ION - It's Only Natural
The Cat on the Bookshelf
Nuthatch Morning
At Fairfield University Bookstore
Yes, Poetry
Check out my wife's poem on page 8 of the bi-monthly Yes, Poetry magazine.
Pumpkin Soup
Here's a pumpkin soup, served in the shell, that my wife made recently. We softened the pumpkin in the oven first, and then used the recipe for squash soup in A History of Connecticut Food. Along with some roasted pumpkin seeds and a healthy salad with quail eggs, it made for a delicious meal. Try it out!
Mark Twain Is Connecticut
Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, is often thought of as a Missouri writer. He is also buried with his wife's family in Elmira, New York. But he spent most of his years in the state of Connecticut. He wrote most of his books here (including A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court). I was also born elsewhere - in Maryland, and spent years in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Everyone wants to claim Mark Twain as their own. But we have the best claim to him, and should make sure that everyone knows it.
The photo above is of his amazing house in Hartford. The billiards table is still there. Go check it out.
Robert Bly: News of the Universe
A good poet and a great thinker. I was impressed by Iron John, and it really helped me during my late twenties during a crisis of purpose. I was even more impressed when I met the man himself. I'm looking forward to this documentary!
Call Some Place Paradise, Kiss It Goodbye
There is a secret town that my
girlfriend and later wife Amy and I found after two intense days. We had climbed
a large mountain, seen frozen waterfalls, and fallen in love. The town itself
was full of charming antique shops, pottery studios, and outdoor
sculptures.
A huge monument stood on the edges of town, and a small elevator zoomed us to the small room at the top. From there, we could see the whole of the wide valley, the small friendly houses scattered around the urban center, the fields and meadows beyond, and the cup of the mountains enfolding all. A small college hid on the outskirts, and we talked of someday teaching there, of living in one of the brightly-colored Victorian houses. We would sit on the porch and read each other’s poetry, satisfied in the autumn of our busy lives that we had done the things we set out to do.
"Why keep the name of that town a secret?" One of my creative writing students asked me. The reason, I told her, is that this town isn’t sharable at all. I will persuade you to visit, and you will be disappointed. It is special to me for a complex set of personal and associative reasons. To others it may seem boring, or trite, or even ugly. Another writer who lived in that town for years believes it to be the most twisted place on earth, full of corruption and evil. Once, I was extolling the beauties of Florence, Italy to a colleague, and she laughed bitterly. "It’s rotten to the core," she told me. Who is accurate? Both, and neither.
Another of these favorite places appeared to Amy and I over a year later, after we had a fight. Like most fights, it was over something outrageously stupid, a difference of opinion that we had blown into monstrous proportions. We had woken up to a driving rain, and had cooked oatmeal and Turkish coffee in the tent. After taking down the sopping tent in the rain, we drove miserably through traffic down a long coastal road past fishing villages and sleepy tourist towns to a dock where we had fried fish for lunch. We boarded a ferry and after leaving the harbor, the captain announced that it might be a rough trip. It was the roughest we’d ever experienced, with six-foot swells and one enormous wave that whacked us and nearly sent the small boat tumbling end over end. I put my brine-soaked head between my legs and fought my nausea, wondering if all this was worth it.
We finally reached the island, and I collapsed on the dock. When I arose, I followed the steady Amy into perfection: small clapboard houses, flower gardens, and sailboats. Thousands of monarch butterflies landed on every flower, resting before heading south for the winter. Gulls and cormorants ranged around the rocky coast. There were no cars, no locks on doors, and no macadam roads. We stayed in an upscale hostel, with shared baths but a private room, from which we could see the harbor and the green hump of a steep grassy island on the far side. The next day after blueberry pancakes we hiked around the borders of the island, finding dozens of artists with easels en plein air, painting the island’s mystical landscapes. Amy picked raspberries and blackberries, and we scrambled over volcanic rock, shot through with limestone, and dotted with patches of orange lichen. We found an outcrop that we had seen in a famous painting, and sat on it and wrote, while the waves crashed far below.
That evening after naps in our breezy room with its simple rocking chair, we ate dinner at the island inn: chilled blueberry soup, pineapple salmon, corn on the cob, mussels, crème brule, lobster, and glasses of "Perfect Stranger" wine. By the time we finished, the sky was dark, and without streetlamps or flashlights we made our way back on the road in absolute darkness, with the only light emanating from the thick Milky Way outlined in a billion stars overhead. On the ferry the next day, the sea was glassy and full of seals. It was a place, not to live, but to summer in, to live slowly and purely, to create and to absorb, to make of life something better, and to keep a perfect secret.
This place felt like mine, because I found it, without any help from travel guides or travel writers. I looked at a map and said "I want to go there." Later, I discovered that other writers had already realized the singular nature of that place. But it still feels like mine, because my experience predated that knowledge. In fact, that fact made me question the very nature of my work, the usefulness of travel writing as inspiration and guide. Maybe, instead of listening to what I have to say, you should head out and find your own. Maybe that is the true purpose of travel writing, to encourage rather than direct, to point in all directions, instead of just one.
I want to not tell you about one last place, a place I don’t want to write about, for fear of ruining it, for fear of drawing more people there. It is a place you all should see, though I don’t want you to. It is a place that would die if more people came there, if my stories brought the hordes, or maybe even one more person. It is a secret valley that first appeared to me when I was sick and tired. I had just completed three days of difficult hiking though cold rain and hot sun. My stomach had rebelled against dehydration and I didn’t eat all day. After a long downhill slope from a long cliff, my friend Ryan and I reached the river. One of the many waterfalls that made up the thousand-yard cascade was on our left, with two young girls bathing in the pool at the base, like mountain nymphs greeting us at the entrance to a hidden godhome. The waiting mountain hut welcomed us and enfolded us in piney arms, as Ryan and I spent a restful day on the rocks of the waterfall, talking with a beautiful hut girl known only as "five-star," and recovering our strength and balance.
After that I tried to return every year to this cabin and the magical landscape that surrounded it. The long view from the hut’s porch down a glacial notch toward breadloaf mountains seemed to etch green onto my soul. Once, in early May I hiked down that notch, finding bear tracks and swollen rivers full with spring thaw. Jack-in-the-pulpits peeked their ministerial heads into the bright world. Moose shouldered through the forest, leaving evidence of their enormous passages. Two friends who mean a lot to me, Chris and Alison, hiked with me over the unknown ridges to the east another year, through mossy-floored forests and over a wide pass, away from this secret home, which by that time I had acknowledged as one of my favorite spots on earth. But even with this awareness, I had not lost that sacred feeling of hope and purity that made it so.
Once in a while, my heart becomes full of the world’s many problems and I retreat to that forest to renew my strength. I wander the hills and dales, my walking stick grasped firmly in a sturdy hand, at last finding the rushing river that spills down from the high places in a seemingly endless cascade. Near the base of this river by a friendly mountain hut, the view opens once again to fairy-tale mountaintops at the end of a long carved canyon. My muscles ache with the exertions of tramping these steep mountains, but the hut crew blesses me with a hot cup of soup and a mug of tea. I sit on a boulder in the center of the river, just above the slippery lip of the largest fall. The roar of the river drowns thoughts and carries away feelings, until I am empty as a hollowed cave, smooth like polished granite, and clean: born of water and sound.
First published on Hackwriters in February 2008.
A huge monument stood on the edges of town, and a small elevator zoomed us to the small room at the top. From there, we could see the whole of the wide valley, the small friendly houses scattered around the urban center, the fields and meadows beyond, and the cup of the mountains enfolding all. A small college hid on the outskirts, and we talked of someday teaching there, of living in one of the brightly-colored Victorian houses. We would sit on the porch and read each other’s poetry, satisfied in the autumn of our busy lives that we had done the things we set out to do.
"Why keep the name of that town a secret?" One of my creative writing students asked me. The reason, I told her, is that this town isn’t sharable at all. I will persuade you to visit, and you will be disappointed. It is special to me for a complex set of personal and associative reasons. To others it may seem boring, or trite, or even ugly. Another writer who lived in that town for years believes it to be the most twisted place on earth, full of corruption and evil. Once, I was extolling the beauties of Florence, Italy to a colleague, and she laughed bitterly. "It’s rotten to the core," she told me. Who is accurate? Both, and neither.
Another of these favorite places appeared to Amy and I over a year later, after we had a fight. Like most fights, it was over something outrageously stupid, a difference of opinion that we had blown into monstrous proportions. We had woken up to a driving rain, and had cooked oatmeal and Turkish coffee in the tent. After taking down the sopping tent in the rain, we drove miserably through traffic down a long coastal road past fishing villages and sleepy tourist towns to a dock where we had fried fish for lunch. We boarded a ferry and after leaving the harbor, the captain announced that it might be a rough trip. It was the roughest we’d ever experienced, with six-foot swells and one enormous wave that whacked us and nearly sent the small boat tumbling end over end. I put my brine-soaked head between my legs and fought my nausea, wondering if all this was worth it.
We finally reached the island, and I collapsed on the dock. When I arose, I followed the steady Amy into perfection: small clapboard houses, flower gardens, and sailboats. Thousands of monarch butterflies landed on every flower, resting before heading south for the winter. Gulls and cormorants ranged around the rocky coast. There were no cars, no locks on doors, and no macadam roads. We stayed in an upscale hostel, with shared baths but a private room, from which we could see the harbor and the green hump of a steep grassy island on the far side. The next day after blueberry pancakes we hiked around the borders of the island, finding dozens of artists with easels en plein air, painting the island’s mystical landscapes. Amy picked raspberries and blackberries, and we scrambled over volcanic rock, shot through with limestone, and dotted with patches of orange lichen. We found an outcrop that we had seen in a famous painting, and sat on it and wrote, while the waves crashed far below.
That evening after naps in our breezy room with its simple rocking chair, we ate dinner at the island inn: chilled blueberry soup, pineapple salmon, corn on the cob, mussels, crème brule, lobster, and glasses of "Perfect Stranger" wine. By the time we finished, the sky was dark, and without streetlamps or flashlights we made our way back on the road in absolute darkness, with the only light emanating from the thick Milky Way outlined in a billion stars overhead. On the ferry the next day, the sea was glassy and full of seals. It was a place, not to live, but to summer in, to live slowly and purely, to create and to absorb, to make of life something better, and to keep a perfect secret.
This place felt like mine, because I found it, without any help from travel guides or travel writers. I looked at a map and said "I want to go there." Later, I discovered that other writers had already realized the singular nature of that place. But it still feels like mine, because my experience predated that knowledge. In fact, that fact made me question the very nature of my work, the usefulness of travel writing as inspiration and guide. Maybe, instead of listening to what I have to say, you should head out and find your own. Maybe that is the true purpose of travel writing, to encourage rather than direct, to point in all directions, instead of just one.
I want to not tell you about one last place, a place I don’t want to write about, for fear of ruining it, for fear of drawing more people there. It is a place you all should see, though I don’t want you to. It is a place that would die if more people came there, if my stories brought the hordes, or maybe even one more person. It is a secret valley that first appeared to me when I was sick and tired. I had just completed three days of difficult hiking though cold rain and hot sun. My stomach had rebelled against dehydration and I didn’t eat all day. After a long downhill slope from a long cliff, my friend Ryan and I reached the river. One of the many waterfalls that made up the thousand-yard cascade was on our left, with two young girls bathing in the pool at the base, like mountain nymphs greeting us at the entrance to a hidden godhome. The waiting mountain hut welcomed us and enfolded us in piney arms, as Ryan and I spent a restful day on the rocks of the waterfall, talking with a beautiful hut girl known only as "five-star," and recovering our strength and balance.
After that I tried to return every year to this cabin and the magical landscape that surrounded it. The long view from the hut’s porch down a glacial notch toward breadloaf mountains seemed to etch green onto my soul. Once, in early May I hiked down that notch, finding bear tracks and swollen rivers full with spring thaw. Jack-in-the-pulpits peeked their ministerial heads into the bright world. Moose shouldered through the forest, leaving evidence of their enormous passages. Two friends who mean a lot to me, Chris and Alison, hiked with me over the unknown ridges to the east another year, through mossy-floored forests and over a wide pass, away from this secret home, which by that time I had acknowledged as one of my favorite spots on earth. But even with this awareness, I had not lost that sacred feeling of hope and purity that made it so.
Once in a while, my heart becomes full of the world’s many problems and I retreat to that forest to renew my strength. I wander the hills and dales, my walking stick grasped firmly in a sturdy hand, at last finding the rushing river that spills down from the high places in a seemingly endless cascade. Near the base of this river by a friendly mountain hut, the view opens once again to fairy-tale mountaintops at the end of a long carved canyon. My muscles ache with the exertions of tramping these steep mountains, but the hut crew blesses me with a hot cup of soup and a mug of tea. I sit on a boulder in the center of the river, just above the slippery lip of the largest fall. The roar of the river drowns thoughts and carries away feelings, until I am empty as a hollowed cave, smooth like polished granite, and clean: born of water and sound.
First published on Hackwriters in February 2008.
Connecticut Muffin
Visited Connecticut Muffin the other day in Brooklyn. It's so often that here in CT we get "New York Bagels" or "Texas Barbecue" that it was nice to see us exporting something, even if it is only our name. To the residents of Brooklyn perhaps Connecticut is a magical place, with rolling hills and trees, where fresh-faced bakers create the day's pastry in colonial fireplaces, and the morning smells as sweet as the country air...
Happy Turkey Day!
A champion turkey courtesy of my brother-in-law, Erick. I went straight for a leg.
This was only the half of it...homemade cranberry sauce, Japanese potatoes, pickled radishes, stuffing, brussel sprouts, sweet potato pie, apple pie, muffins, and much much more...
Do Not Pick the Daffodils
$98.00 per flower! That's pretty steep. Is this what we have to do to keep people from behaving badly? What do you think?
Hubbard Park and Castle Craig
Hiked up to Castle Craig the other day, since Amy had not been there since she was a child.
Despite being a crisp, cold day, the views were a little hazy (see Sleeping Giant below).
I had never taken the white trail to the castle, usually approaching it on the Metacomet (or one time going straight up the cliffs by accident). It was a fine little hike. A couple of ladies were heading up just as we reached the bridge across I-691 below. They were already tired, and I'm afraid I lied and told them it was an easy walk. Sorry ladies!
The Little Rendezvous
Finally made it to the Little Rendezvous on Pratt Street in Meriden the other day. The oven (pictured below) has been in operation since 1880, and in 1938 it began baking pizza pies. That makes it possibly the oldest (operating) brick oven in the state.
It is one of the best places in the state to get coal-fired, New Haven style thin crust chewy center pizza like the one pictured below.
It was delicious. The Little Rendezvous is clearly one of the state's best pizza joints. And it is a 'joint' make no mistake. It is no fancy restaurant, but who cares when the pizza is this darn good. Next time we'll try their anchovy pie.
Lobster Landing After Sandy
Courtesy of the Clinton Patch, here is one of my favorite places in Connecticut during Hurricane Sandy. Will it come back and serve us the best hot lobster rolls in the world? Time will tell.
Let's do what we can and all pitch in to help our Connecticut brethren during this time of need!
Homemade Tom Yum Soup
Homemade Tom Yum Soup with a wonderful duck stock and fish balls.
Welcome Home
My boy, Django, waiting for us to return in the downstairs window. It's a great thing to have cats to welcome us - they make the house a home.
Menunkatuck Trail
Took a walk on the Menunkatuck Trail the other day - Connecticut's newest Blue Trail, and part of the epic New England Trail.
Plans are afoot to take the Menunkatuck down to Long Island Sound, but for now it goes south from the Mattabettsett through the Cockaponset State Forest and Timberlands Reserve. Since there was hunting in the state forest, we went south from Route 80.
Had a wonderful lunch on Rock Creek near the Guilford Lakes. Can't wait to hike more of the trail.
Antique and Artisan Center
Stopped by the beautiful Antique and Artisan Center in Stamford last week.
Most of the items were a little out of our price range, but everything was absolutely gorgeous.
And you have to love a place that has buttons to press for assistance, along with free notepads and pens to take notes as you walk around the vendors' individual areas. Find out more in the Insiders' Guide to Connecticut!
Dressing Room Theatre
Saw Wait Until Dark at the Dressing Room Theatre in Stamford last weekend. Great show and a great little venue. I highly recommend seeing a show here.