Stillness

There's a lot of noise out there.  And there's a lot of noise in your head.

I grew up in a mostly rural pocket of northeastern Connecticut.  Save for being the home of the state's university, Mansfield was - and is still - a quiet town.  With the UConn skating rink and Student Union arcade room, a drive-in theater, and not much else, I was accustomed to finding ways of passing the hours.  I explored the woods looking for trails, I attempted to go fishing, I enjoyed sledding down pristine white hills.  Though there were many who chose to stay, I, like a lot of kids - many also the children of professional academics - sought to get away just as soon as we could.

Though college only took me to another college cow-town, Amherst, Massachusetts, it was big school in an area with several other colleges within a 20 minute radius.  I met hundreds of new people, joined the crew team and was exposed to a whole different set of experiences.  I fell under the spell of a fraternity, joining their ranks and living in our fetid house for three solid years of college.  There was a buzz and an energy and as a 20 year-old who wanted to be buzzed and energized there was no better place.  With the exception of the time I broke my humerus bone in half and got 10 stitches in my other hand (lumber yard accident, different story) and lived back home for a few weeks recuperation, I flew the coop right after high school.

Moving to a Boston suburb and then into the city after college, I have mostly lived in urban or suburban places ever since.  And as I moved into more compact and complex environments, my own world got more complex.  I had a job now, had to make my own decisions and sometimes suffer the consequences.   In my early twenties, I, like many, made - let's see, to put it politely - questionable decisions.  Many times given the choice between industriousness and indolence I chose the latter.  The party instead of the library, the girl instead of the gym.

A few years later, I advanced in my place of employment.  At first it wasn't really any kind of effort.  I was likable, reasonably intelligent, and mostly kind.  It wasn't long, however, that things got more complex.  If I was still going to be in the company's good favor - and just as importantly if I wanted to boost my pay, I had to take on more responsibility.  More responsibility requires more effort, more training, more curiosity and diligence.  Sure I'd made periodic efforts in my classes.  Sometimes I had to put in maximum effort to get passing grades in particularly difficult courses.  I often employed determination and resolve as an oarsman in college.  In crew I had to learn from my teammates and my coaches how to put forth consistent effort.  And in that sport my failure was my teammates' failure; I felt responsible to them.

Responsibility.  I have no idea how I came to possess any semblance of it.  When I was in high school I worked at the Mansfield Depot Restaurant.  I began as a dishwasher.  I showed up on time, I did my job thoroughly and conscientiously.  If someone called in sick and they called me, I went in.  If they needed someone to work a double, I offered.  Certainly, I was motivated by money.  Though I made less than $4/hr. when I started, those paychecks supplied all my spending money.  I saved up and with some help from my dad, bought my first car (1974 Volvo 164E, with a jerky transmission).  But not far  below money, I didn't want my bosses to think poorly of me.  I felt rewarded by how thankful they were that I was able to work and was a diligent employee.  I should have said "no" more than I did.  I should have spent a little bit of time being still while I could.

When I was in my early 30s, I moved abroad.  It had been a goal of mine; it appeared to be  the next adventure I was craving.  In my several years of city hopping, I lived in London, Amsterdam, Toronto, and Zurich - and that was only where I got my mail.  I was using my work postings to go to Italy or Luxembourg, France, Scandinavia, India, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Poland, and Malta of all places.  Though I travelled more than some, there were others I worked with who hadn't missed a continent and had seemingly alighted in every country on them.  They lived out of their suitcases, had wallets stuffed with reimbursable receipts, and knew every Irish bar in every non-Irish city they'd seen.   I relished the travel, the relative perks, and the opportunity to learn more about myself by seeing myself in different settings.

Year by year, the adventure continued until I moved back to Boston.  It was shortly after 9/11 and our country was a different place than the one that had launched me in the 1990s.  After the 2000 Election, when Bush 'beat' Gore, it was all and more than we might have anticipated.  The country moved right, and became even more partisan.  Bush made extraordinary gaffes, both publicly and politically. But it was funny still.  The Daily Show and Will Ferrell can thank Dubya (and a lot of talent, too) for much of their success today.  But after 9/11 things got pretty serious.  War.  Terrorists, Global Warming, global political unrest, loose nukes!  This was my 30s.

Eventually, traveling began to lose its luster and I had to make different kinds of choices.  I chose between a salary and a lifestyle.  I tried to strike a balance between what I wanted to do and what people wanted me to do.  I'd begun to save for my future.  I took time to consider.  I got my own financial planner.  The more I tried to reconcile what the heck I was doing with my life, I tried to think about what was meaningful to me.  My family.  My friends.  That was about it.  I was traipsing around the globe, but had so much time to myself that I had ample time to reflect.  I reflected on what was worthwhile.  Socializing was valuable, but I grew weary of the repetition.  On many quiet Sunday afternoons, I'd wander foreign city streets.  I was able to meet up with friends, but I also enjoyed the stillness of being alone in a park, by a river, on a trail.

Stillness.  That was the word that my stream of consciousness lingered on.  It's the word that inspired this posting.  I was enjoying a hot shower after a peaceful run.  Both of those things offer stillness, if one permits it to enter you.  Sometimes it's an effort, but other times it is spontaneous.  In the shower, you feel the warm water beat on your skin, cooling and warming at the same time.  You get to give yourself and all over body massage (if you're cleaning all the parts you ought to).  In the shower, behind the closed door, you're away from the TV, the kids, the internet and the iPhone.  Sure you can have a radio, but that would ruin the stillness, the privacy of the moment.  I many wives complain about the length of time their husbands spend in the bathroom doing number two.  It's the stillness.  Whether in the corporate bathroom stall, or the downstairs loo under the stairs, many a man takes respite from all that consumes him outside that door.  Take 10, deep, deep breaths, and you'll feel the stillness seep into you.  Calgon, take me away!

I don't know how many millions the makers of Ambien are raking in, but I do know that they are banking on people's inability to find and possess stillness.  And in that vein, alcohol, recreational drugs, including cigarettes, are mechanisms whereby many find that confounded, illusive stillness.  On the healthier side, many find stillness in yoga, pilates, and various forms of martial arts.  When I lived in New York City for an unemployed time, I had a lot of time to walk the island of Manhattan.  I'd walk 100 blocks at a time, at all hours of the day and night.  For the millions who've done this in any world class city around the globe, you know what it is to be struck by the sheer magnitude of the operation.  All those people, all that transportation, infrastructure, food, trash!  It's 24/7 because it has to be, because it's alive, it breathes.  I am thankful for the time I lived in Manhattan because at that point in my life it taught me that I didn't want to live there. For me, it was too busy.  I literally became tired sometimes after just a short walk outside because I couldn't help but absorb how busy everyone else was.  I needed more stillness.  I am betting there's a lot of Ambien in Manhattan.

In between my second and final European tour of living and that stint in NYC, I disappeared for two months.  Long before Mark Sanford made it a popular alibi, I hiked a few hundred miles of the Appalachian Trail.  Along with a friend who'd often found the stillness he craved in nature, we hoofed it up and down hills and mountains.  We traversed large open fields, scaled rocks, swam in ravines, and spent hour after hour not saying a word.  It was exactly what I needed when I needed it.  Before that hike, I was living in Zurich and planning on moving to Lucerne soon after the summer.  The company package offered wasn't quite what I was expecting and the company was not going to offer more.  We were at an impasse.  It was not the first time I had to make a decision about what was valuable to me, but it was one of those times where you ask yourself what your life means to you - and how valuable you feel to those you work for.  It was a watershed moment for me because it allowed me the opportunity to be true to myself.

I thanked them for the many opportunities I'd been given and gave my notice.  In the process of coming to that decision I spoke with many confidants.  As I'd done many times before and would do many times again, I used those discussions to comb through the complexity of emotions that accompany a major life decision.  As I explained the situation to people in both monetary terms and at what juncture in my life this occured, I began to understand that I'd reached as far as I wanted to go with the company.  I didn't want anyone else's job who was superior.  As I interpreted it then, to me those people were pawns of the company.  If you were talented and completely dedicated to the company, you were 'rewarded' by moving to ten cities in ten years.  Or maybe your whole family would have to move from Boston to China, no matter that it's your daugther's senior year in high school.  I didn't want to be a cog, however highly paid that cog was.

I knew that even though I knew I could earn more money, I also knew that you either have to be very intelligent or very hard working or both - and even if you are you have to catch some luck, too.  Whatever the psychological reasons (and I'm sure they are deep and plentiful), it wasn't enough to make me want to supplant my independence for the sake of the company.  I'd gotten what I perceived was valuable out of the relationship.  I was paid well enough, I got to travel, I had friends all over the world and a global perspective that I continue to carry with me every day.  But the wave had crested and I didn't want to be pulled down into the undertow.

Sadly, many of you - and certainly people you know  - are churning in the undertow and looking to come up for air.  To breathe.  To find stillness.  It happens imperceptibly slowly.  It's easy to see the second hand on a clock move.  If you stare carefully, you can see a minute hand move.  But staring at an hour hand will make you insane.  And yet, time passes.  Before you realize it, you bought a house.  You got married.  Your kids are almost in, what the F!, middle school!  And for too many, you're stuck in a job, town, marriage, relationship, bad habit that you've been in for years.  We find moments of stillness.  For the fortunate among us hard work leads to vacation and that sunrise on the lake from the deck.  A few bottles of wine will stop the mental carousel for an evening.  Otherwise, it's very hard to stop the noise.  Every question leads to another question and another person perhaps to involve, and a cost consideration, and maybe someone's feelings to think about.  With the increase in electronic communication, the immediacy of the times in which we live, presents the need of simply removing yourself from being accessible.  We now have the burden of being concerned that if you don't answer a text message in a 'reasonable' amount of time, you're perceived either as an idiot for not having your apparatus with you or as one intentionally avoiding communication.  And if you are having an affair, it means you are b-u-s-t-e-d.

My path required that I have a crises of personal conscious and leave the job that wasn't filling my soul anymore.  I ditched my laptop and mobile phone and took to the Appalachian Trail.  And while there was stillness and I had many pure and perfectly still moments, I had long, long conversations with myself, too.  What was I going to do when I came out of the woods?  Where was I going to live?  Who was going to be my life partner, the ballast for which I was so obviously yearning?

My romantic arc - rated PG - in brief.  I didn't have a real girlfriend until college.  In high school, I barely kissed a girl outside of whatever spin the bottle game I was fortunate in which to land a seat.  College was different.  In college I wasn't the person everybody already knew.  And girls were different.  They appreciated different things.  For years being funny meant getting laughs.  In college and beyond being funny meant you got to occasionally kiss the girl.  This was new to me and after finally experiencing it for myself it was hard for me to just want to kiss one girl.  So I kissed a few, had some major crushes, picked up girls, and got dumped by girls.  My dad's been married at least as many times as Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president and I used to say - and I think I believed  - that I didn't want to get married before I was ready to stay married.  I met some fantastic women, smart, beautiful, funny, athletic, driven, compassionate, worldly and then there were a few who weren't any of those things.  I was looking for the perfect woman for me and as searchers know the longer it takes the harder it becomes.

It was a void I was looking to fill.  And as much luck as I've ever had led Linda Mary LoPiccolo into my life.  As they say in life and in cliché, all the others were merely prelude to this.  When we finally engaged out in Long Beach, California where we lived in August of 2003, I'd chosen for the first time the kind of permanent commitment that had long eluded me.  It was the first time this selfish Sagittarius elected to be responsible for something other than himself.  It took me longer than it ought to have to realize it, but I fell in love with Linda and thankfully she with me.  I guess I am a slow learner because it's obvious to me now how perfect she is.  Not perfect.  Perfect for me.  But I digress.

There was this moment right after our wedding that I often return to.  After the reception and after stopping at the bar where our rowdy friends and repaired to, Linda and I got in the back of a somewhat tacky limo for our ride from Connecticut to our Boston hotel.  (We departed to Mexico the next morning.  I recommend Hotel Secreto).  It was the first time we were alone in several days.  Those days preceding the wedding are hectic.  There's family coming in, last minute arrangements, weather to watch, and of course, fun to be had.  With the wedding and our all our guests behind us, we could breathe.  We had stillness and the beauty of it, what was magical was that it was shared.  I looked into Linda's eyes and she into mine and in that moment we were perfectly aligned (horizontally, too).  It was a moment of stillness and perfection to which I regularly return.

But like that hour hand on a clock, time passes and it's hard to tell how it did, so quickly.  You think about all that's happened in that span of time, but looking back months get condensed into a nugget of experience.  When Linda and I were going through fertility treatments it went on for more than a year.  And then the whole process of considering and then moving forward with adoption is collapsed into a sentence when really that was probably a year, too. And whether you have your own baby or adopt one, you know what happens after it arrives.  And for those that don't have kids, you can imagine!  Time flies and the 'noise' is as loud as it's ever been.  Not just the noise of the kid, which is real to be sure, but now you've got a spouse, a child or two, or three or seven.  The dogs need to be walked and taken to the vet.  There's the dance recital, your sick parent, the hockey practice, the potential new position, GLOBAL ECONOMIC MELTDOWN!  That's not what we were prepping for.  As you get older you realize the calamities of youth were but love taps compared to the punches life has in store for you now.

So much noise. A lot of political noise - everyone's pissed off.  They're pissed at their government and they're pissed at the opposition.  They're pissed at big business and they're pissed at corruption.  Sarah Palin's pissed off, Glen Beck's pissed off.  Keith Olberman's pissed off.  John McCain looks pissed off even when he's happy.  If you're at all tuned in, you can't miss the rancor - it's on the radio, the web and on billboards.  I was running around my sister's neighborhood in Texas and many houses had these "No Socialism" placards stuck on their front lawns.  I get freedom of speech, am 100% for it, but just because you can say something doesn't mean you should.  But hey, it's a free country.  I digress again.  And it's easy to do because there are a lot of things in this life that are truly distracting.

Television is pretty noisy too.  Many of these reality shows capitalize on conflict.  If someone's not pissed off, they better be obviously peeved.  How much louder are the commercials than the show?  I know I am not alone in muting them.  Mute.  Silent.  Still.  Breathe.  I used to listen to my iPod (which I still sometimes call a Walkman) a lot when I was running.  In the cities I used it to disappear into the music and into the rhythm of my stride.  I also liked drowning out the sound of my heavy breathing.  It's not attractive.  But as I got fitter and especially when I ran on quieter routes, I left the iPod at home and chose instead to absorb my environment completely.  I smelled the foliage, heard the rippling brook, the chirping birds.  When I lived closer to a pool and swam laps, I found stillness in the repetition.  I find that stillness sometimes when I'm doing dishes or ironing (yes I do both).

As much as I praise stillness, I cannot help now but hear the word still and associate it with stillborn - and that is what Leo what was.  Born still at eight months.  Years after fertility treatments failed and after adoption succeeded we got pregnant.  That event, too, now is reduced to a sentence.  Something years in the making, so much emotional energy invested, so much noise endured, even embraced at times, gets relegated to a sentence.  We got pregnant.  On our own.  Leo brought us tremendous joy while Linda's pregnancy progressed normally and without warning.  It was a warm July day, 4 weeks before the due date when we learned that the baby had died.  This was the kind of stillness I never sought, never truly considered, and the one that also necessitates the stillness I now perpetually crave.  After Leo died, after three long days in the hospital, and after we went to the funeral home to collect his ashes, Linda and I paused as best we could.  Our son Max needed and deserved our attention and he got it.  But we couldn't breathe and we needed to.  We left Max with relatives and went north, to Maine to a cabin retreat belonging to that hiking friend of mine.  Those days nestled in the thick woods, next to that long lake were a gift.  I went for a few jogs.  Linda read.  We swam and we napped.  And there were tears. We had coffee at sunrise with the water lapping on shores. Then we left.

2009 was especially noisy.  The economy tanked, the housing bubble burst, and Obama replaced 8 years of Bush.  I was unemployed and we'd made the decision to walk away from our upside down city condo.  We lost the baby we longed to raise, suddenly, tragically.  And through it all, Linda and I were making choices that compelled us to listen to our values.  I don't want to spend two hours commuting every work day.  I don't think working that hard is worth either commuting or paying through the nose to live closer.  It just makes things noisier.  Let me make sure that readers know that I am speaking only for myself.  Millions choose to commute or feel that what they get for their hard work is worth that equation.  That's fine if it's fine for you.  It wasn't for me and we chose to move to the Quiet Corner - what the northeastern part of the state of Connecticut is affectionately called.  Through all the noise, the message was steadily speaking.  Leo's stillness firmly repositioned stillness to the forefront of my thoughts.  I read some Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle.  I took some wonderfully long and meditative runs in preparation for my first marathon.  I practiced tuning out the noise.  I practiced being present.

Please don't imagine me some Buddhist monk in constant meditation.  I am not.  Despite my green environs and dearth of neighbors, the world too easily penetrates, vibrates, reverberates.  Internet, cable television, radio have made access to noise nearly as abundant here as it was in my former urban life.  But proximity permits me easier entry into stillness.  There's a mile stretch of road that I either drive or run on nearly every day.  It's one of the few straight roads around and there's a canopy of ancient and tall trees that form a cathedral vaulted ceiling of branches.  This time of year the green is so new and lustrous.  Later those leaves will grow richly and deeply green, but now they are translucent; when the sun shines through them the vernal splendor is arresting.

You might imagine me trotting down that shady road, or going to the farmer's market for freshly picked vegetables and those are things I indeed do.  But my mind is still too noisy, too many misplaced thoughts pulling me from the present.  I've read that it's a good first step that I'm aware of these leanings, that to be conscious of my thoughts helps to bring me back to the present.  It's an effort, every waking moment is an effort.  I go through phases of wanting to work on presence and in choosing not to, procrastinating being present for goodness sake!  Recently though, I was in a bookstore and saw a book about Zen Buddhism, Buddhism Is Not What You Think.  I bought it because everything I've ever read - which is not a ton - about Buddhism appeals to me.  I bought it because I knew I would find it helpful to have a new reminder of what it is I am seeking to honor, to value.  It's not something mystical I'm after; it's not even something necessarily spiritual.  What I'm looking for is something practical, a way to be, stasis.  There's a more peaceful mind in me - and in you.

Below the Surface

Over the past couple of months I've been spending a lot of time on a feasibility study.  I'm assembling the costs associated with the complete renovation of the vacant farmhouse which belongs to my wife's family and analyzing those figures to see if we can actually afford to do it.  Despite its dilapidated appearance, the house is structurally very sound and ripe for restoration.  (I wrote more about the house here:  The Farm.)

The house was built circa 1926 and was last occupied in the 1980s.  After my in-laws moved from Texas to Connecticut in the late 1990s to take care of the family property much work was done on the house to prepare it for its eventual restoration.  The removal of copious amounts of asbestos in the cellar and a new roof were two expensive and necessary investments.  Additionally, much effort and time (and money) was spent gutting the house to its bare studs to prepare for eventual transformation.  And that is essentially the condition it's in today.

Our hope is that we can afford to renovate the house and transform it into a beautiful and hospitable bed & breakfast/inn.  In order to know if we can actually do that, we obviously need to know what it will cost.  So over the past month or so I've been working with a local and reputable contractor to begin the process of estimating the costs.  Every week it seems a new group of contractors comes by to survey the house and property.  We've met with builders, painters, electricians, masons, plumbers, HVAC people, and even a representative of the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation.

With each visitor comes a new line item in the budget.  But many of these professionals also have the irksome habit of raising issues which seem to precipitate other potential costs.  "What kind of septic system is here?" "What kind of water volume does the well generate?"  The answer is, "I don't know, but I bet it's going to cost us more money to find out."  There are costs we can estimate now, but several others are dependent on what we find underground.  Soil tests to determine leach and fill for the septic system await and with that information will come a new contractor estimate.  We might need an entirely new septic system and we might need new wells dug to generate enough water supply for the large house.   Like much in life, the important answers, the deeper meaning, the hidden truths are buried below the surface.

Once we have rough estimates for all the work required, we need to add in the costs to furnish the house, buy and install appliances, and do all the little things that are needed to actually open for business.  The list of costs is a long one and it's as yet unclear if the estimated projected revenue will be sufficient to cover them.  There are many months ahead of business planning, estimating, and securing funds (anyone win the lottery lately?!).  It will still be many months thereafter to actually complete the project.  One thing that is extremely heartening is that to a person, those who come into the house can't help but marvel.  They speak about the remarkable straightness of the house.  They comment on the unexpected good condition of the interior.  Few can mask their surprise at how much bigger the house is compared to its exterior appearance.

This is no small endeavor.  To say it's a big job is a gross understatement - the house is about 5,000 square feet not including the full size attic which might become another livable space.  There's a difficult decision to be made at each juncture and each one has a financial implication - a life implication - both for the short and long term.  I have the distinct feeling that when we get the estimates back from the contractors someone is going to have to pick my jaw up off the floor.  I once heard it said that a compromise is an agreement where neither party is happy and I can easily predict that there'll have to be more than a few trade-offs along the way if we're really going to be able to pull this off.

We're often reminded that life is not about the destination, but rather it's the journey that counts.  We humans are so eager to get to where we think we want to be, only to arrive there and soon be anxious to move forward again to some new goal or destination.  I know that there will come a time when we make great progress on this house and that I'll be focused on the next stage - there will always be something to do.  I must however be mindful that the urge to move forward is really an expression of the ego.  While I am aware that my motivation to tackle this project is my ego at work, I must also remember that life's real answers aren't in the future at all, but rather in the present and often just below the surface.  Dig.

I Root for the UConn Huskies

If you know me well you know that I am more than a casual fan of UConn Men's Basketball.  If you know me better than well, you know that I didn't even attend UConn.  In fact, I went to the University of Massachusetts and while I do root for the Minutemen, The Huskies have been a part of my life as long as I can remember, before I was born in a manner of speaking.

My dad took a job as a professor in UConn's psychology department in the early 60s.  Later he courted my mom who was living in New York City and in 1969 they were married and driving cross country to California for his sabbatical.  Somewhere along the way, I was conceived and in December of 1969 after they returned from the West Coast, I was born in Willimantic, CT - just a few miles from the UConn campus in Storrs.

Storrs is a section of the town of Mansfield which was incorporated in 1702.  The university began as Storrs Agricultural College in 1881 and still excels in the study of animals, farming, and natural resources.  For those of us who grew up in the Storrs/Mansfield area, the UConn campus was the center of most of our activity.  Drive off campus and the landscape quickly becomes wooded, rural, and bucolic.  Campus was where all the action was (and still is!).  There were movie theaters and galleries, museums and performance halls.  There was the Student Union with its cafeteria, ice cream fountain, and basement hall of video games.  There was the UConn Dairy Bar with its delicious freshly made ice cream.  And there were the athletic facilities, the hockey rink, the baseball fields, the tennis courts, the soccer field, and the indoor field house.

Growing up in the early 80s, the sport that dominated was UConn Men's Soccer.  Coached by the legendary Joe Morrone, the team was a perennial contender for the National Championship, winning it under Morrone in 1981 (and again in 2000).  The soccer stadium is where we kids wanted to be on game day, there and nowhere else.  I'd go with my mom and my sister and friends of our family.  We'd sit behind the goal and when the opposing team's goalie was in the net, we'd hurl insults at him with relentless zeal.  When one time the goalie (from St. John's, I think) turned around and gave us the finger after their team scored, he propelled us into a vicious and unrelenting tirade.

When the weather was warmer, early in the season, I'd sometimes wander below the bleachers and collect cans and bottles to return for money.  I can still palpably recall the time someone deliberately and cruelly poured their beer on my head.  But such was the risk I took. The crowds were rowdy and raucous.  When the season wore on from fall to winter, and especially as the play-offs arrived, we'd bundle up and sit on the cold metal bleachers in snow and ice storms to watch our team play.

One of the highlights of my youth was being on a town soccer team, sponsored by Rosal's Restaurant,  that played a 10 minute game on the UConn field at half-time.  It was pouring rain that day and the field was a soaking mess.  We ran around, kicked up mud, and slid all around.  I am sure some of the players were focused on the game, but I wasn't a very good player and was mostly just thrilled to be on the UConn field, highly amused at the vaudevillian falls that we were all taking.  I couldn't have been more elated the next day when the local paper, The Willimantic Chronicle, featured a picture me and a friend, running through the rain.  My glasses are coated in mud and I have the widest smile on my face a boy could have.  I still have that photo somewhere.

When the soccer season ended, it was time for basketball.  In the late 70s and early 80s, the team was coached by Dom Perno, who'd been a player for the Huskies in the 1960s.  I was thrilled to be a friend of his son, Matt, even invited over to the Perno house for dinner one night.  (Embarrassingly, I accidentally got locked in the upstairs bathroom.  Too shy to call for help, it was many minutes before someone came looking for me and helped me unlock the door.)  UConn was one of the founding teams in the Big East, which was a fledgling conference in the early 80s.  The heavyweights were teams like Georgetown, Syracuse, and St. John's (Coached by legends, Thompson, Boeheim, and Carnesseca).  UConn was competitive, but we (notice the inclusive 'we') were not an elite team and certainly didn't have a lot of national recognition.  I can clearly recall going to games at the old UConn Field House, which held just a few thousand fans, at tip off time and finding our regular seats behind the hoop.  Corny Thompson was the star player then.  Fans of that era will also recall names like Vern Giscombe, Chuck Aleksinas, Gerry Besselink, Norm Bailey, Bruce Kuczenski, Earl Kelley, and Karl Hobbs - to name just a few of our beloved Huskies.

Perno had three 20 win seasons as coach of the Huskies, but was eventually succeeded by Jim Calhoun.  As the mid 80s became the late 80s, UConn recruited the players that would begin our transformation from a New England powerhouse team to a Big East Title contender and an eventual National Champion.  Chris Smith (talk about a crossover move!), Cliff Robinson, Tate George, Scott Burrell were some of the big names of that era.  And no one who grew up in Storrs can forget where they were the day Scotty Burrell threw the ball the length of the court to Tate George to hit the winning shot against Clemson to propel us to the Elite Eight in 1990.  It will forever be known as "The Shot."  (I was on spring break with the UMass Crew Team in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, listening on the radio of my coach's truck.)  It was the shot that would precede stars like Marshalls, Donyell and Donny (no relation), Ray Allen, Kevin Ollie, Richard Hamilton, Ben Gordon,  Emeka Okafor.  It would be the shot that precipitated our rivalry with Duke (We hate Duke and we particularly loathe Laettner), and our National Championships in 1999 and 2004.



The other thing is this, growing up in Connecticut, we didn't have much to put us in the national spotlight.  When the NHL Hartford Whalers, rarely a play-off contender, moved to North Carolina it left the Huskies as really the only team to unify the state.  And having a winning team was heaven.  Before Men's Basketball (and much credit must be given to original Big East commissioner Dave Gavitt and the rise of both cable and especially ESPN in the early 80s for our national prominence) if you told someone you were from Storrs, they had no idea what you were talking about.  Even within the state there were many who had no idea where Storrs was.  Today, along with storied programs like UCLA, Duke, and North Carolina, UConn has amongst the most players in the NBA.



Winters can be bleak in Connecticut.  Cold, Gray, Windy.  But inside the Field House, now Gampel Pavillion - the Hartford Civic Center, now the XL Center, it's been hot for a long time now.  Calhoun is a Hall of Fame Coach.  The women's team rivals the men's and now owns 6 National Titles, has won 55 straight games, and regularly thrashes its opponents by double digits.  Even UConn Football has gone big time.  The team has gone from The Yankee Conference to the Big East, from Double 1-AA to Division 1-A.  Old Memorial Stadium on campus is more like a miniature field compared with the new Rentschler Field in East Hartford which can accommodate upwards of 40,000 raving fans.  They've won two bowl games in a row and have several players in the NFL.  Since the UConn Men's Basketball team won the NIT in 1988, UConn's stature in athletics and academics has steadily risen.  We may still be in podunk Storrs, Connecticut, but there are few that follow college athletics that don't know the Huskies.  And having come of age here during those seminal years fills me with the kind of pride that can only truly be understood by those of us who grew up or lived here during that time.  You know who you are.

The UConn men lost last night to Pittsburgh.  They lost to Georgetown last Saturday.  The losses hurt more than I can accurately express.  As go the Huskies, so go I.

The Farm

I've had better than a year to think about what I should next do with my life.  I am looking for something bigger than myself.  I don't want a job; I want a passion.  In the last twelve months I, together with my family, have made some significant  and life altering choices toward this end.  We opted out of urban living; we chose to declare bankruptcy; we walked away from the upside down mortgage on our city condo.  We moved to Pomfret, Connecticut in hopes of living a simpler, but admittedly no less easy, life.  And throughout these recent machinations, there's been something massive looming - something inviting, intimidating, and wonderful.  An undertaking of a lifetime.  Something worthy.

In 1707 ancestors of my mother-in-law, Polly, purchased several hundred acres of land in Pomfret. In 1713 it became the Mathewson Farm and later came to be known as Fox Hill Farm.  For generations it served as a homestead and source of livelihood to the Mathewson family and its descendants.  Today, as has been the case for three centuries, a large farmhouse overlooks the property. (The house that's there today is the fifth on the same footprint.  As is the unlucky, but common history of old estates, fires destroyed the previous homes.  The house that stands today was built in 1926.)  As the 1700s became the 1800s, and those the 1900s the property was passed down to family.  Over those years some of the custodians of the land sold off portions or parceled acres off to other family members.  But in its 300 plus years of being passed from one Mathewson generation to the next, a sizable piece of unspoiled acreage remains in the family.

In 1908 a modest summer cottage was built and in the 1960s a small addition to it was construcuted.  The cottage would eventually become the summer home of my wife's grandmother, affectionately called Newie.  Her sisters, Aunt Chan and Aunt Hope, were the last to dwell in the larger, 5,000 square foot farmhouse.  When they passed away in the 1980s, the house sat quietly dormant, only the furniture and the ghosts of Mathewsons past remained.  But in the summer, Newie would return to the cottage and there she'd be visited by her daughter and grandchildren.  Polly, in fact, lived there the summer my wife was born, in 1969.  So while Polly wasn't raised in Pomfret and while my wife never really lived here, it's always been a rich and familiar part of their heritage.

When Newie passed away in 1992, the property became the responsibility of Polly and her brother Chandler. Although his interest in caring for his ancestral homestead never faded, Chandler - 16 years Polly's senior - spent his entire adult life living in the south and chose to remain in South Carolina for his retirement years.  This left Polly and her husband, Nick, who lived in Texas then as the sole remaining custodians.  Sometime in the 1990s, the woman who lived on the property in the cottage and acted as the caretaker fell ill.  Her ne'er do well son, desperate for money to support his drug habit, slowly but steadily stole most of the pieces of antique furniture stored in the Big House, as the farmhouse is called.  When Polly's daughter, Patty, discovered this one weekend when she came up from New York City, it was decided that the property couldn't be tended to from afar.  My in-laws packed up their home in Arlington, Texas into a moving van and moved north.

For the past eleven years, they've worked hard to breathe life into the land.  Even while both holding full time jobs, they managed to renovate the cottage addition into a Bed and Breakfast, Inn at Fox Hill Farm, and have transformed overgrown vegetation into a charming swath of green.  They live next door to the B&B in the old caretaker's cottage.  In the colder months, they fill the wood stove with logs to stay warm in the non-winterized country house.  The Big House is a behemoth that would intimidate the bravest of do-it-yourselfers.  Yet work has been done to prepare it for transformation.  It has been gutted to the studs, stripped of its horse-hair plaster.  It stands quietly and nearly ready for updated electricity and plumbing, new windows, insulation, and sheetrock.

Fox Hill Farm - as it stands today -  consists of 75 acres,  25-30 of which are cleared land.  The rest of the land features a pond, a corn field, a hilly meadow, and dense woods.  The cottage looks much as it did when it was built and the B&B hosts regular guests.  The Big House, though re-roofed in 1999 to preserve it, stands at a crossroads.  It's in need of immediate attention.  The windows and basement are far from weather tight.  It must be sealed (to be renovated sooner or later) or it won't last many more seasons; it's structural integrity hangs in the balance.  There is a mortgage on the property that requires a regular monthly payment. There are property taxes to be paid and the bills that go with the maintenance of such a property.  And there is a legacy to fulfill, a family covenant to keep.

Linda and I moved to Pomfret knowing that as my in-laws age this property will increasingly become the responsibility of Linda and her three siblings.  But those siblings are elsewhere right now - two in Texas and one in New York.  It's we who have chosen to move here now.  It's we who have elected to move our family here sooner rather than later to insert ourselves into its history.  We've been thinking about this property for many years now, knowing that eventually we would bear much responsibility for its care.  The undertaking is this:  how can we help to make sure that Fox Hill Farm, the legacy of the Mathewson family, continues to be a family homestead for Nick and Polly's children?  And for their children?  For my son, Max, and his little cousin, Teo?

In the six years that I've been coming to The Farm, I've fallen for it.  Hard.  I want to live here with my family; I want to grow old here.  I want to watch our family play in its fields, pluck its gardens, and sled its hills.  I want the once proud farmhouse to recapture its former stature.  And I want to be a part of its history.  There's more work to do than I even know, but this is, I've decided, an effort more than worthy of my time.

The Chronicles, No. 2

Exciting News:  Ring Writes will soon be featuring guest essayists. It is, after all, Collective Intelligence.

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The clock is ticking.  We move the Monday after next.  Linda and I no longer talk in weeks, but in days - as in, "Max has five more days left of day care." I've filled out the change of address card.  It's almost time to cancel cable and order it for the new place.  None of this is foreign to me; I've moved many, many times.  Since high school graduation, I've never lived in the same place longer than we've lived here:  3 years, 9 months.  For a long time I moved less than every two years. I've moved across town, across the state, across America, and across the Atlantic Ocean.  But those were moves to places like Boston, Amsterdam, Long Beach, Zürich, and New York.  I can't remember last time I moved somewhere that didn't have sidewalks.

  

Until I was 33 years-old, I made all those moves alone.  Five years ago I began to make them with Linda.  Four years ago we added two now very large cats (Lucy on the left, Tommy on the right).  This move will take our 21 month-old son, Max, from the only home he's ever known.

And the Monday after next when we leave Salem, Massachusetts for Pomfret, Connecticut we'll bring the ashes of our still born son, Leo.

***************

This move - in so many unanticipated ways - is the most substantive I've ever made.  It's true that it's a move of practicality, but it's also a move of conviction and principles. And right now, specifically because we unexpectedly lost Leo in July, it's also a move that will forever mark the beginning of a new era in our lives.  I know that losing Leo has changed me, changed us; we just don't know how much.  As this life chapter ends somberly, it does however feel auspicious that our next chapter will feature less traffic and roads and green pastures, thick woods, and rocky streams (but with the same number of Dunkin' Donuts).

A series of events in each of our lives (which I also believe are integrally, intricately, and invisibly linked to events in yours) have conspired to bring us to this moment in time.  And at this time we're to see if we can really lead the simpler life we say we want.  It's time to put our address where our mouths are.  Linda and I have talked about moving to country Connecticut for as long as we've been married.  At times we'd pretend there were other fates.  Up until a just a few months ago, we'd joke and ask each other, "Where do you want to live when you grow up?"

I recently heard a Ted Kennedy quote about the Presidency.  Kennedy said something like, "I don't care that I'm not the President.  I just care that somebody else is."  Linda and I don't care that someone else is living in Italy, Vermont, Northern California, or New York City. We just care that we can't live there, too.  But because we can't live everywhere, Connecticut here we come.

Starting tomorrow we're taking a couple days off - from packing, writing, and our concrete and brick condo.  We've been invited to go down to The Cape and with all that's happened lately, all that's going on right now, and all that's yet to pass, it just seems like good mental medicine.

I've been reading a bit about presence lately.  Being present means not being in the past.  It means not being in the future.  Now is really all you ever have.  We all have a lot to think about, but it's sad how little of it is dedicated to the now.  Sometimes when I'm running and I'm tired and I think about how far I've run and how many miles I still have to run, I repeat a little mantra, the timing of which matches my footfalls.

"There is nothing in this moment that is not right."

Stay tuned.

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The Chronicles will continue in regular installments, as will other Ring Writes essays.  Though I've been posting almost daily, the frequency will drops off just slightly for a few weeks while we move and get settled.

Poison Ivy

I have small break out of poison ivy.  It's just on my foot and shin a bit.  For the most part I can control the scratching - far, far from a bad case.  I must have picked it up in Connecticut the week before last when I was barefoot in and around the garden at my in-laws property.

Getting poison ivy always makes me wax nostalgic.  Growing up in Storrs, Connecticut we were always close to the woods and there was plenty of poison ivy around.  In the summer, I'd go traipsing through the low ground cover and disappear in the cool woods.  I'd see huge ferns growing on the carcasses of fallen trees, fed by the dimpled sunlight filtering in through the canopy of leaves above.  I'd note fungi growing on moist limbs and from moss gathered on a rock buried like an iceberg, a comparatively small surface the stone exposed.  And during those excursions I'd inevitably rub my legs or clothes on the oily leaves of the ivy plant.

At that age  - 10, 11, 12 - I wasn't paying attention to, well, much.  And I certainly wasn't practicing any preventative measures like washing hands or clothes after parading through the grass.  I got poison ivy multiple times a summer.  Everywhere.  Not washing up meant my hands were covered with the ivy oils.  I'd touch my face, my eyes, go to the bathroom (yup, got it there, too).

One time I went to sleep with a small case of it and woke up in the morning with my eyes literally swelled shut from the allergic reaction.  That was scary.  We went to our family practitioner who prescribed some Benadryl pills.  Benadryl can cause drowsiness.

The next day, my mom went to work and I was home alone.  She called the house to check on me, but there was no answer.  She called again and again no answer.  She worried and called a neighbor.  Unaware of any of this, I was surprised to find the mother of my neighborhood friend in my bedroom rousing me out of bed.  With little explanation that I can recall, I was put in a car - still in my pajamas - and brought the the doctor's office, where my mom met us.  The doctor checked my pulse, blood pressure, and temperature.  He shined a bright light into my eyes and asked me if I knew who the President of the United States was (Reagan).  I was declared fine other than extremely groggy and was sent home.

Scratching the top of my pink-dotted foot reminds me of those idle summer days, exploring woods that seemed as infinite as my youth.

Stay tuned.

The Chronicles, No. 1

Every Day is a New Beginning.

In 20 days we're moving from Salem, Massachusetts (population ~40,000, 18 square miles) to Pomfret, Connecticut (population ~4,000, 40 square miles).

I've been married a little over 5 years. My wife's name is Linda.  She's so wonderful.

We adopted our son, Max, at birth in November 2007.  He's a happy whirling dervish.

We lost our other son, Leo,  stillborn one month before his due date in July 2009 - just over a month ago.

I've been unemployed since December 2008.

Yesterday morning, August 2009, my wife and I signed documents with our attorney with the intention of declaring bankruptcy.

I am training for a marathon, my first, in October 2009. Many of the training miles are run in minimalist footwear called Vibram Five Fingers.

I am 'this close' to becoming a vegetarian.

I turn 40 in 112 days.

And I am looking forward to what comes next.

Stay tuned.

Soft Launch

The drumbeat has grown loud, the call now too clear to ignore. Beginning with this blog, I am declaring my candidacy for your internet time.

Some background: I was born in the waning days of the 1960's; I grew up in Storrs, Connecticut - a sleepy college town set betwixt cow pastures, woods, streams, and rocky farmland. I was voted "Class Clown" my senior year. That's enough background.  Yawn.

"Ring Writes" (working title) will eventually be a mixture of articles, columns, reporting, web guides, observations, fiction, opinions.  There will be featured writers, guest columnists, links to great articles, audio, and video.  I imagine an online magazine, a forum, and a community which will be appreciated for its content and usefulness.    This is just the start.  So follow the blog, subscribe to the feed, read the postings, share with your friends, and let's see where this takes us, shall we?  And yes, this is going to be a primary source of my income.

It begins with this blog and ends....stay tuned.

--Dave
www.ringwrites.com

p.s. I like this regular column by Lynn Zinser in the New York Times:  Leading Off