Day: February 1, 2015

There’s about a foot of snow predicted for southwestern Vermont tonight. It’s not an epic snowstorm, but I’m inclined to go along with the higher predictions for one simple reason.  The animals have told me so.

I’m not claiming I can talk to animals (I’m still trying to understand the voices in my own head), but Katy-the-wonder-dog and our black cat Snoop have shunned the outdoors most of the afternoon, lounging around the house like a couple of under-served teenagers.

As it happens, Snoop isn’t just a great weather forecaster, he just may be a scientific genius.

In the summer, Snoop goes by his wildcat name, The Chipmunk Slayer.  He spends his mornings stalking and his afternoons decorating our stoop with his trophies.

You would think all this exercise would make him a lean, mean, garden-protecting machine, but you’d be wrong.

Snoop in summer is round.  His girth has proven too challenging even for birds of prey (we found talon marks on his rump one summer) to lift off with.

When chipmunk season ends, Snoop becomes a slug with fur, decorating laundry baskets and light-colored blankets with as much black fur as he can donate.  And herein is the genius and the lesson of Snoop.

It is at precisely this time of year, when he is not exercising, that he really drops that weight.  The absence of the winter chipmunk buffet could explain it, but I think he’s figured out the greatest mystery of life – how to lose weight and have your food served to you without exercising too.

I’ve gotten in the habit of doodling when I go to plays. It’s a holdover from my younger days when I doodled throughout my classses, and, far from being a distraction or way to kill time, it helps permanently engrave emotions and inspiration on my heart.

Last night,  Thing1, Thing2 and I alternately chuckled and wept as we watched the third performance of Jon Katz’s first play, Last Day at Maple View Farm, and I knew I would be glad I was branding the evening into my soul for more than one reason.

The play is about Ralph Tunney, a farmer and his wife of 40 years coming to terms with the harsh new realities of dairy farming – a mechanized world where cows and farm workers are treated like value-less, replaceable widgets.  It was a powerful story, powerfully written by Katz.

It was also powerfully told, and my husband, lovingly known on these pages as the Big Guy, as the farmer, literally had a big part in that.

The Big Guy has been in numerous plays, many of which take advantage of his booming voice and imposing size, as well as his acting ability.  That may have been the case with this play as well, but as I watched my husband connect with the audience when Ralph decried a world that increasingly discounts the value of the people in it, I knew he was the perfect person to play this role.

This role was perfect for him because, in many ways, it wasn’t an act.

The Big Guy, like many people around here, lives a parallel reality with the farmer in the play.  He works in a job that is physically demanding with little opportunity for advancement.  A lack of economic opportunity is a constant the reality of rural life. Small family businesses struggle to stay afloat in an encroaching sea of national and multi-national stores that often treat their workers like widgets, and, working in the center of town, the Big Guy hears stories from the casualties of economic progress everyday.  He also hears the stories of the ones who don’t stay afloat.

He rarely complains about his situation.  We know and love the family he works for, and we pray for their sakes as well as ours that they continue to avoid this fate.

My Big Guy has a heart as deep as his voice, and as Ralph Tunney knelt on stage, almost weeping as he prepared to say goodbye to his favorite dairy cow, I knew I was watching the Big Guy mourn for all the Ralph Tunney’s who struggle and lose and somehow keep struggling.