I NEED A HUG

April 30, 2010, Vol. 1, No. 14


SPECIAL ARBOR DAY ISSUE


CONTENTS
(in scroll-down order)


THE BEARS OF WALDEN PUDDLE
by Dr. Ursula Whipple
Dr. Whipple plants a tree by checkbook ... while her mother, Ms. Priscilla Whipple, gets back in touch with the true meaning of Arbor Day.

I NEED A HUG
by the Walden Puddle Writers Uncooperative
Looming above the town, the Old Dumbarton Maple has had a front-row seat on everything that's happened in Walden Puddle for the past 347 years. Says the great tree: "It's been hell."

THE TALK OF WALDEN PUDDLE
reportage from the Agreeable Doughnut Cafe
When you "train" a bonsai using farm implements, nothing good can happen.



THE BEARS OF
WALDEN PUDDLE
Notes from the Field, Plus Expert Advice

by Dr. Ursula Whipple

Field Notes: April 26, 2010. All three ladies from Walden Puddle Hadassah came by today. They asked me if I would like to plant a tree in Israel. "Hell, yes," I told them. "I could use a warm-weather vacation. When do we leave?"

They explained to me it did not work that way. I still wrote them a check for $3. Arbor Day is coming, and we've got too many damn trees in Walden Puddle anyway. I thought, what the hell, I'll plant a tree in Israel. Some of my best friends are trees.

When I was out at Central Montana Normal, I dated a Jewish guy. He was majoring in English. I found that intriguing. We only went on trout-fishing dates, because we were too broke for movies or bowling, and if we caught anything, we ate it immediately ... sashimi-style, but with the bones and all.

One day, he says to me, "Ursula, let's not go trout fishing today. Let's catch some gefilte fish." I had no idea what a gefilte fish was, but I trusted him. Well, it was just a ruse to lure me deeper into the woods. "Where's that gefilte fish stream?" I kept asking him. "Another half-mile or so," he kept saying. "Just follow me." Finally, I socked him with my creel and ran like hell back to campus.

The next day, I told my marine biology professor about it. He was a Scotsman on loan to us from the University of Dundee. "Ursula," he said, "that laddie tried to take advantage of yerrrrr girrrrrrlish innocence."

He explained that gefilte fish are ocean fish, and that they never come upstream to Montana to spawn. "By the bye, Ursula," he said, "if yer free this weekend, would ya care to join me on a huntin' trip? Pursuin' the elusive Wild Haggis?" I sensed that he was up to no good, like all the men I meet, so I declined.

Anyhow, looking out the window now, I see that Priscilla is out there doing her Arbor Day thing. Priscilla is my mom, as some of you may know. I would love to call her mom, but she insists on Priscilla. She says mom is "too hierarchical and repressive. Nixon called his mother mom," she says.

Priscilla comes out to my cabin to hug trees, like she did in the 1960s when she was a tie-dyed hippie in a commune in Oregon. Now she hugs trees on my property, where no one can see her. In town, she has this reputation for being prim and proper.

She is not afraid of my bears. On the contrary, my bears are afraid of her. Even now I can see Alonzo, Clyde, Maybelle, Janie, and Big Jack cowering in the underbrush.

"Priscilla, did you ever Mace my bears?" I confonted her once.

"No, I did not," she said nervously, unable to look me in the eye. "They just see me as the alpha animal. I emit alpha vibes. I'm an Aries."

I must write a scholarly paper about the whole Aries thing someday. Anyhow, I went outside to greet her.

"Hi, Priscilla," I said. "How's the tree-hugging going?"

"Just fine, Ursula," she said. "If I'm guessing right about which guy in the commune was your father ... your daddy had thighs like tree trunks, and this tree is turning me on."

Dr. Ursula Whipple is a freelance animal behaviorist and a contributing editor of Walden Puddle. She shares her field notes with us twice monthly, because no scholarly journal will publish them.

To get to know Ms. Priscilla Whipple better, go to Page 1 by clicking http://OnWaldenPuddle.blogspot.com/. and scroll to the November 26, 2009, issue. It contains an interview with her in "The Talk of Walden Puddle." Ms. Whipple also appears in "Lost in Translation," the feature piece in the December 9, 2009, issue, on the same page.


I NEED A HUG
(from The Walden Puddle Chronicles)
926 words

by the Walden Puddle Writers Uncooperative

The Old Dumbarton Maple was feeling very depressed. By coincidence, Arbor Day was its birthday, and on Arbor Day 2010, it turned 347 years old. The great tree had spent every minute of those 347 years straddling the hostile border between Walden Puddle and Copious Falls. "Why wasn't I born in the Amazon rainforest?" it sighed. "I could have been cut down by now."

It is not widely known that trees talk, but they do. We humans mistake the sound of their speech for the rustling of leaves.

On its 347th birthday, the Old Dumbarton Maple was talking a blue streak ... feeling sorry for itself. "If I could just get an agent," it said, "I could write a book about these idiots in Walden Puddle. But I'm rooted to this spot. Literally."

A squirrel scampered up the majestic trunk of the Old Dumbarton Maple.

"How ya doin', Thumper?" the Old Dumbarton Maple greeted him. "Can I buy you a drink?"

The squirrel busied himself munching on the acorn he'd brought with him. He then found a patch of sunshine on an upper limb and sprawled out for a nap.

"I'm boring you, too, huh?" said the ancient maple. "That's okay. I'm used to it. But if someone would just take the time to listen to me ... oh, the stories I could tell ..."

"Tell me one," said the Rev. Dr. Alice Walker, pastor of Walden Puddle's First Unitarian Meeting House. She had been standing at the foot of the Old Dumbarton Maple, unnoticed by the tree, for the past 10 minutes.

"Dr. Walker. You speak the language of trees?" said the great maple in amazement.

"I do," said the Rev. Dr. Alice Walker.

"How is that possible?"

"I'm a witch," said Dr. Walker.

"But ... but ... but ... you're a pastor," stammered the Old Dumbarton Maple.

"True, but I'm a Unitarian pastor," said Dr. Walker. "We Unitarians can believe any damn thing we want."

"Are you a good witch?" asked the tree.

"Oh, that is so five minutes ago," said Dr. Walker. "Good witch. Bad witch. That's all trick-or-treat Halloween talk. I'm a witch. Period. Get used to it."

"Wow," said the Old Dumbarton Maple.

"You want to unburden yourself? You have tales to tell? Tell me. I may be a witch, but I'm a pastor, too."

For the next eight hours, the Old Dumbarton Maple told Dr. Walker countless stories about Walden Puddle ... stories that went back to Early Colonial times ... stories of human folly, stupidity, more stupidity, and even greater stupidity than that ... pausing only long enough for Dr. Walker to drop a fresh cassette into her tape recorder.

Darkness was falling. "I'll be back tomorrow," said Dr. Walker, who then ... to the tree's amazement ... vanished in a puff of smoke.


At dawn the next day, Dr. Walker came back with a flourish, arriving in another puff of smoke. The Old Dumbarton Maple picked up where it had left off, telling her stories from the Revolutionary War Era, including how the Founding Fathers, negotiating a boundary with the British in 1783, had tried to get the border moved farther south, so that Walden Puddle would become part of Quebec ... and how the British threatened to resume hostilities if that ever happened.

By nightfall, they had reached the Gilded Age, and the story of how George W. Vanderbilt, enamored of the "most bracing and salutary air" around Walden Puddle, wanted to build his great Biltmore Estate there, something that would have created jobs and tourist revenue for endless generations.

When Mr. Vanderbilt's chief landscape architect -- the celebrated Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York's Central Park -- arrived in town to look at possible locations for Biltmore, Walden Puddlers tarred and feathered him and rode him out of town on a rail. Biltmore was quickly relocated to the Great Smoky Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina, which has prospered nicely because of it.

By nightfall of the next day, they had gotten to the Roaring Twenties, and the story of how rum runners from Canada used to pay Walden Puddlers $5 a year ... in bright, shiny beads ... to turn their basements into warehouses for contraband booze. The liquor was then sold for $50 a bottle in black-tie speakeasies in Copious Falls, while many a Walden Puddler went to federal prison for it.

By nightfall of the next day, they had reached the Eisenhower Era, when a young Warren Buffett, working out of his car, passed through Walden Puddle and Copious Falls offering stock in his fledgling investment company for 15 cents a share. Hugely impressed by the young man, families in Copious Falls purchased tens of thousands of shares. In Walden Puddle, Mr. Buffett was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail.

By nightfall of the next day, they had reached our own time in history, the year 2010, the 347th year that the Old Dumbarton Maple had been a captive audience to, in the tree's words, "the stupidest people who ever lived ... doing the stupidest things that ever happened ... anywhere ... anytime."

"Quite a story," said the Rev. Dr. Alice Walker.

"Thank you for listening," said the Old Dumbarton Maple. "You really are a good pastor."

"I'm an even better witch," said Dr. Walker. "Tomorrow I do lunch, drinks, and dinner with three different agents in New York. Thanks for the book, sucker." And she disappeared in a puff of smoke.

The Old Dumbarton Maple simply rustled its leaves. "Story of my life," it said.




THE TALK OF
WALDEN PUDDLE
We had green tea at the Agreeable Doughnut with Mr. Hiroshi Takahara, the great Japanese bonsai master, whose lecture tour of North America ended on a sour note in Walden Puddle last Sunday.

"Sure, I walk out," Takahara-san told us. "Those crazy hillbilly bring axe and chainsaw. Bonsai tree very small. Bonsai tree very delicate. Very subtle. Prune with cuticle scissor. Prune with nose-hair thingie. Who tell them bring axe? Who tell them bring chainsaw? Who?"





NEXT POST: May 19, 2010


SPECIAL NEW ENGLAND
MUD SEASON ISSUE


FEATURING: "Cleanup in Aisle Seven," a tale of of young love at Walden Puddle's only supermarket -- Edible Foods -- complicated by a severely hallucinating cat, and including a blistering critique, long overdue, of Neil Armstrong's total srew-up as the first wordsmith on the moon. Also included: a chilling glimpse of the Last Days of the Roman Empire; stirring lyrics from High Noon; and a special guest appearance by Raymond Burr, in character as Perry Mason.

THE BEAR FACTS: Dr. Whipple forgot to buy insurance for her Bear Wrestling Camp. To take her mind off it, she shares her favorite light summer recipe.

BONUS ITEM: How to keep your children clean during Mud Season.


Editor's Note: You're on Page 3 of Walden Puddle, the most current. To view Page 1, which contains Posts 1 through 5, click http://onwaldenpuddle.blogspot.com/. For Page 2, and Posts 6 through 10, click http://onwaldenpuddle2.blogspot.com/. If you're new to Walden Puddle, we hope you'll pay a visit to both.

All printed matter in this issue of Walden Puddle copyright © 2010 Walden Puddle Gift Shop. All rights reserved. All photographs reproduced with permission. Original artwork courtesy of Aytsan.