New life for old mills

Old shoe factories and woolen mills  in the northeast are finding new life as studios for artists and craftspeople.

Many are private work spaces, but retail shops are finding a home in these brick buildings as well as Yoga or dance and martial arts studios.

Other defunct mill factories are being renovated as apartments and a growing number are geared towards the baby boomers looking for elderly housing.

Wood warms you twice

We got our delivery of fire wood this week.

Old timers say that wood warms you twice.

Once when you stack it and once when you burn it.

I have already had a couple two or three fires in the wood stove this summer.

With all the rain and being so close to the coast, the damp air can make you shiver in August.

Eulogy

Why is it our society commemorates a man after his death rather than while the physical body is alive. I think it is easier for people to wait until someone has died to rally their feelings and thoughts to the surface. It is easier to put on a black suit and take time from work to attend a funeral than to show up in jeans to the hospital. Just show up. Hold a hand, hold a crying relative, hold your tongue about how you would handle it differently.

We fear death. We fear the face of death that alters the features of a person. We fear the tubes and machinery hooked up to a frail wisp of a person, nearly unrecognizable as being the robust man they had been before death gripped them by the wrist and wouldn’t let go.

The struggle against death is never pretty. It seems the inevitable is denied and hope is a carrot just out of reach that withers along with the condemned.

But death comes to us all, regardless of health care, regardless of choices made, regardless of loved ones who cling to the belief that they are being left. Left an orphan, left missing half of their selves, left without, begging the dying to not leave them here alone.

It is easier to remember him as he was in his strength…but wouldn’t he have filled with peace, with joy, with tears, for all the respect, love, and loss that is felt with the passing of such as he?

Price of Pain

You’ve seen the ads…ask your doctor if this over-priced-drug-of-the-moment is right for YOU!

Yeah…I’m on it. Next commercial…yeah…I’m on that too. There’s no moth flying over my bed and I won’t be puking on some politico’s shoes, but my cholesterol and bone numbers are better…and I no longer feel the need to strangle complete strangers for wasting Oxygen…But the pain remains in Maine.

Make a choice…painless – never free – and stay home or no relief so I can engage with the world and pretend. Pretend I can pay attention when the price is searing through my spine.

Check please.

Carriage House

Carriage House in Salem, Massachusetts 

Where the Lilies Bloom

where the lilies bloom

I love this book. This is one I search out on my shelves to read every year. When I feel that life is no bag of jelly beans I get some much needed perspective with this book. Though considered a young reader classic, it is not written down to the reader. I never read it until I was in my 30′s so don’t let the category get in your way. Written in 1969 Where the Lilies Bloom by Vera and Bill Cleaver (illustrated by Jim Spanfeller) holds up to time.

Salem

A walk through historic

 Salem,  Massachusetts

 is an architects dream and

 a pleasant way to spend a beautiful day.