CAPE COD REPORTS, 2005 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, but if you see something here that offends you, let me know. No offense was intended, and I apologize. Many last names have been suppressed, so as not to intrude in friend’s lives. You’ll have to sort out the characters by context, if you care. JANUARY February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December JANUARY 7 Jan 05 It's snowing again this morning! What's going on here, winter? It looks quite nice actually. We'll plan to boot up and go out into it later. After the last snow we walked to Coast Guard and were standing by the bridge looking at the birds when I thought I saw something move near my feet. A small head poked up out of a hole and looked around. It was a weasel (or perhaps a ferret)! I silently pointed it out to Nancy, and we watched it for a few seconds before it noticed us and popped back down. We were pleased to get a note from John that he'd seen Sally and the British Museum and made it to York. Emails all look alike, but I don't forget they come from different corners of the world, California, Virginia, Philadelphia, and now York! "Old York" I suppose you could say. -- We continue with our own English plans, consulting maps and splendid guide book. There are so many free Museums in London! And I gather that some of this freeing happened relatively recently. Hear, hear! The dining room corner cabinets progress with the help of the laser level. It's amazing what can be accomplished by doing a little every day. I realize this wouldn't work for all projects. I'm reading a good book, American Colonies, by Alan Taylor, a history prof at Columbia, in furtherance of my plan to actually get an image of American history in my head and give a talk next summer. No one was very nice to the "Indians". The Indians, unfortunately, weren't nice to each other, or cooperative, and misjudged the early colonists as total idiots, owing to there lack of survival skills. I have to finish Reading Lolita in Teheran to present it to the book group in a week and a half. I decided to read Lolita as well. So far, my take isn't at all like the Iranians, none of whom mentioned that it was funny. HH is an amusing and brilliant psychopathic nutso and Lo a guilty innocent. But I haven't finished it. 14 Jan 05 We had a fine visit with Mari. She was delighted by a high tide, partly up over the road out to First Encounter. The really high ones are a combination of lunar tide and strong wind. The biggest we’ve seen was a foot and a half above the surface of the bike bridge to Coast Guard! We enjoy the reasonable extremes or storm and snow and wind and ice and water but realize that someone generally suffers somewhere. She liked seeing the Cape without leaves. The variety is good. It’s hard to imagine living in an unchanging climate. – We walked to Coast Guard a day or two ago in a cold rain and saw not a soul. – Went out at 7:00 today and found it clear and very windy. In his old age Karl Barth said the Holy Spirit was like the clear, clean air of his native Switzerland. Perhaps the Holy Spirit is the clear, clean air. – We walked to the bay this morning into a steady 40 mile per hour west wind, because rain is forecast by noon. Great whoooing in the trees and wires. The tide was out and the distant water white and churning, and sand streamed along the beach but not into our eyes. The return trip up Western avenue through the deserted mcmansions was quick. The dining room corner cabinets progress in the usual organic way. As in Dorothy Sayers The Mind of the Maker I have a general notion of the plot, but the action proceeds on its own. It’s shaping up. President T.R. is in California, so I have to be the presiding vice president of the Fellowship for a month. We’re experimenting with having members take responsibility for programs by the month (because no one wants to be on the program committee, and who could blame them.) I took February by defensive default and got Bruce from the French group to speak one Sunday. He can talk convincingly about anything. I’ll take another and talk about religion. We’ll devote the last Sunday to politics. I need one of those signs, “Patrons must leave their guns at the door and refrain from talking about religion or politics.” -- A Buddhist “minister” is speaking this Sunday. The Buddha rejected that role, but hey... R says she’s a fake. Nancy would stay home, but I think she feels she ought to support me in my official capacity, which is nice. I don’t think anyone is really a fake. I remember objecting strongly to the notion of “phonies” in Salinger’s Franny and Zoe. We can of course be ignorant, deluded, and nutso. 20 Jan 05 Wow! Another 3 or 4 inches of snow on top of what we already had. What is it about our snows that they so thickly coat the branches? There’s an inch and a half to two inches piled up on every twig. It makes the woods around our house even thicker than when in full summer leaf. I watched a junco flounder around up to his beak and finally decide to eat straight from the feeder in a very unjunkolike manner. We saw the wild turkeys again a couple of days ago, twenty to twenty-five of them grown huge, twenty pounds at least. They crossed the road in front of us in no hurry, stopping a line of cars and trucks. It was so cold two days ago we just walked around the block. Brrr. Like upstate New York? Yesterday was better. We walked on the bay beach above the line of ice. Frozen sand makes good walking. We now have two lightweight walking sticks with steel points made from cut down ski poles (from the dump of course). Even Nancy admits they might be useful for icy trails. We have our plane tickets and hotel reservation, and I’m typing up a few pages of the things we might want to do and checking the latest info on the web. Almost everything we want to see is free except St. Paul’s Cathedral, which we’ll be glad to pay to see unless we go there to a service. We’re planning to go to free church concerts and some church services, sort of an Anglican tour of London. – You could spend more time on the web preparing for a trip than actually traveling, but it’s fun, a virtual tour. I see that at the National Gallery you can punch in the art works you want to see and have a tour guide printed out. You can also see views of restaurants, maps, menus, etc. There was something to be said for serendipity, but I guess it’s a faster moving world. Inauguration day, what fun! Paul told a joke at the men’s meeting. Clinton, Gore, and Bush were in front of a firing squad. Clinton thought fast and yelled, “Hurricane!” While everyone ran for cover, he got away. Gore thought, hey if it worked for Clinton, so when the firing squad was ready again, he yelled “Earthquake!” He escaped too. It had finally sunk in to Bush what the others had done, so when the squad was reassembled, he yelled.....”Fire!” Oh well. 23 Jan 05 Whoa, golly, this is ever so slightly intimidating. I hope things are a bit better down your way. A bagatelle no doubt to upstate New Yorkers, but it’s supposed to go on for another 12 hours, and we can’t get the back door open now! The front door can be forced, and I’ll keep doing that. We cleverly parked the car near the end of the driveway, facing out, but I can dimly see a 4 foot drift in front of it. I guess a plow has been by unheard. Twenty to thirty inches projected total, with 60+ mph winds. Yep, about that, I’d say. At least it probably isn’t accumulating on the roof. A friend was concerned about her flat roof, and I suggested that perhaps her large son could clear it off. But he was flying to Hollywood for a job in the movie industry! Not today he isn’t! I’d meant to stop by the Chapel this afternoon to see that a scheduled birthday party was properly supervised. I doubt it will be a problem. We lost our electricity for an hour during the night, but it’s back now. We have food, water, shelter, firewood, charcoal, books, music, TV. We may miss our walk, if not our exercise. I was looking forward to checking on the “dangerously high tides.” Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny. We can go out and enjoy it. The Weather Channel is delirious. I hope none of you had plans to go see the Eagles. Stay tuned. 22 Jan 05 Things went a bit downhill from there! We were about to enjoy CBS Sunday Morning when the power went out. It came back at 5am this morning, 20 hours later. The house did well. It was still only 50 degrees inside, despite temperatures in the teens and a blizzard with 70 mile an hour gusts. I dug a path to the garage, so we had the hibachi, charcoal, and firewood. We have lots of candles and two oil lamps from previous blackouts. We ate well, listened to Cape Classical on John’s old boombox, and had a nice fire in the fireplace in the evening. Unfortunately we couldn’t see much, as there was little visibility and every window in the house was plastered with snow. Our chief concern was pipes freezing, but it never came close to that. We’ll have to think about that issue for the future. -- With the present administration, things are bound to get worse, This morning I dug a path to the car, past the bird feeders which we have replenished. Later we’ll start digging out the 4-5 foot drift in the 15 feet from the car to the street. Then maybe we’ll look around th town. We’ve heard there were from 32 to 36 inches of snow in Eastham. It’s hard to tell, as it has drifted so. In either case a lot. All is well. FEBRUARY 3 Feb 05 Whoa, we hear on CNBC that Al Sharpton has joined with PETA to take on KFC! We’d thought he was a madman until he spoke at the Democratic Debates and made more sense than anyone else. Sounds interesting. Someone loaned me a copy of the 1987 film “Tough Guys Don’t Dance”, novel, screenplay, and direction by Norman Mailer, because it takes place in Provincetown and contains a scene in The Chapel in the Pines. I’m a poor judge, having seen maybe a dozen films in the past 30 years, but it could easily be the worst I’ve ever seen, possibly the worst ever made. After the opening 5 minutes of handsome Cape and P’town scenery, it plunges instantly downhill. I watched until the chapel scene, 45 minutes in. Turns out the chapel is supposed to be in North Carolina and you catch the merest glimpses of both its interior and exterior. I may have told you, they didn’t like the stone fence and put up a white picket fence and encased the stone pillars in wood. You see it for three seconds. The fat wooden enclosures have moved across the street to be part of Bob Seay’s picket fence. After failing to find anything suitable on the web, we saw a couple of 22” x 12” x 11” duffles at Staples for $19 each that should let us carry on everything we need for London. Take the web with a grain of sand. Three feet of snow doesn’t go away quickly. We can’t get the car in the garage. We have ice dams on our roof, but they aren’t causing any trouble. Our walks are for the most part still un-walkable, but we’ve discovered The Great Beach. Thoreau and others discovered it before us, but we’ve avoided it because it was difficult walking. In winter the sand is frozen and easy walking, with our waterproof boots we don’t need to worry about cold or wet feet, and we have it largely to ourselves. Big waves. Tall cliffs. Lovely skies. Thanks to the dump, I’m massing a collection of Americana. It’s about time. I shold learn about our noble nation before it goes down the tubes. I’m reading Paul Johnson’s 900 p. History of the American People. Art says there are three major theories about American history, a continuation of the past, a break with the past, and something else. He’ll instruct me. I have a ways to go. 17 February 05 We put our car in the garage for the first time in weeks. Then it rained all night and suddenly the driveway is clear. It was all a bit too long and difficult. We like our snow neat and attractive and gone before it gets boring. We hear that the Mall of America is being greatly enlarged. It will enclose Minneapolis, and the rest of Minnesota will be a large parking lot. Not the way to experience winter. We walked at Audubon yesterday. Our friend Joan at the desk said, “Be careful, the trail isn’t entirely clear,” a notable understatement. We got all the way around the Good Pond trail only by going cross country at several points. The Audubon frowns on this, like in those time-travel movies, where if you leave the trail and step on a frog you totally change history and come back to find the chimps in charge. Bruce’s talk on Sunday was a great success, but unfortunately a last minute mini-blizzard scared a lot of people away. To be fair, a lot of people are pretty tottery, and some need knee and hip replacements. They know enough to stay in out of the snow. Some French group folks showed up, so there were enough to be convivial. Bruce talked a lot about Brewster and Orleans in the 30’s. Nostalgia is always a winner around here. We’ll have him back in the summer. I got Karl Weiss to agree to do a talk on water and Karl and Madeline to speak on their lives in Europe during the war, quite a story! There will be only five of us at book group, and it will have to be at our house. This is normal winter mortality. We finally unload Reading Lolita. Next month is Portrait of a Lady, an edifying read. Elizabeth always makes us read classics. She has note cards on her reading back 50 years. We hear from Williamsburg that Burt Bennison died. A real gentleman. Boston Brahman, public health physician, one of the developers of “the pill”, head of the biology department at Drexel. He along with Bob Olson and George Abbott were the intellectual heart of the Fellowship when we came. All gone now, well up in their 80’s. Lots of accomplishments, but obviously enjoying their current lives even more than their past. I keep trying to get the first two chapter of The God Box right but find it a hard sell. Readers like their genres neatly partitioned. I’ll send along 20 pages one of these days, for you to look at or tactfully ignore. Rhoda gets more excited about the Morris stories. I started one about the blizzard but for once don’t know how to finish it. Rhoda insists I include a Jacuzzi because she finds them so absurd. I don’t think I can write about Jacuzzis. There is one, as you may recall, at one of the large new houses built on small lots on the bluff overlooking the bay. So far as we can tell, this multimillion dollar trophy home has been unvisited over the winter. I have mixed emotions about not playing the violin. Who wouldn’t? It would be wonderful, but it would take a lot time to do it well enough. And it’s sort of circular, you’d get better and better but over the same territory. Practicing medicine would be more like a small wheel, going around and around but with slow progress. The library was a bit like that, for less money and with less stress, much the same task but with slowly improving resources. Writing, painting, scholarship, teaching, science, public service all seem to me to have a wavy forward motion. Does it matter? Probably not. According to the Cape Codder, many raccoons and skunks as fareast as Barnstable are rabid. We’ll have to be cautious on the trails and carry quarterstaves. $1 steak tonight! I never tire of small pleasures. The corner cabinets look good, except for needing doors. 25 Feb 05 Oi! We were supposed to have 2 to 4 inches of snow, and it looks more like a foot and counting. We should have parked the car out at the street again. It’s supposed to snow more on Monday, maybe snowing out the second rescheduling of Reading Lolita! Life in the snow belt. We’d thought of going to the mall today, but fortunately we went yesterday. I bought a $279 London Fog raincoat for $79. At least that’s what it said on the label. It also said it was made in China. Nancy agreed to share an order of chicken teriyaki from the Tokyo Express. Quite good. A successful day! Barry gave me the title for his talk, “Personal poetry: a psychologist’s perspective.” His poetry is good, a lot of it about growing up in Newark. This is kind of fun, getting your friends a gig. I think I’ve got it listed in the Cape Codder’s Calendar too. I won’t list my talk the following week, “Religion as metaphor: a ramble by Russ Chenoweth. I thought this up in desperation when I thought I’d be stuck with the February programs. I wasn’t, but I had to volunteer for March, and there it was. The corner cabinets progress. I finally used the power router Rosemary gave me. Once I realized that the manual that came with it and the two books I got from the library were saying opposite things, and that the manual was right, it went fairly well. Perhaps done with the machine it will look as if it were done with hand tools by a second rate colonial craftsman. Not to be despised. I don’t think I’ve mentioned Dr. Brian O’Malley. He was a very hyper guy with a pony tail who gave a terrific talk on the need for national health care. He and some others are working on Cape Care, a so for theoretical comprehensive in health insurance plan for all Cape residents. Interesting idea. Evidently Medicare and local employers could feed into this easily. How to get the thousands or private supplemental insurers to cooperate would be the tricky part. Pie in the sky maybe, but certainly more worth the money and effort than invading Iraq. We look forward to our visit in April. 27 Feb 05 Nancy read that snow geese had been seen at First Encounter, so we went to look, and sure enough, we saw snow geese! She took their picture, “Snow Geese in the Snow.” It seems to snow every night now, “ocean effect” snow, but it amounts to the same thing. We walked to Coast Guard in 4 inches of semi-slush, and it was pretty but a hard slog. Not much competition, not even skiers. We also bought an 8 foot 1 by 6 to frame the bottom doors on the corner cabinets. A fellow was just unloading a bunch of these, and I selected an almost perfect board. There’s something quite sensuous about beautiful new lumber. I’m up to the Civil War in Paul Johnson’s History of the American People. I see that I have underestimated Lincoln and misconstrued the whole business. It was a nasty war, the worst in our history in killed and wounded as a percentage of the population. The Revolutionary War was second worst. But it was probably inevitable for a number of reasons, one of the chief being the remarkable stupidity and ineptitude of The South, and although slavery would have ended, it would probably have survived for several more decades. And Lincoln was really something. – It’s rationalization, but I’m glad I had so little interest until now in American History. I’m finding it fascinating, and I might have tired of it! We did manage to have our book group meeting on Reading Lolita in Tehran. T.R. came too, and we had a cozy fire in the fireplace. We hope that in your lifetime no book police will ever break down your door. Stay alert. Give some thought to Social Security, too. A retirement plan, like TIAA/CREF, is essential, but so is Social Security. The present furor is farcical politics. There is no SS fund. SS taxes go into the general budget and SS payments come out of it, along with the money to occupy Irak. As there’s no fund, it isn’t “in trouble”. In a few decades without changes more will go out than comes in (but Irak brings in nothing now!) Raising taxes, lowering benefits, or, better yet, finding more efficient ways to live, should solve any problems 30 years down the road. More to the point, SS isn’t a retirement fund at all. It’s a promise that we’ll support our elderly and infirm citizens as best we can out of available resources. If in 40 years we’re a rich society, we’ll support them well. If we’re poor, we’ll share what we have, based on their need and the resources of the economically active citizenry. -- The “ownership society” idea is just institutionalizing greed, a process that President Reagan began. Thus speeketh... The amaryllis has two stalks, 18 inches tall, and is blooming. We’re sort of standing back. The log, alas, never mushroomed, although I tried it twice. I will set in a damp and shady pot outdoors and let nature take its course. Erika, from French group, and her husband Bengt just got back from 3 weeks driving around Argentina, including Rio, which sounds like a permanent (and more genuine) Mardi Gras, a barren island full of penguins, and the miles wide Iguazu falls. We were never that adventurous at any age. They are retired Lufthansa executives and get cheap air travel. She had some nice pictures, but Argentina doesn’t really appeal. A mini-bliz last night, 50 mph gusts, inch of snow, very cold, 2 hour power loss. Enuf! MARCH 17 Mar 05 We managed part of a walk along the bay beach before the cold wind drove us back to the car. The fences have been destroyed, and not one of the the long stairs hasn't had its bottom part broken or sheered off. Big chunks of the bluff are gone too, especially the in places not protected by boulders or the huge sand bags that look like a pile of beige whales. Mixed shadenfreude. We feel sorry for the owners of threatened beach shacks but can't wait to see the trophy homes slide into the bay. In any case, seeing Mother Nature at work is one of the pleasures of living here. As long as she doesn't mess too much with us! Barry's talk on Sunday was very good. He's an experienced lecturer and teacher, as well as a therapist. Thirty-five years of clinical practice! No wonder he's happily into poetry. He likened "brief therapy" to short poems: diamond shaped, with a catchy beginning, an expansiveness in the middle, and a sharp focus at the end. And hopefully a bit of residue. He read mostly the poetry of others but included a couple of his own as well. I think he's good. In another hundred years I could become a believer, in poetry that is. Nancy says, "He has a wonderful voice." He does. My own program, next week, on "Religion as Metaphor", remains to be seen. I dreamed it up in desperation when I thought I'd be stuck with February. It's been fun to assemble, beginning with Grandma Jennemann's baroque 1875 Confirmation Certificate, in German, from Redbud, Ill. and running through my various theological adventures. It's just an outline, but maybe I'll write it up in full someday. It's more an entertainment than a spiritual biography. As long as someone provides eats! My friend R. hates all religion. That's foolish. It's like hating life or humanity. Or like being an athiest, having blind faith that there is no God. Not a productive exercise. Whether one takes religion or a religion with ultimate seriousness or not, it's a dandy way to study mankind. -- We're delighted by the fact that the Vatican, after trying to ignore the furor, has now appointed to committee to combat the effect of The DaVinci Code. Twenty-five million copies have been sold (and it's not even that good a book). The Vatican study should give it a further boost. -- One can balance the disgraceful behavior of the Catholc bishops re child abuse with folks like the MMM's, the Medical Missionaries of Mary, doctors and nurses who spend their lives healing in far off and dangerous spots. We may not finish Portrait of a Lady by Monday. E. feels it's her duty to make us read classics. And we appreciate that, in theory. We're both halfway through, sharing a paperback with small print and a tight binding. I like it, but it's slow going. A series of desultory conversations. Perhaps I'm slightly tiring of all these people who do essentially nothing. Clever and nice Isabel Archer inherits a fortune and doesn't know what to do with it. I want to say, "For gosh sakes, go to grad school!" But of course that wasn't what ladies did in the 1880's. (They could study privately and become quite erudite.) I was very annoyed with Jane Eyre when she didn't continue to run her school, with Mr. Rochester teaching philosophy. The ladies of the club laughed at me. 24 Mar 05 We woke up to find it snowing hard and the ground and roads already covered. We've had enough, but it's undeniably pretty. Nancy goes to school today unless classes are cancelled. The district will be reluctant to do this, as they've had to cancel many days already, but kids living on dirt roads have trouble getting out in the snow. Most of the kids in Eastham live on dirt roads. We're glad we went to the mall yesterday. We were looking for shirts, sweaters, a purse for Nancy, a copy of Freedom Just Around the Corner, but we bought nothing except two MacDonald's Fishwiches. We hadn't had one in years. A square patty of deep fried generic fish, a slice of American cheese, a dab of mayonaise, on a soft bun. It doesn't get much better! We decided we'd buy a small piece of fish someday and make our own, with lettuce and tomato. We're equipped for our English trip with tickets, railpasses, clothes, duffle bags, etc. I have 10 pages of notes of what to see and eat. We look forward to it and expect to enjoy it, but we're a bit nervous. Our friends flit off to exotic locations almost weekly, Argentina, South Africa, Turkey. Some of our aquaintances seem addicted to travel, one or two months long cruises or several months of auto touring every year. Sound exhausting, and we can't imagine it would be that rewarding. We're rather addicted to our small lives and would be content to go nowhere. It will no doubt be good for us to move about the world a bit. My talk on religion went better than I'd hoped. The children of a recently dececed former member came, and we spend twenty minutes talkng about him, which left exactly the right amount of time for me to say enough and not too much. Always a good idea. Several people who couldn't come asked me to write it up, so I shall and add it to my web site. We gather that you're all very busy these days! Busy is good, but take care not to overdo. Truly, the human body and psyche need a certain about of R&R and TLC. Of course, it isn't helpful to add guilt about not taking care of yourselves, and guilt about the guilt, and.... Just be sensible. We're so sensible it's APRIL 13 April 05 Saturday was gorgeous, cool and clear, so we took our tuna sandwiches and coffee to Bearberry Hill and Small’s Swamp. The spring peepers were busy at the swamp. They do trill sometimes, but mostly they make single peeps, a second or two apart. There are just so many of them. We were able to get close enough so they were almost deafening, but we could see a single one. Then we went an inch too close, and the whole swamp fell silent for a minute. I even did some “gardening,” which in our case is raking a few leaves and replenishing the woodchips. Our perennials appear to have survived. Today there’s a little snow on the ground. We went to the Eastham Town Hall last week to hear Bill Delahunt, our Democratic Representative, give a good talk. Many in the large and enthusiastic crowd asked why the Democratic Party couldn’t have a strong and clear position. This is probably harder to do than it sounds, but we have an anecdote that might help. We were with some friends a few days later, enjoying one of the more scenic hiking trails in the Cape Cod National Seashore, when a well-dressed man approached us on a bicycle. We stepped off into the underbrush, and as he breezed by, my wife said, “You know, this isn’t really a bike trail.” The man glanced down at her and said, “You must be Democrats.” The dining room corner cabinets are finished (except for the bottom door panels, which I haven’t found yet) and filled with sandwich glass. I flubbed the staining and so had to paint them white, but they look nice. After England, we’ll seriously look into the pantry/mud room/ laundry, which has enlarged itself to 8’ x10’ over time. I need a handicrafts project. I had a computer adventure yesterday that I don’t care to repeat. My desk top died a few weeks ago. Counter measures suggested by Dell didn’t work, and a repair-reinstall hung over my head. I finally went ahead with it, and by Jove it worked and fixed the problem. But it created another problem. Now my modem didn’t work. After forty-five minutes with a polite Dell techie, it began to look like I needed a full Windows reinstall, which wipes your desk clean, but she suggested I check with MSN first. I was politely lead through several levels of expertise until I reached a fellow on Vancouver Island, where it was 5 am. “This may be easy,” he said, “otherwise it’s hard.” He took me down 7 or eight layers into the register and had me delete two values. It worked! It was unsettling though, as when I took college biology and learned how complex the human body was, and how little understood. I used to really love computers, but they’ve become more like automobiles, elegant and fun sometimes, but at heart mysterious and worrisome necessities. We read The Girl with a Pearl Earring for the book group. Pleasant but not exciting. One is angered though by class distinctions and subservience, even in the relatively liberal 17th century Netherlands. Sort of an Ownership Society. MAY 7 May 05 We had a splendid trip and are safely back in our rut. We’ve been so content tucked away in our woods that it took a major effort to get ourselves moving, but we found travel, although not as easy as our son suggests, not too difficult. The weather was excellent, most days 57 degrees and partly sunny. We were delighted to see Martin again and met Marie, his charming partner, and spend time with Sally, who was wonderful to us, on three separate occasions. We lunched with Peter and Caroline Carmichael in Chichester. We saw everything on our lists and more. The following rambles on a bit for you busy folk, but there won’t be a test. The finances had been carefully planned, but it’s still a shock to pay $3 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks (on nearly every corner in central London and vastly outnumbering MacDonalds I’m glad to say). Nonetheless, we ate well and more economically than we’d feared: fish, Greek, pub, Indian, Thai, (twice), and Japanese (Wagamama, four times!). We loved Wagamama. Plus sumptuous lunches with Sally and with Peter and Caroline, supplies from Sainsburys, and soup and sandwiches in museum and crypt cafes. Crypts are big in London. We now know what a ciabatta is, and it’s delicious. Barclay’s ATM worked like magic and added no charge. We returned all our fuddy-duddy travelers checks to the bank. We’d packed wisely and found we lacked nothing in our 13 pound duffles. I was quite proud of my 3 oz. toilet kit, which included a sawed off tooth brush and half a small cake of old fashioned shaving soap. I had two shirts I never wore. The U.S. custom and immigration officials were quite impressed. Few get off a BA flight with only cabin baggage. Nancy was pleased to take me out in public with my new shoes, microfiber navy blazer, and bargain London Fog raincoat. I’ve never looked so respectable in my life. By and large it all went as planned, although we began to wonder in the first hours. We had clam chowder for lunch at Friendlys but then had to go back to the house as we’d forgotten our Stop & Shop muffin. This small economy seems laughable in the light of expensive muffins to come, but they’re better as well as cheaper than airport muffins. We’d checked the park and ride lot at Barnstable on our way back from Philadelphia three weeks before and found adequate parking. On April 19th it was packed solid, even the no-parking places, so we drove on a bit concerned to Sagamore. Fortunately the “Flyover,” (which will link Route 3 directly to the Sagamore Bridge and if the Big Dig is any indication may after ten years and $15 billion slightly reduce traffic congestion) had forced planners to make a new and much larger park & ride lot which was only half full. The Holiday Inn shuttle bus got us to the British Air terminal by 5:30 am the next morning, and we were first in line at the check-in desk. Typical. We read the paper and enjoyed our half muffin. It’s a cliche by now, but we still wonder why 30 years ago airlines managed to provide comfortable seats and good food and now go bankrupt with cramped seats and marginal food. It’s true we’re a little larger ourselves, but we aren’t big people. The obese couple behind us sat grimly uncomplaining for six hours, reminding each other now and then to get up un-kink their veins. The staff did make a considerable effort to keep us hydrated, perhaps for insurance purposes. “Oi, yer’onor, we give the blokes as drink every 15 minutes, ‘snot our ‘ookout if they won’t tyke it, eh?” Yes, BBC-speak has largely gone away, even on the BBC. Still, a cheerful and blessedly uneventful flight. Heathrow Airport Terminal 4 is mysterious. We seem to manage in our country to get passengers to and from aircraft with little fuss. Why at Heathrow must we trudge along miles of moving and unmoving corridors? It is a test? We did arrive finally at the main terminal, which resembles the Port Authority Bus Terminal of yesteryear. –- We love Great Britain more than ever, but these oddities must be noted. –- The A2 bus to Russell Square had been recommended by a friend, but no one seemed to have heard of it. We were sent by the Heathrow Express to the main bus station at Terminal 2. As this bus station too seemed to be well concealed, and the entrance to the tube gaped invitingly, we took the tube, saving money and time and enjoying the good company of a cheerfully motley crew, much of which joined us for the half mile lift ride to the surface at Russell Square where we arrived at 10 pm, their time. The St. Margaret’s Hotel is a dream. A modest and elderly dream but just what we wanted. The owner was warm, welcoming, and efficient, and although we’d understand that hotel rooms in London tend to be small, ours was quite large. There was an extra bed where our travel fliers lived and a huge double-hung window which looked out on a lovely garden in which no human ever appeared. It was also extremely quiet for the entire two weeks. We may have been lucky. The facilities were not “en suite,” which is quite common in hotels made from converted Georgian town houses, and which saves a bundle let me tell you! But they were clean and adequate and not at all distant, and each time we used them was a bit of an adventure, what? I sense that adventure is not really what Nancy prefers in these circumstances, but she was a good sport. The Full English Breakfast was excellent and our Brazilian waitress highly entertaining. We discovered that the secret of really smooth porridge is a small amount of coconut milk! The raw rashers of bacon we couldn’t eat 40 years ago have been replaced by quite tasty Canadian bacon and Chipoletas by genuine sausages. The eggs were nicely cooked, and the granary toast was excellent and occasionally warm. We also discovered that most of the other guests were French, Scandinavian, Italian, and Spanish, with just a sprinkling of English and Americans. This was true of the entire British Museum/University of London neighborhood, and to some degree of all of central London. We’ve never felt so linguistically inadequate in our lives. I tagged along with a French school group at the BM for a few minutes, trying to understand the guide. I listened a bit to TV5 the French international TV station and on our tele. It’s commercial and excellent, better than anything in the U.S. or the U.K. We rarely watch U.S. TV because it’s so wretched. Alas, British TV is amateurish as well as wretched. BBC 2 is supposed to be good, but for the entire two weeks it carried a marathon snoooooker tournament. Five minutes of snooker is mildly interesting, although not as interesting as the sheep dog trials we’d watched endlessly 20 years before. Ah, the Brits. But we should talk, a hundred channels of drek. We were never oppressed by crowds, except in Covent Garden and on the tube at the wrong time, but London was pleasantly thronging. I am a professed city lover, and I loved it. London is a handsome, clean, low-rise, and relatively easy city, but two weeks of concentrated city living should hold me for a while. What must it be like in July! We visited, not in order, the British Museum (several times as it was just a short block away), the National Gallery, the British Library, the National Portrait Gallery, the Tate Modern, the Imperial War Museum, the Museum of London, John Soanes Musuem, the Foundling Hospital Museum (at Sally’s urging and where we sat for half an hour listening to Handel, a major benefactor of the hospital), and the Courtauld Institute. All were gorgeous buildings and collections and were beautifully maintained. One could spend days in each, and we had only hours and not even the stamina for that. The restrooms were spotless, and nearly all had good cafes, some would say an indication of the level of civilization. It was too much to take in, much less share, but there were high points. I’d wanted to see Jan van Eyck’s “The Betrothal of the Arnolfini” in the National Gallery. -- The Tate Modern itself is the experience, the art a little weak except for the fascinating roomful of Russian Revolutionary posters and art (relying heavily on red!). We asked the fellow at a kiosk outside the Modern what sort of soup he had. “Well uh, it’s uh... To be honest I haven‘t the faintest idea. Here, try some.” It was delicious, perhaps yellow pea and lentil with a touch of cumin. -- At the British Library I was pleased to see holographs of Alice in Wonderland and Jane Eyre meeting Mr. Rochester and listen to early Beatle recordings. Sally took us around the Courtauld Institute, where she had once worked. Somerset House is a splendid building and the Courtauld houses many famous works, in particular Manet’s “Bar at the Folies Bergere” one of my favorites. -- The Sir John Soanes Museum, three fabulous town houses maintained just as Soanes left them and which we also saw with Sally, has two of my favorite Canelletos. The Museum of London and the Imperial War Museum are similarly rich displays of history, beautifully done. If I worked nearby I’d come frequently and become well informed. The War Museum didn’t at all glorify war and if anything emphasized its waste and horror. The V2 was surrounded by tiny toys, representing all the children killed in the V2 attacks. I was struck by the absurdity of our US Administration’s claim that we are “at war”. Nothing remotely like it. There were, of course, hordes of little boys exulting in the tanks and guns. Will we ever learn? Alas, even to me the 15 inch naval guns were mesmerizing, and the Rolls engine of the Spitfire was a thing of sinister beauty. We saved the National Portrait gallery until the last Monday, and it was the best. Wonderful seeing all these characters from history. Nancy had very much wanted to see the strong portrait of Richard III. I found myself wishing it wasn’t just British portraits. It was here that we had the delicious toasted ham, brie, and spinach ciabatta. We made a point of seeing churches and cathedrals. Sally gave us passes for St. Pauls, which was large, impressive, gilded, ornate, and sadly not really to our liking, though I did rather enjoy the workman’s cap which was found where it had been left up in the rafters in the 1500’s. -- York Minster was fabulous, high and light and soaring. We had an hour-long tour by a charming retired school master (the same one who gave the tour when Marie was there, she said.) The Roman remains in the crypt were as amazing as John had promised. We stayed for Evensong and heard the excellent choir of men and boys. The service was nostalgically familiar, as they used the old prayer book. Indeed, the Minster made a considerable effort to remind visitors that they were in a working church. We walked in the medieval-ish Shambles and lunched in a very Ye Olde pub on excellent soup and bread. --The handsome Southwark Cathedral, near the Tate Modern, is one of the oldest churches in London. We were impressed by the many community activities on its notice-board. -- At St. Martin in the Fields we listened to organ practice and lunched in the crypt. -- We attended an organ concert at the circular Temple Church, one of the venues in the DaVinci Code! -- We went to a piano and cello concert at St. Pancras, near the British Library. -- We approached Ely Cathedral up a long path through the Dean’s Park where several neatly laundered sheep gamboled for the visitors. A very competent lady gave us a fine tour and afterward showed Nancy where Elizabeth Gouge had lived while her father was a member of the cathedral staff. She also pointed out the pagan “Green Men” in the stonework and other places the naughty sculptors had had their fun. At one point she called out attention to tourists up near the roof, and we realized our perspective was well off and the whole shebang was much bigger than it even looked! -- We stopped in Clement Danes (the official church of the RAF) with Sally. -- There are an amazing number of Anglican Churches in London, all in good repair, but Peter says only about a third of churches in England are truly active. We thoroughly enjoyed seeing Peter and Caroline again. We visited them in 1965 on their farm in Sussex, again with our children in 1985 in Chichester, where Peter was vicar of two Anglican churches. In 2005 they have been retired for some years to the pleasant seaside town of Selsey. I think they may have been a bit puzzled by our wanting to make the train trip from London for lunch, but we explained that we’d enjoyed seeing them before and liked the personal contact with English relatives. They gave us an excellent lunch and we had an enjoyable visit. We agreed that if we are to visit again it had better be in less than 20 years. We encouraged them to send some of their many and children and grandchildren to Cape Cod. Our train trips, by the way, were very pleasant. The English countryside in spring was lovely. We saw castles, churches, hamlets, thatched-roof farm houses, sheep and cows, many wild swans, one purposeful fox, and gorgeous golden fields of waving rape. – In Cambridge we had a long chat with a young lady from Saskatchewan and saw comically inexpert punting on the Cam. Enough about penguins? I’ll just mention politics. No political advertising on TV!!! What a blessing. We did see an excellent “town meeting” at which Blair (Labor), Kennedy (Liberal Democrat) and Howard (Conservative), answered tough questions from the audience, and the moderator made sure they answered the question or were clearly seen not to! We thought Kennedy did by far the best job. All assumed Labor would win but we gather were pleased at the size of the richly deserved “bloody nose” Blair got over Iraq. And Wagamama. Wonderful broth and ramen noodles with large slices of chicken, delicious stir fries with Japanese rice, etc. at excellent prices, in a room that does indeed resemble a friendly grade school cafeteria. Paris and Florence? Well perhaps. 12 May 05 Spring is so much farther advanced in England! We're still looking at tiny leaves and shoots. The grass is growing enthusiastically, however. I've cut the Chapel grass, but I'm letting our "lawn" grow a while just to encourage it. It's been put together with implants, sort of an artificial turf, but it looks almost healthy this year. The birds think it's spring. There was a great rumpus of redwinged blackbirds at the swamp, cacking and bracking and chasing one another through the trees. Our bushes seem to have weathered the winter. I'm starting to think again about the laundry/pantry. It's size is now hovering around 6' by 8'. Morris stories and the nameless novel advance slowly. I've started on the American History talk. The corner cabinets are finished, unless we want to put a stencil on the bottom door panel. French group still flourishes. Having enjoyed TV5 in London for two weeks I'm tempted to get it here, not too extravagant at $15 a month, but we don't have an earphone attachment for the TV, and I doubt Nancy wants to listen to much French TV. I'll think about it. I can get TV5 news summary on the web, but the mouths don't move. A little lip reading is helpful. I suppose that fact that French is much harder to hear than English or German is part of its elegance, but it's a pain sometimes. Tonight is the Fellowship/Am Ha Yam potluck. We'll bring a salad as usual. It's because we have a big salad bowl. That's how the important decisions are made in this world. I enjoy the potlucks. We try to sit around and chat with different folks. I try to find people who are actually interested in Judaism. Most members of any religious group are of course not really very interested, and that's not why they're there. So it goes. Nancy is doing more photography and making more cards for various organizations. It pleases her, and them, and me. We've signed up to help again at the Chinese Feast. We're planning a picnic at Doane rock for the book group next monday. The book is Beston's Outermost House, with Nancy presenting it with the help of Don Wilding's book on Beston. He'll be pleased when we tell him about it. Afterwards we'll walk to the beach (but not all the way to the former location of the house!) Hope some of the ladies have never been there. A rain date the following monday. All very mild and bosky in a world that racing off in all directions and falling apart at the same time. Was it ever thus? I don't think so, but no one ever does. All else being equal, an insane hope these days, we think we may look into a week in Paris and a guided tour of Italy in a year or two. Travel is addictive, although tiring. Not sure about the tour bit, but we're older, less flexible, a bit more vulnerable, and speak no Italian. We'll see. Karen, thanks again for the old telephone answering machine! It lasted 15 years!? And finally gave up. We've replaced it with a cheap digital machne which does the same things, and a few more if one had Caller ID, which we don't. The potluck was great. We've done this 4 or 5 times now and feel these people are friends. I did manage to talk about religion. The food was fabulous. Ilsa made a berry pie that ranked with Ida Loessner's. You remember Ida? She and Hazel always baked two pies for Aunt Ori, one for the family and guests and one for themselves. Hazel would polish off a quart of milk with her half pie. Ah Maine. JUNE 1 June 05 The weather woozles smiled on the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce and gave us a beautiful three-day weekend. Even so, the Fellowship's yard sale didn't do as well as last year's, because last year the Eastham Beach Committee was holding a huge sale on the same day at Windmill Green, and their prices were too high! The 90% of shoppers who weren't simply making a contribution to the Beach Committee bought our cheap junk instead. I did buy a 25 cent copy of Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy and a brand new hair cutting kit with a rechargeable clipper and all the attachments, for a buck. The one we bought at Sears in 1967 is still working, I haven't been to a barber in 38 years, but the price was right. It works very well. At first it seemed rough, and I remembered I hadn't oiled it. So it took off the 1/2" attachment and oiled the clipper and then forgot to put the attachment back on. It'll grow out. Memorial Day was particularly splendid, so Nancy suggested another down-Cape picnic, and we took tuna salad sandwiches and coffee to Smalls Swamp. The leaves are still only halfway out, and the airy green colors are particularly nice. It's hard to believe that the trees were fully leafed and flowers in bloom in England more than a month ago. Ah, but the frogs! Except for the short season of the spring peepers we rarely hear more than the occasional frog. Monday at Smalls Swamp there were hundreds, all croaking at once. Or to be precise, twanging like hundreds of different-sized rubber bands stretched over cans and bottles. We looked and looked and couldn't see a single one until we were almost past the water and saw a small pile of them, topped by a bright yellow frog. They say frogs are our canaries in the mine, a bizarre metaphor if there ever was one. At least Smalls seems to be a healthy swamp. It ought to be, with 100 inches of snow and seven inches of rain just in May. There was a clutch of birdwatchers on the hill overlooking the dunes who greeted us cordially but never stopped scanning the skies. "Three of them, over there," one said, but we saw nothing. We never do. In the valley between the Visitors Center and Race Point much of the bicycle trail and the woods around it is under water. We by-passed the drowned spots and chatted with a disgruntled cyclist. The good news is that with all the rain it's the season of ground cover. The starflowers, bearberry, false (and true) lily of the valley and various more obscure crops are happy as clams. Quite a few ladyslippers too. Gee, dad they look just like.... Ladyslippers, son. Lots of things are underwater this week, low places in the woods, back yards, dirt roads, and the ponds and vernal pools are overflowing. We enjoy these excesses of nature until they threaten us, or turn out clouds of mosquitos! The mudroom/pantry is on hold until July, so I have no manual projects at the moment. I have about 30 single-spaced pages for the American History talk in August, which has to be boiled down to around ten and then turned into memorable sound bites. A couple more books to read to add to or subtract from the basic outline. I have a shape for early American history now, which I never had before. Not for future American history. alas. Are we turning into Saddam's Iraq as we pretend to bring democracy to the middle east? We saw a panel of Kent State survivors and contemporary college students on CSPAN, and were encouraged, but they're too few. In 1967 I was with the majority that didn't see our government as lying dogs. Now I'm with the minority that does. I'm reading an interesting short book, God was not in the fire; the search for a spiritual Judaism, by Daniel Gordis. He teaches as the University of Judaism in Los Angeles and was ordained as a rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative). He makes Judaism sound very modern and un-dogmatic. Rhoda says all religions should be shot. I say we all practice a religion, like it or not. Like it is better. We're getting our coffee at Chocolate Sparrow these days as the Stop & Shop is often out of Starbuck's decaf, and The Sparrow is cheaper anyway. The place is always mobbed. They should have made it bigger, but who knew. 14 June 05 We’ll be in Florida from July 7th to 10th. Grandmother expects to be back in her apartment by then. In fact she’d like to go now and is trying to arrange it. Be good to see her, but aaaargh! Like venturing up the Amazon. We’ll have to think of strategies to deal with the heat and humidity. Not that it’s been cool here, but it was fifty for my morning walk, just me and the crows. The rest of the week should be in the 60’s, which we consider about at warm as it ever needs to be. We would be in favor of modest global cooling. Nonetheless, we’re aware of our many blessings, which go well beyond living in a house that we couldn’t begin to afford. I’m particularly fond of our yard which produces much entertainment with little effort. Every year there are strange new plants growing at the edge of our “woods,” some identified and some not. The catseas (cats ears) were quite late this year but have arrived, tall and elegant monarchs of the dandelion tribe. The faithful sarsaparilla more richly carpets the forest floor above the septic tank each year. The Fellowship waxes and wanes, always on the edge of disaster but for that more satisfying than an institutional church. I shudder at the thought of the new megachurches which appear to combine the advantages of a Puritan theocracy and a Soviet commune. Our speaker on Sunday spoke of stress reduction through forgiveness and ended her talk with a meditation accompanied by new age music. I opened my eyes near the end and saw that all but one of the 25 participants had their feet planted flat on the floor and their hands limp in their laps. Only Nancy had her legs crossed and her arms folded across her chest, a classic rejection pose. I suspect that most of our sept- and octogenarian colleagues have done any necessary forgiving ages ago. Art and Rhoda weren’t there. I told Art on the phone that I didn’t think there was anyone I needed to forgive. He was silent a moment and then said, “How about Bush?” Rhoda agreed that hate and anger are a terrible burden but said she had no intention of ever forgiving X, Y, or Z. Next week: the Women and Girls of Pakistan. I hope in person, but I suspect not. I’m pleased with my discovery of RFI, Radio Francaise Internationale on the web. I listen to 10 to 30 minutes each morning and gradually understand more. I’m skimming Friedman’s The World is Flat in which he says Globalization 1, by which we gathered in nations, ended around 1800. Globalization 2, in which corporations took over the world, began to end around 2000. Globalization 3 is the digital revolution, in which your order for a Big Mac is taken by a housewife in Salt Lake City and all future strategic thinking will be done by Indian Ph.D’s for $100 a month. I suppose, “expect rapid change” is as good a motto as any. We walk the bay beach these days. Lovely and mostly deserted at low tide, with a scattering of mothers and small children later in the day. Seeing the curve of the Cape, our place on the planet, which we’ve also seen from airplanes and which is visible from space is satisfying. I suppose it could be claustrophobic, but on the tidal flats it isn’t. There was an op-ed in the Times this morning, “The Old and The Rested,” by John Tierney, in which he suggests that all our problems would be solved if we worked longer. Evidently he lives in a different world. My father used to sneer at Kennedy’s “ask not...” We are all one, to be sure, all in the same boat, and we need to look after one another. But that doesn’t mean we’re here for the universe. On the contrary the universe is for us. One of the many culture clashes between the Pilgrims and the Indians was that the Pilgrims believed God wanted then to work hard all their lives to tame the earth and acquire possessions, thereby pleasing Him and demonstrating their saved status. The Indians worked just enough to put food on the table and spent the rest of the time telling ghost stories around the campfire. They didn’t load themselves down with tables, chairs, and heavy woolen clothing. Such savages! -- As I see it, we need a certain level of industrialization to support medical research, and after that we should work as long and hard as we find work satisfying and productive and share the results to provide a modest living for all and leisure to enjoy it. A “competency” the Pilgrims called it, much better for you than an abundance. JULY 26 July 2005 Well, that was all rather surrealistic. As I’ve said, our brief visit with my mother from the 7th to the 10th wasn’t particularly successful per se. We’re glad we did it, however, even apart from my feeling I had to. We met and talked with many nice people and were able to feel much less like vultures descending when we arrived on the 18th for four days. We recommend jetBlue and their A320’s as cheerful, comfortable, and efficient. Select the Munchies or the almonds. The blue potato chips have no flavor. Tampa airport is first rate but not a reason to visit Florida in July, or any time really. The heat was bad but not quite as bad as when John and I were there in August. Even Floridians say August is the pits. I could walk from 6:30 to 7:00 am pretty comfortably. Nancy and I took dutiful afternoon health walks. I offered to share my white “Green Mountain Coffee Roaster” baseball cap to keep her excellent brain from frying but was politely ignored. We did walk to Al Fresco’s on the first trip, and survived. Al was in great form. On the second trip we had a car and drove to Al Fresco twice, for the Asian salad and the grilled portabellas and once to the Country Boy, a pretty-good, big-serving, old-time Florida Greek restaurant. Excellent fish sandwiches and terrific eggs and sausage, cheep. We did the various business thing with dispatch, filled many garbage bags with trash, packed the photo albums in apple boxes supplied by a friendly fruit man at the Publix supermarket, and took some things to Pack and Send to be dealt with more professionally. The very nice P&S lady also took the three 50 pound album boxes. What a relief! I’d be hard pressed to write clearly about the emotions, politics, economics, etc. of all this, but I have the outline of Morris story in mind that might do the job. We’ll see. In other news. We heard from Sara that all is well except that her new car has given her trouble but presumably will be mended. Karen liked the first day of her new job a lot. Much to learn. You’ll probably be exhausted, K. I always was when beginning anything new. We hope John is enjoying Hawaii. Saw something in the news about it, Hawaii that is, and it looked good. Sally sent a clipping from the Daily Telegraph (is she a Conservative! Martin is a Liberal Democrat) about informal gatherings at St. Pancras in commemoration of the victims of the London bombings. St. Pancras, the Victorian Anglican church where Nancy and I attended a Beethoven piano/cello concert, is yards from Tavistock Square and just above the tube bombing. I note that the new constitution will relieve Iraqi women of the burden of rights they had under Saddam. AUGUST 2 August 05 It has been jacket weather for the last few days, at least for my morning walk. As we say too frequently, you can always wear more clothes, but you can take off only so much. I suppose it could get too cold. I read somewhere that the average temperature of the universe is a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. A very small spider, with a body the size of a pinhead, spun a web in my window and captured a generic bug at least ten times her size. A day later the bug was a hollow hulk of perhaps half its original length. In another day there were several more hulks at the bottom of the window sill. The spider was the same size. Did she use all this tasty protein just in processing her harvest? -- No, a week later more corpses have joined the pile, and the spider is now the size of a birdshot. Our cell phone proved its worth in Florida. I had it on the entire six days and got many calls. I felt very businesslike, except for the case, which is made from an old glasses case, a bit of nylon strap from the dump, electrician’s tape, and superglue. Superglue is really quite useful. Nate gave a talk on the Red Tide last Sunday. Nate is Ilse’s son, a forty year old who’s found his métier and is glowingly happy. He’s a successful Wellfleet oysterman, both a wild harvester and a farmer. He told Nancy he loves being completely independent. It was an interesting talk with accompanying video. He’s a professional photographer and video cameraman as well and has produced his own films and sold some stills to National Geographic. He’d brought his girlfriend, a charming young woman from Boston he met through the web. An upbeat morning. The plumbing is finished for now. It took all Saturday, from 8 am to 8 pm with breaks, to change the hot water pipes from copper to cpvc. I’m glad I did it. The copper pipe was so corroded it broke instead of bending when I got it ready for the dump. Ted tells me the Cape water is very acid and chews up copper pipe. We seem to buy ice cream these days. Only when on sale, and we eat only small amounts at a time. Nero Wolfe doesn’t like ice cream. He claims it paralyzes the taste buds. Maybe his taste buds. We’re pleased to hear that Hawaii was great and that Karen loves her new job. Right on. SEPTEMBER 10 September 05 I know my letters have faltered in frequency and size. Perhaps the world is slightly relieved. Our pleasant life does seem to follow a well-marked path, but on the whole this is good. The need for constant stimulation is not only tiring, it’s expensive. Things do move, slowly. The canoe is now fully outfitted, including two brand new yellow (Nancy’s choice) life jackets. Now all we need to do is venture forth. This will be my job. We’ll start with Great Pond. Then Nancy sees Boat Meadow Creek as less intimidating than Nauset Marsh. We have ten pages, if you can believe it, photocopied from Paddling Cape Cod, a coastal explorer’s guide, by Shirley and Fred Bull, with maps, launch times, etc. Felco Engineering sent a $400 estimate for a Plot Plan. This is Cape Cod’s version of Scilly Island economics, inventing expensive regulations and services to charge each other for. Actually the estimate was for a “Site Plan,” which is different and is evidently a misunderstanding which must be cleared up. So, you see, the back stoop, which had morphed into a 6’ by 8’ pantry/mud room, and is now back to a 4’ by 7’ covered stoop, may be underway before winter, or not. I have almost finished the illustrated version of the Frohock, Atkinson, Lowe, Chadwick genealogy, which I will eventually send along, as well as sending it to Nancy F. H. The process isn’t too difficult. The camera takes good pictures of the old photos. Picture It 9 lets me crop, add text, and reduce them to around 10KB for inserting in the Word document. I’m getting better with the camera. One does. I won’t need a larger memory card unless we go on a long trip if I can keep dumping pictures into the computer. We are off this morning to Windmill Weekend, where Nancy will help person the ECEC table and I will lurk in the background after setting up the tent, etc. We look forward to our visit to Philadelphia in two weeks, a visit from Mari and Gloria in early October, and a trip to Virginia later in the fall. And perhaps Paris in the Spring. Just kidding. Sometime soon though, on Iraqi Airlines if necessary. OCTOBER 13 October 05 M and G have come and gone. Unfortunately it rained the whole time they were here, as it did almost everywhere else except San Francisco. We had a nice time nonetheless. We talked and ate, walked at Audubon and the Red Maple Swamp, and they visited Provincetown and Bearberry Hill. There were actually some overcast but rainless spells. Their visit to New Hampshire was flooded out, as their hosts living in the southwest corner of the state which has been declared a disaster area, but they left for Portland and possible sun on Wednesday. The fall foliage glows when wet. We ate at the Lobster Claw, for the first time in years. It’s fine, no change except the higher prices. For some reason bluefish is unchanged in price, when they have it. N and I shared a fisherman’s platter, which was good but almost too much for us to eat. I think Captain Cass’s platters are a bit lighter in flavor and texture, but that may be because you get them absolutely hot out of the fryer. Or it maybe it’s some family secret. M made us a delicious from-scratch pasta dish on Tuesday. We do enjoy food and cooking. I was reading a pleasant Kate Wilhelm mystery and note that she, too, indulges in my two pet writing peeves: 1) characters toy at their food to evince stress (can’t they find some way to do this that is less disrespectful to lovingly prepared restaurant meals!), and 2) “something was eluding me,” “there was something at the edge of my consciousness,” etc. ad nauseum. Does this really happen to people? Revelations and solutions pop into my head all the time, but I haven’t been aware of their hanging around annoyingly before they do. I think it’s a phony device, but what do I know. As a result of the Pakistan earthquake I’ve learned that my old neighborhood in Jackson Heights, Queens has become entirely Pakistani. Things do change over time. And speaking of time, we heard a radio interview with poet and essayist Judith Viorst about her latest book of poetry, I’m too young to be seventy and other delusions. She read a couple that were very entertaining, especially if you happen to be seventy. I picked up my “Certified Plot Plan” at Felco Engineering on Namskaket Road in Orleans. They were shaking their heads that Eastham required a $400 land survey before permitting a 4’ x 7’ covered stoop. Vernon, who’s on the Wellfleet zoning board, explains towns want to avoid legal problems by making this a blanket requirement for any and all additions. Of course there have been situations, such as the fully permitted new house on which an entire unauthorized floor was built. The neighbors noticed it and ratted, and they had to take it down. Americans still live by the frontier ethos. – Austria and a number of other European cities have what is in effect an honor system for paying subway fares. Evidently it works for them. – I’ve used the digital camera to draw an in-scale plan for the stoop and will submit the application in a day or two. I’d like to put in the foundation tubes before freezing weather arrives. We had a good crowd at Men’s Meeting and discussed all possible sources of alternative energy. Wind is fine and being investigated by several Cape towns, including Eastham, but I vote for investing more research in solar as well, a potentially powerful and entirely clean resource. And no, we didn’t forget septic. I drove Ken home, and we discussed a new study and education program to explore nitrate free systems for Eastham. While the government adventures in the middle east and the young play video games, the geezers address the world’s problems. NOVEMBER 17 Nov 05 It was a moderately busy week. The Chinese Feast was a great success. We used my freshly constructed easel (intended for painting, but I haven't gotten around to that yet) to display some of Nancy's photography. She sold a number of cards for the benefit of ECEC. We served the crab and corn soup very efficiently, and eventually even got to eat. Bill's many dishes were fine as always. The egg rolls were particularly good, fresh from the deep fat and brimming with a secret ingredient which I'm afraid was not vegetarian. Our main job was clean up and dishwashing, which we did dutifully and at considerable length. It was good to see John. We gather that his college visits around New England went well. It will be interesting to see what develops. John and I decided that the weather was sufficiently calm and warm on Saturday afternoon to take the canoe to Salt Pond. We had no trouble launching and paddling out into the marsh, which as seen late in the afternoon and from a new viewpoint was quite lovely. Another time we may wait until the tide is in a little more, as there were many shallow spots. Once I thought we had wandered into a total impasse, but John calmly got us back out into the channel. And we saw the most amazing thing! I thought at first it was junk on the bottom of the inlet to Salt Pond, but it was sponges! Large beige and red sponges that actually look like coral but were soft. Forty years, and we never imagined they were there. Why has no one mentioned them? Perhaps sponges are not that high on most people's agendas. After considerable thought and consultation with John and my colleagues in the men's group I've decided to replace my dead printer with an $89.00 (after rebate and in theory, you have to buy a cable and goodness knows what else) Brother laser printer from Staples. An all-in-one was tempting, but I seem to be able to "scan" with my camera, and for the rare photocopy I go to the Eastham Hardware store, where I have been a weekly customer for 6 years, or to the library. TR says lasers are sturdy and relatively inexpensive to run. The deck/platform of the back stoop is within a day or two of finished. All that remains to do is to attach the decking with stainless steel screws. Then I have to make a step. Nancy wants it the full seven foot length of the deck so she can put a flower pot at each end. Sounds good to me I think the roof will wait until spring. Then we may add lattice at the sides and encourage roses to climb. Very bosky. The laser level was quite useful. I'm enjoying No God but God; the origins, evolution, and future of Islam, by Reza Aslan, an American from Iran. Perhaps "being informed" is more descriptive than "enjoying." The situation is actually a bit discouraging. But we knew that, and it always has been. -- Also reading The Last Refuge, a tale of money and murder in the Hamptons, by Chris Knopf. Just a mystery, but Knopf writes like a dream and seems to have no literary background at all. He even used a word I didn't know! This is not so amazing because I know that many words but because the vocabulary of mystery stories is usually fairly simple. The word was "muntin". Which Webster's Second says means a kind of munnion, which Webster's Second says means a kind of mullion. "Bottles lined a back wall that was mostly mirror, decorated with false muntins." False muntins yet! I think someone was having fun. Maybe everyone was having fun. We hope Sara and Andy are having a good time in Florida. Florida is a great place to visit between November and March. I know I've used the quote before: "Miami has two seasons, unbearably hot, and not unbearably hot. -- Is the Septa strike still on? We were glad to hear that Karen could take the train. The Fellowship's Thanksgiving potluck is tomorrow. We have to go to Rosemary's to get the turkey. She can put it in the oven, but she isn't strong enough to take it out. Soon it will take four of us to manage a turkey, then five... We look forward to our trips to Virginia Beach and Philadelphia. DECEMBER 1 Dec 05 We had a very nice trip to Virginia and a good visit with Sara and Andy. Virginia was pretty, just at the tail end of its fall foliage in December. The tall pines and water everywhere create an exotic atmosphere, and with the many new, light-colored buildings I'm reminded often of Florida, except that Virginia is more spacious. Their apartment is quite nice. It was great to see them relaxed and happy. Rose is happy too! Their Florida trip sounded like a lot of fun. Apparently South Beach and Key West live up to their lively reputations. Williamsburg and William and Mary are both quite large and attractive, although I imagine more colorful in a warmer season. It was cold, so we appreciated the occasional wood fire along the main drag. We saw the 17 mile long bridge/tunnel twice from the air and once from the dinning room of our hotel. Amazing but intimidating. If I drive it again, I think I'll wear my life preserver. We also saw many flights of pelicans skimming the water just off the beach. We heartily recommend the food at T.P. Changs, a good quality, and now very popular, chain of Chinese restaurants. So, now that I'm officially the Treasurer of the ECEC Friends I guess I'd better find out exactly what ECEC stands for, possibly Eastham Council on Early Childhood. It's the after school program, which we support. Anyway, it should be less fuss than being treasurer of the Fellowship, which involved many CD's and the upkeep of a building, but as a non-profit instead of a religious organization we do have to file a tax return. I did it because Don Sparrow clearly wanted to get rid of it, and I have few obligations at the moment. As vice-president of the Fellowship, I rake leaves occasionally, and I keep the chapel rental schedule. I suppose everyone has the urge to feel at least a little useful. This is certainly doing it on the cheap. Nancy says she's good at doing nothing, but she really does a lot. She's also good at keeping in touch with people, and people like that. I was the one who started us off being sociable 6 years ago, but now it's N who knows everyone in town. Well, almost. Shocking! The Mobil gas station beside the post office, which we have used for 6 years, was boarded up and the pumps removed from one day to the next. It is true that I thought the owner was probably an al Qaeda agent, but I kept that to myself, feeling it would be politically incorrect to tell the FBI. Will the station become something else, or will it remain for decades as an eyesore like one a little further down Route 6? There are already 3 gas stations and three banks at Bracket Road, and one Thai restaurant! They saw the economy is booming, but just who it is that's doing well? Stage 1 of the back porch is essentially finished. This week I'll install the new storm/screen door and take a picture. Next spring it gets its roof, rose arbor, and bench. The building season is over for the year. It was satisfying while it lasted. We have a bay window for the dining room and a laundry for the back bedroom vaguely in the future but no other plans that I know of. Well. maybe one more big window in the front so I can see both bird feeders. Nancy would like new Anderson windows. I expect we'll do that too someday, but it's expensive and unexciting. Exciting is better. -- Will I now, as I promised myself, get out the easel I made last month and try painting? Wait and see. I do need projects, and they should go on for a satisfying length of time but then be finished. The heritage of Martin Engle who knew he couldn't be a farmer because farm work was never done, so he built barns. Nancy and I have done the fall cleanup at the chapel, in two twenty minute leaf rakings. Nancy rakes and I bag. We aren't very thorough, but the theory is that we remove enough leaves to let the wind can get at the rest and blow them onto the Library property where they have a sizable crew. It works for us. Fall cleanup at home is another matter, involving only me and maybe three twenty minute leaf rakings. Twenty minutes is the energy constant. I would be more enthusiastic if our oak leaves made compost, but they just subsist year after year. The Egyptians should have wrapped their pharaohs in oak leaves. Perhaps they did. I think I'll make omelets. I'm not quite as enthusiastic about omelets as Nancy is, because I have to make them. But I have them pretty much to a science. The trick is to invent good new fillings. Oven fried rosemary and garlic potatoes cut small should work. I can also put ketchup in the side, which Nancy can't, because she doesn't like ketchup. Liking ketchup is very American. If you like ketchup you hardly have to salute the flag. 12 Dec 05 We left the Little House on the Prairie at around 2 am and returned to the 21st century after an interesting 60 hours. It was sort of fun although it was growing old. Nancy had pretty much had it by the time we came back from the chapel on Sunday. There was power in the chapel, heat, coffee, and conviviality. It all makes one think. Everyone lived like this until about a hundred years ago. Of course they were much better at it, had wood stoves, oil lamps, much knowledge and many techniques that we've lost. Many still live like that, which is pretty unforgivable. I was reading the short book group book, When the Emperor was Divine, about the internment of the Japanese during the war, and it occurred to me that our "hardship" was rather brief and mild. The storm on Friday, or really just high wind, was truly ferocious. We took the Nauset Marsh walk, rainless and not too cold but with 50 mph gusts from the east. We went home, and there was a blue sky eye for a while, and then the wind came back from the west. It was the scariest wind we're ever experienced, although nothing seemed to happen to our house. Our kale soup had just begun to boil when the power went out. I put the hibachi in the fireplace and finished cooking it there. We got out the candles and oil lamps and the portable radio and settled in for a long winter's night. Fortunately the temperature never got much below 40, so with many sweaters and blankets were fairly comfortable. In the morning we went in search of breakfast and were amazed at the scope of the disaster. Hundreds, probably thousands of trees were down, in the roads, on houses, whole groves of pitch pines or locusts. Many were twisted and piled as if from a tornado. Alas, everything was closed in Orleans except the Stop and Shop, which evidently has a generator. We bought water and some soup. The Superette was open and had power, perhaps from the generator for the town hall and police and fire stations. The traffic light at Samoset and Route 6 was working, the only one in 20 miles. The Superette had charcoal and hot coffee. We took our coffee home and drank it with bread and jelly. We read, took our walk, listened to WFCC on the portable radio, called a few people, and heated the kale soup for supper. As several people pointed out on Sunday morning, you couldn't find anything about our situation on the radio. Good thing it wasn't an emergency! I drove to the chapel at 7:30 on Sunday and found it open and warm. The AA group was just leaving. So I called around, and we had a well-attended meeting, talking with a bright but rather programmed woman about the arrogance and power of corporations. We do spin our wheels a bit, bit it was so warm and friendly! Everyone hung around extra long. Hot showers were offered by those with generators, but as Nancy said, we had no intention of getting wet until we had a warm house. As the four pound chicken in the freezer had thawed, we steamed it with vegetables over the hibachi. This worked fine, it cooked in about an hour and a quarter. We stowed the leftovers in the trunk of the car. It will be nice to be back to normality! I've already begun my list of preparations for the next blackout. Like fighting the last war.