why am I posting this?

Long story short:
To show Magda.

Short story long:
We live in the fork of a road in the Berkshire hilltowns. If you go up one tine of the fork, you'll go to the dairy farm where a black bear was killed last week. The bear was trying to kill a calf, so the farmer had to shoot the bear.

If you go up the other tine, you'll go to the house where a different black bear was killed last week. That bear was coming into the yard where two small children play.

It's uncommon for two black bears to be perceived as threats and killed so close together, geographically and chronologically, even here in the hilltowns. You see them in the news frequently, but typically they are being removed from a tree in a park or a downtown area by wildlife management experts, and the story has a charming Yogi Bear angle to it.

These newsworthy bear killings brought the local TV news crew out to do a report. They interviewed the mom of the two small children (wife of bear shooter B). For the establishing shot of the story, as the reporter described "this quiet neighborhood in Williamsburg", they showed OUR house and gardens, and the camera zoomed in on the two tipi-like structures I built for the pole beans to climb.

I was telling my co-workers about all of this at work, and Magda, who loves to garden, wanted to see a picture of the gardens. She did not see the news report, nor did anyone at lunch. Which is fine, and I should have just kept my big mouth shut. The only reason I mentioned it is because I thought somebody I know might see my house on TV in connection with that story and think I killed a bear. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I guess, if you feel threatened, or if you feel that your kids or your cattle are threatened - it's just that I did not do it.

So anyway, I told everybody I'd just put it on my blog. So here is a long shot of the gardens and a close-up of one of the tipis. It all looks very different now. These pictures were taken back at the beginning of the summer.

The windsock hanging from the tipi looks neat when it is hanging free and blowing in the wind, which is about 1% of the time. Most of the time it is tangled around the sticks.


As long as I'm posting pictures from home, check out this cool trunk lid I picked up at a tag sale. COOL, HUH? Is that not a thing of beauty? Look at the craftsmanship, the attention to detail, the textures. I look at that trunk lid, and then I go out into the world and I see all those goddamn hideous tupperware mailbox things that are all over the place now, and I weep like a lost child.

But enough of that. Let's talk about Jack Kirby and superhero comics some more!