Workin' stiffs

No farm posts lately. That's because we're too tired to get anything done. And we're a little depressed, which is usual for this time of our year.

This is the middle of the semester, and we're working quite hard. And, although we are on the run-down to Thankgiving break, the pressure will continue to mount until the last week, when, except for grading, the bubble will pop, and we will deflate.

I would guess that I routinely sleep for twelve hours a day over the Christmas/New Year's break.

Spring term is always more relaxed than fall. For one thing, the worst of the students will have already flunked out. The really pathological cheats, the druggies, the bullies and vandals, the spoiled, the lazy ones. Our small college doesn't get as many of these as other colleges, especially in the cities, but we get a few, and they generally disappear after Christmas. Some never return from Thanksgiving.

Maybe that's why we call it Thanksgiving.

Actually, the worst thing is the so-called helicopter parents of these pathological students. There should be a teacher's prayer: "Lord protect me from parents of spoiled teenagers."

The other thing thta makes the spring progressively easier, is that the days are getting longer, not shorter, and weather better, not worse. The darkness and gloom of the November and December weather is a major contributor to our seasonal mood swings.

A walk in the Maine woods

Aimee and I went for a hike with Haggis and Mary-dog up to Howe's Pond, a local beauty spot, very secluded.

Harris Mountain is the peak in the background.

Aimee always says I walk too fast, and my objective is not to enjoy the walk, but to get to the top of the hill as fast as I can.

Actually, I'm so arthritic that if I go slow, it hurts more.

Still, on this day at least we had a nice walk together.

Seasonal sadness

(My Grandfather, Arthur Holden Watson, as a private in the East Yorkshire's, a Kitchener Army training regiment, probably taken at or close to Hillsborough Barracks, Sheffield, spring 1917.)


Fall can be brutal.

Not the weather, the death of nature all around us. That's easy enough to deal with, although the colors and the falling leaves always contribute to my mood.

It's really the remembering that is hard.

This time of year, with less to do around the farm, a little time on my hands, and various anniversaries to help me, I can easily get caught up in remembrances.

It's perhaps a silly mood, very celtic, I think, but a whiff of coal smoke, a fragment of poetry or song, a photo, doesn't seem to matter what, but usually it's a song, and I suddenly realize that I'm an immigrant, in a strange country, and that all my people and their bones are somewhere else, and that somehow I've been lucky and had things in this strange country, like land, a farm, a house, a wife, an education, things I might otherwise take for granted that past generations of Womersleys and Watsons, and Sumys and Phillippis for that matter, particularly back in the old country, were routinely denied.

I start thinking about them, especially the men who served, and how hard it was for some of them, and how many of them there are in my family who served, and how disproportionate it is that my family served and suffered so much, when others, especially the wealthy who benefited from the British and American world hegemonies that our service ensured, in most cases did not, and do not, serve.

And now we have another war and some of the kids in my classes rotate in and out of their reservist, or National Guard, or regular service, and in and out of Iraq or Afghanistan.

My paternal grandfather (not the one in the photo) was in Iraq. In 1943.

What goes around, comes around.

This time is was Eric Bogle's And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda that brought it all back and nearly brought me to my knees.

Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, Veteran's Day, call it what you will. It's part of me. I'm a former British airman, an aircraft engine fitter and RAF Mountain Rescue troop with nearly seven years in, who's really the last of a long line of British soldiers and airmen dating back to WW1 and before.

I have a lot of people to be grateful to, and to remember this next week:

Grandad, Arthur Holden Watson, British Army, WWI and II, including at least a year in the Northeast Fusiliers during the time of the second Marne (1918). A hell on earth. We don't know where he was or what he did, because he was so shattered by it, he never spoke about it. My sister and I are trying to find out through the National Records.

He went in again, for four years, as a way to survive the Great Depression. 1929-1934. We have those records.

Still on the reserves, incredibly he was drafted again at the age of forty in August 1939. According to the little he said, he was sent to London during the Battle of Britain and the first Blitz, to do heavy rescue from the rubble. Later he helped run the massive training base at Salisbury that contributed to the Normandy landings. We have these records too.

He served 6 years in WWII, 16 in all. He voted Labour and was an outspoken pacifist for much of his later life, despite his feeling that participating in WWII was his duty. He hated Hitler but made his own personal peace with the German people in the 1970s, taking a coach tour to meet some of them, German Great War veterans.

I doubt he would have participated in WWI, knowing what he later knew about war. And the ridiculous British and European class system that was the primary cause of the war and its prolonging. Lions led by donkeys.

He lived just long enough to see me become an RAF Mountain Rescue Party leader. Even with his pacifist convictions, he was proud of my service. It was another depression (I served from 1978 to 1985), and at least I was doing something for myself, not being a drag on my family or society, on the dole like so many of my classmates were, and I was helping save lives too.

I was radioed off the hill at Cheviot the day he died, and swept in an unauthorized MR Land Rover all the way to Sheffield, 120 miles of stolen RAF petrol, courtesy of my mates and the common sense and humanity of working class servicemen everywhere, but it was too late. I wore my best blues at his cremation, with the new MR arm badge so recently won.

But he's just the one I know the most about.

Great Uncle Tom Leigh, British Army, lost an eye somewhere, someplace in WWI. He and his wife, my great aunt Ethel, also suffered during the Depression. He was aways full of fun and mischief, never seemed to dwell on his losses or hardships. For a scare, as a young boy, he'd frighten you by showing you his eye socket.

Great Uncle Bert Watson, British Army, originally enlisted, he won a battlefield promotion to brevet major (so the legend goes). Again, he never spoke about it. He appears in the National Records as a subaltern, but at that time and at that place, officers who survived became brevet majors routinely, so it could be true. How did he survive? We don't know. He lived out his life with Jane his wife, and Tom and Ethel, at the modest cottage in Whitely Woods that our family held on lease for nearly 125 years. A century of landlord-ism. Never ownership. That's the British class system for you. Arthur and Grandma Lettie, and my mum and sister and I, would come visit all the old folks on Sundays and bank holidays.

What I would give to show them all this fine safe home and productive farm we've made here in the woods of Maine. And play Newmarket one last time around our kitchen table, after a good meal of our homegrown Yorkshire ham and sliced boiled eggs with salad.

There'll be no-one going cold or hungry in this home. Because of them.

Uncle Ron Watson, Royal Air Force, (mother's first cousin, actually, but this is the Yorkshire usage), was a Bomber Command navigator, WWII. The death rate among bomber crews was almost 50%. Mother's first banana was brought back by Ron from his flight training in Canada. Can you imagine being 10 years old and never having had a banana?

Dad, Gordon Womersley, British Army, National Serviceman, Royal Signals Regiment, 1953-55. Easier, certainly, but Dad's two-year service would have freed up regulars to go to Korea. Dad gave me all types of tips to get through basic. Including the stock, "never volunteer." Or, "If it moves, salute it, if it doesn't move, paint it."

Uncle Ron Womersley, Royal Air Force, Dad's elder brother, died 1964, another 1950s National Serviceman. Died of a now-curable fever at an early age. Apparently a low-key musical genius, was Dean of Music at Hexham Abbey and is buried there.

Uncle Stan Womersley, British Army, National Serviceman, 1950s. Catering Corps. They also serve who keep other men's bellies full. Still in uniform: the Salvation Army. Still filling bellies. Still serving. Amen to that.

Uncle Barry, Royal Air Force, National Servicemen, 1950s. Barry and Dad together taught me the traditional British serviceman's card game, Three Card Brag, a kind of poker. They would fleece me for my pocket money, then gave me more so they could take that too.

That's the Brits, but we're not done. There's also Dick,

Richard Phillippi, US Army, Vietnam. My father-in-law. Who now has leukemia from Agent Orange and is on 100% disability from the VA. Dick was a generator service specialist attached to the HQ company at LZ Oasis on May 11th, 1969, when the airfield and Dick survived one of the first regular NVA attacks of the latter part of the war. Later Dick married into the Sumy family, and thus the Church of the Brethren, and so some of his family members, and many members of his church, were conscientious objectors during Vietnam.

I am so proud of them all. Especially the ones who had the guts, the sense, and the religious belief to say no.

And then there's myself, who had it easy. I ate well, exercised well, and was not shot at, at least not with live rounds. I was at some risk from time to time on rescue trainings and call-outs, and was lightly injured several times, and almost killed once or twice by rockfalls, avalanches, and other hazards. Mostly I just had big adventures in the wilds with my mates. But seven years is still likely to be ten percent of my life. The guys I helped train went on to do great things; one summited on Everest for the RAF, and many of them were at the call-out for the infamous Lockerbie Air Disaster. My old roommate Heavy, who visited this spring, was in charge of this response for the RAFMRS, another hell on earth. But like Grandad, I've seen and helped more than my share of lost, hurt, broken, bleeding and dead people.

Sensibly, however, I'm the last of my family to serve. Not counting cousin David who followed his dad into the Sally Army, my young cousins on both sides, British or American, have not served, nor are they likely to. Nor do I blame them.

In my perfect world, we'd only go to war when we needed to, and everyone would have an equal chance of being drafted.

I guess I'm pretty crusty about this. And so now I'm sort of becoming an old soldier too. I have a few years to go, but I can see it happening.

Don't get the wrong idea. I'm no jingoist, no armchair conservative warmonger. I hate war. For myself, even after nearly seven years, I demobbed early in protest at what Maggie Thatcher was doing to the Yorkshire miners and to the Greenham Common Women. In a very strange way, I am my grandfathers' legacy. And in a strange way, Aimee is her family's legacy. She's a leftist American peacenik from a Peace Church family, which is very different but also very similar in many ways to being a greenist British peacenik from a Labour socialist and Methodist family. I don't object when my students join up. For most of them, they need the money to go to college. But in my perfect world, they'd be able to study for free, just like the wealthier kids that don't need to do a stint in Iraq or Afghanistan just to get through school.

But in a few days time, the old-timers of the RAFMRS will take their place of honor in the march-past at the Cenotaph and I sort of wish I could be there. Some of my old buddies will march. It's a matter of deep pride to me that our honor is for saving lives, not taking them. And deeper still, that I am still on call for search and rescue, even in this new country.

Amen to that.

No, what this strange, contradictory, yet severely disproportionate record of service and sacrifice really means is that no-one, no-one at all, in this country or any other, especially that armchair British or American conservative, has the right to tell me or my families what to think about war, peace, national service, and sacrifice.

Believe me, some have tried. Shame on them. The first idiot I met that thought you had to be conservative and a free market capitalist to have a valid opinion on any of this was an RAF officer. A real Zob from the British class system. Thankfully I escaped that nonsense long ago. These days, you hear similar bullshit all the time on the American radio and TV, from idiots that have never been in uniform, never served. And one candidate in particular during this election was truly offensive.

What this really means is, my mixed up, contradictory, atheist, religious, leftist, greenist, German pietist and Sheffield socialist and Salvation Army, all at the same time, but always peace-loving, extended family, is really right from the beating heart of both the British and American twentieth century experience.

The real people. Not just from red states.

They're my family, and my people, and no matter how red or green or pink or purple, we have the right to think what we want, where we want, how we want. For which we have sacrificed a good deal.

Have a good Remembrance Day.

First snow signs

We had a little sleet after Tuesday's second gale. Probably a cold front at the back of the low. It didn't stick, but it did get me to thinking about switching tires and picking up my yard.

Today is cold right now, before the dawn, but will be sunny. My crew is back out at the Alpaca farm, so we should have a good day. Tomorrow, Saturday, I'll pick up the yard. Or lose my gear!

I'm in the habit of keeping equipment for the tractor around the edge of the school bus and plow truck turnaround that is really our driveway. This works fine for spring, summer, and fall. In the winter, the plow truck seems to go around that turnaround at about 50 miles an hour, and anything not removed from the danger zone will get a full broadside and like as not be flipped over, or worse, through the sheep fencing.

We will get our first four, six, or twelve-inch snowstorm sometime between now and December 20th. In year's past, according to dairies like that of Jonathan Wright, a Great Farm neighbor in the late 1800s, Jackson could confidently expect it's first snowstorm before Hallow'een.

Once the first storm comes, chances are good, 75-25, that the snow sticks and accumulates with the second and third, until we have several feet on the ground, and huge piles of plowings all around that loop road, which becomes a kind of giant snow fort. Sometimes, though, the first storm melts and refreezes, and we have two or three weeks of soggy then icy mess until the second.

We will have between six and ten storms each winter, of which four or five will be heavy, over twelve inches, and require us to change our plans for the day while we get plowed out and plow ourselves out. Being at the end of the road, our chances of getting snowed in for eight, ten, twelve or even twenty-four hours are pretty good. The occasional winter brings a storm that has us snowbound for two or three days.

Something to look forward to. I always enjoy the readjustment of values that occurs when a workday is terminated by a major storm. My usual response is to throw another log on the fire, put on a pot of beans, and take it easy.

The Holy Ground.

(These guys, an Irish band called the Dubliners, look like they could be members of my family.)

The weather of late fall and early winter in this part of Maine includes wind. Which is good. For me at least.

I like the seasons and, being British, expect winds around the equinox. These are no disappointment. They already blew a chunk of asphalt roll roofing off our own small Womerlippi sheep barn. We had several short power cuts, one long enough for me to at least start the emergency job of finding all our battery packs and inverters to provide temporary light and to keep our freezers running. They blew down some small dead trees on our road. And they completely blew down a part-built barn owned by our local alpaca farm, Northern Solstice Alpacas.

Consequence being, I spent most of Sunday morning fighting flapping wet gritty roofing felt in a fresh gale with driving rain, and my students and I spent much of yesterday afternoon, between gales, rebuilding an alpaca barn. I quite enjoyed both experiences. There's something about a good stiff gale that gets my British blood going. And, when it's all over, you feel just a little bit more alive as a result.

Aimee, although she enjoyed the experience less, being an American, was good, and brave enough to hold my ladder Sunday. The barn is 18 feet high. It gets windy up there. the ladder would blow down by itself, already had, and I didn't want to be trapped on the roof. A couple gusts had me thinking I might soon learn to fly, without really wanting to know the technique, nor time enough to learn it. I also cursed, not for the first time, my lack of a roofing-nail gun. The nice thing about a nail gun, is it only takes one hand to operate, giving you another to hold on for grim death, or to hold down the new roofing before tacking it down. I have a framing-nail gun, but not a roofing-nail gun.

The alpaca ladies, probably wisely, left us to our own devices to rebuild their barn Tuesday. We had enough help to hold any number of ladders. And a suitable nail gun.

Our student construction crew is now fairly well-trained and experienced, and knows most of the tricks it takes to make construction easy, safe and accurate, like building framing tables and saw tables first so you work at waist level standing up, not ground level kneeling down. Measuring twice, cutting once. They also figured out the use of wind braces PDQ, and we attached several to the barn as we put up the frame sections, and a bunch more on completion of our work day to help the part-built building survive the new gale. I expect it to stay up, this time.

Now, as the old song goes, the storm is raging, and we are far from the shore of calm days. It's midnight in Maine, and I just went out to check around the farmyard. Everything seems fine, and seems to be sticking more or less where it belongs, including the barn roof. So far, so good. The biggest gust tonight was only about 30 mph. The National Weather Service was predicting sustained 40 mph winds, and gusts to 50 and 60. Our house doesn't even think about moving until gusts reach 40. It's been on this spot a long time, and has a better windbreak now than it probably had in previous years, while I already removed all the trees that were closest to the house that could have fallen on it.

It's supposed to settle down a bit by the weekend. Hopefully no-one else's house is getting tossed about either, and all the ships in the Gulf of Maine have made port.

This is one of those nasal songs we used to sing in pubs and Land Rovers when I was in the service. I do believe I even know it on the penny whistle, although I play the penny whistle rarely, now my old dog Liza Jane is no longer around to join in. A good song for a windy day. The kind my wife doesn't like. Maybe if she gets tossed around in gales a bit more, she'll get used to them.

(Either way, she's the girl I do adore.)

The Holy Ground

Fare thee well, my lovely Dinah, a thousand times adieu.
We are bound away from the Holy Ground and the girls we love so true.
We'll sail the salt seas over and we'll return once more,
And still I live in hope to see the Holy Ground once more.

_(chorus)
(Shouted) Fine girl you are!
(Sung) You're the girl that I adore. And still I live in hope to see the Holy Ground once more.
(Shouted) Fine girl you are!

Now when we're out a-sailing and you are far behind
Fine letters will I write to you with the secrets of my mind,
The secrets of my mind, my girl, you're the girl that I adore,
And still I live in hope to see the Holy Ground once more.

[chorus]

Oh now the storm is raging and we are far from shore;
The poor old ship she's sinking fast and the riggings they are tore.
The night is dark and dreary, we can scarcely see the moon,
But still I live in hope to see the Holy Ground once more.

[chorus]

It's now the storm is over and we are safe on shore
We'll drink a toast to the Holy Ground and the girls that we adore.
We'll drink strong ale and porter and we'll make the taproom roar,
And when our money is all spent we'll go to sea once more.

[chorus]

Happy Hallow'een

Hallow'een is a holiday Americans keep to make sure their pious don't get too pious.

After all, what could be more overtly pagan? Obviously anyone who observes Hallow'een doesn't take religion too seriously, which I think is probably healthy for you.

I always enjoy the pumpkins. Who wouldn't want to make one of these? Even if you don't have little kids?

Back home in the yUKe, we had Hallow'een, but it was far less of a big deal than the following holiday, "Bonfire Night," or "Guy Fawke's Night," a holiday to celebrate a failed Catholic insurrection, the Gunpowder Plot.

My mother's birthday, too. Happy Birthday, mum.

Bonfire Night was a religious holiday at least at root, although the religious aspects went right over the heads of us kids, and even my Catholic buddies went to see the fireworks. The torchlight parade, on the other hand, featured fife and drum and bugle marching bands from the Boy's Brigade, the "chapel" version of the Boy Scouts.

I should explain "church and chapel." In 1960s and 1970s Sheffield, as in Wales, and most other northern and western outposts, if you were not of the tiny Catholic, Jewish or Muslim minorities then existing, you were either church, or chapel.

Meaning your family loyalty was to conformism, and Anglicanism. This was my mother's side. Or to non-conformism, and Methodism. My father's side. And the Methodists, like the Presbyterians in Ireland, were closer to the ideals of the Civil War Roundheads and hated Guy Fawkes and all he stood for. So Bonfire Night was still a big night for the Boy's Brigade or formerly the Church Lad's Brigade.

The fireworks displays were all over the city that night, but the closest one to us was at Coldwell Lane sports field, where we kids would play milk-crate cricket all summer and sled in winter. Mother would cook a special dinner of baked beans and baked potatoes, and the neighbor kids would gather at our house because we were on Sandygate Road, the main route for the march-past. There would be toffee, sometimes toffee apples. I can still feel my teeth getting stuck together. The sled hill was the fireworks hill. A massive bonfire of scrap lumber and brush was lit, about fifteen feet high. The torchlight parade would come to an end, all the kids throwing their torches on to start the bonfire, which had been primed with an effective accelerent and would just light right up. Then all the kids home-made "Guys," the effigies of Mr. Fawkes himself, were flung on to roast.

Poor Guy.

The the fireworks would begin. A small squad of dedicated pyromaniac fathers and grandads tended these, and the "oohs and aaahs" went up into the night with the sparks from the bonfire.

A good night was had by all.

If we kids or our parents had any clue we were re-enacting the English (and lowland Scottish) public hatred for a failed Catholic terrorist, and his execution, no-one let on. It wasn't until I came to America that I realized what the deal was. And how violent a holiday it was. With the uniforms and torches and fire and burned effigies! Shades of Nuremburg.

I expect the fundamentalist religious authorities in America who hate Hallow'een because it's pagan at root would approve of Bonfire Night if they thought about it. After all, these outfits are really just spin-offs of British non-conformism; all of them offspring of the seventeenth century social and political upheavals in England and Scotland. The burning times.

Not that they would wish to know this.

Snorri the studmuffin

Snorri is a two-and-a-half-year old Corriedale/Romney cross Ram who belongs to Chris and Betty Beach. They just dropped him off for the breeding season. He will cover ewes Maggie, Mollie, Nellie, and possibly Lark. These are all offspring of the current Womerlippi stud, Abraram, and so he shouldn't breed them.

Instead Snorri gets the pleasure.

But don't feel bad for Abe. He has his regular harem of Tillie, Tootsie and Jewel.

Snorri, named for a viking baby from the Greenland/Vinland Sagas, is a big chunky guy, a much wider load than Abraram, although the latter is much taller.

We'll keep the two rams separated by two fences and about ten yards for the duration, or they might go to work on each other.

It will be interesting to see who gets bred, who gives birth to what color lambs (Snorri is a natural colored brown-grey not unlike Tootsie), and how many lambs we get total from 7 ewes.

The reason we expect Lark not to get bred is, well, let's just say she's always been a late bloomer. Likely malnourished as a lamb, she never quite filled out until this year, which is her third. Now she's the size of a healthy two-year old, but we can't tell if she is sexually developed. She's also a little soft-headed, and unlike the other sheep, doesn't know to avoid the worst of the manure and mud.

Who knows? Maybe she'll surprise us all.

The other ewe that likely won't get bred is great aunt Tootsie. She's a little long in the tooth.