This weekend my internet access was a bit limited so I'm doing a combined post. My gramps had a bit of scare last weekend and has been in the hospital until yesterday. So my family is taking turns staying with him for the next week..so a weekend up in New Hampshire at the cabin on the lake with the wood stove and the beautiful foliage..rough life, huh? Complete with a feisty, wise-cracking 92-year old grandpa who likes to drink schnapps with me last at night and it's the perfect weekend. But there was something else that brought me up to my hometown for the weekend. Recently while taking a walk in Harvard Square, back home in Cambridge, I picked up a book that caught my eye: The Good, Good Pig by Sy Montgomery. Simplified storyline: New Hampshire couple, the wife a vegetarian, adopt a runt pig and raise him to adulthood (or pig grownup-ness?). Christopher Hogwood, as they call him, becomes the darling of the neighborhood. The book is also an exploration of the relationship between people and how easily they can become attached to that which they might otherwise consider food. It's a fascinating book and one that I hope to somewhat model my squirrel book after. So last month I was browsing the author's web site only to find out that she was scheduled to speak at the Brattleboro, Vermont Literary Festival. Yay! So my and my sister, Michelle, decided to take the afternoon to hang out in Brattleboro which is just 20 short minutes from Keene.
Sy did a slide show about her life's work: tracking the moon bear in Asia, studying the pink dolphins in the Amazon, and dodging man-eating tigers. We especially liked her thoughts on science and how breakthroughs with animal research really began when women such as Jane Goodall forged intimate relationships with the animals that they study. We began to understand them when we began to love them, she explained. Right on Sy!
Afterwards, we walked down Main Street (Brattleboro and Keene both have great Main Streets..cool shops, cafes, etc. in your typical old mill town style). We saw a few of these interesting carved pumpkins around town and stopped to admire one:
Then we had lunch at Amy's Bakery. Several vegan options! We started with a vegan carrot apple soup:
Then had a hummus avocado sandwich on Amy's freshly made bread:
Michelle is modeling our vegan oatmeal almond raspberry cookie. You can tell that I love my sister because I actually shared the cookie with her!
Squirrelly's cousin is evasive and hard to photograph but finally I caught a glimpse of him. Shooting pictures of wildlife with a digital camera is really tough because of the slight delay in taking the picture. I had forgotten because Squirrelly loves posing for my camera and will patiently wait until I'm done!
The trees are starting to change..New Hampshire was a little further along in color than Vermont..this picture is of New Hampshire:
And, finally a beautiful night sky over the lake with a shiny sliver of moon.
2 comments:
I haven't really explored Brattleboro yet but it sounds as though I should. What a cute chipmunk, I'm impressed you got a picture at all :)
Brattleboro is great..hope you get to explore it. I grew up on the NH site of the river. It's funny how different my hometown and Brattleboro are though. Brattleboro is really funky. Sort of a smaller Burlington. My mom used to bring us there in the late 70s and early 80s when I was a kid to go to the old Common Ground restaurant which is now gone I think but it was a vegetarian restaurant I believe. Even as a kid, I knew it was good stuff!
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