Would It Surprise You To Hear?

There is more than one blog under the sun named Letters From The North.

Cutting wood

All is gray and white today. We had a heavy wet spring snow during the night. It has covered our old rotten snow and is balanced precariously on every branch. Suddenly I see a patch of blue and a spot of orange across the pond. When it moves I see it is my husband's blue jacket and orange chain saw. That little patch of pink is his lovely face. The chain saw roars to life and down goes another of our little birches. We bought six cords of tamarack in the fall, but it's been a long, cold winter. There are only about six pieces left. For two weeks we have been debating. Should we let the fire go out for the season and drain the boiler? Rely on our electric heat? Our house is cozier when the wood boiler is going. Our hot water is hotter. But we have to keep the fire going. If the lines freeze underground there can be no circulation to the house. If water freezes in the boiler it would be damaged. Our son Marty told us once, "You're slaves to that thing." There are huge farm fields and Lake of the Woods and Canada to our north. There is nothing but woods for fifty miles to our south. Only a mile or so down our road there's a patch where loggers have been working. The logs are stacked in a neat pile. There's a small mountain of tree tops nearby that will probably be burned and hunks of small wood scattered over the ground. My husband stopped and asked if he could pick some up for our boiler. The loggers said that he needed a permit from the Department of Natural Resources. The DNR said that they can't give one because the County has put on spring road restrictions. They don't want the thawing gravel roads all rutted up by wood hauling. It all proves my husband's contention that if you want to get something done, don't ask too many questions. The day after he queried the DNR, I drove into town. Coming toward me on a restricted road I saw two pick-ups heaped with wood. One was pulling a large, flat trailer with eight big logs on it. No questions asked, I guess. Oh well, we have lots of little birches. We thinned them once before and never missed what was taken. We have birch stumps with four or five new little birches sprouted from them. At our church picnic this summer a friend was watching my husband pitch a softball game. "He's in better shape than most of the young guys at Marvin's," she said. [Employees of Marvin Window's and Doors] I attribute that to all the wood cutting and hauling and heaving that he does. Maybe if we go to an easier kind of heat he'll just go to seed.

Happy Easter

My husband had me come and look out our front windows when I first got up this morning. There under the bird feeders was the Easter bunny, munching on spilled sunflower seeds. He's still all white; no patches of brown yet. We observed Lent almost entirely this year. We only missed one mid-week service, on a night when it was already way below zero at 6:15 p.m. when we were due to leave. We went to church Maundy Thursday evening and Good Friday noon also. Yet still, we both remarked several times that it just hasn't seemed like Easter time. Truth to tell, I think it never seems like Easter since my husband retired. We were so in the center of the preparations then. It's too easy now. The last few services we didn't even bother with supper, just had a little toast or something when we got home. In days of yore my husband had to make up extra batches of sermons. I had to [or thought I had to] make supper, do dishes, and get five children relatively neat and clean. One year on Good Friday, our oldest son was invited to go roller skating at a rink and out to eat with a friend from down the street. He was eight or nine years old. I could see nothing wrong with it, but I must have had an inkling that my husband wouldn't agree. I called him at the church. Absolutely not! Nick was going to church. Our parsonage kitchen was small when all the kids were little. To make more room, my husband fashioned us a kitchen table of sorts from a beautiful old oak altar top. It was no longer in use and had been stuck in storage at the church. He cut a half moon on one side in the center of it. Our high chair sat against the kitchen wall. The altar/table was placed in front of it at the half moon point. Baby Peter sat in the high chair and looked out into the room. The rest of us sat on long benches and looked at either baby Peter or the kitchen wall. In those days I tried to save money on milk by mixing it with some that I made out of powdered milk. I kept the mix in a big glass pitcher. On one Lenten Wednesday morning our second youngest son, who was two, was standing on one of the long benches. He reached for that big glass pitcher. I stood up to keep him from it. He got that devilish look in his eyes that I remember so well. In order to keep away from me, he stepped off the end of the bench with that big pitcher in his hand. The milk spilled. The pitcher broke. Matthew stood up holding just the handle with one very sharp shard of glass still attached. Blood was pouring down the side of his face, soaking his pajamas and mixing with the milk on the floor. I called my husband at the church again. He rushed home. If anyone reading this knows Matt, look along,I think it is the right side of his face. You'll see the long scar there still. He came home from the clinic a little feverish, his face swollen and red and bluish with a long row of right-out-in-the-open stitches. There was no bandage. Do you know where Matthew and I and his sister and his brothers were at seven that evening? At the Lenten service, of course. How did I do that? Why did I do that? I can still see him lying there on my lap, asleep with his poor Frankenstein face pointing up. I don't know where my baby was. Probably his sister had him. She was a good little substitute mother. One of the church members told me later that she could hardly bear to look at Matt that night. It really grossed her out. But I was young and eager and foolish and my husband was no better. Somehow we all got through it. And we get through our quiet Easters too. We have peace now instead of excitement.

For the lurkers

Let's get this out in the open right away: I'm getting lazier and lazier. Whole days go by when I don't do much but read, and eat, and look out the window. That is, no doubt, the main reason that nothing has been posted here for a long time. I have had reason to suspect, though, that a few persons have been offended by things they read on this poor innocuous little blog. That has bothered me. I forgot to comfort myself, as I did when I was a nerdy high schooler, with words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, i.e. "To be great is to be misunderstood." I had about decided to let Letters From The North slip off into the wide world web or whatever it is that w.w.w. stands for. But then I heard a radio program about blogging. Since personal computing is all the rage these days, [I heard last night that you can confess your sins on-line now] someone has done research on blogs. This person has discovered that for everyone who reads a post and writes a comment on it there are several hundred, perhaps as many as a thousand people who read it and say nothing. These people have been designated 'lurkers'. Wow! Who knew? I realize that the researcher was probably dealing with famous blogs, but still.... Let's say that you had three regular readers who commented. [It doesn't matter at all if one is your husband and the other two are your sons.] And in addition to each of them, you had maybe ten lurkers. Well, that's a nice little group of people listening to what you have to say. A blogger is not so alone in the world as she thought she was. So this one's for you, my dear lurkers. Lurk on.