Edie Clark shares her memories of Vermont artist Stephen Huneck following his death in 2010.
Yankee
Edie Clark
The time between Christmas and New Year’s is a silent time, a time of grateful stillness. At least it is here, at this place that is known in the magazine and to the folks in town as Mary’s Farm but that I call, privately, Stillpoint. Since the first night I spent here, the place here […]
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February Secrets | Mary’s Farm
For some unknowable reason, 19 of my good friends have birthdays in February–if you count my old dog, Mayday, who was born on February 20, that would be 20. I can hardly keep up. And so I’ve solved this problem by throwing what I call my February birthday party, inviting all my friends who were […]
This recipe for French Canadian meat pie — also known as Tourtiere — not only melts in your mouth, it keeps a family tradition alive.
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Happy Solstice!
Happy solstice, a somewhat forgotten mark of time and the movement of the planets. In the northern hemisphere, today is the shortest day of the year and the longest night; it is also the first day of winter. No one seems to want to celebrate that as much as we like to acknowledge the first […]
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Hot Money
A couple of weeks ago, in church, our minister got up to preach his sermon and, before he began and without a word, he stepped down from the pulpit and began to distribute something. It looked like he was peeling bills off a roll of cash. We in the choir were served last and discovered […]
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Pansies Still in Bloom
The first snow appeared on Mt. Monadnock this morning, the dark profile arching white in the morning’s new light. Rain pelted the windows down here all night long with a thunderous, roaring wind that set one of the shutters loose. But no snow, not even temperatures below freezing. In the old iron kettle on the […]
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Ice Storm Futures
I’m burning ice storm wood now. After the big storm and after the snow and ice of last winter had melted, the trees at the edge of the north field remained, bent, broken. Their high tops bowed down, their crowns touching the earth, surrendered to the ice. The warming sun of the new season could […]
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Silent, Brilliant Storm
It’s been calm here this week, unusually mild for November. Temperatures have been in the 50s, skies are a light blue, the sunlight pale and weak on the bare trees, bare ground. This exposure is fleeting. It will be covered soon. But there has been a peaceful feeling all around, a sharp contrast to the […]
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Deer Strike
This past Sunday I was slated to do a program in Kennebunkport with my friend, the author Carolyn Chute. Carolyn doesn’t drive so I was going to go pick her up which meant I was basically going to drive three sides of a triangle, from my home to Parsonsfield, Maine, down to Kennebunkport, and then […]
Yankee
Puddings, puddings, puddings
We sat sequestered in the Sunday School room of the Charlemont Federated Church, three of us, twenty-seven glorious puddings set on the Sunday School tables, which had been covered with bright red and yellow Provincial table cloths for the occasion. For almost two hours, the puddings had been carried in through a light rain, cradled […]
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The Metropolitan Opera in the Pines
I went to the opera on Saturday afternoon. The Met. Verdi’s Aida. Around noon, I put on a pair of slacks and a sweater, gave the dogs a cookie and left the house. I turned left out of my driveway, headed down a paved road which soon turned to dirt. I was on my way. […]