another one for peg

i'm still going through my pictures from maine last week and when i've got them sorted i'll post them for you.

meantime, here's another one for peg.

what you see here is a view of the maine coast from inside a candy shop: perkins cove over handmade chocolates.

you're welcome.

trail survey

after yesterday's storm i went out and rode all the woodside lowland trails. the woodside at catamount has the flat part i call the lowland and it has the bumpy part that goes UP THE HILL. it's a biggish hill. someday i'll probably show you a topo map. everything east of the powerlines goes up or down the hill.

but west of the powerlines it's mostly flat and the one hill is small and there are some technical bits but mostly it's easy rolling and it's my favorite part of the place.

and last night in the storm i heard some big thing come down, but not too close to me so i went out today to do a survey of those trails and found five blowdowns on the trails. from the placement of one, i'm pretty sure i heard it come down. and yeah, it was right where it would have been if it was that big noise i heard over my left shoulder and not close enough for it to hit me or even come close, but they'll need a chainsaw to clear it and a thing that big makes a good amount of noise even if you're not underneath it.

i have a picture, but i;m on the sofa now. in my pjs. i;m not going upstairs to load it onto my machine.

so just imagine: a tall tree falls in the woods. here by me, there's a long trunk. over there are some branches.

mr. toad's wild ride

well. THAT was interesting. tonight was the last tuesday night trail run of the catamount season. the weather here was hella rainy and hella windy all day and it was comparatively calm at the venue when we started, but by the time i got around the corner of sandman's the wind had REALLY picked up and i wasn't watching the trail. i was watching the treetops, which were blowing like daisies in a meadow. i didn't even bother to notice the twigs and bunches of leaves coming down like confetti, but the cracking and crashing all around me was alarming. i only SAW a few branches of four or five inches diameter come down near me, but i heard some things a great deal bigger come down off to the sides. and most of the time in woods there are "leaners"; trees that have already come down but are hung up on other trees and haven't fallen all the way yet. out on the backside of sandman's there were a lot of leaners hanging up in the branches that are now leaning on the ground but not fallen all the way. i was still on the wrong side of those guys when the wind picked up again and i ran. like. hell. i got out ok, but i was pretty jumpy and i don't think i've ever run that fast. in other news, i am only getting angrier and angrier. the Very Bad Thing is hanging heavy on my soul, and i do not care what damage gets done because it's time for a LOT of truth telling.

hermit crabs

night before last we were on prout's neck at the ferry beach in scarborough and it was just after low tide and there were all these little hermit crabs in the pools.

eating, fighting, doing whatever hermit crabs do.

no, not sweathogs.

stream of consciousness.

i was saddened by the death earlier this year of ron pallilo which doesn't really have anything to do with today's post except my mind went there.

yesterday afternoon barb and i wandered into old orchard beach for no particular reason and we were out wading on the sand bar and there was this guy out there digging clams.

now, my first memory of clams was wayyyyyyy back in my childhood when we went clamming off of fire island and took those little guys home and right into the steamer and they were one of the best things i'd ever tasted in  my little life.

barb never saw clams being dug, though, so i asked the guy if he wouldn't mind me taking some pictures and probably i wouldn't strictly need to ask permission to take pictures of his clams or holes, but when you see people doing interesting things and ask if you can take pictures, often they will show you the most interesting bits and tell you a story to boot.

and while we were talking, one of his quahogs tried to escape.

here's a short video.

important news you may not know.

transfer station decals are available at the police department.

outdoor burning is prohibited without a permit.

file of life refrigerator magnets are available from the fire chief.

there are vacancies on the planning board.

you need a permit to hold a yard sale.

harbormaster's phone number: 646.2136

rotary club meets noon on wednesdays.

only dial 911 in case of emergency.

all honorably discharged veterans are entitled to full military honors at burial.

rosh hashanah services are being held monday september 17th at jonathan's restaurant.

the baptist church will be reading "the story", selected passages from the bible arranged to read like a novel.

you may not ride your pony or horse in the ogunquit estuary area, not ever.

wifi is now available at the library.

all you can eat pancake breakfast $5 every saturday to benefit the senior center.

the parks and recreation department is seeking instructors and ideas for classes to teach to the community.

the town office is open nine to five monday to friday.

the chamber of commerce board of directors is seeking nominations for citizen of the year.

use and sale of consumer fireworks is prohibited within town limits.

if smoke from your wood fire is impeding your neighbor's ability to enjoy their own property, it is considered a "nuisance"

next month is dogtober.



i LOVE this channel. the default channel when you turn on the tv in our room is the community announcements channel, with pretty local scenery pictures and crappy elevator music.

we have been watching this channel nonstop in our room for the last half hour. we are mostly watching it because i am insisting that it is most excellent.

"i LOVE this channel", i say, every two minutes.

"what are you writing about?" my friend asks.

i read her the post so far. when it get to the part about "we have been watching this channel", she explodes laughing.

"WE???" she says, with some indignation.

view

today we went mountain biking here.

then there were some other things i may or may not tell you about later.

we had dinner at the cape neddick lobster pound, and my mom who is at home in vermont picked up the tab, which is a lovely thing.

mom likes that place. we all like the food and it's one of the few seafood places where a vegetarian can get a really nice meal, plus it's right on the water and a pretty view.

so here's a picture from our table. tide low, but rising.

this one's for you, peg.

long night exposure, no tripod.

not bad for handheld.

pretend it's gritty and arty.

this is nubble light.

mystery solved

today when i went out for my bike ride i could not figure out why my legs felt so sluggish.

i was trying to add up the reasons why there was not spark in my legs. allergy season? emotional stress?

maybe.

and then: ohhhhhhhh. i ran last night. and i ran hard. i think i have mentioned that i am not a fast runner even in a good year and i think i have mentioned that the run is only a 5k, but it was MY 5k, an ambitious pace on  a hard course and at 57:20 it was a personal best on that course.

tomorrow's a rest day.

wooo, dad!

recently i was on a boat.  yeah, i know other people maybe sing the song, but i only ever heard it once so it was pointless for me to make reference to it, especially since nobody else on the boat had heard it.

but the boat had a  horn, and my dad blew it.

impressive, yes?

doug's little machines

i think i mentioned a couple of weeks ago that i had been to a party and seen some interesting things. i also said that i was too tired to show you the pictures and you can go back and read that post if you want, but it's not very exciting so i'm not even going to give you the link.

it was the end of season party at catamount. we're not done riding there, but the xc mountain bike race season is over, so that's what the party was about.

one of doug's monkeypuzzles 

don't be sad, though, catamount fans, because the tuesday night running season still has another week on it and the cyclocross season is only just getting underway. plus the trails are really nice and there's still a lot of riding left.

our friend doug (who also built the awesome orthoses i wear that make walking bearable now)-

the larger engine

uh, anyway, doug was there and he brought some things for show and tell. he's a hobby machinist, and a skilled one at that. he brought two of his little motors and a few monkey puzzles that he made.

most days i consider the day to be a success if i have seen something interesting. maybe it's a low threshold for the judging of success, but if i have seen an interesting thing and gotten to take pictures of it i call it a pretty good day.

mobb farm

yesterday i went riding at mobb farm, which is a pair of trail sets  by fellowship of the wheel.

i rode on the the valley side and then the hill side and then back to the valley and then home for a nap.



it was golden sunlight in dappled autumn woods and field, forest and riverbed habitats to boot.

here are two views of it.

slaughter of the innocents

i saw them first.

to be fair, the dogs smelled them. and we all saw the terrified mothers leap out of the shelter of the pile of canvas, but i saw the little mouselings, newly exposed.

what do you do?

i have kept rodents as pets. i would have hand raised these little pinklings, or tried to, but the truth is i haven't got time right now to be raising a litter of wild mice.

there, in my gloved hand, they were trying to suckle. their little eyes weren't open yet, but they would be in a day or so.

we had few options. the only real choice was to kill them quickly and humanely.

i cried a little.

and we went back to work.

smokin' hot

do you guys ever read the spam comments you get?

some just make me shake my head. do any of these things actually fool people? i mean, are there THAT many bloggers who are both stupid and starved for any kind of attention that this sort of thing is actually profitable?

a recent comment:

Do you mind if I quote a couple of your articles as long as I provide credit and sources back to 
your site? My blog site is in the very same 
area of interest as yours and my users would truly benefit from a lot of the information you provide here.
Please let me know if this okay with you. Thank you!
Also see my site :: winston cigarettes (link removed)

let's break this down, shall we?

Do you mind if I quote a couple of your articles as long as I provide credit and sources back to 
your site?

no, that'll be fine. i have no objection to you quoting my material properly cited and linked.

My blog site is in the very same area of interest as yours

really? that's odd, because my blog is mostly about my life and thoughts. is your site about my life and thoughts too? because maybe we should get together or something...

and my users would truly benefit from a lot of the information you provide here.

well, if you think so. because although i DO provide a few recipes and some links to interesting things, most of what i post here isn't really of much benefit, especially to people looking to buy cigarettes on the cheap.

Please let me know if this okay with you.

i imagine it would be nice for you to know you have a live link and a gullible mark, so sure, i'll get right back to you.

Also see my site :: winston cigarettes 

of course i will visit your site! it is clear from your comments that we have a lot in common and i'm sure we're going to be great friends. i bet even the many users of your site will come here and read my words regularly because after all why wouldn't people looking to buy cheap cigarettes from a fly-by-night website enjoy stories of my mountain biking adventures and photos of geese i might have met?

UPDATE:

this afternoon i got a comment on this here post and wanted to share it with you:

Very good blog! Do you have any tips for aspiring
writers? I'm hoping to start my own website soon but I'm a little
lost on everything. Would you propose starting with a free platform like Wordpress or
go for a paid option? There are so many options out
there that I'm totally overwhelmed .. Any ideas? Many thanks!
Here is my blog ; winston cigarettes (link removed)

sound bite from the DNC

i heard a scary quote from the democratic convention. do radio reporters just go and look for the biggest asses who haven't been tied up and locked in a broom closet?

so anyway, there was this show and a reporter and some commentators, one from the republicans and one from the democrats because it's THAT kind of show where they talk about stuff civilly.

and they get this guy -presumably a white guy- who gets on to complain that the democratic convention is all fine and dandy and he loves what the party stands for, but he just wishes that he felt more "included" and that there were more people at the convention who "look like me".

i'm not kidding. a white guy was complaining that there weren't enough white guys. AT A DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION.

and both commentators, the republican and the democrat, bless their hearts, laughed right out loud and said there was no need to worry that white guys had suddenly become irrelevant to the discussion, and that they had not, in fact, lost their standing or voice and were not in danger of being pushed out of the decision making process.

it's sad when you need to fall back on exclusive control in order to feel comfortable letting people traditionally marginalized have any voice at all.

i guess what the guy is saying is that it's all right to let the coloreds and such feel better about themselves or something as long as they don't get all uppity and expect to be part of the conversation.

i'm sorry, but if a full 70% of the people there aren't white guys, that is not a true representation of the US citizenry.

to match the US demographic at large, half of the people there should be women. thirty percent ought to belong to a "racial minority".

does the convention floor look like that?

how about the delegates? the speakers? the policymakers?

when we can look at a national convention or our legislatures and see a rough equivalent representation of the population, we'll have something closer to equality.

you can bet on it.

parti quebecois

today i was going to say a few words about the parti quebecois and that was before i heard about the shooting.

this afternoon i wrote a thing as a comment on someone else's blog and it was pretty much what i was going to say to you so instead of rewriting it i'm just going to post it the way i wrote it there.

--



i perhaps have not been following quebec politics as well as i should, being perhaps too much thinking about vermont politics.

my full understanding of current climate notwithstanding, i have an opinion.

we have in this region of north america a shared heritage and quebec finds itself in the difficult position of being the last bastion of the francophone portion of that rich cultural heritage.

canada as a country ought to be vigorously preserving its francophone citizens and their heritage.

moreover, anglophones are part of the rich cultural history of quebec. quebec as a province ought to be vigorously protecting its anglophone citizens and their cultural heritage.

anglo quebeckers are not just more anglos that are an inconvenience to french life; they are a part of the history of the province. they are are a minority people of some importance and quite frankly quebec ought to understand that on a fundamental level better than most political entities.

here in the us we have wiped out nearly all of our francophone heritage. in the 1930s the state of vermont engaged in systematic eugenics to purge francophones from the population. here in vermont and new hampshire and maine we lost something good and important.

so i don't know what the answers are, but what i know is that it is a shame to lose the precious enclaves of minority culture whether that's the larger group of francophones in canada or the smaller group of anglos in quebec or any other group for that matter.

let's everybody play nice, ok?

flapping and fussing.

here is a video of lisanh's toulouse geese in a kiddie pool.





they are lovely gentle geese and not, as some people call geese in general, "hose-necked bastards".

i was getting ready to post the video and i thought of this poem i wrote long ago, about some other geese:




he's there when the ice cracks
and every little streamlet rolls
and heads of newborn grass poke through
and the grass grows tall and taller
and gets mown down and the hayloft fills
and corn is planted and it bows down

they are a pair, these two-
they tend their nest as the season turns
the barnyard goose with the yellow feet
and the canada goose handsome and proud

and later when the corn is cut
there are little ones who must be taught
to flap and fuss and take the sky
brown and white all to their ways
go flying over stubble fields
where frost comes down and summer yields
and he remembers other days and only he knows
why he came
or why he stays.

i know. right.

yesterday i heard the most astounding interview with john sununu.

i do not remember him making quite that little sense, or sounding so rabidly angry. i don't know about you, but whenever i hear somebody go on a rant about how fact checkers know nothing and no matter what anyone says about things that have a great deal of evidentiary weight and are a matter of public record, nobody knows anything about it but them, it gives me pause.

i've been listening a lot these days to what they have to say at fact checking sites and i've been listening to what fact checkers like politifact.com say about bias and their process.

last week i heard an interview with someone at politfact who described the process and the transparency of it, and the care they take to cite sources on everything so you can check it out for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

when i hear a thing that clashes wildly with a thing i believe and want to believe, i usually think: wow. that does not match what i think i know. i should go look that up. i should find as many sources as possible. i should find out who benefits from that being true and who benefits from this being reported this way.

sometimes i learn that a thing i want to believe is just wrong. sometimes i learn that the thing i believe is supported by actual evidence.

in either case, i'm not wild about being told what to to think. and i am really not wild about angry guys shouting that only a select group of people can possibly understand the actual facts, and that everyone pointing to evidence to the contrary are simply too stupid or too much enmeshed in an evil conspiracy to see the real meanings of things, which we should all just shut up and believe what we're told. or else.

i've been thinking about these general ideas a lot recently, and actually not in reference to politics exactly, although most changing ideas in science or even mathematics do touch on politics. i was actually going to write this same post about climate science, or about the debate over what to do with the mental health crisis in this state.

and then i heard that interview with john sununu. go listen to it if you dare.

statements that rest on themselves as proof are not necessarily true. loud belligerent shouting does not make things true.

john sununu is an ass.

i don't remember him quite that way, but apparently he is one now.

more farm fun

if you're following along, you know that in the past couple of years i have taken to only buying eggs from people who keep chickens.

so i've written about eggs before.

anyway, we were putting up the tent at lisanh's farm and alla sudden gaela was eating an egg.

gaela and the egg

the nest

...which means that she had found a nest.

...which means that lisa does not have to go looking for the eggs. when the move is farther along, there will be a coop, but not yet.







so it's helpful if a dog hunts out the nests. it's only fair then to share the eggs with the dog as a
finder's fee. the dog got two, and i got the rest.

they are delicious.

the turkeys look at my stuff

turkey herd

among the exciting things yesterday was the turkeys discovering the land beyond the yard. they had not yet been up to the field on the other side of the fence, so it was all new to them.

there were lots of bugs and lots of green grass and pretty much half of the things turkeys generally want, so it was fun to watch them go have a look.

but then they were too close to the road and had to be brought back, which was accomplished with a dog.

i think this is bjarki bringing them back. lisa has three border collie thingies (ok, icelandic sheepdogs...), and i'm pretty sure this one is bjarki.