ONE moccasin hillbilly plus dog

HI All,
I have had to elicit Calley's help on the blog because the other three family members are otherwise occupied.

Eliza is up on Mt. Washington starting her job as assistant hut master at Lakes of the Clouds.
See her post called "Napkins" for photos or go to
www.outdoors.com/lodging
With no internet and barely any cell service, I don't think she'll be posting on this site anytime soon.

The business of architecture fills David's week days and the garden lures him out on weekends, so I don't know when
he might bless this site with his musings. It may have to be a dark day in December when the earth is asleep.
To see what his firm is up to go to
www.op-architects.com

Carrie is in Nicaragua; her return was delayed due to the tropical storm which did not, blessedly turn into a hurricane. She will be working in Maine this summer for Seeds of Peace, a camp program that empowers youth from regions of conflict to communicate using mediation techniques and good old fashioned summer camp fun.
For more info see www.seedsofpeace.org
She hopes to find time to do some writing about this experience, so we may hear from her once it gets started.

Calley and I will try to keep things rolling here.
Thank you all for your comments and reflections on what we have posted. I love that what we write, inspires the rest of you to write also.
With love to everyone from Moccasin Hill.

Lambert's Cove

In her post about our trip to Martha's Vineyard, Calley didn't mention the sunsets.
She has yet to appreciate the finer things.

graduate puppy

I passed! We were given a yellow piece of paper and a box of tasteless dog treats.

To celebrate we went to Martha's Vineyard to take care of two dogs while their family went to the Wesleyan Graduation. They kept saying Obama. Is that another English word I should be learning? Everyone gets so excited when they say it!

To get there, we went on a huge boat with metal ramps and steep steps and I glued myself to the ground and wouldn't budge. There was no where to dig or sniff, no squirrels to chase and water everywhere. They had to carry me on and carry me off.

I wasn't allowed in the smaller boat, that looked like fun. I did like the beach,though. I could dig as much as I wanted to and no one told me to stop. I swam, but the water sure tasted weird.

We're home now. Things are good. They say CALLEY COME a lot and when I do, I get the delicious treats, not the tasteless ones from dog school. So I give it a try and run to them when they call and for good measure, I sit. They are so excited about this, I guess I'll keep doing it.

graduation day

Here are some photos of Calley deep in thought. She's cramming for her Puppy Kindergarten exam. If all goes well, today she will graduate.

Let's see, what were those English words I've had to learn?
SIT... was totally easy, I knew that when I came to Moccasin Hill but took the treats and praise anyway. They were so excited.
STAY... I'll do that for a little while if I'm sure there's a treat in someone's pocket.
LIE DOWN... I can do, but stay on my haunches so I can leap up at any minute, if needed.
LEAVE IT ...leave what? I'm too curious to not explore an unknown commodity, especially if they don't want me to have it! Manure, trash, a dead bird, a sock, shoes, the possibilities are endless.
OFF... okay, I understand that they don't want me jumping up to the counters to see what food is up there. Now I understand that I will never get food that way and have to wait for them to give it to me in bowl. I guess I'll stop the kitchen counter surfing, it doesn't get me anywhere and takes a lot of energy to walk on my hind feet.
HEEL... keep the leash slack, don't pull. I get it. It will take me awhile to accept this command, there's so much to see and they walk so slowly!
CALLEY COME! ... only when I want to.

I wonder if Tucker, Montana and Sandy will be in class today. I LOVE to play!
Wish me luck.
C

Artifact

Imagine my surprise when I received a personal letter in the mail today. I barely noticed it at first among the catalogs and credit card offerings. My address was written in ink and in the upper right hand corner were nine stamps that miraculously added up to 42 cents. Note the antique chair and the non digital clock images on the stamps. Antedeluvian.
This was intriquing. I recognized the familiar handwriting instantly.
One of my readers called my bluff and sent me an old fashioned letter.
Thanks, Donny.
Wow, the power of the blog.

Old One

Madelyn is my old one. Because she is old, I will always be young. Now that I have entered my fifties, I am aware of my own aging. When I see my reflection in the store window unexpectedly, I am surprised to see my mother’s face.

With Madelyn, I am a sprite. I am young and smooth skinned and I bring the world to her one room. She loves to hear what I have been doing. 
“Begin at the beginning and don’t leave anything out,” she says as she sits upright in her corner chair. “How are the girls?”

At 95 years old she lives in one room. The nurses are busy across the hall but in this room are remnants of a long life lived. The charcoal portrait of her father hangs on the wall. On her desk with the faded tan blotter, is a box that is jammed with letters. She has many friends who keep in touch with her. On her bureau lies a hand mirror, earrings and grey hairpins are scattered about.

Books are stacked by her bed. The New Yorker magazine is folded back. Sections of The New York Times pile up. The faces of grandchildren and great grandchildren smile from frames on the bookshelf.

Her life, once so full of dance, drama, young friends, worry and responsibility has distilled down to this. Reading is her greatest pleasure she says but I suspect that she isn’t able to recall much of the detail of what she has read. Perhaps she reads the words over and over for the sheer pleasure of the sound and sight of them. The weight of the book in her hand. Books and written words are like old friends.

She looks up and asks again, “How are the girls?” I tell her, a shorter version this time, and she smiles to hear familiar words, to see me speak, to be in conversation. Her short term memory is weak but the details from her younger years, particularly her childhood are crystal clear.

“Darling, it was so sweet of you to come,” she says as I reach for my coat and begin my good byes. “Give my love to David and the girls”.

I kiss her paper cheeks, first one then the other and turn and walk down the long hall. She used to walk me to the door, but now she waves from her chair. I walk away alone and go blinking out into the sunny too bright parking lot. I have been granted another day of youthful freedom reminded that one day, it will be otherwise.

Letter

The cost of a postage stamp went up on May 12. I fear the US Postal Service will price this small piece of currency right out of the market.

Once a necessity for communication, the stamp is now a decoration on wedding invitations, postcards from far away places, and the rare hand written thank you note.

The letter as a form of communication has gone the way of the telegram. College students lament that they never get any mail. Across this country on college campuses, rows of small square boxes with combination lock dials on the front in student centers are empty except for inter campus announcements and tuition bills. But what do you write in a letter to a daughter in college when email and cell phones keep us in close touch? A letter is quickly old news.

Worst of all, letters are not ecological. I was horrified to hear someone say that Christmas cards are bad for the environment. There’s concern about the use of all that paper and all those trucks and planes that are needed to deliver them. An E card with music and dancing reindeer could easily replace those red and green envelopes that arrive in our mailboxes each December.

I recycle. I take my own bags to the grocery store and never ask for plastic. I use cloth napkins at dinner and drive a hybrid car. But, as long as I can afford the stamps, I will never stop sending Christmas cards. They are the only personal letters left that actually arrive by “snail mail!”

I have a friend that I met at a writing conference in New Mexico. She lives nearby so we get together every month to write. We arrange our meeting times on email and occasionally send each other pieces of writing to read. We’ve gotten to be good friends. The other day I found a article I thought she would like and sent it to her in an envelope with a stamp and included a personal note. She called to say she was amazed to realize that although she had known me for over a year, she had never seen my handwriting.

Surprise someone with a handwritten note. I try to send off postcards or short notes to people at random times. I love securing a stamp on the upper right hand corner of the envelope. It keeps my place in the long line of letter writers and gives the US postal service something to do beside deliver catalogs.

Napkins - May 8, 2008

"We encourage you to use your sleeve, or even your neighbor's sleeve... and if there's a spill we can bring you a rag... and if you really REALLY need a napkin we might be able to dig one up for you."

We had napkins.  In fact, we used one - perhaps even two - once a week to do a thorough stove-top cleaning.  But our well-rehearsed, semi-sarcastic schpeal had an entirely serious message: you will live sustainably while you are here.  We hoped, perhaps, that in doing so, guests at Madison Spring Hut in NH's pristine White Mountains would learn to translate these small (yet huge) sacrifices to their luxurious lives at home.

The hut's accumulated trash, napkins included, dug into my hips with every step as I descended the mountain twice a week, creating an all-too-tangible awareness of trash's unyielding ability to build up.  Most Americans don't experience such a vivid punishment for their excessive consumption, and so, on they consume.

In rural Honduras (a port stop on my semester at sea), trash piles up in back yards next to whirring washing machines, decrepit shrubs, and makeshift basketball hoops.  Local kids kick old crushed milk cartons around and make it a game.  They live with their waste everyday.  And if Americans were to do the same, every house would be buried.  And on we consume, often needlessly.  Napkins come and go, whisked away at the end of our driveways, and as aware as I was of my waste on the mountain, I, too, would watch it drive away at the trail head.  And such is America's ever-degenerating sickness.

-EMO'N

From Ruth

From air to air, like an empty net
I went between the streets and atmosphere
arriving and departing...
- 'The Heights of Machu Picchu' by Pablo Neruda

response

Here is Ruthie's wisdom in response to my mother's day blog. Her reflections are always illuminating for me. I'll include it here, until she remembers her password and can comment directly!

"We moms never know where our touch holds and where it doesn't...so we keep on touching, giving love, giving wisdom, and then off we go into our own gardens, so to speak."

Call Your Mother

This is the title of Tom Friedman’s Op Ed article in the NYT today. He gives us these directions because for the first time in his life, he can’t call his mother; she died this past year. So if you have a mother, be grateful that you can call her.

I did the math and was amazed to learn that I haven’t been able to call my mother for nineteen years.

Mom was not a fan of Mother’s Day. She believed it was a construct of the Hallmark greeting card company and was to be ignored. 
“Everyday should be mother’s day,” she used to say.

And it is. She is woven into the fabric of my life and I think of her often.

This morning as I sipped my tea and gazed out at the hillside in back of our house, I admired the large mountain laurel that grow there. Mom brought those to us as tiny seedings twenty five years ago, along with tiny dogwood trees and rhodos. She had discovered them in the Phillips Academy Bird Sanctuary that was directly behind their house in Andover.

History: When our parents bought the Andover house, the Phillips Academy Board of Trustees voted to create a gate in the Sanctuary fence that would allow them to enter right from their back yard. This was a special honor bestowed on Dad in appreciation for his long years of service to the school. Surely the Trustees imagined Mom and Dad strolling down the gravel roads, taking in the beauty as they aged gracefully over the years.

I am sure they did not imagine that this easy access would encourage pillage and plunder of plant material! How was it that laurel, vinca, and dogwoods jumped the fence and took firm root in Mom’s garden? Even more puzzling, some of them ended up in Lincoln!

Mom was always good at pruning and I have no doubt that the thinning was good for the plants in the Sanctuary. It was not as well tended as it should have been she often said. Mom provided a valuable service.

Our mother was an accomplished gardener. I was intimidated by the thought of creating a garden here in this woodlot in Lincoln where every time I put a shovel in in the ground, I hit a rock. No Garden State, this Massachusetts! Our Summit garden was amazing, helped by the fact that it was set in a surprisingly fertile, temperate part of the country.

When I’d ask Mom for gardening advice, she’d calmly say, “ just create a woodland garden” and kept bringing me shade tolerant plants which were tiny escapees from her neighboring Eden.
I hate to admit that many of the plants that she brought me died. I was busy with two young children, a teaching job and a house under construction, and tending more small living things was beyond me.

But her laurels have lived and thrived in our acid soil beneath the canopy of tall hemlocks. Blessedly the deer, our new hungry neighbors, don’t like the taste of them. So, thanks Mom, for helping us establish a woodland garden. It is all because of you.

Fire - Dec 2007

I had to learn the exact location of every fire extinguisher on the 134-foot Corwith Cramer, and they were in the most remote corners and hidden nooks imaginable.  On several occasions, the Captain had me run above on my cook day and yell "Fire in the Galley!" to incite a boat-wide drill.  Obeying pre-determined drill positions (which were to be taken extremely seriously), I'd take the helm, flanked by the Captain and the First Mate, two highly impressive men.  My obviously superior position during drills was both a confidence boost and a power trip, and I found that I liked it just fine.  Smirking at the wheel, I'd gladly take orders from the highest ranks aboard.  For us on the quarterdeck, drills were a break... from studying, cooking, setting and striking sails, or navigating, depending on which rotation you were on.  Others continued these arduous chores, but in an even higher gear than before.  I watched the mere mortals scurry about the heeling ship, grand but under my thumb.  Sails flapped violently as they were set and struck.  Lines of students screamed "2, 6, HEAVE!" and hauled together, groans drowned out by the wind whipping past my relaxed ears.  Endless Caribbean blue sea breathed heavily in and out around our boat, flocks of flying fish soared above water and splashed into each rhythmic wave.  I didn't feel much different on my boat, soaring and crashing repeatedly.  We were big, but only by comparison... a truly insignificant speck against the continuous horizon.  Before me, burnt shoulders bulged as students hauled, and envious looks under beads of forehead sweat only satisfied me more - second only to the Captain, a grand step up from cooking in the Galley, my day was made every time.

-EMO'N

Storm - Jan 2008

The rumbling in the distance goes unnoticed until two black dog faces look beseechingly at me to DO something! They feel the world shaking, they feel the unease that we humans can ignore as we make conversation, share ideas, get out our notebooks.

The dogs are silent witnesses, curled by the fire with ears cocked, listening.

I miss my dog Niki. Yellow face and probing eyes. She was there when I needed comfort, a head to be patted. Did she like being patted on her bony head? I think she preferred being scratched around her ruffly neck but she tolerated any affection we would give her, glad for the attention, happy to be a part of the human pack.

But in the evening on the porch, I’d watch her. She’d tip her nose up into the wind and pull her ears back. She tuned into the wild world beyond our grassy yard. I felt I barely knew her at these times. What did she hear? A fox in the underbrush? Long legged deer slowly walking across the field? The hollow, deep sound of an owl?

Soon, she’d slip down off the porch and disappear into the darkness. Even on three legs she was drawn to the wild. An hour would go by and I’d begin to worry. I’d call and call her name into the dark night and finally the yellow face would appear coming up our front hill. Panting, soaking wet, muddy paws, she’d collapse on the porch. I’d wonder where she’d been and wish I could go with her to explore a world I will never know.

-BMO'N

Meet the Puppy

Here are some pictures of the newest member of the O'Neil clan, Calley (nicknamed Calleymouse by David with no notable explanation). She is now about 7 months old, with manners improving daily. Part Labrador Retriever and part Australian Shepherd, she is loyal and smart, with that feisty strain that we're all slowly getting accustomed to.

Joining the Blog World

Hello Readers,

Since Eliza has gotten home from college, we have been doing a lot of writing together. We use the method I learned from Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones) during the week long workshops I have attended with Ruth in Taos, New Mexico. The concept is simple. Choose a topic, write for ten minutes, no stopping, no erasing, just keep your hand moving. Most of all, ignore the inner critic who will surely weigh in with unhelpful comments. Then share. Writing must not be sequestered in a journal. Read it outloud!

We often go to The Nashoba Brook Bakery in West Concord to write. Today after I finished my large latte in the white ceramic cup and Eliza finished her Odwalla Orange Juice and we split the #9 (grilled sandwich with arugula, turkey, cheddar cheese, delicious honey mustard, and apple slices on harvest bread), we got out our notebooks, chose a topic and started writing. We flew. On to two more before we got up from the table. As I left I imagined sharing our writing in a blog. Eliza went right to work setting this up and we're ready to roll.

We will share writing, photos, reflections, pictures of our puppy, Calley, and anything else that might come up. We'll try to get David and Carrie to contribute as well. (4 Moccasin Hillbillies)

Now for some acknowledgements. Thanks to John and Sarah, Sylvia and Brad and my own brother Jack for showing us what a blog can be. Thanks also to my parents, Martha and Don, who certainly passed down the writing gene to their four kids. Thanks to Donny who told me about One to One which has sent me to class at the Apple Store each week and made me blog ready. Thanks to Ruthie, my writing buddy and life partner, and Jack, who will make us all famous.
We will post some writing and maybe even recent photos shortly.