Happy St. Patrick's Day. Next week my classes start and one of them is titled "Dystopian Works", we are reading books about the opposite of Utopia. And Japan is a good example of this right now. But let me tell you what I read last night. I was reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and this passage jumped out at me. "Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away." And a little further on "Grandfather's been dead for all these years, but if you lifted my skull, by God, in the convolutions of my brain you'd find the big ridges of his thumbprint." Now Maria left a million things, kind letters, an "invisiblity cloth" for Timmy to wear to family functions, a book for me titled "How to be a Guest at the Bird's Nest B&B", a collage of Mothers- Grandma Burky holding Bucky, Bucky, holding me, and me holding Maria.... I could go on and on, you probably could add something to the list if you knew Maria, because that was just the way she was. Three years is a long time, and it is a blink of an eye. Today is a beautiful day and I am going to wish everyone I see Happy St. Patrick's Day. God Bless. Rest in peace Maria.

Well today would have been my mother Bucky's 95th birthday. Maria loved Bucky and I think she was a lot like her in many ways. When Maria was in College a lot of her essays were about her childhood memories of Bucky and staying with her on Falconer Street, sleeping on the back porch, looking for Mr. Chase's hidden money, etc. I recently found a letter Maria had written but never mailed to her cousin John...she wrote "You remember how Grandma used to walk Poohbear - she'd always say, "Who wants to take the dog for a dump? She had a way with words!" Maria had captured Bucky in a nutshell - she had a way with words.

We could all add to the list: (1) After the fourth of July, the summer is over, (2) Show me an engaged girl, and I will show you a future bride, (3) you shit in one hand and wish in another, you know what you get first. My brother Bob remembers these two: "I know someday I will wake up dead", and a recurring dream of hers where she would wake up and say I was dreaming I was choking on a peach pit. She never could stand clothes that were too close to her neck...she would explain, "I must have been a dog in my other life, I can't stand a tight collar."

Well Happy Birthday Bucky - we miss you wisdom and your wit.

Today I was at Agway buying birdseed, when I walked in on a conversation between the cashier and her customer. "The news was so bad this morning," she was saying, "I don't know why I bother to put on the Today Show." He agreed and added, "It's only going to get worse with the unrest in the Mid East, terrorism you know," nodding like he knew we were going into RED ALERT at any moment now. The thing is that I was thinking these exact thoughts this morning. Why am I starting the day off with all this terrible news? Today's morning show was filled with graphic pictures of the victims of the earthquake, bloody, writhing in pain, and I thought back to 40 years ago when I would get up and have a cup of coffeee, not with the tv, but with the radio.

I had a little black portable radio, battery driven that picked up an AM station in Kingston, WGHQ. The radio sat on the kitchen counter, close by, while I made the kids' breakfast and packed their lunch bags. Bill Skilling was the show's host and he gave the news, the weather, and played music. The music was always the same..."Breaking Up Is Hard To Do", was played every morning - I don't know if that was a reflection of someone on the show, or the only record they had at the studio. The best part of the show came on 5 minutes before the hour. Bill would read the school lunch menus, making appropriate voices and sounds to go along with the food. For example, hamburger on a toasted roll would be said in a Jackie Gleason voice. Desserts were always good for a laugh, especially fruit cup, which he would pronounce, and then put his thumb in his cheek and make a ccccuuuupppp noise. That was the way to start the day, laughing with the radio, no visuals, nothing more dramatic than thinking of canned fruit mix being served to the poor kids as dessert.

I should have known back then that the newspaper and tv weren't for me. The songwriters were telling me so. Simon and Garfunkle said, "I get all the news I need on the weather report."
And really, that is all that I am interested in. Don McLean said it also, "Bad news on the doorstep, I couldn't take one more step." Timmy is always telling me I need a "News Fast", go a week or two without the news and see what happens...like a fruit juice fast or that cayenne pepper lemonade fast that people use. Maybe I'll try that, or see if I can find a radio stations that reads the kids' menus today.

Well this is the first weekend in two months that there is not a zero reading or snow predicted. Hooray! I've been spending my time mostly watching the birds and the neighbors. The neighbors are like the fable the ants and the grasshopper. We (Timmy and me) are the grasshopper, fiddling away our days, while the ants (the neighbors] are working hard. Wayne has a big yellow shovel, a long roof rake shovel, a snowblower, and a little go-cart mobile that has a plow on it. He can use all of these almost at the same time, removing methodically the snow from his house and yard.

Last week our other neighbor Tony did something I have never seen before. He hitched his son Christopher in a harness, tied a rope to it, tied the rope around himself, and they both went up on the roof. Now this is a high roof, steep pitch, therefore the rope on Christopher who had a roof rake shovel and was clearning off the roof. Now this made me laugh, because I remembered a story from my childhood where the husband and wife trade jobs, and the husband does everything wrong, including putting the cow on the roof, so he doesn't have to take the cow to the pasture. Then he tied a rope around the cow and himself. Well, the story ended with the cow falling off the roof, and the old man going down the chimney. This didn't happen across the street, but the tension and drama lasted most of the afternoon. Better than the Superbowl.

So February is dragging on. I tried to think of some good that has come out of this winter - hard to do when the pipes froze in the garage, had to all be replaced, cabin fever doesn't even describe it - and a trip to the Post Office is all I can say happened in my journal. But then I thought of one thing - no mice. Usually, in the winter, they come in the house and Timmy is trapping almost one every night. No mice. They can't make it into the house through all the snow. I think I would rather have mice than this winter.

Yesterday when Timmy brought in the mail there was a package for me from my Aunt Alice. Now this was a surprise on many levels - Aunt Alice was married to my father's brother and is in her 90's. We only corresponded once a year, at Christmas and I hadn't received a Christmas card from her this year. I thought perhaps she's not well. Anyway, when I opened the box there was a letter on top of the wrapping which I read before looking into the package. Aunt Alice said she was cleaning out nick nacks, saw this and thought of me. I couldn't imagine what it would be, unwrapping the papers, I laughed and then cried...one of the teasel ladies Ria used to make years and years ago.

Maria and Kevin were running the Stork - delivering (thus the name) sandwiches, foods, desserts to businesses, but mostly Bard students. To supplement their income Ria was also making crafts, one of which was the teasel lady, a plump, kerchiefed lady, holding flowers with a teasel face, making it look like a hedgehog. Then I remembered Maria going to the craft fairs and one event jumped into my mind. This was maybe 27 years ago, when Jer was 3.

There was a craft fair in Cold Spring and Maria asked if I could go to watch Jeremy, maybe take him someplace, while she was at the fair from 10 until 2. I said sure, and my friend Crissy decided to come too. "I've always wanted to visit Boscobel in Cold Spring," she said and we agreed to go there with Jer while Ria was at the fair.

Boscobel was beautiful, but we realized a few seconds into the tour that it was not Jeremy's idea of fun. He started to scream "Lets go" and twist and turn, trying to get away. I asked the guide if we could be excused, but the woman, in a strong German accent, said "No, you MUST stay with the group. There is no one to take you out." So we stayed and it got worse and worse. On the second floor both Crissy and I were red faced, sweating trying to control Jer. In the main bathroom the tour guide pointed out the large bathtub and said, "You could drown a bad boy in there." Finally, it was over. Crissy held Jer, who tried to punch one woman in the face, and he bit into Crissy's leather jacket, leaving teeth marks. We went to a deli, got sandwiches and two beers and drove to the river, where there was a nice beach, people feeding swans and sitting in the sun, and we tried to relax, eating our lunch in the car. Just then the noon whistle went off, Jer panicked and huddled under the front seat of the car, shaking in fear. Crissy and I looked at each other in amazement. That kid who had no fear of the guide, the other visitors, us, or anything was terrifed and quiet as a mouse with the noon whistle!

Anyway, just seeing that little teasel lady from Aunt Alice made me think of that day. Maria must have made a 100 of those dolls, I wonder how many will turn up.

The snow that fell last night clung to the trees this morning, making a winter wonderland. I swept off the deck to lay out birdseed and filled the front feeders, got a new cup of coffee and waited. The cardinals, juncos and chickadees were the first to appear at 7am. For a time in the early morning light, they all were motionless in the trees, bright red dots against the snow. A hawk must have been around, and then left not seeing his breakfast, for in union they all again began to eat and flit from feeder to deck to feeder.

Then the blue jays came. Noisy, piggy, stuffing themselves with seed after seed. Not like the cardinals, who politely nibble one seed, look around, wait, then take another nibble. Also, the jays are loud, screaming to each other, screaming for themselves, chasing each other away from their special place.

The squirrels come next on the half hour as if an alarm clock had set them off. I had to laugh because as they jumped from branch to branch they set off avalances of snow, minature blizzards. They are more like the bluejays, glutons, and not nice to each other. The other morning I counted nine, nine competitors, some more interested in fighting than eating.

The last to rise on a cold morning are the woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers that will go for the feeders, but prefer the suet, but today the suet is frozen, a little too hard for their taste.

Birds have been in the news lately - the reports of thousands of them dead, lying on the ground, in several parts of this country and even in Europe. What this mystery means seems to have everyone baffled. I can't imagine my life without birds. They are my meditations, my seditives, my addiction - and my salvation (that might be going a little too far!) When my neighbor Nick's wife died years ago, he went into a deep depression. She had been sickly, but her death was totally unexpected. His mood was so different, not the laughing, joking person he once was and his eyes would fill with tears frequently. Then, something changed him, brought him out of the depths of depression - a fishtank. Yes, he found an old tank in his garage and decided to buy a couple of fish. He told me about it, and I could see something had changed. Then he bought more fish, apparently he had once earlier in his life had fish, so he knew what kinds were compatable and would once in a while, splurge on an expensive, exotic fish. He told me how he would sit and watch those fish for hours. I thought of that this morning - I guess I use the birds like Nick used his fish. Relaxing, calming, amusing. I hope they find out soon what is causing these bird deaths. I need my birds.

Happy New Year - since all the media seems to be looking back over the year, I thought I would do the same, but just break it down to one per season. Spring would have to be the kite flying and bubble blowing festivities in the cemetery. Not gloomy, not sad, I don't think a tear was seen, just the joy of watching the kids running, some with adults trying to get their kite in the air. We all rubbed instant lottery tickets, but no big winners, only one $3 that Paul had. Sabra's tarot reader later said to forget the ruboffs, go right to the lottery and we will have a winner within 3 years.

Summer would have to be Wellfleet, almost the whole family there, lots of laughs, lots of good seafood and Ava spotting the skeleton of what turned out to be a dophin, that came home with Jer and is now on the back porch. The kids gave me a lot of laughs and it was fun to sit on my bed, drinking fundador with Maureen, listening to David Sedaris. John O'Leary's yearly trek to our campsite was fun for all the girls and Sabra and Laura are still talking about midgets and webbed feet.

Fall would be the StreetPainting in Tivoli, working on the pavement between Sabra and Tony and Regina on the other side, doing the Guiness bird, remembering Margaret. The funniest part was that Natalie Merchant and her daughter were working on a square right in back of me. They had live music, a young woman dressed in fancy clothes, little red hat, peacock earrings, and singing all the songs I knew from my past. When she did "Blue Skies" I couldn't help myself and broke into song: "Blue skies, shining at me, nothing but blue skies do I see...never saw the sun shining so bright, never saw ..." I looked up and realized I was within earshot of Natalie and she probably never before had heard anyone sing like that.

Winter would be Rachael and Miles' engagement party - really nice restaurant, good food, everyone dressed up. Rachael looked beautiful and Regina was wearing a topless little dress she kept pulling up. Lots of topless dresses, lots of tugging, lots of pictures and lots of families. Very nice and gave us a glimpse of what is coming at the wedding.

So that's it - the year in a nutshell. Let's see what happens this year-I'm hoping for the lottery.