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    • Burpees and Excuses

      Burpees and Excuses

      I’ve struggled with getting the appropriate amount of daily exercise for years.  I’ve tried P90X, sprint triathlons, swimming laps, walk-a-thons, and all manner of motivators to get myself going.  I rowed in college and like to row, but I travel a lot and don’t have regular access to an erg, let alone a river; I tell myself.

      I love to walk, and when Bodhi was younger I was powering through 10,000 steps daily with no trouble.  As Bodhi has slowed down, my steps have decreased significantly.  Walking 10K steps takes roughly 90 minutes at a steady pace, and I don’t always have time for 90 minutes of walking; I tell myself.

      I don’t run, I don’t lift weights all that often, and I my bike has gathered dust in the garage for three years since I tuned it up and promised myself I’d get out more.  Life is busy, and I just haven’t had the time for long rides; I tell myself.

      I love to hike, and watched with envy as friends subtracted themselves from the regular turns at drinking together on weekends and tackled the 48 4000 footers in New Hampshire.  I celebrated their completion of this goal after a year of getting out there almost every week for a year.  I could accomplish that goal too, but I travel and the weekends are the only time I have to get things done around the house I tell myself.

      Over the last couple of years, I’d read a story that burpees were the perfect exercise.  I then started following Joshua Spodek, who writes about his daily burpee routine and how that’s improved his overall quality of life.  Small daily habits make all the difference.  Discipline equals freedom, as Jocko Willink says.  I understand this, and I’d tried to introduce this daily habit before, starting with 20 burpees per day.  After day three one of my abs felt like it had torn and I quick.

      I’ve decided to start again, but more slowly.  I’ve been doing burpees for almost a month.  I began on September 20th with 10 burpees.  No more.  The next day I added one burpee, and the next another one burpee.  Eventually I got to 20 burpees per day and stopped at that for a while.  Then I increased it again, and again.  Yesterday I did 50 burpees with relative ease, so I added 20 decline pushups when I was done.

      I’m under no illusion that I’m fit yet.  I’ve lost a couple of pounds, but I have a long way to go still.  No, my goal is to establish a habit of daily exercise, and see where it takes me from there.  So far the habit has continued through a trade show in Vegas, two long trips to Upstate New York and 12 hour days of driving and meetings.  I missed one day during this, when I got up early and drove to Vermont for a service and got home late.  That was on day 10 of what has been 28 days of burpees.  I’m now trying to do a minimum of 30, and trying to hit 50 per day.  This increase in production isn’t costing me a lot in time as I’ve become more fit and I’m not out of breath after 7 or 8 burpees.

      Where this takes me I don’t know, but I like to do them, I can do them in my hotel room without waking up the hotel neighbors, and it gives me a minimum threshold to reach daily that I can then mark as success.  And success builds on itself.  I’m trying to do more of the other activities that I’ve put off now as well.  I’m 651 burpees into this, and look forward to reaching 1000, and then 10,000, and then 100,000 burpees.  It’s a small daily thing, but small daily things are everything.

    • The Ghosts That We Knew

      October is a magical month in New England.  The harvest is largely done, leaves are turning and falling off the trees, the days grow shorter and the air becomes crisper.  Winter is coming, but not just yet.

      Like most people who live here, I think of fall as the best time of year in New England.  It’s the sight of foggy ponds and pumpkins and chrysanthemums, the smell of leaves and hay and apple crisp, and the feel of layers of clothes pulled out of dormancy clinging to our skin to warm us from the new season’s chill.

      2018 has been a year of loss.  Some people who were full of life have moved on to whatever comes next.  Autumn is when I think about such things.  Really, it’s hard not to when nature demonstrates daily that this time is short and we’re all dancing on this earth for a short time.  Seeing the leaves turn or seeing Bodhi struggle to climb the stairs; really it’s the same thing.

      Momento Mori.  This is the season of reflection.  The ghosts that we knew remind us that our time is short.  I must do more with that time.

    • Visitors from the Wild

      Visitors from the Wild

      I don’t ever think about salamanders, but fished one out of the pool last Sunday.  I believe it’s a Northern Redback, but what do I know about salamanders?  Next to nothing.  I spend as much time outdoors as I can, but I don’t poke around in streams or under logs and leaves looking for critters.  No, the only time I really see the creatures in the world adjacent to mine is when they come to visit.  Usually that means they’ve gotten into the pool and can’t get out.

      Many visitors from the wild are commonplace.  Birds are lured to the feeders.  Rabbit, chipmunk, squirrels, turkey, skunk, raccoon, turtles, frogs and deer are regular visitors.  And so are the creatures that hunt them.  Walking at night you’ll hear coyote or the strange cries of a fisher cat break the stillness.  Hunters, especially nocturnal hunters, are much harder to see, but you know they’re out there if you pay attention.

      The wild where I live is right on the other side of the fence.  We live adjacent to protected woodland that abuts horse fields on the opposite side from our yard, and runs uphill to form an unbroken necklace of wooded shelter for wildlife.  Within that necklace, Providence Hill Brook runs down that hill right behind our yard, flowing into Hog Hill Brook down the street, which eventually flows into the Spicket River to the Merrimack River and finally to the Atlantic Ocean.  This waterway is a highway for all kinds of creatures – from salmon to the first explorers to this land.

      We get a lot of toads and frogs visiting the yard.  Sadly I found a toad with my spade when I was digging in the garden.  It didn’t end well for that toad.  Generally I’m able to avoid harming more than I hurt.  I spend a lot of time fishing frogs out of the pool.  The relocation program for survivors begins with the pool net and ends at Hog Hill Brook, which should be a more attractive home than my pool.

      A few weeks before that I was looking for pole beans in the garden when I looked a garden snake in the eye.  It was sunning itself five feet high up on the trellis.  Outside of taking a picture I let her be.  Snakes are hunters doing a great service to the local ecosystem, and seeing this one confirms that overall that ecosystem is healthy.

      The ancestors of these visitors from the wild were living in this neighborhood long before we built here.  Hopefully their descendants will be here long after we’re gone.  Any illusion of permanence on my part is tempered by the old stone wall that runs between the woods and my backyard.  I like that the local ecosystem still supports visitors from the wild despite the encroaching development.  We’re surrounded by woods and streams on all sides that should never be developed.  But other forested areas are being razed nearby, disrupting the local ecosystem there.  Will that impact my own someday?  I think that’s likely.  We’re all connected aren’t we?

      The joy of visitors from the wild are in learning a little bit more about the place I call home.  I’ve lived here for almost 20 years, and that was the first salamander that I’ve seen.  Makes you wonder what else is out there, hidden from view.  I’m grateful for the visit, and look forward to seeing who stops by next.  The world is right in front of us, is we’d only pay attention to it.

    • Autumn in the Air

      Autumn in the Air

      One week after Labor Day Weekend and the air has changed.  The days have been getting shorter steadily for three months, but with the hot humid August it was very much summer.  The last few days have been more crisp and dryer.  Autumn is in the air.

      Summer still holds on stubbornly – and this week the temperatures will climb back to a level that warrants air conditioning.  But change is indeed in the air.  Sunrise is later, sunset is earlier as the northern hemisphere tilts towards the darkness.

      Yesterday, while pulling weeds and planting chrysanthemums I drove my spade into the garden soil and realized I’d caught hold of something more than soil.  Looking into the hole I realized that I’d caught a fat toad squarely in the middle.  An accident of wrong place at the wrong time.  The toad was burrowing deep into the soil to hibernate, and tragically picked the very spot I chose to plant a mum.  It looked intact – I removed it from the garden to the woods and despite the odds hopefully it survives.  I see a lot of frogs and toads in the garden and in the pool, but this was the first time I’ve dug one up.

      The garden has turned.  Most plants have gone to seed.  A few annuals like the dahlias are still cranking along.  Tomatoes and green beans are almost tapped out.  It’s harvest time for apples.  The garden knows what we all know – summer is almost over.

      2018 has been a year of change in many ways.  Family and pets passing away, divorces and separation for friends, new jobs for my wife and for me, increasingly independent kids, some friends moving further away, others getting closer.  Physically this is the first year that I can remember where my metabolism didn’t kick naturally into another gear as we hit summer.

      As the season changes I’m reminded that the blog has suffered.  I’ve lost the consistent contribution I’d aimed for.  Likewise I’ve lost the consistent effort to walk 10,000 steps, row 5,000 meters, do 100 pushups… etc.  Some things go well, other things fall short.  Such is life.

      The political climate has been such a distraction this year, and efforts to filter it all out have proven unsuccessful.  I’ve taken to deleting apps like Twitter or Facebook only to return to them.  The addictive elements inherent in smart phones and social media work on me.  Compartmentalization becomes increasingly difficult when the noise penetrates from all sides.  Ryan Holiday calls this outrage porn; addictive outrage over the latest affront to our moral compass.  Best to turn it off…

      This post, while brief, serves to shake me out of my self-imposed writing break.  It’s Autumn; summer mental vacations have ended.  It’s time to make a contribution to the world again.  A return to long form contribution.

    • Northeastern Forests

      Northeastern Forests

      I recently finished reading The Hidden Life of Trees, a profoundly interesting book that taught me something new about the forests and the tress around me than I’d ever thought possible.  The relationship of trees to the fungal network they’re connected to, the way the support each other with sugar through that network.  How they migrate over the years.  Incredible book.

      Of course, it got me thinking about the forests around me.  I’ve long appreciated the forests of the Northeast United States and Eastern Canada.  Driving north through Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Western Massachusetts you ride through miles and miles of forest.  Upstate New York, for all it’s farmland, is still, or rather once again heavily wooded.  Even Connecticut and Rhode Island have heavy percentages of their land wooded.

      Encroaching developments eat into this magnificent green blanket, and the trees that once stood where developments are going up end up as firewood, lumber, bark mulch or paper products.  A little piece of me dies when I see lots being cleared.  I’m not opposed to development, I just greatly prefer the woods.

      I was talking to a friend of mine about a place where we once camped on New Year’s Eve.  We drove deep into the woods as far as his car could go in the deep snow and hiked in to a favorite spot of his.  We lit a bonfire and drank beer and listened to the coyotes in the still night.  I woke up in the middle of the night to embers melting into the plastic outer shell of my sleeping bag as my buddy stoked the fire up and howled at the coyotes.  We still laugh about that night almost 30 years later.  He mentioned to me that it’s now a development with hundreds of houses.

      I imagine that’s how the Native Americans felt when they watched the deep forests that generations walked through were felled for ship masts and houses.  Roads were cut in, and the sprawl began, rapidly displacing those who came before.  Through it the trees survived to fight another day.  Where once a farmer’s field lay claim to the land a forest has reclaimed it.  Most of the forests I drive through as I travel New England are new growth – reclaiming the land over the last century or so.  There’s a measure of hope in that, balanced with caution.

    • Bloody Brook

      There’s a tiny brook that flows from Searles Pond near Holy Family Hospital and feeds into the Spicket River just before it in turn feeds the Merrimack River in Lawrence.  It’s name betrays a violent history, long before Lawrence and Methuen become heavily developed urban environments.  Google has led me a couple of times to a very useful site that details the history of Methuen and some of the surrounding area that once was part of Methuen.  You can Magenweb here.

      The name Bloody Brook was said by George Frederick, late town treasurer and authority on Indian lore, to come from a terrific battle between the Agawams and the Tarrantines in the days before the English settlement. As near as white men could tell after they came, about September 1615 the Tarrantine Indians of Maine had a poor harvest so they invaded the Merrimack Valley to raid the fields,and naturally the local Indians resisted as best they could. It is said that clubs and stone axes, rather than arrows, were found in this area, indicating the closeness of combat. 

      The Tarrantines were part of the larger Mi’kmaq tribe of coastal Native Americans who lived from Maine to Newfoundland.  For them to make the long trip down to what is now Methuen to raid the fields of the Agawam speaks to their desperation.  There is another famous Bloody Brook that points towards the better-known history of conflict between the white settlers and Native American population.We hear a lot about the encroachment of European settlers in the area and the conflicts that arose with the Native American population as a result.  The conflict between tribes is a lesser known, but no less violent history of the land we live on today.  Names like this dot the map, just waiting for someone to remember the ghosts who once inhabited this land.

       

    • Straightening the Spicket

      Straightening the Spicket

      The Spicket River flows from New Hampshire into the Merrimack River in Lawrence, Massachusetts.  The river has changed over the years, particularly during the explosive development of Lawrence and Methuen in the Industrial Revolution.  By the late 1880’s the City of Lawrence had enough of the typhoid breeding ground that the river had become and decided to straighten the river.  Looking at the first map from the 1850’s followed by a Google map from 2018 you see just how much they changed the Spicket River in the Lawrence stretch.

      Unfortunately, they didn’t dig the channel deep enough and the river bed can’t handle the floodwater that were once absorbed by the natural flow of the meandering river that once flowed through the city.      Heavy rains combined with spring melt-off creates a flood plain that makes some areas of the city impassible.  Perhaps no place carries this burden more than Central Catholic High School, which sits right where the the flood plain once acted as a sponge for the river.  The city doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to correct the situation, so every few years there’s a lake where the CCHS parking lot once was.  The price of progress, or the price of poor engineering?

    • Good As It’s Been To Me: The Genius of the Avett Brothers in Four Songs

      Good As It’s Been To Me: The Genius of the Avett Brothers in Four Songs

      The Avett Brothers’s music is a lot like a tidal river; always shifting, complex and different.  Like many people I started listening as they hit a national audience with the I and Love and You album, then the Avett Brothers Live, Vol. 3 album and concert video, and finally when I got to see them live, where I learned just how electrifying they are with a crowd.

      I know what you’re saying, you’ve heard one or two of their hit songs, probably I and Love and You and Ain’t No Man, and maybe they’re okay but not your style.  Maybe you view banjo as a little too Americana for your tastes.  Well, if that’s the case then you’re missing out on some great music.  Like the songs themselves there are many layers to the Avett Brothers.  The songs are intricate creations built like melodic Penrose Stairs; uniquely complex but also highly listenable gems.  Scott and Seth – to me – are like Lennon-McCartney or John-Taupin in the way they feed off each other to build a memorable song.  Bold comparison?  Perhaps, but I believe their life’s work will stand up well against other legendary writing duos.  So here are four songs that illustrate the incredible range and complexity of the Avett Brothers:

      The Once and Future Carpenter  The Avetts craft songs that take you on a journey, and this song exemplifies that.  The central message is living your life following your own true north, so you don’t regret it on your death bed.  Old souls these Avett Brothers.  This kind of deep thinking about our mortality is usually reserved for the end of an artist’s career, not the middle of it.

      Forever I will move like the world that turns beneath me
      And when I lose my direction I’ll look up to the sky
      And when the black dress drags upon the ground
      I’ll be ready to surrender, and remember
      We’re all in this together
      If I live the life I’m given, I won’t be scared to die

      Pretty Girl from Chile  To really know the complexity of an Avett Brother’s song, look no further than this one.  The studio version is a roller coaster ride of deep climbs and plummets, hard turns and a racing heart.  A live performance adds a triple shot of espresso with a Red Bull chaser.  These are great musicians, and it takes a song like this to really hammer that point home.  From the moment Scott grabs your full attention with his piercing, evangelistic voice they’ve got you:

      I’m no more than a friend girl
      I can see that you need more
      My boots are on my feet now
      My bag is by the door

      This song has everything – starting with Scott’s powerful lead vocal and rapid fire lyrics to quick instrument changes that weave us between bluegrass, flamenco and alternative rock in the same song.  Seth is the engine behind this song with incredible range in his guitar playing and harmonies with Scott woven throughout the song.

      Laundry Room  There were big hits on the I and Love and You album.  The title track for sure, and Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise and Kick Drum Heart rightfully got a lot of airplay.  Great songs every one, but to me Laundry Room is the emotional core of this album.  The song that sneaks up on you, gives you a bear hug and won’t let go.

      Stop your parents’ car
      I just saw a shooting star
      We can wish upon it
      We won’t share the wish we made
      But I can’t keep no secrets
      I wish that you would always stay

      Lovely song that stays with you when you’ve let it into your heart.  The live versions I’ve seen just completely grab the audience and take them for a ride.  And every listen does just that.

      I am a breathing time machine.  I’ll take you all for a ride.

      No Hard Feelings  A masterpiece of looking at our own mortality and the dynamics of love and loss.  This song may ultimately be the signature song for the band, like Stairway to Heaven is for Led Zeppelin.  Neither band is a one hit wonder by any stretch, but respectively these songs demonstrate a pinnacle of creative writing for each band.  The Avett Brothers may yet top No Hard Feelings, but it feels like a song with the staying power and genius of Stairway to Heaven.  Look, I know the band isn’t at that Led Zep megastar level yet, and perhaps they never will be, but the point is they’re brilliant musicians and this song will be a highlight of their career catalog.

      When my body won’t hold me anymore 
      And it finally lets me free 
      Where will I go? 

      Sure, there are a lot of great bands out there making great music.  This one is my favorite of the last decade.  I could have picked four different songs with the same emotional impact.  There’s just so much to this band to love.  The harmonies between the two brothers is exceptional, and there’s a tightness to the band molded out of years of touring.  I’m looking forward to seeing where they take us next.

    • Boomtown: Lawrence, Massachusetts

      Boomtown: Lawrence, Massachusetts

      In 1845 the land along the Merrimack River that would soon be called Lawrence had a population of 104.  Five years later the population had exploded to 8,358.  By 1920 the population had swelled to a high of 94, 270.  All these people arrived in Lawrence as the river was dammed, canals were dug, brick buildings were constructed, and water was diverted to fuel the entire enterprise.  Water power moved everything, including the people who moved here for the work the mills provided. 
      Lawrence is ten miles downstream from Lowell, which was the most successful textile city in North America.  The Essex Company wanted to duplicate that success using the same Merrimack River water that Lowell used.  The first step was to build the great stone dam in Lawrence to better regulate the flow of water to the mills.  Next, as in Lowell, a power canal was built to channel the energy of that water to the mills.  This powerful water had to go somewhere, and it was directed through turbines that turned gears that turned leather belting that turned the looms that thousands of factory workers tended.

      And it didn’t stop with the loom workers.  The mills had to be maintained and grow.  The workers had to eat, and live somewhere, and go to church, and their children had to go to school.  Banks and hospitals and trolleys and parks and stores and houses and roads to connect it all grew like concentric rings out from the turbines.  Lawrence, like Lowell before it, became a boomtown.  Like Lowell, it thrived until cheap electricity and labor pulled textile jobs to the South and eventually overseas.

      Unlike Lowell, which has a major university and political clout in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that enabled it to rebound more quickly, Lawrence was lost without the manufacturing jobs for decades.  The loss of jobs led to an exodus of many of the people who were the backbone of the community, and that void was filled with poverty, helplessness, riots in the 1980’s, insurance scamming in the form of staged accidents and arson, and drugs and crime led to Lawrence being one of the least attractive places to live in New England.

      And yet the bones of the city are strong.  There’s beauty in the mill buildings and homes that the textile wealth brought to the community.  Looking beyond the criminal element, there is a vibrant immigrant community that is family-oriented, hard-working and chasing the American dream.  Lawrence is a city poised for explosive growth, just waiting for the next economic turbine to power it all.

    • Sensory Awareness

      Sensory Awareness

      While walking through the garden early this morning deadheading flowers and pulling weeds my left hand brushed up against the leaves of the potted Jasmine and the water resting on the leaves from the overnight rain ran down the back of my hand.  I didn’t see the water, nor did I see the leaves of the Jasmine, but I knew exactly what was happening at that moment.  The senses, when open to the world, inform us in ways both delightful or discomforting.  And both are valuable depending on that moment.  The senses detect a change of state and tell our brains when we ought to pay attention to something.

      Sometimes in summer I’ll walk Bodhi barefoot down the street at night.  This is of course fraught with peril as stones, acorns, glass or any number of other things may be lying in wait to encroach upon my naked feet.  But the payoff is feeling the warmth radiating off the pavement on a cooling summer night, and the variations as you walk from what was, hours before, a shaded part of the street to a part that had been in full sun.  Combined with the celestial show above and the ever-changing  sounds of a wooded nighttime New Hampshire Cul-de-sac in late July it becomes…. well, sensational.

      I’ve written before about the feeling of the water current flowing across your skin as you swim.  Or the rustling of leaves or pine needles on a breezy evening.  The sound of ice crackling on branches as the first light of day stirs the air.  The smell of tropical rain or winter snow well before you see anything falling.  The hot summer sun warming your skin as you air dry after a swim.  The scent of flowers hidden from view but announcing their presence.  The quiet stillness of a hike in the White Mountains alone with your thoughts.  The enticing smell of a wood fire at night, the mouth watering aromas coming when something is cooking on the grill, or the irritating smell of a neighbors cigarette smoke invading my space when I’m in my backyard (damned prevailing wind).

      The senses come alive when you’re outside.  So much more to take in of course, but its also being removed from the things that pull your attention away.  But for many walks outside in the past I’d have my earbuds plugged in and music blasting, and I’d be deep in my thoughts or in the lyrics as I power walked my way to whatever level of fitness I achieved.  And there’s a place for that too.  But so much of our lives today is electronic noise; political banter, pharmaceutical advertisements, canned sitcom laughter and electronic notification pings.  I’ve found that turning off the noise releases me from that burden, and I’ve taken to removing myself from as much of that as possible.

      America’s media diet is changing.  Mobility is everything now.  Traditional sources of information continue to evolve with winners and losers announced seemingly daily.  This week the New York Daily News laid off roughly half their staff in a cost cutting move by the firm that owns them.  Facebook lost $120 Billion in Market Value when they announced slowing growth.  Grabbing our attention is more critical for the survival of media than ever, and as a result the noise gets more shrill all the time.  Click bait “articles” and political extremism seem to get more in your face every day.  I’ve gotten to a point where I choose to turn it off and think, listen to music or a long-form podcast or read a book.

      I’m at an age where I’m living notable state changes.  The kids are grown up and doing their thing, building their lives and becoming more and more independent.  Friends are living through similar changes and time with them wanes as they focus on new businesses or checking off bucket list items.   Remarkable people in my life are passing away, living through divorce or separation, fighting cancer or depression or unemployment or the effects of aging.  And remarkable people are entering my life as our individual ripples across this surface of life intersect and change our trajectories.  Like a stone dropped into a still pond carries ripples across the surface long after they’ve disappeared from sight I still feel the ripple of people I haven’t seen in years influence my life and by extension those of people I interact with.

      I watch the ripples change their size
      But never leave the stream
      Of warm impermanence
      And so the days float through my eyes
      But still the days seem the same
                                                – David Bowie
                                                  Changes

      Social media is a way to stay in touch, but its not the same as spending a day on the side of a soccer field together, or gathered around a picnic table or a fire late into the night.  Such is change, and its not my first rodeo.  Similar changes happened when we went off to and then graduated from college.  Similar changes happened when we moved and raised children and built our lives around their activities.  The world is constant change, and I’ve come to accept that.  I take the additional quiet time as an opportunity to open up the other senses and feel what the world has been saying all along.  One thing I know for sure is it won’t be quiet for very long.