Vermont Journal: The Quechee Gorge

watercolor of Quechee Gorge by Hallie Cohen

There is Little Shop of Horrors and then there is the real thing. It’s the same with wonders. You have the Taj Mahal and The Grand Canyon and then there are the sublime wonders that you find in a state like Vermont where the electorate has voted to bring time to a standstill, albeit the same voters who elected Bernie Sanders. Not really a contradiction, when you consider Donald Trump’s executive order exploring the repeal of the Antiquities of Act of l906 with respect to monuments that occupy more than l00,000 acres. For instance Vermont still has over l00 covered bridges and consider the historical note that the millionaire Frederick Billings, who made his fortune in the California Gold Rush of 1848, came back to his home state and reversed the depredation caused by cleared land, which he saw destroying both the scenery and ecology of environment. Another Vermonter George Perkins Marsh wrote Man and Nature (1864), one of the first primers for environmentalists. Woodstock, which was the home of both Marsh and Billings, has consistently been voted one of the most beautiful villages in America. The town of Quechee, right down the road from Woodstock,  features the Quechee Gorge, a sublime treasure that may not qualify as one of the Seven Wonders, but which displays a beauty that's almost more powerful due to its intimacy. The Quechee Bridge which is half between Woodstock and White River Junction was built in l911 by the American Bridge Company and it’s the spot from which you peer 165 feet down into the mini abyss created 13,000 years ago when the Laurentide Ice Sheet cut through the area.

What Your Paid Obit Tells You

skeletons of human and horse in the Australian Museum (photo: Hibernian)

You tend to read the obits of those who have excelled in their fields or celebs, but it’s also fun to peruse the paid obits, which are put in by the families of average and not so average Joe’s and Jills. Some of these are even more involved and if the family can afford it longer than the newsworthy obits. You’ll read about how beloved Poppsie was and how she grew up in Westport and learned how to play golf and tennis in Greenwich, or about how Dirk founded his local Catskill flyfishing club. You’ll learn about how Edith majored in French and will be sorely missed by her family and friends. Reading between the lines you will note that she was a divorcee since no husband is mentioned besides the fact that she has children. Sometimes the paid obit is filled with so many accomplishments that you wonder why The Times neglected to do a story on him or her. You see a picture of an absolutely ravishing looking woman, who apparently was born in France and studied with some of the major names in deconstruction at The Sorbonne, amongst other places. You note that she then married a rich American. You know this since her husband who survives her runs a hedge fund and the paid obit was placed by charities x, y and z. In this sense this sense the paid obit can be like a financial disclosure form. Donald Trump will undoubtedly earn a regular obit, in addition to receiving many paid ones from purveyors, but it will be the paid obits that’ll reveal the nature of the business connections he had been trying to conceal all these years when he has not furnished tax returns.

No Vacancy

No Vacancy--The Best of The Motels

Have you ever wondered who occupied the skeleton hanging in your anatomy class? "Skeletal remains" is an expression that's often employed by paleontologists in reference to lost races. It’s also how desiccated corpses are referred to in police procedurals in which deeds of a serial killer are unearthed. These are grisly reminders of man’s inhumanity to man, but the bony legacy which often becomes the basis for ghoulish costumes on Halloween is a reminder that the soul or whatever it is that comprises the life force only leases space in the so-called body. When you rent an apartment, you're given a clean box-like space that you then add wall and window dressings to, before purchasing the furnishings. The body similarly is like a building with its foundation and steel girding into which the insides, the plaster walls and wood floors are eventually added. That hanging skeleton is a reminder of the fact that the flesh which inhabits the space is a little like a renter who simply occupies a dwelling for a limited period of time. Life is short indeed! Those who believe in reincarnation or the transmigration of souls simply regard the soul as occupying a timeless eternity that’s something like what occurs in a major cosmopolis when there are a lot of apartments on the market. But the reality is more likely that the average human lacking any preternatural abilities becomes a fixture in his or her neighborhood for a relatively short period of time before journeying into oblivion and being forgotten forever.

Is Possession Nine-Tenths of the Law?

Levittown, PA (c.1959)

In essence we're all lessors. Ownership is an illusion. You think you own the house, but just as is said about some cancers, the house will probably outlive you. Even the fruits of all your labors, your pension, your life savings, your retirement fund—they’re really not your own. The house will be bought by someone else who will then proceed to have the illusion of ownership and the savings, unless you gamble away all your dough in Las Vegas, will in all likelihood end up in the pockets of your heirs or in the coffers of the charities  designated in your will. Still in all, you walk around mildly comforted by your so-called possessions, your stocks, your books, your jewelry, that Rolex you received on your fiftieth, or that good example of your connoisseurship, the piece of art that you purchased and that turns out to be going up in value. It’s a nice feeling. The ground you walk on is yours, as is the roof over your head and the pet who scampers towards the front door when you come home from the movies on Saturday night with your wife and/or your children or for that matter your friends or business associates. The universe is filled with nouns on which you can place a possessive pronoun—that is until death steps in and relieves you of your legal rights. It’s a terrible feeling to be deprived of everything you own and unless you’re the unfortunate victim of a natural disaster it’s not a reality you’re necessarily familiar with. “The things which I have seen I now can see no more,” says Wordsworth in “Intimations of Immortality.” You may wake up from a bad dream of loss and find comfort in reaching across the bed to the warm body of your beloved, but one day you will no longer be there for them, nor they for you. When you look at a skeleton devoid of flesh and soul, you realize you never really owned your body either.

Baconator

Wendy's Baconator

You have to be impressed by Wendy's BACONATOR, two slabs of hamburger sandwiching  succulent strips of bacon and dripping with cheese. You no longer have to wonder, WHERE’S THE BEEF? But if you don’t have the balls or stomach, that is, move down the menu to SON OF BACONATOR (no jest). Where the BACONATOR costs you $7.19 with the price you're paying in calories coming to 950 (the combo is $9.29 with a calorie count of between 980 and 1570, depending how many fries you scarf down), SON OF is only 5.39 for 630 calories (with the combo coming in at a cool $7.69 for between 670-1250 calores). OR let’s say you're a baked potato head, try one with bacon and cheese for $3.19 at only 410 calories. It’s kind of hard to get around these kind of prices and on a recent summer’s afternoon with a fake fire place roaring, the climate controlled Wendy’s was the place to let it all hang out. You don’t use a fork to eat French fries and more than one patron let his fries casually droop off his lips in the way the French actor Jean Gabin always had a Gauloise hanging out of the side of his mouth. SON OF BACONATOR does sound a little like SON OF SAM and there's no doubt that Daddy and THE TERMINATOR have something in common but even though the whole BACONATOR family are pumped up on NITRATES, they won’t kill you.