The Strolling of the Heifers

Linking to My World and Shadow Shots

My last post Homelessness in the U.S, is a serious and sober one. Let's have some fun now, shall we?  :-)

 Last Saturday, The Future Mr. Pagan Sphinx and I awoke early to beautiful morning of sun and a fresh spring breeze. A perfect day to take in the 10th annual Strolling of the Heifers parade (and Slow Living Summit) in nearby Brattleboro, Vermont. It was to be our first time, as previous years we've missed it for one reason or another.

The Strolling of the Heifers celebrates New England small farm tradition, new-age organic farming and, as my friend Susan put it, generous doses of fun and funk! Enjoy!

There is a tradition in Vermont that if you see a cow in the middle of the road, go ahead and milk it. Just make sure you leave enough milk for the next guy.  ;-)

The sign on the back of the cart reads save gas, ride an ass!  :-)

 The first crop of local strawberries is on its way to the markets this week!

Harlow's farm and sugarhouse is a business that was always generous to the kids at my former Vermont school; giving us free tours and great deals on fruit to take home.

 And proud.

 I thought this girl was especially sweet. The heifer, I mean!

 The Dairy Fairy organizes her ring!

Not just for heifers:

Finally, for you foreigners who assume that all Americans are obese, a skinny cow!  ;-)

A Little Madness in the Spring

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown -
Who ponders this tremendous scene -
This whole Experiment of Green -
As if it were his own!  

~~Emily Dickinson

For several years now,every April during my spring vacation I visit Emily Dickinson's garden at The Homestead. Emily is my neighbor to the southeast, less than a half hour's drive from where I live. This is one of my top favorite places in Western Massachusetts.

 Since childhood I've been fascinated by The Belle of Amherst. Her reclusiveness has been speculated upon by all manner of scholars, some of whom have made it their entire life's work to study her poems and letters, in an effort to understand who she really was.

A very private person, obviously. By her own instructions, her letters were burned after her death by her younger sister Lavinia, who while doing so, came upon a box of 1700 of Emily's poems. During her lifetime, Emily Dickinson felt uneasy about publishing her very personal and highly passionate writing. Perhaps she felt secure that her tiny bundles of poems, sewed together into little books, would one day be discovered and found to have merit.

I've always entertained a suspicion that Emily's reclusiveness was not a result of serious mental illness as was once highly speculated. The old stereotype of her as a frail, perhaps frigid spinster have more recently given way to a view of Emily much more after my own heart!  In thinking of someone like Dickinson, we assume that she was like a little mouse, never speaking to anyone, holing up in her upstairs bedroom to write, paranoid that anyone was watching her. In fact, Emily interacted fully with her own family, having close relationships with both her siblings and an adoration of her nieces and nephews. She tended the family garden and baked the family bread daily. Eccentric, yes. Yet busy and productive, with a sharpness of mind that is one of the trademarks of her poetry.

That her poems reveal, at times, a smoldering physical passion is obvious. Her relationship with God and religion  tentative and questioning, she was most comfortable worshiping nature in her garden. Her father and brother Austin, prominent citizens of Amherst, helped to found the Congregational Church, just across the street from the Dickinson home. Emily never stepped foot inside of it.

"I feel that the world holds a predominant place in my affections. I do not feel that I could give up all for Christ, were I called to die" (L13)

 I have not gone into a full biography, as others have done a much better job of it than I could possibly. For everything that is known about Emily, please visit The Homestead website, linked above. For many things speculated and invented, read Jerome Charyn's delightful novel The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson.

Here some more photos of Emily's garden in April, 2011. If you visit last year's post on this subject, you will notice a difference in how the garden is blooming. Spring is here, albeit somewhat delayed.

Scilla

Spring comes on the World—
I sight the Aprils—
Hueless to me until thou come
As, till the Bee
Blossoms stand negative
Touched to Conditions
By a Hum. 

~~Emily Dickinson

 

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown -
Who ponders this tremendous scene -
This whole Experiment of Green -
As if it were his own!

 The path from the Dickinson Homestead to The Evergreens, Austin and Susan Dickinson's home.

Magnolia

Hyacinth

 

 

Wild Nights - Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile - the Winds -
To a Heart in port -
Done with the Compass -
Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden -
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor - Tonight -
In Thee!

Linking to That's My World

Picture for One Moment

We got up to High Ledges Wildlife Sanctuary on Saturday and as the windchill must have been in the single digits, we passed on a hike and had pancakes and delicious local maple syrup at Davenport's Maple Farm in Shelburne, Massachusetts.

 In addition to maple sugaring, Davenport's Farm raises cows. There were two calves in pens for the kids to pet. Being kids at heart, we couldn't resist them. This photo is of the shier, more skittish one

Below is The Future Mr. Pagan Sphinx petting the more friendly calf, whose look of ecstasy is priceless!  :-)

Linking to Scenic Sunday and That's My World!

Pagan Sphinx Photo 2011 © All Rights Reserved

Picture for One Moment

Saturday was brisk and windy but beautifully sunny. The-future-Mr.-Pagan-Sphinx (that's a nod to the style of hyphening one's name with one's spouse, era ;-) and I decided we had to go to the bulb show at Smith College Botanical Garden, as it was the last weekend before they closed up the bulb display for the season. We figured the last day would be less crowded but we were wrong. The place was busier than I've ever seen it on any weekend I attended this event in the past. The botanical garden is a small jewel among the laid-back, but busy pace of Northampton. And the view from of the lake from the knoll the greenhouse sits upon, is western Mass at its relaxed best. If you live in western Mass and you don't love Northampton, you have no heart!  :-D

Because it was so crowded, it was hard to take decent photos, let alone get any stand-outs. This is my humble photo offering from the bulb show, which I hope you will enjoy. For some photos of this bulb show that will really knock your socks off, go visit my dear friend The Cunning Runt at Little Bang Theory.  (for those of you who don't know him, CR is The Girls' Dad and my western Massachusetts neighbor to the west, not to mention my blog buddy.  (hi, guy).    :-)  

 

The Girls (and then there are three more girls, besides  ;)

As I look out the window my desk faces at home, a mixture of snow and freezing rain is turning to just rain. It's been coming down since around 9:30 this morning. I'm glad I had a chance to get some color and warmth on Saturday at Smith.  On this first day of the vernal equinox, I wish you....well...better weather than what we're getting around here today! But also love, peace and groovy things.

Pagan Sphinx

Linking to That's My World Tuesday

(fantastic folks from around the world gather in these places virtually to celebrate the beauty and interest that surround us through photos and other creative media)

Linking to a lot of Photo Memes

Our end-of-the-year trip to Mass MoCA

Up the Mohawk Trail from Greenfield up through the foothills over the Berkshires and into the town of North Adams, home of the Mass MoCA - the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

Above is the Sign, Signs contribution

In the Building 5 Gallery:

Above images:

Katharina Grosse: One Floor Up More Highly

 Tobias Putrih

Re-Projection:  Hoosac

2010

And coming on January 4, a new photo meme called Signs Signs, hosted by Lesley, to which I will be linking. 

 Alyson Shotz

The Geometry of Light

2010

What is the red thing behind the door in the photo above, you ask?

Orly Genger (b. 1979, New York)

Big Boss, 2009–2010
Rope, paint

Created with 100 miles of knotted rope Orly Genger’s installation commands the space
with a towering wall that bursts through the architecture and falls into a riotous spill
of material. Forcing viewers to rethink their path, the distinct elements articulate
the structural potential and strength of the rope as well as its softer side. Genger’s
work often grapples with a male-dominated history of sculpture and with the legacy
of artists such as Tony Smith and Richard Serra. Hand-working her industrial material
in an adapted crochet stitch, Genger introduces a traditionally female-identified
craft process into an artistic idiom associated with a certain muscular bravado. Yet
Genger’s own process — which has her wrestling with large amounts of the heavy
material — is overtly physical. (Images of body-builders are pinned to Genger’s studio
wall). The “Big Boss” of the title might refer to the labor the rope demands of Genger,
or perhaps to her mastery over the material. Painting the rope a vivid red, the artist
matches the material’s presence with an equally forceful color.

Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen

(b. 1979, Portland, Maine, and b. 1976, Little Falls, Minnesota)
White Stag

2009–2010

Paper, wood

Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen have been working with paper since their
first collaboration in 2005. The versatility of the material — which can be flat or
volumetric, smooth or textured, buoyant or heavy — allow the artists a wide range of
possibilities for their large-scale installations which they describe as “investigations
of the uncertain territory between imagined and physical space.” At MASS MoCA the
duo has responded to the museum’s industrial, brick architecture with its imagined
opposite: a fantastical, old growth forest fashioned from twisted, crumpled, and
draped rolls of paper. The ghostly image of the decaying natural landscape, however,
mirrors in some way the fading industrial landscape embodied by the museum’s
repurposed factory spaces. Spanning two floors, the installation appears to grow from
one gallery to the next, joining the separate spaces and providing viewers a different
perspective on the labyrinthine building.

My World

Weekend Reflections

Ruby Tuesday

Signs Signs

Window Views and Doors