Memories

‘Coming into leaf’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
* * * *
When I entered her car last Wednesday morning, my friend’s greeting was, “What a beautiful day.” This is not always her greeting, not always the first thing I hear her say when I see her on Wednesdays, so from inside my current depression I stammered, “You … you mean the sunniness?”

We backed out into the road. It was indeed a sunny morning. “Yeah, I think we’re finally past the snow,” she added.

As you and your shovel may know, it was indeed a snowy winter this December and January and February and March in New Paltz, a prankster’s winter that gave us the biggest snowstorm in a couple years followed by a few unseasonably warm days followed by the biggest snowstorm in a decade and a week of below-zero nights. Small snowstorms then punctuated March. My friend’s tentative response (“I think we’re finally past the snow”) was the sensible one. More snow could yet arrive.

I needed that greeting, though. It was a sunny morning, and I had not yet noticed it.
Read More

A Hometown Halloween

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I, Mark Aldrich, have only one hometown, and that hometown, Poughkeepsie, NY, was voted Halloween Central in 2013 by a major little-known Canadian institute. One could say that this is a big deal. It isn’t, but one could say it …

* * * *
The Martin Prosperity Institute released what it called its third “annual survey” of Halloween in America back in 2013. The Institute did not produce a fourth or any subsequent sequel to this seminal study of all things creepy, ghostly, and scary, and in 2019, the MPI itself closed up shop altogether. It’s now a ghost, itself. Perhaps the MPI accomplished its mission when everyone named Martin was discovered to be prosperous. Or in an institute.

On reflection, it is likely that my hometown broke the Martin Prosperity Institute, which I will explain.

The Institute’s 2013 in-depth look at the field of Halloween enjoyment, a study not undertaken by most people older than say, eight, led to many national news articles that expressed shock at its conclusion, which was this: the best place to enjoy Halloween in the United States of America is Poughkeepsie, New York.

If this was true in 2013, it may very well be true tonight, Halloween 2024.
Read More

A Valentine’s Day Knockout

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

It was as if every wish I had made in childhood for a hole in the ground to open up and rescue me had been answered in reverse …

* * * *
I bear a scar from the first Valentine’s Day that I had a reason to celebrate as Valentine’s Day, as a part of a couple.

Until the last decade, my romantic history was a long walk alone in an empty field, punctuated by moments in which I interrupted someone else’s walk, attempted to try a relationship, and discovered that I try people’s patience instead. (All the women I have dated are brilliant and accomplished and I was lucky to get to know them; I was stuck at age fifteen for an astonishingly long time, however.)
Read More