N.B.

N.B. Note Bene. I have fruitlessly sought to find my 208 Blogspot posts, frustrated but hopeful that they would not be lost, but only hard for me to find. With more time at my disposal the past few months--due to the unfortunate reduction of my work status at the Whaling Museum from full to part-time--I have, at least, been able to catch up on many things. I need this time to find myself. I operate at my own speed, digesting experience at my own metabolic rate. Distraction is the foe, and it comes in many forms, from time at work to time at play to time to shop, errand, cook and clean. But I have found this journal of a decade, Time for Change, and wonder. How to set it into print.

Any Day Now

Ahh! Spring arrives, stealthily in the fog. Through the windows, it looks the same as yesterday, but it is actually twenty degrees warmer, rising from the mid-50's to the mid-70's overnight. Still dark, a stalled warm front drapes its moisture over, in and around everything, but it grows rapidly, noticeably brighter and I expect full sun before long. The trees have been slow in developing their blooms this year and only now, mid-May are the leaves unfurling before my eyes. The beauty of the season is enhanced through its slow arrival. Now, past predictive of the present, spring will slingshot and rocket onto summer. The sun is burning through the clouds. Its warmth radiates through the panes. Ahhh!

Thanksgiving on Prospect Street. The third one, perhaps,--probably--our last one at number 92. Sophie's back in New York City on the Megabus, now uptown at Columbia. She broke up with Jordan this afternoon, moments before we took her to Kennedy Plaza. She sort of sprung it on him; he sped off in his Ranger, not saying goodbye or looking me in the eye. My heart feels for him. I have been in his shoes. I think Sophie has made the right decision. She says she has been breaking up with him for a year. Sally has been hoping she would move along. I have an identity issue, feeling for Jordan, all of the parallels between myself and Jeanette, back in our Princeton days. It feels as if I am more bothered by this change than Sally and Sophie. I expect Sophie will wrestle with her decision for a while to come. Will it be our last Thanksgiving with Jordan? What about Dad, in rehab. He still cannot walk, although there is no diagnosis, no prognosis. He just sits in his wheelchair, not reading. Watching television programs like "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy," a sad demise. The long goodbye, twilight. Who knows? Will this be his last Thanksgiving? It, too, feels like it might be. I drained the pipes at Stonepile yesterday. It took me nearly three hours, but less nerve-wreaking than it has in the past. I'll know in the spring whether I should have been more circumspect. It will not be our last Thanksgiving with Stonepile, or my last time draining the water from its pipes.

Friends

Friends. Friends? Friends! We have some who stand the tests. Who endure. I once thought my friends from youth would surround me in old age, not knowing how they would molt, like snakeskin, or how few would, in the end, survive the challenges life hurls at us and we hurl to save or sink ourselves. I used to think that one could judge a person by how many old friends they surrounded themselves with, but by that standard I have not done as well as I had hoped and expected. Instead, my oldest friends are institutional acquaintances. People who I intersect with from school and college, or a summer community. People that I have socialized with, but never been much closer to than arms' length. Old loves, generally lost. The ones I am curious about? It seems prudent to let their memories flourish without present refreshing. Which means, I guess, that I'll be living in my head entirely before long. A few of them have died, these were rare people, ones who had once wrapped themselves around me and cried out love. How many have I loved and left, now forgotten? There are a few. My old male friends: where are they now? Mostly scattered in the wind. Where are my family? Scattered, too. My father left. One uncle. A sick and unhealthy brother. One 'friend' who cannot see the difference between her money and our friendship. It's time to molt, not moulder. To move along, not wax sentimental. Our eyes are built into the front of our heads for a reason. We look forward. Our friends are those who are with us now. There is no need to carry dead weight into hoary age.

April in the Afternoon

A fine day. Windy, wild, warm and wet. It's also grey, like fog, only not. You can imagine the noise of the plant kingdom, stirring with the spring. Already there are daffodils and the crocuses have been out for nearly a month by now. Tumescent magnolia buds and the increasingly evident red canopy of maple trees on the street reveal further evidence. Soon enough the sun will shine, the matted lawn will green and require mowing, and the robins will tilt their heads to eye their earthy prey as it emerges from beneath the frost line, thawed for another year. It is a very fine time of year. The promise of longer, warmer days. Of sweet scented flowers. Of less clothes. Of water blue and sun-filled golden hues.

Winter Blues?

Why, tell me, do I feel more lonely than ever before? Is it my daughter growing up and having nearly flown the nest? Is it my wife sleeping in her own bed, leading a parallel, disconnected life? When we speak, we seem to disagree. Is it my father's increasing dementia? Or is it just a dearth of sunlight? My dog is just as far gone as my father. She sleeps. I wake her for meals and carry her outside to do her business or up the stairs at night to bed. Is it being so estranged from the workplace, worried about most things, from paying taxes to health insurance to the absence of love to finding meaning in this life? It is not that life is bad. It is that it feels so empty.

Providential Blizzard

Op-ed Letter, Providence Journal, January 12, 2011

The plows are out, some with “Facilities Management” stenciled on their cab doors, and others unmarked, with independent contractors in their pickup trucks, cockeyed blades akimbo. The doorbell rings and unfamiliar, often Hispanic or Black faces appear at the kitchen door, going house to house on foot, asking “Do you want to be shoveled out? “We’re all set, thank you,” I tell them, feeling apologetic, admiring their enterprise. Few others are astir.

Walls of snow pushed off to the sides of the primary streets create hurdles, small mountains to surmount on my XC, ‘cross city’ skis. Approving smiles tell me that people find this activity novel and amusing. Having done this for many years, I know it is a wonderful way to witness the urban landscape. The temperature hovers around 32 degrees. I notice how this snow bears more resemblance to a March, spring snow, both wet and heavy, than the first one of the New Year.

Branches lie broken, littering the sidewalks. Many more are bent double, stuck. When the temperature drops later on and the northwest wind kicks in, a lot of them will snap. This is the type of storm where families lose electricity when power lines fall down. A street parking ban mandates staying home for most, except for those people curiously labeled “non-essential personnel.” It is a found day, one for keeping ecstatic children out of school and their parents in their pyjamas, warm and safe at home, together. Let no one brood upon lost production and cancelled appointments, but, rather, let us view it as a day overflowing with generosity, a boon for domestic bonding. I stop and talk with old neighbors, asking if everything is all right. “What do you need? Can I help?” These are the days we remember fondly from childhood, the snow clean and white for a day. It will not last, and if it did, distinct, pristine memory would likely blur into a bland continuum instead. Actually, this is precisely what happens as we age, as survivors who have encountered a multitude of storms, like trees laden with a heavy load, more flexible than we imagined.

Curtains

I promised her. I will never explain why I open or close the bedroom curtains again. I've written about this before, I am sure. She likes curtains open. She has some kind of thing about it. So do I, I guess. At night, I like them closed. I like the way it looks, nice printed curtains drawn shut, cozy and secure. I am also a private person: I would prefer to watch to being watched. I don't like the glass reflecting darkness back. It must be an animal instinct, at least that's the depth of the emotion. Or is it from that shadow framed, looking in at me through a plate glass window. Is my wife so open? How so? I don't think she is: I think she's full of secrets, just not appearing to be full of secrets. Hmmm. I am going to leave it as I did last night. No more explanations. I like the curtains closed. And if I should change, I don't want to hear the accusation: "Why didn't you close the curtains?" "Because," I'll start to say, "because..."

Baby Blue Mercedes

Back when I sixteen, my father rented an enormous, top of the line, baby blue Mercedes sedan in Stockholm. We were traveling as a family of six, ages four to forty-three, our final destination: The Hague. We think they were having some trouble getting the car back towards Germany, because it was ridiculously cheap, and they made us a deal we could not refuse. I remember my father saying that we would probably never drive such a fancy automobile again, which I dismissed at the time, but it turned true close to fifty years later. The thing was that in addition to being somewhat embarrassed by the unaccustomed luxury, we would have to drive through Germany and Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France before turning it in. My father being of WWII vintage, also pink-cheeked and blue-eyed, conceivably Arian, although entirely white anglo saxon protestant, driving a Mercedes with "Deutschland" on its stern, he drew particularly nasty looks from many along the way, who treated him as if he were a former Nazi. We felt their enmity and our father's discomfort. It was probably worthwhile to feel the revulsion and know what it was like to be a German in post-war Europe.

There have been a few experiences and situations in my life which have made me feel squeamish or discomforted. Gardening in Greenwich for people I once considered my peers, for example, who wondered how it was that I was digging in their dirt. House painting for a schoolmates' parents in Easthampton made me feel awkward, as did carpentering for various friends over the years. This winter, caretaking with my wife in a grand house on the top of College Hill, filled with wall sized 19th century oil paintings, highboys, a Steinway grand, a spiraling staircase, a half dozen bedrooms upstairs is akin to my father in the German car. It feels strange to live here amidst such unaccustomed wealth. Part of life, I think, must be role playing, but this makes me feel like an impostor. I'll just have to get over it. Yet another of many changes; I might just say, consider the alternative! Ironically, my father grew up in just such luxury, living in a town bearing his family name. Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in a dozen generations. It is my good or bad fortune to be out of phase, at the end of such a grand legacy.

Spring Break

So many of life's experiences are hardening ones. I always think, if we knew what we were in for in the beginning, we never would have kept on keeping on: the burden would have seemed too great. It is nothing huge this time around. No one died. Well, yes, in fact, someone did, but this is not about that. And no one is sick. Well, that's not exactly right. Dad's got dementia; Uncle Joe has a recurrence of lung cancer. Life goes on. You have to be very self-contained and selfish as there are real disasters littering the road we travel. No. It is the realization of what you already know. Sophie returned today from college for spring break. She looks and seems great. She is growing up, very self-confident, independent. Kind of an amazing thing for someone who would barely go into a store by herself a year ago. And now, she's running around NYC, having a great time, maybe a little overconfident, which does cause me some alarm. And she has had a very successful winter term. Much better than last fall. She arrived at the back door in the early afternoon, dropped her things and hung around for half and hour before meeting her friends, the old posse, out on the corner of Thayer and Williams. Matt, Miles and Koby. They headed north, ostensibly to visit their old school, though it turns out they never arrived. No matter. And later, Sophie returned for a nice roasted chicken dinner. And we had our three cornered conversation, on the edge of fighting, though not over it. And then things calmed down a bit, and we had more of adult conversation, whicho was great, noticably improved from, say, such attempts a year ago. But the thing of it is, now she's off until some small hour of the morning. We don't get much for our success in raising her. She is ours. She loves us in her way. And she is free as a bird, confident with friends of her own. It is great, just what we would hope for and yet it is so bittersweet, witnessing our success. She's grown up. She is capable and able to function on her own. I am seeing this now, spring term. We are a couple, parents who have given everything we have to give. I feel like an animal whose purpose has been fulfilled. What now? I've spawned and raised: do I die?

Vancouver Olympics

Wow! They are over as of the last day of February, 2010. We have watched so many, many hours of the events during the past two weeks, so many stories and such an amazing performance by the North Americans. Never has there been as strong a collection of performances by American winter athletes. Some friends do not watch at all, while others were addicted, as I was for the past 17 days. Some of the sports leave me cold and wondering, the crash and circus events that seem, as Apollo Ohno puts it, "insane." They are undeniably athletic, but the best do not necessarily win and this does not satisfy the purest in me. It's complicated. I guess it boils down to what is more commercial no longer extricable with amateurism and dreams of Baron Coubertin. The Olympics have become too big a spectacle with far too much money at stake. My favorite events are tainted: I am not as pure-minded as I think. I love the downhill skiing; I am amazed by the performances on the cross country ski course. The long track oval speed skating appears to have a purity few others match. The halfpipe and aerial ski events are subjective and acrobatic, death-defying stunt sports. And then there is figure skating which seems to combine artistry with athleticism and some commerciality. This year, the skating seemed more about people doing their best than failing to deliver performances they have crafted over months and years. I have little interest in the luge and bobsled runs, so poorly explained, leaving all but the initiated wondering about the perfect line, g-forces and the technology of the equipment. All one senses is the speed and danger involved. Hockey is exciting, but how many times does a puck hit the metal post and riccochet or carom to the advantage of one or the other team? It is exciting. It is incredibly athletic, but the best team does not inevitably win in a single game. Russian, American and Canadian hockey fans, among others, know this acutely. Soccer and baseball fans know this. Long seasons and stats help allow the consistently best teams to emerge. One slip on a breakneck run down a giant slalom course puts a racer into the netting alongside of the course, which brings another factor into the equation: often unequal conditions for the athletes starting early or late, with a headwind, rough ice, snow or fog. Well. It's over, and I loved it.

BBT RIP

An old friend passed on last week, a man who did so much for me. I had disappeared on him in recent years. It began one day in 1976 at the end of summer, when a girlfriend-to-be asked me if I might wish to go sailing with her over Labor Day weekend. I was supposed to go off on the three day Vineyard Race on the maxi sloop Congere that afternoon, but it was impossible for me to leave work early enough, especially when a senior editor (Karen Durbin) had a hissy fit when she heard I was planning an early exit. I called Lyn back and we ended up together after all, me taking the train to Old Lyme that night and sailing with BBT, Benjamin Brooks Thomas late the next morning at the changing of the tide. Brooks was the president of Harper & Row. Lyn worked in their children's book division with Charlotte Zolotow, while I was a junior editor working with Judith Daniels at The Village Voice. It ended that I would date Lyn for only several months through the fall, but I ended up sailing with Brooks for fifteen years, and outlast a string of his girl friends. I was a reliable crew and available. Over so long a long time there were many adventures, now long ago. And now he is dead at 78 after a fall in San Diego February 5th. Another mutual friend told me that he had not looked well recently. Perhaps he had a heart issue? Brooks had his fancy cars, BBT1 and BBT2, his custom ketch. He had his toys, especially his boats, his condominium in Vail and his house on the cove in Essex, his triplex overlooking the UN in Tudor Village. The last time I saw Brooks was at his 60th birthday held appropriately at the NYYC on 44th Street. Brooks had taken time to propose me for membership in that club, taking me around town to visit five members of the admission committee. Perhaps it was a mistake for me to join, an extravagence, but I liked it at the time. Sophie was a brand new baby, and it was the first time we left her with a babysitter. Oddly, that beautiful young mother, Kate Scott Tucci, died last year, not much more, if even in her forties. Sally thought Brooks was misogynistic, and she didn't want to spend time captive on Teal. We both wondered if Brooks figured that I was off the saiing circuit once we married and had a daughter. Come to remember it, Brooks read a lesson at our wedding at St. Stephens' chapel at Kent School, two years before in 1989. I remember all those trips up and down the coast from Essex to Maine. And once, alone on his boat, I sailed it for two weeks from Edgartown back to Essex. He was a fine friend to me; I was not much back in recent years, something to regret. Beside him, I felt inadequate and unaccomplished. In recent years, I had nothing to show him. I felt like a failure and his success reminded me of it. I think that was the extent of it, my fear of his eyes. It makes me sad to realize how I failed to stay in touch. There is nothing to do about it now. Maybe I can learn?

To Hum or Not to Hum... Part 2

Now this is perfect. I tired the uninhibited humming piece out on the wife. She doesn't like it at all. Its too contrived, too much information. Sit on it for a week. Do you like it? Well, sanguine advice, I suppose, but yes, I do like it. Not only did I write it, it comes from the heart of experience. And experience seldom fails me. More editing, perhaps. Sit on it for a week. It has the same stifling feel that being told not to sing did, and you know what that makes me want to say! "You make sounds all of the time, you know." "Yes, I do know." "It must be a way for you to release energy, or something." Amen. I fear what it would be like with any more of it inside.

To Hum or Not to Hum...

I don’t know when it was that I began to hum. I’d be in the shower, humming. Or in the car, alone—at least I thought I was—making my own music, or accompanying the best, or walking away from an argument with my wife, left with humming as the only graceful way to exit without conflagration. The weird part is that I wasn’t entirely aware of this. I mean, I knew I was tuning into a mildly eclectic array of songs from Bizet to the Beatles, from South Pacific to Janis Ian, or God Save Our Gracious Queen, to Do You Know the Way to San Jose. Usually the tunes were explicable in some opaque way, but so subterranean or tangential that it would seriously disrupt my reverie, in fact put the brakes on it to discover the origin. Naturally, I was partially cognizant of the transition from inaudible to noticeable. As often the case with deep distracted thinkers, it was my wife who brought all this to my attention.

I was doing what I’d seen many others doing on the streets, or what my mother did when I was very young, not quite singing because I seldom knew the exact words, but moving along the corridors of house and city, lips often moving, having full-blown conversations with myself. I once thought these people were all nut jobs, addled people. Now, as I stopped to consider it, so was I. Fever. Give me Fever, I’ve Got You Under My Skin, Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone. They just bubbled up and out. There was a time when I would whistle the tune, because every time I dared to sing, there was no recognition. That I had all these strings of melody and lyrics lurking in me and now coming out, intrigued me, and even liberated me from a lifelong state of inhibition. What this meant was that I could not have cared much less what others thought anymore, or might think when they saw me humming. Screw them all, each and every one was close to how I felt. Had some judgmental whippersnapper like myself have hove in sight, I could not have noticed., and this was what was strangest of all: somehow, after a lifetime of acute self-consciousness I was now uninhibited. I was like after years of furtively closing curtains so people would not look at me from outside, of feeling watched, it did not matter. I felt free to do what I wanted without nary a thought.

I recommend this, all of you who mumble words in church or singing happy birthday, as I had done for many years, a lifetime in fact. Maybe it just comes naturally—it was not anything conscious on my part. Should you be a parent, too, I hope you will never laugh at your child, as mine did when I sang to them, passing on your own shyness for another generation. Or as educators, avoid singling out and embarrassing those who are off-key or groaning, as several music directors did to me. One told me to confine my vocal efforts to yelling at the crew out on the river, whle another suggested that I mouth the words. The song was On the Road to Mandalay, the sort of song that invited enthusiasm. All of this negative feedback had the impact of making this songbird cease to sing, silencing the canary in the coal mine. It was not good. It was not right. I am thankful that I now hum, one day, I project, I may find myself singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Glory to the newborn king.

Bleak, Cold, Dark January

I have a sad daughter back in college this week for spring semester. Spring is illusory, unfortunately, a dream many months away. There will be snows and much ice between now and then, and its warmth is metaphoric. Not only is she readjusting to being away from a cozy vacation at home, but she and her star-crossed lover are separating, at least they are trying to see how they get along without each other, and it is painful. I ache for them, imagining how they must feel, as it once was for me. And then there is a whole new set of courses for her to squeeze into and attack, probably a most excellent distraction. Going down to NYC and leaving her was worse than delivering her in the fall, and it has caught me offguard. I had assumed that the first semester would be the hardest one, but there was so much newness, and stability in her relationships, with so many distractions, and it was not so terrible, all around. And it was warm, and we went far away, to Maui, for a birthday party.

Her sadness brought to mind returning to boarding school in the 1960's. Driving and training into the Berkshires. Dark. Frozen. Unfriendly. And we knew we would not be getting out of that harsh place in the middle of nowhere for months, until Spring Vacation in late March. One has to laugh: we thought it was Siberia, a gulag. As little boys (I was the littlest of the little) we waited on tables and were always hungry, always in subjugation to older, bigger students. The teachers--we called them masters--were more terrifying than avuncular, and mandatory school assemblies were more of the same: terror, hostile, grim about summed it all up. I mentioned this to my friend, one of those formerly intimidating upperclassmen, and he concured. That return to school was always dreadful, a descent into gut wrenching winter,. We both related to the unfriendliness of January, then and now, nearly half a century later. They say that the first cut is the worst one, still remembering his return to college after a devastating Christmas vacation when he broke up with the girl he loved and thought he was going to marry one day. He is a pensive man, prone to morosity (?), and fortunately a strong man. He perseveres.

Out in the unprotected world, so many more harsh realities confronted us, and now her. From the daily exposure to creeps in the street to buses dowsing unwary pedestrians with oily black ice water, to the deadly wars against terror. From the extremes of religious misinterpretation and zealotry, to rescue operations in earthquake-flattened Haiti, where true life and death unfold, without water, food, medical supplies, drugs, and unanesthetized amputations take place daily. Or to a world engulfed in mountains (beyond mountains) of unrecyclable junk, a world where cancer and congestive hearts kill. Where failure to communicate creates wars against wars. These are a heavy burden, a hunded pound pack on an uphill climb, from the real to the imagined. That old bleak, cold, dark January I harken back to from school days, and now my daughter's age. It is all some kind of preparation, I think, for the rest to come. Stamina for the long run.

Thanksgiving

It has been so mild that Stonepile is open and we are going to have our Thanksgiving there for the first time ever. It is almost the first time the house has been open in late November. Just once, to my knowledge. We have been fortunate to have had mild weather. Global warming comes to mind, but it is just a cycle. Five falls ago, when Sophie and I stayed in the house until the first of December, there was a five inch snowstorm in mid-November. I expect to shut things down within days after we have Thanksgiving. All it will take is one cold front coming through.

In the Old Days, we would gather outside around the big beech tree in what we called the Holly Woods, and what my grandfather Sherer had named the Marion Osborn Sherer Memorial Woods. Actually, she is looking down from her portrait on the wall behind me, a woman I never met, of course and whom my mother lost when she was a young girl. In the Holly Woods we would race around as kids, jumping in the leaves and climbing trees and rocks. My grandfather would have an outdoor fire in an open stone pit blazing, with dishes set to the side to keep them at varying stages of warm, and large metal pots of black coffee steaming. I can see him in his khakis, a yellow and black lumberjack plaid jacket, a khaki visored hat, red-faced--probably from bourbon, i suppose, though I never thought of this until now. All of the uncles and aunts and in-laws and cousins. Perhaps an interloper or two: I certainly had no idea. Grandpa Sherer died in 1956, but the tradition endured through most of the next generation. In 1976, there were some 76 of us assembled for the centerfold of Yankee Magazine, looking pretty much like an advertisement for Orvis and L.L. Bean. The festivities would begin at high noon, when the hard liquor was put out and the blanket-wrapped turkeys emerged from the trunks of people's cars. By two, most of the people were merry with gin and quite ready to fracture into compatible subsets, indoors beside someone's fire.

This year we will reinstitute the tradition in our unheated except by fireplace summer cottage, what was then called Stone Pile Shanty, a name that has been shortened to just Stonepile. We will have our own relatively diminished group there for the afternoon before disbanding. It may be mild enough to stay overnight for three of us: I hope it is. Dad will return to his Assisted Living quarters, as will his companion, Louise and her family will come spend the day with us. Sally will make the meal and indoctrinate Sophie into the magic of preparing the dinner. A few cousins from up the lane way may drop by before their dinner later in the evening. It will never be like olden times, but it will be fine and fun, as long as the weather remains as projected in the 50s. And if it rains, it will not matter inside. The view across the Sakonnet is always beautiful, and the fields are yellow and brown and full of blazing reds. We will be thankful to be there and with each other, graced by life.

"Dear College Applicants..."

It is college application “crunch” time, and time to create and polish your essays. For most, the personal essay will be one of the few ways to distinguish yourselves from fellow applicants. A few hundred well-considered words will allow you to jump out of the admissions office files that have initially reduced you to raw, impersonal numbers. The essay is an important, often rushed element in the evaluation process, and savvy applicants will take full advantage of the opportunity.

I am the parent of a Wheeler ’09 graduate, now a freshman at Columbia University. Over the years I have helped her and many sons and daughters of friends to think about, craft and edit their essays and school articles. The combined efforts have assisted students applying to places such as Amherst, Princeton, Rice, RISD, Savannah College of Art & Design, Virginia, Chicago, Swarthmore, Smith, Middlebury, Wellesley and Brown, among others. I help students consider who they are and how to set their best foot forward. I do not write the essays, but I can offer impartial advice and editorial assistance. Oftentimes, it is psychologically easier for someone who is neither a parent nor a school advisor, someone who has an outside, educated and experienced perspective, help in the process.

What are my credentials? I majored in English at Princeton University and attended Harvard’s Publishing Procedures Course, after which I worked in NYC as an editor and writer at The Village Voice, American Photographer and as a freelance editor. I have written dozens of winning proposals for toy and clothing manufacturing companies, a hospital foundation’s newsletter, a publishing house, as well as being directly or tangentially involved with writing for many corporations and educational institutions, alumni publications and newspapers. I have interviewed applicants to Princeton as an alumni volunteer in New York and Rhode Island every year since 1991.

Seniors who would like an impartial, qualified editor to assist them sort out and focus on a solution, or parents who may see the advantage of inserting a third party between themselves and their children in a situation fraught with the pressures of “getting in,” I am available to help you. Give me a call.

Yankees Win! Yankees Win!

It is November, with the morning thermometer regularly dipping into the 30s, and baseball season has finally concluded for 2009. Last night, well into this morning, technically, the New York Yankees defeated the Philadelphia Phillies in the sixth game of the World Series. It was an exciting best of seven, won in the new stadium in the Bronx with four familiar faces from the Yankees of the late 90s through 2001. Jeter. Rivera. Posada. Pettitte. And Johnny Damon, the former Red Sox Yankee nemesis, now a member of the pinstripe contingent. And A-Rod, Alex Rodriguez, and the great Hideki Matsui. It was a fun series. Of course one needs to be circumspect around these parts, as Rhode Islanders and Massachusetts are thoroughly Red Sox Nation, and as such, fall into the "ABY" category, that is, Anybody But Yankees. My daughter accused me of being a traitor to my New England roots, but there is a certain time when prudence dictates a loyalty towards players (such as those named above) that tops geography. And there is not enough time for masochism. I sometimes think of The Old Man and the Sea, and how Hemingway's old man knows things are right again when the great DiMaggio and the Yankees are winning the World Series. When like the old man catches his enormous marlin, breaking his string of fishless days, the odds are with him again. His chewed up remnant of a fish lashed to his boat is a sad reward, so I wonder how far Hemingway wants to extend his metaphor, when a mindless tourist calls the great fish a "shark."

Empty Nest

You know the term "empty nester"? Being one for the first time, I find that it irks me. Yes, the little fledgling birdie flew the coop and has left her parent's nest for the great, wide world of New York City. And yes, the parents must now stare at each other, no longer having the diversion of feeding the young, no longer having to fend for their baby, no longer having to worry on a minute-by-minute basis about protecting them. As parents whose gaze has been deflected downward more than at each other for years, this is new territory. Fact is, humans live in homes; we do not nest, per se. After eighteen years of disacquaintance, the relationship sacrifice of focusing on their progeny instead of upon themselves, we feel almost shy. The home devoid of a child, of the shuttling back and forth, of the eternal snipings, the small, daily irritations seems strange. Here is the time when the nurturing gives way to the success of inevitable separation. The house is now occupied by two middle-aged people who are together as they were what seems like a lifetime before, still together, bound by the experience and love of raising a child. We are weathered and tethered, together, "till death do us part." Together. We have 'lost a child and gained an adult' psycho-coaches euphemize. We look not backwards at an empty nest, but forward, to all the rest. The truth is that the windshield is much broader than the rearview mirror as we drive ahead.

Fathers & Sons

Copies of Turgenev's "Fathers & Sons" have lurked on the bookshelves growing up. Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Mann's Magic Mountain, Doestoevsky's Brothers Karamatsov. Serious Russian or German tomes. I thought Fathers & Sons would be a heavy, but uncharacteristically, it delivered a little less than anticipated. It is good, but no rival to the others. Or is it that I am reading it with an older reader's eyes? Impossible to tell. Turgenev is a compelling story teller and his comments have the universality of great writing. Old ideas being replaced by newer, younger ones; political fads such as nihilism butting up against sentimental and romantic ones. The politics of old Russian society with its serfs and owners which will collide head on with what will turn out to be the Revolution of 1917. Science debunks tradition; a locked social structure opens up to allow matches which were formerly inappropriate; honor dueling comes to an end. I had guessed it would be more about the conflict between the fathers and sons, in the way The Brothers Karamatsov tackles the subject, but it is nothing as intense. In a way, the translation ought better to be "The Father & Sons Karamatsov" and Turgenev's "Brotherly Love," instead. About the same time Turgenev was writing in Russia, over in Concord, Massachusetts Henry Thoreau was writing "old deeds for old; new deeds for new" and warning those unable to keep up with change to get out of its way.

I Got Webs Between My Toes

It is wet. Raining nearly every day it seems. Especially on the days when there is some sort of Event taking place that requires a coat and tie, a nice pair of shoes. I like the rain, most of the time. It doesn't entirely ruin things, though it makes it difficult to paint the house. I will need to take advantage of each sunny day as the sand flows through the glass. We have about a month until we go to Switzerland, to the higher ground in the mountains. And to Provence, to the land of Van Gogh and Arles. And then only a month before we go to Maui. We have planted many things in the garden and new shrubs along the driveway. The rain is good and it minimizes the transition from pot to ground. Seeds germinate in days. Great weather for amphibians, but for people, this is a time of stinky damp feet, for rubber shoes and synthetic jackets and caps. And a time for doormats and fires inside to dry things out, or the restorative fires of reading and writing, or even a stiff drink. It is a time to give thanks for all of the blessings that seem to flow. To appreciate good fortune which shines, regardless of the inclement weather. This is the time to say I love you to people who I care about. Experience reminds me that such times are always fleet and fragile. Nothing should be taken for granted. Not a single thing.

June???

I just googled an older, former boss who I just learned, turned out to be dead, age 69 in 2006 after a brief illness.  Her name was June.  Truth is, I couldn't stand her.  She very nearly ran for Republican Governor of Alabama in the mid-1980's, employed 5,000 people, the most in Alabama at the time.  The mistake people made was to believe she was smart, when all she was, was rich.  Earned it the old-fashioned way: by divorce. My intersection with her made me aware of the illusion. I could have kissed up to her. For three years, I negotiated all of the government contracts that her apparel company obtained. One day she called me to complain that I was earning too much money, more than anyone in the company except for her, and her partner Jim, who I liked working with. "Charles, I'm going to have to let you go," she said. She never received another contract. I think she wanted to create business losses to offset gains somewhere else. Nothing else made any sense.  But I am actually thinking of another kind of June, equally as incongruous as the Belle from 'Bama. I have been sitting before the fire all afternoon at Stonepile, rained and fogged in, cold, but, it is June, dammit!  And on television tonight is the final game, perhaps, of the Stanley Cup between St. Louis and the Pittsburgh Penguins, or as if this isn't weird enough, then we have the Lakers versus the Orlando Magic in the NBA finals.  Basketball, hockey, roaring fires, the old Boss named June, dead.  Next thing?  I don't know.  How about June bugs, snow? How about beach fires, sailing, rhododendrons in full bloom, lawn parties?

Stripers for All?

First, let's deal with the word. A striper is a fish, not a woman that takes her clothes off in front of scummy men for money. And not some gooey solution you pour on old paint in order to remove it. It is a striped bass, and the bass are back after a winter somewhere else, headed north and east for summer. A striper is a desirable fish, both to catch and to eat.  Stripers may be caught off of the beach or the rocks, or from a boat, just like bluefish, a fish I like to eat but some avoid because it is too 'fishy' for them--it is more about how they are cooked than anything.  Visualize a sunset image of a surf caster, rod bent backwards, lure about to rocket some fifty yards or more to an imaginary spot where an unseen, lurking fish will strike from out of the inky darkness. Fish or no fish, complete or incomplete angler, the activity is an appealing one.  It consumes one's attention, man alone in nature by the sea.  And now, to the subject at hand. A truck parked on our private laneway. A fisherman comes after work. He has no permission to trespass, except he says he's fished here for sixteen years. He doesn't know whose land he fishes from, whose road he parks his truck upon. I have no stomach for telling him that no, he has no right to be there or to fish. Who am I to say this? What harm does he do, except perhaps to the fish? Is this land, this beach, this pool of water really mine to share or not to share?  Is ownership not transitory?  Are there enough fish in the estuary for him to take, and leave others some? Am I to tell him you may not stand here in the sunset in this extraordinary spot?  I am unresolved. I told him that I would look the other way, at least for now, and he thanked me. I want to share, not hoard. I do not operate from scarcity, but from wealth. There are enough stripers for all, for now.

Le Mort de Barkus

Old Barkus, as in "Barkus is willing" from Dickens' David Copperfield, is dead. The pembroke corgi was very nearly fifteen years old and trouble from the start, but a charming companion for my father through the loss of his wife of 44 years, through the interim before meeting Mary, his partner for nearly ten years, and his move from independent living into a managed care facility. Barkus was my father's favorite companion through these years, surely a member of the family. Old Barkus destroyed furniture, shoes, bedding, underwear. He seldom came when called and often ran the opposite direction. He was wily and wiggley, not the sort of dog that liked stroking. But he was a character. Dad will miss him the most of all. Only a month before, the Manor where Dad stayed had said enough. Barkus was defecating and pissing in the lobby. Dad was unable to control him. He stayed with us for a while, but the city streets were hard on his paw, and nearly crippled him. He move to Dad's ladyfriend's daughter's house, and seemed to be settling in. It is another milestone to pass. Dad's last dog. I am sure he thinks about this. I said, "Well, Dad, now we can get you a turtle or a parakeet." He said, "thanks a lot," but he smiled. I think I wrote it somewhere before: old dogs die.

It's Columbia!

Ah, well, beware what you wish, because miraculous things happen!  Sophie's choice chose Sophie, and now she will go to school in NYC, uptown at Columbia University.  An amazing coup, if you had asked me.  Some 25,000 kids wanted to go there in the fall and there are but 1400 places for them, so including those who decided to go elsewhere, the acceptance rate was about 8.8% this year, the same as Princeton's, a bit less crushing than Yale and Harvard.

An accomplishment to be proud of!  And I am reconciling myself to the notion, although it feels a little sad that she did not want Princeton the way I did, or my father did once upon a time. Sophie was the only student in the entire Providence area to be on the waitling list at Princeton. They wanted to know whether she wished to come, perhaps advised that she wanted NYC more by her advisor, who understood this to be Sophie's wish.  Columbia is Sophie' Choice: it is HERS, who cares about mine?  There is no legacy, no inside scoop, nothing but herself to get her in.  

We visited the campus and were immediately taken.  Internships!  The Core Curriculum!  The City!  I think Columbia will be an excellent fit, especially when Sophie overcomes the initial shock of the City and leaving home, and goes after whatever it is that she wants.  No school can offer all the job connections of Manhattan as Columbia will.  It seems that Columbia is taking advantage of its #1 natural resource.

Since this time, we have more or less figured out the financial component to attending Columbia and it is possible, making it appear that we actually knew what we were doing in this whole process, which would be a marvellous overstatement, to say the least.

But it all looks possible.  We have made it to this stage; now.  We will need to adjust our sights upon the next hurdle.  Isn't this always the way?

March Madness

Bigger things confront us, I know, in these troubled times in America and the world, with financial disaster of unfolding dimension, wars on terrorism and unemployment levels approaching those of the Great Depression, along with the stresses we encounter in the best of times. Another version of “March Madness” is in the winds, with its own brackets and rankings. Along with some three million high school seniors and their parents and extended families, we are focused on something else—college acceptances for the Class of 2013.

We have prepped for this determinative moment since becoming parents, and the end is palpably near. As Jimmy Cliff wrote it, we are “Sitting here in limbo, but I know it won’t be long… Sitting here in limbo, waiting for the dice to roll… ” I can relate his song and struggle to the admissions process, where we are all equal for one final moment as we dangle in limbo. Many seniors will probably find my notion to prolonging it an abomination, wanting only to end their misery. They do not yet know or realize how the bittersweet selection process will segregate them overnight, or how their secondary educational peer group Diaspora is about to begin in earnest. We are now in the eye of the storm, and I remind myself to savor it, to step back, breathe and ‘freeze frame’ the way things are, before the world changes.

As responsible, middle class parents, our lives have focused relentlessly on the University Grail, and not just matriculating at any university, but at the very best possible one. As a faculty brat, I grew up with college at the center of my family’s universe. As a parent, I have put constant not-so-subtle pressures on our daughter to achieve. As parents with one child and only one chance to do this right, the stakes have always been high. My wife and I have been child-centric, sometimes at the expense of our own relationship, weathering the strains of adult lives while rearing a child, enduring the vicissitudes of modern life and the inevitable disappointments and successes life brings to us all. We entered this state of child-fixation open-eyed, always doing things the very best we could or knew how, sometimes wishing we could have done more, but understanding we have done so much, and never counting the cost. The result, so goes the saying, is priceless!

As parents we have felt every vicarious thrill of victory and suffered each agony of defeat, remembering these are her experiences, not ours. We are not living vicariously through our daughter, but in her. And over the years, the victories have accumulated, even as the going became more challenging and the competition more acute. How could we know that we would bring our child into a world fuller than ever before with smart, competitive young women and men wanting to attend the same highly competitive institutions with the same number of acceptances? We could not have done it any other way.

Today, there is nothing more to do but wait. The case has been presented and the jury is out. The applications have all been submitted for evaluation by frazzled admissions officers burning midnight oil to determine the fates of so many. Parents can still dream and their children can still aspire to win the golden ticket, to harbor the illusion that the same opportunities that existed in 1991 when most seniors were born remain a moment longer. All too soon the bell will toll. Many hopes will be dashed overnight, with what was once an infinite universe reduced down to a handful of acceptances, then culled to a single choice.

For this reason, I relish the lingering suspense. Not everyone can “win,” especially where the odds are ten or more to one against acceptance. Students and parents will separate into newly determined social stratifications as defined by the U.S. News & World Report’s current rankings. Someone who knows advised me that it is not the day admissions letters arrive that is the hardest, but “the day you drop your daughter off” in the fall that will be. That day can wait a while longer, too.

Whatever the outcome, we can congratulate ourselves for having done a good—no—for having done a great job! Our daughter has already done more than we could have imagined. We admire her tenacity, sense of irony and her dry humor, her smile. To her credit, at times, she infuriates us. We love and like her and she even loves and likes us back, most of the time! In this moment of reflection, we deserve to marvel at the accomplishment. How could we have created this miraculous being, two artistically oriented people, married once and never having parented before? We have proven ourselves a team of real, seldom model parents, never “normal” ones like Ward and June Cleaver or the Waltons, more nuts, more flawed and more like our own parents. She will thank us for never quite blending in one day.

We do not confuse the admissions process for what is most important: our daughter’s growth as an independent person. Acceptance will not determine her validity. She is already self, parent, peer and teacher validated. Nor will it determine our success or hers. We have all succeeded. The choices will soon come down to mundane, nitty-gritty things like need and merit money, student loans, the best choice, itself determined through some serendipitous encounter with a tour guide, or the friend of a friend, or a rendezvous with a savvy professor. Will she receive a welcome from her first choice? And if she does not, how will she adjust to the disappointment?
A decision will be made. In only a few months our daughter will go to college somewhere between New Jersey and Maine, and we will learn to accept a transition as natural as when a baby bird flies from its nest. Long observing this anticipated “empty nest” phase with suspicion, now we will experience it ourselves. We will refocus our energies on our art and reconfigured relationship. We will be there always for our fledgling daughter’s flight into the collegiate world and beyond, and if we are very fortunate, maybe we will be around long enough to meet a boyfriend or experience a grandchild. As we have many rivers yet to cross, right now, it seems that the main thing is to appreciate our bird while she is still in the hand.

Workshops

Workshops. Bah. Humbug. They do a few good things, granted. But they wear poorly. Or maybe that is a given. I need a fresh audience to pay attention to. I need new work to read from my peers, and they usually submit pieces of a larger work, or chapters. Only once have I been exposed to a book I actually wanted to read in five different sessions. That would be about ten writers times three pieces each times five sessions for a round number. 150 stories. Seems like quite a few, but it is a reasonable guess. They just get stale, especially the remarks such as "I liked it, as usual..." which insincerity prefaces several readers' comments each week, no matter what. You know from their written remarks or what they don't say that they neither like what you have written, nor you for that matter, but the rules do not allow for them to say what they feel. The significant benefit is that a deadline of any sort is a good thing. And reading in front of a group is an excellent part of the process. I need to find a new group. I need to move on. I am restless.

Arties

She just walked past the window, south on Thayer Street. Two hours ago, I spoke with her as she walked, nearly ran, north. She is hard to miss. Yellow pants. Red jacket. A black and white checked packpack. Glasses and a hat. She's a comical looking character. I know she went to see a movie at the Avon, where the arty films are. By herself, I think. It's fun to see movies by yourself. I haven't done it for quite a while. Usually she is away on weekends, but lately, she has stayed in town. "I Loved You..." something or other is the name of the film. She said she was late. Hurrying down the street, it looks as if she's now late for something else. Always hurrying. We're busy little animals, are we not?

A Call from Dad

It is still puzzling me. Dad called the other day, out of the blue. He did not ask anything; he had no agenda. Perhaps I said something in the course of the conversation that caused him to change his mind. He never calls, and when he does, it is for something. I like to think maybe he was reaching out this time, calling to say hello, I'm here. Or to remind me he is there in the retirement home, not doing much and wouldn't mind a visit, but cannot quite bring himself to ask me. Or to say thanks for stopping by earlier in the week. Who knows? I have never quite been able to understand him, for all my intuition about most people. It is a father-son thing. I am sure.

Color this Thursday

What color to ascribe to this rainy, raw day? It is one of reckoning for a seventeen year old's hopes and dreams attached to her choice of university. Will it be dark and murky or translucent and golden: we will know before dinner time. It is not the end of the world, either way. But it is an awful lot of pressure that will be eliminated with a simple "yes."  Acceptance means the acknowlegement of effort. It means the same about parental sacrifice. And it points a family in a known direction, allowing it to make plans. Rejection means many new options will come into play, and this is not all bad, taking us all in many directions. While potentially they are just as great, they resolution will be  pushed into the future for three more months.

Postcript.  Not a "no," but a "deferred."  I guess they still want to see more or weigh the options available to the admissions committee.  A disappointment, but it makes our daughter feel challenged and more resolved to get what she wants, and this is a very positive thing.

The Plumber

I am the only plumber in my family. Plumbing, after all, is a relatively modern thing, with the convenience of pipes and running cold and hot water and toilets and showers replacing chamber pots and tubs that were filled by the bucket only a couple of generations ago. Mid-winter trips to the privey. Brrrr!

Plumbing work is heavy and dirty. There probably are not many lady plumbers. And it ain't rocket science, though it could get tricky fast once you get into its engineering aspects, the new on-demand water heating systems, for example. My forebears hired plumbers. They would open their summer houses by the ocean and close them in the fall, sometime after Labor Day when they would migrate back to their winter homes inland.

My forebears did not work much with their hands; they were owners and executives, not laborers. I must be the antithesis to all of them. I work with my hands in order to escape the frustrations of these executive pursuits. I do this because it challenges me to learn how, to be self-dependent and save money. They chose to do what they and others felt were more gentle, appropriate things. Ah, reality! Boethius would have shown how the wheel of fortune turns. The Mississippi football coach and dean of boys had his own saying for it: "The sun don't shine on the same dog's behind, all of the time."

NaNoWriMo

National Write a Novel in a Month project well underway. I am warping its rules to suit my own needs by using bits and pieces of blog with new writing. My object is to meet the 50,000 word goal within the month, and have something that might actually be worthy of reading. Others who have mentioned the project have all said they did not do anything with their work after November 30th, the final day. To me that is almost useless. And I have many stories which center around Time for Change, the Providence and Little Compton axis and family poles. Use them or their impetus.

Life is like a Cocktail Party

November 2008. Been here before, 58 times, with another two or three dozen in the tank, odds on. A dozen, anyhow. It is like a cocktail party, the art of knowing when to leave. It will be lonely and unfortunate to overstay. Do I want to outlive my wife? I do not want to outlive my daughter. Does my wife wish to outlive me? The coward's way out would be to go first, but I would rather not have Sally have to deal with my demise. I ought to ask her; maybe she would like a reprieve from my foul company near the end? Depressing thoughts, brought on by the gray skies, the fall chill, the looming prospect of The Holidays and ever mounting bills.

Piracy

I steal, therefore I am a thief. I rationalize: we all steal, everything's derivative. Art, stories taken from real life, fiction created out of fact. This much, I know is true. I have writings upon writings, mountain ranges beyond mountains of thoughts and ancient postings. They accrue and moulder, or whatever things do in cyberspace. And now I am using them as pieces of a larger framework. Old pieces tied together with the new. I am redeeming them like books filled up with green stamps from the supermarket, hoping to win my own reward with points from my own thefts or purchases. Yes, I am pirating my journal of thoughts, happily, thankfully, without remorse. This writer is a thief!

Hubris

Big hearts small hearts I see them every day. Small hearts will send Dad away from the woman he has lived with for more than a decade. Selfish little people are kicking him out: for shame! The small hearted Governor of New York just announced his resignation moments ago. He had ample love at home but a rapacious appetite for expensive prostitutes. Poor Eliot Spitzer! Now perceived as a hubristic hypocrite. What a terrible fall from grace is all I can say. The disaster he has brought upon himself and his family is stunning. The smaller disaster with Dad and Mary is the impossible situation he is in, wrought first by Alzeheimer's disease, and now by her unloving children who have moved to throw him out. Dad will not compromise. He is stubborn and inflexible. He's 85! The woman he has loved since 1997 has lost her mind; her children have taken control, against her expressed, but unwritten wishes. They are kicking the old dog and his old dog Barkus out ASAP. We see the ploy. They call it a break, for "vacation." Once he is out the door, they will never allow him back. He will have abandonned Mary; she will not remember who he is. They've said this in so many words. It is so cruel and heartless, quite beyond comprehension. It will be as though she died. It may as well kill Dad. While she will not remember anything after a few moments, he will likely remember for as long as he can still think. It is a bitter destiny. In the end it will be better for him to be elsewhere. He has a chance to live again, or start in a non-adversarial position, but how do you start over when you are 85, increasingly frail and more alone than you've ever been in your life?

College Hill Breakfast Club

Breafast at Tiffany's? How about Louies' over on Brooke Street? Tuesdays at nine these days, with sessions that last well past ten and sometimes later. Usually Sean and John. And then a cast of several more. Phil, the Keiths, Gerry. And Sally shows up often in the but for her nearly all boys club. The coffee is truly terrible. The rest is fine. The service is familiar. The music classical and the zeitgeist completely unpretentious. Despite lackluster food, the place grows on you. I am now a regular. Last week I invited several new people to come, and none of the regulars showed up except for myself and the two Wheeler School parents I met the weekend before at a fundraising event. "Come to breakfast with Sean" who they know well and obviously liked. It felt like a bait and switch manuever when neither Sean nor John arrived. It was my very own breakfast table at Louies this day. Sally came near the end. I hope they will return.

2008 The More Things Change...

Is is possible that nearly a year's gone by, and there are no new blog entries? I think not. I have written several which have disappeared. So much remains unchanged, however, that it would appear that Time for Change has stalled. Am I in living limbo? It seems possible. No work; no opportunities; no direction home--"like a complete unknown." I am baffled entirely. It is as though there is a governor that checks my speed, an evil damper that throttles my ability to find happiness or achieve security. Not endorsing theories that accept any exogenous control, the God within me, in other words my own spirit, must be responsible for the stress and frustration which characterize my fifties. I have to take charge of my life, living among so much opportunity. In a life we can only live once, this limbo must now come to an end; change, new direction, full immersion are needed. There is no such thing as "time to spare" or waste. Imagine, if it works out that there is time to reflect, looking back at 'the end' to review what all this will have turned out to be in the context of this one privileged life. Drifting. Absorbing, hopefully, and moving on to process what I have learned. Who knows?

The Metaphor

The Chinese Chest. It sat in the living room. It is long gone, its contents emptied. But they exist within my cranium, my memory, wherever it resides within. I try to remember it photographically, but the images are collaged, layers upon layers. The truth is not photographic; it is better. Photographs, we know, can lie.

My chest is small, yet large as the universe. It is mine. It is simple and complex. It is woven, it is mysterious. It is embryonic and random, not entirely making sense. I have had all these thoughts straying, vagaries, for years. Every time I go back anywhere, or repeat an action performed before. I see the layers, like a painter who layers oil, then scrapes, then adds another pigment and scrapes again. The stories become burnished with their layering and love. And that is the other thing. That quest for acceptance, for love, but not on anyone else's terms but my own. In the end, what you catch is the inner sanctum of one person's experience. How interesting is that? How universal is my truth? That has to be for you to know. I think of what I hear on the radio, "this much I know is true."

Winter Daze

Winter's back has been broken. It is fifty degrees warmer today in Providence than it was on Monday when we left Bethel, Maine. There are but three more weeks until the Ides of March and the St. Patrick's Day parade of drunken, barfing fools. I associate March with beginnings, much as I do September after Labor Day and back to school. March is the month I moved to New York City and began my first serious job. March is the month when the crew season of racing began, a month of emergent new life, the month of lion and lamb here in New England. I feel torpid in these final days of winter, like a bear, walking out into the sunlight after a winter spent in hibernation and still too groggy to realize that he is hungry. The latent energy is about to transform itself into rebirth, spring and summer industry. I feel ready, rested and energized, yet wary of the ides of March.

Confluence of Opportunities

The ocean is vast. Out in the deeper water, away from currents, reefs and places where life converges in abundance, there is often nothing. The fish are few and far between, and at least in my imagination, they are frightening. Where there are no little fishes, there are no big fish to devour them. This is precisely the image of how I've felt about exciting job opportunities in the past two years. Aside from the distractions, there has been almost nothing that intrigued me. Today, there are a handful of interesting possibilities. Is this coincidence or is there some fateful, anti-chaos theory which explains this confluence of opportunities? Of course the things that catch my eye will also catch the eyes of others, competing predators to resume the metaphor of fish in the deep blue sea, chasing rare prey. I expect something to come of them this time, and fairly soon. This will mark the end of this time of transition. We will enter into another orbit, if and when it does.

Transitions! Transitions!

[With apologies to the Fiddler on the roof]. The time for change has elided into its third free fall, and sliding into where? I know where, but where, really? Where am I going, what am I doing? Where I am headed, rudderless and pointing nowhere? And there's the rub-a-dub-dub, one man in a tub. I am like a wave in the ocean, nameless, rolling on and on, merging with other waves, occassionally carrying something with me, but in many ways unremarkable. An anonymous wave, an invisible man, wandering, at moments even seeming purposeful (illusion), yet undistinguished from any other. And unto this wave--me--much has been given; and therefore, much, much more is expected. So this ripple needs a task or to produce something in order to create the illusion of immortality. This wave is perfectly comfortable in general blending in with the sea around it, to be at one with nature rather than a stark monument. I mistrust the passing glories of the world. Mondo Cane would not actually be so bad. Jettison the Sic Gloria transit mundi. Mrs. Jackson was not royalty, more special than those around her, and anyway, she is dead. But there are all those bills to pay and miles to go, please, before I sleep. The observation behooves me to act. All good transitions need come to an end, and thus, on to Immortal porpoises! Andiamo! Subito! Hurry up, it's late!

the Fall of Middle Age

I think of Hemingway's "Three Day Blow." I don't know if it is appropriate; I read it many, many years ago. The winds whip with a florish around the house and the rain comes down in sheets. There is a fire, now glowing red with coals as it is time for bed, the midnight hour. I have not been drinking bourbon or whiskey, but a mild white wine; potable, buvable, mediocre, no better. The dogs sleep in their places near the fire, waiting for me to brush my teeth and invite them to my bed. I welcome their company on nights like this, as they do my own. I am the alpha animal; they think I am a dog, or that they are human: either way, it works so long as I agree. There are no lights nearby, no neighbors; there is nothing nor nobody to intrude upon our world, except for fatigue. Sleep, Lethe, forgetfulness. I wonder now, still young enough and healthy, how I can give up even one minute to sleep, when I know how, years down the line, I would pay so dearly to have this time and energy again. I would sell my soul, if I thought I had one. Is this the time to pull an all nighter, to just say I only live once and I must push, exhaust myself because I can? I think, not this night, like many other nights, yet special. The lull and warmth of sleep beckons. I need to dream and wake, hopefully refreshed, to confront the morrow, another day.

On the Move, Again

End of June, we move out of Stonepile for summer tenants. End of July we move out of Congdon Street and leave a very small-minded landlady behind. Move to Thayer Street, to an apartment that had every window sealed closed, was unclean and unpainted. Painted the upstairs and opened the windows; it is far nicer than it was, but why are we doing this for someone else's benefit? During a heat wave? Is there karma? Our old landlady stole half our deposit, even while saying we left the place cleaner than any tenant ever had before. Asshole. Now end of tenancy at Stonepile. We will go there tomorrow. All this moving. It is a good thing, but it will be nice to settle down somewhere. We are well into our 50s and living like college students. On the other hand, it is young and fun. "More funner," as someone I know would say. I worry about squandering our scarce resources.

The Tenants Are Coming

Thank god for tenants! It's like before a party, only better. All that cleaning and organizing. We spend weeks upon weeks readying the premises for The Tenants. They've paid good money; its incumbent on us to do the best we can. And we outdo ourselves. Had you seen the place 48 or 24, or for that matter only hours before we vacated our house, you would have said it couldn't be done. The place is better than ever, though there is still work to perform. Much work. But we spent $35,000 on the roof, and that is more than anyone ever spent at a single time on the place. A beautiful cedar roof. And new curtains, a new wall, a new porch, a new trellis (partially made before we ran out of time). And without the tenants, we could not have attempted doing what we did. We don't even know The Tenants, but we will meet them when we garden and mow the lawn. They have been here before, several times, so we know they should not be abusive. We will find out in August when we return. Let's hope for the best. For now, we have a break from all that never ending, if rewarding work.

The Roof

After years of deliberation, the roof at Stonepile is nearly rebuilt. After years of wondering how, we have done it with red cedar, better than it has ever been done before, and more expensively than I would have ever believed. But it has been done 'right.' It will not leak in my lifetime, as full and long as I can imagine it to be. The entire roof has been surfaced with a water and ice shield material from, appropriately, Grace, and then with 30 pound roofing felt, and then with the shingles from the forests of British Columbia. The lead flashing around the chimney has been completely redone, the rotten raker boards have been replaced, every valley flashed with copper and 'woven' with compound, beveled cuts in the shingles. We can be justly proud that the job has been done so well. The cost? I don't know because the bills are not all in, but more than a year at private day school, and less than a year at Princeton, so far. The shingles themselves are no further apart than a dime, tighter than I might have done them myself. This roof will keep us dry, and keep us thinking that we have done right by Stonepile. Amen!

Rock On

I went to my first Rock and Roll concert in many years last week. It was in an arena setting, Brown University's Meehan Center, the unfrozen hockey rink. I went with my wife, and my teenage daughter. It was her first such concert. We, her parents, were the among the very eldest present and she at 14 was among the youngest. There were three bands, the first named "OK, Go" and the last, the one we wanted to see, calls itself "Wilco." It was Spring Weekend at Brown, a Thursday night kickoff to a wild weekend, no doubt. The concert ended at 12:30 after two encores. It was a great concert. Wilco and especially its lead singer slash song writer Jeff Tweedy, was fantastic. Kind of quiet after the incredible volume of the first two bands, so much better and more subtle. Sophie was mortified to be there with her parents, but when the lights went down, she seemed fine. We were all blitzed by the decibel level. Deafening, literally. She was so excited to tell her schoolmates about it the next day. I think the novelty of going to a rock concert with one's parents may have been cool once she got past the thought of it, The Horror. Her classmates may have thought: I wish that my parents would have taken me--no way that was going to happen. Well, that's the fantasy, from a parent's perspective only. One schoolmate, a junior, attended the concert and he have to leave before the encores which were the best part of the concert, by the way. So our little teenager grew a bit in the hipster quotient, and became a little bit more self confident. And we have all been humming or singing Wilco songs for a week now, morning noon and night. "Thanks, Ma," for listening to WFUV all those years, and thanks for noticing that Wilco was in town on that telephone pole, and for insisting that we go see them.

Death Stalks the Laneway

Time for change can be metaphoric: it can also be for real. Right now, things are very mortal, dark and dull. Death stalks the laneway. Uncle Bill, 84, is expected to return home tomorrow after two weeks at Charlton Hospital in Fall River. Not to live, but to die at peace in his own bed instead of in a hospice, the same bed where his wife and mother-in-law each passed away, not very many years ago.

Poor Uncle Bill. I wonder if he will have enough presence of mind left to just look out the window across the fields to the sea? Or whether this gesture is more for the daughters' benefit than his own? Will he be conscious? Will he know what is happening or even care where he is? Uncle Bill. Uncle Wiggily. Uncle "Nud" I have loved him like a father, sometimes more. He has known me forever, from the beginning of my time. Who else is left? Everyone says, “it's time, it is all for the best,” wondering what he lives for. What presumption! He lives to live, of course, for life itself, just as he did in a Japanese concentration camp in WWII. He lives for his daughters, his granddaughters and for sitting in the warm sun, shirtless.  His books of crossword puzzles and acrostics. For picking grass growing in the gravel of his drive, for picking raspberries by the Hodgson House Camp in the summer and the fall, for the trips to the market, to the Post Office and the dump. He did all this until the last weeks of his life, until days before. I saw him in the Post Office. I passed him driving to the dump. I loved going up the lane for the quick loan of a tool, a screwdriver or a nail, or for his cookies, cans of beer, of soda, and for the shared experience of the same boarding school, of Harvard, or Princeton. And for innumerable Thanksgivings up in the Sherer Hollywoods, of tennis at the Sakonnet G&T Club and at “Namquit Farm.” I still see in my mind’s eye walking across the Battlefield with Aunt Bobby, a basket with a bottle of gin and tonic water, probably some lemons. I see him now, faded red cotton shorts, boat shoes, a bleached out madras shirt, his little notebook in its pocket. We shared some pedigree and lots of time. We shared the laneway. Bill was always funny with Sally, with Sophie, and with the dogs. It was just so incredibly hard to communicate with these last years, no voice, no patience to write things down. I could understand him best when we were alone and I could concentrate on every word he attempted to say. It became increasingly difficult to understand him; I don’t know why. I don’t know why he chose not to use that electronic device which worked so well, once you got used to it. He was always having to clear his throat. Alone with his cable television, asking if I wanted to come and watch something, even if he were asleep in his room. Uncle Bill almost always turned in about six or seven p.m. at the latest. Uncle Bill! He wasn’t even a real uncle; he was my first cousin-in-law.

There is more going down on the laneway; this in not all by any means.  This in not all by any means. There's Kathleen, across the lane a non-smoker with cancer of the lung, and Mrs. Reynolds, who just sold her field for almost a million dollars less than she was asking for, with terminal breast cancer. And of course, there's my own mother, dead in 1994 of colon cancer, and Uncle Charlie who had colon cancer as well. Uncle Bill will join the dead, his beloved Aunt Bobby in Swan Point, right here in Providence along the Seekonk River. Time. We come and go. What lingers of the good and bad in us? Who determines our contribution or our mark? Who gives us our final grade? Who says we enter the Kingdom, or go to Hell? Bill did not buy into religion. He was an atheist. He did not, despite an intense indoctrination into the Episcopalian faith, adopt it as his own. He did not turn to God when he was imprisioned by the Japanese. This is our mortality, Bill would say. We are the culmination of our possessions and our children and our work. If we are artists and create something that outlives us, we are very rare. Most careers do not do not create much more than weatlth. Not a life commuting to and from Boston and an insurance corporation. He had some fun with it, I think. It is hard to see his soul invested there. Life's effort translates into land or things, or else just memories. Good gestures. Good words, kindnesses, and generosities. And then, with or without much commotion, we are gone, the final show sometimes mistaken for our worth. What then of those who make the error of outliving all our peers? What determines "greatness?" Is it left to the whim of whomsever can say or tell a story best? Or simply through silence? Do not look to me to know: I find things out usually by knowing what they are not, more than by what they are. Time for Change. A changing of the guard. There are only a few old soldiers left. There's Joe, and Dad. The rest are history, another generation forms the next, front line in the war of humanity against death. In this regard, we may as well just march over a tall cliff, at least until science discovers a way we will never have to die. And then, who knows? That could be a fate worse than life?

Watch Out for the Neighbors

Watch Out for the Neighbors

Al Zeimer looked back at the sink.  A poltergeist had turned the running water off.  He filled the water kettle and turned back to the stove.  The burner he had just ignited—he had heard the sparker click click click—was off again, somehow.  How could this happen?  It was the ghost of mischief, the trickster of his memory, “a Spaniard in the works.”  He was thinking.  What was it now?  The coffee grinder.  Who put it away?  And what happened to the great big bag of beans?  They were in the freezer, no?  No.  they were in the cabinet with the pots and pans.  Nothing quite made sense.  Things were never where they ought to be.  Things were off when they should be on.

Mr. Murphy, on the other hand, penalized those who did not do things “right” like leaving the car in neutral instead of the parking gear, the glass of water next to the pillows by the bed, so clearly a disaster-waiting-to-happen, or so he thought.  Mr. Murphy loved the “Never happened to me before response” he sometimes heard.  The “it's O.K.s” and the “thanks-I-know-what-I'm-doing” replies.   Preventative maintenance was Mr. Murphy’s thing.  Procrastination, manyana, never do today what can be put off until tomorrow was not Murphy’s kind of thing at all.

Mr. Goldberg was a different sort.  He’d get all nervous and flustered over things.  Like rushing to do the dishes or trying to do too much too fast or all at once.  And almost inevitably, one thing would cascade into another, causing great catastrophic events, like dishes falling off the counter or the extra bag of groceries tearing and the mayonnaise jar breaking all over the walkway to the kitchen because he thought he had three hands, always attempting to do too much.  One by one, you could see a succession of things happen, like the dominoes all aligned across the floor.  One slip, and they all fall down.  It was funny that his mother-in-law, a Mrs. Murphy, no relation to the Murphy man who did things so carefully, had a bed that folded up against the wall, a mother full of latent energy just waiting to unfold.

Nearby, down the street, there was a curious lady named Gladys Stichintyme.  She was from the Caucasus.  She thought Mr. Murphy was a fool because he worried so much, always puttering around with things, "such a fusser," she often said.  She liked Mr. Goldberg better, though my, what a calamity he could be!  She absolutely, positively refused to drive with him, not any where, place or time.  

When Goldberg or Zeimer, or Zeimer and Murphy got together, just fugedaboudit!  It amazed Gladys that they even returned in one piece or at all.  Truth was, they did not always come back in a timely manner.  Once a strange taxicab pulled up in front of their house and let them out.  Gladys wanted to ask what happened, but did not dare.  She’d be labeled a nosy stoop-sitter.  Another time, and this was more amazing, old Zeimer and Goldberg went off to the Home Depot and they came back three weeks later in a brand new car.  Apparently Zeimer was navigating, and Goldberg’s addiction to organized clutziness had led them down the Road to Disaster, and Zeimer couldn’t find Road to Disaster anywhere on the map and they ended up in Erehwon, listening to Neil Young’s song “Everybody knows... this is nowhere."  They were so engrossed with this amazing place they decided to hang out, not remembering where else to go.  Gladys called this a ‘Goldberg variation.’  Never a single day was it dull around these guys.  

Wanted: Work

Charles... would like to speak with you about work.

He is 55 years young, a multiple career changer, a graduate of Princeton University (English, honors thesis work) and the publishing procedures course at Radcliffe, having lived and worked for twenty-five years in and around New York City as a resident and as a commuter, only moving to Rhode Island in 2005. He has ten years’ experience as an editor and a writer; twelve years’ as a clothing and textile manufacturing executive specializing in government contract work, three years’ as a toy manufacturing entrepreneur and many years of fundraising work—school, town, college, church and hospital—both as a professional and as a volunteer.

His primary work assets are excellent communication skills, organization and sense of responsibility, trustworthiness, a seasoned “generalist” perspective and his unique sense of humor. He took a year long, intensive Microsoft Office Suite course in 2002 and is computer competent. Charlie’s wife Sally is an artist and his daughter Sophie is a high school freshman. They also have two dogs and a summer house in Little Compton, which makes southeastern New England the family’s strong geographical preference.

Midlife is a challenging time. In Charles’ view, it provides strengths because he brings much more as a "Boomer," not less to the table than ever before and certainly more than most younger people seeking the same job. His having been around the block, successful in a variety of environments requiring diverse sets of skills are no liability! He has worked alone as an entrepreneur and as a consultant and in a corporate environment on a team, and he understands people and office politics well as a result of his breadth of experience. He is in excellent health, energetic as a runner, cross country skier and sailor and he has the youthful outlook of a much younger parent. Charlie possesses the curiosity and excitement associated with a creative personality and someone who has been willing to take risks. Charles is also the product of six years in American and English private boarding schools, plus two premier Ivy league universities and families with colonial Massachusetts Yankee blood, a former member of Princeton’s elite “Ivy Club” and the N.Y.Y.C. so he is, therefore, socially very well-prepared, an intangible 'plus' in many situations. He also knows himself well and is willing to work harder than most people. Equally important, Charles wants to make a substantial commitment to work that will prove a worthy investment of his time and energy at this stage of his working life.

If you wish to communicate further, please do so, at any of the above addresses...

Looking Back

I'm here now, no longer there. I wonder what it is like for them now in our old house? Do they like it, still, as we did for seventeen years? Do they see things that are not right and say, "damn Charlie," and cuss? The winter's been so incredibly mild, they've hardly experienced winter like weather, yet. Can it be that this will be the winter of no snow? Who says there is no "global warming" with a straight face or grey matter behind it? Each weather system that marches through without the requisite combination of moisture and cold is an opportinity lost, and there are decidedly limited opportunities. We've had several close calls, but we've had rain in buckets instead of a blizzard, and a few doses of arctic cold, always in alternation. The way I see it, we have about seven weeks of winter left.

What else do I miss in the old place? The look of the woods in the back, the sight of snow on Sophie's playhouse and the barns. And the frequent trips to the Post Office, those random conversations there, with Charlie and Laurie and Joe, or outside, in the parking lot, every time I visited. We do not have this here. I miss skating on the lakes, especially on the black ice, long tracks cut into the surface by hour after hour of figure eights. This year, it cannot have even frozen at all. I miss Lake Oscaleta and hiking up to the "Lookout" in Mountain Lakes Camp, and my jogging routes. I miss seeing a handful of friends, my old officemates, lunches with Lou at the Blue Dolphin in Katonah or the old "Hay Day" in Ridgefield, where we would sit next to the New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast while she drew, pretending not to know exactly who she was. I missed the annual workshop party for the first time since 1991. All in all, it is surprising how little else I am missing, after so many years in that place. It is more interesting here, where we are now, where things and people and places are mostly new and I hope this only gets better as time wears on.