A Treehouse, a little you-and-me house

I’m pressed against a baby carriage that is wedgeded against a metal barrier. A baby is asleep in the carriage. The afternoon sun is bright, and I adjust my body to cast a shadow over the child. Her sweet talcum scent rises from the carriage. The mother, a redhead, is fair and has a long white scarf over her head and shoulders to shield her from the Parisian sun. There is no shade, and I feel my skin burning.                 We are shoulder to shoulder, chest to back—thousands of us. I’ve been standing in Place des Pyramides for an hour waiting for bicyclists to roll over the finish line in the Tour de France race. Across the road, a crowd of Swiss sing a song in German or Austrian—yell it, really—and wave flags.                 The baby is crying and the back of the redhead mother’s neck is red. She has had too much sun. My throat is dry. The boy beside me—he’s...

Let’s call him Andy, for starters. He’s a special educator, hates his job, saves his money and quits. He’s never been to Ireland, where his parents are from, so he finds a cheap flight and gets on the plane. The answer for his dead-end life, he thinks, is finding an Irish wife. Maybe he has read Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s poem, “The Irish Wife,” with the stanza: My Irish wife has clear blue eyes,            My heaven by day, my stars by night; And twin-like truth and fondness lie   Within her swelling bosom white My Irish wife has golden hair,   Apollo’s harp had once such strings,          Apollo’s self might pause to hear   Her bird-like carol when she sings. Or maybe he knows the Irish are known for story-telling, a sense of humor and love of family. Their hearts are warm, their dispo...

Now that Fern Forest Treehouse has taken a bite out of the Apple (check out the web developers video at http://www.apple.com/ios/videos/#developers ), it’s time to polish up the old blog again. Our most recent guests were Alexandra and Mike from west of Boston. Alexandra was living in Manhattan as a set designer and traveled with a touring production of The King and I , which landed in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Mike, a Green Bay local, happened to be filling in backstage on the same show. Alexandra saw him. She gave him orders. He did what she told him. Then she noticed. He was awfully good looking. Uh-huh. Mike is a self-starter. When he was 17, he started a haunted house design business, building haunting displays, hiring actors to put on gory makeup and scare people. He had no plans to leave Wisconsin, so Alexandra gave up her New York apartment and moved to Green Bay, no easy task for a die-hard Patriots fan. She never took to the Packers, but Mike forgave her. His haunted ho...

‘Tis summer and work in the gardens has taken me away from the computer. Fern Forest Treehouse has not taken a break, however. New Yorkers love to get out of the city during the sweltering season, and Vermont is a favorite destination. In the past week we've had back-to-back Brooklynites. Josh is from L.A. and Laura’s from Florida, but they drove up from New York in a rental car with Texas license plates. Josh works on the television show “Law and Order,” and Laura fundraises for the Tribecca Film Festival. She’s also a musician and has played clarinet in orchestras. They’re quiet folks. And they like to sleep. Both work until 7:00 or 8:00 at night, then they go to the gym and finally have dinner at 10:00 or 11:00. They’re lucky to get to bed by 1:00 a.m. and use weekends to catch up on sleep. When we got them the latest reservation at the Bobcat, they were a little appalled at having to eat as early as 8:30 p.m. H and I eat at 6:00, dishes washed by 6:45, and by 8:00, he’...

George Carlin said our houses are nothing more than places to keep stuff while we go out and get more stuff. Why do we need so much stuff and so much space to hold it? I read about a guy who pledged to own only 100 items, including a toothbrush and a pencil. I’d like to try that, getting rid of one thing each time I bring a new thing into the house (other than Ben & Jerry’s, of course—but, then, that’s not hard to get rid of). I started thinking about space and possessions when Deek Diedricksen came to stay at Fern Forest with his wife Liz, four-year-old son Jonas (Deek calls him “Jones”), two-year-old daughter Angie (she calls Deek “Magic Dad”), and big black dog Orzo. I worried that a 90-square-foot treehouse would be a little snug for the family, especially since Deek is well over six-feet tall. But no. Deek loves small spaces. In fact, he builds them. Check out his website www.relaxshacks.com. You'll also see Deek's take on his weekend in the treehouse. ...

This morning I went to a homebrewing supply store to purchase some materials to make moonshine, purely for book research, of course. The shop was not large and was packed floor to ceiling with all sorts of accouterments for making brews of one kind or another. The smell inside was warm and earthy, caramel sweet, like a deep, mossy forest. As soon as I walked in, I forgot everything. Why hadn't I brought a recipe? Why hadn't I written down the things I needed, the mash fermenter, the boiler, the worm pipe, the slobber bucket (whatever that is), the hydrometer (what does that do?)? The guy behind the counter looked friendly enough. There were two customers ahead of us, one of which was in a concentrated monologue with the clerk about putting his boat in the water and sailing around the world. Was he planning to brew beer on the boat? Another guy came in, bought a bottle of something. "Credit or debit?" the clerk asked. "Whatever's easier for you," the guy ...

For a writer (which is what I sometimes call myself), there can be no better guest than another writer. Nicola came solo from Cape Cod for a retreat to work on her novel-in-progress. When she arrived in Lincoln, H and I were in Kentucky, where I had a week-long gig as guest author in the Spalding University BFA program. I taught two four-hour classes to advanced writing students, gave a morning presentation to fifty high school girls from local Catholic institutions, and had an hour-long radio interview. It was a full teaching schedule, but H and I managed to sneak in an afternoon trip to the Maker’s Mark distillery, thanks to my friend and former student Sylvia. If you haven’t tried bourbon flavored coffee, I suggest you order a bag pronto. Anyway, because we were gone, Nicola stayed at Firefly B&B just up the road and owned by our good friend and neighbor, Issy Link. Nicola is English and Issy is from Germany, and they got along famously, talking about “the old country,” as Issy...