We Are Wabi-Sabi

Thanks to my brother Erik and the subscription he gave me to the Mother Earth News I have just discovered something that makes me enjoy life even more. I can now find contentment and peace in everything I have and everything that surrounds me by engaging in Wabi-Sabi. What is Wabi-Sabi? I had never heard of this until I read an article in the current issue of the Mother Earth News last night written by Robyn Griggs Lawrence titled Wabi-Sabi: Finding the Beauty and Peace in Ordinary Things. To quote from the article “Wabi-Sabi is the Japanese philosophy of appreciating things that are imperfect, primitive and incomplete.” “It’s slow and uncluttered and regards authenticity above all.” “It finds beauty in cracks and crevices and all the marks that time, weather and use leave behind.” Well if that is the definition then I live in a Wabi-Sabi Mansion and the photos you see here may make you extremely envious.

Think for a moment of one of your favorite objects, a well worn but oh so comfortable sweater with holes, a piece of pottery or drawing your child gave you long ago, or a piece of furniture passed down from your grandparents with a few ding s and a knob or two missing. Dwell on it. It’s comfortable, it was made by someone you love, or it has history told by the scratches, water marks and a missing knob. You probably will never get this same feeling of appreciation by going to Wal-Mart or Target or wherever and buying a mass produced product fresh out of the perfectly packaged cardboard box. Wabi-Sabi is about appreciating old and used items, appreciating hand-made items, appreciating the imperfections that are life.

If you read the article on Wabi-Sabi in the Mother Earth News you’ll find a list of 12 Ways to Wabi-Sabi. It’s all good in my book and I do encourage you to read it because then you may find that you can accept things as-is, as good, just as they are right now and feel content about it.

Sure…I have plaster missing from my walls and ceiling…but it looks kind of neat and it has a certain warmth to it….and it makes me think of who actually did that work….and what it was like back then. I can get lost in the beauty of the imperfection and I believe that is what Wabi-Sabi is trying to say. Now I just have to convince Lauren.

I Got Lucky

When I was young the term “I got lucky” had a whole different connotation and now when I say “I got lucky” I mean something like …I just won a pair of free tickets to see and hear some cool music in a really neat place…which is exactly what happened to me last week. You see I entered this contest on a radio station I like here in Maine known as WCLZ and about a week later they emailed me to say I had won a pair of tickets to see Carol Noonan at the Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownfield, Maine for January 20th. This really was a prize because Lauren and I have been talking about going to this place for the past 12 months. If you check out their website you will see why http://www.stonemountainartscenter.com/ArtsCenter/ .
What they do is they bring in amazing musicians and entertainers with some pretty well known names like Joan Baez, Robert Cray, and The Indigo Girls to a “beautiful- new” post and beam barn structure located out in the middle of nowhere to entertain you, me, and the locals. There was such a nice vibe at this place that words cannot explain it. The box office lobby is a “beautiful-old” post and beam barn that they had moved just a short distance on the site and rebuilt. The bartender was one of the people who helped to rebuild the lobby barn which brings me to another point. You really sense “community and love” here, from the people who work at multiple tasks, to the songs you hear, and from Carol’s desire to give back to the community. In fact this event was labeled as The Album Release for Waltzing’s for Dreamers by Carol Noonan who notes that the sale proceeds will be used to “To put on some free shows for our recession hard-hit community…”

Before I end let me say you can eat here before the show at the same table where you will then experience the show and the food is good and plenty. We had a delicious large salad with fruits, nuts, and cheese which we split and still brought home half. I then had the salmon chowder loaded with chunks of fish and other goodies which came in a bowl the size of a small bathtub. Okay I exaggerated here but not by much, you’ll see and yes I took at least half of that home too.

Carol Noonan and the Stone Mountain Band is so worth seeing if you can create the opportunity and I think you will feel lucky when you arrive at the Stone Mountain Arts Center even if you have to pay for the tickets

January Update

It is 2:45 now on a lazy Saturday afternoon and it looks like it may snow soon. Lauren and I just came back from the Transfer Station where we actually came back with nothing extra this time. Earlier today we took down our Christmas Trees, yes trees, we had two of them. Why, because….well why not? We certainly have enough decorations for two. Lauren deserves the credit for decorating them. My job was installation, keeping them watered, and then removal. I did enjoy them because they added a nice festive light and feeling to the home.

In other news, we had seen a raccoon at the side of barn the other day so I set the Hav-a-Hart trap inside the barn and on Thursday thought I had caught it when I saw the trap closed. But instead I had caught the neighbor’s cat that was very happy to be released. We haven’t heard the ruckus lately that we had been hearing under our kitchen floor which is a crawlspace that allows access and shelter for the raccoons, porcupines, and woodchucks. When these guys get going it can sound somewhere between a party and soccer match. They chatter loudly, run back and forth, bang into the floor, and chew the bottom of the floor joists. Because “we” don’t have access to this space our only solution currently is to take a block of wood, place it on the kitchen floor directly over where we hear the noise and then proceed to bang the daylights out of the wood with a hammer to try and scare them off. It seems to work but sometimes only temporarily. Recently someone told us to put a rag soaked with ammonia down there. I remembered this worked well when we were having raccoons get into our garbage barrels in Massachusetts years ago. The problem with this is our limited access to get the rag under there and then do we really want the aroma of ammonia wafting up through the kitchen floor? I don’t think so.

Thanks to this last snowstorm on Wednesday all the bare spots which were on the ground are now covered. Hopefully it will stay like this until spring so we can do more cross country skiing. We did our first cross country ski of the season a couple of weeks ago after the first big snow. It felt great to ski, yes and fall, along the trails at the Bethel Inn and at the end of a good workout I was able to take my skis off and walk 100 yards to my house. On Thursday I walked up to Suds Pub for Hoot Night and met up with our long time good neighbor from Magnolia, John O’Hara. We caught up in conversation while the local musicians played. I Love Hoot Nite at Suds. Tomorrow we’re going to watch the Patriots game with Matt and Sari Rochford who are other long time Magnolia neighbors of ours. They apparently come up with their kids most weekends now to go skiing at Sunday River. It’s uncanny just how many people from Gloucester and Cape Ann we keep bumping into here and how many have bought homes up here. Enjoy the cold…it was zero here last night. Hey, it’s snowing now.

Once in a while you’ve got to look back.

Once in a while you’ve got to look back.

This is the time where we want to look back and review the year because tomorrow starts the New Year even though millions of us will continue to write 2010 on our checks well into March. This has been a dynamic year for me and Lauren mostly because I like saying the word, Dynamic. It was just over a year ago we had bought this house (12/11/2009) and it was just 11 months ago when Dusty the Cat and I hit the road to drive across country with our worldly possessions and then rolled into Bethel on January 17, 2010. We had to wait until our new heating system was installed on February 19th to actually move in. From that point on it has been weekends full of house projects and/or company. We’ve actually had more visits than I expected this year which has been really nice. I’ve actually completed less house projects than I had hoped to this year which is life but I can point to three big items accomplished; a new heating system, a new 200 amp electrical service, and a new washer and dryer. Then I can point to a bunch of smaller items accomplished; painting, plaster repair, weather stripping, insulation here and there, tree cutting and fighting bamboo, cutting the lawn, raking leaves etc.

In no particular order here are some things we’ve have done:
We joined the Bethel Historical Society. http://www.bethelhistorical.org/
We joined the Bethel Inn Country Club. http://www.bethelinn.com/
I’m a member of the Suds’ Pub Mug Club and Dart Team. http://www.sudburyinn.com/
We’re members of Western Maine Senior College. http://sad44.maineadulted.org/western_mountains_senior_college
We’re members of the Mahoosuc Land Trust. http://www.mahoosuc.org/
We’re member of the Bethel Outing Club. http://www.wix.com/kirksmegalinknet/boc
I’m a member of the Old Speckled Hen Appreciation Society at the Jolly Drayman English Pub. http://www.briarleainn.com/

We’ve discovered a number of swimming holes and lakes we like. We had a bunch of campfires in the yard this summer. We went hiking and kayaking. We’ve discovered that woodchucks, porcupines, raccoons, mice, deer, and black bears like our home also. We’ve attended the various festivals/fairs, wine tastings, free music events and free talks they have had around here. These are the things we enjoy when we aren’t looking backard or looking forward. We continue to make new friends and acquaintances which is so much of what being part of a community is about. Happy New Year!

Holiday Greetings

I made a very limited number of these handmade Christmas cards which I sent out this year, six to be exact. For the rest of my family, friends, and to those I have not met yet, this is my virtual handmade card to you. Happy Holidays! Peter and Lauren.

Catch of the Day

Does anyone feel like having some Pork-of-Pine Soup? Well this not so little bugger was one of the rodents that have been noisily gnawing away at the floor joists below my kitchen recently and probably the same one I can thank for giving the floor in my pantry the support and feel of a trampoline.
Seeing and hearing the damage that these critters can do to a 2"x 8” was enough to make me go out and buy a Hav-a-Hart trap about a month ago. Last spring I spoke to one of the local Game Wardens about the porcupines and he told me what to use for bait: an apple cut in half, smeared with peanut butter, and covered in salt. It’s the salt that porcupines apparently love the most. So I had that apple with peanut butter and salt in the trap for almost 3 weeks before Porky decided to have a bite. Today was my lucky day and with the help of a neighbor we “relocated” it to a better place.
Now I just have to see if he has any brothers and sisters living under my crawlspace.

Lots to be Thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. It’s a beautiful and sunny 28 degree day here in Bethel this morning. In just a few hours Lauren, me, and her parents Frank and Joan will be heading over to Rooster's Roadhouse to eat our Thanksgiving Day dinner. Lauren’s parents ate at Rooster’s Roadhouse last year on Thanksgiving Day when we were still out in California but after they knew we were going to buy this house we live in now. (They have a habit of scoping out the situation as soon as they know something is happening.) So last year they came across Rooster’s Roadhouse by chance and LOVED the meal they had. We heard about how good the meal was so many times from them that it has now become a joke….”You had a good Thanksgiving at Roosters? Really, tell us again, we’ve never heard that story before.”

It has been a busy November, TBTB…Too Busy to Blog. Just over a week ago we got our new washer and dryer installed and Lauren did the first load at the house. That was on Tuesday November 16th where I had Mike Field of Field Plumbing and Heating install the washer hookup and new drain. Then later that same afternoon Brian Strickland of Autumn Electric came over to install a new 220 volt line for the dryer and a 110 volt line for the washer. I had already installed the vent cowl for the dryer exhaust the previous weekend so by the time Lauren came home from working at her new job it was all systems go and ahead of schedule. So we are thankful for our new washer and dryer.

I’m also thankful for my new $5.00 thermometer I hung outside the kitchen window. I get to see just how cold it is every morning and I write the temperature down on the calendar. It has been a mild November so far with many mornings in the mid 40’s.

Now we’re going to go workout and swim at the Bethel Inn before we chow down our Turkey dinner. I hope everyone who reads this has something to be thankful for.