But they would have been a bitch to heat

One thing that most Americans do at some point in their lives is something I've never done, or had any desire to do: own a house. Since I left home at 18 I have been a life-long renter, and that has been just fine with me. You couldn't find a monthly mortgage as low as many of the rents I've paid over the years, and I haven't had to worry about paying taxes, or insurance, or taking care of repairs, or other major maintenance situations (in two of the four houses I've rented in my life, I did take care of minor repairs...or rather, my handyman husband did).

Given my indifference to the very idea of owning my own home, I find it interesting that one of my favorite things to do is visit old homes that have become museums. I love looking at the size and layout of the rooms -- so often, even though a house may look large from the outside, the rooms really are not big at all, especially when you consider the large families and the voluminous skirts people generally went in for in the olden days -- the furniture, the knick-knacks (despite having no use for knick-knacks in my own home), the dishes and other kitchen utensils that might be on display, the arrangements for using the toilet, for taking a bath (my favorite example of the former was an elegant wooden "throne" in the master bedroom of an old plantation house in New Iberia, Louisiana, whereas my favorite bathroom was at Waddesdon Manor near Aylesbury, England -- the single round window had a stunning view of a huge, beautiful fountain in the center of a formal garden). I love the staircases, all the fireplaces -- even though I know they did a lousy job of keeping the inhabitants warm -- I love imagining what it might have been like to live in these houses.

On my trip to Rockland in early October (Notes of Oct. 11 and 19), between the main building of the Farnsworth Art Museum, and the converted church down the street that houses the Wyeth Center, is the Farnsworth Victorian Homestead. The last member of the well-to-do Farnsworth family bequeathed the building that became the art museum to the town, as well as her family home, with the stipulation that everything in the later structure remain essentially as it was. Although Lucy Farnsworth died in 1935, unmarried and childless at the age of 97; the house had been very little changed from the mid-1800s when it was built; thus, visitors are, indeed, able to see a comfortably middle-class "Victorian homestead."

There was the "second parlor," which was actually the room the family spent the most time in, where guests were routinely received -- the 1800s' equivalent of today's den or family room. This was a good example of what I was saying about rooms not being as large as you would think they would need to be. Across the hall was the formal parlor, much larger, much more "elegant" (actually quite ugly, in that way attempts by the Victorians to be elegant could be). Two of the most interesting rooms were for the servants, the housemaid and the hired man. Upstairs, back of the house over the kitchen, with a nearby stairs leading down to same. Small, very spartan rooms, especially the hired man's. I think about the maid, cleaning the bedrooms of the family -- so much roomier, and more attractive -- did envy ever tug at her brain stem? Or was her situation such that she could only be grateful to have a live-in position (one afternoon off a week), with her own room, small and plain though it was? The Everything's Relative Sydrome...

The one question I had for the two pleasant ladies who were serving as "guards" was, why was the cast iron stove in the kitchen so low?! It seemed almost like a toy. The ladies explained to me that Lucy had been quite short, not even five feet tall, on top of which, the pots and skillets they used back then were quite heavy, and the higher the stove, the more difficult to maneuver them. This answer left me a little skeptical, since surely Ms. Farnsworth had someone to do the cooking. This was a well-to-do lady, after all, in a time when servants were common. But maybe the cook was pint-sized, too.

Interestingly, this stove had a contraption connected to it that used the heat from the stove to produce hot water, which was then pumped to the one bedroom downstairs (which in her old age became Lucy's), and to one of the bedrooms upstairs...that of one of the sons. Lucky, spoiled so-and-so.

My kingdom for a shoveler

I'm not ready! This is what I said a couple of days ago (Friday, Nov. 6th) when I woke up to snow on the ground. The day before had been bad enough, when there were snow flurries as I was leaving for work. I made a squawking sound when I saw those. And they recurred off and on throughout the day, though there wasn't much sticking. But overnight the dang stuff stuck, and there was at least an inch standing up along the railing of my back deck, when I looked out my kitchen window Friday morning.

I really do like snow, but unfortunately snow means shoveling; for this lady who is no longer young, a back-breaking proposition. And I don't just have to shovel a path from my door to the car, and then shovel away what both nature and the snowplows have deposited behind my car, all too often I have to shovel the walks at the library, too. Officially we have someone to keep the walks clear, but last year he did a lousy job. What he would most often do was come very early in the morning, and use his snowplow. But there would still be a layer of snow -- it takes a shovel to get down to the concrete. He might put down some ice-melt, but that needs to be shoveled away within a half hour or so, or the softened snow just freezes again. And if it continued to snow, by the time we opened, at either 10 a.m. (Monday & Wednesday), or 2 p.m. (Tuesday, Thursday & Friday) there would be additional snow that I would have to go out and shovel away. And yes, of course, I talked to Jeff about this, more than once. When I told him that what was important was that the walks be genuinely clear at the time we opened, he insisted that he had to come earlier, if it was a heavy snowfall, or his plow couldn't cut through the accumulated snow. "Then you need to come back later, to do a follow-up," I said. And a few times he did come back -- for an additional charge -- but even then he wouldn't be out there applying the necessary muscle power; he would just make another swipe with his damn machine.

Get somebody else, I hear someone say? This is my third snow clearer in four years. The first one I contracted with did a good job when he showed up, but he was totally unreliable about showing up. He always had excuses. I got tired of the whining, and the fact that I was having to do so much shoveling, an omen of things to come, Had I But Known. The fellow I found the next year started out so gung-ho -- he and his men were out there with shovels, after using the snowplow -- but by midway through the winter it was the same old song. And when I called him for the following year -- despite my misgivings -- he seemed to have gone out of business; I got no call-back.

You would think people dedicated to clearing walks of snow would be thick on the ground in Maine, but you would be wrong. Guys with snowplows on the front of their trucks, eager to clear parking lots, people's driveways, private roads, they're pretty easy to find. But guys who will get out and swing a shovel, no indeed. And even the snowplow guys are, as all of the above indicates, not terribly reliable. As far as my personal situation goes, I have thought of putting up a notice at the Gardiner library, saying "Snow shoveler wanted, weekdays that it snows (M&W, snow cleared by 9 a.m., T,Th&F, by 10:30). Note that this is not a job for a snowplow; the space has to be shoveled." I don't know that the library bulletin board is the best place to find such an animal, if such an animal exists. It couldn't be a kid because they are all off for school by 7 o'clock. An out-of-work Joe Blow with a strong back?

I think I'll try it. Heck, maybe I should try it for the library...

Second Tuesday

Oh, I do love to vote. That is the time I feel my most patriotic, glad to be living in a country where the people can say who or what they prefer, without fear of having their fingers cut off or being blown up at the polls. All those people who say why bother to vote, all politicians are alike, nothing ever changes anyway, blah blah blah are 1) wrong and 2) missing the point. Yes, most politicians are cut from the same basic mold because it takes a certain kind of person to go into politics, just as it takes a certain kind of person to go into teaching, or electrical engineering, or nursing, or riding rodeo. And the nature of politics, especially in a democracy, is such that change usually does come slowly -- it's not like the emperor, or Herr Hitler, declares this is how it's going to be starting tomorrow -- and that change is rarely perfect, rarely exactly what any group or individual wants. The name of the game in our political system is compromise, has to be in such a big, wildly diverse country.

If you vote, you're at least putting in your two cents' worth, and those pennies can add up.

Here in Maine we had several referenda on the ballot. I'll admit to being disappointed that the majority of Mainers voted yes on the "people's initiative" that had put us in the national spotlight, the initiative to overturn the law passed by the legislature in the spring making same-sex marriage legal. I had been so pleased when that law passed; to me it was evidence that I did, indeed, live in an enlightened state, that acknowledged that same-sex couples existed, loved one another, often stayed together for many years, and were entitled to the same legal rights and protections that heterosexual couples enjoy.

However, opponents of the law immediately set to work getting an initiative onto the November ballot that would overturn the law. And obviously the majority of Mainers, at least Mainers who vote, agreed with them. The outcome wasn't even that close, at 53% voting Yes, to overturn the law, 47% voting No. While Maine is in many ways a liberal state, certainly much more so than either Texas or Colorado, the states I was living in before I moved back here, it would seem that many Mainers still harbor a deep aversion to, fear of, homo-sexuality. I myself don't "get it," because I am hopelessly hetero-sexual, but at least I acknowledge it as a reality that has been around as long as heterosexuality has, and that isn't going to go away. And I also acknowledge that people involved in long-term homosexual relationships should have the same right to leave their retirement or Social Security benefits to their "partners," as Mr. & Mrs. Smith next door.

Ah, well, the people have spoken, with there vote. See, it can make a difference.

Time

My husband died five and a half years ago, and in the last year, I have found myself thinking of him far less often than I did during the first four years after his death, which I believe is "normal." I used to talk to him constantly inside my head, despite a great skepticism that, even if he still existed in some way, on some level, he could instantly hear my thoughts, and instantly respond to them. I still talk to him occasionally, but it's very occasional. And the brief but bereft bouts of crying, once so common, are very rare indeed.

The other morning when I was washing dishes -- along with cooking, something I seem to do on a non-stop basis -- the song 100 Years by Five For Fighting, which sounds like a group but is actually a single performer, came on the radio. This is a neat-sounding song that, if you listen carefully to the lyrics, reveals itself to be awkwardly written, not making much sense if you follow it beginning to end. Nonetheless, the following lines caused me to stop scrubbing an egg-smeared plate, and spend a good minute and a half crying:

"I'm 22 for a moment
She feels better than ever
And we're on fire
Making our way back from Mars.
15, there's still time for you
Time to buy and time to lose
15, there's never a wish
better than this
When you only got 100 years to live."*

The reason I stood there and cried for a couple of minutes, to the accompaniment of this not-very-good rock song, was that it made me think of Micheal and me when we were young. Not 15, but 17 and 18, which is how old we were when we met. We were young, beautiful (I thought I was horribly plain, but a look back at old pictures has shown me that I really wasn't...and Micheal was indisputably one good-looking, sexy dude), madly in love, with no thought of ever getting old, dying, any of the awful, real things that happen in life.

He lived in Terrell, Texas; I lived an hour away in Ft. Worth. Sometimes in the middle of the week he would drive over when he got off from work at the all-night service station (Micheal was a high school dropout when we first met, which meant being a gas station attendant was about all he could hope for). I would still be sound asleep and would suddenly hear my little brother Bobby -- now a talented, weighed-down-with-responsibility cartoonist, husband and father -- sing out "Mike, Pauline's boy's here!" (Pauline was Micheal's mother, and my stepmother's second cousin. Oh, those southerners.) So I'd have to hastily get dressed, eat some breakfast, with an infatuated Micheal looking on, and then we'd go riding around, run errands for my stepmother, and always, at some point, wind up at a nearby drive-in. Either we'd order from one of the carhops who actually came out to your car and took your order or, if it were just too damn hot (in Texas, a not-infrequent occurrence), we'd go inside and sit in a booth, which had the additional benefit of enabling us to play songs from the juke box menu that every table had in a little glassed-in box. We'd feed the box nickels (nickels!), savor our root beer floats, and talk about I haven't a clue what, but we never stopped talking.

How fleeting that time was, and yet, because we were young, it seemed to last forever.

Life is all about loss. It is about acquiring, and losing. If you live long enough, you lose just about everything you worked so hard to acquire: job, fame, wealth, health, spouse, children, home, friends. You find yourself living alone -- a not-really-healthy way to live -- standing at a kitchen sink, weeping to a rock song, as you remember the hot, sunny days, the cold, delicious root beer floats, the happy hormones dancing through your body, the hope, the faith, the obliviousness to Time. Who is the enemy, and the boss.

*100 Years, by Five for Fighting, c. Five for Fighting Music, Inc., c. Emi Blackwood Music, Inc.

Sing

People love to sing. Isn't that interesting? I was just watching the very charismatic country singer Kenny Chesney on Austin City Limits (which Micheal and I used to love to watch when we lived in Boston -- a touch of country in the middle of the big, sophisticated city -- but now the show has lousy rock groups on more often than good country musicians), and every now and then the camera would scan all the people in the audience singing along as Kenny sang. They all knew the words. They were happy, having a great time. And people are almost always happy when they sing. What do you suppose there is about not saying words, but singing them, that makes us feel happy?

Think about all the people who sing in choruses. They don't get famous, they don't make a lot of money, they may have to go to rehearsals after working all day at their mundane jobs. But they are doing something they love, that makes them feel happy. I reckon there aren't all that many things in life that do that; when you find one, you're smart to go for it.

Or think about the people on chain gangs, slaves in the fields, singing to ease the tedious, grueling monotony of what they were doing. Singing did that, but how, or why, that's what I wonder.

We also cherish people who sing at us; we love professional singers. That's interesting, too, if you think about it. People who act, paint, sculpt, dance, write, are comedians -- we may be full of admiration for them at least partly because we can't do what they're doing. But almost everybody can sing. Yet, we're full of admiration for profes-sional singers, too. Is it simply that they put joy into our lives, and you gotta love somebody who brings you joy?

Andy Williams was on the Tavis Smiley talk show last night. In his eighties now, but still handsome, a low-keyed charming, as he was in the '60s, when my family used to watch his T.V. show religiously. They showed clips of him singing on his show with Tony Bennett, and the two seemed to be having such a good time. But the thought occurred to me: why would men like this, why would any man, decide to become a singer, that is, try to make his living at it? Not aim for being a doctor, lawyer, banker, accountant, engineer, airplane pilot, truck driver, soldier, teacher, newspaper man, not even an artist, but a singer? Actually, in the case of Andy Williams he told us: he had, not a stage mom, but a stage dad, who was hoping the singing talents of Andy and his three brothers would take them all out of Iowa (apparently Mr. Williams was not crazy about Iowa). And it did; they did. By the time Howard Andrew could perhaps have decided on some other kind of career, I suppose he was pretty well entrenched in the one his father had foisted on him. But one wonders about others. Why did Tony Bennett become a singer? Why did Bing Crosby? Why did Johnny Mathis? Etc., etc...

Still, whatever their reasons, I suppose we can only applaud them -- as we do -- even as we sing ourselves, in the shower.

I'll leave you with a nifty lyric from one of Chesney's songs:

A bottle of wine/two dixie cups/3 a.m./I feel in love/
for the first time in my life.
That's somethin'/that just don't happen twice.

The Wyeths have it

At the Farnsworth, I quickly lost interest in our guided tour, and set out exploring on my own. The modern works on display in the ground floor galleries were for the most part Robert Indiana's smooth, brightly colored word sculptures -- LOVE, HOPE, EAT -- which are blandly pretty. Much of the art in the exhibit American Art Between the Wars --paintings done by artists working in Maine from the late 1890s to the early 1940s (which is not my idea of "between the wars") was not very good, looking clumsy, amateurish. These were disappointments, but the Tribute to Andrew Wyeth exhibit, while small, was excellent; several wonderful paintings by this adopted son of Maine (he was actually from Pennsylvania, but spent most of his childhood summers on the mid-coast of Maine) that I'd never seen before. One, called The Belfry, was almost surrealistic -- a small church belfry, with little birds flying all around it...sitting on a table in an old attic. Another, called Room after Room, has an interesting perspective: the viewer is looking through an open doorway at a woman in a chair, with another open doorway beyond her, leading into another room. But that wasn't what I found most fascinating about the picture. Rather, it was Wyeth's perfect depiction of the old wood of the walls (the setting is, as often in Wyeth's paintings, an old farm house). The different shades of brown, of grey, of blue, produced a texture: rough, old wood.

One of my favorite courses in college was my Survey of Art course. It did exactly what a liberal arts course should do: broadened my horizons, introduced me to new possibilities, new ways of looking at the world. One of the most memorable lessons I got from that course was that paintings are not really "that which is represented," they're paint. The instructor, with whom I had endless arguments about what is art? (I called myself the class philistine, but really I was just the one with petit bourgeois tastes who spoke up), would have us go stand close to a painting, so close that the picture was essentially lost; all we could see was the paint. And that's what he wanted us to see; he wanted us to understand that these marvelous effects we got -- these pictures we saw -- when we stood back and admired them from a distance, were first and foremost paint, put on the canvas by a person who was hoping to convey through that paint what he was seeing, or what he was feeling about what he was seeing, or simply what he was feeling. Getting this glimpse of the nuts and bolts of the artist's work vastly increased my respect for what artists do, though I have always been a big appreciator of their finished products.

To this day I still walk up close to paintings in an art museum and look at the paint. This is how I could see the greys, the blues, the different shades of brown, in Wyeth's Room after Room. A marvel.

The museum also owns a old, converted church a block away, that is now the Wyeth Center, dedicated mainly to revolving works by Andrew's father N.C., and his son James, more commonly referred to as Jamie. Here I was surprised to find that the illustrations by N.C. (and I swear I never knew that N.C. Wyeth's first name was Newell), didn't do much for me. I realized I much preferred the sometimes melancholy, subdued-tones depictions of old farmhouses, old farmhouse windows, of his son. The most interesting thing I heard the guide say on the tour I abandoned was that N.C. was always after his son to put more color into his paintings. But the old man was wrong.

So what's the big deal?

One of our patrons made a good point the other day. He said, "Why celebrate the discovery of a country that somebody else had already discovered?" He was talking, of course, about Columbus Day, celebrating the man who "discovered" the Americas. Which were already full of people who had been here for a very long time. And as a matter of fact, any number of others had "discovered" different parts of America, though none of those had stayed for very long. Certainly it smacks of a real ethnocentricity, honoring the achieve-ment of someone because he was the first of your kind to do it, rather than the first one, period. And not only that, discovering the Americas was an achievement that never really meant much to Columbus. He never got over his disappointment at not having found a route to the rich Indies; he didn't think of these lands he had discovered as a feather in his cap.

I'll admit to having always thought Columbus Day a sort of weenie holiday. Since I'll take any holiday I can get I've never protested it, but really, Columbus's bumping into the Americas was a sheer accident, not this great feat that he attempted and accomplished despite tremendous odds. Meanwhile, those who came after him brought enslavement, disease and death to those who were already here. Indeed, Columbus started the trend himself, subjugating the natives on the island that eventually became Haiti and the Dominican Republic, killing them or using them as slave labor. So, really, why do we give this guy his own day?

Certainly I wouldn't think Native Americans would be all that enthus-iastic about the day. Honor this guy who started it all -- the decimation of a race, the complete obliteration of many individual populations, endless loss and suffering? They might even treat it as a day of mourning...

Which thought sends me to that ever-ready tool, the Internet, and I learn that as a matter of fact American Indians have objected to a holiday that honors Columbus, over many years. A fact that somehow escaped my notice, all those years. But now I'm aware.

According to History.com, the original Columbus celebration was in 1792, in New York City. It was organized by a group that called itself The Society of St. Tammany after, of all things, an Indian chief, making their honoring of Columbus the supreme irony. This organ-ization eventually became the political "machine" referred to as Tammany Hall. In 1792 they were celebrating the 300th anniversary of that European discovery of...well, they said America, but really, it was just the Caribbean islands; Columbus never set foot on the North American mainland.

In 1869 the Italian community of San Francisco decided to celebrate their heritage by making a big deal out of "Columbus Day." President Benjamin Harrison encouraged citizens in 1892 to actively celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival, but it wasn't until 1934 that October 12th was proclaimed a national holiday by President Roosevelt. And then came that period when all the inconvenient holidays were being changed to Monday holidays, regardless of when the event actually took place, and Columbus Day became, not necessarily Oct. 12, but the second Monday of the month. So now, it seems to me, it means even less.

And I'm thinking, maybe next year the library should not close for the day. Certainly this would make the patrons happy, our being open when everything else was closed. My part-time staff, who are paid only for hours worked, would be happy to have the hours. I would be the only one out a paid vacation day. Three-day weekends are among the true blessing of my (and most people's) life, so we shall have to see...