New Life in the North Country

The Sower and the Seeds, 2.0

2012-04-17T12:32:00.000-07:00

Jesus told a parable about a man who went out to sow seeds. It turns up in Matthew 13, Mark 4, and Luke 8. Some of the seeds fell on the path, where they were trampled by passersby, and the birds ate the rest. Some fell on rocky soil. They managed to germinate, but the plants couldn't develop a good root system in the rocky soil, and so they withered and died for lack of moisture. Some fell among the weeds and thorns and got choked out as they tried to grow. But some fell in good soil and produced bounteous crops, even a hundred times as many as the seeds that were planted. And Jesus said those famous words, "Let anyone with ears to hear listen."

But in case his listeners didn't get what he was trying to tell them, in Luke's account Jesus explains the parable to them ("Parables for Dummies"). The seed is the word of God. The seeds on the path go to those who hear but let the devil take the word away from them. The seeds on the rocky ground go to those who hear the message, get really excited about it, and then drift away when real life intervenes. The seeds that fall among thorns and are choked out go to those who are easily distracted by the diversions of life. But ah! those who receive the word of God as seeds in good soil will receive spiritual blessings by the hundredfold.

Hey, it's spring again in the North Country. This past winter was nowhere near as bad as our first. The snowblower only got a couple of runs all winter, as opposed to the year before, when it got a LOT of use, especially by the pastor's spouse early on Sunday mornings so ye olde pastor could get the Evacumobile out of the driveway and past the jagged mountains of frozen snow left along the curb by the plows. But this winter was nothing like last winter. Hello, climate change.

But I dutifully waited until mid-March to start my seeds in peat pots under the sunny windows in my office at the church; I put too much effort into getting these little guys started to lose them to an unexpected late frost. They seem to like the location, and it keeps them safe from marauding cats at home who would delight in digging them up or making salads out of them.

I keep seeds in a vegetable compartment in the refrigerator. I can usually get three or four seasons out of a pack of seeds. Most of the seeds I started this year came from packs I also used last year. The cherry tomatoes started to pop up after just five days. Last year's jalapeno peppers followed suit. But the other pepper seeds I got this season from a specialty supplier took their sweet time. Finally I saw a couple of leaves of a bell pepper variety supposed to be good for short northern growing seasons. Then a cayenne pepper cautiously peeked out of the soil, and then another with leaves of an interesting purple shade. But the four peat pots with seeds supposedly of the variety used to make Tabasco sauce are still stubbornly bare after four weeks. (Of course, that's the variety my husband wanted the most to grow. He is such a fan of Tabasco that he has several Tabasco ties; he even wore one for our wedding.)

Every morning I check the peat pots for signs of life. Now even the spinach I planted last week is quickly coming up. But no Tabasco peppers. I thought about the parable of the seed and the sower. But this is different. All these little plants got planted in the same kind of soil, and all of them are in the same physical location. They got lots of water and warmth and sun. They got turned every day so the seedlings wouldn't lean in one direction. And some are doing just fine. And some refuse to sprout.

Jesus didn't tell the parable like this. But I think there's a parable here about spiritual growth. We in the church can knock ourselves out trying to provide just the perfect spiritual climate for people to grow in their faith. We offer worship, music, art, study, prayer, fellowship groups, outreach opportunities, mission trips, everything we can think of to help nurture people in their faith in a way that has meaning for them. Some will find their niche right away and thrive. Some take a little longer, then something clicks and they get more involved. Some take a LOT longer, years and years, and you hope that someday, something somebody said or did will come back to them and have meaning for them. And some, well, nothing ever seems to happen in that little peat pot, and we never understand why.

So -- Jesus never told a parable about a bunch of seeds that all got the same good treatment but didn't all take root and thrive. But that's a parable, too.

In the meantime, the vegetable garden has been tilled and is waiting for the seedlings when the danger of frost is past. The sugar snap pea seeds got planted over the weekend. I'm hoping for another great gardening season this year.

And I've been watching some new Christians grow in their faith this winter. It's been neat. New seedlings.

Ten years later

2011-09-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

I offered prayers of remembrance in worship on the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001.

Every person here today who is old enough to remember September 11, 2001, can tell you exactly what they were doing when they heard the news. It was an event that none of us will ever forget.

I was serving in my first parish, having been ordained earlier that year. The church treasurer, the chair of the finance committee, and I had scheduled a meeting that morning to begin work on the budget for the coming year. About eight a.m. Central time, the treasurer called me and said, "Turn on your television. Something has happened."

We had our meeting that day not at the church but across the street at the manse, where we could watch the unfolding story on television. Somehow we managed to come up with a preliminary budget for the coming year, even as we wondered if there would be a coming year.

In the days that followed, my own reaction was one of grief and horror. In that small Louisiana town where I was a pastor, people began leaving wreaths and bouquets of flowers at the door of the local fire station.

We had a prayer service at the church the following evening. That Sunday, I began my sermon with a question: "What do we tell the children?" And here's an excerpt of what I said that day, ten years ago:

For the Christian, in the end, it all comes back to faith. The God who created this world, the God who gave us life, is with us still. Our God is not a God who can be bombed out of existence by a terrorist.

God sent us his Son, Jesus the Messiah, that the world might be saved through him. Jesus lived among us, preaching a message of good news to the poor, while at the same time pointing out the shortcomings of those who lived only by the letter of the law and failed to fulfill its commands of caring for the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned. Jesus was seen as a threat to the authority of the religious leadership of his day, and they sought to do away with him. They succeeded. Or so they thought. But not even death could stop the power of God. In the face of the worst that evil could do, God triumphed. Jesus rose from the dead, and the world will never be the same again.

If you believe in the power of God to triumph over evil...
If you believe that Jesus through his resurrection has defeated death...
If you believe that all things are possible through the work of the Holy Spirit...
If your believe, in the words of the great hymn of Martin Luther,
"The body they may kill, God's truth abideth still, His Kingdom is forever"...
Then the worst any terrorist can do is still no match for God's power and might.

So much has happened in our world in the last ten years. But today, ten years later, we remember.

Let us pray.

Holy God, you are a God who remembers us. Through the risen Lord, Jesus Christ, whom you did not forget in the grave, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, we pray to you this day. Remember us, O Lord, as we remember those who died ten years ago today, on September 11, 2001.

2,977 victims, including:

246 people on the four planes:
40 aboard United Flight 93 that went down in Shanksville, PA.
87 aboard American Flight 11, the first plane to hit the World Trade Center.
60 aboard United Flight 175, the second plane to hit the World Trade Center.
59 aboard American Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon.

2,606 who died in New York City, in the Twin Towers and on the ground.
125 at the Pentagon, including 55 military personnel.
411 emergency workers who responded to the scene, including
342 firefighters, 10 paramedics, 223 New York City police officers, and 37 Port Authority officers.

And 236 citizens from 90 countries besides the United States.

Remember, O Lord, those who were there that day and survived. Be with them in the moments when the traumatic memories come back and threaten to overwhelm them. Be with the loved ones of those who died and those who survived.

[We remembered by name those known to members of the congregation who were there that day, those who died and those who survived.]

Lord God, remember us, even as we remember them. Be with us in our grief and confusion, even all these years later, as we face the reality of the depth of evil in our world. Comfort us, and remind us that you are still our God, and that we can trust in you.

The evil that thought it had triumphed one Friday afternoon on a hill outside Jerusalem was wrong. The evil that thought it had triumphed on September 11, 2001, was also wrong. Thank you, God, for your Son, Jesus Christ. Through him, death has been defeated. Thank you, God. Amen.

Back to Syracuse University

2011-09-05T18:45:00.000-07:00

Newhouse School of Public Communications in foreground;

Crouse College in background.

Newhouse I, where I studied magazine journalism

Took a quick trip to Syracuse this past weekend. It was my first trip back in 18 years, since the 1993 reunion. Went to the opening football game in the Carrier Dome, Syracuse vs. Wake Forest. Syracuse won in overtime.

It was quite an experience to see the campus again. A lot of the old Victorian houses have been torn down and there are sleek modern buildings in their place. Still a lot of beautiful old campus buildings, though. The Newhouse School of Public Communications (where I went to school) now is completed, with the third building of the complex opening in 2007. You can still major in magazines, but they have a lot of new majors like online journalism. Some of the students' work was displayed on the walls -- web page designs, storyboards for TV ads, magazine layouts. The future of journalism is in good hands with this new generation. Classes had been in session for five days, and late on a Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend, students were working in the news lab on giant Macintosh screens (you could see them from a glass window one story up) and huddled in meetings around their laptops working on group projects. The professors have them hitting the ground running, just like when I was a student there.

Over in Crouse College, the gorgeous red stone Victorian building with the stained glass windows, which looks like it belongs on a seminary campus or at Harry Potter's Hogwart's, the music students were practicing. Also hard at work on a Friday afternoon! I am sure some of the student body was down on Marshall Street lifting a few in the local bars, oops, you have to be 21 to do that now...anyway, some of the students were hard at work and no doubt some of them were hard at partying! College life.

A few trees were starting to turn in the Adirondacks on the way down to Syracuse. Fall will be here soon. With the amount of rain we've had this summer, I'm hoping the leaves will be gorgeous.

Sweetie the cat (18 pounds plus) is in my lap as I write. He sends his regards :-)

There once was a church...

2011-07-20T07:38:00.000-07:00

We were traveling last weekend and stopped for the night at a hotel. Not knowing the area, we asked the desk staff where to find something to eat and were directed to a restaurant nearby. After checking out their website (doesn't everyone?) to see their menu, we went over there and had a very good meal.

It was one of those funky themed restaurants that caters to the young and hip. There was a bar in the center of the restaurant with tables and booths around the perimeter. It was a Friday night and the place was filling up fast, so we were seated upstairs, where from our booth we could look down at the bar and the decor. The restaurant theme was a woman aviator (aviatrix?) from the 1930s era: goggles and scarf and leather jacket. A plane of that time period (don't ask me what kind) was suspended from the ceiling and hung over the bar at a crazy angle, with the daring woman aviator seated in the cockpit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The summer menu featured lobster and it was quite good. We were more interested in the food than the decor. But sometime around the time my stomach was more full than the plate, I happened to focus on the rows of booths around us and noticed...they were pews. Real church pews. Oak, with the trinitarian three-lobed carvings on the ends. The numbered brass plates were still on the sides. Over toward the bar I saw a carved railing, mahogany, with the same three-lobed design: an altar rail, perhaps?

I took a closer look at the pew I was sitting in. Yes, it was the real thing, with old deep scratches in the wood. When the waiter came with the check, I asked him about the pews. Not surprisingly, he had no idea where they came from. The restaurant was quite busy by now, so I didn't bother trying to find the manager to ask for more information. But on the way out I noticed a round stained glass window on one wall. It had an inscription that it had been given in memory of someone. So it was real, too.

The aviatrix and the plane were fun, funky stuff. But why the salvaged pews, altar rail, and stained glass from a church? I hope some decorator didn't think that was old funky stuff too, that fit in with the decor because it was part of that era.

I thought of the people who had sat in those pews and prayed. Generations, probably. They had worshiped in those seats, sung hymns, sat through sermons (good and bad). They had attended weddings, baptisms, funerals in those pews. I wondered where the church had been and when it had closed, and how many people had been left at the end. (The possibility that it might have been torn down to build a bigger sanctuary, particularly in the Northeast, is slim to none.)

I suppose I can be a little bit glad that some parts of that sanctuary (and by extension, the people who worshiped there) have a new life, a new home, even in a restaurant. It is sad that it's hard to find someone who remembers who they were and what they did.

Will this new generation of young people remember going to church as a quaint old custom that their grandparents found important? Or will they have their own ways of worship? Plush theater seats in stadium-like auditoriums seating thousands? Alone at home (or in a coffee shop, an airport, anywhere) with a laptop/tablet/smartphone and an online "virtual church"?

I do think there will be a church in the future. But it may not be anything I recognize.

There is a huge discussion going on among mainline church leaders about the future of the church: whether there will be a future at all, and if so, what it will be like. But that subject would make a longer blog than I have time to write today. That would be a book. Or a series of books.

Psalm 90:

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

Look! It's a website!

2011-05-17T08:15:00.000-07:00

After months and months of work, at last, the new improved church website has gone live. Eeeeee!

Check it out: http://www.presbyplatt.org/

The old website stopped working around the time I arrived at the church a year ago. (Coincidence?) It refused to let anyone go in and make updates. It was time for a change. We hired a consultant to help us with the technical stuff and develop a basic template, then it was off and running developing new content, especially photos that captured the essence of the building and the congregation.

I was quite surprised when I saw the stock image of a stained glass window on the old home page, when the church has such awesome stained glass windows of its own. So I spent some sunny afternoons last summer (and a couple in the winter) taking pictures of the windows. Not easy. If you're not a professional photographer and able to climb up on a scaffold, the perspective goes all wrong when you point upward with your camera from ground level. So I focused on sections of the stained glass rather than entire windows.

I don't know how old these windows are. The sanctuary dates from the 1870s, replacing a sanctuary that burned to the ground (a couple of years after major renovations) in 1867. I'm not sure if the windows were salvaged from the old church or were built for the new one, as some of the memorials date from the 1840s. But when you examine them closely, you can see that over time they have been repaired, and some repairs, shall we say, worked better than others. But the imperfections make the windows even more beautiful, in my opinion.

And then I started to learn how to edit photos with a program on my computer. I still have a lot to learn, but I was able to clean up some dark photos and crop others. I took more pictures, my husband did also, and others in the church did, too. I struggled to write copy. How do you capture the heart of a very diverse congregation in a few paragraphs? In the old days, I guess, I'd have typed a few lines, ripped the paper out of the typewriter, and tossed it in the wastebasket and reached for a fresh sheet. Today, of course, it's highlight and hit delete. And start over.

And then there was the learning curve for posting sermons and other videos on the Vimeo site and linking them to the website. More technical stuff to learn, and much more yet to learn.

Meanwhile, the youth director and church administrator were working on their own sections. There was much frustration and "Why won't it do what I want it to do?" The youth director summed it up well on her Facebook post, "Jesus saves, but this website won't."

And of course there were the queries and emails from the congregation and session of "When the heck are we going to get the new website up and running?" Guilt, guilt. It took the website consultant to give us the final push to get it all done. But yesterday afternoon, we told him, "Go live!" And here it is.

Still needs some tweaking. But now we can update it every week. And it looks great! In My Humble Opinion.

A new chapter

2011-05-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) made headlines this week when the 87th of 173 presbyteries voted in favor of Amendment 10-A to the Constitution of the church, giving it the majority needed for passage. The new amendment replaces G-6.0106b, the so-called "fidelity and chastity" amendment adopted in 1997, which prohibited anyone from being ordained to office in the church who did not practice fidelity in a marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness. 10-A never mentions marriage or sexual orientation. Instead, it says that local governing bodies -- sessions in the case of elders and deacons, and presbyteries in the case of ministers -- shall examine candidates and determine their suitability for office. Which is what we have been doing all along, in fact. But by removing the fidelity and chastity wording, it leaves the decision whether to ordain someone who may not meet those criteria up to the local governing body.

Because I pastor the only Presbyterian church in my community, I figured someone from the local paper would call me for a quote, and they did. You can read the story here:

http://pressrepublican.com/0800_special_sections/x1950015858/Presbyterian-Church-approves-change-in-ordination-standard

All the hoopla, lo these last fifteen years or more, has focused on the ordination of sexually active gays and lesbians. "Fidelity and chastity" was much broader than that -- it prohibited straight people living with a partner outside of marriage from being ordained, too, and I suspect there are a lot more of them in our churches than gay couples. (Think of older widowed and divorced church members who, for any number of reasons, decided not to remarry but to live with someone.) And let's face it, over the years, there were probably a number of people ordained to office who were cheating on their spouses but never "self-acknowledged" that they were, so hey, they were off the hook. But the focus was on those who were openly gay.

Until a little over a year ago, I had never been married. During the years I was going through the arduous process that leads to ordination as a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the PC(USA), I fully expected that someone, somewhere, in one of my innumerable meetings with committees on preparation for ministry, committees on ministry, and pastor search committees, would ask me about my sexual orientation. To my surprise, no one ever did. And I never brought it up. In the secular world, where I worked for twenty years, federal law prohibits an employer from asking questions about marital status, children, etc. In the church, it's no holds barred: you can be asked anything. But no one asked. Doesn't mean there wasn't some speculation raised or assumptions made when I was out of the room. But I never heard about it.

Attitudes toward gay people have been shifting in the United States since "fidelity and chastity" became part of our church's constitution in 1997. This became clear to me just after last Christmas, when Congress voted to repeal "don't ask, don't tell," a policy dating from around that same era, with hardly a whimper, and essentially with the blessing of military leaders. I suspect that as more and more people have come out in recent years, both public figures we see on television and people we know in our private lives, that being gay now has a face. It's no longer "those people." It's our neighbors, friends, and co-workers. And surprise! Gay people are not demons, after all. They are ordinary folk, going about their lives -- and their faith -- as best they can, day by day.

And in the church, I do think that some pastors who have been particularly vocal in opposing the ordination of gays and lesbians are starting to realize this too. It's not about "those people from outside" who are trying to "destroy" the church. We are talking about children we baptized, who went to Sunday school and Vacation Bible School and confirmation classes, who professed their faith in their youth, who suddenly were no longer welcome in their churches when they announced that they were gay. I think some of these pastors are slowly realizing that gay people have families. Maybe some of these family members have become brave enough to go to these pastors and say, "My child/grandchild/sibling is gay, and when you say they are categorically not fit for office in the church because they are gay, I find that I can no longer worship here."

Some large-church pastors have been rattling their sabers in the last few months, as it became more and more likely that G-6.0106b was going to be removed from the Constitution. Their latest missive suggests that they want to form a new denomination without leaving the old one (with its great health insurance and pension plan, but I'm being cynical here), where they can set their own ordination standards and do as they please with regard to funding the work of the PC(USA). I have no idea how that idea is going to fly with the rest of the denomination, but time will tell how it will all work out.

It's a new chapter in the life of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). I don't think there will be radical change all at once; I mean, after all, we're the church. We don't move that fast. (A little bit more cynicism here.) But maybe, just maybe, after all these years of fighting, we can take a deep breath and say, "Okay, let's move on. Let's get back to doing the work that Christ has called us to do in the world." Not everyone is going to go along. But I do think that many hearts and minds have been changed over the years. The Holy Spirit is in our midst, still at work in people's lives. Amen!

Watch the skies!

2011-02-02T12:06:00.000-08:00

The photo doesn't show it well, but the white stuff is really coming down today in what they'll probably call the Great Groundhog Day Blizzard. The Weather Channel trumpeted that 100 million people would be affected by this weather system, which has included thunderstorms, damaging winds, tornadoes, ice, snow, and combinations of the above. Here in the North Country we are finally getting a snow day, to the delight of everyone who doesn't have to go to work today (including me!) and the not-so-delight to people who have to be out driving in it, like the UPS driver who slid a little as he turned the corner on our street trying to avoid the snow plow in the cul-de-sac.

We went outside about three hours ago and shoveled and snow-blowed the driveway, walkways, and steps. You'd hardly guess now that they had ever been touched. The snow is really coming down! It is about ten degrees, so the snow is very light and fluffy and won't make a snowball, much less a snowperson. It looks a little bit like powdered sugar piled up on the deck -- a LOT of powdered sugar. There's some sleet mixed in with it, little white icy pellets that look like the salt crystals we spread around to melt the ice that builds up on the front steps.

Snow is silent. Rain makes a fair amount of noise: tapping or hissing or glub-glubbing as it comes down the gutterspouts. But you don't know that it's snowing unless you look out. Except for the welcome sound of the snowplow scraping down the street and the salt and sand rattling onto the pavement, the snow deadens sound. Beautiful. Peaceful. Awesome.

I have a lot of snowless years to make up for, a lot of childhood days in New Orleans dreaming of what snow must be like. Today is going a long way toward filling that void.

Always winter, always Christmas!

2011-02-01T12:27:00.000-08:00

I took this photo on a recent day trip to Montreal. This lamp-post in Parc Mont Royale reminded me of the lamp-post in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. At the beginning of the story, when Lucy goes from the wardrobe of fur coats into the forest of snowy fir trees in Narnia, she finds a lamp-post in the middle of the woods. And here is another one.

In Narnia, Lucy meets Mr. Tumnus, the faun, who tells her of the White Witch, who makes it always winter and never Christmas. In the North Country, it's been winter now for two or three months, and there are two or three more to go. It only seems like it's always winter.

But in the North Country, I've discovered, people leave their decorations up after Christmas. Wreaths, bows, lights, everything. Some continue to turn on their lights in the evenings. It really is neat -- I like to say that the city looks like a Currier & Ives Christmas card. When I asked why people leave their decorations up after Christmas, I got three responses:

1. It's too darn cold to take them down.
2. The nights are so long and dark, the lights cheer people up at night.
3. We leave them up until spring comes, or maybe Easter. (Easter is not necessarily spring in the North Country.)

I'd like to think that people in the North Country have read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and have taken it to heart. If it's going to be "always winter," then by golly, it's going to be "always Christmas." Aslan is here, even in the dead of winter. Take that, White Witch!

A White Christmas

2010-12-22T11:22:00.000-08:00

Yes, last week we finally got real snow! As I write, it is snowing lightly. The temperatures haven't gotten very far above freezing, if at all, in the last week, so this snow is going to stay around. The transplanted New Orleanians are going to have their first white Christmas as newlyweds. Is that romantic or what?

Like Santa Claus, I'm making a list and checking it twice, but my list is a little different from Santa's. Bulletin for Christmas Eve children's service -- check. Bulletin for candelight service -- check. Bulletin for next Sunday -- check. Bulletin for the week after that, so I can take a week's vacation -- check. Pastor's report to session -- check. Pastor's letter for January newsletter -- check. Speech to local Rotary club -- check. Sermon for Christmas Eve -- hmmmm...and here I am writing an entry in my blog...

Back in New Orleans, the locals are remembering Nash Roberts, who died on Sunday at the age of 92. Nash was a television weatherman who first went on the air in New Orleans the year I was born, 1951, and is perhaps best known for predicting accurately where several major hurricanes would make landfall, including Betsy in 1965 and Georges in 1998. I remember Nash on the air about ten o'clock the night Betsy came ashore, standing in a pile of broken glass that was the remains of the front window of his office on Royal Street, telling viewers, "We're going to stay on the air as long as we can" -- and then the power went out.

In recent years Nash stayed home to care for his wife, who I believe had dementia. As Katrina approached, he made the decision to evacuate (for the first and only time) to get her to safety. I wish with all my heart he had called his old colleagues at WWL-TV and told them of his plans. If only they had announced on the air that Saturday in August 2005, "Nash Roberts is evacuating the city for this one," many of the old-timers who had decided to stay because they had ridden out Betsy in their homes and they believed they would be safe in this one, would have changed their minds and gotten out. Immediately! "Nash is leaving? We're outa here!" So many older people drowned in their homes or died from the heat and the stress. Of all the people in the city, Nash was the one they would have listened to. Not the mayor. Not the current crop of weather forecasters. They trusted Nash.

Nash, thanks for all that you did. Be at peace in a place where the weather is always perfect.

Snow at last

2010-11-27T14:43:00.000-08:00

OK, it wasn't much, even by the standards of a transplanted Deep Southerner, but some of it is still around at the end of the day (which doesn't happen in the Deep South). But it was neat to see a few flakes turn into serious snow, even if only for a few minutes. There is still snow on the deck, and for a time, the green pool cover turned white. (BP the alligator has gone for his winter hibernation indoors...deflated.)

In the middle of it, a phone call from the tire dealer asking us how we like our new tires (mine, all weather; his, snow tires). I said, "Well, it's finally snowing. Call us again after we've had time to try them out."

The next opportunity for snow, according to The Weather Channel, is late next week. We'll see!

Tomorrow is the first Sunday in Advent, the first Sunday in the official liturgical year, but with it falling on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I'm not sure how many people will be back from their travels and in church. I have spent the holiday at home, doing battle with a respiratory illness and mostly losing. At least the fever has abated. All I want is to have enough energy and voice to make it through two services tomorrow. One day at a time.

Waiting for snow

2010-11-15T13:49:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's mid-November. Most of the trees are now bare, and since we went back to standard time, the sun is setting in the North Country around 4:30 in the afternoon (soon to be even earlier).

I am now the proud owner of $800 worth of "all-weather tires" on the Evacumobile, as well as a new battery (the four-year-old one was pronounced not fit to survive the winter), and the biggest windshield wipers I have ever seen (to stand up against snow and ice).

So where's the snow? I remember from my college days at Syracuse that it usually shows up by now. And the Midwest has had a couple of big ole nasty storms already.

Mind you, I'm not complaining that it's still 50 degrees and the sun is shining the past few days. I'm just, well, dying of suspense. Let it snow, and let's get that first one over with!

Yesterday I saw a photo in an online article of a snow-covered New England country house. Soft, beautiful snow on the roof, snow in the yard, snow in the trees, soft golden light coming from the windows at dusk. The article was about romantic weekend getaways in New England bed-and-breakfasts during the Thanksgiving to Christmas season.

Hey, we're ready for our own weekend getaway-at-home, just a ferry ride away from New England! The front porch is stacked with firewood! How about a lovely snow-covered roof and yard at OUR house, not to mention smoke coming up from the chimney, so we can take pictures to send with the Christmas letter?

Oh, right. I work weekends, and especially between now and Christmas. Scrap the weekend getaway. I'll settle for my day off. Or any snow days that may come along.

When February rolls around, I am going to go back to this entry and groan. I just know it.

So it wasn't a hurricane...

2010-10-04T14:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, maybe I was a little too flip, or blase', or whatever, in my last post when I wrote off the remnants of Tropical Storm Nicole as just a little rain. There was significant flooding all up the East Coast, and some people died as a result. Flooding is flooding. Never a good thing.

Here in the North Country we got a steady rain all day Friday (my day off), and the rivers and streams turned into torrents as they carried the runoff away into Lake Champlain. The lake level was noticeably higher when we took the ferry over to Vermont on Saturday, but the lake is big enough to handle all the extra water.

I love this place. The locals decided that if Scotland's Loch Ness could have a sea monster named Nessie, then Lake Champlain could have a sea monster named Champy. I have even seen a cartoon of Champy making an afternoon snack out of the ferry, cars and all. We didn't see Champy on our run Saturday, however. But the trees are turning, both in the Adirondacks of New York and the Green Mountains of Vermont, and the views are just grand. By next week they should go from grand to spectacular.

Here's a little peek of one of the local rain-swollen rivers, normally so shallow and clear that you can see the rocks on the bottom. I wish I had been taking a video instead of a still photograph. The photo doesn't capture the swift movement of the water as it hurtled toward the lake, or the way it dashed around rocks and made eddies and backwaters of splashing whitecaps (whitecaps in a river? Is there another name for them?). Next time, I'll dig out the video camera.

What a neat place to live.

Is it me?

2010-09-30T15:00:00.000-07:00

When I saw that there was a tropical storm named Nicole in the Florida Straits, I said, "Uh-oh." Too many of them sail through Key West and head into the Gulf of Mexico and end up who knows where, terrorizing every coastal community from Tampa to Brownsville until it decides where it wants to go. But this time, when I looked at the projected path, I said, "Huh?" Because this one was moving backwards. Instead of going west through the Gulf, it was heading east and then north, up the Atlantic coast. Most of the storms this season have headed up the Atlantic, in fact. Blessedly, some of the nastiest ones have turned north right up the middle of the ocean and never threatened land, although one gave Bermuda and Nova Scotia quite a hit. And the Northeast got a brushing from one over Labor Day weekend.

And as I write, Nicole is drenching the entire East Coast, and all of New York State is covered in green on the Weather Channel radar. Outside my window, the rain varies from moderate to heavy.

So I have to ask: is it me? Did this year's storms bypass the Gulf Coast landfalls and head up the East Coast because they knew I had moved? Believe it or not, a couple of people in my new home have suggested just that!

Well, ya know what? If they're after me, that's just fine. If my moving to the North Country spares the Gulf Coast, which has had way too many things go wrong lately, it's a good deal, as far as I'm concerned.

The water temperature in the Gulf is still around 84 degrees, which is warm enough to fuel a pretty powerful hurricane. Up Nawth where I now live, it's full-fledged autumn, and the leaves are brilliant golds and eye-popping reds -- and the temperatures have dropped enough to take the wind out of the sails of a tropical system. So we are getting rain right now. A lot of rain. I can deal with that.

I know the meterorologists will probably explain that the storms are going up the Atlantic this year because of El Nino or La Nina conditions, or wind shear is tearing storms apart before they can get really powerful, or something. I am just glad that the people I love in New Orleans haven't had to evacuate this year. Right now I'm wondering how to get my Evacumobile (a supersize SUV) into the garage of our new home for the winter. And what it's going to be like to drive it in the snow.

The Evacumobile had to do its thing just once, when we evacuated from New Orleans to Atlanta for Hurricane Gustav two years ago. As far as I'm concerned, one evacuation justified its purchase. When I saw people on the interstate evacuating in RVs, I stopped feeling guilty about owning a gas guzzler. This spring, when we moved to the North Country, I was glad to have it to transport three cats, the essentials I didn't want to put on the moving van, and me. How it will handle a real winter is yet to be seen.

Even in the dreariness of a rainy day, the colors of autumn are awesome. This weather may bring down a lot of leaves, but for now, I'm as captivated by the colors as a little child. Wow.

New life, new blog

2010-08-30T09:34:00.000-07:00

Once there was an eight-year-old girl who started a newspaper at her grandmother's kitchen table and called it The Daily Cattown News. She grew up, life changed, and in the bizarre world of post-Katrina New Orleans, she found herself living in her grandmother's house and writing once again at that kitchen table. She created a blog and called it The Daily Cattown News.

And one Saturday in the late winter of 2010, on the day before THE SAINTS WON THE SUPER BOWL, she spent the day at that table writing out wedding invitations. Once again, her life was about to change dramatically.

Newly married, she and her husband set out in the spring to start a new life in a new place, far distant from New Orleans. With her three cats and his dog, they set out on a great adventure involving two vehicles, four days and three nights on the road, separate rooms for cats and dog in "pet friendly motels," tornado activity across the Deep South, a late-spring snowstorm in the North, and, in the end, no real mishaps along the way, which was a blessing.

And they came to their new home in the North Country and settled in. The new home has a swimming pool. While on their honeymoon in Pensacola Beach, Florida, they acquired a five-foot alligator (not a real one but a blow-up toy!) for their new swimming pool. They believe they are the only family in their community with a geniune plastic Florida alligator in their swimming pool. In light of the oil spill, just weeks after their honeymoon, that has devastated the Gulf of Mexico as far east as Pensacola, they decided to name the alligator BP. (Well, it IS the right shade of green.) In the mornings they sit at that kitchen table that came with them from her grandmother's house in New Orleans, and watch BP sail across the pool, buffeted by currents coming from the filter as well as the prevailing winds.

It's a new life and a new blog. Come, sail along!