peterography

Finally.  We got a freeze last night.   The weather forecast gave fair warning so I took in the last of my basil yesterday and made pesto - mixing it with sun-dried tomatoes as I’ve learned to do in recent years.  

While I ground and pureed the ingredients I watched the Patriots do the same to the Washington Redskins on TV.   Before the game there was anticipation about how the irresistible force of  New England’s league-leading pass offense would fare against the immovable object of  the Redskins’ league-leading pass defense.  The final answer to that philosophical conundrum was: irresistible force 52, immovable object 7.    The Boston Globe’s headline:  “Washington Slapped Here”

A few hours later my wife and I turned the TV back on to watch the Red Sox complete their sweep of Colorado in the 2007 World Series.   I was reminded again of why my interest in baseball has dissipated in recent years.    Near  the top of the 8th inning something came across the newswire about A-Rod leaving the Yankees.   And from then through the top of the ninth, all the Fox announcers could talk about was A-Rod’s contract.  The fact that there was a game going on in the background and the Rockies had pulled within a run of the Sox seemed like an annoyance to them (”Turn off that World Series  game - we’re trying to discuss baseball here!”) 

I got more of the same driving to work this morning.   I had tuned in to a football-talk radio show (WEEI’s “Patriots Monday”)  not really expecting to hear much about the Patriots.  It’s understandable that Beantown is all a-twitter about the Red Sox winning the World Series.  But during my commute the whole conversation was about  Mike Lowell’s free-agency and whether the Sox should sign A-Rod, and how much they should spend to buy or retain this player or that.   If the game had anything to do with a bat, a ball, and bases, instead of lawyers and bank accounts, you’d never know it from that show.

It’s been preternaturally warm this fall.    Today is in the 80’s and at my house we haven’t seen any temperature below 40F.  

“Preternaturally warm” is one of those hackneyed quasi-literary phrases that’s supposed to mark me as an educated writer, and inform you that you’re reading something of substance.  More often it just signifies that the author has spent too much time with genre horror fiction.   

But I like “preternaturally”.  It’s derived from the Latin -  “praeter naturam“ meaning “beyond or exceeding natural”, and it comes from a respectable family:  in theological law, especially among Catholic scholars, “praeter” finds several other uses.

Praeter intentionem  - “outside the moral intention” - doing something harmful in the course of doing something morally neutral or good.

Praeter legem - outside the law  - not regulated or specified by the law  (not to be confused with contra legem - “against the law”)

Praeter ordinem - outside the normal order of things.

As a gardener I’ve watched the growing season grow over the last 40 years.   I can reliably plant crops now that would have died of frostbite before yielding any fruit when I was a teenager.   Yet I have far less time in the fall and winter to work on my fences and terraces and chop trees in my woods without worrying about ticks, because we have such a late freeze and early thaw.

Watching this trend over decades of gardening convinces me that this is not just Al Gore blowing hot air.   Studies at UMass and UNH confirm my personal observations that this is a real warming pattern and not some brief meterological condition.  When I was born the atmosphere had 300 ppm of carbon dioxide; in Ben Franklin’s time it had 276 ppm; today it has 385 ppm and the best scientific evidence points to man’s role in this.   So is it  praeter intentionem,  praeter legem, or praeter ordinem?  Or is it all three?

I cooked several gallons of butternut squash soup this weekend.   Some was consumed by musicians visiting us and most of the rest was frozen for future lunches.   On Saturday the AMC Mountains and Music committee descended on our house to throw a party honoring my wife who just finished her tenure as committee chair.  They brought all the food, drink, and desserts, and even supplied real dishes, glasses and silverware.   My wife is a little embarrassed at the attention but I enjoy any opportunity to party with musicians.

I’m in Rock City – that’s Rock City the bookstore and café, in Rockland Maine. Last year it was called the Second Read, but nothing else has changed. It’s still the classic used bookstore and coffeehouse with little tables upfront where all the local bohemians and a few out-of-state ones such as yours truly, sit and write, sipping fair traded Nicaraguan coffee and espresso and munching cakes and pies and brownies. Latter-day Hemingways prefer caffeine and a sugar high to wine, and laptops to pen and paper, but little else has changed. Glancing around at people’s LCD screens I can see the four line stanzas and double-spaced text that reveals poems and stories in progress.

My own project is postcard poetry. I’ve signed up to write poems on postcards – one a week – and to send each poem to someone on a list of other poets sharing this project. There are over a hundred of us signed up.

I first heard about this from Brent Allard, the exalted leader of Poets Unbound, my poetry group in Nashua. Brent had the inspiration of making his own postcards from photos he took. I take photos – see some at my other website, pnArt.com. So I’ve gathered together a selection of photos that I think will work as 4×6 postcards, and don’t have so much nudity that I’ll get arrested by the Postal authorities.

This is fun but lately I’ve wondered if I should be aiming higher. One of our friends just won a MacArthur “genius” grant for his work in helping veterans overcome the trauma of war. There’s nothing like this to make you ask yourself what the hell you’ve been doing with your life.

And why am I in Maine, just now? My wife is attending a chamber music workshop sponsored by the Bay Area Chamber Concerts in Rockport, and I’m tagging along. They spend the day getting coached and practicing and I sit at Rock City, writing, or visiting galleries and museums along the coast. In the evenings I socialize with them. I love hanging out with the chamber musicians. I remain convinced that there is no better company – no category or class of people more convivial, stimulating, interesting, and just plain nice, than chamber musicians. I have no idea why this seems to be true. Does it have something to do with so many of them being doctors? Like so many other chamber music gatherings, this weekend’s workshop could pass as an AMA convention. (and by the way, the McArthur genius mentioned above is usually part of this crowd, and he’s a doctor!)