Author: christinestaffa

My life's journey has taken me from the streets of New York, up the Hudson Valley, to a little goat farm under Vermont's highest mountain.

So Effing Sick of Barbie

I had Barbie. I had the Barbie Townhouse. The elevator was very cool.

But I have next to no memories of playing with Barbie.

I have memories of the various Fisher Price dollhouses and playing with them, particularly with my little sister, who called the little dolls “Peoples”. I have memories of my friend’s dollhouse and having a blast playing with it with her, right before we got too old for such things.

Those dollhouses all had family units, lots of characters to play off each other. Barbie was just Barbie. I know this is going to sound anti-feminist – but it should, as I had an anti-feminist childhood. But what did you DO with a character who was just a single woman? Did I have any role models of single women? Zip, nada. I know Barbie had Ken and maybe friend-Barbies. But still, I think that was the reason Barbie wasn’t so much fun. I had no idea what to do with a single woman in a townhouse, once she’d gone up and down the elevator a few times.

Beerfest Highlights

14th Star – Railcar Refresher – made with yuzu, really interesting (and good)

Goodwater – German Wheat – loved

Mill River – Watermelon Gose – mmm!

Switchback – Katie’s Love Poem – ‘a traditional Grodzsikie’ – what the hell is that? Polish wheat. We both liked

Switchback – Smoked Oyster Stout – mostly smoke, I really liked the smokeds this session

Lawson’s Finest – Elderberry Gose – loved

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Marcovaldo

by Italo Calvino

Connected short stories that grew on me. The title character is basically a schlemiel, but it’s not just about schlemielitude. Calvino surrealism is present. Marcovaldo is a poverty-stricken father of six in poverty-stricken northern Italy in the 1950s-1960s. First living in a basement room and then in a garret, he and his complaining wife and mischievous troublesome children make discoveries and get into pickles and end up on hospital cots or afoul of the law or the landlady. And life goes on to the next story.

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Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories

by Isaac Bashevis Singer, illustrated by Maurice Sendak

A collection of very Jewish children’s stories with illustrations by Maurice Sendak. The title and final story was the best. Young Aaron must take the old family goat, Zlateh, to the butcher’s in the next town. They get caught in a blizzard and survive for 3 days inside a haystack. Aaron lives on the goat’s milk and the goat of course lives off the hay. They return home after the storm, and the life-saving goat is then forever after welcome in the house and treated like a sibling. “Maaaa,” is all she says. Yes, I loved her.

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Fuzz

by Mary Roach

The unifying theme is supposed to be “when nature breaks the law.” This loose idea combines stories of investigating wild animal attacks, deterring birds from eating sunflower seed fields, controlling monkeys in India, controlling rodents in your own home, and myriad other digressions. Mary Roach is funny, so it’s all good.

“I have read the 1978 paper by researchers… who tried to warn away white-tailed deer by erecting roadside plywood cutouts of deer rear ends with tails a-flagging. On some… an actual deer tail had been nailed in place. Sadly, because who wouldn’t want to see our nation’s highways lined with plywood deer asses with decomposing tails, none of it worked.”

Then the story of “fecal bags” attached to goat butts (no, she’s not always scatological, but, well, she often is)… a harness was designed with no fewer than 19 leather straps that allowed goats to rear up on their hind legs. “In a minor setback, several of the nonharnessed goats, being goats, ate the leather straps off their pals.” I had to include that quote.

I’m pro-wildlife but I find a little tiresome heroic efforts to get vermin out of your home without actually harming any critters. I do not wish to inflict cruelty. When she says glue traps ought to be banned, because “a professional pest control person should be checking the traps daily and humanely killing any rodent that’s been caught… what homeowner is going to tackle that?” We do, actually. We use glue traps because they work, and my husband, bless him, humanely dispatches anything we catch, always within half a day. She admits herself that snap traps very often fail to kill immediately and humanely, so what’s the diff? But the complaints about have-a-heart style traps where you release the critters somewhere far away – well, then they don’t know the territory and they get eaten. OK, as if in their own territory, they live to a ripe old age enjoying Lawrence Welk and complaining their children never call. It’s a thing-kill-thing world out there, people!

I was pretty disgusted to hear how Big Sunflower kept trying to kill blackbirds that would feast in their sunflower fields. They said blackbirds were responsible for the loss of about 2% of their crop. 2%? You can’t give 2% for wildlife? You have to kill and bomb and poison and kill myriad other inoffensive birds too in the process? 2% of your crop, for a healthy blackbird population and all the other little tweeters too. Cmon!

Back about getting pests out of your home. (It’s a sore spot with me.) She had a rat in her walls. A rat! So instead of doing anything lethal, she so virtuously had the pest guy come over, figure out where he was getting in, and plug all the entrances with steel wool. Problem solved! Sure! Oh, it’s so simple! Sure, just go around putting a little steel wool here and there. I wish it were that easy to keep things out.

Lyin’ Eyes

This evening I had the classic rock station on playing “Lyin’ Eyes” by the Eagles, which is really a crossover country song. I had this very brief period age 17 or 18 when I liked to listen to the country music station in the kitchen. I used to stand there washing dishes and listen and imagine my future, someday, with my own little kitchen, busy domesticating for my future family. I was so eager to begin my adult life at 18! I imagined I’d get married right after college, of course to my current boyfriend, and we’d live somewhere that wasn’t Staten Island; I imagined it being Wichita, and I imagined lots of kids. Poor me! I had seen so very, very little of the world, literally and figuratively. How could I have formed any realistic vision? I did the best I could with limited information.

Anyway there I was tonight, washing lettuce leaves at the sink of my own little kitchen, listening to a country song while domesticating for my own family of one spouse and five goats. “All my dreams have come true!” I thought.

I can still sing for your a few bars of several top country hits of 1986-1987.

It’s funny how in my childhood home there was this pleasant little window above the kitchen sink, just like I have now. Well, I guess most homes have a window above the kitchen sink; but it helped with the memory.

So I’m only half-joking when I said my dreams had come true. They had. Just the details changed. Because people don’t change, only the details do; and the details naturally change based on all the contingencies of life. All the wacky things that had to align that had me marry the person I did and end up in this house with this crazy hobby of angora goats. I didn’t realize at 17 that this is the nature of life, and that the visions I was forming were just my current wild-ass guesses at the future, not to be set in stone. I took everything so seriously. I could not stray. I’m not sure if I could go back in time if it would do any good; I can’t see myself listening to me. I had to get whacked upside the head by real life to shake me out of my rigidity.