Author: Brett Ann Stanciu

Two, Not-So-Random Visitors

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A young AmeriCorps worker stops by looking for information about how small town Vermont government works and brings a crabapple pie he baked.

The pie is deep-dish, about the size of a dinner plate. He’s tall and cheerful and tells me about his dog named Mindy. Eventually, I give him a paper map and tell him to drive around town. I highlight one section of the map in yellow. Here, I tell him, is one especially beautiful stretch of dirt road, high above a lake. He’s driving his grandmother’s hand-me-down Toyota Corolla.

Good luck, I say as he leaves.

When he’s gone, a friend stops in, looking for town info, too. The sunlight comes through the windows. I offer her a piece of pie. We talk and talk. She finally says, I feel like I haven’t seen anyone in so long.

The strange thing is, I feel that way, too. We keep eating pie. The young baker has peeled the crabapples, one by one, to sweeten the pie. We eat the whole thing, and then I wash up the plates and forks.

There was earth inside them, and they dug.”

— Paul Celan
Hurray for autumn garden.

Good and Hard Place

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Balmy days move into our wedge of Vermont. The leaves are turning colors in scattered spots — some gold, a glimmer of red — but nothing threatening, nothing ominous yet.

Live in Vermont as long as I have (a few eons, perhaps, it feels like some days), and you know winter isn’t far in the offing. But for now, the days and nights when we sleep with the windows open, the air is redolent with sweetness.

If there’s one thing we’ve collectively learned from the pandemic, I suppose it would be that the Here and Now matters immensely. We soak up sweetness, knowing tomorrow may bring an unknown kind of hardness.

Thank you to all who came out last night, in-person, to the Hardwick Town House. The Town House has had so much history, and last night’s audience of listeners in masks — well, that’s the history we’re participating in these days.

I’m now on a mostly virtual book tour. If you can stop in at all, please do.

Finally — I mentioned last night that the original working title for Unstitched was A Good and Hard Place. There’s plenty of hard things in my book, but it’s full of the goodness of life, too. Here’s hoping you have a taste of goodness today, too.

And, a thank you to Literary North for running a short original piece.

So…

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Pub date for Unstitched arrives Tuesday. The lovely Galaxy Bookshop and the equally terrific Jeudevine Memorial Library (both in Hardwick) are hosting a reading Tuesday (9.14.2021) at the Hardwick Town House.

If you’re in town and interested in coming out, please do.

I’ll also be chatting virtually with the fantastic poet Kerrin McCadden this Thursday, September 16, at 7:30 p.m., in an evening hosted by Phoenix Books. No charge, of course, for these events.

How much our world has changed since those days when I walked downtown and spent Tuesday evenings in the Galaxy, listening to writers and drinking cider. I hope you’re all well….

Short excerpt…

Like many others, I arrived [in Vermont] as a transplant. As a child and into my twenties, I moved frequently, from deserty New Mexico to New Hampshire’s red-brick mill cities to mountainous western Washington. Gradually, I became smitten with this tight-knit town. I joined the five-member school board and chaperoned walks into the wetlands. Our world was stitched together by carving jack-o’- lanterns, giggling at sleepovers, voting yay or nay on town and school budgets at community meetings, and baking surprise birthday cakes for friends. When I discovered the library had been broken into after hours, what remained was a lingering residue not only of cigarette smoke but also of fear. I began to wonder if maybe this world wasn’t so fine.”

Taking Stock.

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The little apple tree that someone planted at our house before I bought it boasts fist-sized apples this year, surprising me. The previous year, the tree produced just a handful of apples. The first year we lived here bore only a single fruit. But this year, one branch bends so low beneath the weight it threatens to break.

On an evening walk, I pick a single apple, its skin tart, the flesh mealy. Enough good for pie. That’s fine news for the day.

*

I’m honored to participate as an author in CLiF’s Book Club for Grown-Ups. The Children’s Literacy Foundation is an inspiring, give-books-to-kids organization. If you’re interested, you can participate, too. Link included for a free sign-up.

Last, a little Richard Brautigan from Tokyo-Montana Express on this autumn morning:

“There are not too many fables about man’s misuse of sunflower seeds.” 

Fat Beauties.

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Our cucumbers withered and died this year, producing little. For years, I’ve built my little mounds and buried seeds or planted my seedlings. This year, the extreme heat, the fluctuations of cold and rain, and sultry heat again, made the vines lie down and quit.

The queen of my garden is the sunflower, their golden faces open high above my head, friend to the sparrows and finches who dart through their stalks.

In the face of grim news, I offer this as a tiny sliver: the sunflowers are growing mightily. Bees are fattening.

Love Lies Bleeding.

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My daughter returns from a hectic work week with a mason jar of flowers from a friend. Our cat immediately gnaws on a zinnia leaf, and so my daughter sets the jar of flowers on our table on the back porch.

A week later, the flowers are still vibrant — giant orange zinnias and sunflowers and maroon amaranth that drapes over the jar’s edge. This, despite the fluctuations of cold and heat for days.

The other name for amaranth is Love Lies Bleeding.

On this Saturday morning, my daughters already at work and soccer, I drink coffee and catch up with email. Next year, I imagine, maybe I’ll plant my entire garden in flowers, vegetables be damned. I won’t; I know that. But I sowed an enormous variety of Love Lies Bleeding in along my brassica this year. We’re devouring all of that.