Dear Folks, It’s two days before Christmas, it’s fifty degrees, it’s drizzling, the grass is green, and I’m depressed. I know that one can’t really ask for “normal” weather in variable New England, but this is ridiculous.
A week ago I thought the greenhouse curse had finally been lifted from us. It snowed all Sunday, a luxuriant, beneficent snow of the sort that sticks to the trees and transforms our everyday farm into a magic place. Don and Sylvia laid down a cross-country ski trail to the back swimming hole. Stephanie and Heather made a snowman on the lawn. Monday dawned clear and crisp. My spirits weren’t the only ones that shone with the sun that day. Everyone in the Valley waits for the cold crystal of the real winter to begin. When it happens, you can feel the cheer in the air.
That lasted one day. Then the temperature rose enough to lay down a good melt and plunged to create glare ice. Tuesday morning Stephanie left at 6:30 for her shift at the hospital, and got exactly four miles before she lost her nerve. Cars were off the road on all sides. There was a 7-car pile-up in Plainfield, a town where there are hardly ever seven cars even in sight of each other. Stephanie hid out at Griswold’s Garage until the temperature rose and the sand trucks went by. Then she got to work safely. It’s been above freezing since then, and the snow is gone.
Bah, humbug!
People hate this weather, but the geese and ducks are reveling in the puddles and the mud. You say you didn’t know we had ducks? Well, we do now. Sylvia entered into negotiation with friends in order to restore a rooster to the farm (the former one expired of old, old age) and in the process she somehow wound up with four ducks as well.
The new rooster’s name is Dominic, because he is of a rare breed called Dominique. He looks like a Barred Rock to me, peppered black and white. We have absolutely no need for a rooster, except that we like the noise. We also like the possibility that a hen may establish a nest we can’t find and surprise us with chicks, though we have no need for the chicks. Most of what we do on this farm disproves the neoclassical model of rational economic behavior.
That goes even more for the ducks, for which there is not the slightest justification (except that, again, we like the noise). Three of them are drakes, and they are of four different breeds — Mallard, Rouen, Khaki Campbell, and Indian Call. So if we want babies, we have to find even MORE ducks, just as, if we want goose babies we have to find a new gander.
Our adventures with waterfowl are only beginning, since, also as a part of this bargain Sylvia got a Murray MacMurray catalog. Murray MacMurray is the great wishbook of fowl fanciers. There are more kinds of chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, swans in there than you would believe, with feathers of colors you can hardly imagine, growing in places you never knew feathers could grow. This catalog has fascinated the whole household. The general consensus seems to be that we should order one of each. Sylvia is in charge of animals around here and the final decision will be hers. I expect some cheeping packages from Murray MacMurray will arrive next spring.
To get ourselves in a holiday mood Sylvia and I took Heather to the Christmas Revels at Dartmouth — that’s a show of carol singing and dancing and pageantry put on by local folks. Heather, who had never been to a theater before, did pretty well, for awhile. She was interested in the other children and the animals and the blue fairies. She loved the part when the audience joins the cast in a dance that winds all over the theater. During intermission she and I went and actually talked to a blue fairy! Don’t tell this kid there are no fairies! But during the second act, having been permitted once to dance with fairies, Heather lost her grip on the distinction between performers and audience. She kept heading down the aisle to center stage. So we removed her and bought her an ice cream cone, and she collapsed in exhaustion in the car on the way home.
It was snowing nicely that day. It was also snowing nicely in Zurich, where I went for a weekend meeting of the Balaton Group steering committee. You’ve heard me describe the Balaton Group’s annual meeting in Hungary every September. The steering committee meetings in December are where those meetings get planned. My good friend Joan Davis generously welcomes us in her house, and about eight people (this year from India, Thailand, Hungary, the USSR, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the US) work hard and also have a nice time together. We cook simple meals, which we eat by candlelight with wine from Joan’s former vineyard. We go for walks. And we talk, talk, talk, not only about Balaton matters but about our individual lives and our small attempts, each in our own place, to bring some ecological sense to the world.
Chirapol from Thailand has just spent six weeks running six back-to-back workshops on the greenhouse effect and energy conservation for students, journalists, teachers, and Buddhist monks. He and his students constructed a 31-booth display area at the workshop site where the participants could see and test low-wattage light bulbs, low-flow showerheads and dozens of other conservation devices, including little display houses with insulated roofs. They built a plastic greenhouse and put a few participants at a time in it (it was over 100 degrees in there) and didn’t let them out until they had successfully answered 10 questions about the greenhouse effect and how to prevent it! On the last night they made a fire on the beach and everyone took six solemn vows. I will turn out the lights when I leave the room. I will save gasoline. I will inform others. Etc. Now Chirapol and his students are going to take this show on the road to Buddhist temples!
Our friend Genady from Moscow was full of good news about work he’s doing to set up international research centers on global change, but full of bad news, scary news, about his home country. He spent his spare moments in Zurich shopping for butter and cheese to take home to his family. He is fed up with Gorbachev, as most of the Russian people are. He is surprisingly positive about Yeltsin. But basically he has no hope. He sees no good way forward and many possible terrible outcomes. I think back to the French Revolution and shudder. People who have no experience of freedom can do strange things with it, when they finally get it. Especially in the USSR, where people are accustomed to laying low, pretending to be invisible, and waiting for the leadership to do something. So now many of the best people are planning not to stand up and take power, but to leave.
I returned home full of warmth from my friends and concern for them, and with a longer to-do list than ever. I have to organize the plenary sessions for the next meeting (topic: biological and cultural diversity). I have to write proposals, write the next Bulletin, and of course keep my column, book, and farm going. In January I start teaching for the first time in two years — so that at least one of my activities brings in an income. All these tasks I do with love and joy, but I am also capable of turning them into a burden, especially at this time of year with the sky gray and no snow.
It’s not surprising to me that the literature of Christmas has its Grinches and Scrooges. I’m one of them. The season drives me crazy, because it splits me apart. I love the public permission to be happy, to be compassionate, to express love and generosity — all of which are so suppressed the rest of the year. The small letting-go of positive emotions at this season sometimes just emphasizes the pain of their absence at other times. Also, I have trouble being merry on demand. I’d rather do it when I feel like it, whatever the date on the calendar.
And of course the commercialization of Christmas makes me sick. I do my best to duck. I wouldn’t be caught dead in a shopping mall after Thanksgiving. I send no cards, buy no presents, bake no cookies, hang no decorations. The only thing I seek out is the music. For me a perfect Christmas would be a day of fasting and retreat, with the Messiah and the Christmas Oratorio and Amahl and the Night Visitors and the Ceremony of Carols playing.
But we have a child in the house and therefore, despite my grinchiness, there’s magic in the air. Stephanie cut a Christmas tree in the woods and made a wreath for the front door. The candy canes on the lower branches of the tree have all disappeared. Tomorrow night our neighbors the Whybrows are coming for Christmas Eve carols around the piano. I just finished plucking a fat 11 pound goose for Christmas dinner.
So Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, a peaceful New Year to you all from Foundation Farm:
Eight sheep a-munching Dot Godiva Forsythia Tulip Dotlet Faithlet Godivlet Godivletlet
Seven (plus thirty) hens a-laying (plus Dominic)
Six funny people Dana Sylvia Don Heather Karel Stephanie
Five warm cats Simon Poppy Cassiopea Critterbits Tigger
Four waddly ducks
Three loud geese
Two turtledoves Karel and Stephanie, planning their wedding
And a dog snoozing under the Christmas tree Basil
