CAPE COD REPORTS, 2008 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 3 Jan 2008 Happy new year! Lake-effect snow is very light, but when it falls on you for 12 hours it starts to pile up. It's lovely out this morning but cold, 10 degrees. We may not take much of a walk. It's not just the temperature, it's carrying the weight of all those clothes. So we can stay home and listen all day to various people saying nothing new all day about the Iowa Caucases. I put in N's bathroom window. It was easier than the first one, so we'll probably order 3 more, which costs enough to get free delivery from mid-cape. I note that they have argon between the panes. I wonder why this is better insulation than plain air. You'd think one colorless gas would be much like another, and of course you'd be disastrously wrong. I edited my journal for 2007 and uploaded it to the web. It was interesting going through the preceeding year. We did more than I thought. I always entertain myself. Well, surely it's better than boring oneself. Christmas was nice, wasn't it? Ten people at the dinner table, and it was just fine. A good visit. We are pretty much back to normal now. Nancy finished the cookies. I finished the wedding cake. It was quite good heated slightly in the microwave. The refrigerator no longer looks like Aunt Elizabeth's. I enjoyed the last morsel of the whitefish salad. It was just as good as I remembered it, but only Andy and I ate it. Strange. We still have lots of chocolate. We heard an author talk about his book about happiness around the world. The Swiss are pretty happy it seems, owing to orderly lives and eating lots of chocolate. They're also a wealthy country, which helps, but they don't flaunt their wealth. Bhutan measures their Gross Domestic Happiness. It's a thought. We got our town census form in the mail. We made no changes, reported zero dogs once again, and the titular "head of the household" signed it as required. We'll drop it in the mail as that's much easier than parking at town hall. There was no town census in Oreland. I suppose there must be some point to it. Back to the old grind. I'm reading a history of Scotland. They already had 5 universities in the 17th century and not enough jobs, which is why there are Scots running things all over the world. 18 Jan 08 The BR window is finished to satisfaction, and we have ordered the first 3 of 6 full-sized windows, which will arrive in a month. If this is Just-in-Time manufacturing one has to wonder just in time for whom? -- No more snow here despite promises. N is right pissed off about this. We're paying the oil bills, so where's the winter wonderland? -- The primaries are entertaining, some amusing editorials and op-eds. The whole world is watching, and it's more edifying than neocon rants at least. Some have noticed that Mitt's eyes don't crinkle when he smiles. (Reminder to the makers of Mitt ver. 4.2) -- Have I mentioned Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pasco mysteries, set in Yorkshire? Very witty and well done. He wrote the first in 1970 is and still going, with remarkable consistancy. Just finished "Polio" (the book), for the Book Group. N found it fascinating. I persevered. It's mostly about money and politics (and what isn't). I remember an article Preston Wiles wrote decades ago pooh-poohing the the notion that the Ivory Tower of academics and research wasn't solidly set in the real world. I just started "Einstein" next months book, which I'm supposed to introduce. I'm enjoying it. Einstein said all sort of nifty things. A funny guy. Thanks to J as always, for the CC Times. Yes, we're great fans of Madeleine Albright, but she's probably right that you get only one shot at being Secretary of State. There are always plenty of good people around. It's the gesamt that has to be just right: President, Congress, Staff, public attitudes, world conditions, blind luck, etc. Let me get this straight. We've been supporting the world's economy by spending money invested in us by the third world on bad loans to buy second homes at vasly inflated prices. Someone finally noticed this, and now everything is going to the pot. So, although the "right" think in these circumstances would be to raise interest rates, where' goin got lower them to spur the economy, thereby ensuring inflation and forcing me to learn to surf cast for bluefish. Fortunately we like bluefish. Dan McCullough's column, "A touch is all it takes" was interesting. A nice man, Dan, but I don't usually read him because he's such a fellow old fart. And I often disagree with him as in this case. To say that we are "more than our biochemical structure" is in Young Dr. Frankenstein's terminology pure doodoo. We are energy in action and should be glad of it. Look at the wonders it produces, horrors too, but that's the price. -- We have probably all expereienced the touch phenomenon. Once upon a time a mentally disturbed woman was throwing the library's computers on the floor (she may have had a point!) I talked with her as she did it and caught a few of the computers before they hit the ground. When the campus police arrived in the form of a young woman and moved in to stop the mayhem physically, I asked if I could help and with permission went behind the woman and touched her on both shoulders. She stopped moving instantly. She'd been waiting for the touch. Just biochemistry, which doesn't mean the right touch at the right time isn't effective. The wrong touch of course gets you in serious trouble. We most enjoy Garrison Keillor who we don't encounter elsewhere. Good for the tall women in the long coat who used the mens room rather than stand in a long line. By all means double the number of stalls in the WOMEN's. Better yet, though, develop society to the point where RESTROOMs can be unisex, as in some European venues. -- But why would Garrison want to see Sweeny Todd? There are lots of things I don't understand about humans at all. Even molecules in action can be mysterious. I went to a poetry open-mic with Barry. Maybe thirty people stuffed into a dark room behind O'Shea's Pub in Dennis. It was, remarkably, quite good. All the poets were earnest, some funny (including Barry), a couple rather incredible performers. That's what I forget reading poems in collections. Poetry was, and is, and should be a performance. -- We don't go to plays, our of thrift, laziness, whatever, but good live performance is indeed sometning else. Although still just atoms of course, and what's wrong with that? Why do people have to inject "spirit", something they know absolutely nothing about, into everything to give it value. Value is simply there. 24 Jan 2008 A good week. Among other things we had an attractive bit of snow on Sunday which always brightens our spirits. Temperatures in the 20's but without the wind makes for pleasant walking. We saw another baby seal at Salt Pond. I should have taken a backlighted picture instead of trying to walk around him (or her), as he slipped back into the pond too soon. N is into cooking these days, something we can both enjoy. A really excellent beef stew, a particularly splendid yellow pea soup, one of N's favorites (best with chicken broth), N's black bean chili, and the rare sea scallop dinner! Scallops are $16 a pound, but half a pound (once in a blue moon) is still cheaper than eating hamburgers out. Nauset Seafood fresh scallops baked in Ritz cracker crumbs are quite delicious. Balanced by our hot dog suppers: two Jennie O chicken hotdogs (8 for a dollar) and a $1.75 container of German potato salad from the Superette. Tonight quiche, a la Julia Child. I did tell you the George Bush quiche joke? I'm enjoying Einstein, by Walter Isaacson. Interesting man, Einstein, (no Bobby Fisher). Not a great family man, alas, but a pussycat compared to many "great" men. I sort of understand the science, or at least some nefty bits of it, and the whole business is agreeable. Interesting picture of an age as well. Ted (Ph.D in biophysics, retired from NASA) came to the Book Group discussion of "Polio". He will come to "Einstein" too and give us the advantage of his knowledge. We went to J's to get some more boxes of stuff for the Fellowship yard sale, and she gave us a nice watercolor of Fort Hill, which we have hung in the living room. For my handyman hour, I've started preparing the 3 windows that we'll replace in a month. And I'm cleaning up a nice brass lantern from the dump that I hope to use on our front lamp post. We've pinned down Barry's poetry open-mic for April, and I wrote a "guestbook" in PERL that Barry can use (a separate version of it) to sign up readers. See it on my site or easier the Fellowship's at www.nfuu.org Click "COMMENT" at the bottom of the page. I'm still fiddleing with it. Programming is a terrible time glutton. We're all signed up for Europe in April/May: flights, hotels, etc. Good to hear of Mari's new Mac Mini and Maury's eco teaching. And all other events and activities in your worlds. FEBRUARY We got a foot of lovely snow and had to shovel out our driveway. Then two days later it all melted, but it was pretty while it lasted. We walked at Fort Hill and talked with a young woman trying out her snowshoes. These were the small modern kind, not giant tennis rackets. She said they were great fun, although she admitted that they rather sank into deep soft snow. Good to see someone enjoying themselves. Too often we see joggers, bikers, hikers, cross coutry skiers, and in-line skaters who look like they're not really having much fun. They're evidently not having much fun with their snow in China. The old brass lantern is finished and ready to mount on its post. I had to cut a piece of replacement glass and managed to do it on the third try. Not one of my favorite tasks. I have yet a third old lantern to work on some day. Tonight's potluck was rescheduled to the 22d. No explanation. So we're left with a head of lettuce. We'll have to have tacos and salads. It's good garnish for chicken soup too. I was told Sunday will be a program on Africa rather than the monthly business meeting. Business meetings are entertaining but rarely necesary. It means I have to find some appropriate introductory words of Humanist wisdom. I have about 50 pages to go in Einstein. A good book. Amusing to learn that the FBI had collected 1400 pages on Einstein, all either wrong or irrellevant, but they missed the fact that his girlfriend after his wife's death was a card carrying Soviet spy. Einstein had no secrets to tell her. Superbowl tomorrow. We hear that some Boston fans are spending $10,000 to get to Arizona on the slim hope of scalping a ticket. Super Tuesday next. Hillary is a little ahead in Massachusetts. We'll vote for Obama. Our (well my) only concern about Billary is that they might not win in November. Yeah, Clinton/Obama could be a good ticket. Would Bill and Barak compete for the president's attention. Are we in a recession yet, and how will it affect us? As a guy just said on the Diane Rehm show says, there's a Dr. Seuss-like quality to our economy. Do remember to take time to smell the flowers! 7 Feb 2008 It must be springtime on Cape Cod. It will be 40 degrees most of the time from now until May. So why not 45, jacket weather? But it could be worse. Could be hot. I'm 1/3 of the way through Garry Will's "Head and Heart; American Christianity." On the book cover is a cross wrapped in Old Glory. Fascinating. The pilgrims/puritans must have had their light moments, but there can't have been many. They lived in a pressure cooker in which nothing happened except by God's gift, God's punishment, or the savage attacks of witches and devils. (And expecially of the satanic Jesuits and Indians. Hannah Duston was kidnapped by Indians, who killed her newborn baby. She manageed to kill ten Indians in theit sleep, including six children, take their scalps, escape, get the bounty and be aclaimed and lauded by all, including Cotton Mather.) It sounds medieval, or even aministic: those sad tribes who believed sickness, death, and misadventure were all the results of witchcraft practised by their friends and relatives. On top of tha,t the puritans had to test themselves constantly to be sure they were among the saved. And if you were sure, you most surely weren't! -- Wills makes it very clear that the founding fathers, all of them, were diests plain and simple, and closer to Quakers, Unitarians, and Jews than to evangelicals. Ah well, folks can come to blows over land, food, sex, money, and almost everything else, so why not religion? The Book Group discussion of Einstein will be at our house. I enjoyed the book and let the physics wash over me. Not sure precisely what Einstein DID contribute. The clue to nuclear power? He never followed it up personally, and spent most of his life looking for the theory of everything and trying to refure quantum physics. Ted, 80'ish ex-director of research at NASA will come and perhaps explain a few things. As N says, it all sounded much clearer when Isaacson talked about it on Book TV. I've made the more-or-less successful attempt to understand half a dozen complex things over the years, but as I forget them almost instantly it hardly seems worth the trouble. Einstein was a good chap, except for his early married life and maybe that wasn't entirely his fault. He had the stature to oppose the anti-commie witch hunts in the 40's and 50's. And was a big advocate of personal freedom with responsibility. A great icon too, that hair. -- We ran into a book group member and her husband in the Stop and Shop and spent 15 minutes in the produce section talking about Einstein and Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" a wonderful lay explainion of science, most of which I've forgotten. I love leaning; it's probably just as well I didn't become a teacher. Supertuesday wasn't bad. We'd have liked to see Obama do better, but he did well. Sorry about Massachusetts; we tried. If I were a woman, I think I'd be more torn. The rest of the world is wild about Obama. I don't know why I prefer McCain to Romney as I disagree with him on all issues. Perhaps because he isn't yucky. I agree with Mari that Clinton/Obama would be a good ticket if some appropriately distant task could be found for Bill. Obama/Clinton seems less likely, and probably uncessary. We were sorry Bill O's ECEC Chinese Feasts are no more, but N and I are going to Bill and Nina's for a private feast for 10 or 12, same price, same cause. Great food. We look forward to it. 20 Feb 2008 I've clearly offended Mother Westwind which is never wise. Since I declared it Spring, we've had two snow storms, 10 degree weather, 50 mile per hour winds, and drenching rains. The swamp is full. We like wind in our trees, it's soothing, but when it starts to sound like a freight train, that edges into scary. We went to our Chinese Feast for 10 in support of ECEC. Bill made deep fried shrimp and scallion egg rolls for appetizers, crab and corn soup, sweet and sour pork, stir fried chinese vegetables, and shrimp and pea pods. Delicious as always. This friday a Fellowship potluck, and next Friday Barry and Lois. Friday nights I guess so we can have the weekend to rest up. With the weather and lack of major projects I did a few things on the web. "Palestine From 1948, an illustrated Chronology" is done, under Essays (or though nfuu.org). I also put the Coates and Frohock family histories online, with portraits, but just through my parents, no living relatives, under Biography/Genealogy. The three Anderson replacement windows will be delivered tomorrow. I have much of the prep work done, although it won't be a matter of just popping them in. I sure hope they fit. Wow, I'm listening to WGBH Boston Public Radio as I type. A Handel organ concerto. It sounds wonderful, from the big pipes to the tiny ones just like you were sittin-in-church. And even through my American Airlines "free" earphones, which have lost their foam rubber somewhere along the line. Let's hear it for broadband. So folks in the Gobi Desert, or African or Indian villages could be listening too? Hi, guys. Where will it end? Really. All friends or all against all? So, good think we didn't invest heavily in HD technology, or in John Edwards. Next year we'll get a high definition TV. And I guess a Blu-Ray DVD player. We didn't use our tape player half a dozen times in the past 8 years, but my friends rave about great movies they've seen on DVD, so maybe someday. It's just that there are so many books and so little time. Einstein went well. Ted did talk about physics, but I'm not sure how much it helped. What was entertaining was his stories of the physicists he worked with or took classes from: Teller, Fineman, etc. N read China Road by Rob Gifford and emjoyed it, so I've just read it. Fascinating though maybe not all that encouraging. A billion people seeking "moderate prosperity" but not quite sure what to do with it when they get it. Ah well, we're always told we have to work our out own salvation. Food and shelter first, no small thing for 3/4 of the Chinese, then cell phones and ipods, then cars, and then maybe art and literature. If there's anything left by then. I'm not sure I've mentioned the dozen or so Inspector John Rebus novels by Ian Rankin we've read. A good cast of characters and set in Edinburgh. I begin to feel I know the city without having been there, the grittier parts anyway. And all the bars. Have to try a bacon butty. Or maybe that's London. Maybe it's a bacon roll in Scotland. MARCH The big news of the week is neither Ohio nor Texas but Virginia Beach! I gather that the delight has swept from coast to coast. I happened on the web site "Encyclopedia of Life", a dream evidently of E.O. Wilson, sponsored by Harvard, Google, etc. It aims ultimately to include data, images, video, scholarly articles, etc. on all (to date) 1.8 million species of life. Just started; take a look at: www.eol.org L was sick, so we had to put off our Friday night dinner. Maybe next week. Our social life waxes and wanes, but we never seem to be bored. -- L much is better, and 5 poets have already signed up for the poetry open mic in April. Despite my relative lack of interest, poetry lives! We seem compelled to listen to too much speculation about the primaries. The name-calling troubles us, but if you listen closely it's pretty mild. The news hypes every nuance. It will be nice when things are settled and the party can speak more or less with one voice. You'd think folks could choose between the guy who says we could be in Iraq for 100 years and the one who says let's get out now, but I won't count on it. You'd think we could ignore dirty tricks, too. One bedroom window is done, the other is all set for as soon as the weather improves. Now we vaguely talk about the kitchen. We buy the good stuff, but I'd do the work, and, in theory, need no interruption in daily life. Some of our friends have had to cook on a microwave for weeks or move out altogether while a new kitchen is put in. We're talking in another year or two, but it's the planning that's most entertaining. -- Now the second bedroom window is done. Looks fine, like a window. I can't see why, but the argon filling seems to work. We just finished The Race, a novel by Richard North Patterson. It's about a presidential race much like the one going on now. Convincing and entertaining. He wrote Exhile, about the Jews and the Palestinians, also a great novel. Tonight I cook a vegetable stir fry using the last of the excellent green beans we bought for our postponed dinner party. Tommorrow I try another pizza method. Who thinks their homemade pizza is really great? I'd like the recipe(s). I think after 20 years I have a stir fry for two I really like. Bring a half cup of sushi rice to boil in 3/4 cup water and simmer for 15-20 minutes, then off heat for 10. Stir fry separately, 1-2 minutes each until still crunchy, in vegetable oil with a little sesame oil: carrots, onions, zucchini, green peppers, muchrooms, and maybe red peppers, cabbage, par-boiled broccoli and green beans. Stir fry for 1 minute 2T chopped garlic and ginger. Add 1 cup beef bouillion cube and water. Add 2T corn starch paste, and stir until thickened. Add 2T soy sauce, 2T oyster sauce, 1 tsp Szechuan sauce, and 1 tsp honey. Optionally add a scant tsp chile paste to helping. Two of the members of our French group lived in Belgium all through WWII! The Belgians don't always get good press, but these two women think highly of them. -- Why don't all Belgians just learn both Flemish and French as infants! What a mess. Two foreign languages used to be required in college, then one, and now none in many places. Boo. Another language gives you another world and another window on your own. March 11, 2008 There was an article and picture in the Cape Codder a week or so ago of a laser scanner being used on the old wreck that turned up on the beach in Wellfleet. We've talked of going to see the wreck, but talk is cheap. It takes a lot to get us out of our pleasant rut. I read an interesting book, "Day of Empire: how hyperpowers rise to global dominion and why they fall," by Amy Chu. She talks about the Roman, the British, and the American empires, among others. Her thesis is that you become a hyperpower only by harnessing the forces of a multi-cultural society. Not necessarily all as equals, just all allowed to do their thing and make their contribution, as the Jews were NOT allowed to do in Germany in the '30s. The USA is the most multi-cultural society that has ever existed and is correspondingly successful. But that could change! China is actually quite multi-cultural, although only by insisting that all its many racial and ethinic groups consider themselves Han Chinese. We heard about another book on Book TV, "Artists in Exile" by Joseph Horowitz, about European actors, directors, composers, and musicians who were forced to come to the US from the teens to the 50's. They greatly enhanced the arts in American, at some cost to our "native" composers, directors, and performers. Horowitz says only America had a sufficiently open society. The Europeans were euphoric, although some were eventually a bit disillusioned by McCarthyism. Our talk last Sunday was by Yvonne Relin and her mother, who had been to a reunion of 40 Wallach family members at the opening of the Jewish museum in Munich last summer. They were fascinating. Evidently the Wallachs invented the dirndl! The NAZI's made a big deal out of German folk culture, and it was the Jewish Wallachs who had valued and preserved it. Why now, I asked. Because only now are there enough Jews in Munich to support several synagogues. "The Wallach brothers treasured their homeland so much that they made careers out of collecting and selling traditional German clothing and folk art. Their homeland did not always treasure the Wallachs. Seven decades ago, the brothers, who were Jewish, were forced out of Germany and many of their possessions were confiscated by the Nazis. The Wallachs, like the artifacts they collected, were scattered. Eventually, some of what the brothers had collected was returned by Allied soldiers. Their antiques and art are now on display in Germany, part of an exhibit at the Jewish Museum Munich honoring Moritz and Julius Wallach and their contributions to German culture." from Columbus Ohio Dispatch, June 2007 "For every woman who has been dreaming her whole life of a dirndl, or every man with an eye toward acquiring some choice lederhosen, Wallach is paradise. This is Munich's spot for traditional clothing, including fancy hand-embroidered country dresses as well as riding gear (loden wool coats with leather trim are not uncommon sights on local women of a certain age), luggage, Tyrolean hats, and accessories. It's as "authentic" and antimodern a store as you're likely to find in Europe, even if the clothes are not exactly typical for a night on the town." from "Shopping in Munich 2008" web site. My friend Vernon has been invited to Berlin next December, along with his brother, as a gift of the German government. He was born in Berlin in 1935 and the family was fortunate in being able to get out. Seven of the ten Anderson windows are now in. The last 3 are on order. 16 Mar 2008 We were quite impressed by Obama's speech and gather that many others were too. What a good idea if adults were to behave like adults most of the time. A lot to ask for. Harnessing the full advantages of a multi-cultural and multi-racial society is a splendid thought. We admired Paul W's pellet stove at Men's Group. It burns wood pellets about the size of a pencil eraser. Lots of electronics and a screw drive to feed pellets to the burner (like the coal stoker that great uncle Lee invented). Very efficient and quite economical, almost no ashes. They use their oil burner very little. We also went up into Paul's 3d floor cupola, from which the whole bay was visible before the trees grew, and admired his large 18-panel solar collecter. It takes his electricity use down almost to zero. He gets credit from the electric company for minus readings! It's people like Paul (and Bob O. with his geothermal heating system and home-made wind turbine) who move the process along. Now that I have my 1G on Comcast, I've begun adding our favorite locally-developed recipes to the web, at Databases/Recipes. I also added (under Biography/Family) a family photo show from ca. 1870 to 1964. This is a selection of around 60 photos from our thousands of photos and slides, most of which are either not very interesting or are difficult to copy. Eventually I'll put up a selection from the many more photos from 1964 to the present. Any contributions to either set would be appreciated. We talked about Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" at the Book Group. Everyone liked it, including the seriously Catholic which surprised me a bit. I accepted Liz as an agreeable free spirit who was never meant to settle down. She's a good writer who made Italy and India worth reading about. Bali was a little more puzzling. But then I found that in later copies of the paperback there is an addendum that she married Filipe and did settle down in rural New Jersey. (Some people don't know there IS a rural New Jersey. It's really quite nice, and handy to New York.) I read a shortened version of John's paper about the Archaeology of Quaker Philadelphia to the Fellowship last Sunday, with his Power Point images and some additional images I got off the web. I thought it went well. We had a good discussion of Quakerism afterwards, as some of the attendees had knowledge and experience. Our techy projector worked. The CD/DVD player has a mind of its own and sometimes changes the order of slides, but at least it's consistent. I found the cable to make the speakers work. Someone tried to use a laptop with the projector and found it was too old to have a USB port. I see we can get a converter, but a converter and a new bulb are $300; a new projector would be $500. We'll have to think about it. Fortunately it's not my money. No matter how low church you are, these days you need high tech. -- Next year maybe HDTV and Blu-ray, for us I mean, not the Chapel. Or maybe not. Whitefish salad! I found a container of it at the fancy fish counter at the Stop and Shop. I will try to get some the next time I entertain the men's group. They all love fish, herring, sardines, etc. This Sunday is the Easter brunch, which has little to do with Easter in fact. I always bring baked beans and eat whatever is offered. Nancy will have had her toast and coffee and eats little. Which leaves her free to chat. APRIL 8 April 2008 I guess we've been busy lately, but I'm not sure what at. The squirrels think it's spring. The garlic mustard is up an inch, and the bush honeysuckle is sprouting small leaves, but the temperataure rarely goes above 40. We still wear our full winter outfits when there's a sea breeze. I might plant scallions and lettuce in our window boxes before our trip. We're set for London and Edinburgh, except for our train trip to Truro. I tried to buy the tickets online for several frustrating hours and appeared to have succeeded before the Great Western Railway finally informed me that, no, although they never say so and it looks like you can, you can't actually do that from outside the UK. Arrrrrgh. So we'll book our tickets when we get there and pay more. I put up a slide show of our ancestors from 1870 to 1964 on my home page, under Biography / Family / Family Photographs, with annotations for the more obscure pictures. I played with Javascript and Perl for this but found just a series of html pages with links to be most practical. I'll add more eventually. Glad to accept contributions, particularly for anyone not represented. Eventually I'll do a show for 1964 to the present. I do have bare lists with photos for both. All in flux. I made a guestbook and a counter with Perl, mostly for the fun of doing it. I'm pleased to see that the Fellowship's page gets daily hits. At least folks will have made an informed decision not to join us! N has the women's group tomorrow. I've been invited to the Coffee Club in Orleans and will probably go. I may go with Barry to another Poetry Open Mic at O'Shay's. The Open Mic at the Chapel on the 27th is fully booked. So it goes. Sounds like things are going pretty well over-the-bridge. We look forward to seeing you all in June or July. 13 April 2008 N generously let me interfere with her favorite chili recipe. She likes to make a big pot on Sundays. We eat a third and freeze two batches for later. My innovation was to use a pound of chuck cut in small pieces instead of ground beef. We agreed that the results were excellent. There is a truly huge and bewildering variety of chili recipes on the web, some so far from traditional chili they might come from another universe. I did go to the Coffee Club and was disappointed. My impression had been that it was a fairly high-powered discussion group in which former VIP's kicked around the problems of the world. I was almost a little intimidated at the thought. But, alas, it turned out to be a much-too-large old man's support group. The Fellowship is very much a support group, too, as well as a discussion group and a quasi religious organization, but it's far smaller and livlier. After ten minutes of reports on absent and ailing members, the leader gave his 15 minute personal bio. Leaders rotate, and the bio is standard. His was quite interesting actually. He had been a small boy in Lithuania when the Russians invaded. A year later the Nazi's "liberated" them, but turned out not to be ideal liberators. The family survived the war and spent 4 years in a DP camp in Bavaria. He finally got to the US in 1949 at age 16, won a scholarship to MIT and evidently did well in life. The formal "Discussion" that followed was on the subject of contemporary technology and turned out to be an almost unrelieved gripe session: cell phones are a nuisance, email means no one writes letters or communicates face to face, etc. Just one guy said he had some satisfying email friendships, and someone else pointed out that he could no longer read longhand. For once I said nothing, as I'd decided I probably wasn't coming back, but I would have liked to point out that almost everyone else in the world, of any age, found all these things generally pretty useful. No one is forced to text message while driving or to become addicted to soap operas or computer games. Coffee cost a buck and I was lucky to grab the last doughnut. After the break, the topic was "how I met my wife." This is standard old folks story-time fare, usually quite pleasant. Age does often bring more patience with one another, which is indeed a blessing. Many met there wives while in the Service, which puts them in their 80's. Quite a few met their wives in church. A cliche, huh? Oh, yeah... I had the sense that they were mostly Republicans. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I knew six of the members, all pretty sharp, all of whom I like. Why were they there, I wondered. Not for the quality of the debate, surely. To provide support? Could be, and the thought humbles me a bit. There was one very funny joke told, but I forget it. N's Women's Group was small this time, which meant more chocolate pudding pie for N and me. We never eat desserts, unless we have one! A few of us washed, dusted, and polished the chapel woodwork, and TR and I dismantled and removed the old stove to the back yard. Someone has volunteered a good used electric stove (his wife wants a glass-topped one), so all we need is a truck. The first question to any man retiring to the Cape is, "Do you own a truck?" Quite a few do. They have apparently wanted one all their lives. We see a few Hummers, not many. -- Bill called from AA to say the handle just fell of the toilet. I fixed it. The thrills are continuous. Gordon talked Sunday. Gordon is about my age, a semi-retired minister. His talks are always very good. This one was on aging gracefully. You'd think we know all about that, but Gordon always adds to our understanding. Three things: 1) be kind, be kind, be kind, and then tow more: 2) learn to accept love 3) look for meaning. We knew all that, right? He told lots of good stories. Wish I could remember a few. I have to buy a quart of brown porch paint for the chapel. Paul will supply a small amount of very fine sand to make it non-slip. This is important for old bones. I went to hear an Am ha Yam sponsored talk on Palestine at the chapel yesterday afternoon by an excellent speaker representing a moderate Jewish peace organization. She was quite sensible I thought. Maybe a little more peacenik than I. I asked my main question and got only a partly satisfactory answer. A two-state solution means giving up most of the settlements except what can be consolidated, traded, or satisfactorily compensated. The parties who want to keep and continue to expand them are growing but still consitiute only 25% of Israeli citizens. All to the good. But, while the settlements in Gaza were considered a security liability, those in the West Bank are at least thought to be an asset. Giving them up unilaterally, in the face of Palestinian intransigence, would require a considerable leap of faith. I wouldn't do it. Good Lord, I have TWO things to do on Thursday! Men's Group at 2:00, then dinner with Barry and the Poetry Open Mic at O'Shea's. Usually I eat too much at the Men's Group. We eat dinner at 5:00, and sometimes I'm not ready. On the other hand, when we go out to friends for dinner they rarely eat before six and we have to munch on something before we go. So this works out okay, and N has a big bottle of beer bought just for the occasion to go with whatever she cooks up for herself. Tomatoes and eggs was one of her favorites in the years I worked one night a week. Both were enjoyable. TR had a video on ten ways the world may end and how we might avoid them. Always entertaining. The poetry open mic was great. Wildly varying in quality but some first rate performance art. We hope all is well in your health, house, wedding, baby, cat, rabbit, job, study, teaching, IT, travel, food and entertainment departments. You're in our thoughts. MAY May 15, 2008, 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel Yes, it was an excellent trip. Why, as our stamina and flexibility inexorably decline, we should attempt ever more ambitious journeys is unclear, but it all worked out. Flights and trains departed on schedule, and we had only to step on a platform for our tube train or bus to arrive. You'd think we had planned carefully in advance! I had fussed a bit about parking for the Logan bus. The communter lots are often full, the pay lot at Hyannis is small, etc. I tracked down a big pay lot near Boston as a last resort, and off we went at 11 am for a 6:00 pm plane. In the event, there was just one parking space at Barnstable and we got it, bought our sandwich at Subway, and caught an earlier bus than planned. Typical. We arrived at the Celtic Hotel a block from the Russell Square tube station by 7 AM Wednesday and were given tea by Mrs. Marazzi herself. The saga of the St. Margarets and Celtic Hotels is a long and sad one. We were glad to see Mrs. M. still going strong, although a bit frazzled. Lunch with Sally at the British Museum and soon to bed. The next day we had afternoon tea with Sally and her cousin Jane Lushington at the Jolly St. Ermin's (sic)Hotel, one of the few venues left for such elegant shinanigans. Then to Westminster Abbey for a sung eucharist. This was quite lovely, but N and I found ourselves less moved by the numinous than in the past. Quite unfair as it was all free and not even a collection was taken, a gift to the tourists. We had been thrilled by York Minster and the Ely Cathedral three years before. Oh dear, were we losing our, not faith exactly but perhaps taste for the religious? Not at all. The next day, after a morning at the National Portrait Gallery, we went to a lunchtime concert at St. Martin's in the Fields (Nevil Mariner, etc., but just a piano and clarinet this time). St. Martins had just been refurbished inside and out and was absolutely lovely. Taste for the spiritual restored. It's hard to explain why the National Portrait Gallery is one of our favorite places, all those wonderful faces. The Tate Britain, where we had never been, was excellent, and the Victoria and Albert glorious. I'm sorry my photos of several miniatures didn't come out better, lovely tiny paintings, much better to remember your beloved by than a photograph. Perhaps Bertha Crapper was more dignified than handsome, the wife of the inventor of the flush toilet. But you knew that. We ate twice at Wagamoma, great both times. The weather was fine for our train journey to Exeter in Devon and Truro in Cornwall. Wonderful rolling countryside, glowing chrome yellow rape (canola) fields, and millions of sheep. Very interesting small museum in Exeter, splendid items donated presumably by local world class Emperial thieves. We had a very entertaining tour of the imposing Exeter Cathedral by a jolly church lady who pointed out all the naughty witicisms of the medieval sculpters and the effigy with two left feet (joke, monumental carelessness, bargain rate?). Exeter and Truro were both very pretty Georgean cities. We never tried a cornish pasty (short "a" as in "rat"). Nor did we drink any alcohol at all on our trip. Not a statement, just didn't feel like it. The Brits try to produce the cafe scene but don't seem to carry it off like the French. After one day at the Celtic (because there was no room at Pickwick Hall), we stayed at the Hall, run by Patrick and Clara. Very nice people. Patrick was Olivia's godson. He and Clara live outside London, where he's an accountant and she an artist and art historian who gives tours at the British Museum and other museums. Pickwick Hall is a hostel actually, with in-room microwave and fridge and an open kitchen where we made coffee and toast every morning and admired the backyard garden. We met the usual crowd of young ladies from Carleton College the first morning, and then they were conveniently off on continental jaunts for a week. Very quiet. -- We, Patrick and Clara, and Sally went to lunch together our last day in London and came back to the hotel for a long chat and cup of tea. Family history was rehearsed. I must dig our the 1920's picture of Oliva and Sally's grandfather The Rev. Mr. Lushington. Edinburgh Castle loomed up darkly as we rounded the bend on Lothian Street. Somehow the several hundred foot climb wasn't too bad. "Edinburgh Castle is every schoolboy's dream of what a castle should look like." Well, not exactly; that's Schloss Neuschwanstein in Bavaria, which is why Disney used it for Disneyland. But as a brooding pile it can't be beat. We saw the Scottish Crown Jewels, which they seem to prefer calling "The Honors of Scotland," and the Stone of Destiny aka Stone of Scone. That was Thursday. Friday morning we walked to the High Street to catch our one-day bus tour of the Highlands, driven and narrated by Alec, a very nice chap.It was sun and cloud and very dramatic and impresive. Also incredibly uninhabited. In the USofA we would expect a McMansion on every craggy summit. Most of the Highlands are privately owned, explained Alec, by very rich people presumably. There is no trespass law in Scotland (or so Alec said; once suspects there are nuances), so anyone can tramp around, and many do. We saw quite a few backpackers. Not much traffic, but Alec says in high summer it's a mess; you wouldn't want a McMansion. The Scottish National Gallery (on "the mound") is the best museum we've ever visited. A fine collection beautifully displayed in elegant rooms. No photography allowed, alas. Also first rate cheap soup and bread with a view of the Princes Street Gardens. We ate most lunches in museum cafes. We were particularly taken by Sir Francis Grants's portraint of his daughter "Daisy", Gainsborough's portraint of Mary Cathcart, and Sergeant's of Lady Agnew, which I'll send along later. The Writers Museum, Stevenson, Scot, and Burns memorabilia in a 400 year old house, was delightful. I'm inspired to read Treasure Island again. We had been disappointed (appalled actually) by British TV this time, but finally in Edinburgh saw half an exciting rugby match, the Windsor Castle 2008 Tattoo (Queen in atendance), an amusing if incomprehensible pre-teen comedy (sort of like The Goonies in Serbo-Croat), and The Time Team excavating a site near the white horse we saw up on a down in Devon. -- Delicious Kung Po chicken at Izzi. --- This week was devoted to replacing N's shower, a long and difficult process which is almost done. I don't really like plumbing. Are there people who do, home handypersons who just love to plumb? Two days of rain thank goodness. The beans are up three inches. The lettuce, scallions, and tomotoes are doing well. But I'm afraid we won't have homegrown salad in two weeks. Our jungle is healthy, the neighbor's houses have almost disappeared. - This Sunday is a Fellowship picnic. Should be nice weather. We look forward to it. Our travels seem always to take an eccliastical turn. I think we visit churches and cathedrals partly in search of beauty, particularly church music. We decided to attend a sung Eucharist at the very handsome medieval St. Mary's Scottish Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh on Whitsunday (Pentecost Sunday). Whitsunday comes from the white robes worn by the priest. Pentecost from 50 days after Passover, Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, which seems to be related to the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai and the harvest. The Bishop of Edinburgh preached. He must be a modest man because his name wasn't given in the program, just the "the Bishop of Edinburgh." I looked him up on the web; it's the Right Reverend Brian Smith, who seems to be a very progressive guy and involved in all kinds of doing good. His sermon was based on Acts 2:1-13, wherein a mighty wind and tongues of fire come down from Heaven and the large crowd speaks in tongues and everyone understands everyone else in his own language, a miracle. The Bishop said his sermon would be about "inclusion." Unually I find the sermon a good time for quiet meditation, but I listened. First of all, he said, what are the three basic ideas of the Christian faith? 1) God has a purpose in the world. (Well, maybe WE can have a purpose, but...) No, says the Bishop, I'm not talking about the Big Bang or Evolution but about your OWN sense of purpose. So, okay. 2) Prayer and worship. (I pray occasionally, but...) Naturally, says the Bishop, everyone goes at these differently, as personal struggle for meaning, acting with loving kindness, seeking social justice, etc. Hmm. 3) Jesus Christ is our model, teacher, and savior. (My father said he had three heros when he was young: Jesus Christ, Tarzan, and Jesse Owens, the black American sprinter who shocked the Nazi's at the '36 Olympics, but...) Everyone, says the Bishop, has a different take on Jesus, a different understanding and relationship. And as to the tongues of fire, it's the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the shikina of the Jews, the inner voice of the Quakers, the conscience of all sane persons, and the polyglot miracle is simply our sharing of ideas and beliefs. When I shook hands with the Bishop at the door, I told him I liked his sermon and would pass it along to our Unitarian Fellowship. He seemed surprised. At the coffee hour I told a gent in a clerical collar, that I had liked the Bishop's sermon. "Yes," he agreed, "he's a good guy." There was a fascinating article in this month's "UU World," which we get free and I usually just glance at. "This Present Paradise," by two UU theologians begins, "For almost 1000 years, the Christian church emphasized paradise, not Crucifixion. Images of Jesus's Crucifixion did not appear in churches until the tenth century." I found this quite startling, and gratifying. N and I have always loved Christmas and never cared much for Easter. At a glance I misread this headline with horror: "Explosion d'une bombe de l'ETA au Pays basque." Whew! So, who should Barak pick as a running mate? Jim Webb, Ed Rendell, Joe Biden, Bill and Hillary? Once I thought Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton a good ticket, some said the dream ticket. I'm sure that Hillary, being Hillary, could rehabilitate herself publically in the next two months, but perhaps the harm is done. She seems not to have said to herself, "Aaask nouwght what your country can do for you...." Then, too, "What about Bill?" 25 May 08 A couple of good books. Alexander McCall Smith's "The World According to Bertie", the latest in the 44 Sccotland Street series, is delightful. We bought it in England and N sent it to her friend B after we'd both read it. Reading it while in Edinburgh was a treat. Smith even refered to the streets being torn up and St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral. "The Modern Mind, an intellectual history of the 20th century" by Peter Watson is my kind of book. Ineresting, entertaining, and briefly making you feel like you've learned something. At 700 pages the fun lasts. The Fellowship Tag Sale made $900. Old people selling old junk to one another. It's like the loaves and the fishes. The London tube worked just fine for us. The prepaid Oyster SmartCard made it cheap and easy to use. Why "Oyster"? No explanation. Some train cars are quite new, with comfortable seats, good BBC style announcements, and a crawl anouncing the stations. A few stations are modernized. Some even have a glass wall with automatic doors synchonized with train doors, I guess so you can't fall or jump onto the tracks. The intimidating old wooden escalators are gone and in many places there's also an elevator. The sign at Russell Square notes there are 177 steps to the street and strongly recommends the elevator. I wonder what alternative worlds you might enter by climbing the stairs? I like public transportation, get on, get off, and forget it. If more people had to ride, I imagine it would be better yet. And if there were only one class on airplanes, we might all have enough space. Dream on. At least the British have the sense to drive small cars. We ate well if neither elegantly nor cheaply. Prices look similar to our own, except that they're in pounds not dollars, so tiwce as much. We went to Wagamama twice. Once I had yaki soba, £6.70, teppan-fried soba noodles with egg, chicken, shrimps, onions, green and red peppers, beansprouts and spring onions. garnished with mixed sesame seeds, fried shallots and pickled ginger, which was quite good (copied and pasted from the online menu). Another night N and I shared a chicken tama rice, £7.15, marinated and grilled chicken breast with stir-fried courgettes, shiitake mushrooms, red and spring onions in a thickened oyster, fresh ginger, garlic and wine sauce, served on sticky white rice, and an excellent salad. In Edinburgh we ate several times in a good Italian restaurant and once at IZZI, a Chinese/Japanese restaurant where I had chicken kung po and N had chicken satay, both very good. No lamb, no haggis, and sadly for N, no oatmeal. The St. Mararet Hotal had served excellent oatmeal. Our hotel in Edinburgh had a generous steam table for the full English breakfast of eggs, beans, bacon, sausage, toast, tomatoes and mushrooms, plus fruit, cold cereal, etc. The also had a machine which made cappucino, cafe creme, espresso, latte, and hot chocolate. The cappucino was as good at at Paul's in Paris; probably the same machine. For most lunches we had soup in a museum cafe. The V&A's 19th c. purpose-built cafe was best, but the National Gallery of Scotland Cafe was good too, with a nice view of Princes Street Gardens. A couple of weary evenings we were satisfied with Subway sandwiches, and we picked up apples and chocolate bars at Sainsburys. We don't eat chocolate often. It's frighteningly good. With sufficient pounds and pence, one can live well off the land. -- British Airways food was pretty good, too. Evil evil! Another 160 billion for a pointless war, and schools are having to cut the nutrition value and raise the prices of school lunches. Toad Hall (sorry, Pickwick Hall) was interesting. The Beford Place Block is 200 years old, and the Hall shows its age. C said a year of assault even by the rather sweet Carleton College girls requires major refurbishing. It's a worn old building, held together by home handyman repairs. And yet we thoroughly enjoyed it. The facilities, while not en suite, were right next door and worked, though oddly. Most British plumbing seems a bit odd. We did use the fridge for our apples. We brewed good decaf for breakfast, and had toast and cereal in the crumbling but agreeable kitchen with a lovely view of the garden out a huge window. P seemed a bit shy at first, probably wise with unknown-quantity slightly-related paying guests, but he became quite friendly and was always helpful. That should satisfy our wanderlust for a while. Just as well if fuel continues up and the dollar down. We'll hope to manage California next year. A visit with Maury, too, and maybe a trip to Yosemite. Someday, all things permitting, maybe Jerusalem. I seem to be spending about an hour each morning with French and 15 minutes with German. The web makes it so easy. Maybe Spanish would be more practical for young Americans. Countries have split along language lines (Yugoslavia, etc., and consider even the conservative Belgians!) Multilingualism helps, eg. Switzerland and Quebec. If many people know both English and Spanish, perhaps we will hold together when the country is 50% Hispanic. 3 June 08 The Cape being a magnet for environmentalists, lots of folks around here are pretty green, especially in the Fellowship. We eat a lot of vegetarian meals ourselves, and for us a pound of meat is good for two dinners. All to the good, but not much of a break on the general rush to production and consumption. A quarter of the houses in Eastham are MacMansions that sit empty 10 months of the year with their heat and AC running. Cape Wind can't get their project past the yacht owners, and even Eastham can't get a wind turbine in its back yard. The world talks about a billion or two to help stave off world hunger. Doesn't the US alone spend that every week or so in Iraq, and every month or so on pet food? Individual efforts are fine, but I think we need big national programs for fuel standards, new energy sources, local farms, etc., and we can't wit for China and India to sign on first. Let's hope that "you young people" (a curse by a former president of Brigham Young University) will do it better. Maybe next year! The polls sound good on gay rights. I'm sure you're right about personal realtionships (although some of our politicians seem to be able to compartmentalize their own relatives). I wrote to our state rep who was backing a anti gay marriage constitutional amendment askingexactly that, "Don't you have a perfectly nice friend or relative who's gay?" And lo, she changed her tune. I guess maybe I wasn't the only one. That it's all about economic success was what I got out of Gifford's China Road. But that's not so hard to understand, and as you say, a lot of folks are still left out. -- I gather that when the Chinese dumped Confucianism at the turn of the century, because it couldn't deal with the modern world, they were left with nothing but materialism. Not that Confucianism was that great. We read "Snowflower and the Secret Fan" in our book group a couple of months ago, about the incredbly static society of 19th c. China, and expecially the totally shuttered condition of women. Sounded dreadful. I'd rather be a crass consumer any day. -- Public intellectuals have complained about capitalism, productionism, consumerism, other-directedness, pop-culture, and and the decline of western civilization, ethics, morals, compassion, thought processes, sense of beauty, and quality of life for the past century, and it just gets worse. We seek escapes, ignoble but understandable. I guess I have a higher opinion of Obama's political skills that you do. Time will tell. I read his two books and thought them terrific. Granted that few Americans read, but I think many of his speaches have been superb too, particularly the one he gave in Philadelphia on race. McCain seems an agreeable guy, certainly an improvement over Bush, but except on a few important issues his record is quite conservative. Rainy, foggy, and fifties for the last couple of days, my favorite weather. Readhead weather! I didn't know that. Very apt. - I took a peek at weather in Honduras. About what you'd expect, hot and wet. ? June 08 Bizzare occurance. Nicky Reilly, 22, somewhat mentally disturbed and a recent convert to Islam, was injured while assembling a nail-bomb in the men's room of the Giraffe Restaurant in Exeter, Devon, UK, just by the nice old Cathedral. Shades of Tavistock Square in 2005. No, there's nothing strategic in Exeter. It's just where Nicky hangs his hat. He was encouraged by others evidently, and Scotland Yard is on the hunt. We've lately learned that oyster culture, being vigorously pursued by Henry Lynd, fish and wildlife officer in Eastham, is very helpful in cleaning the marsh. Eat an Oyster (but not too many), and save the world. N's shower/bath is truly finished; she is pleased and bathed. CPVC makes plumbing much easier but still not fun. Very hot here, though not as hot as other places. It's cool at night, and our system of fans, etc. seems to work. We have no plans to air-condition. Another small contribution to The Greening. Finally finished "The Modern Mind, an intellectual history of the 20th century," by Peter Watson. Great fun, long and a bit slow, nearly 800 p., but worth the trip. Everybody's there, a sampling: Freud, Planck, Picasso, Husserl, Mach, Klimpt, Bergson, James, D.W Griffith, Einstein, Russell, Nijinsky, Proust, Bohr, Wittgenstein, Bartok, Kafka Leanard Wolley, Lysenko, Auden, O'Neill, Turing, von Hayak, Fermi, De Beauvoir, Reisman, Crick and Watson, Chomsky, Jane JAcobs, Milton Friedman, Mailer, Rawls, Braudel, Dawkins, Mead, Geertz, Quine Alice Walker, Mamet, Updike, Bellow, Hawking. You get the idea. A good guide to further reading. We walked on the beach yesterday and today. There are many fishing boats out. We will check at the Nauset Fish Market for bluefish, our favorite and still the least expensive fish, though hardly cheap. -- We checked, they had it, still the cheapest though not cheap, grilled and ate it, yum. The yard is agreeably jungly with the recent and adequate rain. The Fellowship picnic was splendid. We ate well as we always do, and talked of shoes and ships, the women outside under the big beach umbrella, the men inside around the table, another phenomenon of aging, we revert to school-age behavior. Excuse the telegraphic communications. When you start getting just quotes and clips you'll know. Barak and Desmond cancelled for Sunday, so we're reduced to "bring a humorour poem or two to share." I finally found some of Billy Collins that were short and amusing. I tried all week to write something but failed, poetry is hard. Then in 20 minutes I wrote this. Will have to do. With Caws Crows can't be as angry as they sound. Like schoolgirls on the subway they're just trying to be heard above the crowd. We know nothing of their sweet nest talk with wives and fledglings or out on limbs with dusky slim inamoratas. Unless they are, of course, all mad as hell, at us because we've spurned the common paradise for gated Edens of our own. 13 Je 08 Many thanks for your great letter and also for George’s enclosures which always give us a laugh. I know M had a wonderful time visiting you, and was also glad for the chance to visit and talk with J. He seems to be doing well so far, thank goodness. Our trip to the UK was wonderful. We spent a lot of time with my dear friend Sally – she and I have been friends since we were little girls and became pen pals. Her mother and a cousin of mine were best friends and “introduced” us when I was about 8 and we’ve been friends ever since, even though our actual meetings have been very few. She is an artist and an art historian who worked at the National Portrait Gallery among other places, so she is a great person to go with to an art museum. She also treated us to a wonderful tea complete with cakes and clotted cream, after which we went to a sung Eucharist at Westminster Abbey. It was Ascension Day and the music was by Olivier Messaien – this is a centennial year of his birth (or death? can’t remember).It was a lovely service, and there was even a peal of bells at the end, which was not in the least diminished by the loud clap of thunder that sent us scurrying into the Underground! I loved Westminster Abbey when I first saw it in 1965, but now it is so crowded and busy that it is hard to really see and the atmosphere is certainly different. We went to a noonday concert at St. Martin in the Fields which has just been repainted and restored both inside and out. What a beautiful church, with no stained glass windows, just plain ones which let in a lot of light. The Victorians apparently replaced the originals with stained glass, all of which was shattered by a nearby bomb during the war. Now it is back to the plain glass, with a beautiful modern window depicting a crucifix using simple lines, set behind the altar. We made an overnight side trip to Exeter and toured the cathedral – the oldest in England and quite a lovely one. The tour was led by an elderly woman who obviously loves it and knows a great deal about it. The next day we took the train to Truro, another beautiful cathedral city. It’s not as old a cathedral but still it is quite lovely. The organist was playing “Come Down OLove Divine” and we sat and listened and rested our feet. We did other things besides visiting churches – the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro was great, and we spent a day at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Our day long bus tour of the Western Highlands of Scotland was another highlight – a sunny day and snow on the tops of the mountains! We loved the National Gallery of Scotland and went there twice, both times enjoying an excellent lunch of home made soup and wonderful bread. A great trip but we were not pleased to find ourselves tiring more easily than we expected. We got home in the middle of May and Spring finally arrived. Our huge rhododendron is a mountain of flowers and the grass is quite tall – Russ cuts it in the back but leaves the front alone. Quite amusing to see squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits leaping through it. Now it seems we’ve had a preview of summer with our first heat wave. It only lasted 4 days but that is enough for me. We make great use of our attic fan and the ceiling fan in the living room – luckily it cools off at night. Summer brings the bluefish to the bay and we buy it at the fish market. Russ marinates it and cooks it on the grill – delicious! Next Saturday Mari, Gloria, Karen and David arrive – they will stay in cottages nearby and take their meals with us. It will be so good to see them. They leave the 28th and we take off for Virginia on July 1. What a shame your church is to be closed. There have been closures here too, much to the dismay of the parishioners – but now there is a new church being built to serve 2 combined parishes. I know the Boston diocese has closed many churches and schools as did Philadelphia – those city schools are vital to people who aren’t being well served by the public school system and want their kids to have a good education. Seems very short sighted – and you are right, not at all responsive to the needs of its people. 15 Je 08 It isn't out of principle that we rarely watch TV in the evenings. Reading, both fiction and non-fiction, is just more satisfying. We saw the promo for the Nova on E.O. Wilson and enjoyed that. We still watch Washington Week, although they keep chopping away both ends for ads (on "public telelvision") and run constant fund drives. We'll greatly miss Tim Russert on Meet the Press. Is the populace dumbed down, as pundits claim. Is reading on the way out altogether? Will we be communicating in pictographs? -- No, I assume the human spirit, such as it is, will continue to soar above the medium and well make good use as well as bad of all the technology. The World and All things Considered are worth listening to on radio. I read the Times in the morning and get analysis from France. JULY 9 July 08 And so... It was a lovely wedding, and it was great to see everyone. We're home again after two days of fairly easy driving, although easy is a bit harder each year. We marvel at Millard and Rosemary Frohock still crossing the country by car every summer in their 80's. For the mechanically and/or economically minded from tuesday in Eastham to Sunday in North Jersey on the trip home we averaged 48 mpg in our '04 Honda Civic! We aimed for a steady 55 and stayed between 50 and 60 most of the time. Another reason to drive moderately. I don't much like the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel, it's unnatural (like flying), but we did it, twice, and survived. It probably goes with my not much liking boats, which goes back to 8 hours of being seasick on a fishing boat in Florida in 1946 and 11 days on a troop ship in 1960. The Bluenose to Nova Scotia on our honeymoon was somehow perfectly okay. Perhaps the company helped. We had stopped for lunch at a Friendly's with Karen and Dave on the way down and managed to stop at the same Friendly's on the way back to Philadelphia. They have great fish and chips and delicious clam chowder. We're sorry the one in Orleans closed. We also managed to stay on the main highway instead of wandering off on one of the many alternate 13's on the return trip. N wanted a Filet-O-Fish at MacDonalds in the Mall for supper. Gives new meaning to concept of "filet", ut as I understand it, "scrod" means filet in Dutch. You never know with fish. Creatures of habit, we ate breakfast Sunday at Springhill Suites. (Fake eggs and low-end sausage patties, with toast and good decaf. For me that is, good oatmeal for N. We search the world for good oatmeal, and it was fine at the VBRH.). We bought our usual sandwiches and cheap lemonades at Wawa in Flourtown and were on the road by 8:00. We were on the Cape by 3:00, breezing up Route 6 past the 10 mile backup heading for the Sagamore. (Heh, heh.) We got off at exit 7 because N doesn't like the two lane highway. When we turned onto 6a, with the afternoon sun behind us lighting up the spic and span B&B's, Inns, Victorian and Cape Cod houses, big old trees, and flower gardens, I said "Oh my, we're back in The Land of Oz!" We missed Gloria, but we know the charms of New Orleans in July are irresistable. Just kidding. We hope it was a fruitful session and that you got good info and excellent seafood! ALA met in N'orleans in the summer once and raved about the food. I didn't go. Our vegetable garden was just fine when we got home. I don't think it rained, but evidently my heavy watering and mulching before we left was enough. We have millions of tomato and bean blossoms and dozens of young tomatoes. The lettuce is doing nicely. If we could grow tuna we could make great salads. I mean to expand next year. Maybe peas, maybe zuchinnis (what the Europeans call courgettes, just to be confusing). Any suggestions? Root veggies seem impractical. They take room and taste approximately like what you buy in the Stop and Shop. We grew beets once. They tasted just like canned beats. Mari grew corn once, but all they got was a few old baseball players. So that's it. First Megan C and now Sara R. The world refuses to stand still. Several people (not our Unitarians friends!) have had what seemed to me the well-meant but still doubful taste to say we seem quite broad minded our daughter's converting to Judaism. We always say that she didn't convert, she chose to become Jewish, and we're delighted. And we are. When N and I first met four decades ago we learned that we both greatly admired and possibly envied Jews their wise and sensible religion, based in the home and on the family. We've read a lot about it in recent years and only had our perceptions reinforced. I doubt that I will become Jewish at this late date, but I would like to find a Torah study group nearby. I must ask our Am ha Yam friends. 19 July 08 We had a couple of what we insist on calling Cape Cod Days, cool and bright. Now we're hot and humid again as some of you are. (Well, maybe not quite that hot and humid.) Thunderstorms last night refilled the rain barrels. Our mild excitements included seven swans a'swimming at Salt Pond, one well ahead of the others for some swannish reason, and a party of young turkeys near the lookout bench. -- A good book title "The Young Turkeys," but what's the book? Do you ever play that game? I have a colection of them somewhere. I think one was "The Concrete Gazebo." -- Alas, I'd decided it was too hot to carry a camera. Two fuzzy baby mallards were seen at Goose Pond through an Audubon scope. N declined the offer of a look although the nature wallah weedled. She doesn't see things through lenses. We saw a vole scrounging under the bird feeders. We were quite excited for a while, and then one of us turned to the other and said, wait a minute, is this altogether a good thing? I think I once read that under every stony acre galavant 13,000 voles. Oh no! -- We've eaten our home grown bush beans twice and blanched and freezed a few. I read that pole beans have a longer season, but we think bushies taste better. Our cherry tomatoes are sweet and flavorful. It's not the answer to Al Gore's challenge, but we try. Jan continues to email me right-wing screeds, to which I duly snarl a polite answer except when she demands that I don't because some things are too sacred. And she flatmails us the editorials from the "Cape Cod Times." I see Friedman online now but not Garrison Kiellor, so we apprecaite this. Kiellor is almost always good. The one about chatting with the proud father of the only girl on a little Little Leage team was a real sleeper. Folksy and pleasant, and then all of a sudden he writes: ""I'm 65 and have had a good life and can't claim that the Current Occupant has done me much harm at all. It's when I think about 10-year-old-girls I start to get hot under the collar. This clueless man has dug a deep hole for them and doesn't seem vaguely aware of it. He has spent us deep in a hole, gotten us into a disastrous war, blithely ignored the long-term best interests of the country, and when you think of the 4,000 kids who now lie in cemetaries, and for what? - You start to grind your teeth. For the sake of the girl with the beautiful swing, I hope we get a better president than the disgusting incompetent we've wasted eight years of our national life on. Think twice about who you put your arm around, Senator McCaine." -- Garrison can be quite sharp. I hope I never raise his ire. I am so tired of election talk. Now we have to watch every work and step of O's foreign travels for faltering. Can't we just declare him President and dispense with the vote and all this lame duckery? Gail Collins says Bush's recent world traveling is the Junior Year Abroad he never had. I just finished "Gone for Soldiers" (picked up at the dump dome months ago) a 1987 book by Marge Piercy (autographed!), who lives in Wellfleet, is married to novelist Ira Wood, and is almost better know for her poetry. I'd read that it was a real WWII sweep, and indeed it is, battles in both Europe and the Pacific, spying, the home front, working women, flying women, refugees, concentration camps, and the French resistance, love, death, passion, and action, and quite well written. Most of the large cast of characters are Jews, which adds but doesn't limit. One thing that got to me was the level and virulence of the prejudice and downright hate among the general public for blacks, Jews, homosexuals, "foreigners," and women anywhere but in "their place." Shocking really. I was only ten when the war ended, but how could I not have sensed any of this? She does a lot in 700 pages. Recommended by Russ, for those with time on their hands who might be interested. Looking back, I'm aware that my brilliant mother almost had a nervous breakdown before she broke the taboo went to work and school. Blacks lived in Kinlock (a Scots name like Ferguson) at the edge of our town and were never ever seen. The State Guard (including my father) regularly marched through Kinlock with riot guns. The Annual Ferguson Lions Club Minstrel Show was suddenly changed to a Cowboy Show towards the middle of the war. Jews and gays were unknown quantities. When we moved to Jackson Heights in 1947 I was puzzled (and still am) by the "pork stores," but I feel there has to have been a malign reason. I did soon become aware of what "exclusive" meant. N remembers that her mother battled furiously to get a friend named "Levy" into the decidedly exclusive Monday Afternoon Club (that same place we didn't have our wedding reception), not, alas because whe was Jewish but simply because she had a possibly Jewish name. L&M hired their first Jewish employee in the mid-'50's, as General Council of course. I rmemeber being pleased at seeing black couples easting in restaurants in NYC. How pathetic, but we've come a ways, haven't we Barak? A common joke in Junior High: Question: "How do I find the 69th St. Ferry?" Reply: "Thspeaking." I didn't get it for about five years, on both counts. I was a little slow. I'm not all that speedy now. I've started our November book group book, "The count of Monte Christo" (Gee thanks, Elizabeth! She always picks classics, for our own good.) I found two copies at the Snow Library. One, at around 500 pages, said "slightly abridged." The other, unabridged, was 1400! Brings new meaning to "slightly." -- My grandmother Chenoweth (Mum) gave me a copy for Christmas around 1947. Amazingly, I think I read it. I had more stamina in those days. I read most of Dostoevsky for fun in college. Last year I couldn't slug through all of The Brothers K even for The Group. Much of the conversastion seemed silly. -- The Count is online fulltext in both French and English. Now that would be a tour de force. Speaking of Garrison Kiellor, he read this poem on his brief morning NPR poetry program: Not to sleep, by Robert Graves Not to sleep all the night long, for pure joy, Counting no sheep and careless of chimes Welcoming the dawn confabulation Of birds, her children, who discuss idly Fanciful details of the promised coming - Will she be wearing red, or russet, or blue, Or pure white? - whatever she wears, glorious: Not to sleep all the night long, for pure joy, This is given to few but at last to me, So that when I laugh and stretch and leap from bed I shall glide downstairs, my feet brushing the carpet In courtesy to civilized progression, Though, did I wish, I could soar through the open window And perch on a branch above, acceptable ally Of the birds still alert, grumbling gently together. Isn't that lovely? And Garrison read so well. As Garrison says: Be well, Do good work, and Keep in Touch. 22 July 08 I checked out all your emails, with pleasure and/or interest. I can appreciate much without agreeing. Hope that's okay. Always loved the Battle Hymn as a kid, very stirring. But the Civil War was literally brothers against brothers, a time of shame and sadness, not triumph. And I can't believe God was on the side even of those who (sort of) opposed slavery. Actually, I can't believe in God at all, but I can appreciate Tony Snow's lovely thoughts. If only.... My old neighbor Gunther played the horn in a Hitler Youth band (not willingly!), in which he would be beaten if he missed a note. He was not big on patriotic music. One of my bosses at Penn had driven a tank, and lost a leg, for the Wehrmacht. He noted that every house in Germany had to fly the German flag, on pain of pain. He was not big on flag waving. I've always liked guns and usually owned several. I also rather like the pretty sea shells we used to be able to pick up on the beach and have found them, in the long run, more useful. Aren't guns mostly for those guys who fear their other equipment is a little inadequate? Or who fear invasion from the barrios, possibly with justification. -- I think the technical term for the comparison of guns and doctors, however, would be: 'silly'. Corruption and improvidence in the Mass Govt! I'm shocked, shocked! Show me a government with soul so dead that it doesn't enrich itself from the public pocket... Pikers they are, however, compaired to 'private' greed. Enron, CEO's, insurance (sic) companies, golden parachutes for the the scalawags, market forces, the 'invisible hand' picking your pocket. The ark is amusing, as is the Creationist theme park in Tennessee. It does sadden me a bit to see chrilden raised to a mean and narrow life in Christian madrasas. Don't know enuf about La Raza. Probably one of those inevitably fallible human institutions, like the FARC or the Supreme Court. I kind of go for the fence though. Frosts's 'Good fences make good neighbors' was sarcastic, but I've always felt they did. -- As to a plot to separate Texas from the US of A, however, I say go for it! And the dog! I've always believed that the world was confusing enough without trying to confuse people deliberately. I'm not really for practical jokes. But, I don't live up to my own ideals either (he he), and I thought it was delightful! Of course, the amazed watchers didn't really believe it either, but I think they enjoyed being twited, as by a magician. 28 July 08 I gave my talk this morning, "Palestine from 1948, an illustrated chronology." It went well. Fortunately there were a lot of visitors, attracted by the topic presumably, because many Fellowship members were off seeing grandchildren, etc. The projector worked without a hitch for once. M, of the Hot Chocolate Sparrow, a member but infrequent attender because of her coffee house duties, said she never knows what to say when her fellow liberals start lambasting Israel. For one thing, she's Jewish. I said that was exactly why I produced the web pages, to supply an even-handed rebuttal. -- R the Roofer came. He's just published his novel, "Glen" on iUniverse. It's about a murder in the Peace Corps in Africa, where Rick was years ago. I'd read it and made suggestions. He owns a house in Portland, Oregon and has a business on the cape and a girlfriend on the mainland. People do live complex lives. - V reminded me that because of its parliamentary system, the Israeli government is always beholden to right-wing parties who can nix anything they don't like. And that some of the newest settlements are financed and peopled by American Orthodox, sometimes to the displeasure of the Israelis. -- Next week Mother Bear, a Wampanoag lady, will talk about Creation myths. You never know. N chanced on an uninterupted performance of Bruckner's 5th Symphony yesterday afternoon, played by the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra at the gorgeous baroque Abbey of St. Florian near Linz (Hitler's birthplace) in Austria (a country known for its natural beauty, art and archiecture, great music, rich food, and virulent anti-semitism.) A wonderful performance even on our old tv which could awake technogreed in this old soul. Maybe in a year or two, when the high definition format wars are over, a new HD tv with good sound will be considered. Imagine ballet! There was an after-concert interview with the German conductor of the Cleveland orchestra. The "most European of American orchestras," it has by tradition almost always had a European conductor. Severence Hall is smaller than most American concert halls, which encourages playing in the quieter and more precise European manner. Or so they say. Certainly the performance was elegant. We enjoyed our free tickets to the Cape Symphony last year, and it was nice for a half hour or so to hear an orchestra at full blast (something you Rock Concert fans must appreciate), but then it got almost too much, a little exhausting. Chamber music is more our thing. I read half of my first Steven King novel, Duma Key. Then it became too weird, violent, and grim. Too bad, as I'd liked it a lot up to that point. He's a good writer, but I guess he knows his audience. We watched a talk on Book TV by Steven Greenhouse, a NYT reporter, on his new book The Big Squeeze, about the sad state of labor in the US., the only industrialzed country without national health care, universal paid vacations, maternity, and sick leaves, etc., as well as lost manufacturing jobs and sinking wages, especially compared with company executives. Well, you know all this. We need a regieme change! We're buried in bush beans. It's a good thing they're tasty. We've boiled them, steamed them, and used them in salads and stir fries. I like our cherry tomatoes, which are more the size of grapes. Nancy thinks they're a little sweet. We have a ton of big Better Boy tomatoes, still green. N loves fried green tomatoes and is suggesting immediate action. -- The compost pile is now in great shape! We haven't had a decent one since Oreland. In Oreland, though, we had a nice mix of oak, maple, and beach leaves, which breaks down much faster than just oak. Two daddy long legs (Pholcus phalangioides) live in my shower and become quite upset when I use it. We've been walking on the beach lately, as the tide's been out mid day. Sunny, cool, and breezy. In fact, slogging south against the wind is like walking up a steep hill. We fly on the way back. That's much better than the reverse. AUGUST August 8 2008 Below 60 at night. It was like the olden days in August on the Cape when we had to have a fire in the fireplace every morning. Won't last. -- Lovely brunch with Barry and Lois. We talked from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm. Mother Bear was pretty cool. She's the head honcha of the matrilineal Wampanoags. She was wry, amusing, irreverant, and seemed to have no agenda. She worked for a while at Plymouth Plantation, as an "Indian" of course; she looks the part. But she was fired for insulting the visitors. For instance: a woman asked quite accusingly about her fox tail coat, "Did you kill all those foxes!" (Plymouth Planatation folks are supposed stay in 17th century character, and Mother Bear pointed out that joking and misdirection are very much in American Indian character.) "No," said Mother Bear, "I asked them to unzip their jackets." It didn't fly. -- She said she wouldn't talk politics, which at the moment means the fuss over a Wampanoag casino in Massachusetts. She mentioned the "woodwork Indians", who come out of the woodwork when they smell casino money. Quite a character. I'm not sure why she agreed to talk to us, except, could it be that she was just saying in her own easy-going way, "Screw you, palefaces?" Good fun. In reply to a gift right-wing editorial: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is the basis of Judeo-Christian morality. Teddy Roosevelt said it in his own way: "This country won't be good for anyone until it's good for everyone." And I have a small bone to pick with Bill and Malinda Gates, too. Each person already has a chance to live a healthy and productive life, what they need is the real thing. I doubt that all the items mentioned in the editorial are actually Obama's. You can't trust these editorial writers. They lie. Obama's a pretty moderate guy actually. Too moderate for me; I'm a Euro-socialist. Alas, though, as V says, greed trumps every time. In reply to a cartoon of Noah running into trouble with EPA, OSHA, et al. "Noah's Ark ca. 2008" was great fun and contains much truth, as we home-improvers know. My accursed plot plan for a stoop! I often feel compelled to reply to these things (except when J tells me something is too sacred for me to comment on!) Isn't "government" a word like "quality" which needs to be qualified as good, bad, or indifferent? Government is always with us, sometimes oppressive, sometimes neglectful, and sometimes (but not often) just about right. My feeling at the moment is that it's the lack of government oversight, of our financial institutions, agricuture, natural environment, energy resources, borders, and international relations which is most likely hastening our possible destruction. Two books came for me at the Library, the "slightly abridged" 500 p. version of The Count of Monte Cristo, (for N, I jsu finished the full 1400 page text), and a 900 p. version of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, (instead of the original 6 volumes). So, I dusted off Dave Eagle's old bicycle and went to get them. The first thing I did was scratch my leg on the rear basket getting on the thing. I stayed in whatever middle sort of gear I found it in for fear it would break down if I tried to change. I did bring the cell phone to call N for help. But it went just fine. The bike trail has been resurfaced and is a dream. Took 35 minutes there and back. Middle gear was fine, it's all flatland, but the bike does shift down sucessfully. I made a great Phad Thai yeaterday. So glad you asked. I'll give you the recipe: Start with a packet of Sun-Bird Phad Thai Seasoning Mix. Combine mix with 1/2 cup water and 1 T soy sauce. Set aside. -- Bring a good sized pot of water to a boil and take off heat. Stir in 6 oz. of A Taste of Thai Thin Rice Noodles, Straight Cut. Let sit 15 minutes. While it sits: -- Softly scramble one egg. Set aside. -- Stir fry in a little oil in a large frying pan one medium sliced carrot, 1/4 small red bell pepper thin sliced, a few scallions sliced, a clove of garlic (minced), (and a few snow peas, except that we didn't have any). -- When noodles are ready, add mix to frying pan, and add ca. 1/2 a cooked chicken breast (cubed, optional). -- Add noodles (well drained). -- Stir fry the whole mess over medium heat for 2-3 minuts. Add 1/4 uncooked red bell pepper sliciced, add a few uncooked sliced scallions. Stir in scrambed egg. -- Serve, with optional soy sauce. Top with rushed peanuts (optional). August 14 2008 We have a house rabbit. He lives outside actually and comes by each evening to munch what passes for grass in our back yard. Now two voles appear at once under the bird feeders. We read that there can bu up to 12,000 voles per acre. N is a bit freaked. I took down both of the remaining locust trees at the chapel before they could fall on the power line. A disgracefully messy job by Woodsman Russ, with a semi-sharp axe and a feeble timber saw, but done. I bought the paint for the chapel porch and did most of the scraping. New we need a few dry days. I found a great book at the library, a 2007 complete revision of Lies My Teacher told Me, everything your American History textbook got wrong, by James W. Loewen. I've always considered myself lucky to have been born an American (although Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand, and post-war France look pretty attractive too). I'm still a loyal and patriotic Yank and moderately proud of my modest military service. But, as is inscribed on the south facade of the Boston Public Library "THE COMMONWEALTH REQUIRES THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE AS THE SAFEGUARD OF ORDER AND LIBERTY", and that means knowing both the good and the bad. I thought I knew a fair amount about American history, but almost every page is a revelation: Columbus and his large scale genocide and slave trading, Woodrow Wilson as a world class racist and our greatest warmonger (in central and south America), and the way the high school and even some college textbooks whitewash our past (what they don't leave out altogether). As a quote in the intro says, "American History is longer, larger, more various, moe beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it." - James Baldwin Someone sent me a jokey film clip. Bob Hope is being told about Zombies, and Hope says, "Oh, you mean like Democrats?" I loved the old Bob Hope road movies, although I liked Abbot and Costello even better. My nomination for zombie of the year is the average joe who votes Republican (why is never entirely clear) against his own economic interests, his quality of life, his civil rights, his prospects for decent health care for himself and his family, his personal freedom, and the liklihood that his grandchildren will have a habitable world. He must get something out of it you'd think. Relief from responsibility for others? Comfort with his prejudices? Pride in going it alone (down hill for the past decade)? The pleasure of tugging a forelock at the rich folks in the big house on the hill, and the (faint) hope of someday living there? A delight in being (marginally) better off than at least someone (preferably of another race or ethnic group)? The glory of dying on a foreign battlefield (for no apparent reason)? And the distinct pleasure of calling others wimps, pinkos, faggots, elitists, and (gasp )liberals! I truly don't understand it. God and biology both say: "Humans, unlike many other species your survival and happiness depend on your working together, honorably, fairly, as a team, for the common good, and to everyone's advantage, and not on stealing each other blind and rending one another asunder like wild beasts in an eternal battle for King of the Hill." Show me a genuinely compassionate Conservative and I'll have seen one. -- McCaine will win in November because he is willing to go to war without giving it much thought? The summer traffic is pretty bad, but we have complex ways of doing our necessary business in Orleans while making no left turns! Old family history: I don't think my mother worked until my sister was in college. She must have been around 40 and ready for a nervous breakdown if she didn't get out of the house. A graduate social worker, she worked part time in the local hospital for a while but hated her boss. She taught 5th grade for a year and loved it but decided she lacked the physical stamina for the classroom. So she went to library school and did so well (and liked it so much) that she was hired as an instructor without ever having worked in a library. There was a bit of resentment about that on the part of a few colleagues. She hated to have to 'retire' at 56, but she didn't hesitate to move to Florida after my father's hear attack and never worked for pay again. -- There aren't that many related Chenoweths out there, at least that we know of. There's a sizeable contingent in Chicago, but we've been out of touch with them for 50 years. I send letter to David Chenoweth, Norman and Velma's son, a couple of years ago and got no answer. It may not have reached him. -- Rosemary and Mill will visit the Cape in September. A nicve note from John Mason, a PDS classmate and good friend who I thught was dead. It's always good not to be dead. He's involved with the Quakers these days. Good company. ---------- A pleasure indeed! Nancy and I were delighted to get your note and find you among the thriving. We thoroughly approve of the Quakers and enjoyed the meetings we attended in connection with John's 12 years at Germantown Friends School. Yes, I remember Charlie as a very pleasant chap. I suppose we're technically Unitarians, as well as technically Episcopalians, of course, but the Nauset Fellowship, here in Eastham, is a purely humanistic organization with only vaguely cheerful beliefs. We have programs rather than a worship service, which does discourage some visitors. As a friend of ours (who makes me think of Tom Bombadil) says, "I'm a worshipping man, and you don't do worship." That depends of course on what you mean by worship. N and I are great fans of Karen Armstrong and have read most of her books. We, too, consider ourselves "seekers," although not particularly driven ones. I don't have a beef with the Episcopal Church (except regarding gays and lesbians, which I'll get to), just not much interest in it. When we travel we go to churches, cathedrals, and museums in search of art and music. (And restaurants in search of food!) Sally Wimbush, Nancy's pen pal of 60 years, took us to a sung communion at Westminster Abbey in April. It was lovely, but it left us rather cold until we walked out into Parliament Square afterward to find the bells pealing. Splendid! We've been to evensong at Ely Cathedral and found that very moving. A concert at St. Martin in the Fields was excellent. Ely Cathedral and York Minster are particularly beautiful. Sung communion at St. Mary's Scottish Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh was not only well done, the sermon by Brian Smith, the Bishop of Edinburgh was right on. He said it was to be about "inclusiveness" and it was. If we lived in Edinburgh, who knows? Except that we went to the coffee hour afterwards and no one spoke to us. That doesn't happen at the Nauset Fellowship. -- So you see, religiously we're out there floating like so many others. We're pleased with, but not quite envious of, our daughter's 'conversion' (from nothing much)to Conservative Judaism. Sara (41) was married in July to a great guy, and is expecting their first child in 3 weeks. -- I can perhaps imagine an Episcopal church with lovely music, an elegant liturgy, and a completely open mind. It could exist, and perhaps it does, but not around here. As to gays and lesbians, I don't think it's a matter of opinion but rather of ignorance, a repeat of the Church's errors concerning slavery. It's as normal for humans to have different sexual orientations as it is to have differently colored skins. End of story. How can there be any sort of "compromise" here? I don't still have the short note I sent you, but evidently I wrote about our children. It's a failing of my mine. We have only 1 grandchild, still on the way. I've mentioned S K is a social worker in Philadelphia. Dmakes us proud by doing well with his many limitations. J, Ph.D. candidate in archaeology, has just returned to Berkeley from a two week dig at the Lettsome plantation on Little Jost Van Dyke (near Tortola in the BWI) with his crew of five undergraduates. John Lettsome was born there into a Quaker family. He became a wealthy physician and freed the family slaves when he inherited them. (Just before his dealth he inherited a thousand more!) -- N used to say, "All your friends are named John!" I have a friend from my French conversation group named John, an 85 year old retired pathologist. I'll say, "John says..." and then have to explain. I've never cared for the name 'Russ', but at least its usually unambiguous. Glad you have travelled. We find it gets harder physically each time, and more expensive. A friend my age (73) says, when you travel you have morning, afternoon, and evening; you can use only two! We can use only about one and a half. -- I'd love to go back to Paris again, although no one there will talk to me in French. We'd also like to visit Rome and Jerusalem before we pack it in. Probably it will be San Francisco and Virginia Beach for a while. Yep, I wrote Shadow Walkers, published in 1993. I wrote it for a 55 year old man and his 12 year old son but was glad to have it published "for 10 and up." Unfortunately Scribners' Books for Young Readers was disbanded the next year. My editor went to another press and tried to sell them the sequel but it was no go. I've written three more novels and a collection of short stories. Writing, and editing, is fun. I keep working on all of them so that I can put off the dreary business of marketing them. Not fun. We're big Obama supporters (for the first time in our lives having given a tiny bit of money) and hope for the best. Should you think of visiting Cape Cod again (together) let us know. We'd love to see you. We have a small guest room and could put you up for a night. August J's email about the kids at a Little Rock High School for whom veterans "earned" the right/freedom to sit at a school desk: J, who is considerably older than I and a conservative Republican sends a lot of things like this, (as well as many others that are just highly entertaining). Some I respond to, some I don't. I would like to put my response to this bit of performance art into a sentence or two. I would give you my suggestions, but I'd rather hear yours. If you feel like it, that is. I know most of you don't really have the time. August 23 2008 You'd think the spiders would get used to me, but they freak out every time I take a shower and run around wildly, even though I'm careful not to splash them. It suppose it's asking a lot of their tiny brains to remember yesterday while managing eight long and rickety legs. They seem to move these very crudely, as if by the sort of program I might have written in Pascal thirty years ago. I looked up voles on the web. I learned that in the winter they sometimes girdle shrubs and small trees and eat the roots of larger trees. Traps, coyote urine, and cutting the grass were recommended. I chose cutting the grass. Supposedly voles are afraid to appear in the open and become targets for predators. But next morning there was a bold as brass little vole munching birdseed under the feeders. It looked just like a short-tailed chicken nugget. N suggested a sign with an arrow: "Voles, here!" -- We heard an owl last night, a lovely and auspicious sound. N said, "Voles! Get them while they last!" The toaster oven went pffft. Our first one lasted 15 years. This one cost three times as much and went in two. So we bought a cheap toaster. The toaster oven didn't do toast very well anyway, and the toaster can handle english muffins and split bagels. So, that's good. It was made in china, of course, and came with a ten page instruction manual, all in good English. I miss the old pidgeon English instructions. I used to wonder whether the chinese did this just to be charming, or possibly disarming! I really did think that about the food trucks. "You want spicy?" And surely someone would have told them that "Won Ton Suop" was cute but not exactly correct. But then, you might have thought that 'nucular'... Ten pages of instructions to operate a toaster? It did repeat the warning three times about not sticking a fork in the toaster. Last Sunday's Fellowship Meeting attracted over 100 people to hear Abraham Manyang speak. He was one of the thousands of "lost boys" of the Sudan, who at the age of ten walked hundreds of miles through the desert, losing friends and siblings along the way, to the relative safety of refugee camps. I had planned to read some more quotes from Lies My Teacher Told me but quickly regrouped, said a few words about the Chapel and the Fellowship, and read them the children's version of the U/U's Seven Principles. Good choice! Abraham spoke well and had a good story. Interesting culture disjoint, however. He and the audience didn't always understand one another. He finished High School and Junior College in Massachusetts and has been back to the southern Sudan several to help set up training schools in computers and woodwork. We collected over $500, quite informally. I think we have a bit of guilt about Africa. I finally painted the chapel porch. "Russet" was a little redder than it looked on the color chip, but it will go with the brick foundation. If we lived closer to the chapel, I would probably do more. I remember Digby Baltzel, the author of Puritan Boston, Quaker Philadelphia working on the rocks around the Chestnut Hill train station as a kind of hobby for several years. Of course our house can absorb an amazing amount to fussing as well. I've about finished insulating the heating pipes and the rim joists in the basement. I still have vaguely in mind to make a solar collector with the old storm windows. I've sorted my thoughts on the school desk incident, for what they're worth. If the exercise made the veterans feel appreciated and the children feel appreciative, then I guess it accomplished something. I'm all for veterans. I wish they were better treated by our government. And it never hurt anyone to say thanks. So how did the students react? We're told they "started to understand." What does that mean? What did they say? Did they get the point? What was the point: "You didn't earn the right to sit at these desks. These heroes did it for you." Huh. My first reaction was that this is all pretty silly. Who are these 27 veterans in uniform with nothing better to do? Gulf war? Iraq? I soon outgrew my uniforms and got rid of them. What were they told? What were they thinking? And are contemporary high school students really this docile? Maybe they are in Little Rock, but did they buy this charade? Ah well, I was told by a teacher in Seventh Grade, "You're quiet Russell, but you're insolent!" (N nods.) My second reaction was that no child needs to earn the right to anything: food, shelter, love, and least of all the right learn. Children owe adults nothing, in fact. Adults owe children everything, including ultimately the abilty to take responsibility for their own lives, but as a gift of self-discovery, not as a duty imposed on them. My father always said that there are no "rights" at all (human, civil, natural), or duties either, except for those we formally agree to. Was he wrong? At any rate, there is a formal agreement in this case, compulsory education. Kids are required by law to go to school, and parents are required to make them go, and to pay for it, including the desks! Are all veterans heros? Are there heros at all, or are there rather heroic actions by otherwise normal human beings? Nero Wolf said the world's greatest detective may be a naked savage sitting at a camp fire. The bravest person in the world may not be a Rambo but a frightened little girl or a sick old man. Did veterans earn our freedoms? Many of the people who did the most to win World War II were not members of the military at all but scientists, businessmen, and politicians. Who won the war? We the people, working together. Who works harder and faces more dangers to serve us now? Soldiers, or police and firemen, teachers, social workers, health care workers... Did our wars make us free? WWI was completely unnecessary, a criminal mistake. Might the outcome not have been better if it had not been fought, if the peace treaty had been wise, if the US had stayed out, or even if Germany had won? Might not 100 million lives have been saved and a billion lives not been disrupted? Would freedom have been snuffed out? Can freedom be snuffed out? WWII was caused by WWI. It could still have been avoided, but ultimately we needed to win it. Naziism was a genuinely evil (adjective not noun) ideology. Japan was a racist and expansionist military dictatorship. And we did win it, as a nation working together. Korea? Who knows? Vietnam? At first it was an attempt to support French colonialism, then a stupid mistake, and finally a political crime much like Iraq II. It has been said that most great empires fall because they have bankrupted themselves through war and the preparations for war (Rome, Britain, the Soviets). And here are our leaders once again inventing new enemies, the Islamists, the Chinese, the Soviets, to exhaust ourselves against in eternal struggle. Are we Americans, a third of us without health care, a fifth living in poverty, most living in a crumbling consumer's dreamworld, a few living like oriental potentates, actually all that free? Are we freer than the Europeans who are assured of health care and a social safety net? I think maybe the students in Little Rock should have stood on top of their desks and told the teacher, the school administration, the veterans, and the press to stop playing games with their lives and let them get on with their homework. 27 August 08 Lovely cool nights here. Noel Beyle's sign (on the Innermost House and Viagra Oyster Company) reads 4 days to Labor day, but there are still too many cars on the road. Yankee Go Home! Such a pretty day that we drove up to Small's Swamp and Pilgrim's Spring. The paths are overgrown, but fortunately there were no ticks and still a little room between the encroaching ranks of poison ivy. Great crowds at the Salt Pond Visitors' Center, the lot nearly full and buses rolling in. We had thought the crowds would slacken with the approach of back-to-school. Still few people on the trails, however. Bikes, roller blades, kayaks, etc. are all popular. We have much less competition from walkers. I enjoyed Garrison Kiellor's column on the Iowa State Fair. Particularly the girl who blew gently on her llama's nose. -- I'll never forget the horse pulling contest at the Lincoln County Maine Fair in something like ought-fifty-two. Draft horses are big! A cartoon was sent to me in which Brutus complains about product placement in the movies. We've watched a bit of the Olympics and found it impressive, but, yes, that's part of what we find dreary about the comtemporary Olympics, the constant commercial interruptions, but also the national triumphalism, and most of all the "professionalism", i.e. that it's all about the money the athletes hope to get in return for what we consider an inhuman devotion of much of their young lives to a bagatelle. Give your life to peace, justice, art, science, or the cure for athlete's foot, but to the fastest hundred meters? Unfair no doubt. Jesse Owens has "Fine Man" on his virtual tombstone, not "9.3". And our chief spectator sport, watching birds bathe, doesn't thrill everyone either. We don't actually know much about the movies. N and I have been to just seven together in 44 years. We went to Where Eagles Dare on our honeymoon in a dusty theater on the second floor of a warehouse in Damariscotta, Maine. We'd read the novel, a thriller about Nazi's in the Alps and enjoyed it. The movie was a total bomb. We went to Mary Poppins, took our kids to a reissue of Fantasia and to a screening of Bergman's The Magic Flute in Philadelphia (the sound was much too loud). We saw Amadeus in 1984, shortly after the death of N's father. It was brilliant, but N was so overcome, we're never gone to the movies again. Well, no, that's not quite true. Our kids made us go to the movies one year on our anniversary, so we saw Sweet Liberty with Alan Alda and loved it. And we've been to the Wellfleet Drive-in a couple times with the kids. Fun, but I don't remember what we saw, something Disneyesque. We've seen a few very entertaining films on video, often at our children's instigation. We saw "Enchanted April" that way and loved it. We then read the book and loved it. We then saw the movie again and hated it. Go figure. I, without N, have seen a number of movies with our kids and enjoyed them all. "Aliens" for instance was wonderfully dark, clanky, and scary. The girls cowered beneath the seats. All before the time of serious product placement, however. I know there are some good movies out there. Our friends talk of them. We find reading to be generally a much richer experience than film, but maybe next year we'll get a DVD player. As to Senator Obama, I'm glad folks have read his brilliant books. He seems to us to be about as open and transparently decent and honest a man as we have ever seen in American politics. What's not to trust? And what "lies" have been found in his speaches or writings? I don't think politicians lie nearly as much as we say they do. I think President Bush, for instance, believes much of what he says. Which is the problem, of course. -- Good speaches by Michelle and Hillary, Joe, and Bill. -- Yes, we're a bit scared, not of John McCaine who, other than his opinions, seems like a decent guy. (Although 993 our of 995 in his class at Annapolis suggests a lack of application, and he's maybe a bit short-tempered? Are those really good things in a President?). We are afraid of the further depths of greed, arrogance, and shame to which 5 more years of Republican administration might drag the country. How reasonable and soft-spoken we liberals democrats are! As to socialism. The dictionary says it means national ownership of the means of production. There are a number of totalitarian, quasi-fascist countries in the world, but I don't think there are any pure socialist ones. What I mean by "euro-socialism" is a democratically established national concern for all the people in the country, including the poor, sick, weak, old, and handicapped, as well as, and to an appropriate degree, the undermotivated, foreign visitors, illegal aliens, and criminals. You might even call this the (gasp) Judeo-Christian view of society. It has been joked that in the U.S. we have a good social safety net for corporations and the wealthy. Some joke. We also have excellent health care, for those who can pay. We say that we can do better. Yes, we can. -- What, by the way, would be so objectionable about (non-existent) pure socialism? I don't think it has ever actually been tried, but it doesn't sound that bad to me. There is nothing about it that intrinsically restricts freedom of speach, conscience, religion, etc., all the important freedoms, which can and indeed are restricted even in some capitalist societies. Whereas, the "freedom" to oppress, to be a billions times richer than your neighbor, to be ignorant, to suffer, or to starve have always struck me as a bit unattractive. Just finished a good long book about the war in the Pacific. Mistakes were made, most of them by MacCarther evidently, a poor commander but a great Figurehead, but probably nothing much could have been changed about the course of the war. Few things are ever black and white, but the Japanese appear to have behaved amazingly badly and never yet to have admitted it. SEPTEMBER 2 September 08 We're fine and dandy. We just get tired sooner than we used to. As I may have already quoted a friend, "When you travel you have the morning, afternoon, and evening, but you can use only two!" On our excellent trip to London, Edinbugh, and the Highlands this Spring we found we could use only 1 and 1/2. We still take our daily walks in the National Seashore and Audubon or just stroll down to the bay beach and stare into the distance. We read, work around the house, and do our civic duties. I write. It's plenty. We plan trips to Rome and Jerusalem someday, the Good Lord willing, but it will probably be mostly Virginia Beach, Philadelphia, and San Francisco for the next couple of years. You're right, having our children nearby would be a blessing. I remember how plesant it was when we were first married to have dinner at each of our parents' once a week, and how economical! We love seeing our kids, but whether on the Cape or on a visit, we find a few days to be all we can manage physically. Not that they aren't all kind and gracious adults. They're just too young! K still likes working for C.A.R.I.E, but they lost some funding so she has to be an ombudsperson 3 days a week and solve problems at nursing homes, etc. Grim. D tries so hard and is such a kind and mature man. Five years clean, while many of his friends are not. We are quite proud of him. J has just returned from his dig site on Little Jost Van Dyke, near Tortola, with a crew of 5 undergraduates. What a racket! He's been to Hawaii, Jamaica, and Honduras, always a few feet from a tropical beach. But this is his own site, his disertation project presumably, and it went well. You'll be glad to know that one of John and Megan's chief hobbies is cooking. Berkeley evidently has great fresh produce. Maine sounds lovely. We should go, but we find it hard to cross the bridge except to head for Logan. Such stick-in-muds. I have great memories of Maine, so perhaps I'm a little afraid it wouldn't be the same as it was in the 60's. The Cape isn't either, of course, but we don't seem to care. You guys do well. Take it easy, and, I'm serious, think of retirement while you can thoroughly enjoy it. John McCain is my age, so he's either very noble or slightly nuts, or maybe both. And as for Sarah Palin.... : 17 Sept 08 We had a nice visit from Rosemary and Millard. They had been visiting Mill's brother Tom in D.C. and their granddaughter in NYC and are on their way to see friends in Concord, Mass, then to Stratford, Ontario for a Shakespeare Festival, on to Minneapolis to see more friends, a son in Idaho, and home to Redondo Beach, CA. They do a trip like this every year, usually visiting our cousin Nancy Herdon (author of a culinary mystery series) in El Paso and friends in Florida. They came to the Fellowship Sunday morning where I read six of my Morris Stories. They took us to The Lobster Claw, where I had a fish sandwich that redeemed the faltering Claw in my estimation. Sunday afternoon they went off to hear a talk in Harwich about the Supreme Court. I forget that Millard went to law school late in life. Great company. They are in their 80's and exhaust us! We had a long phone call from my old Penn colleague, in part about JB's congestive heart failure. She's in the hospital and they don't really know what the problem is. Went on to talk about their children, doing fine, although their video business has suffered a bit from the economy. S will be graduating from college and hopes to be the next Stephen Spielberg. She offered us the use of their "tiny" cottage in Maine. We would accept gladly except that I suspect we are unlikely to be motivated to go to Maine any time soon. I know M would love to have me go to Gilmanton, NH and poke around in the local records for early Frohocks. To a Californian used to driving a hundred miles to dinner it seems a bagatelle, but we may never make it. The garden is finished for the season. We cooked up a last batch of fried green tomatoes yeaterday. The compost heap has been redesigned. Didn't know you could design a compost heap? It looks quite handsome behind the garage against a half wall of old concrete chunks and with a rolled wire "chimney in the center. You can stick your arm in (if so inclined) and feel the heat. I painted the back porch of the chapel with a damaged can of red porch paint I picked up for $5 at Ace. Paul gave me some (extremely) fine sand to put in it to make it non-slip. A good idea with oldsters. Bill says his people putting on the play reading about Shay's Rebellion in October has a full compliment of actors, so none of us has to volunteer. Thank goodness. I was afraid that, as President, I'd have to volunteer. Rhoda agreed to take over the Chapel Scheduling, if the Fellowship would buy her a 2009 Scheduler. I put a message on the Chapel answering machine to call her and handed over the stuff. Phew. Now if we can find 4 people to be officers next year.... I try to avoid watching TV about the campaign, but I look at the Times in the morning. They seem to be quite down on McCain and Palin and their fibs. I see Obama picked up support from some more women's groups. I enjoyed the quote from Friedman's column: R. D. Levno, a retired school principal, flew in from Fairbanks. “She’s a child, inexperienced and simplistic,” she said of Sarah. “It’s taking us back to junior high school. She’s one of the popular girls, but one of the mean girls. She is seductive, but she is invented." Not a fan I'd gather. We hope the latest financial difficulties don't impact on any of you, or on us either. It does sound a bit like a global Ponzi scheme which has come home to roost. I note the Republicans shamelessly calling for bailouts and government regulation by any other name. "Stop me before I overextend again!" I have long thought we ought to think in terms of stability instead of constant expansion (we aren't the universe!). I suppose that puts me back in the Tang Dynasty. 21 Sept 2008 A grand business it is to be grandparents, aunts and uncles, great aunts, and cousins galore. Better yet a mom and dad, and best of all a brand new young lady. It makes us smile. Now on to horseshoe crabs. Last Sunday Bob Prescott, director of the Wellfleet Audubon Sanctuary, gave a terrific slide presentation. I wish more people could have seen it. Horseshoe crabs have been around for 360 million years and may have become a little complacent. They were harvested for fertilizer in increasing quantities from colonial times until quite recently. I guess it was easier for the Pilgrims to plop a crab in with their corn plants than a herring. Shellfishermen thought they ate softshell clams and did their best to exterminate them. Actually they eat worms, carrion, and small inedible clams and are important in keeping the marsh plowed up so shellfish can grow on the bottom. Their millions of eggs feed verious shorebirds, which tend to disappear when there are fewer crabs. They seem to be a plus in any situation! Lately they have been harvested because their (Wedgewood blue) blood contains a chemical that reacts to minute quantities of gram-negative bacteria (which are present almost everywhere) and thus can be used to test the sterility of medicines and surgical instruments. Fortunately when this is done carefully the crabs can be bled and returned safely to the bay. Crabs molt 3 or 4 times while they are still in the egg and annually until they are ten years old. After that they keep the same shell and various creatures begin to cling to it. Old crabs look like the sea bottom, which is good camoflage. Horseshoe crabs are eaten in the Far East. Arrrgh. This has reduced ther numbers. More about crabs than you need to know, perhaps, but I found it fascinating. Another example of the web of life, which we interrupt at our peril. We saw on TV that the Sidwell Friends School in DC had built themselves a totally green building, all organic non-toxic building materials, solar cells, water recycled through a home-made marsh. Sounds expensive but I suppose if anyone could afford it it would be Sidwell. We say right on. I wish I could build a green house from scratch, although inevitably in a few years there would be better technology. Oh joy, I found a cardboard box full of double open-end wrenches of all sizes at the dump. There was also a vernier caliper. All were antiques but cleaned up well enough to read the markings. I've carried armloads of wrenches around for years, trying each one, and often finding none that fit. It may be that my major wrenching days are past, but it's still nice to have the tools, especially when the price is right. I've finished "Armageddon, the Battle for Germany, 1944-1945," a rather long book by Max Hastings. It's largely anecdotal but gives a good overall picture of a grim and disorderly time. The best and most brutal generals were the Russians who were prodigal with troops, next the Germans who shot anyone who retreated. The allies were in general not that great strategists and were, quite understandably, reluctant to get killed. Eisenhower held things together. Mongomery was a good general but absurdly vain. Patton was aggresive but wacko. Millions suffered: Jews, Poles, slave laborers, Russian civilians, Russian soldiers, German soldiers, German civilians, allied POW, allied troops, allied civilians. In one amusing passage an American sergeant is called on the carpet by a general: "There he sat, big as life...His hair was silver, his face was pink, his collar and shoulders glittered with more stars than I could count; his fingers sparkled with rings, and an incredible mass of ribbons started around disktop level and spread upward in a flood over his chest to the very top of his shoulder, as if preparing to march down his back too. His face was rugged, with an odd, strangely shapeless outline; his eyes pale, almost colorless, with a choleric bulge. His small compressed mouth was sharply downturned at the corner, with a lower lip which suggested a pouting chid as much as a no-nonsense martinet. It was a welcome,rather human touch. Beside him, lying in a big chair, was Willie, the bull terrier. If ever dog was suited to master this one was. Willie had his beloved boss's expression and lacked only the ribbons and stars. I stood in that door staring into the four meanest eyes I'd ever seen." -- Bill Mauldin continued, "I always admired Patton. Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn't like that attitude, but I respected the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes." Patton didn't like "Willie and Joe." I finished Beaufort, by Ron Leshem, pub. 2006 in Hebrew, translated 2008. It's a novel about young Israeli soldiers during the last days at an outpost in southern Lebanon in 2000. The blurb says: "wry, poignant and devastating, written with the ricochet-ring- of hard-won truth." Yeah pretty much so. The author insists it's fiction. The bookgroup book this month is Proust and the Squid, the Story and Science of the Reading Brain. It was someone else's choice, but several members tried to get us (as de facto leaders) to get it changed as too technical. We said no, these are done deals unless the chooser suggests a change. Fortunately Nancy loves the book. So, we'll see. N made her famous chili. Actually it's J's chili recipe, the one we've been using for maybe 35 years. But last winter we first tried it with a piece of chuck, minced by me. It seems much richer and more flavorful than ground beef. OCTOBER 29 Oct 08 Lovely day. We drove up to P'town and took the walk to Race Point. A whalewatching boat was going out, and I looked through the binocs but saw no whales. They do see them from Race Point, sometimes. This is mushroom season. This year there are large flat white ones, slightly curved yellow ones, and groups of glistening little steeply capped brown ones. They all look tasty, but we leave them for the turtles, who have strong stomachs. On the Red Maple Swamp trail: "Like a duck out of water," I said. "What?" says N. "That man said, 'I think she's like a duck out of water.'" A moment of silence. "Doesn't he mean like a fish out of water?" "Oh," says I, "that was a bit odd, wasn't it? Like a fish of another color or water off a horse's back." The hazards and pleasures of eavesdropping. The sound of wind in the trees in the Red Maple Swamp is wonderful. N talks with Sara fairly often. All are well. Sara is out driving and shopping a little. They have excellent baby transporting equipment. We'll drive down for a few days towards the end of next week. We are looking forward to NOT watching the Vice-Presidential debate. Did S.P. gave Katie Curic an idiotic interview to bring expectations so low she triumphs by showing up? Seems risky. As always, we shall see. The Times and even France24 will report. The French follow the campaign almost as closely as we do. And for good reason, as their economy melts down around them owing to our pyramid scheme. -- The debate turned out about as we'd expected. Biden "won" but Palin did okay by cheerfully not answering questions. Did anyone watch it? I'd be interested to know your reactions. I keep two non-fiction books and one novel going at all times. I tend to eat things with non-fiction. At the moment, Proust and The Squid and a contemporary book on the Middle-East, A Path ouf of the Desert, by Kenneth Pollack, with Churchill and Gandhi in waiting. N frequently asks me to get her things on Clams that she hears about on TV. Who says TV is worthless! Yellow Pea Soup tonight, N's favorite. I like it too, just not as much as she does. We get a free Energy Audit tomorrow, from the electic company. I don't know what more we could do at a reasonable cost, to further green our home, but I'll be glad to find out. -- A nice young fellow came and wandered around writing things in his notebook. We chatted, he had a few suggestions, gave us to light bulbs, and will send a report. Incidently, I've added some new pictures to my web site. 6 October 2008 CHILI (We've used this recipe for 30 years. It's Jane's. We've found that it's greatly improved by using a piece of chuck instead of ground beef.) 1 lb chuck, cut into very small pieces (the original recipe calls for 2 lbs ground beef) 3 medium onions, 1 sm. gr. pepper, 2 cloves garlic (sliced) 3 T chili powder, 2 t cumin 1 20 oz can tomatoes, 1 6 oz can tomato paste (1 4 oz can chopped green chillies - but we've never used this) 2 t salt, 2 15 oz cans black beans (drained) (Orig. recipe red kidney) In a large saucepot, over medium heat, cook beef a few minutes until partially browned. Add onions, green pepper, and garlic and cook until softened. Add tomatoes and their liquid, tomato paste, and remaining ingrediants except beans. Heat to boiling. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Add beans. Simmer additional 1/2 hour. For us this makes enough for three dinners; maybe two for heavier eaters. N tried to start the car the other day, and it wouldn't start right away. She insisted that it made a funny smell. I don't have much of a sense of smell these days so couldn't say. Because of our projected trip we took it to Honda. They discovered an incinerated chipmunk nest and had to replace a part. At their suggestion we put some mothballs in a sock in the engine compartment. Such is life in the wild. Saturday was the annual tour of the Eastham Arboretum. As N is now a board member we went. It was a particularly splendid day. Wiley Park has been considerably tarted up with neat trails and informative signs. The red maples I helped plant last year are doing well. We also saw the new $75,000 bridge over the 4 foot wide creek between Great Pond and Bridge Pond. It had to be tall enough for a kayaker to go under (although the water on one side appeared to be about 3 inches deep) and because some federal money was involved it also had to be handicapped accessible, hence a gradual slope. Therefore it is a very wide and shallow "A" shape, held together by eight long steel rods. So far as we know there is nothing much on the other side except a path up to Samoset Road, so it is, in effect, sort of a (gasp) Bridge to Nowhere. A federal govt. specialty, alas. 15 Oct 08 We had an easy and very enjoyable visit to Virginia Beach. Aryn is a perfectly splendid baby. Sara and Andy are proud parents and don't look nearly as exhausted as they probably are. Sara and Andy cooked several delicious vegan meals. We walked in the swamp. (Aryn rode.) We watched two football games and two baseball games on high definition TV's. Babies and baseball, Nancy was in her element! HDTV at the Rabiner's and the Wingate. I see a new TV in our future. N and I wandered around the neighborhood. Very pretty houses and gardens. Nice cosy public access walkways to the beach. Reminded us a bit of P'town. We had a great view of the Cheapeake Bay from our hotel window. A dozen huge tankers were moored not very far out. Flocks of pelicans flew by our seventh floor balcony. A wedding took place on the beach below us, as the tide threatened to lap the minister's feet, and the wind whipped up the bridesmaid's skirts. Dogs and small children were held briefly at bay. It was most entertaining. At night we could see the lights from the ships and the entire 20 mile length of the bridge with the dark places for the two tunnels. My camera battery gave out, but there are plenty of good pictures around. We enjoyed seeing Patti's pictures and those of of Carrie's new baby and nice pix of Megan and John at a misty Yosemite. Nice trip, but we're glad to be home. It's so....quiet. 25 Oct 08 We had a good talk last Sunday by Jeffrey Rogers, a green design professional from P'town and owner of New England Green Building Supplies, on "Greening Your Home." There are lots of fascinating new technologies. Too bad we're not building a house, but some of you guys might someday. Look into it when you do. Some tech is more expensive than the standard stuff, but not all, and most has a payback within a few years. Jeff Built his own house in P'town, the first "LEED-H Platinum Zero-Energy Budget Home" in Massachusetts and one of only 8 in America. (Wow! I think.) Geothermal sounds almost possible. Fun to think about anyway. The Fellowship sponsered play reading last Saturday at the chapel was okay. "The Shame of Daniel Shays," is about Shay's Rebellion in 1786, veteran/farmers being taxed out of their land by shysters. Old Thomas Frohock could even have been a part of it; some farmer/soldiers were from New Hampshire. I couldn't hear it all and kind of dozed through some of it. Some of the actors didn't quite make sense of their lines even reading them. The coffee and goodies were good, however, and I did my duty. There was a nice Bush Administration-bashing discussion afterwards. N stayed home and watched the Red Sox. The Book Group met at our house. Everyone was late, and we feared a rebellion against the book, but they came eventually and most actually liked it, "Proust and the Squid," about the reading process. Reading is not genetically transmitted. It has to be learned from scratch by each person and requires many areas of the brain being used in ways for which they were not originally preserved. Reading also seems to develope the thought process. On the other hand, many famous people were dyslexic and compensated by using the brain's imaging capabilities. Einstin always envisioned his discoveries before describing them. Socrates feared writing would sabotage our ability to think. If it does it's had compensations. Same worry about the web. Same answer in my opinion. -- They're poor eaters, but they ate the pumpkin bread! N decided she wanted a brick walkway in the front, so I scrounged all our bricks and made a path as far as they went. I'll have to be on the lookout for more. In Oreland I could always find bricks at the dump. They're a little scarcer around here, but I might scavange the remains of the chapel chimney in the chapel attic. These are actually rare old bricks, from the Nantucket Brick Works ca. 1890. Tomorrow is Barry's second Poetry Open MIC at the chapel. Good attendance first time. We'll see if the poets can rise again before ten in the morning. I helped plant holly trees at the "Arboretum" in Wiley Park Friday. The red maples I planted last year are doing well. It's not really an arboretum at all, just pre-settlement species of tree planted throughout the park. Henry the town conservation officer was there with a metal detector. I asked and he explained that he buries horseshoes of rebar at each tree so he can find if any have gone missing. Clever but seemingly unnecessary as there have been no tree thefts so far, although the 3 to 5 foot trees are fairly expensive. I've about finished the book on Gandhi and Churchill. Interesting book as it covers the history of the twentieth century to 1945 as well. Both great men, with great talents and faults. If I could have met one it would be Churchill, however, an amusing talker, artist, athlete, and writer, and there would be whiskey and cigars! Most people who met him found Gandhi charming and wise, but you get raw veggies and goat's milk. -- I've just started "1948, the first Arab-Israeli War" by Bennie Morris, the revisonist Israeli historian. I seem to have a continuing interest in the middle east. -- Also, "The Post-American World," by Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International. We've seen him on public TV quite often. Yay for books! He wrote it in '08 but before the economic collapse, which I fear will only hastern our postness. -- The French have a good word for it, la degringolade, "the tumble." Oct 31 2008 Monday was so lovely, clear, cool, and windless, that we decided to make an expedition to Small's Swamp. "We can take a lunch," N said. This is sheer kindness, as she knows I love a picnic. We generally eat in the car because it's more comfortable (and less vulnerable to goose attack). But then it emerged, after 44 years of marriage, that N dislikes the black coffee we often take on these occasions. "We can put cream in the coffee," I said. "But you don't like cream in your coffee." "I like it just fine," I said. Moral: if you want cream in your coffee, level with your partner. The swamp was particularly colorful. The usually subdued Cape fall folliage has been spectacular this year. No explanations of why is ever given. Afterwards, we parked well east on Commercial Street in P'town and walked all the way to the new, larger, and even more expensive Wa. We don't remember a prettier day in Provincetown or emptier streets in 40 years, even in the winter. Is Monday an off day or is it the economy? N spotted a Pine Siskin near Thumpertown beach, a small and pretty yellow warbler. I tried to take its picture but failed. We aren't very good with birds. Fortunately the birds come around and stuff themselves on bird seed and bath in the birdbath anyway. We had to take in the summer bird bath, the Japanese one I bought with the earnings from my first summer as an Eastham miller. It's concrete and might freeze and crack in the winter. We bought a no-nonsense plastic winter bird bath at Birdwatchers. Frabjous day, I painted much of the handicapped ramp behind the chapel and then I looked in the chapel attic and found that the remains of the old chimney can easily be taken apart, by hand as the mortar is so old. In fact there's a danger it might collapse and fall through the ceiling! Eventually our brick walk will be extended to the driveway. The Poetry Open MIC on Sunday was very succesful, over 60 people attended and 24 poets read their work. Barry was ecstatic and is already planning another open MIC for next April. It's my impression that the quality of work at these affairs has been improving rapidly in the last few years. Why is poetry so popular? Is it just a fashion, or is it a reaction to the dehumanizing character of modern society? Or not? I'm tempted to try poetry again although it is exhausting. I found the Sparknotes for The Count of Monte Christo on the web. They look very useful for brushing up for our book group discussion in November. I read the book, all 1400 pages, but I can't keep the characters straight. Many people seem to remember The Count as a favorite book from chldhood. Eve I have a favorable memory. This is hard to believe in re-reading. I know I had more stamina in those days, but the Count is so...creepy. Perhaps complex revenge has a particular appeal to some young people. -- N got hooked on the Gandhi and Churchill book. I have to take it back but will take it out again soon. I am studiously avoiding the elephant and donkey in the room. Hopefully we will survive. Yay Phillies. N watched the game. I saw the last out and the rush to the mound pound one another. Hope on one was hurt. The bad news for N is that baseball is over for the season. She can't take basketball seriously. Gosh, why not? NOVEMBER 14 November 2008 I enjoyed the way the news began on France24 the morning after the election: "Le journal est consacre a l'election Americaine. Yes we did!" The French, like everyone else in the world are ecstatic. The Cape Codder reported that Eastham had a 94% turnout for the election. Are we good citizens or what! I've just finished Simon Winchester's "The Man who Loved China; the fantastic story of the eccentric scientist who unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom." Despite the over the top title and the underwhelming nature of some of Winchester's previous books, it's a good story, about Joseph Needham, the author of the 24 volume "Science and Civilization in China." What a bizarre fellow Needham was. I've known vaguely of this series for decades and assumed Needham was a dry stick. Far from it, he was a large, handsome, and brilliant man, a socialist, activist, and womanizer who lived 60 years in a menage a troi with his wife and Chinese mistress, all academics at Cambridge. He spent much time in China and was Master of Caius College, Cambridge, keeping his chambers there for almost 70 years. They are now occupied by Stephen Hawking. I've requested the abridged version (1 volume) of "S&CIC" from Woods Hole. I've started Steven Pinker's "The Stuff of Thought" and am enjoying it. I recall that M's professor didn't care for Pinker, but I wonder if that could be in part the "he's writing out of his field" syndrome? I figure somebody has to write out of his field or we'd never learn anything. What's it about? It seems that language is determined by the laws of physics beneath the laws of grammer. More to follow. -- endless loop, n. See loop, endless; loop, endless, n See endless loop After a bit of delay, I finished "The Post-American World," by Fareed Zakaria. It's really quite good, an analysis of what's going on in the world now (well a little before the financial meltdown) with historical background. Not at all an anti-American book, but certainly ideas to consider re the rest of the world, particularly China and India. It's not so much that we are falling behind but that others are rising faster, "the rise of the rest." About all we have left to offer are ideas, but we are still good at that and ideas are very valuable. Barak, dont forget that education is the key! -- I recommend reading this book. It's not long, 250pp., never dull, and quite revealing. The new adminstration should read it if they haven't already. I've removed the last of the bricks from the chapel attic, plus most of the trash mortar and waste. I hope I have enough to finish the walk because there aren't any more. I think I do. -- I did. I finished it today and will take a picture as soon as I get new batteries for my camera. It looks pretty good, like a real brick walk. "Is the black because they were once inside a chimney?" asks N. It would seem so. The chimney is visible in photos of the chapel when built, in 1890. A walk with character. The talk Sunday on Oysters was excellent. David Wright has sung to us twice on Sunday mornings, torch songs more suitable to a P'town club, but pleasant and I think he's a friend and neighbor of Paul and Shirl's. He's written a book on the History of Oystering in Wellfleet, and he's a very good writer. A fascinating combination of local history, biology and economics. There is no Welfleet oyster per se. The beds have been replenished many times from other parts of the coast after a die off. What makes the oysters special is the good Welfleet mud. The oyster has made a mild comeback, the annual Wellfleet Oyster festival is attended by 15,000, making it not a good day to drive down Cape. But the Wellfleet economy, like that of all Cape towns is now driven by construction. Well, it was. The day was so beautiful that we walked at Bearberry Hill. Nippy but exquisitely clear and not a soul about but us. Barry and Lois for Lunch. We always talk for hours. Then walked at Audubon. I think I'll be going with Barry to O'Shay's Bar for the poetry open mic next week. Havent' decided whether to read. We paused at the chapel to rake 15 minutes worth of leaves. We've found that if you stir up the leaves a bit and take a little off the top they tend to go away, somewhere. "Away" in other contexts means off-Cape, of course, but I think in this case to Bob Seay's yard. He doesn't seem to mind. My routines are going well, the early morning walk, 30 minutes or more of French, and 15 minutes of German. It's so pleasnt and easy, learning by exposure, and of course it could be aided by a little effort. Zakaria points out tht nearly all Europeans speak two languages at least (4 for the Swiss) in fact most of the world except the English speaking countries. We haven't had to, but that may be changing. If I were young and American I'd learn Spanish (or Mandarin, but I imagine Spanish is easier and more immediately practical). We are the only truly successful multi-cultural society in the world, a great plus, but I think bi-lingualism in Spanish and English may be necessary to preserve this. In fact, why not 15 min a day for me too. I have the time. There are plenty of sites. A good one: http://www.spanishnewsbites.com/spanish_newsbites/beginner_level/ N is well involved in the Fellowship's Christmas charities. I go along on the shoppings to carry the bags and sometimes get an interesting lunch out of it. 25 November 2008 Happy Thanksgiving all! We hope you are well and feeling at least mildly celebratory. We plan a quiet day. Walk, read, putter, and eat homemade beef burgandy (a La Citrouille). The "Thanksgiving" potluck at the chapel last Friday was delicious. Truly a potluck, with no planning, except that we all know our roles instinctively. We have helped set up tables and brought the creamed onions for 9 years. 50 came, some out of the woodwork. I think it probably resembles the "original" feast more than most. I was asked to say a word. I think I said about 10. -- Entrance to Rue Gregoire de Tours, as close as Street View can come to La Citrouille): Coyote lives! We hadn't seen any for some time until yesterday. I was sitting at my desk and thought something flitted past the window. I turned in time to see the second coyote, big, long-legged, and particularly wild-looking race past. I sensed he/she gave me a glance in passing. As long as we have coyotes I will feel that we live in the woods. Perhaps they will come back and eat the tasty little voles. Hillary for SOS? Sounds good to us. We like all Obama's picks. The world hopes he and his team can solve all crises, political, economic, environmental, and social. Alas, they will probably not, but hope is better than despair. -- Nancy predicted they'd pick Sidwell Friends for the girls. Well what else? Madiera? Maybe it was Sidwell's homemade "freshwater marsh" that tipped the scale. I've found another nifty language resource. Just Google: "euronews". Brief parallel videos, with written text, in eight languages, in nine divisions: news, science, culture, etc. Learn languages while you are young! It's so rewarding, and it's much harder when you are old. I baked. Well, sort of. I ran out of 50%-off strange breads from the Stop & Shop for breakfast, so I baked biscuits from scratch out of the James Beard Cookbook. N was amazed. Beard said it takes only 30 seconds longer than with Bisquick (to cut in the butter), and he was right. Quite delicious. I actually finally remembered to watch a TV show. Ken Burns "The War" was on Monday night, I'm not sure what part, but it was about the looted art and it was brilliantly done. I've sort of avoided Burns since "The Civil War" which John and I found such a downer, all that doleful music and miles of corpses. I've never understood the fascination with the history of our national tragedy. -- I discovered that our friend B flew a Mosquito Bomber in the South Pacific. Sad news. Ellen wrote that J is on oxygen, and the prognosis is not good. They still don't really know what the problem is. So much for modern medicine. -- Also, our friend T, who worked with Teller on the H bomb is dying. He, at least, is genuinely old. Thankfulness is always mixed. I attach a song written in 1932. Hope it comes through. -- E. Y. (Yip) Harburg, known as "Broadway's social conscience," was born on April 8, 1896 of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, raised in poverty on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and later attended CCNY where he struck up a lifelong friendship with his classmate, Ira Gershwin. Yip was a master lyricist, poet and bookwriter who was dedicated to social justice. He wrote the lyrics for: April in Paris, Finian's Rainbow, and all the songs in The Wizard of Oz. Yip followed the dream of democratic socialism: He believed that all people should be guaranteed basic human rights, political equality, free education, economic opportunity and free health services. He spent most of his life fighting for these goals. Yip was “blacklisted” in the 1950's for his political views. The recording is from 1932, by Bing Crosby. How 'bout that? DECEMBER December 2008 Our trip to Virginia Beach went well. Traffic was light, the weather was good, gas prices low, and the motels uncrowded. We are well known now at the Friendly's in Seaford, Delaware where we stop for a second breakfast on the way down and an early bowl of clam chowder on the way back. We have the NPR stations mapped out so we can find Diane Rehm and classical music from Virginia Beach to Hamilton, New York. N likes a routine. -- We had a great dinner with all the Rabiners Friday night at the Hot Tuna, where Sara and Andy met. The Naming Ceremony was splendid. I found the Hebrew reading and chanting very relaxing, but I think I would want to learn Hebrew if I were Jewish. The Rabbi gave a good sermon, in English. Aryn was a little lady, and Sara and Andy were a handsome couple. It was a very handsome congregation in fact. Even I wore my "wedding" tie. The closing prayer, in Hebrew, was sung to the tune of "It's a Small World After All." The lunch afterwards, provided by the Rabiners, was excellent and much complimented. There was plenty of whitefish salad, my favorite! N took a "no thank you" helping. I held Aryn for about ten seconds until she started to fuss. Eleven pounds of child seems quite heavy! N was in her glory. Aryn smiles a lot and takes considerable interest in the passing scene. We (well, N) baby sat Aryn on Sunday evening while Andy and Sara went to the Mexican restaurant across the street. As always on trips, I made a long list of things to do when we got home, writing projects, home repairs, etc. I don't do all of them, but it's very comforting to have them in reserve. Barry and I had lunch at the Hearth and Kettle last week and went through five pages of my poems. No one bothered us, sort of like Sarte at the Cafe Flore. Barry is a good poetry critic and guru. He'll be on the cover of the Cape free mag in January. He doesn't know what picture. A Photographer came to his house and took hundreds. I asked if he tried to keep up with pyschological theory, and he said no, that there was a Massachusetts organization of retired psychologists, but that as far as he knew all they talked about was being retired psychologists. He talks a bit about it with his wife, who is still practicing but wearying of it. No, he's into poetry now and hitting his stride. I just finished Philip P. Pan's, "Out of Mao's Shadow; the struggle for the soul of a New China." NY, Simon & Schuster, 2008. 349p. Pan was Bejing bureau chief for The Washington Post from 2000-2007. He covers The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, The SARS and AIDS epidemics, The One Child plan, censorship, corruption, etc. Eleven cases of injustice. "What does China Think?" by Mark Leonard is good on current political thinking. 'China is cuaght between teh two extremes of misguided socialism and crony capitalism...' "Beijing.s formula of state capitalism, open markets and a closed political system ... a formidable alterative..' to the West. Both are good additions to Simon Winchester's "The Man who Loved China; the fantastic story of the eccentric scientist who unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom", "The Post-American World," by Fareed Zakaria, "Day of Empire: how hyperpowers rise to global dominion and why they fall," by Amy Chu, Rob Gifford's China Road, and "Snowflower and the Secret Fan," about the incredbly static society of 19th c. China, and expecially the totally shuttered condition of women. Do I now know everything about China? No. 18 December 2008 We went to a concert at the Orleans Middle School given by the Lower Cape Chorale. We know some of the singers and have heard them several times before. This was different, a concert of Beatles songs plus selections from Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio. Nancy is more a fan of choral music than I and thought much of it worked well. I missed the Beatles' sound, small band, a few thin voices, but it was fun. The place was packed, probably busted all the fire codes. We'd come a half hour early and just got seats. We ended up behind Barry, Lois, and Barry's daughter and across the aisle from Paul and Shirl. It's nice to live in a place where we know everyone. Or at least lots of people. A sea of gray heads actually. Where are the young people? I asked N. This is Orleans, she said, there aren't any. -- Back home we listened to our Beatles CD. You young folks are far more musically ecumenical than I. My mother always sang popular tunes as she washed the dishes (she never let us help, honest), and not badly either, but there was no other music in our house when I was a kid. I didn't have a record player, and the radio was for Jack Armstrong and Captain Midnight. One day when I was around fifteen I found myself listening to classical music on the radio. What's going on? I thought, I'm listening to this sissy stuff and really liking it. A year later a friend introduced me to Beethoven and Shostakovich in his basement on his new coaxial speaker (not yet stereo). We listened in secret, like it was porn. I never looked back, except for the two years I was in the army and exposed 5 or 6 hours a day to Buddy Holly, etc. -- There is other music I like, the odd pop, rock, blues, world, or jazz performance. I'd name a few, but I wouldn't want you to hurt yourselves falling on the floor with laughter. For me, though, there's no real conparison with classical music for goosebumps, hair standing on end, mega-out-of-body experience. To each his own, and God bless us every one. A friend said he felt he hadn't done enough with his life. Who has! There are a few people whose specific accomplishments have made an obvious difference, and not always for the best! Churchill's "finest hour" speeches, Oppenheimer's "I have become the God of death," Roosevelt, Hitler, Mao, Washington, Crick and Watson, Lincoln. We can always hope for a Messiah. But I think for most of us any contribution we make is in the small stuff, our life-long doings and relationships, little you can point to, but it's enough, it's plenty. It better be. At the Fellowship a not particularly knowledegeable outside speaker talked with us about our contribution to green living. "That was sort of interesting," I said to Nancy after the gathering. "Blech," she replied. The person had recommended unplugging appliances when not in use. I almost asked publically for an attending electrical engineer's thoughts on residual electricity in appliances, but as he hadn't volunteered them I didn't. I remembered James Thurber's Aunt who went around filling electrical outlets so the electricity didn't drain out. For all I know it does. We're taking E to J's party tonight. Nancy said to her, "I would have asked, but I thought you usually went with the W's?" "Well," says E, "I get tired, and I know with you folks I can get away early." We all have our uses. A Roger Cohen Times column quoted Graham Greene’s whiskey priest in “The Power and the Glory": “When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity." I though of Rod and George. They're not the same of course. One is evidently a sociopath and the other, depite all the awful things said about him, is just an insecure man who was pushed well beyond his capabilities and did a lot of harm. For my canonization I'm working on Sarah Palin "Give your opinions freely but with humility, for if you wait until you know what you're talking about you never will." from the Sayings of R. Martin Newhouse. I felt rather clever discovering that I can use Windows Movie Maker, which I have, to edit mp3 files, although they end up as .wma. I'm working on yet another project, a digital coffee table of classical musicians with music clips, as a program for the Fellowship. Everyone should have his own audience. I think of JB occasionally. We corresponded about once a year, so I know how much she enjoyed her work and how proud she was of her family. I've known only a few people who were at the same time so serious and had such a good sense of humor. I'm sorry she didn't get her garden. --------------------- Extra “China Road” is our official book for February. I read the others mostly because they showed up on the New Books shelf in Eastham. All are good and, if you're interested, would enhance our discussion. Pan, Leonard, and Troost in particular. Rob Gifford, “China Road: a journey into the future of a rising power.” New York : Random House, c2007. “Route 312 runs 3,000 miles, passing through the factory towns of the coastal areas, the rural heart of China, and the Gobi Desert, where it merges with the Old Silk Road. The highway witnesses every part of the social and economic revolution that is turning China upside down. Radio journalist Rob Gifford, a fluent Mandarin speaker, takes Route 312 from its start in the boomtown of Shanghai to its end on the border with Kazakhstan. Will China be the next global superpower? Is it as solid and as powerful as it looks from the outside? And who are the ordinary Chinese people, to whom the 21st century is supposed to belong?” From publisher description - Girls just want to get rich. Somewhat upbeat. Philip P. Pan, "Out of Mao's Shadow; the struggle for the soul of a New China." NY, Simon & Schuster, 2008. 349p. Pan was Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post from 2000-2007. He covers The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, The SARS and AIDS epidemics, The One Child plan, censorship, corruption, and land grabs, etc. Eleven cases of injustice. -- China, the dark side. Mark Leonard, "What does China Think?" Public Affairs, 2008. 163p. Very good on current political thinking. 'China is caught between the two extremes of misguided socialism and crony capitalism...' Beijing's formula combining state capitalism, open markets, and a closed political system is a formidable alterative to Western democracy. Bios of the major players. -- The most informative, and shortest, and scariest of all these books. J. Maarten Troost, “Lost on Planet China; the strange and true story of One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation.” NY. Broadway Bks, 2008. 382p. I haven’t finished it, but I am enjoying it. Recommended as non-scholarly but informative entertainment by our daughter-in-law, who has studied Chinese and traveled extensively in China with pleasure. Definitely amusing, but if it fails to decrease my desire to visit China that's only because I've never had much. -- To be fair, several of our elderly friends (more elderly than we) have been there (on tours) and greatly enjoyed it. Our doctor's daughter spent a recent 6 months in China and I gather had a ball. It's just that it sounds intimidating and when I think foreign travel I think boeuf bourguignon, not live squid. Simon Winchester, "The Man who Loved China; the fantastic story of the eccentric scientist who unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom." NY, Harper Collins, 2008. 316p. Joseph Needham, author of the 30 volume “Science and Civilization in China,” was a fascinating and bizarre man. Good China background. China was ahead of the West in sci/tech until 1500. -- China is deep and may rise again, in a good way. Fareed Zakaria, "The Post-American World." NY, Norton, 2008. 292p. The author of "The Future of Freedom" describes a world in which the U.S. will no longer dominate the global economy. He sees the "rise of the rest" as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. Much about China. -- We could do much to save ourselves, and everyone else.   Amy Chu, "Day of Empire: how hyper powers rise to global dominion and why they fall." NY, Doubleday, 2007. From the Persian Empire of Cyrus to China, the European Union, and China and India in the twenty-first century. -- Plus ca change. Our group read this one last year: Lisa See, "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan." NY, Random House, 2005. A grim but informative novel about the incredibly static society of Imperial Confucian 19th c. China, and especially the shuttered condition of women. -- Aaaargh. Just for your information, the following are our wishes for the country: Security: Vigorous and highly professional diplomacy. Talking respectfully with everyone is not weakness. Undertake no preemptive or go-it-alone military actions. Use our military only in response to a direct attack on the U.S. or in cooperation with NATO, the UN, or other believable coalition. No more arrogance and bluster. Let's get back our country's good name. Get out of Iraq as soon as possible. Deal with Iran and Afghanistan in conjunction with other Middle-East nations, NATO, and the UN. We are doubtful about the wisdom of operating in Pakistan without Pakistani cooperation, and about encircling Russia with NATO countries. Defend Israel faithfully within adjusted pre-67 borders and assist in the establishment of a Palestinian state. Defeat terrorism through international cooperation and intelligence, not primarily military action. End the “war on terror” nonsense. Provide needed veterans benefits Health Care: National Health Care, including prescriptions, mental health, eye, and basic dental care, should be free or affordable for all U.S. citizens. To do this we must control health care costs to some degree. We doubt that for-profit medicine or medical insurance can ever do the job, but we’re sure you’ll do your best. Energy: A comprehensive Energy Plan emphasizing conservation and renewable energy sources. Gradually reduce dependence on oil, gas, and nuclear energy. Social Issues: An effective social safety net, limited gun control, civil rights, reproductive choice, gender equality, gay and lesbian rights, gay marriage, ending the death penalty, humane prisons, and the separation of church and state are all important to us and to most other moderate to liberal democrats. If you go too light on too many of these issues, you will lose support, but none of them needs to become an election loser. -- I must admit that I consider capital punishment a national disgrace and find it difficult to imagine supporting it. We are also suspicious of “faith-based initiatives.” Our own Unitarian Fellowship receives no government money and gives all of its income to local charities with no strings attached. Civil rights: Ensure civil, women's, reproductive, gay and lesbian rights. Close Guantanamo. Outlaw all forms of torture. Eliminate special rendition and indefinite detention. Courts must monitor and approve all surveillance on American citizens. Provide civil union for gays at a national level. Corruption: End arrogance and corruption in the Executive Branch. Judicial and civil service positions must be non-partisan and awarded on merit. No-bid contracts and giveaway to friends and political allies must end. Finance: Enact or reinstate needed regulations. Immigration: Secure our borders. Develop a fair, generous, and speedy immigration and naturalization process. Enforce laws against hiring unregistered illegal aliens. Environment: Vigorously enforce environmental regulations and enact others as needed. Preserve our wilderness, including ANWR. Control offshore drilling. Protect endangered species. Elections: Ensure honest and fair elections and campaign finance regulations. -- In our experience, OCR scanning is cheap, fast, and safe, and there is a paper trail. Tax Policy: Reduce taxes on the poor, reduce or stabilize taxes on the middle class. Impose fair income and capital gain taxes on those most able to pay. Reinstate a reasonable inheritance tax. Stop wasting billions in Iraq. We must act to reduce the dangerous and growing wealth gap. Employment: Use infrastructure repair to provide full employment to U.S. Citizens. Some trade protection may be required. Sensible financial regulations will help. Science and Education: Every U.S. citizen should have affordable access to a first rate education from kindergarten through graduate school, as appropriate to their needs and abilities. Your plan for public service in return for higher education sounds good. We need massive national support of scientific research, free of sectarian influence. -------------------- 25 December 2008 Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all. We plan to celebrate with cimmamon buns for breakfast. Last week: Twenty degrees this morning. A foot of snow forecast. There was a dove sitting in our frozen birdbath. I watched it for a while, fearing that it might be stuck. They seem so dumb. I thought about how I might break the ice without scaring it to death, but when I opened the door it flew away and I realized that he (or she, it's hard to tell) was just melting hermself some drinking water. Sorry. -- It did snow, a lot, and it stuck to every branch and twig, making all the trees look like they were sprouting antlers. It was there until the rain washed it away. We walked at Coast Guard in the rain and wind and didn't see a soul. (We had our cell phone.) Tonight it's cold again and windy. Someone's messing with the weather. J's party was nice but wearying, fifty elderly hard-of-hearing people in a not-all-that-big house. The food was excellent, her baked salmon is famous. I managed long conversations with half a dozen people before entropy set in. I acknowledged to B, the poli sci prof, that he'd been right, the political pendulum had swung once again. He was ecstatic. Well, who isn't? If there were any Republicans in the room, they were lying low. As a new window expert I was able to verify that the estimate C had gotten for new windows in his house-for-sale in Maryland was a good one. C's wife has been in their house here for a month and impatient for him to stop fiddling with their old one, which should sell despite the market and any faults in it's condition because of it's location near DC. E was tired, so we went home. And N said, "When can we have our popcorn?" Gordon talked at Fellowship. He went to clown school long ago and is always worth listening to. He talked on Hope as a present condition and not a future one, and I pointed out that present Hope was all that humanists run on. We were expecting company for dinner on Christmas eve, but they called in sick, which is not uncommon around here. We cooked our chicken ("organic", which we realize doesn't mean "happy") in the cloche anyway, deeelicious as always. Those French... We are invited out to dinner on New Year's Eve, another couple whose health is precarious, but that's always a hazard in the land of the old. We're sorry for them, but we don't mind staying home. Long ago a friend in seminary convinced me that being "disappointed" was my problem, not anyone else's. It's saved me a lot of trouble. I finished my Old Man's Gutter Cleaning Ladder. I'll send a picture eventually. It works well. Its only drawback is that it's a little heavy, being constructed of 2/4's and bed slats, but that makes it sturdy, which is good, and if it ever gets too heavy to carry that can be a message that I shouldn't be climbing ladders. 28 Dec 2008 We had a splendid Christmas trip to Hamilton. Good to see everyone and share what we're up to. We got to know some of the the extended M family better. We ate well and much. The Sunday morning breakfast at V.J.'s was a great send off, (even if it wasn't an Indian Restaurant). The drive was easy. Much easier than it could have been! We saw some of the results of the big ice storm in central Massachusetts, thousands of downed trees and broken branches. Must have been a mess. There are still a few areas without power a week later. We returned by way of Route 20 rather than the NY Thruway, much cheaper and far more interesting and attractive. There was a lot of ground fog above the remains of the snow cover, whole valleys filled with fog as we drove past above, really quite beautiful, along with the bare branches of trees agains the constantly changing skyline. The small towns we passed through reminded me of Missouri in the 1940's, which is not a bad thing at all, but maybe sort of amazing in 2008. -- We got a bit better than 45 miles to the gallon by driving at 55-60 mph, as we did also on our trip to Virginia for the Naming Ceremony. One of our very small contributions to Green Living. It's much less tiring too. We have a list in my Trip Notepad of all the public radio frequencies along the way which helps pass the time. Our version of satelite radio. Despite my thirty years of book group experience, always the only guy, I've never developed much of a fondness for "literary novels." My reaction is like that of young Sara to my touting of TV programs. Me: "We might like this, 'The Woverines of the Ruanzori!" She: "Is it an 'interesting' prgram?" Meaning, of course, dull as dishwater. Still and all, "The Size of the World," by Joan Silber, is really good. Beautifully written, simple, enthralling. N liked it too. I'm reading Dexter Filkins, "The Forever War," about Afghanistan and Iraq, devestating, required reading. It's always really good, however tough, to understand the world around you and know what you're doing. Filkins is a longtine NYT reporter who is just always "there" and completely objective in the midst of the worst of it. Cool and sunny today. We'll walk in our National Seashore. I'll try to remember to bring a plastic bag for trash. There isn't much, but there shouldn't be any. I could be a litter Nazi. Happy New Year!