44 Words for 365 People

2007-01-31T07:00:00.000-05:00

Visit me at my new blog, Alphabird, which I hope to have up and running by next week. This blog will not have quite the ambitious pace of 365.

For a few endnotes to the 365 project, click on the comments.

Thanks for reading.

—Indigo Bunting

365/365 Dorothy

2007-01-31T06:50:00.000-05:00

One on the beach with sister and girlfriends; another boasting dressed-up sisters with violin and viola; one just married. My mantel photos show someone unknowable: the mysterious she-before-me. Who’s that living a life before she was my mother—that life that led to mine?

364/365 Kathie

2007-01-30T07:35:00.001-05:00

The one who would come when parents were gone, the brick-haired beauty bearing games and projects, the gal who liked to sing “Sugar Town” and was the first to assure me that flossy milkweed seeds buffeted by breeze were not in fact flying spiders.

363/365 Another Dan

2007-01-29T06:58:00.000-05:00

Imagine his face upon realizing that not only had Susan gotten him to the Sonoran Desert for his birthday, but that it was really my birthday party, so determined was I to spend sunset with saguaros then hot-tub with friends under crazy desert stars.

362/365 Lars

2007-01-28T07:23:00.000-05:00

Possibly everyone was a little in love with the guy who grew up growing roses. There was nurture in his nature—or was it the other way around? We delighted in mouthing his Vikinglike name.

Our campus call and response:

Lars: Namibia!
Me: Zimbabwe!

361/365 Another Dana

2007-01-27T07:36:00.000-05:00

We took after-school French lessons together and became friends. She had a goody-goody demeanor, but surprised me by sneaking rum into Rocky Horror. Alison loved it; I was paranoid (but partook). A mere twenty-five years later I finally snuck some decent pinot into Sideways.

360/365 A Fourth Mark

2007-01-26T07:17:00.001-05:00

Junior year, my neighbor and I were the new kids. I bummed rides in his old blue Fiat (a choke on the dash). Good-looking and pissed off, he openly scoffed at what passed for “mountains.” For awhile, I made out with his older brother.

359/365 Nvwa

2007-01-25T08:03:00.000-05:00

We wanted to be the joy that he was, this Nigerian preacher whose voice alone could keep us tucked between the cupped palm of his hand and his heart. He was otherworldly, othersideoftheworldly to Pennsylvania kids at a church camp. Agnostics were warmly welcomed.

358/365 Sheree

2007-01-24T06:58:00.000-05:00

There’s something about Sheree. She greets people with gladness. She’s at once energized and serene. As one gets to know her, though, there will be quick and sudden glimpses of a naughty side. I suspect she harbors some deep sweet secrets behind those smiles.

357/365 A Third Brian

2007-01-23T06:49:00.000-05:00

In, like, sixth grade, his family went on a skiing vacation. This stunned me, as I (a) didn’t know I knew anyone who could ski and (b) hadn’t considered skiing a family activity. Inconceivable! I had so much to learn about the upper class.

356/365 April and Jan

2007-01-22T07:06:00.000-05:00

Theirs was the first gay wedding I ever attended, at a West Virginia retreat. Kim and Linda married there too. Both couples broke up, which taught me that homo odds are about the same as hetero. April’s leaving broke my heart a little too.

355/365 A Fourth Tim

2007-01-21T08:35:00.000-05:00

He called me Kemo; I called him Tonto. He was my faithful co-counselor. There was flirtatious undercurrent. Later, at college, I must’ve done something to piss him off. Soon it was like we didn’t even know each other, and then, of course, we didn’t.

354/365 Another Diana

2007-01-20T07:17:00.000-05:00

She was my favoritest camper. In my mind’s eye, she’ll always be my gigglin’ 14-year-old tapioca-eating buddy. In the World of Now, though, she’s 39, sings with the Master Chorale of Washington, bikes centuries, teaches ESL, and globetrots. Sigh. They grow up so fast.

353/365 Allen

2007-01-19T07:09:00.000-05:00

works hard to make the unaffordable affordable. First he gave me an interest-free loan. Then he offered payment-based discounts. Best of all, he and his brother put a new foundation under my almost-120-year-old carriage barn. Now I can park two cars in it fear-free.

352/365 Annie

2007-01-18T06:55:00.000-05:00

A champagne toast to Annie: A fellow lover of bubbly brut, who can be counted on to show up with a rogue bottle at book group; a woman who should be less countrystuck and more multiple-city lecture tour, talking the environment, history, current events.

351/365 Another Jon

2007-01-17T06:44:00.000-05:00

The registrar-turned-curator acted as my personal docent during those early days of my museum job. No one since has both known and cared so well for the collection. I began making Vermont friends by asking him and his girlfriend to go see Spalding Gray.

350/365 Another Greg and Another Cindy

2007-01-16T06:35:00.000-05:00

They rode a tandem across the country (a bicycle built for two)
They rode a tandem across the country (from northwest to southeast)
They rode a tandem across the country (before Meghan came along)
A tandem across the country
And they are still married.

349/365 Daniela

2007-01-15T06:35:00.000-05:00

She’s from Brescia, not far from Sergio. She’s the beautiful Italian woman down the street. She’s the ceramicist, mosaicist, artist, mother. When I use a bowl she made, I feel a rush of happiness that this art exists in this world, in this moment.

348/365 Another Brian

2007-01-14T07:18:00.000-05:00

I wish you happiness, certainly, but when I open the newspaper and see you and your new wife and baby portraying the Holy Family, my heart achesalittle for your ex-wife: my friend who loved you, whether you were right for each other or not.

347/365 Stuart

2007-01-13T08:23:00.000-05:00

It’s like I’ve had my accountant bronzed. He’s moved past potential snowbird to full-time southern status, still spending some northerly weeks servicing his loyal Vermont clientele. Should I trust such a happy guy—sporting a new, almost-spiky haircut and deepening tan—with my money?

346/365 A Third Kim

2007-01-12T07:36:00.000-05:00

She’s basically got me in a hammerlock. It’s tough for anyone to really get under my scapula, even oiled up, as my neck/shoulder area tends to double as petrified forest, so she uses her elbow for best results. Her hand seems small in mine.

345/365 Greg

2007-01-11T07:42:00.000-05:00

My neighbor and I were born the same year in the same state, which makes me feel an immediate, if illogical, affinity. We might’ve been tight in (hypothetical) high school, if, say, I’d gotten (hypothetically) extroverted enough to be cool.

One lung; still smokes.

344/365 A Fifth Chris

2007-01-10T07:25:00.000-05:00

My favorite story about Chris is this: When Alison visited, he met her at the neighborhood subway. They’re so white, somebody asked if they were lost. “I tried to get Thelma to come along for blackup,” he tells Ali, “but she was too tired.”

343/365 A Fourth Susan

2007-01-09T06:32:00.000-05:00

An infinitely resourceful woman who can rise to any occasion, her rainy-day wedding was a great celebration. I had fabulous conversations with fascinating people. And until she mentioned it herself, I had no idea that this radiant beauty was suffering a violent stomach flu.

342/365 Liban

2007-01-08T14:10:00.000-05:00

Beautiful Mogadishu, scrawls an artist on t-shirts. NPR’s story sparks memory of Liban, yh’s Somali lover and recipient of a love of my own: my blue Schwinn, my only wheels from teens til twenty-three. That sweet ride took us places we had to be.

341/365 Another Rich

2007-01-07T07:06:00.000-05:00

Epiphany 2007, 9:30 a.m., Vermont. Sixty degrees. We meet on crisscross journeys to the post office. The weather’s weird, welcome, worrisome. He loves it, but locals are losing their livelihood. His bartender-self observation: “I shouldn’t be standing around on a Friday night in January.”

340/365 A Fourth David

2007-01-06T07:40:00.000-05:00

was my swimming-pool buddy during Nixon’s last hot, sweaty, nerve-racking months. I spent all summer wishing he (David) would kiss me already, but at its (summer’s) end, when he was saying goodbye for good, the attempt shocked me, and my shyness turned my cheek.

339/365 Randall,

2007-01-05T07:02:00.000-05:00

Tim’s former-crush clone, works her own letterpress, champions a woman’s right to choose, once sent me to the family’s private spring creeks where, when my 2-a.m. bladder forced me out of the tent, I got sucked into the vast expanse of wild Montana stars.

338/365 A Fourth Paul

2007-01-04T07:21:00.000-05:00

We met repeatedly—but only—on the Dance Flurry floor. He had a mean swing, and his signature move was a full dip at swing’s end. Exhilarating. Last I swung him, he was on his way to seminary. Truly a man of some god.

337/365 Another Anna

2007-01-03T06:33:00.000-05:00

is a songwriter for hire. She interviews clients, then takes their joy, their pain, their hopes, dreams, inspirations, disappointments, and sorrows and carefully crafts the song that reflects all that needs singing. Serious as this often is, she sports a wicked sense of humor.

336/365 Mary Kay

2007-01-02T07:33:00.000-05:00

In high school, on certain topics, it is better to be silent than wrong. When she played CSNY’s “Woodstock” cover (recorded when we were 8ish) in Bible as Lit class and said Name that band, I couldn’t bring myself to volunteer the [correct] information.

335/365 Ewart

2007-01-01T15:53:00.000-05:00

The native Belizean fishing guide put up well enough with my seasickness and let me out in the shallows when I had to pee. Squatting, I spied an octopus, which Ewart scooped up in a net, letting us watch as it rapidly changed colors.

334/365 Kathryn

2006-12-31T09:13:00.000-05:00

is so beautiful, you forget how beautiful until you see her again (a brain can’t retain that intensity). Historically, her closest friends could be elected representatives of the best that blondes, brunettes, and redheads can offer. And there’s not a skinny girl among them.

333/365 Thelma

2006-12-30T08:25:00.000-05:00

She’s an interior designer—or maybe a stand-up comic—trapped in a travel agent’s body. As she takes a much-needed break at work, a coworker walks by and announces, “Smoking kills.” She shoots back: “So does unsolicited advice.”

Apparently he’s been avoiding her since.

332/365 Ray

2006-12-29T06:37:00.000-05:00

His reputation is new agey, what with the healing, the drumming, the chiropractic practice. But dining at the bar, martini at the ready, there’s something so classic about him—round glasses, shaved head, cocktail glass—that I feel something akin to nostalgia and envy.

331/365 A Seventh John

2006-12-28T06:58:00.000-05:00

I wish I’d heard him play at the World Trade Center’s Cellar in the Sky, where he was once a fixture. Our guitarist friend is a fine musician happy to play with others, no matter their relative ability. Music excites him in its aliveness.

330/365 Julie

2006-12-27T08:27:00.000-05:00

She’s the type who gives friends flashy-light jewelry at holiday time, creating or intensifying happy moments. A friend once advised her not to let velvet be too dear, so now she wears it as often as possible, every day being its own special occasion.

329/365 Tasha,

2006-12-26T09:08:00.000-05:00

in the market for a new godmother, thinks a grueling, 10-day Survivor-like competition is the way to go (annual income also considered). As the candidates, her “aunties,” drag deeply, she mentions her memoir’s working title: The Smell of Cigarette Smoke Reminds Me of Home.

328/365 Christine

2006-12-25T08:14:00.000-05:00

takes everything the world around her offers—lenses, magnifiers, words, thoughts, fears, software, boxes, stamps, scissors, paste, friends, time, space, light—to use as a brush with which to paint something new. All life is a moment-by-moment act of creation. Christine makes it show.

327/365 A Sixth John

2006-12-24T09:27:00.000-05:00

We earthbound travelers may have lost John physically, but the hills and rivers of Vermont are alive with him. I start noticing him around Woodstock and can’t shake him anywhere along the Ottauquechee. The Upper Valley will forever echo with his laughter. Lucky valley.

326/365 Romi

2006-12-23T08:14:00.000-05:00

sits lovely and regal as royalty in traditional robe and headdress on a love-seat-sized throne in Beijing. Reds and golds swirl around her. I’m both touched that she’s remembered us and certain that this is the perfect holiday card from someone so freshly divorced.

325/365 A Fourth Jim

2006-12-22T07:33:00.000-05:00

His visit to Craig’s on Fourth of July was such a blast that as we drove to the real fireworks, I suggested he move to Vermont. We were passing a freshly fertilized field. Jim breathed in and said, “Nah. Smells like shit around here.”

324/365 Diane

2006-12-21T08:05:00.000-05:00

When she takes to the dance floor and her tight little body grooves with Louise’s tight little body, so in synch, one can’t help but wonder how it is those two heterosexuals move so naturally, provocatively together. One can watch more than one wondering.

323/365 Peter

2006-12-20T08:20:00.000-05:00

His holiday party heralds his annual wearing of the red-velvet-and-black-satin smoking jacket (dinner jacket, tuxedo, what’s your preferred verbage?). This year, custom-punked Chuck Taylors have been added to the mix. The Veuve Clicquot flows freely, and he knows guest booty can’t resist the Ramones.

322/365 Dan

2006-12-19T08:24:00.000-05:00

He’s the kind of guy you worry has gone and married a woman who’s gonna whip him into shape, and the kind of guy you’re relieved that he’s finally married a woman who’s gonna whip him into shape. Wonder what shape he’s in now.

321/365 Another Deb

2006-12-18T08:14:00.000-05:00

She’s one pastor’s daughter and another’s ex-wife. She couldn’t keep her true self down, though. Ran off with a fellow mad library scientist. Now, in the face of all things motherhood, she’s not afraid to call it hard, especially as she climbs PhD Mountain.

320/365 An Eighth Tom

2006-12-17T08:19:00.000-05:00

At 12, 13, we were buddies. At 38, he tied for most interesting job at the reunion: magician (CIA guy also inspiring intrigue). By the next reunion, he’d turned to full-time woodworking and had found artistic recognition with his Santa specialty. ’Tis his season.

319/365 Carol

2006-12-16T08:17:00.000-05:00

When I awoke to the radio’s announcement of the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, my heart leapt first for her and for George. But before I’d left my bed, I heard her very voice as Embassy spokeswoman: a gift from the airwaves.

318/365 Mariuca

2006-12-15T07:57:00.000-05:00

Her Gorgonzola-and-pear risotto changed forever my opinion of the mildest of blue cheeses (I still can’t take true blue). It was one of the most amazing things I’d ever tasted. Still, I worried her husband wasn’t really telling her how much I loved it.

317/365 Anna

2006-12-14T06:37:00.000-05:00

Sergio’s wife would invite us to the apartment for home-cooked meals. She spoke no English; we spoke no Italian; Sergio would translate. But Anna understood some English, certainly, and often I was convinced I knew exactly what she was saying. Sometimes I was right.

316/365 Joey

2006-12-13T06:51:00.000-05:00

Several years running, on Santa Lucia, we’d be awoken godawful early and bundled up for Joey’s predawn Swedish celebration, her house candlelit and filled with warm sweet smells, and soon after the sun came up, we’d be sent off to school, fat and happy.

315/365 Sergio

2006-12-12T07:23:00.000-05:00

Especially at Santa Lucia, my heart aches for Sergio, our all-giving Italian host, and the Piazza Bra in Verona with its grand shooting star, where we’d stroll together. One can’t help but love Italy, but I could love any country with Sergio in it.

This past week I have been checking in with the webcam at Piazza Bra, watching the pedestrians, the vendor stalls appearing for Santa Lucia, and, when the sun goes down, the star lit up. For a view, go to:

http://www.piazzabra.com/new_site/verona/web_cam_adsl.htm

314/365 Pier

2006-12-11T07:52:00.000-05:00

After an overnight flight, it was Pier’s friendly face we’d first see in Milan. He’d shuttle us to Verona, driving 90 mph in his BMW (huge and luxurious compared with tiny eurocars), all the while talking to backseat Tim, turning to make eye contact.

313/365 Fannie Mae

2006-12-10T08:50:00.000-05:00

Her advice to keep a detailed work log (to cover my ass) seemed like overkill. But I kept the habit when I took over a quarterly journal. Now it answers my ever-present question: Did I do that, or did I think about doing that?

312/365 Noelle

2006-12-09T08:52:00.000-05:00

tells me about her new practice: finally solo, small staff, not so much overhead, the relative ease and joy of it. We discuss a patient-ed pamphlet I’d recently worked on. She recommends this great novel. Our energy’s always more kaffeeklatsch than annual pelvic exam.

311/365 Gordon

2006-12-08T11:10:00.000-05:00

Our correspondence is eleven years old; we’ve yet to meet face-to-face. He teases that he’d like to, but upon encountering a firm offer, he begs off, afraid to lose us to reality. So we go on, me playing Stella and Ellen to his Bernard.

310/365 A Seventh Tom

2006-12-07T06:58:00.000-05:00

His latest book is a five-year diary in short five-line verse (a quintupled 365), the coming-of-age journal of a young bisexual man in the early 1950s. A total poetry page-turner. Unrelated: When Tom’s grandson was young, he would ask for his pasta all dented.

309/365 Yoshi

2006-12-06T06:52:00.000-05:00

The well-meaning force-feed him sweets at office birthday parties. He has no natural affinity for processed sugar. But get him talking about fine dining and wines, compare restaurant notes, and you can read every review in his eyes, even before the words tumble out.

308/365 A Third Mark

2006-12-05T07:16:00.000-05:00

When I was in fifth grade and he in fourth, we hung out at May Day festivities. A souvenir we both acquired that night was a small rubber-and-plastic turtle. Reconnecting in high school, the joke was, “How’s your turtle?” Mine’s a Christmas-tree ornament now.

307/365 Kris

2006-12-04T07:08:00.000-05:00

The only time I’ve been in a rich man’s shoes was that night at a trustee dinner when I verbally admired Kris’s crocodile boots, and he insisted I try them on. Turns out our shoe size is much closer than that of our wallets.

306/365 Hoagy

2006-12-03T08:18:00.000-05:00

It was an utterly unexpected evening, a planned business-meeting-and-drink that turned into dinner with his 3-year-old Anesha, then off to an open tap jam, where she was the youngest performer. I saw some huge talent that night. I was in love with New York.

305/365 A Fourth Wendy

2006-12-02T06:54:00.000-05:00

When she heard I’d never shot a gun, she offered to teach me in her South Portland backyard, overlooking the bay. For it to happen, these stars need to align: both of us in Portland, enough after-work daylight hours, time. I’m shooting for spring.

304/365 A Fifth John

2006-12-01T07:28:00.000-05:00

John studies how one thing leads to another, how advances in thought and technology in any field might ultimately set the stage for change, however subtle or grand, in our sport. . . . Fly fishing is lucky to have the likes of John Betts paying attention.

Earlier this year, when my friend John was honored with Fly Rod & Reel magazine’s Angler of the Year Award, I was among those hit up for a quote. I wrote something up—about 170 words. Turns out they picked 44 of them.

303/365 A Third Jim

2006-11-30T07:56:00.000-05:00

When I think of him, I think of Spanish fare and rioja and siestas, of live music and lively dogs, of a big-screen TV after a big meal: warm things, celebratory things. He and his ex-wife just remarried. They are warm and celebratory too.

302/365 A Third Wendy

2006-11-29T07:03:00.000-05:00

She’s an MD who listens to plants, lets them tell her how best to use them for healing. She stands at the intersection of logic and intuition, coaxing the power of each into a more potent whole. She’s why Craig can’t categorically hate doctors.

301/365 Another Karen

2006-11-28T07:17:00.000-05:00

Tom is explaining to Jack that Karen’s his (Tom’s) stepsister, and Jack is saying that he doesn’t want a stepsister, and Tom is saying that if Jack could have a stepsister like Karen, he might think differently, because Karen is the best stepsister ever.

300/365 T. Jack

2006-11-27T06:58:00.000-05:00

He’s named Timothy after an uncle and Jackson after Timothy. At 7, he’s grown into that unknowable little-boy space to relatives who only see him once a year. No more supercuddling; no serious conversations, either. He’s all energy and territoriality and dominating his sister.

299/365 A Fourth Chris

2006-11-26T08:23:00.000-05:00

was the only one of Paul’s “and guests” who had the slightest bit of homophobia, and of course that meant that she was the only one who got hit on at the gay bar in Schaumberg. She was dying to get out of Elgin.

298/365 Tish

2006-11-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

In an office full of Vermont jeans-wearin’ casuals, our bookkeeper always arrives impeccably dressed, no stranger to heels and hose. During staff meetings, my eyes rest most often on her: a canvas of perfect color coordination and accessories draped on a curvy, statuesque frame.

297/365 Another Vicki and Another Pam

2006-11-24T09:32:00.000-05:00

Beautiful, sweet Pam was a shoe-in for third-grade May Queen, until Vicki’s bully cousin started threatening the electorate. Pam was assigned to Vicki’s eight-girl court. Vicki was a vision in white; Pam was probably in the pink pairing; I was relegated to pastel green.

296/365 Todd

2006-11-23T09:57:00.000-05:00

emphatically stated that any family making $50K per year should be able to give $2K of it to charitable organizations. Of course, that can’t be true in all cases. But his fervor inspired me to be more determined, decisive, and disciplined about my giving.

295/365 A Sixth Dave and a Third Chris

2006-11-22T08:26:00.000-05:00

We were college seniors; they were our 27-year-old friends. Their liking us felt like a backstage pass to adulthood. Music at their parties reinforced my suspicion that I was born almost 10 years too late, that I’d missed an adolescence with the good stuff.

294/365 Another Kathy

2006-11-21T07:31:00.000-05:00

Because it was so cliché, it didn’t seem possible that the 18-year-old blonde-beauty waitress could really be sleeping with Dominick, the somewhat sleezy manager of the catering company we worked for. Not Tony, the hot maître d’. Dominick. On again, off again. High drama.

293/365 Kevin

2006-11-20T08:27:00.000-05:00

befriended me when we both lived at the service center, when college and I were “on a break.” Taught me to make begos, a hot kielbasa-cabbage-sauerkraut dish. “Begos, beer, and little girls,” he’d say in Polish. He brewed the beer for his own wedding.

292/365 Kristina

2006-11-19T14:53:00.000-05:00

is actress, dancer, director, stage manager, usher. She rehearses shows with Aidan while the grownups talk endlessly over dinner. Then she outlines the boundaries and direction of the stage, and tells the audience where to sit. It is best to do as she says.

291/365 Carl

2006-11-18T15:26:00.001-05:00

The physical configuration of my tenth-grade geometry class changed weekly as the teacher seated us in test-score order. We’d stand up; he’d call out names and return your test at your new chair. I don’t remember what happened in the case of a tie.

290/365 Ira

2006-11-17T07:32:00.000-05:00

In my parents’ gang-o’-eight, he was a favorite with the next generation. He’d mastered the art of banter. One summer I took his course on liberation movements. The first day, he asked us: How old were you when you learned to stop asking questions?

289/365 CB

2006-11-16T07:53:00.000-05:00

Generous of time, talent, and spirit. The day we met, he was the babysitter in the kitchen already prepping dinner. I don’t think my friend said cabana boy, but she offered some similar term. I wonder if the servicing-the-desperate-housewives rumors about him are true.

288/365 Jerry

2006-11-15T07:36:00.000-05:00

salvaged old canoe canvas for paintings, keeping the irregular torn edges. Mine’s nailed to a leafy dark board; the canvas captures five marshed bitterns, a bird I’ve never even heard in the wild. The subtle colors seem unlike her, and yet I’m guessing not.

287/365 Another Heidi

2006-11-14T09:25:00.000-05:00

social activist, midwife, lost a Latin lover to leukemia, later fell in love with her nephew’s other aunt (a complicated breakup, that). Now she’s mom in a traditional family. After so much pain on the road to her dream, I hope it’s blissfully fulfilling.

286/365 Another Roger

2006-11-13T16:38:00.000-05:00

started fly fishing only last year, and he’s taken to it like a—well, you know. A fish to water. He’s got the enthusiasm of the freshly converted and has probably been out more times than I have in the past ten years. Fanatic.

285/365 Mary Ellen

2006-11-12T12:17:00.000-05:00

stoutly refuses to attend the fire hall’s annual wild game supper, says she can’t even stand the smell of it. She sends her family, then relishes the time alone. I love this fall ritual, but it shocks my aging body. Still, venison meat loaf . . .

284/365 A Sixth Tom

2006-11-11T12:56:00.000-05:00

was different from the rest of his family, five or six generations of whom had stayed put in that Pennsylvania town. Possibly he’s most like his Slovakian forefather, a guy who knew when it was time to leave things behind and try something new.

Computer hiatus: Major difficulties. I'll post when I can find Internet access. My apologies for any long silences.

283/365 Maude

2006-11-10T06:30:00.000-05:00

Really, what did I expect? I’d answered her office e-mail offering up Joan Armatrading tickets, for godsake. But with her name, I was expecting someone . . . older. Straighter. Something about her took my breath away. Not that she remotely noticed. Anyway, the concert was good.

282/365 Perry

2006-11-09T09:41:00.000-05:00

Our state rep needed petition signatures, so he went where the people’d be on Saturday morning: the dump. We were new in town, and only registered voters could sign, so he administered the Freeman’s Oath to us right then and there. Welcome to Vermont.

281/365 Joanne

2006-11-08T08:16:00.000-05:00

asks me to fold my ballot once more before I push it into the box. Turnout’s been high, the day’s not halfway done, and thrice-folded ballots have been easier to shove further down with a ruler. I return the pencil on my way out.

280/365 Judith

2006-11-07T07:16:00.000-05:00

I didn’t know there was a wrong way to color until my first-grade teacher scolded me for letting my crayons wander outside the lines. Despite this slight, I was the one to get help when she fell backward off a chair, knocking herself out.

279/365 Danielle

2006-11-06T07:13:00.000-05:00

My hairdresser’s beauty dwarfs everything near it; I look at her in the mirror as she works. Her hair-color changes captivate, as does her accent. Our bimonthly gossip is missing only a sturdy bar to lean against and the pause of a glass raised.

278/365 Another Jim

2006-11-05T06:31:00.000-05:00

His driving us to the airport, letting us leave our car at his place for two weeks, then picking us up again seems an utterly selfless act. It bears a sweetness that can be tasted and savored, a sweetness never meant to be repaid.

277/365 Pam

2006-11-04T15:58:00.000-05:00

She was a chubby kid—chubbier than me, even—til suddenly, in eighth grade, she got skinny and began dating one of the most classically cute guys in school. We stopped walking home together, and I never heard Bowie’s “Changes” in her room again.

276/365 Max

2006-11-03T07:25:00.000-05:00

shared the same fortieth birthday as Godzilla, a fact not lost on his birthday party, the first real fun I’d had the monstrous week Tim and I began commutermarriaging, Tim off to a land where there were fewer buildings to crush and toss about.

275/365 Philippa,

2006-11-02T06:25:00.000-05:00

political liberal, can’t escape her British class-system roots, will never be able to not know a fellow countryman’s background. Even here, she’ll casually drop shocking comments regarding the local hoi polloi (things most of us have guiltily thought). I rather adore her cringeworthy bluntness.

274/365 Gail

2006-11-01T06:56:00.000-05:00

was the queen bee, the honey that made the office flow and things stick. MDs and PhDs buzzed around, relied on her for scheduling, production, gatekeeping, overall mechanics. Without her, they’d be nothing. Imagine who she might’ve been had she been born with money.

273/365 Another Jane

2006-10-31T06:34:00.000-05:00

My babysitter had two false eyeteeth and played vampire for me. Hers was the first VW Bug I ever rode in. She married a guy who turned out to be gay, which, if we’d had one iota of consciousness in those days, was obvious.

272/365 Judy

2006-10-30T06:34:00.000-05:00

Her eyes are always dancing—with glee, with news, with anger. Little is whispered within 10 miles of her shop that won’t take to the wind and land at her ears. She’s the local lampshade lady. I get to live somewhere that has one.

271/365 Chuck and a Third David

2006-10-29T07:08:00.000-05:00

When they aren’t wintering in Florida and Mexico, they’re summering in Vermont in side-by-side houses in this quirky slate town. In less than a week, they can soak in all of winter’s gossip, then fill me in, the introvert-editor gal who actually lives here.

270/365 Another Barbara

2006-10-28T07:57:00.000-05:00

When siblings appear so different from one another—eg, Barbara seemingly neat, active, thin, practical, with a flair for home decorating—it’s tough to surmise from those appearances what the parents must have been like, even when, or especially if, they were your grandparents.

269/365 Another Sarah

2006-10-27T06:27:00.000-05:00

She’s a ray of sunshine, shining her own light through stained-glass art. I know how ray of sunshine sounds—syrupygross—but her happy-but-hip energy cuts through the darkest anything. You feel good around her. Her studio’s in the old G-Spot. That’s good energy too.

268/365 Carmen

2006-10-26T06:24:00.000-05:00

She’s an intelligent, upper-middle-class suburban professional. When I got her e-mail—which contained phrases such as no child left behind, partial-birth abortion, and defense of marriage—two days before the election, I knew then and there that we were in for four more years.

267/365 Lali

2006-10-25T05:53:00.000-05:00

At first surgery averse, she’s now the poster child for the prophylactic hip replacement. “Do it before it hurts!” she incites. She’s given up pigeon, little else. Lali is a wonderful name, but it feels so good to speak the full one: Eulalia, Eulalia.