Six things, most of them useless, to do when the gray screen of death appears

This is the Gray Screen of Death.

The little gear keeps spinning round and round.

And round.

It has inexhaustible energy.
In all likelihood, it can keep this up forever.

What’s a person to do while she waits?

Don't panic. Make a nice cup of tea.
As Agnis Hamm says in The Shipping News,
"Tea's a good drink. Keep you going."

Lipton’s has handy instructions on the box.

Because there could be confusion.

Make use of the time.

Snip out elaborate snowflakes from the ream of printing paper sitting idly by.

Clearly, you won't be using that paper for anything else today.

Here's one I made. You can do better.

There's always shopping. Browse the catalogs.

Consider updating your look by purchasing a bandana.

This beautiful model from the Sahalie catalog looks great.

But perhaps ask yourself first:  Will this bandana make me, 

a woman no small distance from that demographic, appear

a) Edgy and original?

b) Trendy and hip?

c) Pathetic and desperate?

Still nothing? Try to reboot.

First, unplug all peripherals.

You read this somewhere, and it certainly seems like a fine idea.

Then, attempt to reboot using every combination 

of alt / command / option / control and letter keys you can imagine.

This won't work,

but you'll feel better for trying.

Pray. 

Even though you are well aware

that God is super busy right now

and probably doesn't care that you didn't back up

the manuscripts of two novels in progress and accumulated research,

twenty years of food writing, and the scans of 19th Century family tintypes. 

Nope. He's indifferent. 

Still, you might think even laying on of hands would be worth a try.
Remember, though -- it's an iMac.
Probably best not to slap it like an old Zenith.

What you should have done in the first place. 
Borrow a computer geek child if you don't have one of your own.
Good luck. We're rooting for you.

The Crows in Winter

     Readers of this column might recall that I am partial to crows and in the habit of feeding them in the morning – a cup of dog kibble, a few slices of bread, scraps from the previous evening’s meal. As eccentricities go, this one’s harmless enough, amusing spectator sport as the ritual must be for the neighbors, and a ready source of ridicule for family and friends when I get carried away. “Is that for me?” a loved one asks as I paint a slice of bread with peanut butter. He frowns in jest. “I didn’t think so.”

     They like peanut butter sandwiches, the crows, though pepperoni pizza is a clear favorite, and a chicken carcass with some meat left on the wings and thighs can send them into a mild delirium.  Recently they made short work of the remains of an Italian sub, refusing however to touch the lettuce and tomato. They care not about a balanced diet.

Charles Livingston Bull
"Away up on the top of a mountain, he made a house for North Wind."

 Illustration for "Old Crow and his Friends" 1918

     In mid-December, when temperatures plummeted so quickly and so low, my handful of faithful crows disappeared.  Driving about that week, I saw a huge flock some miles south of my home, and assumed that with the frigid weather the coterie who came for breakfast had decided to take shelter with their comrades.  While they were elsewhere, I must admit, I felt strangely bereft.  

     The few resident blue jays happily filled their seats at the table; suddenly they were joined by nearly three-dozen ravenous starlings that invaded the property, nosily buying up real estate in the branches of nearby maples and the old majestic birch.

    But the crows were gone. I fed the starlings, disappointedly at first, then discovering that they, too, provided a fascinating spectacle as they descended upon the feeder in waves, six at a time, elbowing out the competition, launching into altercations over leftover macaroni and cheese, devouring or carrying away morsels of whatever stale carbohydrate remnant I’d tossed out. 

     One morning, a lone massive crow returned. He surveyed the scene from the top of a tall pine as I brought out some bread and tore it into hunks. The starlings watched, too, as did those few jays, but waited as the giant swooped down, grabbed a crust in his impressive beak then flew off.  Only some time later, when perhaps they decided the coast was truly clear, did the smaller birds dig in.

     Eventually, three or four of the usual suspects started appearing again. Often just one would swoop by the feeder to check out what was on the menu; more than occasionally the meal was deemed unworthy and the crows  -- no doubt resourceful over the summer and fall, their caches too well stocked to be tempted by mere breadcrumbs  -- would hold court high in a tree for a short time before absconding with maybe a single bite.  After a respectful interval, the starlings would again feast, the jays and the single pair of cardinals wintering over flitting about for scraps.

     Crows, I have read, recognize faces; they can distinguish between strangers who might be trouble and the crazy lady who sets out treats for them each morning. I alas cannot tell a single crow from the next, except in a few cases where size, odd plumage, or a dragging wing has set one apart. And I’m not daft enough to romanticize.  But I do wonder about this one imposing fellow who nearly always appears not long after dawn, less fearful and more curious than the others, who doesn’t depart at once when I direct my gaze to him and say hello.

     These last cold months, I’ve kept a smaller feeder going, tossing into it handfuls of sunflower seeds and cracked corn to round out the nourishment of the jays and the infrequent visiting chickadee. Needless to say, the starlings discovered this feeder, too, turning it into something of an avian Grand Central Station. Hanging from a precariously anchored shepherd’s hook, it dangles inches from a kitchen window, providing a showcase of bird behavior in return for a little patience and stillness.

Bradford Torrey, 1901

     On the last day December, I noticed one blue jay hanging about at dusk.  All of his friends were tucked in for the night, but he roosted, shivering, near the house, on a low branch of the old birch.  He dove to that small feeder and hunkered down, his feathers plumped against the cold, his head turned inward and resting on one wing.

     I thought I could bring him inside, where at least he’d be warm. I was inches away from the feeder when he woke and fluttered off.  Later in the evening, I saw that he had returned and taken up the same position and stance, finding some small comfort I hoped within the gentle light and whatever heat came through the leaky window frame.

     In the morning, from his sentinel’s perch in the tall pine, that one vigilant crow watched as I took the jay from the feeder to the far corner of the garden and buried him in the snow beneath the cedar hedge. He continued to watch as I walked back toward the house.  As I reached the door and looked up to him once again, he let go of his grasp and flew away.

This column appears in the March 2014 issue of The North Star Monthly. Take a look at their site:

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Ice Will Suffice

     Snow is falling; I’m watching through the kitchen picture window. Plump, languid flakes meander to the ground, the occasional updraft setting them into a sudden tumble. Courtesy of a January thaw, an odd slab of my backyard is now an angular shallow pond frozen solid beneath the cover of downy snow, doing who knows what sort of damage to a few already put-upon apple trees now up to their kneecaps in ice.

     Ordinarily, I’d be moved by the beauty of this scene, by the snow-globe quality of the atmosphere as it pales the dark green and brown trees beneath a veil of white and blends the line between earth and sky.  Though it is otherworldly lovely, an image you might find on a holiday card, I’m thinking about how fabulous it would be to have a condo in Boca Raton. A small unit with single bedroom would suffice, with a serviceable kitchenette and a balcony with a distant view of any body of open and unfrozen water.

     This year, I’ve lost my patience with ice.

     Earliest ice memory: I’m a kid, no more than four. We’re living in a bucolic suburb of Hartford, where my father works in the insurance business.  The day is darkening, and the roads, wide to a child as ancient boulevards, are treacherous, glazed and reflective as mirrors. And I’m in trouble. I’ve been outside alone, playing or walking home from next door: somehow I’ve put my small existence into peril. There’s a scolding of a tenor previously unknown. Ice is dangerous! Message received, Mom.

     Eventually our family settles in lower Delaware, land of vast soybean fields, fragrant pines and the delicate lady slippers that grow beneath them, humid summers and generally mild winters.  An exception to the last looms large in the mind.  A freak ice storm downs power lines for a week. No water, no heat, and no way for an insecure teenage girl who must still go to school every day to wash and style her untamable hair. It’s tragic.

      Two decades later, with much the same head of hair, I’m back in Connecticut, in another bucolic suburb. Ice happens in the Farmington Valley, not infrequently.  By this time, I’m carting around three small children, and they all have the stomach flu. No bathroom, no laundry for days, the house growing ever colder.  I go to the window and watch in disbelief as power trucks pull through the neighborhood without stopping; I can’t get a human being from the electric company on the phone.  At week’s end we finally give in, toss the kids in the car and head for a hotel in Rock Hill.  I never so much enjoyed a hot bath or a meal at Red Lobster in my life. 

     And that first winter in Vermont: the initial week of temperatures nearing 40 below is quite an education.  I buy hats and scarves and appropriate footwear, boots from LL Bean so stiff with insulation and deeply treaded, they could see me through a nuclear winter.  The flatlander adapts, tumbling occasionally but soon mastering the awkward tundra dance, the slow, splayed steps one takes when the driveway turns into a skating rink.

     “Make friends with the ice!” is the mantra this freshman student of the cold adopts, repeating as necessary while watching with admiration the many role models of the north country: the robust souls jumping into Willoughby on the first day of the year; skiers traversing slopes as slick as luge runs; and fisherman dragging shanties far out into the middle of frozen lakes behind hardworking Silverados.  Bravery (and occasional foolhardiness) abounds on the hillsides and slippery back roads alike.

     Years pass, and the ice and I manage more or less companionably.  I forgive it the dam that backs up water through the roof, and the trees it twists beneath its crippling grasp; I learn what can and cannot be done with bags of salt.  Despite the danger, I appreciate the glory of frosted early dawns, when everything – branches burdened like weary arms, the fading length of cedar fence, the gentle rise beyond the house – sparkles after a freezing rain with touches of gold and hues residing at the far end of the spectrum.

    And this year:  the Kingdom is treated to that January thaw and the subsequent freeze.  The ice brings a fall and a hip-fracture for my father. An hour or more of lying in the snow before he is discovered.

    I’m rethinking my relationship with ice.  This spring, whenever it departs from Joe’s Pond, it won’t be soon enough.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This column appears in the February 2014 issue of The North Star Monthly. Check out the site: 

http://www.northstarmonthly.com  Images are from the Library of Congress. 

        Fire and Ice

                                                     Some say the world will end in fire,

                                                     Some say in ice.

                                                     From what I've tasted of desire

                                                     I hold with those who favor fire.

                                                     But if I had to perish twice,

                                                     I think I know enough of hate

                                                     To say that for destruction ice

                                                     Is also great

                                                     And would suffice.

                                                                                         --------Robert Frost

Starting at Happy

     Can we decide to be happy?

     A new year dawns, and with it comes the habitual assessment of the year we’ve left behind. Many of us make resolutions to right whatever we felt went wrong, to turn over the proverbial new leaf, to chart a course to improve ourselves and our lot in life.

     At the heart of this resolve is the supposition that we, as thinking beings aware of our shortcomings, are or at least ought to be dissatisfied with the present, discontent with our circumstances and with ourselves.  “Happiness in intelligent people,” said Ernest Hemingway, “is the rarest thing I know.”

    Which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t seek improvement, or work to acquire those certain things that would make our lives easier, more pleasant – in short, happier.  But we might consider the sources of our discontent, and the various entities  -- outside of ourselves – that benefit from it.  That original sin doctrine has something to do with it, for sure, though many of us lead lives so secular in nature that we are not consciously aware of the theological burden. 

     But we are on intimate terms with the world of getting and spending, and there’s a lot of money to be made from unhappy people, from consumers who feel the need to replace reasonably acceptable old stuff with shiny just-out-of-the-box stuff, people encouraged to be displeased with themselves and what they possess, to crave change and novelty for their own sake.

     The New Year arrives, and in the spirit of bigger, better, best, we make our various lists. Maybe it’s time to upend the process.

      The quotation has varied as it traveled down the years, but Abraham Lincoln said something akin to this: “Folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Through our study of history, of the magnificence of The Gettysburg Address to the savagery at Ford’s Theatre, through literature and movie portrayals, we carry a mental image of the revered president, gangly in body, so eloquent in speech and steadfast in resolve. How his hardscrabble childhood in that one-room log cabin in Kentucky and the devastating loss of two young sons prepared him to utter such a statement about happiness is beyond comprehension for most of us.

The Mansion of Happiness:

An Instructive Moral and Entertaining Amusement.

Children's board game first published in England in 1800. 

     Let’s play it out: let’s say there are two women, identical except in name. We’ll call them Agatha and Zelda. Both live in old homes that in winter are drafty as birdcages, cold air wafting in at every aperture with a right angle. They murder houseplants with regularity, and for company, each has a pampered calico cat named Mr. Spangles. Both are blessed with good health, though in conversations lately they often whisper, “Excuse me?” and let’s face it, their skin is unfortunate.

     Both have jobs that entail moving papers from one side of a desk to another. Occasionally one batch of papers is more important than the last, and during their handling and assessment, the women employ some small part of their educational backgrounds. But essentially, Agatha and Zelda are bit players in a grand assembly line of printed materials.

     Let’s go out on a limb and say that neither woman has seen her childhood dreams come true. Neither had expected to spend quite so much time wrapped up in bulky sweaters, or to build a career out of perpetual eyestrain and red pencil. And while the two Mr. Spangles are attractive fellows, their conversational skills are limited and they hog the remote.

     So on the first of January, Agatha looks around and accurately assesses all that’s lacking. Her list of New Year’s resolutions begins precisely from that point of view and accumulates predictably, in much the same way it has for the last decade.

     What if Zelda takes Lincoln’s aphorism to heart?  On January 1^st she breathes in and out, and acknowledges that that is a far better occurrence than not breathing in and out. The skin’s a disaster, but there are salves and cover ups; the job keeps the roof leak-free atop the chilly house. She decides, in essence, to be happy with what she has and is.

     What larger, loftier goals might Zelda consider placing on her New Year’s list, if “finding an in-network dermatologist” doesn’t automatically make the cut?

      Agatha, the realist, the one who sees things as they truly are: Is she more apt to genuinely improve her lot and to be ‘happier’ by the end of December? Zelda, who squints at life through rose-colored bifocals: Is she in denial, out of touch with her ‘real’ emotions if she choses to be happy?

     But as a friend pointed out to me during a rough patch, an emotion is only an emotion. The weight we grant it and the influence over our actions are up to us.

     A few years ago, a writer of some means looked around her distinctly privileged life and decided she ought to be, well, happier. She launched a blog and book aptly titled “The Happiness Project,” and set out and managed to become, through incremental steps designed to reach a number of well-defined goals, a (best-selling) happier person. 

     In her book, she offers advice on how to create your own Happiness Project by closely examining what makes you feel good or bad, and what seems out of sync in your life, and in light of that reconnaissance, crafting a list of goals that can be broken down into discreet units. Along the way she tosses out a few questionable maxims (“Happiness is other people.”), but all in all, the book offers a sensible guide on setting measurable goals aimed toward becoming  “happier.”

     It is, arguably, a fine occupation for the month of January, for any of us, to take stock and assess where we’d like to be at the end of this beautiful year ahead given where we are. But the thrust of “The Happiness Project,” as I understand it, as is the act of making quantifiable list upon list, is based on an assumption that happiness is not a choice, that it must be accumulated or acquired, or at very least, enhanced and improved upon, year after year.

     Which puts us at odds with Abraham Lincoln, who knew a thing or two.

     What if, as we settle into our easy chairs to make our resolutions this year, we stood the process on its head? What if instead of listing all that needs improvement, we start by solidly acknowledging what’s going well and, further, allowing ourselves a bit of the serenity that comes from wanting what you have, rather than striving to have all you want?

     How much more joyful would our journey through the year be if we started at “happy” in the first place, and allowed ourselves to appreciate that every item we check off the list, every step forward in the coming months, is gravy.

This post appears in the January 2014 issue of The North Star Monthly.  Images from the Library of Congress.