Just when did everything get so difficult #237, or, why I get so cranky...

It's another disgustingly beautiful morning here in the southern part of Vermont.

It could have easily been an enjoyable morning, but.... I made the mistake of checking Facebook. Specifically, I made the mistake of checking our Community Radio Station's Facebook page. (I'm one of the moderators.) It had been updated to a newer improved version. Which means that it is broken and isn't working.

Weeds in the garden

I check in on Geo's page, and decide to leave a comment.
Nope, won't do it.

I was using the browser everyone raves about. It was recently improved. Since the last update, I can't stop videos from automatically streaming. Videos that are stopped start by themselves. Videos that are stopped (and the few which never started) leak sound a few annoying bits at a time. I keep several pages open at once. Which page has the problem? I also have the page set so that it is magnified and easier to read. Since the update, that doesn't work properly either. The browser that is so much better doesn't have magnification ability - it is possible thanks to an add-on. Which doesn't work with the latest updated browser.

I thought I had 'joined' Geo's train ride - but that must have been on another browser, the one everyone says I shouldn't use, you know, the one I use most of the time. Simple matter, I'll just join his page. Except the browser won't do it. I receive instruction from the program. Cookies. Yeah, I like cookies. Oh, those. I check - the kind to which the instructions refer are enabled. Still no go. Check 'Privacy' settings - nope that wasn't it either. Maybe it isn't the browser, maybe it's a setting with the anti-virus anti-invasive threat anti-what-have-you-got program. Nope, not that one either. What about the program from the cable company that provides my high speed internet connection for a hefty fee? No, not that one. How about a setting in the Googlesphere?

bug on a Shasta daisy bud

After awhile I finally give up, and go to the browser I usually use. I don't see myself listed as a member of Geo's page on that browser either. So I join up. All I have to do is put in my password. I remember it, everything works fine. Until I see my old avatar and decide to update it. I upload a new one. It is rejected. I browse for a particular file folder with a picture I think might be fun to use. The "browse" function shows a file folder arrangement that was changed two years ago. That function used to work fine - until it was improved in an update.

the bindweed gets a visitor

A memory crosses my now grumpy brain. I bought an out of the box computer back around, oh, was it 2,000 or 2,001? It came with a lovely little program called EZ CD Creator. I could make a CD with such little effort. I could make CD covers and inserts that automatically listed all of the contents on the disc I'd just made. It had a great little graphics program that allowed text or other images to be superimposed over pictures. There were lots of fonts for the text, which could be tilted, placed in circular form, oh, there were all kinds of things that could be done. It was all so, so, well - - - so EZ. But then my Internet and Phone Service Provider made dsl available and I was sorely tempted by the newer, the faster, the improved. Which wouldn't work. The computer software refused to load the proper drivers. After months of frustrations, after months of paying for a service I couldn't use, I found the cause in an online forum. It was a peculiarity of the version of Windows which came loaded on the computer. I purchased the newer (expensive) Windows XP, and spent a portion of eternity in purgatory while the update took place. The dsl worked without my doing anything. I entered high speed Nirvana. I lived in a heightened state of awareness, a state of exultation, a state of delightenment. Until I tired to burn a CD. My great little free with the computer EZ CD Creator wouldn't work with the upgraded Windows XP. Okay.... I bought the new updated (pricey) EZ CD Creator. Except all it would do was burn the CD. It would no longer automatically list the contents of my newly burned CD. When I went to type it all out, I discovered that there was only one font I could use, an ugly one at that. The graphics part of the program was gone. It turned out that EZ CD Creator had been purchased by another company, and I had bought a "basic" version of the new improved EZ CD creator. The functions I loved were still available - if I purchased their expensive CD cover creation program. And their separate easy to use font pack. And for those to work I should probably purchase an upgraded version of their basic program. The only improvement I could detect was to the manufacturer's bottom line. Somewhere, Steve Jobs must have been smiling.

One of my old computers, cobbled together from spare parts in what a friend called "open architecture". 

I remember renting a run down little studio apartment in Greenwich Village in 1975. When I first saw it, I was happy enough - it was better than all the other average run down little hovels I had seen. The previous tenant had lived there for a very long, long time. The place was a mess and was being fixed up. It was basically a studio of about 11 feet in width, except that there was a squared archway between the main part of the room and a 9 feet in width section for the kitchen area and bathroom. Two large French doors hung in the archway; every single pane of glass broken. I went right back to the realtor and said I wanted to take it. She called the landlord. Another relator on the phone with the landlord also wanted the place. My realtor held up two fingers. I nodded. "Well, my client will put up two moths security." I got the place. I could have it as soon as they finished fixing it up. I asked that the French Doors be kept, offering to pay for the replacement of the glass sections myself. I waited and waited. They never seemed to finish fixing up the place. Weeks went by. Finally, all that remained was sweeping up from the fixing up. There was another week of waiting. I requested a change in my already paid rent due date, and said that I'd be happy to sweep the place out. I was given the go ahead to move in, which I did one night after work. The French Doors were gone. The old ceramic sink was gone, replaced with a cut down aluminum fish monger's sink barely propped up with a wooden structure of some sort. There was a new gas stove, and a new refrigerator. The place had been painted, and - what was the landlord's word?- "improved". I plugged everything in, and went to the nearby grocery store to get provisions. The store was in its last day of a really good sale on meat. I bought a fair amount of it, putting what I wasn't going to use for dinner into the freezer. Next morning I trooped off to work. When I got home after my 8 (+ lunchtime) hours of toiling in the fields of Mammon, I sat down and turned on the tv to watch the news. It blew up. I turned on the radio. It didn't work either. I opened the fridge - it wasn't working. Everything in it was spoiled. I pondered the situation. The lights worked, but nothing else would. The Village was one of the first areas in New York City to be wired for electricity. In those days, there was only direct current. Lights would work on direct current....  Sure enough, the place hadn't been updated to alternating current. It had, you see, been "improved".

'Japanese' beetles have arrived to destroy the roses.
 

One can almost hear the munching...

Post Script - There are a lot of graphic files on my computer, ordered in an arcane manner of my preference. I used to be able to just tell blogger the file name I wanted to upload. Older files had underlines or dashes so no blank spaces existed in the name, as that would confuse the programs. That got fixed. Except now if there is a dash or an underline in a file name, the upload programs can't seem to find the file - I have to go to the appropriate folder and click on the image. Blogger itself misbehaves; I added a caption to the above photo and it suddenly moved ahead of the previous picture and changed to a very large size. Because I have the page magnified, the options for managing the size and placement of the photo become hidden behind another button and are inaccessible until I go back to the size blogger seems to think is more appropriate. I "preview" the page so I can see how it will look when published. A banner appears to warn me that programs are in use which may be unsafe, so the program has thoughtfully blocked them for me. It has to be clicked off. It's been this way ever since they made a number of "improvements".

Those trees and etc.

Regarding yesterday's post, I wondered about the identity of a stand of trees on the Havemeyer Webb estate (the Shelburne Museum).  Those trees, by the way, line one side of Route 7 just outside of Burlington as it heads south towards the museum. We didn't find any of the gardening staff to ask about the identity of the trees. I'm sure they would know, but if they don't another short drive will get one to another part of the Webb family's estate which became the 1,500 acre Shelburne Farms, devoted to sustainable agricultural practices, which is also noted for its gardens.

As it happens, I took a few photos of the trees:

Geo may have identified the trees (Thank You, Geo!) They are possibly ligustrum japonicum. Whatever they are, I like them when they're in bloom.

Since I've gone this far, I might as well post a couple of the other pictures I took on the museum
grounds. As we entered the admissions building, it was impossible to ignore these haystacks which were standing outside. They aren't your everyday standard Vermont or New England haystack:

The reason for their appearance became evident a little later in the new exhibition gallery:

Monet - Haystacks in Winter




There are many gardens at the museum. This was one I walked by:

The following caught my eye. As I'll explain one day soon, I'm going to have to move some of my plants at Solar Hill to make more grazing area for the sheep. That includes moving my hostas. I used to have lady's mantle (with the chartreuse flowers) in my garden in Boston. I miss it and would like to have it again. I suspect I will copy this idea:

 

My heart goes out to those who volunteer:

 

 

The above garden was next to a building with an old wooden cellar entrance:

Which was (I think) across from this lovely old building, whose investigation is waiting for another time.

 

And that building was next to the giant chair. I suspect the chair came from nearby Gardner, Massachusetts - a mill town which turned out, you guessed it, chairs.





Well, Blogger is being a bit difficult again, the photos are either out of focus or I am (hey - it happens!) and I am way behind in the preparations for tonight's radio show. This seems to be the perfect place to leave off - a chair just waiting. I hope you get to sit in it one day.

Going fourth...

It's a rainy, cool July 4th morning here in Brattleboro. I used to really love July the 4ths. Until recent years, that is. A few years ago I had a job running a video store. It was a lot of work, but it was work that I more or less enjoyed, or to be more precise work I didn't mind all that much. I wasn't all that fond of the 12 to 15 hour days, and I recall a minor celebration when I actually got two days off one month. What I very much minded was not being fairly or properly paid, the promised raises that never arrived, etc. I quit that job on a July the 4th the owner made me work - it was going to be my first day off in two months. That impulsive action nearly destroyed my life; I was out of work for a long time. When I found work it was as a cashier in a supermarket where I was required to work on holidays, where I think I got one July the 4th off in five years. That company would schedule people to work for four hours on the fourth. I guess that had some kind of poetic ring to the Belgian corporation which owned the place. Three generations of my family had fought in the American Revolution; the day once held some meaning to me.

Thankfully, the rain this morning isn't another crazy thunderstorm. I like such storms, I like the call and response of streaks of lightning and replying thunder, the sound of the deluge of water cascading off the roof. Unfortunately, my vegetable garden is in a slightly flat depression partway down a hill, which puts it right in the path of rampaging runoff. It's a small veggie planting this year, but twice in the last week storm waters created havoc. (It has been several years since this last occurred.) Yesterday morning I spent a couple of hours fixing up the damage from the second storm. Last night there was another downpour. The rain will keep me out of the garden today, as will work on my radio show tomorrow. I must admit a certain nervousness regarding what I shall find when I get there on Sunday. I distract myself looking for July the 4th images to post from the mass media factories of America, trying not to think of the garden situation as a metaphor. 

Arlene Judge



Ava Gardner

Elizabeth Taylor

My thoughts turn to Americana. This past Monday, I became joyfully immersed in it. I talked a friend into driving two and a half hours upstate to the Shelburne Museum. It is not your everyday day museum. It was created by Electra Havemeyer Webb. Her parents, Louisine Elder and Henery Osborne Hevemeyer were wealthy. Very wealthy. Miss Electra Haveremeyer married Mr. James Watson Webb, a Vandebilt. They were very, very wealthy together.

Louisine and H.O. collected art. Louisine was touring the continent when she became friends with Mary Cassatt, who introduced her to a group of young unappreicateds who would soon be known as Impressionists. The Havemeyers became the first Americans purchasing their work. Most of the collection they acquired was left to New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where their bequest became the foundation of the Impressionist wing. Some of the paintings, however, were left to Electra. They used to adorn the walls of the Havemeyer-Webb apartment at 740 Park Avenue. (If an apartment there becomes available, it is said that you must show a minimum worth of  one hundred million dollars before the cooperative will even talk to you.)

Electra and Louisine Havemeyer by Mary Cassatt

Mrs. Webb was 19 when she began to collect Americana. She loved the large summer estate the family had near Burlington, Vermont, and decided to turn part of it into a museum for her collections. That kind of space was needed. When the last surviving steamship on Lake Champlain went out of business, she bought it and had it moved to the estate. It sits near a lighthouse she purchased. She showed interesting attention to detail - the estate has many wonderful gardens; the plantings by the lighthouse are the kind of rugosa roses one finds at the sea shore near lighthouses (they have an ability to withstand salt air).


The Ticonderoga is the only surviving vertical beam sidewheel steamship.
It is 200 feet long, and weighs 892 tons.

Just past the steamship were these trees - neither my friend (a college professor) nor myself have any idea what they are - please let me know if you do:

 

Blogger has suddenly decided that I shouldn't use the "caption" function - if I try, it deletes the picture. So... just a few steps further and one finds this giant chair:

 

 

(And, in case you are wondering, yes, that is your correspondent taking a break and sitting down.)

 

Mrs. Webb saved one local old Shelburne building from demolition, moved it to the estate, and reused it for her collection of the contents of a circa 1840's General Store, Post Office, Barber Shop and Apothecary. (There is a similar era dentist office on the second floor.) She occasionally bought the collections of others. Next to the barber shop is a room with over 300 straight razors, the collection of a wealthy lawyer.  I didn't take any pictures of the store (I was often too overwhelmed to think of it) but I did take a few in the apothecary.

 

 

 

 

When I commented on the placement of a couple of objects amusingly displayed in the store, the docent noted that they were "right where Mrs. Webb put them".

 

She also saved a local meeting house and had it moved to the grounds. It houses a collection of Vermont music.

 

She had a small pond installed next to the meeting house:

 

Elsewhere on the property are an old train station (with a 10 wheel steam locomotive), a carousel, a sawmill, a covered bridge, collections of carriages, Conestoga wagons, stagecoaches, hand carved circus miniatures, a jailhouse, textiles (a huge quilt collection), weathervanes, hunting decoys, an  1840's smokehouse, a Shaker shed, a round barn, a worker's stone cottage, and much, much more.

On the property, as a tribute to Mrs. Webb, the family built a reproduction of a fairly un-Vermont Greek Revival Vermont building she admired. In it they put five intact rooms from the Park Avenue digs. The rooms are stunning. The library, for instance, utilized dark wood moldings and black leather wallpaper. (I think I swooned at that point.) Throughout the rooms are the paintings Mrs. Webb's parents left her. Two Rembrandts, Corot, I think there was an El Greco, etc. In a basement room are bronze sculptures by many artists including Degas and Frederick Remington. A number of painting are not in the apartments at present - and therein lies the reason for this trip.

A new building on the estate currently has a temporary museum styled exhibition of the Impressionist holdings, punningly titled "In a New Light". Five or six Monets, several Manets, Degas, Corot, Cassatt. Even the doorway to the exhibit held promise (the Monet which was the source for this image in on display):

The first thing visible upon entering was Monet's "Le Pont, Amersterdam". Just to its left and several feet back was a large photograph of the actual scene. It was very interesting to note that Monet moved buildings and objects a bit to paint what he saw.

One Monet in particular haunts me, not quite to the point of obsession. The reproduction of it does not catch the colors at all. What appears here as a sort of reddish haze was actually sort of, well, not quite chartreuse, not yellow, but definitely early morning light through fog. I think the problem may be that this "Church at Vernon through fog" (near his home at Giverny) is a view Monet painted many times. I wonder if the online reproductions of the painting owned by Mrs. Webb is the same as the one on exhibit.

Blogger and my photo program are both acting up, which may be a last gasp of Mercury retrograde, or the electronics' method of telling me this post is too long, or contains too many graphics, so to rush to a finish...

The Cassatt at the beginning of this essay is also on display, along with several other pieces which I recognized from books, and a few I'd never seen before. I must post this one more, simply because its colors were so stunning, a Degas (what was it with Degas and ballerinas anyway? Maybe he just wanted to try on a tutu?) :

The exhibit was clever, stunningly beautiful, and the works are still in my mind's eye four days later. There was so much to see...

I must go back there soon.

Divertisement

 

A Modest Proposal for the Preservation of Individual Rights and Liberties.

 

In Brattleboro- July 3rd, 2014

When, in the course of legal events it becomes evident that the separate and equal rights which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitles us have become diluted, a decent respect for the opinions of others requires some explanation of the course of action being proposed.

Whereas the business community incorporated enjoys benefits of low to no taxes, taxpayer funded operating and research subsidies, the ability of the Officers of the Corporation to not be held personally responsible for the debts of the corporation engendered by them, legal protection of name and accounts against piracy, legal ability to financially influence elections and lawmaking beyond what is seemly, ability to discriminate against others on religious grounds, and sundry other benefits which are not available to the common taxpayer, a course of corrective action in favor of the individual is required. Corporations enjoy such rights, and corporations are considered to have the rights of individuals. Therefore, I humbly propose that each and every one of us becomes our own closely held individual Corporation.

In the state of Vermont, a “B corporation” (for Benefit Corporation) status is available. Decisions affecting the operation of such corporation take into account social and environmental missions, and a public benefit (i.e a percentage of profits donated to a specific cause) may be declared. Such a corporation may name specific benefit purposes, i.e. influencing educational standards that affect the children of our corporate families, by advocating for the teaching of fact based science, etc.

It might be best, however, to incorporate in some offshore country which exists basically for the evasion of taxes. As the corporation will advocate for wealthy and large corporate entities to pay a more equitable share of their income in taxes, this may seem ill advised. But in an era in which a company can successfully argue for a faith based exemption from providing health care which includes birth control, while that same company has investments in the manufacture of contraceptives, the concept of hypocrisy has obviously lost any meaning or sense of shame. Incorporating in another country could, therefore, be presented as a public display of our seriousness of purpose.

As the process of incorporation will require some small investment, as well as a Board of Directors of the corporation, I propose an even exchange – help me afford the cost and become a member of my board, and I will do the same for you.

As one of the first orders of business would be in the arena of public education, namely the encouraging of others to invest in individual corporations, we would, of course, offer advice and services to that end for a small fee. I would therefore suggest the adoption of a slogan on the order of “Control your fate – incorporate!”

Those interested in being on the Board of my corporate entity should contact me privately.

Thank You.

getting there

My garden is at Solar Hill, which is about a 40 minute walk from where I live. It's an enjoyable enough walk, with a number of interesting buildings and front yard gardens along the way. I like the effects of early morning light.

Once I get about half a block down the street, I usually cross at about this point and cut through the town common. Currently, the white clover is in bloom.

There are momentary distractions along the way...

 

The wood on the side of the dirt road up Solar Hill.



I generally go there very early in the morning these days as I am now finding it quite uncomfortable to work in the sun after about 11am. The changes in just one day can be surprising. The berry like slightly out of focus red buds in yesterday's picture look like this today:

And the as yet to open gloriosa daisy from yesterday came into better focus....

 

The cemetery rose that hides in the day lily foliage was blooming too. I found its parent in a friend's family cemetery many years ago; it was in the mid 1800's section of the plots.  It is heavily scented, by the way.

 

Also new this morning:

 

On the way home, about two blocks from where I live, there is a legal office which painted its side wall this spring. I've already made this pic my desktop:

 

 

 

 

 

In the morning garden July 1st, 2014

Okay, it's like this. Somehow, even though I have more time to do things since I retired, I often feel like I have no time, meaning time available. I've been pushing off getting back to this blog as I am the type of person who would like to have things just so, and so on, and so forth, etcetera ad infinitum. And I should tell you first about Solar Hill, all properly illustrated with my own photographs, of course. I have a garden there within a much larger garden; and I should tell you about the gardens and some of the idiosyncrasies of the place, like the silent walkers. I do and don't want to note my frustrations trying to use the cheap point and click digital camera I purchased last year which I am still trying to figure out how to use, or to be more correct how to make do what I want it to instead of what it wants to do because it's a cheap point and click digital camera.

So, if I don't start posting a few of my pictures I'll never get this story started. It does take awhile to tell. That's the way gardens are. 

Early on the morning on July 1st, 2014...