Vermont's Fitful Spring Continues

Spring is always an unpredictable time of year. Yesterday, a drenching rain soaked everything thoroughly, preventing me from really doing much landscape work and warm season prepping around my house in St. Albans, Vermont.

Wet trees in my yard shine in the sun as a sleet and rain shower
draws to a close last evening

Toward evening, the sun came out, and I was tempted to head outside and get some work done.

But it was still awfully wet, and that black cloud off to the northwest look ominous.

Sure enough, the cloud came overhead and unleashed a torrent of rain and sleet. It only lasted five minutes before the sun reappeared. As the remaining sleet slanted down through the sun in the gusty winds, the trees looked flash frozen, but it was just millions of water droplets glinting in the sun.

A highway near my house gleams in the evening sun after a shower,
contrasting with dark, wet trees and shrubs

I gave up on working outside with the new onslaught of water from the sky. But everything seemed newly washed and fresh and ready to turn spring green and grow toward another lush summer.

It was chilly, the fallen sleet crunched underfoot, but new green shoots struggled up through the muddy ground.

Finally, despite a cold wind, it felt like spring really had a plan to finally arrive.

I went inside and a weather forecaster on television confirmed a warm spell is due in a few days.

Daffodil plants just coming up in my yard gleam in a post
shower evening sun last evening. 

The dark grays of winter will slowly fade, as will the remaining, dirty patches of snow in the woods.  The green is coming. I can feel it.

American Top 40!!!!!!!

It's a chore, sometimes, driving through rural Vermont if you don't have decent music in the car, and you have to rely on radio stations to keep you entertained.  Consider my experience as I drove the two hours home from Rutland to St. Albans the other night:

Hmm, the oldies station. Click:
The Carpenters wail, "Don't you remember you told me you love me baby. Baby, baby, baby baby, oh baybeeee!!"

Click. The top 40 station.
Some pop tart's on: "Sticks and Stones will break my bones but chains and whips excite me."
CLICK!

A country station?
".....I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights...."
Click 

A familiar radio jingle: .American..Top 40!!!!!"
It was a rerun, of all things, of American Top 40 with Casey Kasem from April 5, 1986.

Casey Kasem kept me company the
other night with a 1986 blast from the past

Wow, a time warp from the 1980s. I need somebody with big hair and parachute pants, pronto!

I quickly got immersed in Casey's minutae of the chart toppers of 1986.

This particular Top 40, had two differents songs with the same name, Casey tells us, both called "I Can't Wait."  What fun! I can't wait to hear them, to see if I remember the songs

I do remember them! Stevie Nicks angrily warbles through one of the "I Can't Wait" songs, over a background of urgent '80s era thunks and clanks and fake drums. Fun Fact: Her "I Can't Wait" is off her "Rock A Little " album. "Rock A Little" is also the current name of Nick's official Web site.

Turns out I recalled the other "I Can't Wait,"  by a now-forgotten group called Nu Shooz. I actually like this danceable song, even if it does sound a bit like a really bad earthquake at a wind chime factory. It turns out Nu Shooz is still going strong, though their sound has changed to something they call pop/jazz/cinema. The reviews look good, though.

Another blast from the past follows almost immediately after "I Can't Wait as Casey plays something called "Beat's So Lonely," by Charlie Sexton, who, when he was on the chart in April, 1986, was a 17-year old wunderkind who apparently was on his way to being a huge superstar.

I hadn't  heard of Sexton since 1986, though I've learned, upon looking him up, is that he is still a well-respected musician, band members for big acts like Bob Dylan, and has been producing many hit records. So good for him!

I remember loving the song "Beats so Lonely" in 1986, but upon hearing it again the other night, it sounded so overwrought. Which is what you'd expect from a 17-year old.

Then it was time for the highlight of the snow, the Long Distance Dedication. It was from a guy from North Dakota, who was sending it out to his wife, who presumably lived in the guy's house, so there wasn't much of a distance to carry.

No matter. Mr. Fargo wrote that he was cleaning out his garage and found some eight track tapes, one of which featured Bobby Vinton's song, "I Love How You Love Me."

Bobby Vinton helped soothe my drive home the other night

Good gawd, I thought that song was so cheesy and hokey back in my wild semi-youthful days in 1986. Casey Kasem sure is old school, I thought.

Then the song played. It immediately made me think of my lover, and I melted. What a beautiful tune. Yes, it's cheesy as hell,  but since it conjures up great thoughts, what the hell.

Radio stations obviously play Casey Kasem reruns to appeal to our nostalgia, of course. That's OK. Indulging in "American Top 40" gives us a chance to indulge in assessing where we've been, where we're going, and provides a soundtrack to get the juices flowing with those thoughts.

I see the musicians in the 1986 Top 40 countdown have also evolved and grown and changed, so we're all in this together.  As I neared home, Van Halen's song "Why Can't This Be Love" blasted from my truck's radio (The biggest mover within the countdown!,"  Casey gushed)

I pulled into the driveway, took one last look at 1986, and pronounced myself happy to be home, alive and well in 2011.

A Touching Anti-Bullying ad

The following video is making some major rounds on the blogosphere and I'm going to join in, because the more the message spreads, the better.  It's an Irish public service announcement fighting anti-gay bullying.

Regular readers of my previous blog at mattalltrades.wordpress.com will know how much I rail against such bullying. It's nice to see this very effective, touching, in every sense of the world, video, below.  

The kids are alright.

Best "Ode to Joy" Creativity Award

Check out this cool video from a Japanese advertisement. Bet you've never heard "Ode to Joy" played like this This video is the best time waster of the week.

Vermont Winter Finally Dead?

Yesterday, up here in St. Albans, Vermont, I celebrated the fact that a snowstorm that was to have socked the area Friday never materialized.

Some crocuses blooming at my St. Albans, Vt.
house on Saturday

Instead of shoveling snow, there was an opportunity to get some work done outdoors preparing for the growing season

The weather was mediocre, but I celebrated the fact that at least we've graduated to something akin to the normal spring fitful atmosphere. The sun, when it was out, was warm, and the clouds billowed like they do in the summer.

But those clouds sometimes blew a few chilly gusts of wind, and spit out a few raindrops, and snowflakes in the higher spots.

At sunset, streamers of rain and snow coming from a cloud c
creatred this wispy view

Still, it was a great alternative to winter. The remaining snow on the ground was melting fast, and it looks like it will stay warm enough for the next week for that slow thaw to continue. Rejoice!

Lawmaker Drinks to Montana

Every once in awhile, a politician comes along that has a viewpoint so novel, so bold, that you have to sit up and take notice.

Meet Montana lawmaker, and bar owner Alan Hale, who caused a big stir last week by essentially saying tough DWI laws are a bad idea. 

Such laws "are destroying a way of life that has been in Montana for years and years," Hale said.

Montana lawmaker Alan Hale

Or a way of death. It all depends on your perspective.

Fun fact: Another person named Alan Hale played the skipper on "Gilligan's Island." The Gilligan's Island Hale also owned a restaurant/bar called "The Lobster Barrell" for a time in the 1970s and 1980s.

Anyway, in a big, wide open rural state like Montana, Hale reasoned, how the hell do you get to a bar to drink other than driving?

Hale didn't get into the concept of designated driver, but, hey, leave the picky details to the bureaucrats. A lawmaker like Hale is the big idea guy.

Maybe he's on to something. A lot of people are on drugs, too, and they sometimes break into homes to steal stuff to buy the drugs. You've got to get the drugs somehow, right? So why is breaking and entering illegal? By preventing drug addicts from breaking into your house and stealing your electronics, aren't we destroying the drug addicts' way of life?

Hale, who hasn't been granting interviews, is surely thinking about his Next Big Idea. So, here's to our Montana lawmaker, who surely has an, um, interesting political future in this great nation.

Montreal is Europe in North America

Last weekend, I went to Montreal, Quebec, Canada,  which is less than an hour and a half from my St. Albans, Vermont home. So I practically live in a Montreal suburb.

A street in Montreal's Old Port

I need a big city fix every once in awhile. I define "big city" as anything over about 250,000 people, so my standards are pretty small.

Hey, I live in Vermont, where the biggest city, Burlington, has about 40,000 people, so the entire population of the city can easily fit in many stadiums. All of Vermont has the population of a small city, roughly 630,000 people.


Given how close I live to Montreal, it's a wonder I don't go there more often. I hadn't been there in nearly a year. Just too busy.

A stained glass window in the Notre Dame
Basillica of Montreal

One thing I like about Montreal is it is in some ways architecturally like a European city. Of course, there's the Old Port, the area of buildings dating back 300 years or so. It kind of looks like an old neighborhood in Paris or something.   A particular highlight is the Notre Dame Basilica of Montreal, with its beautiful ornate interior.

I made sure to take plenty of photos while I was there.

Even the nondescript houses, apartments and neighborhoods in Montreal are built differently than those in the United States. The run-of-the-mill buildings in Montreal are not distinctive, necessarily, but it's nice, just for a change, to see architecture that's a little different than in my home state, just a short distance away.

 .

Montrealers speak French, or at least a version of French known as Quebecois. That also helps you feel like you've gone to Europe.

I'm happy to say I can almost say I live within spitting distance of Europe. It makes me sound so haughty, pretentious and special.

The colorful exterior of a Montreal building

Of course, not really, as unlike the well-dressed Montrealers I was surrounded by, I wandered the city dressed in Carharrts and a flannel shirt.

You can bring a hick Vermonter to the city, but you can't take the hick out of the Vermonter.