STRANGE THINGS

THREE KINDA STRANGE THINGS... 

Well, it did happen to be Halloween as I wrote this...

1.  ODD

It's been a warm fall.  The first frost happened barely a week ago, the second frost shortly thereafter. The trees seem a little out of whack. It seemed it was every tree for itself.  Not the ordinary "let' s get all bright and yellow and red together."  I realize this wasn't true absolutely everywhere, as  I did pass through the White Mountains of New Hampshire where, even at high altitudes, as late as the 15th, it looked beautiful while trees around here were just sort of washed out.

Admittedly it did look quite colorful right here.  However....

...this was distinctly not early October, and not even mid-October, but just before the first of November.  Peak foliage here is normally––if there is still a "normal"––anytime from around October 10th to the 18th.   At higher altitudes the peak date may be as early as the 8th or 10th of October.  Maybe the trees figured, dull as they'd been all the rest of the season, they'd better shape up and get color before their leaves get blown away.   Nearby trees were already deep into November mode, leafless.

This maple seemed to signal fall was all over for much of October, vaguely yellowish, and then to my surprise it took on vibrant red and orange.  On Halloween, October 31st, it was the only tree around that has vivid coloring.  This is odd.

At the very same time the apple trees, following their own calendar, are still completely green. The apples are now overripe, and look more like giant plums.

Besides the foliage there was this unusual scene.

It looks as if the little bridge could wash away.

An unusual occurrence on Halloween.  This pond never flooded this much before, not even as a result of hurricane Irene when much of Vermont flooded.  The ground was already wet when the rain began, and probably couldn't hold much more water.  Good thing the muskrats abandoned their tunnels two years ago, or the holes in the lawn would be much worse,  Still, one of their old tunnels that I'd filled in became a little creek.

 

2.  WEIRD AND CREEPY

These two laughing ladies are wearing actual fur hats that they made out of animals trapped in Vermont.  (The trapping season begins November 1 and allows leghold traps.)  They have a business nearby called Otterway Fur Millinery (https://www.otterwayfur.com).  

The following is from their website, in answer the posed question, "Why wear fur?"

"We humans are a keystone species; we are dominant, the top predator. We can and do make other species extinct. We have intelligence and therefore a responsibility. Fur bearing animals are part of the life cycle. All that lives, dies. Nature has the right to exist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles and its processes in evolution.

Trapping is the controlled harvest of wild fur bearing animals to maintain healthy populations within the carrying capacity of the environment. Trappers conserve wildlife and preserve our outdoor heritage for future generations. Gratitude and respect are a practice of ethical trappers.

Fur is free-range, sustainable, renewable, and warmer than petroleum-based plastic and acetone derived faux fur."

I find it especially creepy when words like “free-range,” “sustainable,” “renewable” and the oxymoronic “trappers conserve wildlife” are thrown out to the public, maybe to make themselves feel good, or worse, to signal imagined compliance with wildlife ethics to would-be customers.  Sad.  Environmentally decorated gobbledygook.  Eco-decor!

Code words are everywhere lately, faux non-racism, faux non-discrimination, faux ecology.  Alas.

3.  SCARY

I was rummaging around in a drawer a few days ago and came upon a ring that my grandfather, a jeweler, had made for my grandmother.  I'd forgotten about it.  It's been in this drawer for thirty years.  Maybe longer.    

My grandfather studied jewelry making when he was young, and lived in southern Germany, in or near the town of Pforzheim, a town that was then, and still is to some extent, a center of jewelry manufacture.  It's near the city of Stuttgart, and not terribly far from Munich.  It was the 1920's.  My grandfather came from a family of seven brothers of which he was the youngest.  The brothers apparently* vied with one another for money and position, and he was squeezed out. By the time he became an adult, times were bad economically and restless politically.  Not a good time for jewelry.  He married and had two children, but their future was not promising.  He decided he needed to find out if he could succeed in America, and so he traveled alone to New York, to suss it out.  He either found a job or had confidence that he would.  After a short time he returned to Germany, perhaps hoping against hope that things had improved, perhaps to check out whether or not his family would be willing to make a big move.  While he was there he attended one of Hitler's speeches that he was often making in that part of the country.  Uh, oh, this doesn't bode well, and ihe decided to leave.  He took his family and came to New York City where he worked as a jeweler, or maybe returned to a job he'd found earlier. He must have have been good at it, because as he ended up making particularly high-end jewelry.  

Some of his work, maybe a lot of it, was for the firm of Harry Winston. One stone he worked on was the famous Hope Diamond.  One night he put it in the pocket where he often carried diamonds, probably folded in the complex style jewelers still use today.  He went home to Queens the usual way, on the subway, with the Hope Diamond, because he wanted to show it to his family.

Was he uneasy on that trip home? Or on the return trip?  Was he frightened?  Even for a minute?  If something had happened it would have had tremendous repercussions.  How could he not be worried?

I remember him warmly, though I knew him when I was very young for only  a short time. (He died of a heart attack in 1950.)  I remember he had a calm and welcoming manner.  But this had to have been a scary moment. How could it not be? 

 

History, of course, reveals that he made it back to Manhattan safely, the diamond secure in his pocket. Harry Winston gave the Hope Diamond to the Museum of Natural History in 1949.   I've only just put the whole story together, never having given it a thought—ever.  It was only yesterday that I realized my grandfather must have made the stone's setting.  After all, who else?

*Much of this about my grandfather I learned from my cousin who had been filled no doubt by his father who may have seen it, having recently gotten out of the army and probably living at home until he got married.