February 12, 2012 Contact Calendar The Mix Archives

Somewhere it's the week before Mardi Gras. Melissa made a King Cake for our superbowl gathering last week.

Clair Lewis died with his boots on yesterday. Clair was a neighbor and one of the first people I met when we came to Unity. When we saw our house for the first time in the early 90's, he and Babe Tozier were putting the deck on the lake side. Clair was a geezer's geezer, more grizzled and mumbley than anyone. I could hardly understand a word he said and when I could understand the words, I couldn't understand the sentences. He was all about heavy machinery, maple sugaring, yards of gravel, leveling roads, pushing rocks around, skidders in the woods. Yesterday a tree fell on him. He was 75.

This picture that Peggy Baldwin sent of us at JazzFest a couple of years ago is my happy memory of the week. I have the best adventures in that orange hat. It's been mailed back to me from Newport and saved for me in the courthouse in Belfast. On the day of that photo, we walked out of the Fest in the rain to Kerry's wine shop on Esplanade and Julie Ray picked us up in her giant yellow Toyota thing with wine glasses still in our hands. We need some time down south, but for now we are still being schooled in the protocols of dying as Melissa's mom is in her last few days. I'm grateful that there are protocols and hospice nurses and to-do lists and caretakers who have experience in helping the dying.


Last Time