February 28, 2013
The days are longer; still, cabin fever persists. We live in the mountains of Western Maine where snowfall is plentiful and deep, occasionally yet falling.
Snowshoeing this a.m. passed neighbors,’ up and beyond. We have followed deer tracks in deep snow, and they have followed our snowshoe trails. They move in twilight hours. We are invisible, so are they. Theirs is a stronger scent than ours yet they smell us better than we do them. 

Sunday, February 17, 2008

At the town garage, Bethel, getting sand for our steps. Allen is shoveling.
We snowshoe to check roof condition—not that good—maybe 3 ft. the top part—but the snow is ice inches deep, not safe going. Allen broke it for me but we could not get over the walls of Jericho below. The deck is so deep he has to cut steps in it.

Here’s our deck with charcoal fire for grilling, a picture taken on Sunday. As you can see… showing conditions much better for snowshoeing than what is depicted in the post below. An entry from about 12 years ago in my journal.

Currently listening to The Last Chronicles of Barchester on the I-pod, an antique mechanism that is no longer made by Apple. Went down every Digital Aisle looking for new I-pods, found nothing but old ones refurbished. Then one day I came across the lifetime-warranty portable CD player distributed by Monodeal. If fully charged, it’ll long play during power outages. It’s elegant and well-made, and in its advertisement shows a fun video of its easy operation. I also bought a stack of recordable CDs to burn my own audio books. And began listening to the Last Chronicles on the player. Then I noticed a “Zits” comic in which Jeremy’s father was happily going out to exercise listening to music on his portable CD player (his teenager son mocking him). This was fun! In part because I love the funny papers, love virtually every character on that page in the regional rag.

The snow is thickening white on evergreen boughs outside every window. 
Finished A Small Town in Germany the other night. This is a book about those alive vs. the living dead. A book about the caring, cautious careerist vs. the-career-is-for-something-larger. In this instance justice. Not as part of something called true-justice-and-the-American-way, not even social justice, but the individual alone with Justice. One working who is not lukewarm. In this novel those in a position to aid him, to do justice, are lukewarm, cautious … and not even because they care so much about their careers (though once they cared a great deal). The “career caution” has brought them to a spiritual state—spiritual malaise. In le Carré’s book, the characters most alive are not comfortable.

© S.Dorman

Monday, January 7, 2008

What is pride?  Have you ever wondered?

Why did God decide to share his life—or maybe energy—with pride?

Reading Klemperer: The Language of the Third Reich. An historical observation of his:  that all the tricks of Mussolini were converted without much change to Nazi Germany. The  reverse of my supposal over the years. Theatrical, rhetorical, photographic and other tricks for crowd arousal and propaganda. “The  ‘Fuhrer’ was translated from “Il Duce” into German . . . . They wanted leaders in direct contact with the people, sans representation.  p.46

Friday, January 4, 2008.
-4° upon waking.
Make coffee 6:30 a.m., Allen makes the fire. Breakfast on thin German bread and one fried egg. We have butter. Allen to the dentist. Below zero so I change my mind about snowshoeing at the airport while they work on him. I stay home vacuuming rugs, sweeping the yellow pine floors with dust mop and broom; wash the towels and Allen’s clothes. Throw them into the dryer.

The mill is centerpiece, a steaming cauldron amid built up blocks — the town within the town — its great gray monolith partly obscured in self-generated mist and moving cloud. But now R. was working there, the migrant success story. After living rurally, here is when and where I begin to realize the Catholic culture, the inner unspoken grace that Monica Wood gives creative tongue to in When We Were the Kennedys. Our landlady was Catholic, and her family of older resident women, were from New Brunswick — French — and one was a nun. This is all I had to go on, for otherwise Catholicism in Rumford/Mexico wasn’t spoken of.