The April Fools Day Blizzard

Though it won't rank with the Halloween Blizzard of 1999, our most recent blow has a lot to commend it.

1) It took place mostly at night when few people were out on the highway.

2) It arrived early on a Saturday, a day when few people have anywhere important to get to.

3) It freshened up the landscape, which had been littered with grotesque mounds of dirty snow.

4) It was followed by a brilliantly bright day, with full sun and a deep blue sky.

On the other hand, the snow was wet and heavy; limbs came down, and many people lost power, including us.

The previous morning I'd been out in the backyard, getting a closer look at an unpleasant sight previously glimpsed from the bedroom window: some creature had gnawed the bark off several of our nannyberry bushes, which play an important part in our woodsy summertime privacy screen. We planted then eight or ten years ago, and no one had messed with them until now. I was heartbroken.

Not sure which critter might be responsible, I sent a note to Steve Kelley and his wife Arla, of Kelly and Kelly Nursery, clients and friends with whom I worked last year on a gardening book. Perhaps I didn't phrase the note very well, because I got this reply.

We're sad to think that it took a winter's worth of rabbit damage to your shrubbery to bring Arla & Steve to mind. If you cut the damaged shrubs down to the ground, they might send up new shoots. Otherwise, hope everything is well with you.

 Happy Spring,

Steve & Arla

 In my defense, I might observe that it wasn't the first time I'd thought of them, and it was their remarkable knowledge of plants, rather than the destructive habits of pesky rabbits, that brought them to mind. But I'll get over it. As Spinoza says somewhere, "To feel remorse is to be unhappy twice."

 After examining the sorry plants at close range, I wandered over to the fence to watch some technicians install solar panels on our neighbor Rocky's house. The foreman, who was also watching them work, wandered over for a chat. He was curious to know, naturally enough, if I might be interested in a few panels myself.

 "Our yard is a lot shadier than Rocky's," I said. "And much of our roof is actually an antique rubber sheet. I wouldn't want to tamper with it too much." 

 That afternoon I drove over to the library to pick up a few books that had been put on hold for me. And on the way out I purchased a slim paperback called Quarry by a French novelist named Celia Houdar from the friends-of-the-library bargain cart in the lobby. Ignoring the books I'd requested, I spent much of the afternoon reading it.

 The story, such as it is, concerns itself with a man who's been behind bars for three years awaiting trial in Pisa, the judicial magistrate who's going to handle the case, her husband--an unemployed expert in ancient Hindi textiles--and their daughter, who takes sculpting classes two days a week at the quarry in nearby Cararra.

 The novel consists of numerous chapters, never more than three pages long, that shift from one character to another at random. The details are precise, but links between passages are non-existent, and readers who take them as "pieces of the puzzle" and try to fit them together into some sort of narrative will struggle. Of course we want to figure out who took a potshot at the victim. Yet Houdart refrains from interpolating, foreshadowing, or removing herself in any way from the event at hand.

For example:  

On a Saturday afternoon near the end of November, Marian was driving a charcoal-gray Fiat Croma slowly down the narrow road from Pontedera to Vicopisano. As she rounded a curve, she saw a man in a tracksuit walking on the shoulder, followed by two women who looked like sisters. All three were carrying canteens. From the way they watched her pass, and the way she saw them squinting to make out the province code on her license plate when she glanced back in the rearview mirror, Marian got the impression that they were very anxious to know who she might be."

We never learn who these people are. In fact, they never appear again. They're simply people on the road, behaving the way people often do.

For that matter, we don't really need to know that Marian was driving a charcoal-gray Fiat. Wouldn't "a gray Fiat" do? Every detail adds a little to the picture, but the level of seemingly random detail tends to detract from the momentum of the plot.

Or course, some passages certainly weigh more heavily than others. For example

At around six that evening, Marian received a visit from the court clerk. He asked her if they could talk. His voice was unsteady. He said he was ashamed of himself for not having had the courage to speak up sooner. He wanted her to know that, from the first day of the hearings, he had been pressured. Marian asked him to be more specific. His face changed and went pale. He seemed unwilling to continue. Marian insisted. They were alone, she said. He could speak freely. He was still hesitant. He said that, if he told her, it might mean trouble for both of them.

This sinister episode lingers in memory, but in the end, it figures no more prominently in the story than the pedestrians on the road.

I finished the book that afternoon, puzzled and refreshed. I have no intention of giving away the ending. I'm not sure there was an ending.

While I chopped the onions and celery for an ad hoc spaghetti sauce, I pulled two CDs that we rarely listen to from the rack. The first was The Essential Ben Webster. I'm not a big Webster fan, but listening to this album I began to understand that his appeal lies less in any dazzling virtuosity as a tenor saxophone soloist than in a boogie-woogie spark that drives his work.

The second CD offered a similar lesson: the flamenco guitarist Moraito has never been viewed in the same light as Vicente Amigo, Chicuelo, or Paco de Lucia as a solo guitarist, but Moraito comes from a large family of musicians, and here, in Mora Morao (2004) he maintains a robust village energy, bolstered by a chorus of clappers and shouters with names like Rafa, Bo, and Chicharo.

There was a time when I could distinguish a alegrías from a sevillana or a soleá por bulería from a bulería por soleá with ease. Not any more. But little matter. It's time to relax and enjoy the music.

We woke the next morning to the foot of snow that I mentioned earlier. The power was off, though we could see porch-lights glowing across the street. By the time I got into the kitchen Hilary had already fetched our small green camping suitcase from the basement. She'd set up a flashlight lantern on the counter and was heating water on the stove for coffee. 

We went out for a walk around the block at sunrise. A narrow plow had made its way through the neighborhood, but otherwise the streets were dead. At the end of the block one large branch had snapped from the weight of snow and fallen across the street.

During our first stab at the driveway our neighbor Sean, who was also out shoveling, came over to chat. He'd been awakened by a "pop" a 3 a.m., noticed the power was out, and called Xcel. Hilary asked him how the winter had been treating him. "Too long. Scott and I are headed for Nashville in a week," he said with a laugh. "His parents live there."

Hilary also carried on a conversation with our neighbor Rocky when she came out to shovelg. She was bummed because her new solar panels were now covered with a foot of snow.

After our first phase of shoveling we took another walk around the block. I spotted our neighbor Elfrida, three houses down, waving at us from the window. That was odd. On our return trip ten minutes later she came out on the stoop and called to us.

"My electricity is gone," she said, in her thick German accent. "I don't have a little phone. Would you call the police? I don't have any power." Elfie is one of the neighborhood's few remaining original residents. She and her husband must have moved here in 1947 or thereabouts. After the war.

"Yes, don't worry," Hilary said. "No one has power. We'll call."

I was about to head out for phase two of the shoveling—the really heavy stuff out by the street—when I heard our neighbor Brendan's snow blower roaring. I waited. Fifteen minutes later he was finished with his driveway, and ours, and neighbor Sam's next door. (I own him a six-pack of Surly.)

Our final neighborhood interaction took place that afternoon, when Lee and Joe, a young couple who moved in a few houses down the street two or three years ago, stopped by. "We hear your power's out," Lee said, "so we brought you these." She handed me a zip-lock bag of chocolate-chip cookies. Sweet.

"If you need anything, just let us know," she said.

"Oh, we'll be fine," I said. "We've got the Jøtul going, and we've got a lot of flashlights."

She looked a bit confused, so I added, "It's a Swedish stove." Perhaps that didn't help.

We spent much of the day sitting in the den, judiciously feeding the Jøtul (made in Norway, as it turns out) as we read. Hilary, who was reading An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, would say, "Did you know that when a bat emits a sound, it's so loud that its ears momentarily shield themselves from the noise?"

A few minutes later, looking up from the book I had started on, The Serpent Coiled in Naples, I read her a passage like this:

"Melody was born in Naples. So they claim, and who am I to dispute what people say of themselves? They may overdo the sauce a little, but I’d much rather it be them for a change and not me. Some people flee an unsupported assertion as if suddenly sprayed with insecticide. Others reach for their intellectual weapons of choice. We are, on the whole, expected to be reasonable. The poet Giacomo Leop­ardi, whose ghost I will later pursue, says we place too much value on reason for it is the enemy of nature and he was no subscriber to the Whole Earth Catalogue. Melody was born in Naples. The claim, wild though it is, is not wholly without substance."

As darkness descended we threw another log on the fire and donned our headlamps. It was still cozy by the stove but the back of the house was cooling off. We'd grab a down comforter from the closet before going to bed.