Sunday, June 28, 2009

Summer in the Berkshires, Prairie Home Companion, and Mosquitoes


Today was a glorious day in the Berkshires.

In general, I love everything about summer in the Berkshires except maybe...summer itself. Summer itself = the heat, the humidity, the bugs, the finding the right summer attire, the bugs, and, then, finally, the bugs. But today has been an exception.

People flock into our hamlet-y towns (I say "our" like I am of this place, when in fact I sometimes walk right by my Subaru because of its new Mass plates...Honestly, I miss my old plates: New York, CDT 8981, oh where art thou?, but I am making the best of it) and aside from the annoyance of increased traffic and more people, it gives one some perspective, that goes a little like this: "oh, I live in the Berkshires. People come from all over just to be here and bask in its beauty, its pastoral magic, all the green lushness...it's a place where people literally summer." I mean to live in a place where "summer" is a verb is pretty...weird. And cool.

Saturday night, I went to Tanglewood with my friend KD, who treated me to an awesome seat at Prairie Home Companion...loads of FUN! At one point during the show the following people were on stage at the same time: Garrison Keillor, Martin Sheen, Steve Martin (go here to watch a YouTube video of Steve Martin playing banjo while a guy from the Steep Canyon Rangers—you can't see much but the audio is good), Heather Masse, and Arlo Guthrie...I mean, C'mon, that's pretty amazing. Both KD and I were lamenting the fact that neither of us brought a camera. But we clapped and sang. I felt like a true blue American by the end (and even a little wholesome...which is just...rare).

The woman sitting to our left asked us where we were from. And we said, "here". And she just shook her head, and said, "Wow. Lucky."

Lucky enough to be scratching my first ankle mosquito bite. Oy. My body's not a fan. Mosquito bites on my body are events. My skin is generally itchy and rashy anyway (that sounds scarier than it actually looks), so a bite adds a significant rise in the landscape. (Dr. Magic Pettus and I were hoping going gluten-free was going to help with the rash epidemic but so far, nada. It's only been three weeks so keep your fingers crossed).

But I certainly can't complain (even though I just did)... I've got it good.

Happy summer, everyone!

1 comment:

Abby said...

sorry to pop in from the unsolicited advice department, but wanted to say when i went gluten free - though there are mixed thoughts on how effective this is - i also chose to go totally minimalist on the products front since several things i was using - lotions, shampoo, soap, etc - had wheat or oats in them. and i just had to simplify the whole routine and it seemed to help.

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