CAPE COD REPORTS, 2000These Cape Reports were originally letters to friends and family. They were meant to follow the sound email policy of never saying anything you wouldn't want the world to read. If you see something here that offends you, let me know. No offense was intended, and I apologize. February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, November, December
-----JANUARY -----Ah snow. We've had about a foot altogether, with deeper drifts. We dared each other to continue our walks in 10 degree temperatures and 40 mile an hour winds and have concluded that "this is what we came for". It was invigorating, amazing, lovely. Strange things, "wonderful things" as the fellow says after poking his nose into Tut's tomb. Colors of sky and water that we'd never seen before. Huge waves with their crests blown back in great plumes rising like smoke fifteen or 20 feet in the air. And of course "snow falling on cedars". Odd stuff too, like footprints and pine cones on 4 inch pedestals where the wind has blown away the powdery snow around them and tiny wind-formed contours looking exactly like the lines on a topographic map. I finally saw deer tracks in the snow and thousands, millions, of rabbit tracks, and flocks of hundreds of Canadian robins gobbling cedar berries. There were a few fellow travelers on the trails and many ski tracks. We encountered one cross country couple. After they had passed Nancy remarked, "They didn't appear to be having fun." If man had been meant to ski.... ----- I went to the UU mens’ group last week. We talked at length about septic tanks, and very knowledgeably too. There had been some remarkable developments in waste management, like the Clivus Composting Toilet. We also discussed restricting building in Eastham, corporate crime, the Confederate flag, and World War II. On another day I spoke with a man who came to collect his wife at the book group. He’s a mathematical physicist, who was a student of Richard Fineman and Hans Bethe and who worked with Edward Teller on the H-bomb. The past hasn’t really been devoured as in Stephen King’s short story. It’s here and now. ----- I felt very much a part of the 21st century until 6 months ago and now feel more akin to the 19th. Talk about point of view. I see Red Hat and Perle and the other Linux companies surging. I knew UNIX and programmed in Perl and Java until last summer. I still feel twinges, but it all moves so fast and would take such a commitment of time and money... Tis better to have loved and quit while you're ahead. My favorite view of the future is Woody Allen's Sleeper. We could use Rags the poopless dog. He'd probably even be allowed on the nature trails. -----See "Otis Regrets", another article about the L.A. Times’ dirty deal with a developer, in the Sunday NY Times Magazine. I'm glad to see the Times following this. I think as I age I worry less rather than more about the state of the world, but if I were to worry about anything it would be the corruption of the media and of education. How then would what we care about survive? It often hasn't of course, but in the old days of slipshod totalitarianism it was never quite stamped out. -----The Nauset Fellowship is designing a flier to be available to all who use the Chapel in the Pines for other purposes, such as the Nauset Coffee House and poetry slams. Jari's draft text goes like this: -----"*The Nauset Fellowship offers a fellowship of the spirit based on humanistic values and the expression of our regard for each other and for the well-being of our community. *There is room for all shades of opinion, and we require an acceptance of each others values and opinions; we are a welcoming congregation open to all races, ethnic groups, and gender identities. *We gather without ritual or the usual formalities of a religious group, yet we feel we offer a spiritual base and a home for inquiry on all levels. *Because we are small and because we so choose, we include all in our decision-making, and do not hesitate to change our minds." Jari Rappaport -- It this truly possible? It almost seems to be. -----I've just begun to write again Both books I'm working on (The Lives of R. Martin Newhouse, and a total retelling of the Water Rats from a human point of view) rely heavily on the continuance of the past and the imaginary nature of existence. It’s great fun, if unlikely profit. ----- -----It still seems like magic to us. Where else could you walk along the edge of a marshy inlet as we did yesterday and see a bright red fox sitting on its haunches like an illustration from La Fontaine and watching a young seal bask in the sun. We tracked down a ranger who explained that seals often swam in to rest on the shore and became stranded by the falling tide. They just go out on the next. When we walked past within ten feet of it the seal raised its head and twitched its whiskers at us. -----There are people of course who think of the Cape as an actual geographical location. If we go a half mile due west from our house, we bump into the six foot high ice shelf that presently rims much of Cape Cod Bay to the relief of hundreds of storm-threatened sandowners. Two miles east, from the top of a high bluff, we can watch the surf crump dully onto twenty miles of empty Atlantic Ocean beaches. Although we pass several dozen houses in either direction, most of them are unoccupied at this season, and depending on the weather and the time of day we might not see another soul. At night it is either brilliantly starry or pitch black above our house, and we often hear only the wind in the pines or complete silence. -----Our days are filled with rituals. We watch CNBC at breakfast, which is great fun when you're not a heavy stakeholder. I write a little and exchange email. We collect our junk mail from the post office at 10:30. Delivery is available, but most Easthamers like to get their own. It's a social occasion, and even we sometimes see people we know. Our mail is largely fliers, bills, and L.L. Bean catalogs. Having bought an expensive braided rug, we now receive all Bean's lists, House and Home, Sun and Fun, Survivalist and Militia... ( I made the last one up, but it’s surely coming .) Nearly every other day we go to the Stop and Shop or the Star Market equipped with sale fliers and script we've bought from Harry at the Fellowship. This costs nothing extra, and 5% goes to the homeless. Truly cut rate philanthropy. We have a shopping list, but we also wander the aisles looking for bargains and inspiration. I've discovered the day-old rolls. These are very inexpensive indeed, but, frozen, microwaved, and toaster-ovened, they taste eternally new. The Star Market sells loose brussel sprouts. I sometimes buy 6 or 7, as brussel sprouts are one of the few foods we disagree on. I read the Times at the newsstand while Nancy checks out. I've offered to share this chore, but she finds supermarket checkouts a highly informative social occasion. The clerks are chatty, as are the baggers, who at the Stop and Shop are all pleasant mentally-challenged persons who offer a unique commentary on the world. -----We debate at absurd length ("I chose yesterday...") as to which can of soup to open for lunch, along with a re-processed day old roll. We read. We stop at the library on the way to one of our favored walks, each of about a mile and a half: Doane Rock to Coast Guard Beach, the Nauset Marsh trail, or the Red Maple Swamp trail. Even back in Oreland on our daily walks along the Wissahickon in Fort Washington State Park we had noticed that no two days were ever quite the same There are far more possibilities of variation here, the ice, the tide, winds that blow you off your feet, exotic shore birds, waving grass, falling trees, and animal tracks. We generally pass a few other walkers, mostly older couples. They always say hello and often remark on the beauty (or the rigors) of the day. -- A sign appeared at Nauset yesterday, saying the "boardwalk is dangerously tilted, and going around it requires walking in knee-deep mud". This is true, but we used the boardwalk and hung onto tree branches to keep from sliding off. "This is a bit nuts," Nancy observed. -----I work on the house for a couple of hours in the afternoon. With the interior painting mostly done and the temperature too low to continue with the roof shingles for now, I have to improvise. -----I've just eurathaned the chair I picked up at the dump and repaired. (At the "Eastham Stock Exchange" actually.) I think it's cherry, (would cost an arm and a leg from Thomas Moser), but the style is less Swedish modern than Victorian schoolhouse. It's rather handsome in its way. -----I cut eight inches off the sturdy oak handle of an old push broom we found in the garage and used it to add two inches to each leg of our squat kitchen table. It's now two inches less ridiculous. I cut another five inches off the handle to make a toilet paper holder for my lavatory. I like having my own lavatory, just off the Luxurious Master Bedroom, and my own "wardrobe" as well (a former linen closet inside the lavatory). The lavatory itself is 5' by 4'. Nancy finds it claustrophobic, although it has a window looking out into our woods and over the likely path of any prowling coyote. The push broom still works, but it would work best for someone very short. -----We had a lot of trouble remembering to close the pantry door, so I replaced the latch with a magnetic catch and arranged a weight and pulley which closes it automatically (and rather majestically). "You just have to fiddle, don't you?" says my wife. -----I would have liked to replace the four fogged 2' by 5' insulated living room casement windows myself if I could have bought the glass. Fortunately this seems to be a wholesale operation, and it is being done even now by experienced workmen. They're humming and whistling and discussing frying onions and peppers in a separate pan, so I surmise it's going well. The two windows already in place make a remarkable difference. This is the best feature of the living room, all that glass looking out at the woods and bird feeder. The morning sun comes pouring in at this season but hopefully will be blocked by the re-leafed oaks in the summer. -- They are done, and it looks great. -----One of the workmen, the young one with long hair, admired the framed photography by Sara, Mari, and Nancy and also the Edel etchings of Provincetown. He had just put some glass in Norman Mailer's house in Provincetown he said, and had Norman autograph a novel. He's 81 (Mailer that is) and walks with a cane. "Didn't he run for mayor?" I asked. "Yep and stabbed his wife in an argument, which didn't help him. He's had four wives you know. This last one is really nice." I'll bet she is. -- There is a lot of this versatility on the Cape. The man who put in our hot water heater had a long talk with us about education and the environment. The woman who refinished our floors teaches at Cape Cod Tech. At the UU Men's Meeting someone asked about the “fellow who gave a talk on Africa last year”. The group dredged up the name and asked why he wanted to know. "I want him to reshingle my roof!" -- Last month someone was arrested for "scrubbing". This crime was undefined in the newspaper article (local knowledge being assumed), but was revealed in subsequent stories to be the removal of eggs from a pregnant lobster to make it legally salable. -----Wine and cheese is self-served here at 4:30 and dinner is prepared within the next hour and a half by whoever is hungriest, which is often me. We watch the news and McNeil-Lehrer and then read and listen to music until 11:30. Quite wicked. Our parents stayed up that late every night and got up at six in the morning. I don't know how they did it. Nearer to the old pioneer stock I suppose. -----We go the Nauset Fellowship (Unitarian/Universalist) on Sundays. We’ll have to learn to record CBS Sunday Morning, the only really good program on TV. A UU "fellowship", as opposed to a UU church, has no minister and is a bit like a Quaker meeting on LSD. I love it. I go to the Fellowship's Men's Group, and the Social Responsibility Committee, once a month. I feel a bit guilty about the latter. I've always wished to be socially responsible; I've just never done much about it. Hopefully it will be more a matter of writing letters than splashing chicken's blood on atomic power plants. -----"Unitarian" as opposed to “Trinitarian”, which leaves quite a bit unexplained. “Universalist" meaning everyone gets saved. Only saved from what fate and to what purpose? At any rate, theology isn't much discussed at the Chapel in the Pines. The Religious Right regularly accuses the UU's of "satanic humanism". -----We meet with our book group once a month. The book group is sponsored by the Nauset Newcomers Club. I was asked whether we wanted to join a 'light' or a 'serious' group. I chose serious, and so it is, both amusingly light and satisfyingly serious. We are a group of strong minded and often wryly humorous professional women in our 50's and 60's, and me. -----In addition to the fox and the seal, we saw a mouse in the Red Maple swamp. It was quite adorable and not at all like the two I've had to scrape up off the basement floor. It was almost round, with very large eyes and a tail considerably longer than its body. It went about its obscure business (in the food service industry) without paying us any attention. There was ten feet of doubtfully frozen swamp between it and the boardwalk, but most animals seem more skittish. -----There are at least two Great Green Herons. We saw them both at the same time although a quarter mile apart. Maybe group activities are discouraged by their foot long needle sharp beaks. Although it could be just a trick of light, they really look more blue than green. [It has been subsequently established that these are Great Blue Herons and that there are more than two of them. There is also a green heron, but it isn't particularly great.] ----- -----I note in the Cape Codder that several respectable naturalists think there’s both historical and genetic evidence that the Cape coyote is actually a smallish wolf. I'm eager to see one. Nancy is not. -----With or without the fellowship of wolves, we’re settled in, lacking only proper bedside tables, head and footboards, a hall rug that matches the living room's, and a kitchen island. We’re short of counter space, but otherwise, although our house is smallish at 26’ by 48’, it’s well arranged and more than ample. We have the bare necessities for the 21st century: an aging car (in a two-car garage), TV, computer, dishwasher, espresso maker, and CD player. Less comforting, we also have our own well and septic system and an ancient oil burner with a thirsty 300 gallon tank. We don’t have a dog, but we have lots of squirrels and chickadees. Our luxuries are the Times delivered, Starbucks coffee, nature walks regardless of the weather, and being here. -----I guess our bed is a luxury too. After 35 years of sleeping in reasonable comfort on Nancy’s grandparents’ marriage bed, a new Macy’s mattress frame is a revelation. Nancy’s grandfather was tall and slim. Their bed was built 6 inches longer than customary and correspondingly narrower. The mattress had to be custom made, so we replaced it only once in 35 years. It was a handsome piece of furniture, crafted in 1900 of solid mahogany, but the headboard was sawed off during the depression, (to be sold I understand, not burned to stay warm). I covered the sawn edge with a new piece of mahogany as much like the original wood as I could find (probably from the same Loiseau lumber yard in Plainfield), and my father refinished the whole bed beautifully. Sic transit. -----Our basement is also 26’x48’ and provides generous storage, “in two straight lines” of boxes, for the neatly organized archives of our past lives. -----I'm almost half done with putting a second layer of asphalt shingles on the roof. They are 25-year shingles, so I should be 90 and no longer entirely safe on a ladder by the time the roof needs re-doing. Nancy likes the new white cedar shingles we had to install on the front wall to replace those eaten by termites. She has taken part in the removal of the old shingles (the Joy of Demolition) and inspires me to finish the whole house over the Spring and summer. Cedar shingles are pleasant to look at and to hold in your hand. They go up easily and smell heavenly. Claus Oldenberg could do worse than sculpt a 50 foot cedar shingle and mount it as a weather vane. -- The floorfinishing lady told us that old cedar shingles can be burned in the fireplace. I’ve found in fact that they can be assembled into quasi logs which burn slowly and well. -----I see that we have some bearberry in our woods, Old Mother Westwind’s favorite groundcover. I’ve had to take time out from shingling to cut down dead pines before they fall on anyone. We have a hundred or so fair-sized trees on our lot (and an untold number of oak saplings), but a dozen of the pitch pines were dead or dying, partly of disease and partly from being crowded out by the more aggressive oaks. Cape oaks are tough. A large falling pine raked down the side of a small one, and I thought it was done for, but its bark was hardly scratched. The pines are called “pinus rigidus.” The entire tree, branches and all, sways stiffly in a strong wind while the needles barely quiver. They are quirky, messy, oddly formed, and thoroughly lovely trees. We plan to let the dead trunks lie where they fall. This adds to the appearance of a genuine woods and keeps the termites out of mischief. The woodpeckers, however, are annoyed with me for destroying their favorite venue and have invaded the bird feeder. We expected to see them punch holes in the plastic walls, but they seem to know the proper drill. -----The inside decorating is done for now, just in time to host the Nauset Fellowship's mens' and women’s' groups in April. These are pleasant getogethers, (and excellent opportunities to bake banana bread). We talk intelligently (as teachers, social workers, physicians, scientists, etc.) about the things we seniors like to discuss, such as the sad state of the world, local politics, the birds we’ve seen, and health. We seem to have a collective sense of both humor and values. I love the Fellowship. It's so skillfully amorphous. -- There’s some controversy as to whether to use the word “spirit”, as in “a fellowship of the spirit” in the brochure and the web site which are currently being prepared. My own opinion is that “spirit” is perfectly okay and can refer as the dictionary suggests, to courage, vigor, enthusiastic loyalty, true meaning, and ‘a breath of fresh air’, without any Platonic or theological connotations and could also keep us in good with the IRS. -----Our book group read Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum last month. We’re a bright enough bunch, but I'm not sure any of us really “got” the book. We felt it was worth the effort (although universal distress was expressed over the eels scene), but it was a lot of effort. Not exactly a page turner and possibly better in German. Next month we read Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible. I've just finished it. It’s funny, sad, and well worth reading. It’s not really about Christian fundamentalism. The dreadful preacher father is just loopy. It’s about his wife and children and the development of individuals. It’s not unrelated though. I saw a review of a new book I might want to read, Karen Armstrong’s “The battle for God”, about Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalism. She says that contemporary fundamentalism, rather than being a throwback to the past, is a thoroughly modern, innovative, and even sophisticated reaction to modernity, to a total dread of modernity in fact, but which lacks compassion. The Pope has just revealed that churches can err. Even Episcopalians, while they may have engaged in less wholesale slaughter than some, have a dubious origin and can be pompous, which is no small sin. -----We went to a memorial service at the Fellowship’s Chapel in the Pines. I knew the deceased, who was a fine gentleman. We had talked about history, and I was trying to convince him that American democracy had been originated by retired pirates living in Virginia. The service was both moving and enlightening. It began with a full recording of Finlandia, as evidently Roy was an enthusiastic Finn. Roy was an Eagle scout, so his stepson's delightful talk was based on the Scout’s Oath. A scout is loyal, and Roy was for 30 years a senior analyst for the Army Security Agency. His family to this day hasn’t a clue what he did. A scout is kind, and Roy married two widows, each with 4 children, raising 9 altogether. You get the idea. A few others spoke briefly. A member of the Harvard Club said Roy's comments and questions were always so good “he made the rest of us look better than we are” (laughter). An outspoken liberal said Roy (who claimed to be the Fellowship's token Republican) loved to argue but never tried to convince her to adopt his ideas, "and never even thought of adopting mine!" (more laughter). Roy was an Episcopalian, so Bill Opel, a Fellowship member and another retired Episcopal Priest (they are as thick as fallen oak leaves on the Cape) conducted the service with a few ecclesiastical touches. -- I later mused aloud on whether I wanted Chopin or Saint-Saens for my memorial. Nancy said plan away if it amuses you, but funerals are for the living. Good point. -----We also went to a political consciousness raiser for the same retired priest, who is running for Eastham selectman. We learned about the local water and “buildout” problems. “Buildout” (after which there is no more room in the inn) is predicted in under 10 years. I’d say more like five. Several golf course proponents added comic relief. Maybe a 3-holer somewhere, but not in our backyard. -----I haven’t lived in a small town since we left Ferguson, Missouri over 50 years ago. My mother had grown up there and knew everyone. Mayor Vossburg and his son Johnny were in the Indian Guides with my father and me. Johnny once ate an entire jar of peanut butter and got hives. He was a strange child, but I liked him. We drove around in the funeral director’s hearse every year, putting up signs for the Lion’s Club Carnival In a small town, you constantly run into people you know in the stores and the post office and everywhere else. You have to stop and chat, which makes for a pleasant but inefficient existence. -- I had a longish talk at the dump last week with a man wearing a Penn sweatshirt. His daughters had graduated from Penn in ‘92 and ‘95. I wonder if I helped them use the census. -- This evening while surfing past the local TV channel we heard Bob Seay, of the Nauset Fellowship and an announcer at WOMR radio in Provincetown, talking with David Willard, vice-president of the Cape Cod Five Bank, who used to play baseball with Nancy at Rock Harbor when they were ten, at least until Uncle Elmer’s septic tank began to collapse. Small world. -----Eastham has 4,500 full time residents (summer is another scene entirely), a population density of 320 per square mile, and is somewhere between suburban and rural in atmosphere. Everyone, including us, would like to lock the gate behind them, and why not. The town is perfect as it is. There is a serious “affordable housing” problem however, too few places to live for the folks who support the infrastructure and insist on having children too. It’s not as bad as in Aspen, Colorado, where I understand that houses start at a million dollars and tents are being set up for the doctors and lawyers. -- A cartoon in the bi-weekly Cape Codder has a bird saying to its mate, “Let’s build a trophy nest this year.” -----We had a pleasant visit with John and his girlfriend. Lindsay is taking a photography course and used us as subjects while we walked through the Red Maple Swamp. We played several games of Scrabble. I would think a continued interest in Scrabble spoke well for the new millennium, except that someone said they thought Scrabble was no longer being sold. ( No Computer Scrabble? Play against the OED?) We had great weather for them, two lovely early spring days followed by an attractive snow storm. They drove out to Race Point where they were able to lean steeply into the wind without falling over. -----My mother sent us “Ethel and Ernest”, by Raymond Briggs. Briggs also wrote “The Snowman”, a lovely children’s book and later an exquisite TV cartoon. Ethel and Earnest is a 100 page “comic book” covering the entire married life of the author’s working class English parents. Excellent and poignant indeed. I'll have to go through it again just for the pictures. -- Also recommending this month: Charles Sheffield’s “Borderlands of Science” and John Gribbon’s “Almost Everyone’s Guide to Science.” For brushing up on your quarks, galaxies, and retroviruses. -- The library system here is great. The CLAMS network includes a million items from 28 libraries, and you can request and renew them from home. I’m waiting to get the Java2 Complete Reference from Nantucket. I do my second CLAMS training session at the Library next Saturday. I had two customers last time. ----- -----A brief correspondence on “time”: -----JGD: Good question about time! I suppose I see it as a one way moving sidewalk on which we travel willy nilly. There are several questions about its nature that are curious. Does it speed up and slow down. As we get older we tend to see it as speeding up, particularly if we are technophobic or against change in the social order. Are there cycles such as business cycles or spurts of rapid innovation followed by periods of stability? Does it come in sections e.g. the dark ages? At the end of the 19th century the head of the US patent office recommended that it be closed to save money because everything had been discovered. Ah the Victorians!! -----Personally I think it moves on steadily and our perceptions change in part these days because of the media which needs to view with alarm; the sections are good teaching devices and disappear upon close inspection, although a really powerful historian can create a mood that is hard to dislodge. It is also interesting to see how many people want it to come to an end. The Christians want the 2nd coming and are willing to kill to create the new Jerusalem right now to hasten that end. The far left Marxist types don't call it the new Jerusalem but think they can bring about the same end with ritalin, OSHA inspections of the home work place, and psychological evaluations of loudmouth redneck baseball players. While I was baking today I listened on tape to the New Year's Prairie Home Companion. One of the skits involved a new world in which one's shower head gave a CAT scan every morning. One's home computer sends birthday cards and presents to other PCs. Food comes from central warehouses at the prompting of inventory control algorithms. Several different mood and health monitoring sites are located in the middle west and staffed by locals who have all sorts of well meaning interest on everyone else and their affairs. At need these centers dispatch the necessary chemicals to keep one physically well and on an even keel. Funny in his hands but it made me think. Eastern religions get the individual off by having the ultimate prize the loss of self. Finally there is the question of the final goal. Is there one? Is it good? Bad? Lots of good Anglo Saxons have told us it's bad. The east seems to like the wheel idea which avoids the end question. Helped along by the fact that my life has gotten better over the years from my 1954 low, I tend to general optimism and I fear the zealots who think a small elite and a few compelled changes can stop the flow. So much for philosophical musings. -----RMC: I was thinking of the mental "shape" of the perceived course of history rather than of time itself, but I suppose that is the question. I hadn't even considered a circular image, thereby betraying my Hebraic heritage. You once told me the hour glass was just Christian brainwashing. As to time though, I read Hawking's Brief History... a couple of years ago. I barely remembered it as I was reading it, but my impressions were: 1) it answered no questions I particularly cared about, 2) time and change/movement are about the same thing, 3) if the universe were contracting, time might run backwards. The latter point suggests to me that time may be illusory anyway. Or if not illusory then why not cyclical or circular, but so what. It’s all in the perception. I once semi-convinced a historian of science that if you couldn't tell whether you were talking with a computer or a person, then “artificial” intelligence was no different from any other sort -----Somewhere I read that the "present" is the last three seconds. Presumably this is the psychological present, not the philosophical present. But the last three seconds are just as much in the past as the Babylonian Captivity, are they not? Or if not, what are they? My conclusion is that the past is all there is, but that it enlarges as we observe it. We live in the past therefore, not just we seniors but everyone, which should I suppose sap our zest and spontaneity, but it doesn’t appear to. As our 5 year old daughter once said of something odd, "It must be one of the sweet mysteries of life!" ----- -----You have to wonder about your mental condition, when the first thing that comes to mind is always the weather, but we'd been warned of wet and chilly springs on the Cape, and sure enough last week was cold and rainy and most unfortunate for the spring breakers. There were plenty of these but fewer than last year our park ranger friend Peter says. They must have read the weather reports. It has been a mild winter on the whole, and, as we had few obligations, weather rarely inconvenienced us. We've had a lot of clear and almost fall-like days this spring, and we still haven't missed a day's nature walk. -----We walked the Red Maple Swamp with umbrellas yesterday. It's not much of a swamp in the summer, but now almost the whole half mile of newish non-wooden boardwalk (entombing a trillion plastic bags) stands in a foot or two of blackish water. Umbrellas furled, the rain and dripping made a lovely sound. The red maples are flowering, the bullbriar is greening, and any above-water bits of swamp floor are covered with an attractive but as yet unidentified plant [later tracked down as Wild Lily of the Valley]. We did see patches of the promised wood anemones. The plant is individually pretty but astoundingly Lilliputian, with a white flower the size of an aspirin. -----It's nice in the sun too, when the dark water reflects the sky and the trees and vines. Until a week or so ago anyway, when suddenly it was covered with an evil looking patina. Polly Pondscum perhaps, if Thornton Burgess had thought of it, Mother Westwind's chemical waste. At least I assume it's organically grown and probably good for something, in the long run. -----On the way back to the car we passed a house (the one with the old dog, the big tree, and the unused swing) where some objects were being offered for the taking. We passed up the boat trailer but I took an excellent level and a leather carpenter's belt. I was going to buy or make one of these for myself, as the biggest problem with reroofing is that there's no flat surface on which to lay your hammer. -----The men's group met here on Wednesday. Nancy went shopping but came back before it was over and read in the bedroom. The men were much quieter than the women, she pointed out, with long silences like a Quaker meeting. That's just how we old guys are. -----We've shingled more of the front of the house (Nancy rips off; I nail on) and planted 3 junipers and 2 azaleas under the living room windows. All are quite small but healthy looking. -----Interesting facts: -----In the 1870's a man named Gustavus Swift married a local girl and set up a slaughterhouse less than a mile from us on Thumpertown Road. Around 1880 he went to Chicago and started the country's largest meat packing business. Only 20 years before that, the same area was called Millennial Grove and was a revival campground attracting hundreds of thousands of restless souls, who, as Thoreau observed, also did a lot of picnicking. Before that, all of Eastham was a barren heath, its trees cleared for farming and then for the salt works. -- So much for the Good Old Days. -----The chairman of the building committee that built the UU's Chapel in the Pines ca. 1890 was none other than Captain Edward Penniman of the multicolored Penniman House. It was a Universalist congregation, which believed that all are saved. Perhaps this seemed a particularly comfortable idea to the world traveling Pennimans. -----If you were a child in the 1940's, you might remember the Uncle Whigley stories and a character called the Bad Pipsissewa. I had been puzzling all winter about the small evergreen plant that grows in our woods. Turns out it's the striped wintergreen or little pipsissewa. According to Webster's Second this is an Algonguian word, but Webster doesn't say what it meant. [later discovered to mean "breaks into little pieces - having to do with it alleged power to dissolve kidney stones, understandably a concern of the Algonquins.] -----We're glad Elian Gonzolas is back with his father. I was awfully tired of those Miami folks. We think Janet Reno is one of the few thoroughly decent people in the Government. ----- -----My book of the month is "Gifts of the Jews; how a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the way Everyone Thinks and Feels", by Thomas Cahill. This ranks with my discovery of "In search of Excellence" after its 39th week on the Times Best Seller list. The gifts aren't Mendelsohn and Einstein as I'd expected but history and the individual. I had many hours of instruction in the Old Testament in Seminary which produced only confusion. Cahill makes it all clear in an hour. Possibly too clear, but I'm coming to appreciate expediency. -----Speaking of revelations, I know I've mentioned the famous preacher who unsettled me at Seminary when he said that folks in the go-to-church business ought to like to go to church. Now here is Jack Spong, the retired bishop of Newark, saying that he doesn't care much for religious people. He finds too many of them petty and narrow minded. -- I know the fuss over Cardinal O'Connor's demise was largely political, and I suppose he was a nice enough guy, but he stood for so many of the prejudices and narrow certainties that have crippled the Church for two millennia. -- I'd been dimly aware of controversy about Bishop Spong when he encouraged his priests to perform gay marriages, but I was surprised and delighted by his appearance on 60 minutes. What a guy, and what sad pasteboard cutouts his interviewed detractors were. Where was Jack when I needed him? But why did I need him? Didn't I have a brain of my own, as my father often suggested? -----We had an excellent program at the Chapel on Sunday, a video on homosexuality called "Out of the Past". The main point was that homosexuality wasn't mentioned at all until recently, and without a past it's difficult for gays and lesbians to have a solid present. Although it included lots of history, the thread with tied it together was the establishing of the Gay-Straight Alliance at a high school in Utah by a really impressive young woman. We had a good discussion, and the topic attracted a number of visitors. I thought the Fellowship was at its intelligent best. -----On Thursday we volunteer to help get ready for the annual Fellowship yard and plant sale. We left our own rummage at the curb in Oreland, but I gather there is plenty around. Last month one fellowship basement produced a signed letter from Robert E. Lee, which was sold for the benefit of the Chapel. -----I'd sworn never again to own a lawnmower, so I'm pleased to report that the grass in our backyard is now 42" at its tallest. Nancy isn't quite as enthusiastic about this as I am, so I've had to enlarge the woodchipped area to 15' by 20' which, together with the double driveway gives us plenty of open space. The front yard, such as it is, seems to be composed of pine needles, moss, lichen, and various odd little plants that grow no taller than an inch. We've planted myrtle, with instructions to increase and multiply. Poison ivy, oak saplings, wild sarsaparilla, and other less identified species cover the surrounding forest floor quite nicely. -----There was much excitement, as reported in the Science Times, about the sighting of an albatross near Cape Cod, evidently some thousands of miles off course. I see the Cape's many children’s' authors racing to complete "Wrong Way Albatross". We ourselves saw a swan. Not so remarkable you'd think, except that I'm sure we've never before seen one that didn't arrive at its pond in a van. This one was mammoth and obviously flew in on its own. I briefly thought of walking up to it to see if it would fly out as well, but I decided it would more likely bite off my knee caps. ----- -----A half century ago I read somewhere that in addition to turning on its axis and circling the sun, the earth is moving in nine other directions as well. Wow, I thought. I noticed only recently that this bit of lore ranks with the one about all the vitamins in bread being in the crust. -- However relative, I still think of Philadelphia and points south as "down there" and we, despite living on what is called with Yankee camp the "Lower" Cape, as "up here". -----Cape Cod has inspired a lot of fine nature writing. Fortunately my own knowledge of nature is mostly phenomenological. Watching uncut grass grow, for instance, is quite rewarding. It sways in the breeze like a corps de ballet and ripples and bursts with surges of individuality as the wind eddies about our back yard. There are several varieties of grass in our long lawn, dancing alongside the dandelions. I thought dandelions were squat weeds, but given the chance they prefer being wildflowers at the top of a tall stalk. They also close up at night and open again only when the sun shines. Not so dumb. -----We have an inundation of chipmunks. They chase each other at blinding speed with yard-long leaps and spot turns. 'Oh fer cute,' as the Minnesotans say. The blue jays and grackles have discovered the bird feeder. They make a good argument for the unattractiveness of greed as they sprawl sideways or hang by their toes while stuffing their big beaks with finch food. -----A male and female cowbird (neither much for looks) stopped by this morning. The illustration in the bird book shows the female removing eggs from some unsuspecting mother's nest. What an odd way for DNA to be perpetuated. -----A vole crossed the road in front of our car the other day. Voles have almost no tails and look like cigar butts with legs. Nancy prefers to say they resemble large caterpillars. He made it, although the road is decorated with the remains of far speedier but less well organized grey squirrels. -- I understand that Ratty in Wind in the Willows is actually an English vole. I know of no books for young readers featuring voles per se however. I can't imagine why. -----An ugly black-on-white domestic cat stalks up our driveway every morning. An equally scruffy white-on-black skunk walks through our front yard every evening. Sometimes he pauses under the bird feeder for a few sunflower seeds. -- Trapping skunks for their fur was a big business on the Cape back in the '20's, but the popularity of skunk coats has passed. -----The nice little plant which carpeted the ground along the boardwalk in the Red Maple Swamp through April and May is the Wild Lily of the Valley (aka False Lily of the Valley, Massachusetts Mayflower, and Canadian Mayflower; there seems to be some anarchy in wildflower circles). The 2-inch fluff that covers half our front yard is Smaller Hop Clover, so called because its drying flowers curl down and turn brown, "like hops" the book says. I bought a quarter pound of hops once in an unsuccessful attempt to brew mead, but I forget what they looked like. -----I mailed in an application to be a volunteer at the National Seashore. I thought it might be they on the phone a few days later, but it was the President of the Friends of the Library asking me to be a Member of the Board. I had ignored the stack of "Board Member" applications at the Library, inviting any warm body to sign up who was willing to spare time from lobster scrubbing to help out at book sales and weed the Library garden. -- The Seashore got in touch too but seems more interested in my computer skills than my trail blazing abilities. I've been tempted to trim the poison ivy where it overflows the paths, but I'm afraid I might be prosecuted for destroying government property. -----June 6 was our 36th anniversary. We walked the trail to Coast Guard Beach in a light rain and strong onshore wind in the morning, as the storm was supposed to become worse later in the day. (It didn't - the weather forecast is almost always wrong on the Cape). The surf was huge and lovely and no one was there but us, not even the wetsuited surfers. What wimps. -----We went to lunch at the Hearth and Kettle to celebrate our anniversary and bumped into Harry and Edna. Harry is a former Bronx fireman and community worker and an eternal poet. When we stopped by his house to return a book last week, we saw a picture of him from his street work days in the Bronx, when he looked like a muscular Sonny Bono. Aging is not a straightforward business. Someone said to me a while ago, "but you're young". "Well, I’m 64," I said. "Yes, young," they agreed. -----I looked again at the pictures from my retirement party. The colleagues I used to work with look like freshfaced kids, although I know their approximate ages and they aren't. I was the old man, but it never seemed that way to me. It doesn't seem that way now. It seems rather that, with good fortune, I could have a little more time to grow up. -----Stendahl's (Beyle's) Red and the Black ground to a halt in mid book two. I skimmed through the remaining pages to it's presumably tragic end. None of the group liked it, but we has a good discussion as always. I gather it was a seminal book in its day. -- On a related note, walking along a sandy back road a day or two ago I passed a scruffy house bearing a neatly painted sign that read "The Viagra Oyster Company". Near the door another sign said simply "Beyle". Any suggestions of good books for book groups would be very much appreciated. We have to offer them in July. -----The roof is done. I'd bought 48 bundles (1245 shingles) and had exactly one shingle left over. For Evil Kneivel that would have been the result of good planning. I installed two roof vents to let hot air out of the attic and am putting an exhaust fan in the ceiling of the hall closet. This is considered excessive by some members of the family, but we don't plan to get air conditioning, and if New York is eventually to have Houston's climate... -----Speaking of which, in addition to an asteroid in the Atlantic, the melting polar icecaps, and the monster hurricane, a tidal wave generated by an underwater earthquake has been added to the list of our potential inundators. We are only 45 feet above sea level. But so are many others. ----- -----We've avoided mid-summer on Cape Cod for some years, but we had a front row seat this July when the brisk traffic on Route 6 ground to a sludge of creeping SUV's. Cottages that sat empty most of the year now have 3 and 4 cars in the driveway. Bicyclists, runners, power walkers, dog and kid exercisers, and after-dinner strollers pass our house in a steady stream. -----Things calmed a bit as the month progressed, and some of the festivity has been enjoyable. Without the services and cultural resources that the summer visitors inspire it's unlikely retirees would have settled in such numbers anyway. By now though a critical mass has formed, and there's some feeling that the flow should be restricted. At any rate, it's clear that more and wider highways would simply bring more cars. -----The 5000 winter inhabitants of Eastham could look formidable marching down Route 6, but in fact we disappear in winter, each of us becoming the Robinson Crusoe of our stretch of Thoreau's "bare and bended arm". It makes the summer invasion all the more shocking. -----Speaking of such things, "The Battle for God", by Karen Armstrong is an interesting and readable book. With historical background since the 16th century, she explains the confused but not illogical motivation behind contemporary Christian, Jewish, and Islamic fundamentalist movements as the fear of being erased by the modern world. One can empathize. -----We contributed to the July hullabaloo. Karen and David were tanned and fit and looked like celebrities. John seemed taller. Sara thrives in the corporate world, for now. Mari and Gloria were happily on their way to a Paris apartment. Mari brought us a copy of "After Long Silence", an intriguing memoir by her friend Helen Fremont. Fremont and her sister pieced together the story of their parents' astounding holocaust survival. We suggested it to our book group. Gloria hopes to rest up from the effects of her first year as hands-on principal of a Marian County high school. She doesn't complain, but my estimation is that Mother Teresa had it easy. -- Not everyone stayed with in the house of course, and they went off in all directions, but it was very enjoyable and rather different from family get-togethers of yore. -----Nancy and I were invited along to Provincetown on the 4th for fireworks. We had to park on the highway a mile from town. Commercial street was a more tumultuous scene than during the day, so Nancy and I set up a command post on a bench in front of the town hall while the others milled. We were entertained where we sat by clowns and singers and passing events and eventually sought out good seats on the beach to see the show. It was pronounced first-rate by nearly all. I'm still thrilled by many of life's offerings, but not so much by fireworks anymore. Sput zoop poof, sizzle sizzle sizzle, crack crack, boom boom BOOM. Almost as exciting as 50,000 people trying to leave P'town at the same time. Most of nature has wisely laid low this month, but the piping plovers insist on nesting at the height of the tourist season, to the offroad rage of the 4-wheel drivers. We're for the birds, though I suppose the cottagers feel as we might if told to leave our car in the street so as not to harm the caterpillars. (Piping Plover - Tastes Like Chicken). There is trouble with the Personal Water Craft people as well. The Park Service wants to ban PWC's. The Kennedy's like them we're told, though I can't see Teddy on one. I wonder if the duck hunters and the watercraft folk could work out something symbiotic? -----The marsh is pretty. The various bits of marsh really, but we think of them as one. It starts to turn gold almost as soon as it's fully green. It will change slowly for months now, a very attractive process. The trails aren't that busy. Most vacationers head for the beach, and the more settled retirees avoid the woods until Fall. We walked through the Red Maple Swamp in a light drizzle yesterday beneath Nancy's new Nature Conservancy umbrella. It's been a bad week for tourists, but we need the rain. We were quite alone. What a monstrous effulgence of green! Ferns fluffed. Seething meadows of bullbriar sent their shiny tendrils across the boardwalk. Foxgrape vines buried honeysuckle bushes in ten foot high towers of giant leaves. The lichen glowed a different shade on every tree trunk, and the birds kept up an orgiastic chorus in the background. I offered to help trim the nature trails, but the NPS hasn't responded, and on second thought I like the trails the way they are. As we left the jungle and walked up the path to Skiff Hill the gulls cried so piteously we thought at first they were small children being dragged on a outing against their will. Nature is never to be trusted. -----John and Betty visited us after a curling tournament in Falmouth. Curling was first played on frozen Highland lakes with a 40 pound stone, a broom, and a flask of scotch. We saw it briefly on TV at the last Olympics where it was quite entertaining and stately enough to display its fine points. They did well but didn't win. We had a nice time and enjoyed talking about our children and books and never really got back to old times. -----Millard and Rosemary were in the east to see various friends and to check out the New York City art scene. They'd been to Gilman, New Hampshire to research the first Thomas Frohock. They found the Frohock homestead a few miles south of Lake Winnepesaki. Together we turned up the location of Thomas's grave on a Revolutionary veterans Web site. Checking this out might be a pleasant fall trip some year. -- We too talked more about the present than the past. Perhaps this is a good sign among us seniors. -----We went twice more to Provincetown. I love its small scale sea-side Victorian beauty and bright colors. A tall ship had strayed into port and tied up at the wharf for a day. It was impressive though Disney-eske, but life aboard looked grim. Millard sails, but I find it hard to believe that I too descend from bold Frohock sea captains. I was first seasick at the age of 5 or 6 on a ferry across Tampa Bay. We strolled west on Commercial street as far as Wa, our favorite store, where objects of Asiatic beauty truly seem to soothe the soul. -----Our friends and relatives do quite a bit of touring. We admire their energy. We hope to travel some eventually, but we can't imagine driving ourselves much farther than perhaps Aunt Elizabeth in Ohio. (That's Ohio, Columbus!) We did enjoy a road trip to Florida in the late sixties, down from winter through the full range of spring and into an orange blossom summer in three days, with our small daughter sleeping under the motel room desk (near the night light). Life was simpler. -----I recall that my grandfather and two other men drove across the country in three days in the early thirties. Around the turn of the century he also used to swim five miles in Boston Harbor before breakfast. (I'd rather try to believe three impossible things.) As he frequently observed, it's a great life if you don't weaken. We've weakened of course but toddle on. -----After a warm spell in early August, lovely weather has set in again. I'm counting too heavily on President Al Gore's stepping into a phone booth to reverse global warming, but in the meantime we have few complaints. A mild winter with enough powdery snow to be interesting and a temperate summer with blankets and quilt needed most nights. -----We solved the grackle problem without government help. I found two wire baskets at the dump, possibly from an old freezer. With a little hacksawing they fit together nicely, making a not overly ugly cage to hold the smaller feeder. The goldfinches, chickadees, and titmice perch on the wire, waiting their turn at one of the feeder holes. Slim cardinals can get through with effort. But the grackles and blue jays, after trying every approach known to bird, have admitted collective defeat and concentrate on the other feeder. We're not anti-grackle. We just aren't pushovers. We even allow trickle-down contributions to the squirrel and chipmunk populations. -----On one sparkling and seventies day last week we went down Cape to check out Small's Swamp and Provincetown. We had bowls of kale soup at the Mayflower, and stopped in the library to give them a copy of Shadow Walkers and a flier for a dramatic production at the Chapel. This was to feature professional actors portraying a conversation between William Faulkner and Zora Neale Hurston. Unfortunately it had to be canceled owing to illness. -----As I worked on the Library garden early one morning, a political science professor I knew at Penn walked past on his way to pick up the Times at the Eastham Superette, and we had a long talk. He's teaching half time these days. His interest has always been Soviet Russia, but Russia isn't what she used to be. He spent the Spring in Israel and is considering a book like de Tocqueville's on America, (i.e. how Israel looks to an observant outsider). I'd line up to read it. He's sending me some other reading suggestions. -- Then the chief gardener invited the crew for a cruise and supper on his boat. It was quite enjoyable, particularly the hand-gathered oyster stew. -----Nancy and I have begun reshingling the south side of the house. Whether we go on to do the rear before winter is undecided. No one sees it, and it's in better shape than the side. We do want to add another 6 inches of insulation to the attic, and maybe put in the wiring for ceiling fans while I'm up there. Crawling around in unfinished attics is not one of my home handyman favorites, so best to get it over with. -----The sweet pepper bush, including our own, is blooming everywhere. It's a wonderful strong orangey perfume but not cloying. The swamp loosetrife is also in bloom and the ten foot tall common reed that lives on the edges of the salt marsh has acquired its purple tassles. This must be one of the loveliest alien invaders ever. Too much of a good thing is always a possibility. -----Both of us have at times missed the sense of worth that gainful employment gives. Nancy may do something about it. I may not. The Cape has a more serious labor shortage than most places but has solved it in part by importing unskilled labor from Jamaica and Brazil and more skilled workers from Europe. The latter are college age kids here to practice their English and have a nice summer. -----What are we doing I wonder? Productivity is at an all time high, but the chief benefits appear to go to the very wealthy (if after a certain point more wealth can even be considered a gain). The poor are becoming comparatively poorer, and the large middle class works twice as hard just to stay in place. Two wage-earner households, working 10 hour days and 6 day weeks, schedule time for fun and to be with their kids. And even so we have to import an underclass of foreign workers to do the menial tasks. What do we gain, and where does it end? Or is it simply that we can't stop? Or am I just an old guy who misses the point? Is it impossible in a relatively free society to have the good stuff like books, concerts and plays, stem cell research, and the quest for intelligent life in the universe, without also having SUV's, trophy homes, and Survivor? -- I gather that the national goal of Buddhist Bhutan is something much like genuine life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It'll never work. ----- -----It seems to me that in the olden days we often needed our winter coats by the end of August and enjoyed driftwood fires in the fireplace. Not that the days aren't pleasant and the nights cool. Furthermore, with the cost of oil doubling since last year an extended summer could be a blessing. Route 6 did become magically quieter after labor day. Every year there's a great gnashing and agitation to do something about the traffic, but the locals keep to the back roads and hold their tongues, knowing it all goes away. I approve of bicycles, but I don't miss the multigenerational groups of wobbling cyclists. -----The great blue herons have returned. They breed inland we understand, although Cape Cod seems to us an excellent breeding ground. In September small dry toads abound and seem neither very bright nor particularly quick on their feet. Their defense may be that they don't look overly tasty either. We saw a doe and a fawn at the edge of Nauset Marsh, only the second and third deer we've seen here in 35 years. They were much more wary than the urban deer which are common around Philadelphia. There were plenty of deer tracks in the snow last winter though. Perhaps the coyotes keep them down. There's a lot of anti-coyote agitation on the upper Cape (the built-up wimpy part). Concern is professed for cats and small children, but I think coyotes are just felt to be uppity and disrespectful, and the rich don't like it. -----"Windmill Weekend" was fun. This is an Eastham fair invented a dozen years ago in an attempt to extend the season. It's a thoroughly home-grown and very wholesome scene, mostly child oriented though there are Council on Aging and well-water testing booths. The Eastham Library sold popcorn. Popcorn machines are successful end-stage technology, like bookends and screwdrivers. -- I talked with Don Sparrow, who was at our booth signing copies of "Growing Up in Eastham; four brothers learning to stand tall." It's a nice book, about a youth not unlike yours and mine, but here in Eastham, and so involving skunks and quahogs. I don't often mention Shadow Walkers, but I had to tell him that I too had published a book about growing up in Eastham. He was properly startled. -- We were a bit too near the bandstand, the one jarring aspect of the afternoon. The mother of the pleasant but loud guitarist/singer was lounging at a fencepost nearby. The next act was a somewhat grungy rock band without mothers in evidence. The audience was largely toddlers. -----We took the car for servicing in Hyannis and on the way back stopped at Barnes & Noble, where Nancy bought 3 Barbara Kingsolver paperbacks. We also visited the Parnasus (used) Bookstore in Yarmouth. Unbelievably it's more crowded than ever, packed bookstacks reaching to its 12 foot ceilings, although the creaky 2d floor is now off limits. They have good books, but no bargains, and as always I was glad to get out alive. -- We bought a basil plant, which lives on the kitchen window sill. -----Nancy has been pushing Chaim Potok for 20 years. We own The Chosen and The Promise, and I've meant to read them for that long. I finally read The Chosen, and it's as good as she says. Wonderful. I'll read The Promise next. About growing up orthodox Jews in Brooklyn in the mid-1940's; about study, knowledge, wisdom, friendship, compassion, life. One of the books has recently been a play. -----I've decided to work on my French as my best bet to field a second language in this life. I'm reading a recent history of France without too much need for a dictionary. Of course non-fiction is always much easier than fiction, where writers insist on using words like haymow, roasting pan, and jack handle. Speaking of France, a chapter in Richard Bernstein's (NYT correspondent in Paris) "Fragile Glory; a portrait of France and the French," Chapter 4. "Paris the Conqueror", p. 70-95, is one ot the best short descriptions of contemporary Paris I've seen. -----I gave the "Future of Libraries" talk on Sunday. I thought it went well. I certainly enjoyed doing it and plan to write it up as several people have kindly requested. Nancy said she learned a lot about libraries. This doesn't surprise me, as over the years her eyes have tended to glaze when the conversation turned to my work. And who could blame her. My colleagues and I often talked about how we had to keep constantly in mind that only librarians were really interested in libraries per se. Which could be said of many fields no doubt. My father talked brilliantly at the dinner table of the frequently bizarre people he worked with, but he rarely mentioned the L&M Annual Report or state cigarette tax law. -----The book group discussed Midwives. I was afraid I might be the only one who felt lay midwifery (a fairly central plot element) was idiotic in this day and age, but all the other ladies seemed to agree. (More than once at the Penn Library a patron began, “I was talking with one of the other ladies....”) Next month Nancy facilitates the discussion of After Long Silence, a post-holocaust memoirs by Mari's friend Helen Fremont, which Nancy and I both devoured in a day. Terrific writing. -----I read in the paper that it's customary in the South to pack all your goods and chattels in a Ford Explorer and drive at maximum speed for many hours on your Firestone tires. It's amazing to me that people can view the steady increase in the quantity and impact of automobiles, trucks, airplanes, power boats, weapons, lawnmowers, lawns, videos, popular music, movies, TV, professional sports (except baseball), and so many other things that produce mayhem and pollution as anything other than a serious social problem. But they do. -----We were guests at a Harvard Club luncheon last Friday, because it was thought Nancy might enjoy hearing Mary Maples Dunn, former dean at Bryn Mawr and president of Smith. She did. Dunn is now head of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies (60 fully funded graduate fellows; and terrifying intense one suspects). Most of the guests were Cliffies in fact, women outnumbering men 3 to one, a fact of senior life. The woman next to me seemed to be searching for someone, but she suddenly turned to me and said hello and proved to be highly intelligent and most amusing. She had just returned from a Mediterranean tour and bemoaned the fact that her fellow tourists hadn't a clue what they were seeing. The woman next to Nancy had grown children in Erdenheim and Flourtown and knew all the party boat captains Nancy had known in her youth at Rock Harbor. -----We were concerned about John (in London) and Lindsay (in Paris), but John reports that the petrol problems were just entertaining for him, as he walks everywhere. He is pleased that the British Museum is free, because he lives only a few blocks away on Newman Street. Westminster Abbey has a 3 pound admission and the Tower of London costs 8 pounds. He'll wait for a window of opportunity. He's had some free theater tickets though and is enjoying his courses in metaphysics, the Arthurian Legend, and "Cities, communities, and urban life: London". He had cleverly taken all his required courses in his first three years. He has the spare time to learn Java, he says, with an eye to earning a living next year as he explores the floating world of N.Y. theater. ----- -----We celebrated a year in our house this month and have declared both the year and the house a success. I wasn't certain about that in the uprooted early weeks, but my doubts faded, and Nancy never had any. The year was invested largely in reading, exploring our surroundings and working on the house. We took our walks at Coast Guard Beach, Nauset Marsh, or the Red Maple Swamp every day, missing only once or twice despite high winds, rain, and snow. We aren't naturalists, but we couldn't fail to notice the kaleidoscopic changes daily worked by sun and sky and vegetation. In spite of ourselves we began identifying birds and wildflowers, using the field manuals that Nancy's father had left us. We made forays down Cape as well. ("Down East" parlance is actually used here, but it will probably always seem counterintuitive to me). Every so often we checked in at Pilgrim Spring, Small's Swamp, Bearberry Hill, the Beech Forest, and the Provincelands trails. Commercial Street in Provincetown is a charming nature walk of a kind. -----We've slowly "gotten involved" (as one is told to do for one's own good), with the Eastham Library, a book group, the Nauset Fellowship, and finally the school system. Involvement has moved more to the forefront as the second year gets underway. If the pond is small enough, even the smallest frogs get called on. We, but mainly Nancy, are the coordinators for the book group this year. Nancy runs things, and I type lists and directions and send emails. We're volunteering in the school system, Nancy with disabled grade-schoolers, and I in the "Common Time" program at the middle school. The director is a dynamic woman with a theater background, (who turns out to be the wife of our family physician, 6 degrees of separation being closer to 3 on Cape Cod). I find myself concerned with things like "blocking" and "stage business" which John has mentioned from time to time. We'll perform at nursing homes, hopefully for enthusiastically uncritical audiences, doing skits, readings, song, and dance. (No, I dont dance, and my singing will be blessedly inaudable.) We're increasingly involved in "The Fellowship". (I still hear echoes of Tolkein or Grisham.) A Unitarian/Universalist fellowship is a congregation intentionally (gleefully one might even say) without a minister. Nancy is organizing the Christmas gifts for a homeless family. I lead the grounds crew and assist the house engineer. We attend monthly potlucks, and in our turn provide the nosh for the Sunday meeting and host the monthly men's and women's groups. I agreed to be the MC for the "entertainment" after the Thanksgiving potluck last week. “Bravely done,” one woman said. -----I'll do another talk in January, on Understanding Fundamentalism, which is proving to be a fascinating area of exploration. Other members have spoken on Science and Religion, William Blake, art, China, public health, water quality, environmentalism, the Peace Corps, and so on. Outside speakers have covered every conceivable topic, with a tendency toward "social responsibility", the general theme of contemporary Unitarianism. -- I'm told that one woman had attended the Fellowship for six months before she learned there was supposed to be any "religious" connection at all. It is rather tenuous. We are vilified in right-wing publications (with ample justification) as "secular humanists" and occasionally (with a bit less generosity) as "the spawn of Satan". Perhaps a T-shirt to that effect would be a seller. -----It's odd to think that we're Unitarian/Universalists simply by virtue of signing the guest book. (We also make a small pledge, but that's refreshingly neither required nor asked for.) It was such a deal to become (and remain) an Episcopalian. The dictionary says that Unitarians are "monotheists who reject the doctrine of the Trinity" and "emphasize freedom and tolerance in religious belief and the autonomy of each congregation." It was long ago that I had anything to do with the Church Fathers, but they were mostly philosophers, and my vague impression is that they meant the Trinity to be a nice metaphor representing human experience of the divine rather than a cordon blu recipe for God. (I grew up assuming that every religious belief was intended to be metaphorical.) The Universalists believe that all mankind will be saved. They got together formally with the Unitarians around 1960. I sense that the Nauset Fellowship itself has drifted beyond concerns about monotheism and salvation. A new friend of ours reports that she wandered by accident into the UU church in Provincetown and read the (non-binding) "Principles of the UUA". She said to her to herself, "Aha, that's me." Our web site, www.nausetfellowship.org, was not yet active at the end of November. -----Yesterday's Fellowship meeting was sufficiently bizarre, (and yet so typical), as to be worth a fuller account. There was some program confusion, and the speaker didn't appear. This could have been particularly embarrassing as there were a number of guests, two of whom Nancy had encouraged to come. Fifteen minutes into the meeting we were fussing about what to do when one of the walk-ins, a thin, modestly dressed man in his 50's, with long grey hair tied in a pony tail, (one member observed that he looked and sounded like George Carlin), stood and introduced himself and said he'd be glad run a program for us. After a moment of stunned silence, the president said okay, we'd take a chance. The guy was great. He said he had an M.Ed. in Special Ed. and worked with the retarded but that he had just read a book on the causes of violence, specifically on why groups invade the territory of other groups and kill them, and he'd like to talk about that. He did this, briefly and well, and then led one of the best discussions we'd ever had, and we have good ones. -----During the coffee and (always substantial) refreshments I joined a lively conversation between a nuclear physicist and a pacifist poet. Both are 80 and charming and know how to relate to their fellow human beings. -----Nancy is producing notepaper to sell during Eastham's 350th anniversary year celebration in 2001. (Actually Eastham was founded as "Nauset" in 1644, and included the present towns of Orleans and Wellfleet, but it was incorporated as "Eastham" in 1651.) She got the idea from Aunt Elizabeth and has affixed some of her own lovely 3"x5" photographs of Cape scenes to blank notepaper. The 350th Committee was quite enthusiastic. -----As to our national electile dysfunction, we find it mostly entertaining, and certainly not threatening so far. I wouldn't expect much useful from the Democrats if they won or anything too awfully destructive from the Republicans, though I could be wrong. Environmental damage might be difficult or impossible to reverse. I'd be a little concerned too that overturning Roe v. Wade might encourage the resurgent religious right to attempt additional "government interference with our personal lives", to borrow their language, and that they might want us to threaten Europe and China with nuclear Armageddon, if they failed to toe our moral line. Remember "The Handmaid's Tale"? -----Just before the cold set in we saw a number of frogs in the Red Maple Swamp. We understand that this is a hopeful sign, at a time when we could use one. We also took out a bargain family membership in the Massachusetts Audubon Society and now have access to 5 miles of lovely trails on the bay side of Wellfleet, including ponds, creeks, marsh, dunes, fields and forests and a miniature treasure island. We stood at the edge of the marsh and watched for ten minutes as flocks of black birds darted and wheeled in the sun, faster it has been suggested than is physically possible without recourse to wormholes in space and time. ----- ----- The high tide today coincided with a very strong west wind and filled the marsh behind First Encounter to the brim and came up over half the road. The bay surf was smashing against the bluff at the end of Thumpertown, just below a half completed new house. I'd be nervous. ----- A few days ago I started off on my morning walk at 7:00 AM, just as the sun was rising. What a day! The temperature was around 30 degrees. There was a gusty wind that made the oak leaves swirl and the pitch pines sway stiffly, but the blue sky was a fixed backdrop of scattered high clouds, huge gray-brown rags topped with bright white. Dozens of crows sat around on the telephone wires and branches, feathers plumped against the cold and looking like absurdly outsized robins. ----- Good news, the Tasmanian Tiger is about to be regenerated: "Black-and-white photographs abound, showing a large doglike marsupial with tan fur and black stripes across its lower back and rump. Like the Tasmanian Devil and its more distant relative the kangaroo, the female tiger carried its young in a pouch. The animal had a heavy, rigid tail like that of a kangaroo. Once DNA damage is assessed and repaired, the tiger’s genetic blueprint will be inserted into the egg of a close relative, probably the Tasmanian devil or the numbat, another marsupial, for incubation." (from MSN) ----- It's odd to think that although tigers (of the ordinary kind), elephants, and rhinocerai are an important part of our childhood heritage, more real to us in some ways than the human inhabitants of the same lands, they are probably rarer than numbats, while we, "the consumate weed" are nearly as plentiful as lice. ----- We had an inch of snow last week. The Cape under snow is a different place, like reading a familiar book in a foreign language. There were lots of rabbit tracks on the driveway but no coyotes, which I'm sure the rabbits appreciated. Along the trails we occasionally see a sad little pile of feathers, a brief memorial to an unwary bird. We'll have to go out and take a few snow pictures for Nancy's Eastham 350th Anniversary notepaper project. ----- I'd saved most of the Times front pages for the past month, for John if he's interested, and in hopes that it would be a fascinating tale with a satisfying end. I can see honest disagreement on all sorts of social, economic, and political issues, but I find it depressing that more of our citizens aren't interested in practicing democrary through a full and accurate vote, regardless of the outcome. It's still more disturbing if the Supreme Count isn't. Where's the good old American spirit of fair play? Or maybe it fled, along with the amateur Olympics. Barney Frank says it doesn't matter, that Trent Lott sounds vicious because that's what he does for a living. We'll see. ----- We read lots of mysteries and a few "literary" novels, (in my case mostly for our book group). Mysteries are underrated I think. Some are rich in background, plot, and characterization. Others are as full of angst as the typical "serious" novel, annoyingly so at times. I like reading about people who are in no more than normal human turmoil and confronting interesting but not overwhelming difficulties. How can we relate to fictional accounts of magic, insanity, larger than life characters, wrenching trajedy, world shaking events, etc? This stuff belongs in history and psychology books. I've read a few science fiction novels which try to create truly non-anthropormorphic aliens. The results are always ludicrous and ultimately uninteresting. Talking with an intelligent laboratory rat might be rewarding, but who really cares about alien entities? -- I am thankful for characters who worry about their children though. I'm often afraid for my children. (Or for me really. For how I'd feel if something happened to them.) Everyone, (even we), is so casual in talking about their kids' hairy adventures, until you talk a little longer, and then it comes out that we all worry. ----- When I first wandered into the Chapel in the Pines a year ago I found the Nauset Fellowship warm and welcoming, intelligent and funny, and finally serious and caring. "Basically a support group, " someone said, but most such groups have set roles and goals, and offer inclusion only at a price. Few support their members just as they come or attempt to see the world around them as it really is. The Fellowship seems to do both, and like its classy old box is a treasure. We disagree now and then, but although guilt and anger are unproductive, a little angst and puzzlement seems a reasonable cost for shedding light. If UU's can't think and talk and wrangle about everything, who can? |