I dreamed my hall filled with wild swine...

...and my true love a-swimming in blood. An interesting line from a Jean Ritchie song called "Sweet William and Lady Margaret". The line reminded Eric of our exploration of an old pig farm in Northbridge at the end of October. It's at the end of Castle Hill Road and was very photogenic with the sun and sky while we were exploring and taking pictures. I meant to write this blog a long time ago but we have pretty pretty busy, with getting married and all. So I just wanted to share some of these pictures. Now that it's getting cold and all wintery, these pictures let us hold on to the brief period of time that we call autumn.

Some of the structures at Castle Hill reminded us of a Spanish Mission that we have only seen on tv. I've always wanted to see the sparrows of Capistrano, thanks to Looney Tunes.









Dilapidated barn with Eric and Sean in a field of ticks. Man I hate ticks. Actually we didn't get any ticks here. If we were only so lucky all the time.











It's strange that two strings of barbed wire rusted while the other two didn't.











I was really working the in focus foreground and out of focus background on this day. I like how one of the weed things almost makes up the collapsed part of the barn.
























Eric close-up with the Minolta. Lookin all gruff and lumberjacky.












Eric far away, allergies in the foreground.












You know you're in a good place when there is graffiti around. This says "blood and bong rips" and "beware of undead be careful". Thank you, Stoned Sir, I will be careful of the Undead.









At the time, Eric didn't know he was going to die by standing in that doorway. Luckily he's still with us today because I stopped him. The same can't be said for the many little piggies that surely didn't make it when this place was up and running. RIP Oink and Oink Oink Small. Friends and family may have eaten you at that porketta when I was a little girl, but you will always be my pets.






















View from inside (not the building that looked like it was going to fall over). Ahh fall foliage, you might soon be a thing of the past.










Oh my God! An apparition! Call TAPS!!!












A view into what looks like the watering area for the pigs. This was on the second floor.











The way the bacon went to get a drink.












View of the courtyard.












This place was pretty neat. I'm sad it's getting colder and we're losing time to get outside and poke around without feeling the pangs of windchill in our bones.

The Lair of the Axeman

My mother grew up on Wixtead Court in Douglas, MA. As a girl, she and her friends often played in a field behind her house. They played sports and engaged in all sorts of fanciful imaginations, even producing plays with neighborhood casts in an old chicken coop. However, their games transpired alongside a fear of a named evil who lurked in the woods surrounding the little dead-end road. The name was the Axeman. Ok, so maybe the Axeman might seem a bit archaic to we denizens of the information age, but kids in the sixties didn't have the luxury of Sony's pixelated SOMA and therefore needed to rely on the adrenaline produced by a good, wholesome scare.

Recently, Erin and I were looking at a map and we noticed that there were allegedly caves in Douglas. These caves, called Castle Caves, were situated near the border of Douglas and Sutton. Astounded, we began asking people if they had ever seen the caves. Almost everyone had heard of the caves, yet no one had actually seen them.

When I brought up the caves to my mother, she told me that, while she never saw the caves herself, she knew of their existence. In fact, those very caves were rumored to be the lair of the dreaded Axeman! She had told me about the Axeman and the idea of finding a connection to some aspect of my mother's childhood really drew me in. Erin, Sean (my brother) and I decided that we would find the caves.

Our attempts were initially thwarted. The two road that lead to the woods where the caves, Brown Street and Caswell Court, were both dead ends with houses and "No "Trespassing" signs blocking our way. Cleverly, Erin thought of going into Sutton and down Whitins Road. A little way into Sutton we found a path, parked the car and headed off the find the caves.

Our trip began with a most promising stroke of luck. Across from the path was a house and there was an older gentleman sitting in the garage. As it looked obvious that he owned the land were planned on trespassing on, we decided to talk to him. He was very friendly and gave us permission to go ahead and he even gave us some directions to the caves! Were were off in grand style.

The hike was somewhat longer than expected. Also, were realized very quickly that we were not really certain of what to look for. The image I had in my head was of a rock with a door shaped hole in it resembling the paradigm of an old caveman cave from the movies. As we walked along we encountered many more paths, turns, junctions, and obsticles. We did find this neat balloon though. It seems that whenever Erin and I go out into the woods, we run into fugitive balloons.











The sun was already setting when we encountered a huge rock face. For those of you familiar with Purgatory Chasm, it was about the equivolent of one side of the chasm. I immediately knew this was our place, yet the actually caves themselves did not stand out and the cliff was really, really big.

We began traversing the face of the cliff, searching for any signs of caves. I went pretty quickly and, as I turned a corner, I spotted something about half way up the face of the cliff. There were spray painted words that read "The Who." Any good explorer knows the vandalism marks the spot. I went back and retrieved Erin and Sean. We abandoned some of our heavy bags and camera gear at the foot of the cliff and started on up. The dry leaves and pine needles made the climb rather treacherous, but up we went. Finally, we arrived at one of the caves.

It wasn't huge but it was pretty deep. I crawled in a little bit and took some pictures, but they didn't come out. By that time it was getting pretty dark out and we didn't want to linger too long on the side of a cliff anyhow, so we decided to set off for home and be out of the woods before dark.

Then something stupid happened. Erin and Sean climbed up to the top of the cliff because that was actually easier than going back down on account of the leaves and pine needles. I went back down a bit to get a camera case and, feeling that at that point I was already committed to descent over ascent, I agreed to meet Sean and Erin on the trail. We had left the balloon on the trail, but within the time it took us to explore the caves, someone on an ATV came by and they must have picked it up or moved it inadvertently. After I picked up the camera case and my backpack, I walked down the rest of the way to what I thought was the trail. The balloon was gone and I had actually stumbled upon another trail. When Erin and Sean didn't show up for a long time I set off to find them, only the trail wound around behind the cliff and I didn't know that. I was calling them and they were calling me and we were all kind of freaking out because it was definitely getting darker when we finally found each other. We hadn't heard the calling because the cliff had separated us. After we calmed down for a second, we booked it out of the woods and made it home before dark.
Well, I'm not sure we can absolutely dispel the myth of the Axeman. Perhaps he just wasn't home or we found a different cave. Either way, Castle Caves proved to be a lot of exercise and a interesting look at something few people have seen.

a holy addendum

If you are familiar with Dogtown or Dudleytown, then you know something about New England ghost towns. The area on Sylvester Street that Erin and I explored was something like what I understand those places to be - a serious of logically positioned foundations with other signs of habitation, such as chimneys, stone walls, wells, and the remains of woodpiles within a general vicinity. The main difference with the Sylvester Street foundations is that they were most likely part of Leicester, not an abandoned colony or town.












The Catholic home across the street from Sylvester Street used to be the Nazareth Home for Boys, a sort of orphanage. Now it is the Mcauley/Nazareth House and a school for mentally handicapped 3rd- 8th graders. Over the summer I work at the Mercy Center in Worcester and Nazareth lets our summer program students go there and swim in their pool on Wednesdays.

In spite of having visited Nazareth several times I had never really investigated the Mary alter and I had never even noticed the nun cemetery on the right side of the main property. Erin has always said that she wanted to see gravestones with R.I.P. written on them and I never thought they actually existed, until we stumbled upon this little graveyard of small, white crosses. All the interned here are nuns, all named Sister Mary, and all the vast majority of the graves are small, white crosses that say R.I.P. It's pretty creepy, actually.

One last fun fact, I read that the small stream that runs perpendicular to Sylvester Street is called Lynde Brook. At some point, a 16-year-old from Nazareth (when it was still primarily a boys home, not in its current incarnation) beat a 6-year-old to death and ditched him in the Brook off Sylvester Street. Perhaps that gave rise to some of the Spider's Gates legends...

full of grace!

Sometimes Eric and I make like Hansel and Gretel and hoof it in the woods looking for neat stuff. We did that on Sunday. First we tried to find a cemetery and orchard that I had heard about in Charlton. I lost the directions so we ended up checking out Southbridge instead. We hadn't heard anything good about Southbridge so we thought maybe we could find a good abandoned house there to explore. When I read electric meters back in the summer of '00, I remember being pretty freaked out in some of the areas. That's probably because I had to go into dark, cob-webby basements with pelts hanging from the ceiling. Ok, that only happened once, but while we didn't find anything abandoned, we did discover Southbridge has great potential to be a cute town. It's too bad about Southbridge.

A little discouraged, we returned to home base to try a new approach. Eric did a little research while I ate a cannoli and found some potential places to check out in Leicester. Our mission to find things in the woods brought us first to Spider Gates. We have been to Spider Gates before and let me tell you, there is NOTHING scary about it. In fact, it's a pretty well-kept cemetery with the least scary headstones from that time period that I've seen. The Quakers aren't too up on showy stuff and the most interesting headstone there is a woman who had 2 husbands.

We showed up to Spider Gates to find a few goth kids at the cemetary, which was funny of course. Especially since Spider Gates is as far away from Gothic as the It's a Small World ride at Disney World. After walking around in the woods near the airport, we left for a different trail/road called Sylvester Street where there is supposed to be an old root cellar which you can walk around in. While we didn't find the root cellar, there were a bunch of old foundations that were overgrown and the houses were long gone. It was interesting to wonder why no one inhabited this part of Leicester anymore.

This was the most interesting plot we found. The front stairs were still pretty much in tact, there were some old metal appliances "in" the house, and there were 2 left foot shoe soles - one from a man and one from a woman - placed next to each other on the foundation. You can tell they're old because they were held together by nails.



Another strange occurrence on our woodland journey was that we found the handle to a gardening shovel in a fresh shallow hole - someone had been there not long before us! That's the scariest part about being in the woods. It's not the ghosts, gouls, wizards, witches, hobbitts, spirits, demons and monsters there; it's the potential people and dogs.



The best part of the day was the end. Where we parked our car is an old, but still functional, Catholic home for boys. Outside along the sidewalk are the stations of the cross. Across the street, is a large shrine to Mary. The statues had flowers and Rosary Beads adorned on them. I wanted to be like Mary.







And one cat picture for good measure. Razzle is so cute!

alone with the owls howling pain, pain, pain

I try not to talk about music too much on the "Owls" blog, but I can't stop myself anymore. Erin and I have been finding lots of amazing new music lately and I have to write about it.

First, I just bought both the new Magnolia Electric Co. CD, Fading Trails and the new solo LP from Magnolia's frontman, Jason Molina, entitled Let me go, Let me go, Let me go.


While the Magnolia Electric Co. is good, it's Molina's new album that I'm really pumped about. Since he stopped doing Songs:Ohia, which was a solo project with occasional players assisting, and started the Magnolia Electric Co., a full band, Molina's music has been increasingly heading toward something...well...good, but safe. The first Magnolia Electric Co. CD was amazing and one of my favorite albums of all times (check out Farewell Trasmission, the first song on the first Magnolia Electric Co CD here), but with each following Magnolia Electric Co. release the music has become a little less remarkable.

Until now. Let me go, Let me go, Let me go follows in the tradition of Songs:Ohia and Molina's earlier solo albums, Protection Spells and Pyramid Electric Co. While I love both those albums, Let me go, Let me go, Let me go is even more accessible. Molina's voice, while often compared to Neil Young, is incredibly haunting and more complex than his classic-rock forerunner and on the new CD it goes right through me. I love this CD. While Alone with the Owls is my favorite song on the CD (the title of this post is a line from that song) Get out Get out Get out is the only free MP3 Secretly Canadian (the label) put online.

Erin's persistance spurred our next big recent musical discovery. Erin listens to the Worcester station on the radio and she kept hearing this song she liked a lot, but they never gave the name. She remembered a line and we searched the Internet until we found it and I am really glad we did.

The song was called Let the Sun Shine Down on Me by Jean Ritchie. Ritchie has been throughout her life instrumental in folk music, performing in the early 60's with Doc Watson and making a name for herself as one of the premier dulcimer players in the country. We were eventually able to get our hands on the CD with that song on it. It was a limited edition release that was discontinued. The entire disc is amazing.

Like Jason Molina, Jean Ritchie has a voice that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. Unlike Molina, it doesn't take any getting used to - it's beautiful. Her songs are traditional American folksongs. Ritchie was born and grew up in Kentucky Cumberland region and the songs reflect this somewhat, but they are much more American and universal than esoteric.

Oddly enough, right after we discovered Jean Ritchie, we saw a documentary on Alan Lomax who did field recordings of folk songs for the Smithsonian Institute and she was featured in it.


Closer to home, Erin and I went to Shelburne Falls in western Mass to see Sarah & Dig's brother John's art opening and listen to him play his songs at Mocha Maya's. John is a killer artist and very nice photographer, which we knew, but I was also really impressed by his songs and what a great voice he has. The two things that stood out the most to me about John's set was, A) he's a terrific storyteller and that really adds a lot to the music and B) he included booklets with the set list and lyrics so you could follow along. That was an awesome idea. John is working on a CD and when it is available we will post how to get it.


In other news, we're still really excited about getting married. What adds to the excitement is that Veau and Emily and Katie are coming! Yaya! Also, Kev and Jen will be home in December, just in time for my birthday! Yay!

I'll leave you with some picture I took in around around the Blackstone Canal park and Stanley Woolen Mill in Uxbridge. I guess place almost collapsed or something the day after I was there.

So long.

Worcester: The City That Weeds...

Ever been kicking back in your low-income subsidized apartment and look over at your homeboy and say, "Shit, I wish some city planner would give us somethin' to joke about while we's was blazin' dis blunt!"

Well wish no more, Homes! You're prayers have been answered! Introducing, Weed & Seed!



Looks like the city of Worcester has finally just given in and accepted the fact that the only economic growth on the end of Pleasant Street closest to down town comes from the sale of marijuana. Not only have they accepted the fact that pot provides all that neighborhood's revenue, they embrace it with a new series of signs up and down that end of Pleasant Street that read, "Weed & Seed - Making Our Neighborhoods Better."

Not only does pot bring money into the neighborhood, it allegedly even makes it better! Here's another one of those signs -

Obviously, this is not reefering..er..referring to pot, but I wonder who was responsible for the blazing oversight of calling a community program intended for the less-than-upscale portions of the city and decided to call it Weed and Seed. Of course, it's comparing the city to a garden and weeding and seeding makes a garden grow, but take a look at these dudes and tell me how much they care for metaphors and tropes.
























Normally, I am not amused by pot or pot jokes, but this is way beyond just Cheech and Chong. Perhaps the originator of these ingenius plan was high when he/she concocted it. If not, then shame on them.