yesyesyes

(here)

green green green

To walk through wall-to-wall veggies - heaven!

(here)

wa-hoah

"I love you, Johnny, but I can't marry you until you've seen the place."

So said my grandmother to my grandfather oh so many years ago.

I spent the weekend traipsing the meadows, woods, and brooks of Colebrook, CT where in 1787 my great (times 3 or 4?) grandfather built the Phelps Inn, a colonial tavern and family home for generations.

It's a magical, enchanting place. Frequented, I'm sure, by my ancestors' passing spirits in the fashion of the inn's guests who came and went centuries ago.

Tacked to the wall inside the bar, alongside the wall of mini liquor bottles (many labels long out of make), still hangs a note my grandmother wrote, decades before my birth.

"I never want any further part of GIN; I'm tired of it. *

(signed) Nancy Phelps Blum

Witnessed: (1) Peri (Mama)

(2) Carrington Phelps (Papa)

(3) J.A. Blum 10/2/45

* This means I don't want any more."

I can't help but romanticize my grandmother (she who attended round table discussions at the Algonquin with Dorothy Parker and Harold Ross, wrote two books on her family history, and built a barn to house her astounding collection of books, yet never attended college) regardless of whatever wonderful imperfections plagued her.

Oh, how the vices of the past gleam and sparkle with class, rich with elegance and mystery, when today we kill ourselves over the tiniest fault.

(Anna emailed me this image, but I found it here.)

years

What Are Years?

By Marianne Moore

What is our innocence,

what is our guilt? All are

naked, none is safe. And whence

is courage: the unanswered question,

the resolute doubt,--

dumbly calling, deafly listening--that

in misfortune, even death,

encourages others

and in its defeat, stirs

the soul to be strong? He

sees deep and is glad, who

accedes to mortality

and in his imprisonment rises

upon himself as

the sea in a chasm, struggling to be

free and unable to be,

in its surrendering

finds its continuing.

So he who strongly feels,

behaves. The very bird,

grown taller as he sings, steels

his form straight up. Though he is captive,

his mighty singing

says, satisfaction is a lowly

thing, how pure a thing is joy.

This is mortality,

this is eternity.

Are Years What? (For Marianne Moore)

Mark di Suvero