Cape Year Two

CAPE COD REPORTS, 2001

These 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, October, November, December

JANUARY

So George W. Bush never really meant to have a centrist administration? Big surprise. But then Hitler told the truth in Mein Kampf, and no one believed him. We Americans are pretty careless about our future, but fortunately we're good at cleaning up messes.

The cabinet member I most worry about is Eleanor Norton, James Watt's protege. We can fix social and economic damage, but environmental losses could be permanent. Well, permanent in this particular universe.

E.O. Wilson in "Consilience", my book of the month, sketches a scenario in which we might want to "save" a small ecosystem (as if on disk) from rising water behind a dam and then "restore" it elsewhere. With all the expertise and money in the world, he says, it can't be done, not now at least. The web of relationships is far too complex. 100 million years of evolutionary invention would be drowned to generate a few more kilowatts.

As Wilson says: "The only way to save the Creation with existing knowledge is to maintain it in natural ecosystems. Considering how rapidly such habitats are shrinking, even that straightforward solution will be a daunting one." There's a habitat in Mashpee that's targeted for a golf course!

A fuzzy month, filled with domestic doings and a good deal of cold drizzle. We go to Florida in February to celebrate my mother's 90th birthday. She's keeping her car until then at least. It will be nice to see her, and briefly to enjoy the balmy breezes, live oaks, and palm trees.

Given the admittedly peculiar fact that anything exists at all, the universe makes complicated sense in something like Stephen Hawking's view, and life makes preposterously convoluted sense in Darwinian terms. But what of our conscious selves? Who and what are, we and what are we good for? Surely not to be an appreciative audience for the benevolent force which shepherded our becoming. Is self-consciousness just handy for survival (which it seems to be up to a point), a biological accident that worked out fairly well, like everything else in the evolutionary path.? Is consciousness really individual, or is it shared? And, in either case, what do we do with it? Is even wanting to know this just the nature of the beast, or could that particular desire be counter-productive in the long run? Perhaps that's why so many good burghers voted for sparklingly vacuous George instead of dully brainy Al.

Beginning, learning, creating, enjoying, marvelling, risking, connecting, losing, continuing, surviving, and finally running out of steam. Is there a pattern there, or is what meaning and value there may be entirely in the details? Better there than nowhere.

We had a fascinating book group discussion of Mary Catherine Bateson's "With a Daughter's Eye". It was concluded that the book was filed with quiet rage at her egocentricaly brilliant parents, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. I enjoyed the ideas that popped up every few pages, such as: there is no individual apart from his or her relationships; there is no communication without context; anthropologists include themselves in their observations, but biologists often don't; an ecosystem may have a mind (and if so, I suppose a machine may too.) One of the women had met Margaret Mead in Margaret's old age, when she wore a cloak, carried a staff, and was a professional character. She didn't care much for her. A bi-sexual swinging Episcopalian must have been an interesting parent, friend, spouse, and colleague. "May you have interesting parents!" could be like the old curse: "May you live in interesting times!"

Our daughter Karen is now a social worker and career advisor for the Transitional Work Corporation, a welfare-to-work agency, and a behavioral consultant for Assessment and Treatment Alternatives, both in Philadelphia. We understand that it's very satisfying to be back in her own field after a long and stressful foray into office management at the Franklin Institute.

Our daughter Sara is Assistant Director for Development and Member Services for The American Anti-Vivisectionist Society, with national offices in Jenkintown, PA. A determined switch from working for a pharmacautical corporation. I looked at the aavs.org web site and though it very nice, particularly the animal frieze and the animated rat. I suggested putting jolly pictures of lab animals up front and make the nasty ones an option. Sara says they'll consider it. I support the cause, both because I think we ought to be decent to fellow creatures and because it's an important symbol. We are all part of life, all in this together. If we fail to respect one branch of the family we damage the whole.

How proud we are of our interesting, independent, and constructive children. We look forward to hearing more as the jobs unfold.

We had a nice lunch at the Abbots for the very charming young NARAL (abortion rights) ladies who spoke at the Fellowship. The speaker had majored in sociology and women's studies at Smith. Smith is a mix of activists and preppies she said. I think it always was. On the way home we saw four deer in the Marsh at Mary Chase Road. I'm glad there are deer around to feed the deer ticks. The significance of a sign finally sinks in: "Deer Tick Habitat". This is generally interpreted as meaning "watch out for hostile ticks" but what it really SAYS is, "Ticks live here as happy as clams, so intrude on THEIR turf at your own risk."

In the olden days I had often insisted that work should be "fun", so a former colleague hopes for me that I'm having fun now. I note that a "petard" is not a kind of lance, as I had always thought, and that being hoist on one's is rather comical. Well I suppose I am having fun, but I hadn't thought of our current lives in those terms exactly. Perhaps, after all, the whole idea of fun belongs more to the sunny days of youth. It has been a great year, the best in our lives, but more peaceful than dionysian, and it is always shadowed by the world around us. Our own aging and infirmity and that of friends and relatives is never far away. Occasional fear breaks in, chiefly for the happiness and well-being of our children, but also for the sanity and stability of the ecosystem. Al Gore wins the election and loses the presidency. Madness envelopes the middle east. Saddam makes germs while we make hydrocarbons. And yet why fuss, brief candles that we are, bewildered birds on our short flight through the lighted hall. So a rather subdued brand of fun.

We were very social, 8 parties in December. The bleak mid-winter comes as a relief. Small activities fill the hours to the extent that we look forward to the odd day on which we have nothing to do. Work seems far in the past, and so extreme. Last fall I left for the Middle School at 7:45 am two days a week. But to do this every day! We changed "Common Time" to Thursday afternoons in January. I can't say I'm sorry.

We've been taking photographs so Nancy can make note cards with them to sell for Eastham's 350th celebration. They go like hotcakes. I'll put more photos on the web when I can get them scanned. It is strange to live in a place which gives the illusion of remaining unchanged for so long. It IS an illusion of course. 350 years ago Eastham was covered by an ancient hardwood forest. By 1850 it was a barren heath of worn out and deserted farmland. Then it was replanted with pines, asparagas, and turnips. Then abandoned again, and finally built on, then overbuilt, and within 5 years from now it looks to be entirely "built out". It still feels woodsy and wild though, as most houses are on good-sized lots which many leave largely natural, and the watery edges remain lovely and relatively unspoiled.

We went to dinner at a watercolorist's. I can hardly wait to try my hand. I borrowed a video which I will watch while Nancy is at the elementary school. Water colors are so delicious. Harder than oils, I gather, but no one needs to see my failures. "The meaning of life is art," says Oscar. I've been enjoying a biography of Oscar Wilde, a much more interesting fellow than I ever realized. A brilliant classical scholar, poet, and dramatist, and kind as well as flamboyant. John saw Wilde's grave at the Pere Lachaise cemetary in Paris. Wilde prostrated himself at Keat's grave in Rome on the same day he had merely shaken hands with the Pope, thereby angering his catholic convert friend David Hunter-Blair, (a forebear of the James Hunter-Blair whom Nancy met in Scotland). John left a poem at Keat's grave four years ago.

We crossed the street to a neighborhood party one night. Good food, nice people, gorgous house, and a vast collection of those attractive old-timey ceramic houses, churches, and stores. Good sturdy drinkers too; we left early. Jari's Christmas party was an altogether different kettle of delightfully odd fish.

I went off to the middle school, for a sort of wrap-up breakfast, and found the roads clear but every branch and twig coated with new snow. The remaining brown oak leaves are topped with white and every pitch pine needle presented like a piece of costume jewelry. Accompanied on the car radio by a Hayden piano trio, it all floated a few inches above the ground. If it stays cold we'll go out later and look for photo ops.

I read a book when I was maybe 10, called Camp Lenape on the Long Trail. This kid wanted to go on "the" long camping trip at the end of the summer (why!!), but he had to do a huge amount of stuff to qualify. It looked hopeless to him (and to me too). But of course he surprised himself and did it, one thing at a time. I don't think the book changed my life, but I obviously never forgot it. This is why everything from kicking alcoholism, through starting a business, to becoming a saint seems to be a twelve-step process.

Sorry. January got to be a long month.

FEBRUARY

Weather

Nice weather here, sunny and 40's this morning, with all sorts of birds chriping and chuntering. I can see why when the temperature at the south pole goes above freezing the scientists walk around in their underwear. A calm and sunny Cape day with the temperature in the 30's seems almost springlike. We wear light coats and take longer walks. The birds fly about aimlessly. We see robins and redwing blackbirds hopping and chattering from tree to tree in flocks of 30 or more. We continue to go out on colder days, with many layers of clothing, mufflers, mittens, boots and hoods, but we consider those to be winter expeditions more than walks. The only birds we see then are a few gulls and troops of black ducks floating low in the water like bars of soap. Despite the red cedars and the stubornly green ivy, huckleberry, and honeysuckle, the woods look dead.

Peter has a 60x zoom spotting scope trained on Nauset Marsh from his living room. He sees many kinds of birds besides black ducks. You can even see puffins from Race point he says. You stand there leaning into a below zero windchill for hours, one eye frozen to your telescope, and with luck a puffin may flit past. I'd very much like to see one, but I think we'll give it a miss. I used to think puffins were purely literary, as in: "There once was a puffin the shape of a muffin, and it lived on a island in the deep blue sea. It ate little fishes that were most delicious. I had them for supper, and it had them for tea." If there's more to that I've forgotten it.

Florida.

Our trip to Florida was pleasantly uneventful. My mother is in fine shape at 90. She gets around carefully but without assistance, and still drives well. We had some good talks about the past, a subject she sometimes avoids, being very much an in-the-present sort of person. History has its pleasures though, and we enjoyed them. Looking through the albums always inspires such conversation. Pictures always smile. It's no accident of course that the mind too supresses the gloomier affects of our past histories and retains the cheery ones. Driving is a symbol of freedom for my mother, as it is for Nancy. To me a car has always been a necessary burden. I prefer public transportation when it can do the job. You can read or look out the window. We appreciated it Sunday night on our return from Florida, when our cheerfully burly woman bus driver wheeled her big Plymouth and Brockton coach through the Danteesque Big Dig maze in the rainy dark.

We ate twice in the Regency Oaks dining room. Nancy thought that the Bourbon Chicken and the grilled Salmon tasted alike. I thought they were both quite good, but like Calvin Trillin I'm an eater. Food has to be pretty bad for me not to enjoy it. The newest Regency craze is motorized carts. There are at least a dozen of them zipping about the halls. The word is that Medicare pays. No cart races have been mentioned.

Back from Florida, it seemed hardly like we'd been away. Which is not surprising as we were there only two full days, and the temperature was about the same as it is here this morning, in the mid-fifties. From the air, much of Florida looked parched and brown and I'm not surprised that there are now fires, but Clearwater was green where the sprinklers had been operating. I understand that February is not one of their showier months.

Conversation

I found the following statement in an article in the UU WORLD about the long friendship between a group of UU's and a Japanese Buddhist sect: "For Japanese people to speak to one another openly about their feelings was a completely revolutionary idea when Nikkyo Niwano introduced this practice. The heart of his faith is that people work out the business of living through conversation and mutual support."

I think that's true, although it's not easy for some of us. It's as much un-American as it is un-Japanese, certainly not what John Wayne would do, and a lot of Americans wouldn't know how to listen. Real conversations are rare but rewarding. In a conversation long ago I learned that my "dissappointment" with a friend was my problem. In another I told someone to stop running himself down, and he stopped. Amazing what can be done with a few words. Bad things too, but I wish I'd had more of those conversations.

I'm trying to understand why I'm more sociable in my golden years. I like the UU's. I like their principles and their easy acceptance of anyone who walks in the door. Perhaps it's age that makes me attracted to a group of any sort. Even as an active clergyman I was mostly a church of one. I became more of a team player at the Library over time but never an enthusiastic one. I'm only gradually seeing that belonging to others doesn't have to mean giving up much of yourself. I don't think I could have done Common Time a few years ago, done improv theater or mirror movement with pre-teens or helped a student write a story about superheros. I wish I had figured this out decades ago, but I also wish I'd been a doctor and an architect, and studied brain science, limnology, the history of philosophy, classical archaeology, and Romance linguistics, learned to play the violin and written detective novels about it all. There are also things I'm glad I didn't do.

I haven't made a lot of progress with my writing this year, except for these monthly reports. I've edited some writings, which I enjoy doing, but not really moved forward much. I always write though, when I'm cheerful and when I'm not, different things to different people. Writing is often more personal than talking, more open, less cautious, more serious, which is why I sometimes hang onto to a letter for a day or two, to make sure it's what I really want to say or to reveal about myself. But not always. There are no rules.

Jobs

Karen loves her new full-time job as a career counselor at Transitional Work Corp., a work-to-welfare agency and part-time job as a supervisor at a disturbed child agency. She's making decent money in her own field. If John goes back to Philadelphia, perhaps they'll look for an appartment together, probably in Mt. Airy, one of the more interesting neighborhoods in a good city. -- They found a great one in Mt. Airy through a colleague of Karen's; they'll get it in December. Mount Airy is one of the more civilized places on earth.

Sara too loves her new job with the American Anti-vivisectionist Society, a well-funded 19th century organization with a sensible program of science-based substitutes for much animal testing. I've been reading the AAVS Magazine, their quarterly journal. It's well done. A park ranger friend said he read E. O. Wilson's Biophilia a few years ago, hoping to find a way to turn everyone on to a love of all living organisms. He didn't find it there, but he's still looking. I suppose that is pretty much the goal of the AAVS too, and a good one, although I'd hate to have to give up eating shrimp and scallops. "...not yet, Oh Lord," as St. Augustine is supposed to have said. I sent Sara an essay on animal rights, "Am I Blue" by Alice Walker. [originally Utne Reader: Jan-Feb 1989, n31, p98 (3 pages). ]. The essay was removed from California school readers because it was anti-meateating. Our "traditional values" so often involve simply what we want to do: eat meat, drill for oil in YOUR back yard, support the military, and keep women and the poor in their place.

Jane, my friend and former boss, will be the new director for public services and collection development at the Princeton Library. This is richly deserved, and we're very pleased for her. It's a challenge of course, something on the order of promoting the South Bronx as a theme park. Libraries have much in common with salt mashes. They are among the most productive organisms on earth, but they get little recognition for it. -- (I've just heard that the South Bronx is doing rather well these days).

Environment

The current state of environmental politics and economics is surely as difficult to analyze as avian ecology. There are thousands of organizations and interest groups, ranging from ELF, through Greenpeace and PETA to the Nature Conservancy, hundreds of thousands of legistors and officials, and millions of concerned citizens. Has anyone investigated and organized how one might best influence decisions on the top issues? What ARE the issues, where will the decisions be made, and by whom, and what are the most effective means of wielding influence? Can we use the web effectively? I wouldn't expect to achieve mouseclick democracy as in a game show. -- I don't think we'd want that anyway. What sounds good to me may not be good. I'd need to trust the experts to a considerable degree. -- But I have the feeling now of sending messages into the void. Perhaps the forces on all sides have enlisted machines to do this already? Maybe we should be writing personal letters on scented paper.

We distrust government. We see Federal controls on gun ownership as a move towards confiscation, national safeguards against executing the innocent as a preface to ending capital punishment, the decennial census as an invasion of privacy, and taxes as theft. But we elect government officials to represent our views. The laws and regulations they enact are supposed to carry out our will, and we should benefit from government programs. Personally I'd like to see handguns outlawed, but if stricter registration and background checks can help, let's try them. I think the death penalty is a public admission of our failure as a nation, but I'd prefer at least that innocent people weren't executed. Abortion and capital punishment, war and peace, government interference and social injustice are all considered evil by at least some of us. If we can't have it all our own way, why can't we trade a little moderation here for a little there? -- And as to its being "our money," of course it is. It's all our money, whether we spend it on guns, bombs, national parks, education, or restaurant meals and TV sets.

I suppose all fields of knowledge are interconnected for Wilson because everything is "reduced" to biophysics, and cultural evolution rests on epigenetic (built in) structures. As I vaguely understand it, Wilson suggests that some very basic human/animal behaviours (language capability, group solidarity, etc) have evolved genetically over the past few hundred thousand years and support or influence the learned behavior of recent millenia. (Not always: he mentions the unfortunate south sea habit of eating one's ememies' kuru infected brains! And we could offer clear-cutting forests and filling the air with hydrocarbons.) And, oh yes, free will is a useful illusion. So cultural evolution is both a function of and analogous to biological evolution. I don't disagree, and I can't say it bothers me. Nor is this a new idea evidently. I ran across the following passage in Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence (p. 582):

"[Walter] Bagehot's gift of double-mindedness appears strikingly in his short work Physics and Politics [1869], which William James called a 'golden little book.' It undertakes to apply Darwin to politics, but Bagehot is no Social Darwinist. He begins indeed by showing 'Natural Selection' in the early stages of the march of civilization--the better organized, more cooperative groups conquer the less unified. But then more and more other qualities, initiatives, and ideas--liberty, free discussion, written law, habits of calm reflection, of tolerance and generosity--conduce to survival, because they make for an ever higher degree of cohesion....... and the enlargement of civilization." Barzun says that 'Bagehot' is pronounced 'Badjet'.

I haven't fully absorbed today's Science Times on the human genome. The message seems to be, (as with the functioning of the human brain), that it's not so much the goodly number of parts as it is the complexity of their interrelationships. The notion of meddling with the genome becomes problematic. It might be rather difficult to identify the epigenetic source of a tendency towards group violence for instance, and even trickier to snip it out. The question though may be not so much whether such totally inoffensive persons could exist as whether their DNA could increase and multiply? Prince Myshkin in Dostoevski's The Idiot was a thoroughgoing nice guy who didn't survive. I remember my excellent parents suggesting I might have to "toughen up" a little to face the challenges of the school yard, and asking why eveyone else couldn't just be nicer.

It's hard not to misunderstand one another on these issues. Stephen Jay Gould wrote in a review that Daniel C. Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea was "Darwinian Fundamentalism". For the same point as made in Consilience I think, the suggestion that human behavior is based in part on epigenitic predispositions and evolves in a genetic-like way. This can encourage racists! You would think though that Gould would see that extremists can always twist good science and history to meet their needs or can simply pluck their justification out of the air. I can see that "genetic diversity" might play into the wrong hands, but it also seems fairly likely. It doesn't have to mean that there are master and servant races (or that if there were, the WASPS would be on top. Maybe that's the real fear!). There's enough genetic variation even among Icelanders, for example, to require a social system which protects the less capable blue-eyed blonds. -- The latest news stories greatly play down "genetic" differences between human racial and ethnic groups, but there are still differences, and they are still in part genetic. So what.

We're a single species, but I'm not sure what a "single human nature" means. It seems more a leap of faith or a useful fiction. I'll buy it I guess, but would it exclude extra-bright apes or all those folks who regularly visit us in their saucers but leave surprisingly little trace of themselves, and who might share our thoughts without sharing a species?

Gould has an article in the Feb 19 Times about the recent genome discoveries. He is elated that the human seems to be the product of emmensely complex interrelationships between parts of genes, rather than being the case of: one gene, one protein, one function, which I'm not sure anyone ever thought anyway. He feels this trumps the "reductionists". It seems to me he is still looking for God in the holes in our understanding.

Ecoterrorism

Edward Abbey's great book, Desert Solitaire came up in discussion. I never associated it with ecoterrorism, but I can be amazingly (to me) naive. It's very tempting to want to whack something at times, but violence seems to have a bad track record. I'm reading a book about Vietnam at the moment. Ho Chih Minh was apparently a sweet and gentle guy. He lived simply (unlike Mao) and liked to read to the children. But when there were heads to be lopped he managed to look the other way. -- While I'm on it, what a shambles Vietnam was. Both Kennedy and Johnson wanted out, but they became more and more involved for purely political reasons, so as not to seem soft on Communism to the Republicans and public opinion. There was vast personal infighting among all involved, and no one, here or there, had a clue as to what was going on. What a bummer. Kennedy got us in; Nixon got us out. How about that. What do you think about Reagan for Mt. Rushmore? He could be asleep with a smile on his face.

Anyway, however much justified, ecoviolence doesn't appeal to me. I really do think that education and the resulting laws and regulations is the only possible means of preserving the earth's ecosystems. If everyone could understand just how and why "in wildness is the salvation of the world," and if even the rich and powerful could recognize that eventually their wealth won't protect them from rabid pond scum we might get somewhere.

I thought it was interesting that the 3 boys who were arrested for burning building sites on Long Island are being defended as being mere vandals rather than ELF ecoterrorists. They acted, thank goodness, out of mindless meanness rather than on dangerous principle.

At the monent, too many of us seem to think TV, the movies, and driving around in cars is all we need, maybe all there is. Too many evidently believe the world was intended for human consumption, and that presumably we'll be provided with another and better one when we've chomped it up like Stephen King's Langoliers. Taking the pulpit at a California megachurch last June, John Ashcroft declared, ''the redemptive mission of Jesus Christ, reconciliation and forgiveness, is far more important than anything else in the world.'' This must be so if you believe it, and if you reckon you're among the righteous remnant. I though it odd, though, that Ashcroft's pre-confirmation web site never mentioned religion at all. Sort of a closet charismatic. And far too many folks don't care what the future brings if they can make a buck now. Out of insecurity, I suppose, a feeling that isn't all that difficult to identify with.

I'm sure there are lots of other worlds out there, although probably none that will do us much good right now, and that even if we were to blow it thoroughly, life, and probably even intelligence, would reassert itself eventually right here on Terra. But for whatever reasons, I really feel that we should try to be stewards of the present one. Can we change enough minds? Who will do this and how? -- I managed to have one earth-friendly novel published, but I don't know what that accomplished beyond entertaining me and using up a few more trees.

I must re-read Camus's The Plague. At the end, Dr Rieux resolves to write a chronicle of the plague in Oran. -- "Nonetheless, he knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of a final victory. It could be only the record of what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts, despite their personal afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers." Despair is regretable, but pessimism has its uses.

Duties and Events

Life goes on. I inherited several boxes of miscellanous Treasurer trappings and have put them in order. I think I understand most of my mission. Time and the fiscal authorities will tell. If I can get the new executives to sign things I can start paying the Fellowship's bills, with the Fellowship's money.

Nancy went to her school duties on Wednesday, and when I picked her up we went to the gym to see the elementary school's exhibit of 350th-related arts and crafts.

I went to Common Time on Thursday and did the usual stuff. I took home a play which reminds me a good deal of Alfred Jarry's turn of the century Ubu plays. I would like to show them to her, but I don't think that would be suitable as she's a 7th grader. She does have a lot of words though. I hope I can make some useful suggestions. I read a couple of other short stories, one about a dream of incarceration and flight and another about superheros. I did my best to fulfil my role as Writer in Residence. Afterwards, when Paul and Shirly drove me home, they stayed for soup and corn bread and a pleasant evening. Shirly started and ran Grandmother's Attic childrens' book store in Eastham. Paul is a Rutgers engineer and owned a company that made spiral shutes. They are into everything: peace, race relations, gay rights, politics, environment.

Friday I spent the morning trucking books to the Library book sale. I helped pack up the remains Saturday, after appearing for my stint at CLAMS training. Yesterday I helped tear the covers off discarded hardbacks for recycling. They were mostly old health and inspirational books, so it wasn't painful. I did rescue a 20 volume set of the 1970 World Book Encyclopedia in very good condition. Quite a bargain for free and covering 12 billion years except for the past 30.

I had a pleasant meeting with Jim, an artist and the current Eastham Miller, and my friend Dave yesterday at the Hole-in-One doughnut shop just over on route 6. It's a true hangout, with a long lunch counter. There I sat, between two of the Cape's grandest characters, myself a mere characterette in training (to be a Backup Miller). Years ago in Provincetown we saw an old man sittting at a table in an open garage on Commercial Street. A hand-lettered sign read, "Native Cape Codder. Ask me a Question." Perhaps someday I can operate a booth announcing "Former Summer Person. Ask me Something Easy." I was given lots of information about windmills, including handsome engineering drawings of Eastham's done by the WPA in the 1930's. The windmill was built in 1690 Plymouth, but by a Thomas Paine of Eastham who was an ancester of the famous Diest pamphleteer and revolutionary. I look forward to this.

The Fellowship speaker was Master Gardener Shilea Garry speaking on "The Passionate Gardener". This was enjoyable, a breath of Spring. She showed slides mostly of perennials. Perennials appeal to me. Not that they're trouble free but that they could get to be old friends. Annuals are too much like cut flowers, transitory by nature. We saw a hundred year old plant in the Conservatory in Golden Gate Park years ago. I was very impressed and was tempted ask it about the Earthquake. I can't wait to see if my clethera (Sweet Pepper Bush) cuttings have survived the winter.

We had an excellent book talk today . The members always bring impressive learning and life experience, including a remarkable amount of experience of the south and of the civil rights era, considering that they are all middle-aged white women. I don't really recommend the book though, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. It's the most depressing book I've ever read. I guess it's instructive, but I can't believe in its unrelieved and loveless misery, particularly as Morrison's life was not like that. Next month will be Dr. Zhivago, by Pasternak, very long, like the Russian steppes. I marvel at my stamina for reading long books in my teens and twenties, but what I now lack in stamina I can make up for in free time.

Health

May the Force be with you and the wind always up your spine. I like to try new health producing breakfast cereals when they go on sale. Things are sale for various reasons, of course. It may be to introduce a great new product or it may be to unload a disgusting old one. I should have been more suspicious of a cerial named "From Kashi to Good Friends". When I was young I used to listen to the radio serial, "Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy". The title didn't seem particularly ludicrous at the time, just as "Dick and Jane" was not then a white, middle-class, family friendly, capitalist conspiracy. The announcer always admonished us to "get plenty of fresh air, sleep, and exercise, and eat Wheaties every day." Fresh air is no longer an option in many places, but a nourishing diet and adequate sleep are probably still essential to good health, and all the experts say exercise is important for both body and mind. We find a three-quarter hour brisk walk is pretty good, and if you just look at the passing scene and don't think much, then it's restful for the mind as well.

Religions

This Sunday the Fellowship speaker was a Hindu monk. She's a monk because there aren't enough Hindu nuns around to warrant the name. She spent twelve years in a Hindu monestary in western Massachusetts before coming to the Cape, where she's a physiotherapist and teaches tai chi and yoga. She's had an interesting life and seemed quite nice. I enjoyed her talk, and her lovely brass bells, but I'm not really attracted to the idea of meditation. The purpose of introspection is evidently to know yourself, to discover who you really are deep down. I think I know myself fairly well through the ordinary "chatter of the mind", and possibly as well as I, or anyone, can be known. My suspicion is that at a fairly shallow depth, the self, the individual, the human personality disintegrates into the biological equivalent of pixels. This may be what the Buddhist is seeking, but it doesn't appeal to me. Life may contain a considerable portion of pain, sorrow, and generalized fuss, produced no doubt by our manifold undisciplined desires, but I think I prefer it to the suggested alternatives.

I find it humbling that I studied eastern religions in graduate school and remember so little. I even had two years of Sanskrit and read (translated) some of the Mahabarata. Perhaps E. O. Wilson's notion of our escaping the grasp of an epigenetically driven conscience (and substituting more rationally derived values) is not unlike the Buddhist's escape from the sorrows and desires of past lives. Certainly Buddhist pacifism, respect for all life, and belief that the earthly expression of nirvana is benevolence, would seem to make it a more environmentally sound religion than some others. Also, you don't have to worship anything! -- I know I've written this elsewhere, but I had a moment of "enlightenment" last year when I looked up the Fellowship's Sunday meeting in the Cape Codder and found it under "Worship Services". Whoa, I thought, but we don't do worship! And then I realized that through 65 years of off and on church attendance and participation and even 3 years of seminary I've never even considered worship. I just have these rather mundane conversations with ultimate reality.

I was pleased to learn the origin of the Unitarian/Universalist's "flaming chalice" [sounds like ecclesiastical profanity or a religious rock band]. Hans Deutsch's design is a splendid symbol and originally stood for an organization which smuggled Jews out of Portugal during the war.

Mystery Stories

Probably part of what I/we like about mystery stories is that they're somewhat formulaic, like trusted old friends. I have 42 Nero Wolfe paperbacks, about as formulaic as you can get, with most of the action taking place in his office in his NYC brownstone, and all delightful. Some formulas dont work as well as others . I like women detectives, but so often they seem to feel the need to wander unprepared into what is obviously [to everyone else] a highly dangerous situation: "Gosh I guess I really shouldn't be going into this pitch dark deserted warehouse in bare feet with no weapon or flashlight, but I guess I will anyway." Perhaps it's chiefly the plot that feels the necessity. -- In fact I've always liked women in general. I wouldn't say I "understand" either men or women, (what person stands still long enough to be understood?), but I've noticed, partly through transgression, that women particularly appreciate lots of respect and plenty of space, maybe because they don't often get enough of either. -- We've just discovered the Nina Fischman mystery novels of Marissa Piesman. The protagonist is a middle-aged, neurotic, female, New York Jewish lawyer with a great sense of humor. There is little plot but terrific dialogue, and she doesn't dash senselessly into danger. -- I've thought of making an annotated database of my favorite mystery writers, but surely it's been done to death. I must look.

MARCH

We went to the Library on Saturday and then decided to stop in at the meeting at Town Hall on the "DCPC proposal". This would create a District of Critical Planning Concerns in a 3000 foot corridor along Route 6, including a 1 year moritorium on building and access to the Cape Cod Planning Commission's various experts. It was fascinating just getting to meet the cast of local characters. We stayed for the whole two hours. Eastham only looks like a hick town of course, as it's full of well informed retired professionals and executives. The opposition, as you can imagine, was largely real estate people, builders, and landowners and business along Route 6, although there's a smattering of "Live Free or Die" folks all over town. A couple of Fellowship members spoke well. I think the DCPC will pass, and it should help. If nothing else, we need to control runoff from Route 6, the "continental divide" of Eastham, which pollutes land on boths sides, to the ocean and the bay.

In the afternoon we went to a show given by a Wellfleet Arts group at the Wellfleet Library, because we know one of the contributing artists. I applaud attempts to do original work in all media, but that said, I like water color landscapes, of which there were few.

The Fellowship business meeting was amusing as always, though many folks are away this month. This seems to be the prime month to go to Florida, least likely to be either hot or cold perhaps. Next meeting is billed as "Open Mike". No one knew what that meant, and none of the program committee members was present. I may have difficulty convincing your mother to go. She will personally have nothing to do with a microphone of any kind.

Nancy's eye appointment was cancelled on account of snow. So I called Bill Nugent, the former LC computer chief and took him my Green Pig Story illustrations to scan. He told me what Sir Speedy wants, and we had a long computer conversation. Late morning Nancy and I took our walk over to Coast Guard. There was a 40 mph northeast wind making some of the wildest surf we've seen yet (and no surfers!) It should get higher tomorrow, maybe some of the promised 25 footers. I love a rough sea, viewed from land.

WE got no snow! I knew we wouldn't. (Cape Cod Sexagenarian Predicts Weather! Weatherpersons Agog.)

Wow. I read that corporations are now planning to grade their employees and fire the lowest 10% each year. This seems guaranteed to produce raging paranoia and raise back stabbing to a high art. What fun. I presume the universities will get on the band waggon as usual, at just about the time the corporations are giving it up (merit pay for instance). Oh dear, just referring to my past employment, which I loved dearly and talk up at every opportunity, brings out the latent sarcasm. Well, we are complex organisms.

I have to leave a weekly calendar on the dining room table now, to manage all our activities and appointments. I was warned that volunteer work might not be fulfilling, but it seems to be. The mistake, I think, is in expecting it to raise one's status, stature, or reputation, or to gain recognition. Giving to get, that is. There might or might not be a concretre return but only as the most distant by-product. Giving (in however miniscule a way) is the only satisfaction. I suppose that's always true, but it was harder to see back then.

At times I'm sorry not to be near Philadelphia (Nancy never is). It was/is a good city. I hope to visit, but, I'm feeling more and more at home here. Which was the whole idea. I see the principal of the high school tomorrow. I'm not sure what about, maybe a writing group.

We had a good speaker Sunday. Dr. Margaret Rappaport had a psychiatric practice in Center City Philadelphia and Chestnut Hill for 30 years. Now she speaks and consults with the Airforce. She was on the edge of fanatical but was fairly convincing I thought: Everyone, she says, without exception, needs 8 consecutive hours of sleep each night. Naps should be no longer than 20 minutes, so as not to get into one of the 5-part sleep cycles that we have 5 of every night. Everyone should drink 64 ounces of water each day (chiefly for the brain!), that's 8 8-ounce cups. And everyone should walk a couple of miles a day and eat a 40, 30, 30 (carbohydrate, protein, fat) diet. Sleep, water, and exercise are good for depression too, better than medicines. So, there you go. Health on the cheap and definite.

A couple of people tried to suggest that maybe there are human variations, but she wouldn't have it. "I can't argue with your life," she said, "but your facts are wrong. This all based on documented research." She did explain that she has to be definite, because she's often talking to macho air force pilots, who sit with their arms crossed and don't think they need sleep until they fly into a mountain. She wasn't big on caffine or alcohol later than lunchtime because it messes up your sleep. -- I don't think I need more sleep, but I will try to drink a bit of water.

Book Group

Our book group discussed Dr. Zhivago. Only 4 of the 12 members came, everyone else is in Florida, but we had a good discussion. We decided, somewhat grandly, that Pasternak, Jivago, and Russia all seemed simply buffeted by history. Even allowing that the Russians were under considerable pressure during the first half of the century, the characters all seem a bit nuts. It was interesting to have read it, though I don't have the same stamina I once did for interminable Russian novels. For some reason I glanced at the end of the Brothers Karamazov just before we went. It ends in a funeral and a kind of celebration of life. "Ah, children, ah, dear friends, don't be afraid of life! How good life is when one does something good and just!" says Alyosha. "And always so, all our lives hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!" say the boys. It makes me wish I could read Russian. -- I saw an article this morning about how the Germans are tired of the Third Reich and want to feel proud of their country. An interesting thought. Being glad to live in one's country, as I surely am, is one thing. Hating, loving, being proud or ashamed of something as amorphous as a country seems delusional, a better occupation for Russians than Germans.

The book group hostess is an excellent watercolorist, but we talked about an astounding painting of sheets hanging on a line that was done by a friend of hers. Her friend specializes in finding beauty in the ordinary, Kathy explained. We had concluded that the best part of Pasternak's writing, even in translation, was his descriptions of the ordinary.

Local History

Last night the Eastham 350th historical talk about Fort Hill was by a young woman who has a master's degree in historic preservation from Penn. We knew a lot of it but learned thing too. The Rev. Samuel Treat farmed there in in late 1600's. His house was just south of the Penniman house. The house with the big tree was built in 1742 by Seth Knowles. The B&B across the street was built a bit later by Silvanus Knowles. There was a third Knowles house where the lower parking lot is and a huge barn in the field nearby. In 1960 a developer was set to build 33 houses on 1/4 acre plots on just the southern half of Fort Hill. Fortunately some senators arrived by helicopter and rescued it for the National Seashore. The road to the hilltop and a road circling the hill (barely visible if you look) were roughed in by the builder. The Pennimans owned their land since 1820, but Edward built his house in 1867. His wife and whaling companion, Betsey Knowles, was the girl next door.

We, by the way are about a block south of Millenium Grove, where Thoreau described the camp meetings in the 1850's and a block or two north of where Gustavus Swift had his slaughter house, before he moved to Chicago in 1875 and started his meat packing company.

Activities

I have to call someone about arranging a potluck with Am Ha Yam, the Jewish group that uses the chapel on Fridays, and I'm supposed to see the high school principal on Thursday about volunteering for something which is a bit vague at this point. We have to have a weekly planner on our dining room table. It's not really pressure though, when you know that if you don't like it, or they don't like you, you can walk away. -- I did turn down an offer to be in an adult charity spelling bee. It wasn't hard.

It's 40 but sunny today. Folks are out poking wistfully at their gardens. Our bulbs are up 3 or 4 inches. I think my numerous transplanted sweet pepperbush shoots are budding, and I look for my tiny backyard prairie to revive soon. I have picked up anonymous weed seeds whereever we've gone this winter and scattered them around our property.

Reading

The Times continues to be a window on the off-Cape world. The Science Times was quite good on the genome. There's a one page article on the 22d about 20 story windmills with hundred foot blades and bodies the size of a bus. I collect windmill lore in my new capacity as apprentice miller. In the same issue there's an article on a 19th century wood and stone chinese house that has been moved, in 2700 pieces, to a warehouse in Salem, Mass. and will be reassembled in a local museum by 2003. Would this be called a Chinese Puzzle? Wonderful pictures. I plan to go see it.

Social events

We had a very pleasant evening with Sue and Bruce Lederhaus, the Eastham Librarian and the Episcopal Church organist. Sue expects to go to General Seminary in New York next fall, West 23d street, to study for the priesthood. Bruce studied at General in the '60's. He also attended the Eastman School of Music and studied with Nancy's cousin Blair Cosman. And Bruce is going to his son's wedding in Dunedin, Florida and knew Father Winney, a great favorite of ny father's. Small world.

The Fellowship meeting was enjoyable, although the speaker was on a different wave length. He was talking about using spare rooms as affordable housing, although: a) this is apparently against the law in most Massachusetts towns; b) it can be dangerous and often doesn't work, and c) it would help supply cheap labor rather than housing for families. Oh well.

More local history

This afternoon we went to a talk by the Massachusetts State Archivist about Eastham documents. It was fascinating, although there are pathetically few remains. Most documents were destroyed when the Barnstable Count Court House burned. So often the case. The 1890 census scheduled burned too. I also bought my friend Joan Nugent's history of Eastham agriculture and read it like a thriller.

Nancy plans to get a new camera and continue her recent career as an art photographer.

Nancy just finished "Galileo's Daughter" by Dava Sobel, and I'm reading it now. It's based on 150 letters from the daughter, a nun. It makes the characters involved, Popes, cardinals, and philosophers, much more human and sensible than one would expect. The amazing thing to me is that these folks were contemporaries of the settlers whose graves we wandered among in the Cove Burying Ground. Galileo would have loved our pure night skys. Of course in those days he may have had them too.

We watched the weather channel program on global warming last night. I complained about the ads and Nancy said, "You just don't watch commercial TV anymore." True I guess. Maybe it was an honest presentation, there seemed to be people from the right organizations, but it left things fuzzy, with no big push for reducing reliance on fossil fuels. I'm afraid we'll futz along until it's too late. We often do.

Some measure of cynicism comes along sooner or later of course, at least to the observant. It came quite early in my father's case, some later in mine. Our children have been survivors and have gotten through some difficult times rather generously I've thought. As in most things, a "middle way" often seems wisest.

Speaking of which, there seems to be a quite conscious affinity between the UU's and Mahayana Buddhism which I must explore. Buddhist meditation may not appeal but I like its (theoretical) non-violence, reverence for life, and generalized benevolence. What's not to like. There seem to be several somewhat Buddhists among the followship, and at least one Taoist. And who knows what else. My father always said he was a pantheist. I thought he was mostly kidding at the time, but I now think he wasn't. The difference between atheism and pantheism is much like (well, more than "like") the distinction between something and nothing, the answer to the question "why is there anything?" which goes "why not?" There may be no logical difference, but that doesn't mean there's none at all.

I'd love a pied a terre in old city Philadelphia or Greenwich Village. But as I doubt we could afford a parking place in either, I guess we should count our very real blessing, the last crumb of "affordable housing" in Eastham.

Weather

It's finally snowing here. The "Big Storm" has been 3 days of wind and rain so far. We love the snow, and it always particularly pleases me when I see it last unmelted on our roof long after it's gone from other houses. It's the 12 inches of insulation in our attic paying off.

We do like weather. Xtreme sports are for the avocationally challenged, but Xtreme Weather is something else! We went over to Coast Guard Beach twice today. The second time I got out and blasted through a 50 mph northeaster to the beach. The waves are 10 to 20 feet and raging white water goes out hundreds of yards. The tide at Salt Pond took the water five feet up the usually dry bluff and once again destroyed the boardwalk. What fun. Truly the Mother of All Natures. We'll try to take pictures tomorrow.

Local politics

The Fellowship business meeting was amusing as always, though many folks are away this month. This seems to be the prime month to go to Florida, least likely to be either hot or cold perhaps. Next meeting is billed as "Open Mike". No one knew what that meant, and none of the program committee members was present. I may have difficulty convincing Nancy to go. She will personally have nothing to do with a microphone of any kind.

WE got no snow! I knew we wouldn't. (Cape Cod Sexagenarian Predicts Weather! Weatherpersons Agog.)

It was a productive week as retiree weeks go. Nancy had a hair appointment on Wednesday, so she dropped me off at the Snow Library in Orleans. I found a couple of 1970's books on windmills, which I have read with pleasure. So I already know more about windmills than you'd want to hear. I also noticed that they were giving away a 1995 set of the Worldbook Encyclopedia in mint condition. It's edge-stamped "Snow Library", but I don't suppose anyone will think I lifted it. I've often had a need for an encyclopedia, and the online free Encarta is inadequate. I'm really quite pleased.

Thursday I went to Common Time and conducted a brief writing exercise. Choose one: 1) You speak to your pet, and your pet replies; a dialogue; 2) A letter to a favorite aunt thanking her for a present you hate; 3) An obituary for Donald Duck, the Jolly Green Giant, etc. I have more for next week, including a Letter to the Editor from a lab rat. They like to write, and are willing to read their stuff and be polite about listening. One of our book group friends came to observe and found candidates for a unit on song-writing. Andrea, mostly a choreographer but an artist too, liked my illustrations for "A Green Pig Tale of Eastham". I'll add them to the text as soon as I can.

George (not the Green Pig) came by to give me the Chapel Reservatons book, as he and Rosemary are going to Florida for a month. I noted that there are evening Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in addition to the AA meetings each morning at 7:00. The Chapel is really very well used. The Library used the Chapel for nothing. Others pay a small fee, up to $100 for weddings. A nice community resource. A number of Eastham 350th historical talks will be held here. -- I guess the Fellowship itself is pretty much a vanilla flavored "support group". Perhaps all groups are: churches, unions, civic organisations, and the KKK. E.O. Wilson would say the need to ally is built into the genes. Policies, theories, philosophies, and worldviews are probably more personal than rational as well. And beneath that of course: biological, chemical, physical, and finally mystical.

Our children sound good. It never ceases to please and humble us that when we left for the boonies our family closed ranks even more and have helped, cheered, and supported one another. We look forward to seeing them in July if not sooner and will definitely plan visits to Philadelphia in the future.

I knock no one's harmless methods of getting through life. I just don't think meditation is likely to work for me. Exercise has always worked well, running years ago, working vigorously around the house, and now walking. Decades ago, at a time when Nancy was pretty weary, I suggested exercise. This was not well taken at the time. Now however, she is more determined than I to get in her daily hour of brisk walking. Despite low windchills and high water, we've missed only 3 or 4 days in a year and a half. I also take a walk in the early mornings. I try to remember to look and listen rather than just to natter on in my head. Sometimes it works. (I would attempt to smell things too, but that sense has been in retreat for many years.)

As I understand it, Tai Chi is a true martial art but slowed down. For practice, for old people, to fool the authorities as with Brazilian break dancing? I know a lot of people who do it. I'm not sure I have the patience. Maybe we could try a little at "Common Time".

It is interesting about Bob Dole's support for anti-vivesection. I'm reading a book about Vietnam (1954-1975). It is amazing how a group of mostly decent people like our 60's leaders can futz about and do enormous harm. I'm glad Bob's on our side here. I'm an ameliorist, chiefly because I think it works. (And revolutions almost always make things worse.) It seems to me that having standards for the treatment of rats and mice is much better than not having standards.

I should say more about The Bluest Eye. I'm not surprised that Oprah liked it. What did her audience think? There was a lot of good writing in it. Toni Morrison is a great writer. It must have had considerable shock value when it was written. I wonder how clearly the point was taken about attempting to live by inappropriate mythologies as doing harm. ("Dick and Jane", white, blue-eyed, blond, middle class, nuclear family, capitalistic, etc.) I didn't get the Dick and Jane reference myself until I read a review. I understand that D&J was much closer to my 1940's experience than to that of a poor black family in 1950's Ohio, but it clearly wasn't about my life either. It was just words, a reader. I think most people of varying racial and ethnic backgrounds probably survived it unharmed.

The family in The Bluest Eye seemed not so much poor and ignorant as sick, dysfunctional, totally unloving. There are lots of these around unfortunately, resulting often from terrible poverty, but I can't see it as relating to race. You read such things in Dostoevsky At best, at worst, I guess I'd have to say I didn't really get it, and trying to was very difficult and unpleasant. Oh well.

Nancy is happy to let spiders be, so long as they stay up around the ceiling. I figure they must be eating something else that we probably want even less.

It's snowing and very pretty.

Yesterday evening I went to a talk by Henry Lynd, the town conservation officer about the Future of the Beaches. It was a Power Point presentation with lots of photos and quite well done. Essentially, we lose 5-10 feet from the ocean side and 1-2 feet from the bay side each year, but it's very complex, with wind and currents and barrier beaches all playing a part. The town has found one of the most effective corrective measures to be, guess what, dumping sand on the beach! As we are a mile from the bay and 45 feet above sea level, we figure we're good for a while. We plan to watch the special on global warming on the weather channel tonight. [It was weak.]

Today we down went to Falmouth because Nancy was summoned there for jury duty. We could even be summoned to Boston for a federal grand jury! Fortunately she wasn't needed, so we had hot and sour soup at the Mall of Cape Cod and came home.

I immediately had to roust the squirrel out of the garage. He/she is building a nest. The worst of it is that when we innocently close the garage door at night the squirrel becomes hysterical and tries to eat through the mullions on the windows. This has happened twice. We'll have to keep the garage door closed all the time. Squirrels truly are the dickens.

Our daughter will bring a Tai Chi tape this summer. We old folks need all the help we can get. I got a book on it last year, but that didn't really do much for me. She mentioned a JAMA/AAVS debate on public TV. I'll look, but we never get anything good on Boston TV. I don't think my web connection is speedy enough for live debates.

The miller gig is settled so far as I know. I just don't know how often. Not too I hope. Be prepared to be bored with mill lore.

I've been asked several times what I think of the Nauset Fellowship. It's hard to imagine the members of any other religious group wanting to know this sort of thing. Wouldn't they more likely ask me how I'm fitting in, implying perhaps, do I even belong?

I was told we I first came that we were mostly a support group. All organizations are support groups in some measure, but most of them want more of an investment than a signature and a warm body. "Don't I have to believe something?" I asked, "because I believe a lot of stuff, just nothing in particular." "That sounds about right," I was told. Becoming an Episcopalian took 12 years, and although everyone is more than welcome to join the evangelical churches, I sense that staying in their good graces might be trickier.

Someone said recently, "We're a church....." Are we a church? I was working on the Library grounds with this fellow last summer, and he said, "Oh, are you a member of that, uh.......church?" A while ago I was told the story of a woman who came to meetings for months before she learned the Fellowship had a religious affiliation at all. I wonder what visitors make of our "Sunday service," as announced in the newspaper. The word "church" seems to stem from the Greek for "belonging to the lord," but "ekklesia" means simply a gathering, and I'm sure our excellent minute of silence can count as free range worship. I'm not complaining; whatever we are I like it fine. I've just wondered occasionally.

The major Christian denominations stress liturgy and the gospel message, but they usually gloss over their checkered pasts. The UU's 7 principles would be hard to beat, but we value our history as well, as I've learned from George's excellent presentations. In our case history seems to involve a long-time concern for social justice. I see this in the newsletters we get from UU congregations and in the UUA's own literature. -- The scriptures of all the great religions contain an essential component of social justice, of course, although personal salvation seems to top their current agendas. -- I admire the tremendous vitality that explodes from the pages of those UU newsletters, the activities, the social actions and discussions, the meaningful dramatic and musical productions, etc. It's not really my thing though. I'm a reader and sometime writer, and an eternal putterer. Even when I was much younger just hearing about all that activy could wear me out. It's good, though, to feel I'm in the right ballpark.

I've recently learned a bit more about the Friends, by the way, from the entertaining Quaker mysteries of Irene Allen. Murder mysteries, that is. I admire the Quakers greatly. The silence and orderliness appeal. I'm not sure I could ever be sufficiently serious however. I've protested all my life, without much success, that I'm essentially a serious person. Perhaps it's the wrong word after all. I certainly aspire to being honest, but I don't think many of us make that. Maybe earnest is more like it: clumsily eager, more or less sincere, not entirely trivial.

I'm halfway through a book you might like, Constantine's Sword by James Carroll, a history of the Christian Church and the Jews for 2000 years. He begins with the controversy in recent years over a large wooden cross that was set up at Ausschwitz, the Nazi extermination camp where over a million Jews were killed and also many Christians. Carroll writes: "Once, for Christians to speak among themselves about the murder of the six million as a kind of crucifixion would have seemed a show of compassion, paying the Jews the highest tribute, as if the remnant of Israel had at last become, in this way, the Body of Christ. Yet such spiritualizing can appear to do what should have been impossible, which is to make the evil worse: the elimination of Jewishness from the place where Jews were eliminated."

Worse yet, it could appear to give some sort of meaning or even of necessity to the holocaust, which in fact resulted from a convergence of religious ideas, political forces, and human choices, and which did not have to happen. He says that Jesus and the early church were Jewish sects and thought of themselves as such. The anti-Judaism came only later in the first century, when the Romans were supressing the Jews and it became convenient for the Christians to distance themselves from them. This was when the old testament prophies were historicized as the bible story of the crucifixion. Constantine, the Inquisition, and other Jewish disasters to follow were also chiefly political events. And so it goes.

Paper books? I agree, for now anyway, and I'm sure there will be an appreciation of paper books on into the next centuries. Captain Picard of Star Trek won't the the only antiquarian bookman. I was very pleased with the production of Shadow Walkers. I'm sorry the press folded before I could talk them into publishing Marshfield Manor. Someday I'll gather the energy to try again.

I have to admit I've somewhat disparaged "fancy" books in the past, possibly because of the snooty attitude of Penn's Rare Book Collection, at least after my friend Lyman Riley retired. I've grown more fond of books as physical objects as I've aged. I'm looking forward to receiving a box of my father's early editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs from my nephew. My father remembered playing in his yard in Oak Park, Illinois around 1917 and watching Burroughs writing at a table on his back porch. I don't think Burroughs is readable anymore, but he had a better immagination and a larger vocabulary than most contemporary best selling authors. Which isn't saying much. Frank Lloyd Wright's house was nearby, but I'm not sure they were aware of that.

I do think a perfected hand-held e-book reader will have a place in education and technology. If I were writing a paper I'd like to be able to mark pages, comment, and cut and paste at will, get oddball books instantly over the net, and maybe have them talk to me if my eyes got tired.

I seem to have reached the age when I begin to fill out my letters with quotes and clippings from other minds. I'd like to think it isn't entirely from a failure of creative intuition but also owing to increased humility, the recognition that sometimes others have even better ideas than I do.

In the last few pages of Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence, he amuses himself by looking back on the 21st century as from the 23d. He sees the west divided into two groups, the technologically proficient leaders and the unschooled masses, not unlike the clerics and peasants of the Middle Ages. It seems to have been a relatively controlled and peaceful era, but.... [the very last paragraph in the book]:

"After a time, estimated at a little over a century, the western mind was set upon by a blight; it was Boredom. The attack was so severe that the over-entertained people, led by a handful of restless men and women from the upper orders, demanded Reform and finally imposed it in the usual way, by repeating an old idea. These radicals had begun to study the old neglected literary and photographic texts and maintained that they were the record of a fuller lfe. They urged looking with a fresh eye at the monuments still standing about; they reopened the collections of works of art that had long seemed so uniformly dull that nobody went near them. They distinguished styles and the different ages of their emergence--in short, they found a past and used it to create a new present. Fortunately they were bad imitators (except for a few pedants), and their twisted view of their sources laid the foundation of our nascent--or perhaps one should say re-nascent--culture. It has resurrected enthusiasm in the young and talented, who keep exclaiming what a joy it is to be alive."

So I came home and dug up our septic tank. Just enough to locate the covers, which were down about two feet. I poked a stick inside and to my inexpert eyes all seemed well.

I had meant to watch the Magic Flute at 8:00 but forgot. I did listen to Schubert's Trout Quintet at 9:00. I love it and remarked to Nancy that it was amazing how Schubert could stretch a single theme for 45 minutes. Well, that's what they did, she said. Mozart with Happy Birthday, Twinkle Twinkle, etc. And each of the 5 instruments has to do it in turn, of course. Ah, I said, and the psychological moment passed for me to admit I'd never noticed that. As much as I love classical music, I'll never be tempted to parade my knowledge.

Bill Nugent (the L.C. computer guy) had just come back from a New Orleans jazz festival, raving that even the sidemen were great. The food I would have liked. Our speaker was the truly likable valdictorian from Nauset High School. She didn't give a speach; she just answered questions for an hour, and it was quite interesting. Politically she was in friendly territory. She's going to Yale, early decision, for theatre and American studies. Yes, she said in answer to a question from me, some of her friends had their lives all planned out, but she just wanted to learn a lot of stuff and she'd sort it out later.

We had a good speaker Sunday. Dr. Margaret Rappaport had a psychiatric practice in Center City Philadelphia and Chestnut Hill for 30 years. Now she speaks and consults with the airforce. She was on the edge of fanatical but was fairly convincing I thought: Everyone, she says, without exception, needs 8 consecutive hours of sleep each night. Naps should be no longer than 20 minutes, so as not to get into one of the 5-part sleep cycles that we have 5 of every night. Everyone should drink 64 ounces of water each day (chiefly for the brain!), that's 8 8-ounce cups. And everyone should walk a couple of miles a day and eat a 40, 30, 30 (carbohydrate, protein, fat) diet. Sleep, water, and exercise are good for depression too, better than medicines. So, there you go. Health on the cheap.

Our book group discussed Dr. Zhivago as planned. Only 4 of the 12 members came, everyone else being in Florida, but we had a good discussion and delicious Irish soda bread. We decided, somewhat grandly, that Pasternak, Jivago, and Russia all seemed simply buffeted by history. Even allowing that the Russians were under considerable pressure during the first half of the century, the characters all seem a bit nuts. It was interesting to have read it, though I don't have the same stamina I once did for interminable Russian novels. For some reason I glanced at the end of the Brothers Karamazov just before we went. It ends in a funeral and a kind of celebration of life. "Ah, children, ah, dear friends, don't be afraid of life! How good life is when one does something good and just!" says Alyosha. "And always so, all our lives hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!" say the boys. It makes me wish I could read Russian. -- I saw an article this morning about how the Germans are tired of the Third Reich and want to feel proud of their country. An interesting thought. Being glad to live in one's country, as I am, is one thing. Hating, loving, being proud or ashamed of something as amorphous as a country seems delusional, a better occupation for Russians than Germans.

The hostess is an excellent watercolorist, but we talked about an astounding painting of sheets hanging on a line that was done by a friend of hers. She specializes in finding beauty in the ordinary, Kathy explained. We had concluded that the best part of Pasternak's writing, even in translation, was his discriptions of the ordinary.

Last night the Eastham 350th historical talk about Fort Hill was by a young woman who has a master's degree in historic preservation from Penn. We knew a lot of it but learned things too. The Rev. Samuel Treat farmed there in in late 1600's. His house was just south of the Penniman house. The house with the big tree was built in 1742 by Seth Knowles. The B&B across the street a bit later by Silvanus Knowles. There was a third Knowles house where the lower parking lot is and a huge barn in the field nearby. In 1960 a developer was set to build 33 houses on 1/4 acre plots on just the southern half of Fort Hill! Fortunately some senators rescued it for the National Seashore. The road to the hilltop and a road circling the hill (barely visible if you look) were roughed in by the builder. The Pennimans owned their land since 1820, but Edward built his house in 1867. His wife, Betsey Knowles, was the girl next door.

We, by the way, are about a block south of Millenium Grove, where Thoreau described the camp meetings in the 1850's and a block or two north of where Gustavus Swift had his slaughter house, before he moved to Chicago in 1875 and started his meat packing company.

We woke up to find 6 inches of snow on the ground but none on the roads, a nice arrangement. There are strange big clumps of soft snow on the trees and bushes that have stayed around all day. Very pleasant, although we, and the many robins, are quite ready for something completely different.

The Town Hall meeting on Saturday and the Selectman's meeting on Monday evening were disappointing. Despite what we think is strong sentiment in the town for a DCCP, the old boy net doesn't want it. We will "do it ourselves," with a special meeting in July to consider various zoning and other ordinances to attempt to preserve the character of the town. Fat chance.

Speaking of which, here is a poem I'm working on for an Eastham 350th poetry contest. I'd be glad to have your input. A few hints: The witch is Goody Hallet, the pirate ship is Bellamy's Widdah, the golf course was at Salt Pond, Millenium Grove was the 1850's revival campground, "Silicon Sandbar" the nascent electronics industry around Hyannis, a "washashore" is a phony Indian word for anyone not a native Cape Codder, "rural character" is a frequent wishful thinking phrase in the newspapers. [see "Poetry']

APRIL

Monday morning. We had a furious flurry of tiny hailstones for a few minutes while I was out taking my walk, but all that has disappeared now. There was a poem in the Times this morning by a woman who was reluctant to let the cozy winter go. I understand the feeling, but I think I'm ready to take on another spring. I see birds with nesting materials, (Birdwatchers column says they go by the light, not the temperature), and our bulbs are 6 inches tall and looking eager. Nancy bought peat pots and is planing to start flowers, both for us and to sell at the Fellowship's rummage sale.

What's new? Not a lot. Nancy is back in the art photography business with her new camera and enjoying her Wednesday volunteering in the elementary school. My meeting with the high school principle was an obscure fizzle, and I haven't heard any more about the tutoring. But Common Time goes well, and Andrea hopes I won't "burn out" and will be interested in the Alternative High School they are planning. My mantra these days is "We'll see." I THINK the Green Pig will be locally published, and I GUESS I'm still on for the windmill.

The Fellowship is a little peaked these days. We need new and yonger members. It's been around for 25 years, and there are far more people here now than there were then, so it should be posible. Oh dear, doing "outreach" has never been my thing. One April meeting will be reading our favorite poems, in honor of National Poetry Month. I have no favorite poems.

I have lots of favorite books. Ideas are surely the greatest adventure and the biggest thrill of all!

We had a brief heat wave, over 90 in Boston for 3 days last week, and back to spring again Friday, with temperatures in the 50's. The leaves are just coming out on the oaks. Only the daffodils are looking very enthusiastic and some of them have already had it. Spring is always late here, to balance our long and lovely Falls.

We spent a nice morning Friday preparing salad for 100 for an Interfaith Council dinner. I've never handled so much lettuce in my life. It was fun, and we didn't have to go to the dinner. On our walk at Salt Pond Nancy frightened a 5 foot blacksnake. (At least he seemed more startled than she.) Today Nancy found another snake, in the Red Maple Swamp. A new talent. -- I see them too, once she points them out.

Monday night is Town Meeting, at which we have to defend various environmental initiatives. particularly the sale of 130 acres off Ocean View Road to the CCNS. The forces of evil probably want to build a golf course.

Next Wednesday evening several members of Am Ha Yam, the Jewish group that shares the Chapel, will meet with several Fellowship members at our house, (as the Chapel was occupied by an AA group), to discuss a joint pot luck and program for June. I think they want to share beliefs. This is fine, but as the Fellowship believes nothing collectively, it will be up to individual members to say something. No connection, but I'm doing my program on "The Church and the Jews", based on James Carroll's "Constantine's Sword" on June 24th. -- I've just read a good book by Herman Wouk, author of The Caine Mutiny and Marjory Morningstar among many others, and an orthodox jew. "The courage to go on" (to go on as Jews, not personally). Very interesting. Makes one a bit envious, but alas we have the faith we have and must make the best of it.

This Sunday George Abbot gave me a copy of "A Green Pig Tale of Eastham". A nice job, white cover with cover printing in green. The illustrations came out well. It's the same book you can see online, but it's nice to hold in your hand. Someone bought 20 copies for the school, and I had to sign some personal copies. Always pleasant.

As the unusual little man whom I pass each morning on my pre-breakfast stroll said today, "It's warming up." It is, finally. Our bulbs are budding, the oak trees are ready to burst, and the birds and squirrels are gathering fluff. I append below the little commemorative essay on snow that I wrote as a contribution to the Middle School "Common Time" booklet.

I just finished To Kill a Mockingbird. I've avoided it for years because I knew vaguely what it was about and found the whole topic too depressing. But, of course, it's a wonderful book! Sad but hopeful, funny and scary. Completely delightful. And, it explains something that Nancy knew all along, Karen's kitten, "Scout."

Frabjous day. I read a Times review of Bruce Feilor's "Walking the bible; a journey through the five books of Moses" and picked it up at the library yesterday. Like my father, I've long been a fan of non-theistic biblical archaeology. If I never get to the holy land, "Walking the Bible" might be a good substitute.

At the same time I ran across "The Modern Mind; an intellectual history of the 20th century" which starts out splendidly. "What is encouraging about science is that it is not only powerful as a way of discovering things, politically important things as well as intellectually stimulating things, but it has now become important as metaphor. To succeed, to progress, the world must now be open, endlessly modifiable, unprejudiced. Science thus has a moral authority as well as an intellectual authority. This is not always accepted."

And later: [in addition to C.P. Snow's "two cultures", literary culture and science] "the third culture consists of a new kind of philosophy, a natural philosophy of man's place in the world, in the universe, written predominantly by physicists and biologists, people best placed now to make such assessments. This for me is one measure of the evolution in knowlege forms. It is a central message of the book." It's about everyone though: Freud, Stravinsky, Eliot, Einstein, Picasso, Alice Walker and black holes. And they're both 7-day books. Aaaaaaargh!

Either I talk in my sleep or Nancy is psychic. We were discussing a kitchen re-do yesterday [well in the future], and I was thinking, sure, I'm not really interested in a lot of expensive foreign travel at this point, when she said, "I know you want to spend a week on Philadelphia next winter." I did, I do, but I didn't think I'd said so. Maybe in the fall, certainly by winter, we'd love to find a relatively inexpensive flop and spend a week visiting and seeing the old haunts and maybe a few new ones. I find New York City exciting but almost impossible to deal with. Boston is handsome, but we have no associations. Philadelphia was good to live in and now looks grand to visit.

---//---

SNOW ON CAPE COD

We have to be careful what we say about snow these days. We're such enthusiasts that we forget there are people who don't like it. These are the people who really have to deal with snow, who have to go to school or to work regardless of the weather, or have to drive to Logan Airport for an early flight. We rarely need to go anywhere, but even back when we did, when we too went to work and to school, we liked the snow. It muted the noise of highway traffic and covered the dirt, and it softened the hard outlines of the city. It even inspired a grudging friendliness in some of our neighbors.

Sometimes the first indication of snow is an extraordinary silence early in the morning, when there are no sounds except for the oil burner and the refrigerator. At other times it's the heavy rumble of a snowplow. The plows are out early here, and they do a better job of clearing the streets than in the city. The trucks spread sand on the roads, not salt and cinders. "Sand is the enemy," our friend the floor refinisher says, but sand is what we live in, and believe me, it's better than dirt.

Last winter we had one big snow, of over a foot with deeper drifts. We dared each other to take our regular walk in the 10 degree temperature and 40 mile an hour wind. We made the first tracks that day on the trail from Doane Rock to Coast Guard Beach. "This is crazy!" we hollered at each other. And later, "This is what we came for!"

It was beautiful. We saw "wonderful things," as Howard Carter said when he first looked into King Tut's tomb. Colors of sky and water that we'd never seen before. Snow on the beach and huge waves with their crests blown back in great plumes and rising like smoke thirty feet in the air. And everywhere, the snow falling on cedars. We saw strange things too, like footprints and pine cones raised on four-inch pedestals, where the wind had blown away the powdery stuff around them, and here and there an expanse of tiny, wind-formed contour lines that looked like a topographic map.

There were many deer tracks. We hadn't seen any deer yet, and we'd wondered how the deer ticks managed without them. There were hundreds of rabbit tracks, of course, maybe thousands, and large flocks of Canadian robins gobbling the cedar berries. We finally met some fellow travellers on the trail. We passed one couple on cross country skis. They didn't appear to be having fun.

More snows came after that, both last winter and this one. None was as deep, but each one had some unique quality. Once a hard wind drove wet snow onto the north side of every branch and twig, every street sign, building, leaf, and needle, and it all froze in place and lasted for days. We took far too many pictures. Another time the snow fell not in flakes but in bundles of flakes and gathered on the bare branches like cotton balls. The day warmed as we walked through the Red Maple Swamp, and the blobs melted and fell on our heads.

And once, as I drove to the Middle School early on a December morning, I found the roads completely clear but every branch and twig coated with new snow. The remaining red brown oak leaves were topped with white and every pitch pine needle was presented like a piece of costume jewelry. A Hayden piano trio was playing on the radio, and the car seemed to float a few inches above the road. Snow can do that.

---//---

We discussed To Kill a Mockingbird at our book group on Monday. I had known about it for 40 years but never read it because I knew just barely what it was about and didn't feel I needed to be depressed about something that I already found depressing. Silly me. It's a wonderful, uplifting book. I hope it's read in all schools, which perhaps it is. And of course I didn't know where the cat name Scout came from. Foolish me.

Actually, we talked less about the book itself than we usually do and more about the experiences of the women (social workers, nurses, teachers, librarians, artists, etc) many of who had worked in the South in the 60's, 70's, and 80's and had amazing stories to tell. There was a wild card too, an emmensely large woman, who was introduced as the niece of the hostess and whom she "hadn't seen for 20 years." I thought to myself, what a treat! She was "from Maine". Of course she was; she looked like all the large women who ever worked for my Aunt Ori rolled into one. No one was talking with her, so I said, "You're from Maine?" -- And (toss in your own favorite cliche here) naturally she was a very nice, well educated, highly intelligent and thoroughly interesting person. She added a lot to our discussion, especially as she had lived not only in Maine but also, for 26 years, in rural Mississippi. The world is a grabbag of delights. "Only connect," as the man says. I wish I had learned that sooner. -- How fortunate our children are to be yet young. Though of course, as you all know too, you can't connect without the danger of painful disconnects.

Our children don't think of us as old. Well, I don't either, or feel old really, just a little more physically and emotionally fragile that in former years. I've enumerated the ways in which I could easily feel I'd not had a successful life. And yet I don't feel that. I've spent little time looking back. When I've had a bad day at work (there were a few) I was always consoled by the knowledge that by the next morning I would have forgotten the hurt and the anger. And I always had. I suppose that was a lucky gift. It certainly wasn't an accomplishment, a result of yogic meditation or anything. But I did know it was a very good thing. An incompetence at holding anger, fear, grudges, envy, etc. Perhaps the part of the brain which does that is also the part which holds names, and I get the good with the bad. Nor do I have serious regrets. Rationally I could say I wish I had persevered and become a scholar, a professor of modern intellectual history, and I wish I had learned to play the violin (although I may well have lacked the necesary talent for either). Emotionally it doesn't bother me. I do wish sometimes we lived a little closer to Philadelphia., and I'm a tad more emotional about that. But we'll visit.

Nancy and I? We do consider ourselves lucky. But we recognize that we could have been lucky in different ways with other people. We shared some things from the beginning, books, music, peacefulness, and we've grown together. But we were/are far from identical. We've both been willing to work hard at it and to compromise. A matter of will as well as magic.

The sun shines, and we are promised temperatures in the 60's and 70's in the next few days. We're ready. Nancy's peat pots of zinnias and tomatoes are sprouting. My pots of Johnson grass and rosa rugosa are not. She'll plant a few outside our kitchen window but hopes to sell most at the Fellowship's tag sale at the end of May. Otherwise we do our best to spruce up the Cape. I pick up trash every morning on my before breakfast walks (not a lot I'm glad to say), and we always police up the National Seashore trails as we use them.

I found some handsome 1 inch treated lumber scraps at the transfer station (the dump) on Tuesday and plan to make two nice little arm rest tables for our chair and couch. My next goal is to find enough wood to make a footstool for me. I've finished one poem for the Eastham 350th poetry contest and am working on two more (3 entries are allowed). It's all anonymous so no one but me need know. You don't have to be a resident to enter, so I suppose Stanley Kunitz, the poet laureate of the U.S., could come down from Provincetown and drop one in the box.

The men's group met at Dave Eagle's house yesterday. There were only six of us, but it was pleasant and interesting as always. We grouch a bit, but I think we spend more time seeing the world through the eyes of our children than complaining about it from our own point of view. Our own strongest common bond is of course wanting to keep Eastham as it is, but we don't even have to talk about that, so we tend to range the world. I don't know how it came up, probably in reference to the ever increasing materialism of our society (increasing for the the last 150 years, which hardly seems possible), but everyone agreed that the greatest satisfaction in life was helping other people. Not that anyone claims saintliness in this regard, but the assembly regularly includes a public health services physician, a New York City fireman, a high school shop teacher, two librarians, an economics professor, a college administrator, a chemistry Ph.D., and several businessmen who were and are active in all sorts of worthwhile causes. I've always found it difficult to get out of myself and be helpful, not so much for lack of will as out of shyness, but it is satisfying when possible. Whether we're put here or just happen to find ourselves here, our only duties it seems to me are to hang in and enjoy it as much as we can and to help others to weather life and enjoy it as well. Easy, right? It's better than hoping to win the lottery.

Next Sunday is National Poetry Month day (month day?) at the Fellowship. We're to read a favorite poem. I have none, as I rarely read poetry, but I've found several short ones that make, I think, and interesting group. See what you think: ---------- Spring, by Edna St. Vincent Millay To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots. Life in itself Is nothing. An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs, Is is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. --------- April, by Amy Lowell A bird chirped at my window this morn- ing, And over the sky is drawn a light net- work of clouds. Come. Let us go out into the open, For my heart leaps like a fish that is ready to spawn. I will lie unde the beech-trees, Under the grey branches of the beech- trees, In a blueness of little squills and crocuses. I will lie among the little squills And be delivered of this overcharge of beauty, And that which is born shall be a joy to you Who love me. ------- Balls, by Amy Lowell Throw the blue ball above the little twigs of the tree-tops. And cast the yellow ball straight at the buzzing stars. All our life is a flinging of coloured balls to impossible distances. And in the end what have we? A tired arm ----a tip-tilted nose. Ah! Well! Give me the purple one. Wouldn't it be a fine thing if I could make it stick On top of the Methodist steeple? MAY

Andrea and I tried to do our act (well, mostly hers) for a charter school 8th grade. They weren't rude but weren't interested either. Andrea went around the room fast having 30 kids say their name and an insect or ice cream flavor. Then she scrambled us and knew all the names. Gawd! Next time we'll work only with self-selected "interested" kids. There are some. This is just teaching theatre skills, no "at risk" kids. My point, by the way, is that I was surprised and pleased that "our" relative lack of success didnt bother me. "That was a disaster," Andrea said, but it didn't seem to bother her either.

We had a nice time Monday night at the 350th's presentation on "Gravestones in Eastham". The talk and the slides were quite interesting, although it was almost entirely about the "art" of the carvings, which were mostly winged skulls, a somewhat limited genre in my opinion. I think we had hoped to hear more about the people and some of the more entertaining inscriptions. We'll have to go look for ourselves when it stops raining.

All the 350th tee shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and books were on sale, including the Green Pig, and there was a very attractive display of Nancy's photographic notecards.

Tuesday we went to vote for Toni Stoker. One of the other candidate seriously suggests turning the bike path into a freeway. (Not to worry.) We've got all kinds as my mother says.

We saw a TV bit a few weeks ago about "bialys", a kind of cross between an onion flavored bagel and an English muffin that was invented in Poland. I saw some in the day-old bread display and bought them. They are absolutely deliciious. I recommend them.

After much looking, I finally identified the plant which is for the monent dominating the Red Maple Swamp trail from the boarrdwalk to the field as Garlic Mustard. How about that! Why not Onion Ketchup or Olive Pickle? I also identified Northern Arrowwood and will add these and Black Cherry, which grows in our yard, to the Eastham Wildlife database.

As a side benefit from working on the Library grounds I got to bring home one Rosa Rugosa and 4 lilac shoots. Thanks to the rainy weather of the last 3 days, they seen to be taking. Eastham has a grant to develope a few acres with "original species", the plants and trees that were here with the Indians. We'll do our own version in our yard.

It's good weather here except that it's dry. I start to worry about the well-being of my lovely tall grasses. We have a strange bird (well, unidentified but perhaps a bit strange too) who has for several days now been trying to get into one of our closed basement windows. I think we should call the FBI, except that they would probably lose the message. -- We got a letter yesterday from the IRS saying we owed them $939 for 1999 taxes. Nancy got on the phone and told them no we don't, and they said, you're right, you don't. I feel like writing the GAO and saying, my wife has a little time on her hands, guys would you like some help?

Here's another really outrageous thought. Have faith. Not necessarily in the pleasure of the gods, or even in your own abilities, but in the general bumbling long-term okayness of a lived life. It's an absurd but self-fulfilling activity. Well, enough of all that.

We do need each other.

We went to our book group yesterday and talked about Life and Death in Shanghai, the experiences of a very annoying woman during the cultural revolution. I'm glad we don't live in China, then, now, or in the foreseeable future. It was a pleasant morning as always. All these women are a little (to a lot) wealthier than we are, but that has never seemed to be an issue. The are smart and funny and do or have done interesting things. They are all women, because men (except for me) won't join a book group of largely women. There are 8 or 9 all women groups in the Newcomers Club, and 1 all male group. Weird. Some of my best friends are women.

I've just finished Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer and recomment it heartily. Some might find it a bit teachy and preachy about the environment, but I'm a member of the congregation. Much about coyotes, moths, goats, trees, preditors and prey, etc. I'm sure you girls would like it. It's really about 3 strong women (28, 47, and 75). The men are relatively inconsequential. You might have to be patient with it for some pages. I myself, am accustomed to reading "women's books" (and I'm not sure there is such a genre) from my Penn book club days. BK is always funny.

My transplants are doing well. I doubt that the beach pea and black cherry that I had to remove from close to the garage will do as well, but at least it's raining, which will help. There is a project to re-create a pre-colonial forest on some town park land. We have our own project.

The rummage sale is Saturday. We have volunteered for many tasks. I am also hopefull of picking up some good rummage myself. Nancy is less enthusiastic about this. We are still ow on junk after our move but are making progress.

The tag sale was fun. There were almost always more "staff" than customers, just hanging around, drinking coffee and chatting, but we did made over $1000, which is now tucked away under our matress until I can bank it on Tuesday.

And I did buy the ladies bike for $5. Like any $5 bicycle it will take a bit of work, but I think it will be useful. I'll try to have it working by the time you girls come. (Not that anyone is required to bike! Local custom is helmets, which many don't care for.)

I did also find the second port to our septic tank, right where the plot plan said it was, but a foot and a half deeper. (And then I had to get a tarp over it before yesterday's deluge drowned our system.) I got a book, "Owners Guide to Septic Systems", from the Library. It tells you all you'd want to know about waste disposal systems, and more. Very interesting.

We had the Abbotts and Bobsie and Peter to an excellent dinner last night. Bobsie is Aunt Elizabeth's friend, who also remembers Alice and Howard Canoune, who were just her age. "There was this fellow called Bobsie!" -- This was of course Uncle Bop, so called because he called his bottle his "boppie", which evidently stuck through Princeton. Gawd. -- Peter isn't working for either the NPS or Center for Coastal Studies this summer. He's cleaning houses, because the money's much better. I guess a career as a park ranger has it's limitations. Many do settle down at one park and live a fairly normal life he says. It may be that the family has prevailed on Peter to take care of Bobsie, who is mid 80's, frail, brilliant, strong minded, delightful, and wealthy and has a splendid house right on Nauset Marsh. Don't know. Life is complex.

We will start on the back shingles today, and so should look nice when you come.

I have to mention an op-ed in today's Times, by Ellen Willis, a journalism prof at NYU. She explains why the NYU faculty have supported unionization of the grad assistants and that the Board had picked their new president without a search committee or consultation with the faculty. The campus AAUP and the Faculty of Arts and Science condemned this. -- The old notion of collegiality has been replaced by the corporate model, all productivity and market forces. As I could have told them.

We got a free issues of Boston Museums magazine in our paper today. Looking through this it occurs to me that all the museums have gone to the corporate model as well. Which you could no doubt have told me. Just like our federal government, for that matter. -- But, nothing is permanent; things can be changed.

JUNE

We've had a number of those lovely bright cool green days like the ones when we would stand in the Genuardi's parking lot on a Saturday morning and say, hey this reminds me of Cape Cod.

Monday we took a picnic to the Beech Forest and then walked out to Race Point Beach. There were hundreds of Ladys Slippers nestled among large patches of Wild Lily of the Valley along the trail. Every year is different. Garlic Mustard and now Ladys Slippers. We drove through P'town afterwards, at the usual pleasant 4 miles per hour. It looks great, shiny and colorful, the smallest half million dollar shack fresh painted and surrounded with flowers. Where will it end? We'll have to get up there for a bowl of Portuguese soup before the end of the month.

Today Nancy goes off to school. I'll probably write a bit and do a few shingles. Then we may have a 37th anniversary lunch at the H&K, lobster chowder and spinach salad most likely. Then Nancy has a routine doctor's appointment, during which I'll look through Writer's Market at the Snow Library, and then the walk.

Thursday is worse. A library meeting at 8:30. The Common Time show at the Orleans Council on Aging at 11:00, and back to a Common Time party and wrap up at 3:00. Nancy goes to a Ladies Group lunch in the middle of this, but thanks to Jan Laine, the ladies may stop over at the COA and watch us bomb on the way to lunch.

Today the Dems take over the Senate. Last week we saw an interview with a young Ph.D. candidate from Penn about finding the world second largest dinosaur in the North African desert. The C.I.A. has gone to the middle east to solve the Israeli Arab problem. A well known and resected Eastham resident was killed on Route 6 last week, and the local government finally went berserk and called in all our representatives and the governer. There have been dozens of accidents with injury in the past year and 6 fatalities, so it's about time. We almost never use 6 ourselves.

Nancy said yesterday, this is the sort of day we used to say reminded us of Cape Cod! Cool, bright, and very green. I keep changing my mind about which is the best season. Late winter/early spring isn't the best, and August can be a bit much. Otherwise it's all great. Nature doesn't stand still. We'd expected the same progressions as last spring, but it was different. We hadn't even noticed the garlic mustard (a pretty little white flower) last year, and this May it was everywhere. Lady's slippers popped up in our front yard. There is a red-winged blackbird explosion and the bobwhite are back after several years absence.

I write, but there are so many distractions. It was easier when I had a full-time job and nothing else. -- "A Green Pig Tale of Eastham" has made back its production costs (which may be more than Shadow Walkers ever did). The local schools bought a number of copies. -- The Fellowship made $1100 with the tag sale. I bought a $5 bicycle. They had no $5 canoes. -- On Thursday, Common Time performs a melange of improvs, songs, and readings and enjoys lunch at the Orleans Council on Aging. -- "Eastham Harvest" got a second place in the seniors division of the Eastham 350th poetry contest. I have to read it at the awards ceremony on Sunday. I wonder if there's a prize. We could use $600 or a dinner for two at Finely JP's. -- -- What are you going to do with your $600 tax refund? -- Then we have our pot luck with Am Ha Yam, the Jewish group that uses the chapel on Fridays. We had a planning meeting at our house. They are a pleasant bunch, highly eclectic like us and with no rabbi. -- The following Sunday I give my talk on the Church and the Jews, no connection.

Our adventures remain small but satisfying. A contingent of the Fellowship Women's Group, including Nancy, showed up at the Common Time performance at the Orleans Council on Aging. Fortunately the kids were charming and we intergenerationals adequate. We did "walk to center stage and improv a reason to turn back", made "machines" (with and without sound effects), and did zoo and airport improvs. We read poems and sang songs (not solo), and the girls did an energetic dance to "Wild wild West". There was much applause, and we were treated to an interesting lunch (the same one that goes out with Meals on Wheels). We were asked to take our act to a state competition in October. Fortunately October is a long way off.

Friday we went to the COA's Volunteers Thank You party. As we had expected, no more than a dozen showed, including our friends Paul and Shirl, but we are into showing the flag, doing the right thing, etc. We were nice to the organizers and they seemed to appreciate it.

That evening we went to a presentation on saving the Nauset Light. I was neutral, Nancy sort of wanted to go, and we ran into George Abbott who said, "you're coming aren't you?" So we went. It was very nice. We now know everything about the light(s) (5 or 6, I lost track) and the keepers houses (2) and outbuildings (3-5) from 1830 to the present. After the talk, there was a great deal of credit giving and applause. We incline to agree that coming up with half a million dollars and dealing with 10 federal agencies to move a lighthouse back 300 feet from a crumbling cliff is a considerable accomplishment. It should be good for another 100 years, unless of course....

Saturday was Fort Hill day, so at 1 pm Nancy and I presented ourselves for the Nature walk. Dennis Murley, an Audubon naturalist hired by the Park Service, took us for a 2 hour stroll through the Red Maple Swamp and Fort Hill trail. He was heavily bearded, bluejeaned and barefoot, and very amusing. We've made our own study of the swamp for two years now (and 30 years before), but we learned a lot. In particular that, after the red maples, the second dominant species in the RMS is spagnum moss. Who would have guessed? Also that a swamp is a treed wetland (a bog is treeless), and the swamps just touch the water table, which rises and falls a much as 4 feet, accounting for the fact that the RMS is drowned in winter and nearly dry in summer.

Sunday, the Fellowship Speaker was Kathy Hoffman, the Director of the City of Cambridge Peace Commission. She did a sort of interactive chalk talk on the sources of social injustice, which was fine, and suddenly launched into a pro-Palestinian rant. (Well, that's how I heard it.) I honestly thought for a few minutes that she was intentionally giving us a "bad" example of one-sided thinking. (I will no doubt carry some naivete to the grave.) But no. When she was quite done, I asked didn't we have to consider the reasons for the occupation in the first place and the fact that an offer to end it had been rejected in September, and that the Palestinians were as we speak teaching the destruction of Israel in their primary schools? She tanked on, and no one else spoke up. It left a bad taste.

That afternoon we had the poetry awards/readings, which were delightful, particularly the kids. One of the better poems was by a 12 year old girl from Common Time. Jim Owens won first prize for the seniors with a fine poem about his grandmother's house. A women from Brewster tied with one about kids on the beach that Nancy felt encapulated our long experience. She is making me decide what to do with my $25 second prize check. Oddly enough Jim also has a book for sale with the 350th stuff, a gorgeous "coloring book" of local scenes, and he is the miller, to whom I'm to be one of the assistants. Did I mention that "A Green Pig Tale of Eastham" is on sale at Snows?

No philosophy today. Or not much anyway. I did say to Nancy that I felt I didn't always appreciate our good life enough. Nancy said that was about all she did do. Not true, but quite an accomplishment. Perhaps appreciation, afterall, IS worship. I do appreciate.

Thursday is the pot luck with Am Ha Yam. We have to go early and set up, and after dinner I have to be on an infomal panel talking about the Fellowship, in my case as a new member. In the meantime I have to finish my talk on the "Church and the Jews" for the 24th. After that perhaps I'll retire.

Dave Eagles gave me a bicycle, a really good 10 speed Schwin in excellent condition. He got himself a new trail bike. So, we now have 5 bicyles in our garage: John's, the lady's bike I bought for Nancy at the tag sale, two unsold men's bikes from the tag sale (in sad condition), and the newish Schwin. I'll see what I can mix and match. Ted the former head of theoretical physics for Nasa and his son, also a physicist, like to retrieve broken bikes from the dump and create working monsters.

I feel I've neglected my correspondants and frittered away my time in bizarre activities. Finally though, except for collecting my mother at Logan airport this Wednesday, (not a trivial task), our weekly schedule is pretty open. I do have to find some evening to visit with Jim Owens, the miller, to pick up a few milling tips, and I have to prepare the quarterly treasurer's report for the Fellowship. These are my own fault of course. I also agreed to be the secretary for the Friends of the Library starting in July. I now see how this happens. When you really have any time left to yourself, you feel guilty, and it's difficult to say no. It's only when you're already too busy that you have that luxury. Oh well, by and large I still have early mornings and most evenings.

I've enjoyed this month. The pot luck with the Am Ha Yam (local liberal Jewish organization) was fun and very interesting. People kept remarking as to how much similarity there was between the two groups, and this was true. It could give you some hope for humanity if you let it. I wonder if the most common thread wasn't humility. No one suggested they had the answers to much of anything, which unfortunately seems to be the nature of many other organizations.

My talk on the Church and the Jews, (chiefly on James' Carroll's book) was planned long before the Am Ha Yam appeared on the horizon. It took a lot of time, but it's done, and I think it went well. I've promised to put it on the web. I'm already thinking of the next one, maybe for late fall, which might be on "Some Religious Heros", including perhaps Abelard, Nicholas of Cusa, Isaac Luria, and Spinoza.

Four of the 6 or 7 350th publications now on sale around town were produced by members of the Fellowship, including the Green Pig of course. I'm tempted to try a commercial Pig Tale. I've decided to hang my second prize for poetry certificate over the computer. It was produced by Jim Owens and is very handsome. There are several extremely angry looking gulls in the foreground. Jim is a fine artist, and real gulls always look angry. I'm not tempted to contribute more poetry. Even I can sense when I'm running on air.

We've had lots of rain, which has been great for the folliage. I don't know if it has been good or bad for the gypsy Moth caterpillers, which have pretty much defoliated a number of our oaks and many in our area. This is dispiriting. Much of the town is unaffected fortunately. Next year I will look into "measures". I read that the fungus which generally controls them may have lost its punch.

This is the odd thing about nature, something which we "know" but which doesn't sink in until we experience it. It changes from year to year. There are reasons no doubt, from the obvious to the nearly invisible, but it seems simply willful. The garlic mustard which came from nowhere last month has faded. The wood anemones this year DID briefly "carpet" areas of the Red Maple Swamp as promised. A wholly new yellow wildflower appeared in our front yard. Bob whites reappeared after several years of absence. We heard one near our own yard. Strange green and tan scums edge Salt Pond. I find them rather attractive, but Nancy doesn't. Nancy has seen four or five snakes this year, including one 6 foot black racer. We're noticed many more baltimore oriels, including one that was dogfighting with a crow, a surprising sight. We've also seen redwinged blackbirds chasing crows and crows chasing a large hawk. Small hawks, we read, don't get pursued, because they're too nimble and can nab the pursuer.

I installed a ceiling fan in the living room. We've reshingled half the rear wall, which is it for a few years, as the north wall is still in good shape. The tomatoes are okay but the annuals from seed are just too slow, so we bought $8 worth of yellow marigolds and dusty miller for the side garden. They look nice, but the house skunk dug up several of them last night. They weren't injured, and I replanted them. -- Was he looking for bugs? Could we interest him in a few juicy caterpillers? -- My transplants of salt spray rose and lilac from the Library, and several tiny pines from the Chapel have all taken. If the moths eat all the oaks, I suppose something else will grow in their place. It's amazing how fertile sand can be.

Will the cones I've just added to the baffles finally defeat the wily squirrels? We shall see. JULY

One of those recent Times articles about writing, a partly jokey one I think, advises never begining a story with a weather report, (except of course if you want to). I'm always tempted to mention the weather, not because it's so important to us, unless we have guests who hope to enjoy the beach, but because we enjoy it. It changes the scene and turns the woods or the marsh or the water into something quite different. We don't much like hot sun and high humidity, but there is relatively little of that here. We've had a lot of rain this summer. Whatever else this does, it makes the world very green and keeps the ground water level visible in the swamps and kettle holes. Our tomatoes are doing okay. Our flowers seem a bit peaked. We hope the compost from the dump wasn't contaminated in some way. The consumer of free dirt gets what he pays for.

We had a very nice visit from my mother, who was pleased mostly to sit on the sofa and watch the action at the bird feeders and enjoyed a change in diet. They boil vegetables in Florida. She wanted to see our house and surroundings, as we have always wanted a mental picture of hers. She returned to Florida safely and quite satisfied.

It was great to see Sara, Karen, and John, Mari and Gloria last week. They had cars and except for Sara stayed in cottages and B&B's. We hope they can come frequently, singly and in groups, and we plan to visit Philadelphia this fall and winter. Sara once again got Nancy and me to the fireworks in Provincetown. We knew the ropes this year, so it was easy. We parked on the highway only a half mile from the wharf. I'm afraid I find fireworks, though nice, less thrilling than a field of wildflowers, but Nancy likes them, and I always enjoy the milling P'town scene. In a crowd of thousands Nancy met a teacher she knows from Nauset Elementary.

John and Betty DeJong spent the night on Sunday. We had a good talk about books and could have talked much longer. We rarely mention the past, although we share a lot of it. It's not for lack of interest, but because the present is more absorbing. Interesting times, as the curse goes. We hope to visit them in Maryland.

We expect an evening visit this week with Fenghua Wang, a former colleague from Penn who is bicycling down the Cape. What I read in the Times of the higher education scene isn't inspiring, but perhaps she has a more upbeat view. -- I should soon have a few assignments as miller-of-the-day. Dave Eagles made me an official sign, engraved and painted, so there's no going back.

Nature hangs on gamely in the face of progress. We've had a big bushy old skunk wander through our yard most evenings for some months and often thereafter a large shaggy old cat, the one black on white, the other white on black. Each explores the ground under the bird feeders and may take a drink from the bird bath before ambling on into the woods. Skunks have a funny walk, perhaps owing to their short front legs, and an understandably calm manner. A few weeks ago we saw a baby skunk, eight inches long nose to rump, exploring the feeder scene. He was exceedingly cute, but presumably was as well armed as an adult.

Early one morning last week we had a sudden downpour. It rained so hard I checked the basement window wells where we once before had a problem, and in a half filled rear well I found the baby skunk, swimming desperately. I went out into the deluge, got a shovel from the garage, heaved the wet skunk up onto the wood chips, and quickly retreated. The sodden little bundle shivered for an hour, and we were afraid it would die of shock. Finally it began to move a little. We left to get the mail, and the sun came out. When we returned, the skunk was gone.

Our relief didn't last. The little skunk came nosing back into the yard, looking for insects or seeds, and again came dangerously close to the window well. It was dry now and not a good place to fish a skunk from. We hollered and he turned back, but I'm not sure he was influenced by our commotion. This went on all afternoon, the skunk looking more and more confused and beginning to go in circles. He was camped near the charcoal grill at about the time we wanted to use it but wandered into the woods again just before the mother skunk appeared. He was foraging in the woods off the driveway. She was tracking, her nose to the ground, just behind the garage. We wanted to herd her in the right direction but were afraid we'd drive her off, or worse. Finally, she found him, and the reunion was gratifying. She petted and groomed the little fellow and herded him off towards home.

As to reading, I'm almost finished with Peter Watson's "The Modern Mind; an intellectual history of the 20th Century." It's taken a while, as it's 800 pages long and a 7 day book. Although I'm not sure anyone else is reading it, I feel I should leave it on the shelf for a few days after I return it. It's a clearly written visit to almost every major thinker in every field of contemporary thought, sort of a vastly extended bibliographic essay. I won't remember that much of it, but it has been exhilerating to read, and I now have a list of many more books to track down.

One I mean to look for is Richard Rorty's 1991 "Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth." To suggest just a few insights: Rorty sees "objectivity", the sense that there is something 'out there', irrespective of who is doing the thinking or observing, as a doomed notion. The difference between truth and opinion is a matter of degree, a question of solidarity, and we mislead ourselves if we think that there is some sense in which things are true for all time and all cultures. Reason is not a set of rules for thinking which corresponds to reality. It is more like what we mean when we say something or someone is "reasonable", methodical, or sane. It names a set of moral virtures: tolerance, respect for the opinions of those around us, willingness to listen, and reliance on persuasion rather than force. To be rational is to discuss any topic without dogmatism, defensiveness, or rightous indignation. There is no reason to praise scientists for being more objective than other people, but there is plenty of reason to praise the institutions they have developed, of unforced agreement and free and open encounter, and to use these as models for the rest of culture. Good stuff.

John DeJong gave me a copy of "Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation; a History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties." A delightful time and place, at least in the telling. I sometimes long to return to where I never was.

It's the way it is and to a considerable degree the way it has to be, I suppose. We've left the traditional societies far behind, where families stayed in the same neighborhood for generations and children apprenticed in their father's trade. It must have been comforting, all that chicken soup, but no doubt grim and stultifying for many. Worry and the temptation to interfere vary no doubt with the square of the distance.

It never takes me long to review the alternative solutions for us, the Philadelphia inner-city or exurbs, and to decide we're in the right place for now. The beauty and peace and simple friendliness never stops. We're an easy day's drive away and will come to see you, and you're always welcome, singly and in groups. The NY bus runs every two hours and some busses come right to North Eastham. The tide is always going in or out.

Our children seem so grown up and in charge of their constantly changing lives, sensible about the present but ready for interesting, challenging, or useful changes. If they had all decided to become corporate lawyers for Microsoft we would have been no less pround and loving (and go to it if that's you pleasure), but I'll admit to a little extra pride that they've chosen more humanistic courses.

There was an article in the Science Times by the guy who got rich inventing the Super Soaker (and ultimately a number of more serious devices). It took him 7 years to get it manufactured. Asked what advice he would give a struggling neophyte, he replied, "Perseverence! There is no short, easy route to success." Easy for him to say. And Niel Simon said the secret of being a successful playwrite was the ability to take rejection. I think I was too good at that.

And finally, as H.L. Mencken once said, "If I knew what was right and true, I'd battle for it to the tune of bugle blasts."

We do what we can.

The book signing was very pleasant, we six authors chattered for two hours about all and sundry, but it was a commercial debacle. I could sort of see it coming, but not even I thought we'd sell only one book among us. For good or ill it was a copy of The Pig, (but not on it's merits I'm glad to say under the circumstances.) A woman said her friend had asked her to get it for her as her name was Ellen Chenoweth, and she had a thing for pigs. And not just any Ellen Chenoweth it turns out but the well-known casting director. Once in a while it pays to have a funny name.

Libraries -- I can imagine the thought of working for a library might be odd, but I recommend it. It's a human institution like any other but in general I suspect more civilized than most, with many agreeable and socially useful roles. People have found it both satisifying in itself and sometimes also a platform for other activities, in the arts, scholarship, social service, etc. Great access to books!

I enjoyed it for 35 years. Perhaps a little less at the end, when the University (like most other organizations these days) drifted slowly into the corporate mode. If I were doing it again, I think I would put more effort into relationships with faculty, students, and colleagues, although not less into lore and technology. Public libraries are no more immune from institutionitis, careerism, burocracy, fruity administrators, and greed than are universities, hospitals, and bubblegum factories I suppose, but I do admire their mission. I really don't know, but I think they might be more interesting places to work than universities. The Director at Van Pelt probably has the right idea of trying to promote scholar librarians who would work closely with faculty. It's hard to arrange. Faculty take a lot of convincing. Our recent visitor has a masters degree in Poli Sci, and is the liason to the PS department as I was, but the poli sci bibliographer is someone else, and she can't get this changed although it had been promised when she came to work for Penn. So it goes. She does seem to make the most of any opportunities she has.

So, the town meeting last night went well. We saved the purchase of the 19 acres of marsh and woodland near the traffic circle for open land, we quashed recommercialization of route six above Bracket Road, and we passed good laws on buiding codes and affordable housing. Today I pull my first stint as miller! I'm a little nervous. Could be a long day.

I recommend, so far anyway, John Maddox, "What remains to be discovered; mapping the secrets of the universe, the origins of life, and the future of the human race." 1998. Maddox was the long-time editor of Science magazine.

Yesterday was my first day of paid work in a couple of years. It was fun but not something I'd want to do often if I have the choice. It was the hottest day of the summer too, although the windmill is relatively cool inside. Lots of polite and interested parents trooped through with well-behaved small children. I'm rather sorry the windmill doesn't run. Or rather that we don't run it, because it does work. It's just too dangerous and too much trouble. Both Dave Eagles and Jim Owens dropped by in the afternoon to see how things were going. I interupted my conversations with them to greet everyone who walked in, and Jim finally said, gee, you're more polite than I am. It's all that library training. My instinct of course is to scrub and rearrange the place, and install diagrams and diaramas, etc. I guess it's not worth the price of a full-time job, so I'll resist.

I raced home to greet our guests and had to hide in the kitchen until I could put on my shirt. The Rubinsteins are delightful people, both in their early 70's I'd guess. Al is in the Poli Sci Department at Penn, and his wife Frankie taught English at Overbrook and Girl's High for many years and writes articles on Shakespeare. I wanted to talk more about their Spring visit to Israel, but we didn't get to it. We may get todether again this summer. They liked the Green Pig.

Speaking of whom, I had a thought about another book while I was at the mill. I'm reading Maddox"s "What remains to be discovered," and it occurs to me that the basic points might be incorporated into a GP tale. I'm reminded that when we used to go to the Franklin Institute decades ago, it bothered me that there were only two levels of explanation for most exhibits: 1) A single sentence, inadequate and even meaningless to most non-scientists I suspect, and 2) a long and abstruse paragraph. What I would have liked was a middle level, a clear explanation of WHAT was going on (though not necessarily HOW) in maybe a half dozen sentences, to read myself or read to a child. I wonder if that has ever been done?

A lovely soft rain fell all day. We walked in the greenly effulgent Red Maple Swamp and kept an eye out for Swamp Things. Our new gutters work nicely.

AUGUST

We hope the storms have cooled of things a bit in Philadelphia. There was a nostalgia letter in the Times about growing up in 1940's pre air-conditioned row-house Philadelphia. Everyone sat on their stoops and socialized until late into the night. Now the streets are deserted and the air-conditioners roar. Yeah, well...

Bill Opel's talk on genes and memes was good, although it seemed to me that even he had difficulty keeping to the lack of intentionality in evolution. He talked most about social memes (in general "good" for society, but differing from culture to culture, e.g. female infanticide in China) vs. personal memes (around, say, Crawford, Texas: "I know what I believe, and I believe what I believe is right.").

We had a nice visit with Jane and Sophie Bryan. It was fun to show them Eastham and give them chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. They seem well and happy. Jane seems fully self-confident after many years of working up to it. The culture at the Princeton Library is totally different from Penn's, she says. They are very conservative, have no wish to change anything, and have little contact with the faculty. Jane's job is to shake things up and instigate "outreach". I think she'll be successful. I finally agree that outreach, (a lot of active contact with faculty and students), is necessary. It has to be for the benefit of the library users, though; it can't simply be part of institutional self-agrandizement. She lives during the week in Princeton, in the same faculty housing that Nacy's Uncle Bop lived in and that Nancy visited as a child, and seems to enjoy it.

Sophie is tall, thin, attractive, crew cutted, and seemingly pleased with some sort of legal internship connected with Harvard Law. She does a lot of housing litigation. Thomas graduated from Columbia after taking a number of courses at Penn.

I see a lot of interesting things in the Times. I'll send things along as my mother does to us. I often find hers interesting. The last I knew you didn't get the Times, but inform me. The stuff about welfare and animal's rights may be on the bb's at your establishments. If so, ignore them. Nor do these usually contain any "messages" from me (would I ever try to tell my children anything?!) other than the content.

I'm enjoying a good book on Paris, an interesting history of Islam, finished a helpful history of Boston, and recommend Jill Churchill's "Jane Jeffrey" and the Janet Evanovich "Stephanie Plum" (in Trenton yet!) mysteries as very pleasant light reading. I'm not sure I can get into the popular Patrick O'brien Napoleonic era sea novels.

Religion - What do I think about religion? All kinds of things. I seem to be quite interested in religion these days. I've read many books in the past two years, on Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, and I've given talks at the Fellowship on "Fundamentalism" and the "The Church and the Jews." I plan to do another this fall on "The Religious Left". None of this was really planned. I just seem to want to do it. Perhaps for the same reasons I got involved with religion in the first place, whatever they were.

The Nauset Fellowship is nominally Unitarian, which nowadays embraces Christians, athiests, wiccans, etc. Anyone really. We are functionally Secular Humanist however, which is to say, religious but without mentioning God.

If my aunt Velma asked me if I believe in God, the only honest answer, to her, would be no, but I tell my atheist friends that their firm belief that there is no god is just as faith-based as fundamentalism. Paul Tillich always wrote about "ultimate reality" rather than God. It would seem that there has to be an "ultimate reality", by definition, but there is a problem with saying that something has to exist because we have the idea of it.

There definitely is us, however, for what that's worth. The Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptures (in chronological order) all state very clearly that the earthly essense of the faith is compassion, benevolence, and social justice, and the heavenly reality is beyond our understanding. Members of these religions don't consistently act this way of course, they're as apt to beat each other on the head and insist that everyone hold a particular belief about their incomprehenisble God, but it's what the scriptures say, and it makes sense to me.

Seek the truth and share it. Be kind and generous. Promote justice. Enjoy the gifts of life. The rest is icing. I enjoy good church music, spare liturgy, and intellectual curiousity in the Episcopal Church or any other. I don't much care for religious folksiness, emotionalism, condescension, authoritarianism, or ignorance.

As I've said, we're reading M. Scott Peck's "The Road Less Travelled" for the book group. I forget who suggested it, but I'm supposed to talk about it. Oh dear. Our usual fare, as with book groups everywhere, tends toward the better contemporary women writers, biographies, and an occasional classic. We have no complaints. A quarter century old self-help title seemed questionable, but it's quite sensible so far. Dr. Peck says we tend to avoid our problems rather than try to solve them, thereby developing neuroses and stunting our growth. Of course we do; who wants to suffer.

For fun I'm reading Karen Armstrong's "A History of God", having enjoyed her more recent "Battle for God". This is very even-handed writing about religion, from no particular point of view. She mentions Buddhism in passing and that for the Buddha all existence consists entirely of suffering. -- It's all "dukkha," a wonderfully expressive term that you could probably wear on your license plate. -- Well, I suppose. Certainly our existence is imperfect, insecure, and occasionaly quite painful, and when it's at its best is when its impermanence and loss are most threatening. Not to mention the suffering of others, which world-wide outweighs even the total body weight of all the insects.

The thing is, if you start out on your bicycle as 6:30 in the morning and ride down to the bay, the illusion of joy and beauty can be quite overwhelming. The trees are shorter, perhaps because of the storms and salt air. That and the presence of the water brings the sky near and makes the light strong. The brush and grass are thick from the constant sun and moisture and tend to hide the houses. The beach plums are bursting with purple fruit this year, after two dud summers. The broom sedge is three feet tall and beginning to turn its autumn red. All the familiar cast is present: bearberry, poverty grass, yucca, bayberry, etc., only more intense than farther inland (i.e., a mile at most).

From the 50 foot bluff at Thumpertown this morning, with the tide well in, the beach was a wide band of smooth beige sand, evenly draped with strands of seaweed, like a fancy rice paper or chicken and spinach soup. Occasionally someone else will be at the bluff. We keep silent for a minute or two, but we both really want to speak. "Wonderful, eh?" "Wonderful." Right.

I met a half dozen people on the road. We look each other in the face and say a cheerful 'good morning'. Illusory no doubt, but a grand illusion.

You can carry the fantasy too far of course. No one could be born to wealth and power, piddle his way through Yale and Harvard, do drugs, find Christ, be proclaimed President of the United States, and chill out in Crawford, Texas.

----

We agreed to walk with the Library group in the Windmill Weekend parade, wearing literate T shirts and handing out childrens books. And then the Nauset Fellowship decided to enter the parade after all. So we'll offer to work on the float. I envision perhaps: the "flaming chalice" (a nice design, and I love the phrase), a sketch of the Chapel in the Pines, and a pithy saying by Einstein or Emerson. Or Thoreau or Spinoza or the Buddha, or...

Noel Beyle points out on his sign board that there are only 9 more days until labor day. And then the summer season ends, and we can all clam up.

I took down the big dead pine behind the garage which has worried me for two years.

Eons ago a friend told me 'everything's an experience, and all experiences have value.' I was doubtful at the time, but maybe this is so.

In case it should not be clear, whatever bizarre advice we offer you our hope is only that you get to do things that satisfy you. This can take a while. I was 35 (a particularly bad case) before I was sure I liked what I was doing and began to do it wholeheartedly. At 65 I now think I probably should have worked for a Ph.D. in the history of philosophy, despite my poor memory, and become a college chaplain, despite my pantheistic agnosticism. Good to know. Maybe next time. -- What I never quite did ever was take time to figure out what I should do next. I moved quickly from one thing to another, I think precisely so that I wouldn't have an uncertain road ahead of me. Most people do something like this I suspect, which doesn't make it particularly wise or constructive.

I'm puzzled, and I don't mean just string theory and DNA. I'm particularly puzzled by the activies of the vast corps of the middle aged who are hard at work presumably more or less running things. I see monstrously ugly and intractable problems looming in the near future and little done to prepare for them. The present administration in Washington reaches new hights in short-sightedness and blatant service to special interests. The wonderful melting pot of Ellis Island threatens to overflow with illegal immigrants and coagulate into monolingual language groups. We are afflicted with global warming, increasing water, air, visual, and noise pollution, amoral and nearly mindless multinational corporate control, a growing disparity between rich and poor, the rants of dangerous and narrow extremisms of every sort, greed, cruelty, complacent ignorance, SUV's, PWC's, lawn sprinklers, the same dumb movies and TV series premiering every week, proliferating chain stores and fast food outlets, etc. -- It's easy to sound positively biblical about all this. Has it always looked this discouraging to the elderly in every era? does the day come for everyone when the gladiators are not as good in the Colluseum? Are the Morris dancers not as precise? Does Beethoven jar the nerves? Am I simply getting old, or are things truly going to pot in a handbasket? Tell me.

I'll forward my note to the Rubinsteins for whatever interest it might contain. Al teaches poli sci at Penn. Frankie writes on the language of Shakespeare. She once commented to a respected authority regarding a disputed passage: "I think your 'penis' works splendidly." To which he replied, "That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me." Ah, those academics.

I sent Sara a packet of clippings about animal right [whoops, animal 'rights' that is; the "animal right"? Well, I suppose wolf packs, vampire bats?]. Stuff all over the map. An interesting thought that promoting the rights of primates could: 1) downgrade the rights of "still lower" animals, and 2) reinforce humans as the standard. Is there really no such thing as "common sense", which might entail seeing a lab rat as a creature with feelings and an inate dignity, and four cells in a petrie dish as four cells in a petrie dish? Aaaaaargh.

The covert missionaries in Afghanistan are arrogant fools, of course, as bad as the Afghan miliants in caring little for the lives of the innocents they've compromized and the needed aid they threaten. I suppose, though, if I were the "common sense" king, I too would ultimately be tempted to impose my gentle and reasonable dictates with the lash and the F16. Which is why Tolkein's fairy queen wisely refused the Ring.

I took down the other dead tree in the front yard. Sawed it a bit and then winched it down with a long rope from the back yard. It fell neatly between the lamp post and the house. Very satisfying. I'll add the branches to my berm in the back and the trunk to forest litter. The yard looks better too. Only the squirrels are mildly discomfited.

The interesting speaker at the Fellowship yesterday was Suzanne Phillips, an attorney with an office in Hyannis. She works half time for the courts and half in private practice with poor people. Much of her work is in family law, housing, medicaid, and child custody. Her talk was about how badly the "system" works, with everything operating through medical managed care and by the numbers, and with very little knowledge of the clients or communication among caregivers. (And we're talking Massachusetts, not Louisiana!) Social workers who used to be able deal wholistically with families are more and more forced to be case managers who select solutions from lists and fill in forms. Suzanne is an angry woman, who fights the system constantly, forcing communication among the agencies, involving judges, and probably working flat out, but she didn't seem to have any big answers. Maybe there are none. (As Al Rubinstein says there are none in Palestine, only hard bargaining day by day.) I'm sure all this is familiar.

Nancy had a long talk with her afterwards about the needs of small children. Phillips specifically talked about people in the system who do the needed work but don't get credit because that goes to the good statistics and and neatly filled out forms, however irrelevant and meaningless to the clients. Sounds familiar.

On a related note, more of Scott Peck, who I argue with about as much as I appreciate. He did tell a relevant anecdote. When he was a psychiatric resident he was very dedicated and saw his patients several times a week instead of once, as his fellow residents did. Consequently he was overworked. He went to his supervisor and asked to have no new patients until he could catch up. The superviser said, "You have a time problem." "I know!" said Bok. "What can you do about it?" "No, Scott," said the supervisor, "YOU have a problem with YOUR time and must solve it." -- It took Peck months to figure it out, but eventually he saw it was his choice to work harder than the others or not, and to pay the price or not. He decided to continue to do what he felt was necessary, but he was able to stop resenting those who did less. -- I've never had a serious time problem myself, because I've never dedicated myself to anything to that degree. The few times I tried to study very hard I just got stomach aches. (I probably didn't know how to study, but I didn't try to find out either). I also haven't accomplished what Peck has acomplished. So it goes. WE make our choices, so there's no point in resenting them. And no reason not to make new ones, as we can and will.

Let me suggest this: get half to 3/4 pound of boneless salmon about 1 1/2 inches think. Cut in half so you have two steaks about 3/4 inch thick (or maybe you can buy them that way. Grilling thick steaks dries them out.) Marinate briefly in a little soy sauce, olive oil, dill, and lemon juice. Grill or broil slowly, ca. 5 minutes to a side. Wonderful.

SEPTEMBER

Friday was filled with purposeful activity. I took a brief bike ride. It was cloudy so I skipped the beach and poked down Briggs Field Road. The old airport hanger may have been up at the beginning of the road, but the rest of it dips down near a large kettle pond, full of water lillies and is not airport territory.

Ilse called at 9:00 to say she couldn't start the lawn mower, so I went to the Chapel and cut the grass.

On our walk in the Red Maple Swamp we saw 20 frogs! This is good news indeed, if frogs are really our canaries in the mine. Or is that canaries of the mind?

I started digging up our backyard garden. It's to be a 4 by 16 foot rectangle just west of the wood chips. Maybe with a split rail fence behind it. The garden is for next year, a "kitchen" garden with mixed flowers and vegetables.

McNeil/Lehrer had the last in the interesting series about 2d career teachers in New York schools. Washngton Week was interesting as usual.

Thank goodness George W is a regular chain saw sort of guy and not one of those flossy millionaires's sons who went to Exeter, Yale, and Harvard.

We stopped at the Green to see our brick. Very handsome. "Nancy & Russ Chenoweth". You can sprinkle a few of my ashes around the bandstand, and it will do nicely as a memorial. There were business and civic organizations represented as well as people. Suds and Service even gave it's phone number! Not dot coms.

I helped set up the popcorn booth yesterday morning and sold popcorn and lemonade in the afternoon. Great fun. I bought a couple of $1 first (and last) day cancellations from the "Windmill Station," and today I'll buy a $2 raffle ticket for a wood strip canoe. The first (and last) raffle ticket I expect to buy.

This morning I'll take the car and the bicycle to the Fellowship, stay for most of the meeting, and bike back home, leaving the car there. Then Nancy and I will walk over to Bracket Road and join the Library contingent for the parade. There are 80 floats. It is joked that there will be no one left to watch. I'm not sure it's a joke. No rain at least. Then I sell popcorn for an hour and take the tent down. The simple life.

I forgot to mention we saw a garter snake in the swamp the other day, sunning itself on the leaves of a bull briar patch, four feet off the ground. Boa dreams.

I've collect en envelope full of NYT articles, practicing for extreme old age, when that may be the chief means of communication. -- I like the Maureen Dowd column today which seemed to be about the agglomeration of the intertainment industry. I could have told her some years ago that as the number of channels increased we found less and less to watch. Today we watch only McNeil/Lehrer and Washington Week. Everything else, if not a rerun or the same thing that's on five other channels, is a badly done rehash. Books still please, but I gather they will soon become merely vehicles for advertising (The Bulgari Affair) and that there are only 15,000 novel readers left in the country, largly living on upper East Side New York. This seems unlikley though, and as most of my impressions of the world come from the Times, they may be badly skewed as well. As the Green Pig would say, what we don't know is what makes it interesting.

Windmill Weekend has come and gone for another year, and we quite enjoyed it. I helped set up the Library's popcorn and lemonade tent on Saturday morning and worked the counter in the afternoon. Making popcorn is a very minor art. If you fall behind, it's the devil to catch up. We sold a lot of popcorn and lemonade, and will buy many books and tapes. While not really crowded as crowds go back in the real world, the celebration was lively and well attended. Bands played, highland regiments paraded to backpipes. Kids climbed the plastic mountain, faces were painted, and all that good old Americana.

A tall and handsome East Indian man dressed in maharaja style finery, stolled through it all with his wife (at this side but a few inches behind). We were finally introduced by Jim Owens to the mayor of East Ham, a suburb of London. (Talk about profiling! Should have figured that out.) We were not introduced to his wife, nor did she speak.

Sunday I went to the Fellowship. Nancy stayed home to keep things simple. It was a good meeting, which I will tell you about later. I'd brought my bicycle and left the car parked at the Chapel as planned. The ride home up the bike path took only 15 minutes. We had a bit of lunch and walked on over towards Bracket Road. Martha, the new librarian, happened to be going past and picked us up in her truck. We were number 48 out of 80 floats, and our spot was right in from of Fellowship member Barbara Jones' house, so we used her facilities. We got nifty "Hooked on Reading" tee shirts to wear (XL).

The parade was great fun. Nancy and I walked the whole way (only about two miles, but pretty hot). I pushed a book truck part of the way and walked "reading" a book for the rest. Nancy said I looked very natural that way. She handed out children's book certificates.

The Fellowship truck, number 42, looked terrific. I supplied suggestions for the sign and some Tyvek, which makes indestructable banners.

After we got to the Green I made popcorn for a couple of hours and then we packed everything up. A great day.

The speaker for the Fellowship meeting was Matt, a young man who had graduated from Brandeis in May. He was very exhuberant, (perhaps slightly manic), and expounded many of the things I've come to believe over the last 60 years (open mind, intellectual curiousity, not judging others, we're part of the whole, turned off by too much getting and spending, etc., etc.) He was a practicing Jew but of a very humanistic flavor. Matt plans to travel for a year, in Europe and then in the far east or Latin America, and then go to medical school.

Wendy, an interesting visitor, is a producer of corporate videos from New York, who would like to relocate on the Cape. We'll see her again at the pot luck on Friday. She asked the obvious question, what about like-minded young people who can't afford to travel abroad for a year and then go to medical school? His answer, which I don't recall exactly, wasn't a bad one, and we all agreed that the important thing was to have a vision. Then, whether it's hard or easy, long or short, you have a good chance of achieving it, or something close to it. He brought a bunch of interesting friends of all ages.

I'm glad we seem to have hooked up with a congeneal group. I recommend it. I wish I'd done it ages ago. I sense that, in our case and barring unforeseen changes, we are with these people now for the rest of our lives, and they are as fine a crew as you'd find anywhere. Some groups are better than others, but most have possibilities, I suspect. The UU's, the Friends, Ethical Culture Societies, theme groups, etc. Even the better main line churches are possible, if you openly keep your own beliefs. It's a way of meeting interesting people who aren't exactly like you.

11 September 01

It was good to hear our children's voices. It doesn't change the facts, but it reaffirms the family. I wish we could sit around the table and talk. I wonder if we'll find out what it's about and if there's anything we can do about it.

We saw it all, from the time CNBC, which can see Manhattan from their studies in Fort Lee, N.J., saw smoke on the first tower. We watched the other events as they happened, one after another, in the course of an hour or so. Very scary.

It's such a nice day here. Sunny and cool. I rode down to the bay on my bicycle early. There was no one on the beach, but I saw my first coyote. Skinny with short hair, long legs, and big ears. He was trotting across Shurtleff, looking sly and cocky. There were a few people on the beach at Coast Guard later, when we took our walk.

The well drillers arrived and drilled a new well and installed a submersible pump across the street. My neighbor said he just replaced his old pump, which is what we'll probably do when we need to. Much cheaper.

Our pleasant, safe-as-it-gets life goes on. A potluck this Friday, the book group next Monday. That's about the level of our excitement. We both felt guilty at being so glad our son wasn't in New York. I hope none of our friends was involved. We all know so many people.

Our faith that one day will follow another is necessary, but such events should make one think a bit. Nancy and I have both had minor health scares this year, but so far as we know know now we're in excellent health for our ages. The moral, personal and national life seems to be to continue, with a little more caution and a little more vigor than before. We'll try.

The commentary on TV and in the newspapers for the past week has been mind-numbing. I've taken in all I can. I thought the President's address on the 20th was well done. I'm sure we'll support him, but I hope not mindlessly. Our congress appears to give their consent without also offering advice. The participants on our favorite news panel seem unable to say a word in counterpoint. I appreciate the New York Times, which has allowed reason and caution to speak through its editorial pages and letters to the editor.

My pacifist friends are bravely circulating petitions. I think they're right. If we could put up an intelligent defense and pursue all peaceful means of response, I believe we could end terrorism without great loss of life. Unfortunately, no nation has that kind of courage. We'll have to act, if possible wisely and effectively.

The President spoke of patience but not of sacrifice, and of the cost but not of apportioning it fairly. He said little about trying to understand our predicament. I was glad that he used the word 'evil' only once. It has been used freely in the past week, as a substitute for analyzing the bizarre but still human motives of our enemy. It's true that muslim fundamentalists hate our freedoms, but so do Christian fundamentalists. We have to learn to live with one another. That's far from the whole story, however. The third world was modernized for the benefit of the West and of a local elite. The U.S. was and remains the chief actual and symbolic source of secularization. Most third world citizens were worse off than ever and were treated brutally by their leaders. When they turned to religion for strength and comfort, their religion was repressed. The West, and the United States in particular, were involved in supporting oppressive regiemes and condoning and participating in terrorism. This is another reason we are hated and accused of impiety, arrogance, and hypocracy. They know best our worst and shallowest characteristics.

We've benefitted greatly from the resources of the entire world. We've given much back as well, but we could give far more. There is a great deal of social and economic injustice in the world, and we are responsible for some of it. The mark of legitimacy in every religion, world view, nation, party, or individual is the furthering of social justice.

I wish we could acknowedge the past and speak truth to the present world. Some admissions might be difficult, but our misdeeds are already known abroad if not to our own citizens, and for all our sins we are a great people. In the long run, honesty is the winning policy, and truth and freedom together are the twin towers of our nation.

Harry the NYC fireman and I were saying the other day that we didn't feel things had changed that much, that we had always thought the country was vulnerable. And yet... we have changed. Like most of us, I find it hard to supress those images and hard not to think about the events quite often. It's not the Lisbon earthquake, the blitz, the Hamburg firestorm, or Hiroshima, but it's dreadful, it's here and now, and it's our friends and relatives. The paper yesterday had an article about how very many people will probably be affected over the next months by some degree of post traumatic stress syndrome. I suppose so. Talking helps.

I hope all those political science students I gave small help to over the decades are out there solving our problems, but like so many, I wish I had something more concrete to do now. I'm glad though that the situation doesn't call for us pensioners to put on helmets and flak vests and man the observation posts. I'd like to hang out a flag, but I won't, not now, because there are plenty of flags around, and once upon a time all the inhabitants of Nazi Germany HAD to fly the swastika. We'll just talk.

There has been a lot of that this week. Good articles and editorials, emails and conversations, a lot of good sense spoken, and only a little nonsense, though some of it in high places. Most voices seem to say, let's defend ourselves vigorously and deal with terrorism world wide, but not at the cost of our values. The best statement I've seen came from Jordan's King Abdullah: We can win if you Americans don't forget who you are, if you don't forget who your friends are, and if we all work together. The bad guys work togther, but we don't. We can defeat them but only if we learn to cooperate globally as effectively as they do.

This may be our best opportunity ever to bring the world together. There is a lot of sympathy for us, a lot of public admiration for our good qualities, a lot of shared horror and fear of terrorism, and a good deal of concern about what the US will do next. But we have to be prepared to give something too, and not get hung up on national, commerical, or political advantage. However creaky and suspect it is, we should probably pay our dues and try to work through the UN. As big as we are, we can't defeat terrorism on our own and certainly not by making enemies of everyone.

We ARE a great country. We've demonstrated that a high degree of freedom and openness in a multicultural society can produce wealth, stength, character, and national generosity and benevolence. But we have our failings. The violence against muslims is so stupid, but the public statements at all levels have been good. The CHIEF mark of a properly functioning religion, world view, nation, or person, is a committment to social justice. I didn't make that up; it's in all the scriptures, the Torah/bible, the Koran, the Sutras. We still have some social injustice at home, and we support a bit of it abroad. The gap between rich and poor has grown in this country. The Shah of Iran, Augusto Pinochet, The terrorist School of the Americas, and even the Taliban were all our guys once, and that hasn't been forgotten. Making the world safe for multinational corporations won't be enough.

I went to my first writer's group yesterday, and it was great. This was the "goal oriented", "read and critique" group. 5 of us showed up: a historical/romance novelist (disorganized but promising), a British/Spanish/Argentine memoirist (also disorganized but fascinating and a good storyteller), the english teacher/MFA author of a publised ghost story/mystery/romance (about a cemetery), which I just read and liked, gave out a synopsis (which I haven't read yet) of an in-progress novel; a 40ish college instructor guy, with a pony tail, read the beginning of a really gripping Vietnam vet murder mystery; I read the first 7 pages of the GP and the Windmills, a much changed version you haven't seen. I think we ALL got good advice and encouragement.

Today I go to the more generic "writer's workshop". Don't know if I'll continue with both. We'll see. I like the contacts with interesting people. And, no offense to us seniors, they are mostly younger than the Fellowship folks, which make an interesting contrast.

Fellowship tomorrow is "2-minute biographies". I'll send you mine.

OCTOBER

I seem to be hooked on my writing group lately. I know the world gets on without my letters, but we seniors feel the need to stay in touch. The group is great. It's edifying and satisfying, and it's rather amazing how many quite different sorts of talent there are. Some people are really good at things it would never occur to me to do at all. I've been reading Newhouse to the Friday group and the Pig to the Saturday group and getting good suggestions.

Otherwise, the kitchen cabinets are almost done. They just need new knobs. The lady of the house requests NICE knobs, and she shall have them. I had been warned though, that once the shell of ugliness had been broken, we'd want the rest as well, the floor, the fixtures, etc.

I said I'd buy an old but still boxed up Shopsmith from the Abbots for $50. I hope they don't back out. My father always wanted one. I will invent uses for it.

I don't like this millenium so far. I'm feeling threatened. I know we can learn, and we're tougher than we look. But our enemy is fanatic. It's one thing to believe your God won't let you down and another to assume he'll do it your way. If the other side can't learn and won't back down, then we're in trouble, and there comes a point when a gravely wounded animal loses its good sense and the blank spaces begin to reappear on the map. I feel a little ill.

Hey, there IS good stuff on TV. We're been discovering CSPAN-2 (it takes longer for some folks). Great talks with authors of interesting books. Just enlightening talk, no attempts at "entertainment". See www.booktv.org/schedule

We had quite a nice day on Sunday. The speakers at the Fellowship were old Peace Corps volunteers to Korea who had gone back this summer. The husband is the director of R&D (I thought those were separated these days) at the "Four C's" (Cape Cod Community College). His wife is a Montessori teacher. Naturally there was much contrast between 1967 and the very prosperous Korea of 2001. The mountains are no longer bare as in M*A*S*H, industrial parks are everywhere, and everyone carries a cell phone. I suppose if they didn't mind their own business, the Taliban would pick on them too, for being a bit worldly. -- Well, the people WERE nice, but I had this very slight reaction I sometimes get to beautiful people who set out to do good and do ever so well. Get over it, Russ.

I had a long talk with Harry and might have stood on the village green with a peace demonstration next Saturday, except that it interferes with my writing group. First things first. I agreed to do a talk on Islam in December. The first 10 pages of Armstrong's book "Islam" makes our problem clear. Mohammed started Islam (with a little help from Allah) because of the grave injustices in his local society caused by unrestrained capitalism. Like other great religions, only more so, Islam sees social justice and egalitarianism as the proof of holiness. (All those absolute monarchs were endured but not liked, but neither is democracy. The ideal is the absolute, observant, community.) Our role in supporting the secular elite in Iran and the Saudi Royal family, and our being the world's inspiration for immoral behaviors, puts us in the wrong. So it goes.

Rosemary took my check for the Shipsmith, which will have to be delivered by truck someday. I'm only about 75% sure what a Shopsmith is, and the only project I have for it at the moment is a board with pegs for coats, like the one in our pantry in Oreland. But I'm looking forward to having it and have some thoughts.

We saw the Turnip Judging Contest underway at the windmill but didn't stop. I asked Dave Eagles who won, and he said, "some woman." My interpretation of this is that it shakes the foundations of society a little. What next!

We had Peter Whitlock to supper. Bobsie is in the hospital with a fractured pelvis. She'll be out of action for a while. Peter is the park ranger and oceanography lecturer. We guess he's about 34. He'd just been visiting with an old high school friend. He said, "you know, it occurs to me that no matter how much money you have, and however well your circumstances go, seems to have little bearing on your level of happiness." Yup. Should be obvious, but obviously many folks don't get it. Maybe most.

Now we owe the Opels dinner. He ran the Peace Corps in Africa once and is an expert at chinese cookery. We think we'll have chicken and 40 cloves or beef and tomatoes.

Back to work. I see why people join writers groups. It forces you to write. I see why some drop out too, but I won't.

The year we lived in Arlington, Massachusetts we were amazed by the in-your-face reds of the oaks and maples. Spectacular but garish. We didn't care much for Arlington anyway. The fall folliage season on the Cape is spread out over nearly two months and is correspondingly dilute. Wow, wait till next week, we say, and then, hmm, guess we missed it. We've learned to take it as it comes, and all in all it's very satisfying.

I did freak out for a couple weeks the fall we moved here. I still bump into memories of that brief time, patterns of light, damp winds, an odor lurking in a closet. But we've felt mostly at home for almost two years now. We have friends and activities and are part of a community in a way we never were before, and never could be. I have to get up at 6:30, as I did this morning, just to get a start on all the things I want to do.

I was sad when my parents moved to Florida. We missed the pleasant easy visits and good meals. But it was all right. We had our lives, and they certainly enjoyed theirs in Florida. My father's letters kept us vicariously involved, and entertained. He had a better eye for the ludicrous than I do, and although a kind man, he was less generous in his judgments. Perhaps there actually was more posing and hypocracy in Florida. We New Englanders go in for plain speaking, up to a point.

I notice that our children miss us but that they too get on with their lives. Maybe that's one of the reasons things seem to go so much faster these days. The old-style 'nucular' family, such as we saw a good deal of around Oreland, was comfortable but perhaps a little stultifying. And, unlike the emigrees from Ireland and Eastern Europe, we can visit. We look forward to it. Even far flung families can be functional.

Always start the morning with a cup of coffee and a little healthy rationalization. We have to brace ourselves these days to go after the mail. I think the practice of making junk mail look mysterious may have been discontinued. I now open only things I think I might really want to see and don't bother to add to my lifetime supply of return address labels.

I do hope you all stay safe. How does one do that? Stay out of tall buildings? Don't open your mail? 'Dig safe' has a new meaning. The world has become comfortable for paranoiacs.

On with the day. The yearly termite and furnace inspections are scheduled for this morning. You can't be too careful here in the boonies. Off to the library to help store sale books, rake the Chapel next door, back to the Library to attend the writing group and pick up copy of Karen Armstrong's "Islam". I'll have to learn to knit for the troops.

I'm looking forward to my writing group on Friday. I'll tell you about it. I've just finished Saul Bellow's "To Jerusalem and Back, a Personal Account", 1975. Excellent, sad, amusing, amazing. Except for the references to the Societ Union, much of it could have been writen this week.

NOVEMBER

Thanksgiving, that uniquely American Turkey. I've always liked it, mildly. As a small child I drew witches and ghosts as well as turkeys, but they seemed dumb then, as they do now. Since the age of 12 I've liked all food except parsnips, and I'm quite fond of good turkey. We had darned good turkey Friday night at the Fellowship's Thanksgiving pot luck. (You'll recall that last year I was the reluctant master of ceremonies for the Thanksgiving joke-a-thon. It was so all right that we decided to do without entertainment this year. Good choice.)

It was a pretty good weekend. My Friday and Saturday writing groups were smaller than usual. We had a couple hours each of great conversational fun as well as the usual reading and critiquing. I've come to realize that there are writing group junkies who don't mean to write much but enjoy the ambiance, and that's great, more time for the readers to read. I'm also in the presence, I think, of several fine writers, rather exciting.

Sunday's Fellowship "open mike" (the first of these attended by Nancy) was excellent. "Why is this Thanksgiving unlike all other...." Some thought it was unlike; I thought it wasn't, having inherited my father's cheerful cynicism. The best quote was from Bert, the 86 year old former public health physician: "It is practically impossible to overemphasize the unimportance of anything." -- Bert, mind you, is one of the hardest working, rightest thinking public servants I've ever known. As we speak, he's battling for childrens' health on the Cape. Understanding the RELATIVE unimportance of PARTICULAR beliefs, ideals, nations, accomplishments, and individuals, (including oneself), is almost a prerequisite, it seems to me, to living a vigorous, useful, and enjoyable life. That's not really a paradox when you think about; it's just living in the real world.

So, Thanksgiving approaches, and we recognize that in this particularly blessed outcropping of the land of the well off, we are doing well ourselves, and that although lives are fragile and transitory, and, as Pascal suggests, it's probably best to keep one's eyes on the grindstone most of the time, it's instructive occasionally to do a heads up and look around.

We'll probably go to the buffet at the Hunan Gourmet on Thursday. (It was finally listed in an index to a book of coupons as the "Human" Gourmet!)

We hope you all can be, in your own ways, as happy as momentarily are we. We think of you every day. You are not alone; the table is just extra long. Stay in touch. Live joyfully (and of course, take care).

My thanksgiving poem for the Fellowship:

This isn't a commercial exactly, but our church, which respectfully takes note of god in the details, could use a few more members, because our average age is really getting up there, although everyone is funnier and more caring than ever in their lives and has a lot to offer young folks under sixty and is interested in everything from septic tanks to religion, which isn't such a stretch, and all we do is talk and eat, and cheer on the world, and prop each other up.

We had a pleasant though not particularly social Thanksgiving. Nancy called the Hunan Gourmet and found they were closed. Perhaps they noticed in the past that Chinese food was not in demand on turkey day.

Instead we drove to Provincetown and walked in the Beech Forest. With most of its leaves fallen but lacking the worn look of deep winter, it was quite lovely in the slanted late afternoon sunlight (1:30 pm). There were amazing scarlet bursts of winterberry around Pilgrim Lake. Earlier, we had seen a large flock of birds, terns probably, diving into the surf a half mile away. You could see only the dives, not the ascents, so it looked like a waterfall (though really more like one of those electronic table fountains). Provincetown was closed but not deserted. A few dozen couples wandered its sunny streets as we drove through.

I celebrated by purchasing a foot long piece of 6" black stove pipe to serve as a squirrel baffle. It seems to work. It always does at first. Squirrel brains grind slowly, but they never stop. I also completed the wooden weather door at the bottom of our outside basement stairs, incorporating a closet door found at the dump. The workshop is shaping up nicely around the venerable Shopsmith.

Saw on Boston TV a snippit of New York's "Macy Day" parade. Boston TC is often a little confused about the rest of the world.

Tonight we will try the Hunan Gourmet again. That and a visit to the Library will be the day's activities. The writing groups are both off this week. It's just as well. A visit to CVS can fill our day. Speaking of libraries, I note that a librarian in Florida broke the ALA code (and Florida law) by ratting on presumed terrorists. The sides say, scrap the law or observe it. Why not keep it and use good sense?

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. We are quite thankful. When I was a boy I frequently heard my grandfather say, "It's a great life if you don't weaken." I wasn't sure what he meant, although I thought it was a very wise and original saying. I'm still not certain, but I don't think he was referring primarily to physical infirmities.

THE SHOPSMITH

Around 1950, my father saw an advertisement for The Shopsmith, a combination table saw, router, lathe, disk sander, and drill press. It cost $200 for the basic tool. A bandsaw, jigsaw, joiner and other accessories could be added at additional cost. He didn't have $200 for something like this. Not long before, he and my mother had debated over spending $10 for a used lawnmower. It was a nice thought. He considered similar purchases in the years that followed: a metalworking shop, watchmaking tools, and a celestial telescope, among others. He bought none of these. He did eventually buy a Casco, a small electric drill, roughly the size and shape of a potato, which took dozens of small cutting and grinding bits. I tried using it and never found that any of the bits did very much. When he was older and wealthier he treated himself to a series of fairly expensive cameras.

I doubt that my father ever had much need for serious woodworking equipment, or that he necessarily had anything in mind do with it. He liked tools and built himself a substantial workbench in the basement of our house in Ferguson, Missouri. I don't recall how we acquired the crude workbench in Westfield, New Jersey. Probably it was in the house when they bought it. By that time my father was too busy at his office to think much about home handicrafts. He and I did what repairs were needed around our large Dutch colonial house, and he limited his craftsmanship to oil painting and furniture refinishing. In his retirement, he did exquisite embroidery and made attractive and imaginative small wooden objects that sold well at church fairs.

I inherited most of his tools when he and my mother moved to Florida. Some of these were in poor repair by then, and nearly all of them have since disappeared. Our children were highly satisfactory in most ways, but they were hard on tools. When Nancy's father died, I acquired the contents of his workshop. It was much like my father's: old tools, some orginally of good quality but now rusted and broken. I took what I could use.

I've bought a few tools for myself over the years, always cheap ones. Some tools were given to me by my children, occasionally to replace those they broke or lost. My parents bought me a circular saw, at Snows in Orleans. We were at the Cape on vacation, and I had just announced that I was putting an addition on our house in Pennsylvania. I don't think they had much faith in my ability to carry this through, but they must have felt they should make a gesture. I still have the saw, in good condition. I may also have bought the electric drill which I use now. I don't remember. I do recall, with regret, having to leave my father's huge 1/2 drill in Florida after his funeral, to be given away to a friend. It was too large and heavy to be brought home on the airplane. It looked like something the Terminator would have carried. Perhaps an arrangement could have been made, but none of us was thinking clearly at the time. I can't imagine what he used it for in their elegant 5th floor appartment.

I have a strange mishmash of tools now, many of them acquired in informal ways: found in houses we lived in or lying in the street, discarded at the dump, and bought at yard sales. I use nearly all of them, often in ways they weren't meant to be used, and I take reasonably good care of them. If I'm allowed a few more years of peace and good health, I may leave an orderly and respectable workshop. I've already built a sturdy workbench in our garage and another in the basement, both entirely out of recycled lumber from the town dump. The hanging lamps over the workbenches are from the dump as well. I regret having left my sledgehammer in Pennsylvania, although I haven't needed it yet.

A few weeks ago, at the October Fellowship pot luck, Rosemary Abbot said to the table, "Does anybody want a Shopsmith?" "How much?" I asked. She looked surprised, as well she might have, our average age being around 76, but she quickly said, "Fifty dollars." I bought it. I had just received my $107 check from the Town of Eastham, for 2 1/2 days of work as the Eastham Miller. $50 was already dedicated to the purchase of a Japanese bird bath that I have admired for 5 years at the Birdwatcher's General Store. The rest I planned to use for restaurant meals. But we can eat out any time we choose, Nancy suggested, and we probably won't anyway. She's right.

Nothing more was said for a week. I wanted the Shopsmith and fantacized about it's appearance and condition. I had only the vaguest memory of seeing a picture of one 50 years before. I was pleased with my patience and was rewarded finally by a phone call suggesting we go look at it in Debbie's garage. Debbie's garage was full of old power tools, welding equipment, moribund bicycles, and general junk. The Shopsmith sat in the midst of this, in depleted glory. It was old and thickly coated with grime. $50 seemed near its fair value. I poked it. It weighed a ton, 300 pounds at least.

"I guess you'll have to take it apart," Rosemary said. She didn't sound entirely happy. She hadn't seen it for some years apparently. I dismantled it, enough for the four of us to lift it piecemeal into Rosemary's old truck. We delivered it to our basement, where it lay, a heap of scrap metal. I thanked them and was left alone to contemplate it

I spent the afternoon scraping a thick layer of grease off the wooden bench and wiping down the various metal assemblies. Gradually, something like a steel butterfly emerged from its cocoon of grime. The metal castings were massive and strangely elegant. The milled steel rods and bars cleaned up like...well, like new. Unscratched, almost unused. Beneath the grease, the wooden stand had a handsome patina. The machine was clearly old, the grey paint on the castings was dull and scratched in places, but it was altogether in excellent condition. I reassembled the various parts, by myself now and with considerable difficulty. Holding one hundred pound assembly while sliding it smoothly into another was as awkward as I had expected it to be. I took my time. When it was assembled, checked, and tightened, I pugged it in and flipped the switch. It hummed with understated strength.

There were parts missing, I realized, notably the drill chuck, one piece I could hardly do without. As has become a reflex these days, I looked up "shopsmith" on the web. The company is still in business. There was even an historical section on their web site where I learned that my model, the 10-ER (for "experimental revised") was manufactured from 1947 to 1953. Surely a machine tool that old could be considered an antique. It was sold through Montgomery Ward at first. Shopsmith didn't begin its own marketing until it developed the Mark V in 1954. The Mark V is still sold, nearly fifty years later, under the same name, in what I consider to be an amazing display of conservatism. Why not the Mark 10, or the MARK 50? It even looks the same, although the belts are enclosed now for safety. Parts are not available for the historic models, but the $36 Mark V drill chuck would clearly fit my machine.

It would still have been a good purchase at $86, but it occured to me that we hadn't looked around Debbie's garage very carefully. "Any time," Bill said. "It's never locked." I found nothing at first . There were lots of tools, parts, drill bits, etc., but no Shopsmith pieces. Finally I noticed a large and battered cardboard box, shoved to the back of a shelf under the workbench and buried among other boxes and assorted junk. I dug it out with difficulty, and there it all was, everything: the drill chuck, a dozen circular saw blades, a joiner, disk sander, drum sander, dado cutter, joiner blade and carrage. The jigsaw attachment I already had, the largest and heaviest jigsaw I've ever seen.

I still haven't used my machine to drill a hole or saw a board. I built the basement workbench to hold the accessories using only hand tools. Maybe I never will use it. Maybe I'll just polish it and admire it and show it to my friends and think of how much my father would have enjoyed owning a Shopsmith.

DECEMBER

I'm getting behind myself. My Islam talk and our book group fall in the same week. Fortunately one writing group is in recess until January. But letters have to be written, and chapters. But no, I tell myself, I can just go along and do what I can do. It's allowed now. Fortunately a very capable friend of ours is going to run for selectman, so I don't have to feel guilty about not doing that. We'll hold campaign coffees.

Nancy has polished off the Christmas shopping for the Fellowship's adopted family, knitted 3 dozen sweaters, and is busy assisting the school system.

The cardinals and junkos have staked out the fallen seed gleaning areas. The titmice, finches, and chickadees are busy at the feeders. The squirrels are confined to the ground these days. The coolie hat and stovepipe arrangement seems to be effective. I'm almost sorry the squirrel wars are over, although it was a certainly a good fight, the best sort of war as those things go. If it IS over. The squirrels will no doubt retire to their caves and use their semi-hibernation slowly to crank out new solutions and will probably clear the baffles in a single bound come spring.

We've become Book TV junkies when we can remember to switch it on. I want to read Theodore Rex a new biography of our 3d greatest president. I'd put him second, actually. We saw Jesse Jackson Jr. talk (preach really) about his book, A More Perfect Union. A very impressive guy. He has his father's fire but seems to have applied it more judiciously. I think he and Theodore would have gotten along. I haven't been able to track down the alledged TR quote, "This country won't be good for anyone until it's good for everyone," but it fits Jesse too.

I plan to maintain my irrational (and almost wholly ignorant) dislike of Harry Potter, but I admire his literary mom and am delighted to hear he will be translated into Latin and Greek. -- I did pick up a copy once, read a few lines ( in English), and said ugh. I know many wiserthanI sort of people who like it a lot.

I made myself a very nice foot stool in the style of our PackingCrate (or was it Pine Factory) furniture. Next (when the Lord delivers the required materials to the dump) will be a chairside table in the same format. I was delighted to find a piece of wood for the top yesterday. Excellent, said Nancy, you have your plank, and I'll get a new dishwasher and stove. Sounds good to me.

I thought the Times article on Johnny Spann and John Walker was quite interesting and maybe more intelligent and sensitive than it meant to be. CIA or Taliban, they're the same boy, as Sigmund would point out, with just a different nudge at some point.

And although I often agree with Tom Friedman (and we already set our thermostat at 65 and drive at 55), I don't think 'National Service' is the answer. It's not a bad thing, except that it's one more palliative, face-saver, escape valve, and whitewash, in place of acknowledging what our national and personal priorities are now, working to change them, and living our "real lives" as if we owed each other something.

We look forward to seeing some of our children at Christmas to and a Philadelphia visit in January.

We delivered the Fellowship's numerous contributions to the needy families program to the closed-for-the-season Fog Cutter restaurant on Thursday. A hibernating restaurant is a strange sad place. All doors of the big fridge were open except one. I itched to open it for them, but I presumed it was already too late and I would only release a stench. We were interviewed for local TV. Nancy who claims few talents demonstrated yet another as she gave a sparking interview. Were were careful not to watch channel 3. We never do anyway.

We took our walk early yesterday because it was supposed to rain. It did. We said hi to the couple who go daily to Doane Rock so that the husband can work with his walker. He's going at considerable speed now. They both look pleased. Othewise there was no one on the trail. A few surfers were enjoying the large mild waves. One surfer was a man in his 50's. A few cars were gathered at the Cost Guard Station, and Soft dit dah dits were coming from a loudspeaker in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Marconi Station's 1st transatlantic radio message this week, the one to TR which had to be carried from the station over to the local telegraph on horseback.

While Nancy was at the hair dresser chatting about old Orleans, I visited the Orleans Library. -- If she can talk a good hockey game with a cab driver, she can certainly talk old Orleans. -- It was mentioned in the paper last year that the Snow Library trying to improve its user-friendliness. They have marginally succeeded. The tight lipped hostility has been replaced by faint smiles. The books are always accomodating. I meant to do one thing and did others. Often the way. I took out "A New Christianity for a new World" by Bishop Spong. He's been the hot topic for years, but I've never read him. I considered a book on "the canon of classical music" but concluded that although I can read about composers I can't read about music. I did learn that Samuel Barber was born in Pa, went to Curtis, and lived with Gian Carlo Menotti. I also perused a life of Amy Lowell. I have been reading and much enjoying some of her poetry. Quite a character. And not that I was pursuing this theme, but she lived with an actress.

When Nancy returned, we went to Mid-Cape building supplies and she investigated dish-washers and smooth top ranges while I purchased two extrememly handsome 2x4's. I'd found a plank at the dump for my chairside table top and needed a frame. I may open a furniture chain called "Two by Four".

I have to finish off my Islam talk for tomorrow, and then I can get back to serious reading.

We look forward to seeing the children, at Christmas and/or after. We hope you have a mildly festive holiday season!

We took the car to Tinknockers this morning (great name for a body shop). No prob. They'll let us know when to bring it in. While we were waiting, a guy came in. He wanted his car towed to his house. Sure, said the lady; just get the police to release it. He went off cursing and threating law suits. The lady laughed. It's a 2001 Toyota, been at Tinknockers since September, involved in deep shit, and NOT registered to anyone.

John says you're all planning to work for doctorates, chiefly out of intellectual curiousity I sense, and a hope of enlightening the world. Good for you. Have a vision, and go for it. The journey is the destination (the goal? the reward? something like that). Several of my colleagues at Penn took a decade to get their degrees, and it was well worth it to them. There are a lot of good ways to live but none more glorious than the life of the mind.

I can't complain about my own life, but I do sometimes wish I'd finished my degree. I think I just wasn't sure enough of what I was doing. Eventually it is helpful to decide that. Ah well, the nice thing about being retired is that you can safely ride off in all directions.

I finished the book Mari gave me for Christmas in a day, "An Uncommon Friendship" by Bernat Rosner and Frederic Tubach. One was an orphaned holocaust survivor, the other the son of a Nazi officer. They both came to the U.S. alone in their early teens, met late in life, and tell their stories together. Not sad, horrific, or over emotionalized, just fascinating and rather inspiring. Now we have to get hold of "John Adams" for the book group.

I have to get back to the Green Pig. I'll owe a new chapter by January 4th. But first I want to investigate this Spong business a little more. I plan to write to him, once I decide what to say.