encourage egg laying, and a heated water gizmo. Sometimes one picture is worth a thousand words, so in lieu of my description here’s a photo of it:
That’s from this morning. Note that only one hen has come outside. The others, sensibly enough, are staying inside where it’s warm(er).
So late yesterday afternoon, after sundown but with plenty of light in the sky, I arrived to close the hen house door. (They put themselves to bed.) Cricket, the larger of my two feline charges (see photo above), was patrolling the perimeter of the enclosure’s roof. This was highly unusual: Cricket and his buddy, Love-Bug, leave the hens alone and show little interest in their doings.
Cricket was, however, obviously in hunting mode. Around and around he went, his attention focused inside the coop. Several times he’d bat out with one paw. He’d start to step out across the chicken-wire ceiling and think twice when it wobbled. Once he snagged a toenail in the wire. What the hell . . . ?
At least half a dozen little brown birds (LBBs: generic term for those of us who can tell a chickadee from a blue jay from a seagull but that’s about it) were flying frantically around inside the coop. Cricket was watching feline reality TV. Clearly he was hoping to make it interactive.
The LBBs had been lured in by the hens’ feed and the unfrozen water. I had no idea how they’d gotten in there. Cricket hadn’t figured it out either. Avian reality TV didn’t look like fun at all. The little birds were darting back and forth, pausing only to try to squeeze through the chicken wire.
I thought rescuing them would be easy. I unlatched the door and held it open, keeping an eye on Cricket all the while. Did the birds make a beeline for freedom? They did not. Over the next five minutes or so, three birds did fly through the open door. I think this was by chance. For sure the others didn’t learn from their example. They kept throwing themselves against the chicken-wire walls while Cricket stalked above them, tail twitching. One little birdie huddled motionless on the ground. Maybe it was dead.
Light was leaching from the sky. The blue was getting deeper and darker. I had my flashlight, but I was also getting cold. What ethical responsibility do I have to these stupid birds anyway? I wondered.
I ventured into the coop. To stand upright in it, you’d have to be no more than three foot six, maybe less. I’m five foot almost-five. So I hunched over and tried to trap a birdie, hopefully without giving it a heart attack. I managed to catch one and show it out. Then another. And another.
In trepidation I went over to the bird that looked dead. As my gloved hands moved in on it, its wing moved. By the time I got it to the door, it was awake again. Off it flew.
By now it was dark. All this stooping was not making my back happy. One or maybe two birds remained, but they were under the hen house, where the clearance is less than a foot. Enough, thought I. I’ve done my best, and who’s to say you stupid buggers won’t be back as soon as I close the door?
By this point Cricket had given up and gone home. It was time for me to do likewise. Love-Bug — a smaller version of Cricket, with white chest and paws — was now lurking around the coop. I latched the door, gathered her up, and took her with me to the house. Both cats spent the night indoors.
When I went over there this morning, it was six below (F; -21 C). There were no little brown birds in the coop, either dead or alive.
True, there’s still more than an hour left in 2013 in this time zone, but unless one of the AWOL states drives into the driveway and honks the horn, I’m not going to spot it.
So December, and 2013, end as November did. Not a bad year. Spotted 44 different state plates, same total as last year. Didn’t spot 7: Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana (what’s with the missing Ms??), Nebraska, and — big surprise — North Dakota.
Hawaii, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, and Guess Who were no shows in 2012 as well.
In mid-December I took myself down to the Island Health Clinic, explained to my friendly practitioner that my left knee had certainly improved since it got whacked by Lyme disease and the Baker’s cyst last July but the improvement had stalled well short of normal, and said that I’d like to see a knee person. I’ve now got a late January appointment with an orthopedist.
I suspect that my ongoing knee problem is related to the Baker’s cyst. Baker’s cysts happen behind the knee. I can’t bend my left knee enough to sit back on my heels.
Baker’s cysts often result from injury to or inflammation of the knee. Arthritis can cause inflammation of the knee. Lyme causes, or mimics, or is (I’m not sure which) an arthritis. So my theory is that the Lyme caused the Baker’s cyst, which then ruptured and caused my left leg to swell up dramatically from above the knee to the foot. (For the whole story, see “My Afternoon at the ER.”)
Baker’s cysts, I’ve read, generally resolve after the underlying cause is addressed. Mine, it seems, it still hanging on. So I’m wondering: Do I still have Lyme?
Tick tick tick
Hmm. When my leg swelled up, when I took myself first to the clinic and thence to the ER, Lyme was the last thing on my mind. True, I pick ticks off myself and Travvy on a regular basis and occasionally get bit, but Lyme makes you sick, doesn’t it? My leg was screwed up, but I didn’t feel sick.
My ER doc, however, was suspicious. After drawing fluid from my knee, she was more suspicious. She ordered an ELISA test, the one most commonly used for Lyme. It came back positive. I took doxycycline for 21 days. The swelling in my foot and lower leg went away. The swelling around my left knee decreased noticeably but didn’t disappear. Slowly flexibility returned to my left knee.
When I walk, it no longer feels as if bone is scraping on bone. I don’t have to use the banisters to swing myself downstairs, to avoid bending the left knee too much. Going upstairs, I no longer take a half step at a time. But going up and down stairs my knee still doesn’t feel right.Five months after my trip to the ER, it can do maybe 80 percent of what it could do at the beginning of the summer and what right knee can do now.
So do I still have Lyme? How would I know if I did?
There’s the rub. I don’t feel sick, but I never did feel sick. Follow-up tests for Lyme are notoriously unreliable, both for dogs and for people. Did I really have Lyme in the first place? The ELISA test said so. Positives and negatives can both be false, but something caused the Baker’s cyst and given my residence on Martha’s Vineyard and my intimate acquaintance with ticks the real surprise is that I didn’t get it sooner.
No, not quite. The real surprise was that the ELISA test said that I did get it sooner. At some unspecified time in the past I’d already had Lyme. I had no idea. Not only could I have Lyme without feeling sick; I could have Lyme without knowing it and it could go away without being treated.
We talk about Lyme and other tick-borne diseases (TBDs) a lot on Martha’s Vineyard. If you haven’t had it, you know someone who has — or, more likely, quite a few someones. If you’ve got pets, chances are at least one of them has had it at least once. You probably know at least one person with chronic Lyme, which many doctors don’t believe exists. I know one person who’s had Lyme four times and each time it manifested in a completely different way.
Lyme and the other TBDs have become a catch-all explanation for any ailment, physical or mental, that can’t be readily explained by other means. They can take any form or no form at all. You can get one or not get one and maybe you won’t know if you did or didn’t; if you take your antibiotics, maybe it’ll go away and maybe it won’t and you might not know about that either. Quite a few people I know say it never goes away.
I poked around a while looking for answers, definitive answers, backed-up-by-scientific-research answers. There aren’t many. The scientific establishment is way behind the eight-ball on this one.
One medical website I visited laid out all the myriad trickster symptoms of Lyme and then chirpily reassured us: “Fortunately, the cause of Lyme disease is known and the disease can be prevented. Essential to prevention is the avoidance of deer ticks.”
Good luck with that, thought I.
Anecdotal evidence is pretty much all we’ve got. Crowd-sourced research. It’s one of those frustrations I’m trying to live with. Like I have a choice? What I’d like in the new year is a left knee that works as well as it used to.
On our walk this morning Trav and I found a Christmas tree. “Leave it,” I told Trav, who was eyeing it with tug-of-war on his mind. “It’s mine.” I picked it up and brought it home.
My first thought was that this pine branch had fallen from a nearby tree in the high winds we’ve had lately, but no: at its base was a clean cut. What was it doing lying beside the path?
Damned if I know. What I do know is that Christmas has been following me around this year. I haven’t celebrated Christmas in many years, though I revel in lights and lose no opportunity to sing. (See “Winter Concert,” my most recent blog post, for an example.)
It started late Sunday morning, when DJ Dave Palmater cued up “Chariots” near the end of the Acoustic Sunrise show on WUMB-FM. It was love at first hearing — no, it was more like obsession at first hearing. “Chariots” is a modern carol written by John Kirkpatrick in English traditional style. The rollicking version I heard was from Kirkpatrick et al.’s album Wassail!, but it took me an hour or so to find and download it (thank you, CD Universe).
It only took about 60 seconds to find a live performance on YouTube by Nowell Sing We Clear, an awesome quartet that includes John Roberts and Tony Barrand. With that playing on my laptop, I found and downloaded NSWC’s recording of the song and another Roberts-Barrand album, Live at Holstein’s, because buying just one song seemed awfully chintzy. (A couple of hours later I went back and bought two NSWC albums. Thank you, CD Baby.)
Here’s a link to the live Nowell Sing We Clear video:
Now you can share my earworm. Seriously, how can you resist a carol that makes you dance and sing and that includes lyrics like these?
And the shoes of the mighty shall dance to new measures
And the jackboots of generals shall jangle no more
As sister and brother and father and mother
Agree with each other the end to all war
I’ve been wallowing in English traditional Christmas music ever since. Why do I love it? Tunes you can dance to, lyrics you haven’t heard a thousand times before, and — maybe most important — the voices of people who sound like they’re having a blast. And, as I posted on Facebook yesterday: “Wonderful how many of these rollicking old English carols had to do with beer, booze, food, and merriment. No wonder the Puritans tried to ban Christmas. Waes hail!”
To which one person responded: “That’s exactly why!”
I’m not a Christian. I was raised a churchgoing Episcopalian, but it didn’t take. Once I aged out of the junior choir and got confirmed (“conformed,” as I thought it was, till someone pointed out the error in something I wrote for “conformation class”), I stopped going to church. The more I learned about Christian history and the history of other monotheistic and/or patriarchal religions, the more disgusted I got.
At the same time — well, I was a huge admirer of the Berrigan brothers, and of all my antiwar colleagues who were moved to protest and resist by their various forms of Christianity. The civil rights movement taught me that there was more to Christianity than popes, priests, and patriarchs. Over the years I’ve been inspired by so many women, some famous, many not, who’ve fought to be included in their Christian, Jewish, or Muslim traditions, and have expanded those traditions in the process.
These days some believe there’s a “War on Christmas.” They feel dissed if someone wishes them “Happy holidays,” and say “Merry Christmas” as if they’re laying down a gauntlet. To my mind, whatever war there is on Christmas has been going on for decades and was launched not by “secular humanists” but by commercial interests that continuously urge us to buy buy buy stuff, stuff, and more stuff and join in a mechanical dance that involves dutiful, often joyless meeting, eating, giving and getting presents, and listening to the same old carols over and over and over.
All of which was swept away by hearing “Chariots” on Sunday morning.
With chariots of cherubim chanting
And seraphim singing hosanna
And a choir of archangels a-caroling come
Singing Hallelujah, Hallelu
All the angels a-trumpeting glory
In praise of the Prince of Peace
Whether you believe the story or not, the song celebrates hope and a vision worth celebrating, not least because it’s not the trademarked property of any one religion or ideology. And the celebration is contagious. You can’t dig in your heels when you’re dancing. Or argue when you’re singing.
Maybe 35 years ago I had another epiphany brought on by a song. The radio had come on; I was awake, but I hadn’t gotten out of bed yet. And out of the radio came Sydney Carter’s “Lord of the Dance,” magnificently sung by John Langstaff and the Revels chorus.
Well! The song’s imagery is Christian, but I heard behind it the older story, of the god who’s born, grows through the year, and dies in winter, only to rise again in the spring. I got it at last: Jesus as a avatar of the much older god whose death brings hope to the world. In that moment I made my peace with Christianity. I stopped identifying it exclusively with its worst elements and started acknowledging that its best — many of which I’d encountered by then, and many more of which I’ve encountered since — weren’t aberrations.
If you don’t know “Lord of the Dance,” or haven’t heard it recently, here it is, sung by the late John Langstaff and joined to an exuberantly appropriate video:
Coda
After 10 days of temps above freezing and several days of temps in the 50s (!!), winter is back. The ice disks have come again. We had a little nativity scene on the deck this morning.
For unto us a disk is formed
A Wise Cat comes to see what’s up
Angel wannabe wants to say something. No wonder those shepherds were “sore afraid.”
In late 2011 and early 2012, I attended several town meetings to support 
And light lingers in the sky.
Maybe my jury summons was for Monday, the 13th? I consulted the reminder notice, which I’d affixed to the fridge so I wouldn’t lose it or forget to fill out the form on the back. Nope: it was indeed the 14th. Note, however, that the notice didn’t specify the day of the week.
From the Seasonally Occupied Territories . . . 