In a tree just at the edge of the woods, just past our clothesline, not fifty feet from the house. I was in the cellar working on the table when Anne called me repeatedly, “There’s an osprey in a tree!” It’s a little early in the season for osprey; I wouldn’t expect them until the …
Author Archives: deanb
Seven Eights
We got a new piece in Koleinu tonight (well, when I started writing this, March 9), Vay’chulu by Karen Tarlow. That would be Genesis 2:1-3, “And the heavens and the earth were finished…”. The one word “vay’chulu” (ch as in German “ach”) is enough to identify the passage to moderately observant Jews; it’s the first …
Finished Object – Hat
I finished the hat I’ve been knitting. It’s really warm, though I won’t know that for absolutely certain until I try wearing it outdoors on a cold, windy day. The half-ribby hat I made last year is good most of the time, but two weeks ago it didn’t quite cut it in the wind. This …
Light one tooth
I had a tooth extracted today, and I’m not my most cheerful. My periodontist has been after me for over two years to have this one out. He said (over and over) that there’s a lot of bone loss and that keeping it was endangering the next tooth over, sort of a domino theory of …
Northern New England Spring Quiz
Just one question, for any readers in California, Texas, Kuala Lumpur, etc. What’s going on here? This used to be a common late winter and early spring sight in Northern New England thirty years and longer ago: Those are sap buckets hanging on a sugar maple. Nowadays sugar makers mostly use plastic tubing to collect …
Table Progress
Maybe I haven’t said, but I’m building a table for the kitchen in Casco. It’s going to be a trestle table, I mean, rather than four legs, one in each corner, it’s going to have two things sort of like letter H on its side for legs, held together by a big board going through …
Redpolls
We saw a half-dozen redpolls the weekend Millie and Joel were up in Maine with us, which must have been in mid-January. We hadn’t seen any since up until yesterday morning. Redpolls are little brown-gray finches with a dark red spot on their forehead. They spend the summers in Canada and sometimes, but not always, …
Laundry
The most significant part of this past weekend is that we got a washer and dryer in the house in Casco. We’ve never had a dryer in Newton. The biggest factor is that we haven’t figured out how we’d vent it. Arlene likes line-dried clothes anyway. It’s fine in winter when the house is dry …
Farblonjet
We weren’t really, but it felt that way for a while, and it’s a great word to get a chance to say. My grandfather once said that word described a sheichet (kosher butcher) in Scarsdale. Or, in short, “lost”. We took a walk around the block in Casco, which, as I’ve said, is a three …
Spring Birds
Arlene and I don’t wait for robins to show up. They’re not really signs of spring, anyway, around here. If you look, you can find robins all around the year in Massachusetts. That’s not to say they don’t go south for the winter. The ones that live here in the summer go south for the …