baby crib bedding set
February 8th, 2010 CHRISTMAS has come and gone, even for the Eastern Orthodox, and the stores are looking ahead to Valentines Day. But many upstate lawns still have their Christmas decorations: Santa, Frosty, inflated penguins (penguins were big this year, even though they dont live at the North Pole). They stand like unbudgeable guests who have stayed at a party after the host has unplugged the coffee urn and gone to bed. They are better-humored, for they are still waving merrily, but the feelings they induce are unsettling. They have lingered past their time, like ghosts. They represent the black backside of upstate: depression. Depression manifests itself in lack of will. That is what the belated Santas show. People, in a burst of holiday cheer or a bout of family obligation, put them out. But those same people are unable or unwilling to take them down. Routine is supposed to be the great deadener of souls; how much worse is the half-completed task, the broken round, the unfulfilled routine? As usual there is a diagnosis for it–seasonal affective disorder–and as usual it tells only part of the story. The cold keeps people inside and makes them stircrazy, while the short days put them spiritually to sleep. Cold is no friend: It slips in, through door cracks and floorboards, and slaps your face as soon as you step outside. Bundling up to keep it off makes you heavy and stiff. Dusk at five oclock is no pick-me-up either. Maybe bears have the right idea: grow a girdle of fat and go to sleep. But, although the cold stays until February, the light starts growing longer after the solstice, and becomes noticeably so by New Years. Besides, winter cant explain why so many people upstate seem depressed all year long. What are the signs of depression? How about piles of stuff in the yard? This is a tricky point. One of the benefits of owning an acre of land is that you have room to put stuff. Rural residential zoning allows you to put down anything, short of a junkyard, and rural gun ownership guarantees that it will stay put, though who would want a pile of field stone anyway? But sometimes the stack of two-by-fours, or the rusted-out burn barrel, or the boat under a tarp, or the truck with a mismatched hood and fender and a notional price chalked on its windshield (the price and the truck havent changed in years), or all of these things together cross the line from husbandry to clutter. “If a man have not order within him, he cannot spread order about him,” said Ezra Pound, who should have known about inner disorder. Some lawns have all the cheer of old cemeteries. Another sign of depression is the unpainted outbuilding. Here again it is a matter of degree. The weathered barn slat can look like a wise face in an old photograph: Lincoln, Whitman. But when the slats begin to show gaps, trouble has begun. Once the horizontals and the verticals start to slip and sag, the end is near: Only an effort on the order of Robert Moses can save the outbuilding now. I remember a two-storey house on the grounds of a small, broken-down summer resort (but not dead–cars and laundry always decorate a handful of the cottages come July). Its collapse took about two weeks; my friend Doug, who has put up many buildings in his time, said, with grim relish, “Its moving!” A good wet snow brings the untended outbuilding down, like a bomb. The degrees of serious depression are measured by how long the pieces stay, uncleared.
1. Casale Urbania, Le Marche PERCHED on top of a hill in the unspoiled Le Marche region, you can gaze from the pool at the beautiful Metauro valley below. Built on the site of a 16th Century church, there are four bedrooms and two kitchens and dining rooms, making it ideal for two families who want to split the cost of renting of renting a villa. The nearby town of Urbania has restaurants and shops selling local ceramics while the historypacked Renaissance city of Urbino is a 20-minute drive away. THIS stunning farmhouse sleeps 15 and has eight bathrooms. Great for large families, the pool has a paddling area for toddlers and theres a huge kitchen and lounge.
