The bitter cold has continued. My kitchen faucet is still dripping steadily to keep it from freezing up. The kitchen cupboards are kept open and the house is steadily warm. All day yesterday, I burned logs in the Franklin stove, warming the house.
I went to have my hair cut this morning and I was shivering by the time I got into the shop, which was still chill from the night before and hadn’t warmed up. I did my best not to shake while my hair was being cut.
Following that, I went down to the Red Dot for something to eat. Sitting there, I read a book, a real book, not one on my Kindle. I got some great pleasure out of turning the pages and having the tactile experience of feeling paper.
It was nothing deep; a well-written mystery by Susan Hill entitled “The Soul of Discretion.” Very well done. My friend, Linda Epperson, suggested her to me and I have enjoyed each of the books in the series. It’s a bit of escapism, which doesn’t seem a bad thing for a Saturday afternoon.
Though I have piles of papers next to my desk that need sorting, I decided to read rather than sort. It is, after all, Saturday. Though I will need to do it tomorrow, before I head into town on Monday.
The days have a rhythm and I like that. Getting up in the morning, coffee, the New York Times on my iPhone or iPad, a check of the weather, a quick game of solitaire on the phone. Then the work of the day begins, whatever it might be that day.
Most of it is about searching for what I might be doing going forward. I have a few things lined up but it is the quietest time I have had in a long time. Getting restless, I am starting to see if I can stir up some “trouble.”
Around this time of day, I turn my attention to The Letter From New York and, about this time, with great regularity, the deer cross my yard. They were a little early today, a herd traveling east, off toward the open field behind my property.
The geese are like a flotilla on the creek, making noise through day and night. I don’t mind for some reason. They don’t keep me awake and feel comforting somehow in their presence.
It is calm and peaceful here, sunny and chill, but above all peaceful.
Far away are the storms of the world.
Two are dead in a mall shooting in Florida. Five have been arrested on suspicion of terrorism in Belgium. A truck fire closed the Chunnel for a while but there were no injuries. Rebels have abducted the Chief of Staff for the President of Yemen. I could go on. There is never a shortage of troubles.
But right now, the sun is shining here in Claverack. The troubles of the world seem far away and I am going to let them stay far away today. I am doing those ordinary things that are part of the beat of life, reading a book and doing some laundry. Getting ready to join friends for dinner.
Tomorrow, the temperature is expected to rise up and perhaps I can stop letting the water drip. That would be a change.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From New York 11 20 15 Another day, another atrocity…
November 20, 2015Claverack. “A Trick of the Light” Louise Penny. Three Pines. Linda Epperson. Mali. Radisson Blu in Mali. Agatha Christie. “Murder at Hazelmoor” Paris. Ca’Mea. Hudson, New York.
Today was a startlingly beautiful day; a perfect early fall day, the sun shining brightly with the temperature scraping near 60 degrees. The best part is that it is now late November!
I woke early and watched the sun glitter on the creek while sipping my morning coffee and reading the NY Times on my iPhone.
It has been a good day. I finished reading “A Trick of the Light,” a Louise Penny murder mystery set in the fictional town of Three Pines in southern Quebec. There are twelve or thirteen of them. My friend, Linda Epperson, told me about them some years ago and I have been working my way through them.
When I was in, I think, 3rd grade and was home sick, restless of course, my mother tossed an Agatha Christie at me. It was “Murder at Hazelmoor.” It converted me to being a mystery fan and a bit of an Anglophile. Thanks to my friend Dalton Delan, I am the proud owner of an original edition of the book.
Three Pines is a little village filled with eccentric characters and a disproportionate amount of murders per capita. What it does remind me of, a bit, is my little town of Claverack without the disproportionate number of murders.
A few years ago the son of the man who owns the house two doors down from me did, apparently, an amazing number of drugs and shot his father and then killed himself. I was out of town. The father lived and is still in the house.
But that moment haunts our street, just as all the murders in Three Pines haunt that village.
I am writing on about mysteries because I don’t want to think of the mystery which is the world.
Today’s tragedy was in Mali. Al Qaeda terrorists burst into the Radisson Blu hotel there and killed, at last count, at least 21, screaming “Allahu akbar” [God is Great, I think] while slitting one man’s throat and rampaging with automatic weapons.
It is over now. They are counting the dead. At least one American is gone. Another day, another tragedy played out. In Africa, where there have also been all the atrocities from Boko Haram.
Tuesday night, the night before my birthday, my friend Larry took me to dinner at one of our favorite spots, Ca’Mea, great northern Italian cooking. We talked about Paris; he and his wife, Alicia, had been there not long ago.
He was torn, thinking on one hand he wants to know what is really happening in the world and, on the other hand, not wanting to be overwhelmed by it.
I totally understand. Sometimes I just want to retreat to my two little acres of land and listen to jazz and watch movies and not think about what is happening out there in the world.
But I can’t.
I care too much.
Tags:"A Trick of the Light", Agatha Christie, Claverack, Linda Epperson, Louise Penny, Mali, Mat Tombers, Mathew Tombers, Murder at Hazelmoor, Radisson Blu in Mali
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