You gave me WHAT kind of discount?

     So today Rick and I decided to climb little 900-foot South Mountain at Pawtuckaway State Park, not a half-hour from our home, to train for our hut climb in the White Mountains two weeks from now.
     We were feeling all energetic and virtuous and hardy, and decided to stop at a Dunkin’ Donuts on the way for some fortification before what turned out to be a three-and-a-half-hour, challenging but beautiful hike up and down this lovely fire station peak.
     Rick ordered two a veggie burrito and hash browns, with decaf. I chose a veggie omelet flatbread sandwich with a half-decaf, half-high-test coffee. Rick paid with his debit card and we sat down to enjoy our breakfast, which was actually quite good.
     Only when he went to get more napkins did I glance at the receipt and see what had transpired – a first for both of us. The original bill was eleven dollars and something, but then I saw the cashier had typed in “Senior Citizen discount, 10 percent” and had automatically deducted something like $1.16.
    And he hadn’t even asked us how old we were!
     Oh, the indignity! I still have five months before I turn 65, and Rick even longer. Could it be we not only look our age, but even older? It’s unacceptable.
    It was all I could do not to go back to the counter and give him back his $1.16.

Even her hair looked fit

     Never got a fitness tip from a hairdresser before -- until tonight.
     My usual cutter wasn’t available, so I had my hair trimmed by a long-haired, shapely young woman who chatted as only hairdressers – and bartenders – can.
     I was concerned because I had been late for the appointment and didn’t want to keep her beyond her quitting time, so I asked what time that was.
     She said not to worry, that she was off in a half-hour but that she and some other young women from the shop were heading straight over to Pinkerton Academy, the regional high school in Derry, N.H.
     They go there often, she said. They race around the track – four laps make a mile – and/or run around on the wooded trails, THEN they run up and down the bleacher stairs a few times to stay in shape.
     Sounds like great practice for the White Mountains hut climb I’ll be making in less than a month – or great practice for anyone.
     And who doesn’t have a high school track somewhere near them?

Growing 100 pounds of potatoes in 4 square feet

     I’ve always loved the taste of a fresh, home-grown potato and if you’ve read any of Michael Pollan and know how commercial growers often manufacture the potatoes you get in the store, growing one’s own sounds better than ever.
     But how?
     I’ve tried it for two years with mixed success – one year, getting potatoes that lasted through the winter and the second year getting zip.
     And it was hard work – digging deep trenches for the seed potatoes, then mounding them as the plants grew, then mounding again, and again, and again as they got taller, even running out of dirt after a while.
     I’ve heard of people growing potatoes in tires, where you start the plants in the dirt at the bottom of one tire, then add dirt and tires as the plants get taller, but the idea of growing potatoes inside of rubber tires sounded as unhealthy as something out of a Pollan book.
     Then I stumbled upon this story from the Seattle Times, about how to make a wooden potato-growing bin where you add more wood – and dirt –as the plants get taller. Some inexpensive pieces of wood, a little assembly and voila, you’re supposed to get 100 pounds of potatoes and just four square feet, with little effort.
     So… I’m trying it. It will be a test of both my woodworking and botanical skills.
     An illustration of the bin is included in the Seattle Times story. You might want to try it yourself.
     We can compare notes – and potato recipes.

A mini-visit to Rwanda

     I’d never met anyone from Rwanda before, and the three young people I met yesterday could not have been better ambassadors.
     They were all orphans – as so many young people in Rwanda are, owing to the 1994 genocide – but they were far from without a family.
     The three are students at Agahozo Shalom Youth Village, a school in eastern Rwanda that takes the most vulnerable youth from throughout the country, educates them through four years of high school and prepares them to enter the world with confidence and skill.
     But it is far from just a school. “It’s a family,” all three said, as they visited with students in an advanced history class at Woburn Memorial High School in Massachusetts. All students are assigned to a house with 15 other students and a “mother” who does what any mother does – look after them, encourage them and shepherd them into life.
      The three shared stories with the kids in the Woburn history class, including how they, too, are barred from having cell phones in class. But unlike the Woburn kids, who get a warning, then their cell phone taken away for a day if they’re caught using a phone in class, the Rwandan students said peers are the ones who sit down with a student who uses a cell phone in class. And rather than inflict punishment, the peers remind the student of what educational opportunities he or she has missed while chatting on the phone instead of participating in classroom activities.
     And so it went.
     At the end of the period, I asked some of the American kids if there was anything they envied about the Rwandans’ life. Turned out there was plenty. Their close-knit community. Their discipline. Their desire to change and improve their country.
     And isn’t that the point about meeting inter-cultural exchange – sharing what we can learn from each other.
     The Rwandans also performed a little song and dance in class. Here’s a video I hope you’ll enjoy.

Camping for free on the coast of Maine

If it sounds a little too good to be true, it almost is – a campground on the coast of Maine whose property also includes a working farm, where children who come for summer camp can learn about woods, the ocean and farm animals, and campers of all ages can just enjoy the views, the salt smell and the occasional distant bleating of sheep or cows.
     Rick and I had camped at Recompense Campground, part of Wolfe's Neck Farm outside Freeport, Maine, many times in the past but never for free. We hadn’t known about the volunteer weekends – this year, the first and second weekends of May – where campers can stay for free in exchange for a day and a half of volunteer work.
     The farm and campground are owned by a non-profit group that relies heavily on volunteer labor which we – and some two dozen others – were happy to provide. We arrived Friday night just in time for a lasagna dinner in the farmhouse and some brief instructions, then went off to our favorite campsite overlooking the water, made a fire and shared a glass or two of wine.
   In the morning, we all returned for a continental breakfast then, about 9 a.m., started raking leaves from campsites. We were all ages, from a woman in her 70s who’s also a ski instructor in Vermont, to the 2-year-old daughter of the camp cook, and the little boy, maybe 4, who delighted in giving hand directions to the driver of the huge dump truck that would back up to retrieve our piles of leaves.
     At lunchtime, we returned to the farmhouse for an outdoor barbecue and spent a little time wandering around in the barn to coo over such sights as a new lamb less than two weeks old. Then, back to raking until 4 p.m., when we were done for the day. We sat in our camp chairs and read, made another campfire, had a light dinner and just enjoyed being.

     Saturday included another continental breakfast and an hour or two of light raking, then we were done.
     We left slightly sunburned, slightly sore and greatly enriched.
     “I think this is going to become a tradition,” Rick said.    

First wood thrush of the year

Every year, at the beginning of May, about the same time that the indigo buntings start to appear at our feeders, we await the sound of the returning wood thrush.
     Now, they’re back.
     They have the most beautiful song of any bird – an ethereal, flute-like sound that echoes hauntingly through the woods and makes us stop in appreciation and awe, if only for a few seconds.
     “Whenever a man hears it he is young, and Nature is in her spring; wherever he hears it, it is a new world and a free country, and the gates of Heaven are not shut against him,” Henry David Thoreau wrote of the wood thrush’s song.
     But the thrush is as elusive as his song is transfixing, and it’s rare to actually see one. Instead, we have the pleasure of listening to his song for the entire summer before he leaves again.
     Usually, he sings in the morning and at dusk, making lovely bookends to the day.

     If you’ve never heard one, this little video gives you an idea of how one sounds. Listening is almost like praying.  

The sound of silence

It sounded ridiculously easy.
     I’ve been reading a book called “Life with Full Attention,” which is basically an eight-week course on how to live more mindfully, and part of the first chapter was about reducing outside input – the avalanche of emails, voice mails, telephone calls, news shows, elevator music and largely unsolicited stimuli that bombards us daily and that interferes with our ability to do anything with full attention.
     The book suggested that this week, the first of the course, I come up with a list of three things I could do to reduce such input and a couple of days ago I chose what I thought was the easiest one – not playing the radio to or from work for one day.
     But driving to work, I must have reached for the radio “on” button more than a dozen times without thinking. I was missing the news at the top of the hour. I wasn’t getting the weather report. I didn’t know how badly the Sox had lost most recently. I was almost twitchy with craving. I am a newswoman, after all. I have to know what’s happening.
     As if the world wouldn’t go on without my monitoring it. As if the falling tree wouldn’t make a noise unless I heard it.
     It was almost worse on the way home. There had been a murder in Burlington, the community next to the one my newspaper covers. Had they caught the guy?
     And there was a traffic jam up ahead. Without “traffic on the threes” given every 10 minute on my favorite news station, how would I know whether to search out another route?
     And yet… Without the distraction of the radio, I could concentrate on the different hues of spring green in the trees, on the species of bird that occasionally flitted overhead, even on my driving. I noticed other drivers, clouds, my own breathing.
     I felt calmer, more focused.
     Will I do it again?
     Maybe?
     But it won’t be easy.

Toasting Cissy's 65th birthday

     Cissy would have turned 65 yesterday. It was the first time in our long years of friendship I didn’t take her out to dinner to celebrate.
     I still can’t believe she’s gone.
     I didn’t know what to do to mark the occasion, so on the way home from work I stopped at a Derry liquor store and bought some Maker’s Mark, her favorite brand of whiskey.
     Then when I got home, Rick and I lit a candle in front of a photo of her, me and another friend, Beth, got out some Kentucky Derby shot glasses we had won at one or another of her many Derby parties, poured ourselves a shot, toasted her and drank.
     It was nasty good.
     This Saturday, on Kentucky Derby Day, when we would all be at her house partying if the world had not changed so dramatically and impossibly three weeks ago, we may do the same.
     Hope you’ll join us.