Killing me softly

So much for optimism. Several weeks ago, in the bout of junior year abroad weather that hit Sandisfield for 22 blissful days, little Beaver happily went about planting a bunch of different vegetables and herbs with hope in her heart and spring in her step. But spring has sprung...quite literally. It's hopped away like a Jack Rabbit with a precious gift tied atop his pom-pom tail. It snowed today, dear readers, and snow isn't good for infant seedlings. As the wind hushes and gushes through the rafters, the clouds collide and whisper hurtful things. You planted things too soon, little Beaver, old man frost is on its way! A silent call goes out to the small things: gerbils and bunnies and chipmunks and moles, please come and sit down on my seedlings! Warm them with your pinto-bean sized hearts and hope that they are brave enough to make it through the night!

Summer reading list

Beaver has set herself a little summer reading challenge: to read the 100 Best Novels compiled by the Modern Library. The problem is, her local library doesn't have a cornucopia of "classics". They do, however, have a nice-as-pie librarian willing to take and place special orders. While Beaver waits for her first four titles to come in, she is kicking off the season with a page turner:
Let the summer games begin!
Update: This book was so important and timely, La Beav finished it in five hours. For anyone who is worried about gas, about rents, about the provenance of their next paycheck or simply wondering how the heck everyone else is making it-- they just might not be. Although this book has been out for a while, there might be no better time to read it than now.

Grow, seedling, grow

Siberian Kale, Japanese pickling eggplants, the hottest red chilies, fingerling potatoes and heirloom black Russian tomatoes....just to name a few. From her second-story perch in the little red house, Beaver looks out at the first rain of Spring, as roots stretch and yawn, and shake out the kinks. Will the little planted seeds grown into something wonderful? Or will her lack of a little green claw dash out all hopes of a harvest? She chews on sweet birch and watches the rain. Pour que ça marche, pour que ça pousse!

Going out the window

When you are a freelancer, like Beaver and her Domo, money tends to visit you like a pair of parents. It rushes in one weekend and makes itself busy, cleaning things up, cleaning things out, bringing great hope and small presents. And just as soon as it came, it is gone come Monday morning, the house is quiet and creaky, the roof continues to leak.

Checks come in late from numerous sources and are quickly dispersed with tailored marching orders. Off they go to the plumber, to the electrician, to the overzealous snow plower with his great big rumbling truck. Off march our proud, silver dollars to the lender of our mortgage, to the GMAC dealership, to the softspoken man who suggested new tires. Our cash will pay a visit to the horror of all sights, the dreaded fuel truck reaping havoc upon Sandisfield with his hose and his dark liquid the color of squashed dreams. Gallons and gallons are poured into our house, and the oil in pipes has its marching orders, too. Out through the cracks, out through the crannies, out through the acres of weathered insulation goes our heat and cash.

Next year, next year, we whisper under covers. We'll fix the roof, we'll protect all the walls. We'll cover the red house with a gigantic bell jar, and safe will we be from those horrid, harried trucks and the fuelmongers who drive them. They, too, are frightened at night when the temperature dips and the moon starts to shine and their very large canons sit outside waiting and gasping as everything fails.

Listen up

Out of love, in love again, he's sitting on your bed and you're thinking wouldn't it be easier if you knew the junk about my father and the way that pumpkin muffin tasted that long July in Lincoln? What if I didn't have to explain the stuff about my brother and you knew right off the bat that I laid down that crumpled carpet all by my long lost self? Surrender yourself to "Lady With a Braid" by Dory Previn. Listen, and go back.

Ode to Food Service

When you write for a living, things can get cloudy. Sometime around two-thirty, your head starts to spin, your eyes become flushed with spidery red rivers of fatigue. You speak so often in your head, your own voice becomes a stranger: a hermit, an oddity, a clumsy tool, a scar.

But when you have A Stupid Job you are forced to shake things up inside you. Forced to come back down to the planet, with four feet on the ground. Beaver's Stupid Job involves slinging people coffee and tree bark baguettes. Despite the long stretch between three and six PM when the only creatures to come by are lost soldiers seeking nips, Beaver looks forward to the making of these sandwiches, to the grinding of the coffee, to the smell of the wet bark shaved into fine and lengthwise pieces.

You have to get out of the cabin to appreciate coming back to it. This applies to snack-snacks, to love bugs, to habits, to work. Staying on the straight and narrow is too safe a place to be.

Got guilt?

In this world,
We walk on the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers.
-Issa

In a time where mediocrity is championed and ignorance is, quite literally, bliss, it is comforting to discover the existence of an underground movement to take back our minds and our taste buds. For those of you who purchase food without thinking, whether for lack of time, lack of cash flow, or simple lack of interest, Beaver heartily recommends that you chomp your way through Michael Pollen's "The Omnivore's Dilema". If you can't make it through the first, admittedly protracted chapter on corn, take thirty minutes to execute a simple Internet search on the current polemic over raw milk.

You might be interested to learn that grass fed milk, a.k.a unpasteurized, contains natural antibiotic properties that can help prevent tooth decay, encourage calcium absorption, prevent joint stiffness, flu, pneumonia, and other common illnesses, as well as protect its proponents from asthma and from skin allergies commonly seen in drinkers of pasteurized milk. Alas, the place of healing food in the United States is a portentous place indeed. Healing, nutritious raw milk is the Jason Bourne of American food. Why should we heal ourselves with the food we eat when we can shell out millions for sub-average health insurance, and keep getting sick?

Before knocking raw milk into the cedar-scented sauna of trustafarian fads and "green" trends, do a little research. You might start to wonder just what, exactly, is lurking in your latte.