It's Friday and the Book Review

It's amazing how fast a week can come and go, measured not in hours but in waste management pickups, burn barrel days left before the snow and the Friday New York Times Book Review.

Carolyn Chute probably has other measurements, measurements that might be contained in her new opus, "The School on Heart's Content Road ."

I recall as if it were yesterday her first book "Beans of Egypt Maine" and how taken I was with the writer and the writing. In fact, this book might have indirectly led me to Liberty and Belfast and kept me going back. Waldo County (ME) seemed to represent everything the earth had to offer filled with folks who could and would teach me how to make everything something, nothing everything and appreciate the night sky.

It was 1985 that Chute published "Beans," as it was affectionately called and my own life was circumscribed by an academic job during the week and a retreat in the New England mountains on the weekends whenever I chose and as often as I pleased.

During those weekends, and the long summers at the literal Green Pond I did more than relax, I thrived.

As the years went by as much as I wanted to convert the City Mouse to the Country Cousin, it took another 20 years to settle down to what drew me to Chute's work, Waldo County and a landscape that was as musical as a Mahler symphony.