Leaves Love. They Aren't

 

When I was in Annapolis earlier this year, for my aunt’s funeral, I took an early walk around the city and stumbled upon the campus on St. John’s College.  I’d long admired the program, with its focus on the classics and its best of both campus world’s with one there and the other in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which had always sounded dreamy.  Strolling on the campus I spied a huge tree that I didn’t recognize and my Seek app told me was a “willow oak.”

 

The nursery I’d gotten my chestnut trees from in Georgia, Tyty Nursery won’t ship trees after June.  It has something to do with blooming and it’s all in the tree and the consumer’s best interest I’m sure.  Accordingly, I’d given up on ordering anything new.  Bouncing around on line though I stumbled upon Nature Hills Nursury, in Omaha Nebraska and they don’t seem to give a damn what time of year it is.  Willow oaks of four feet in height could be had for a mere forty dollars and about ten days ago I impulse-purchased two of them.  They arrived today. 

Online it seems that don’t grow naturally much beyond Maryland.  Still, I matched the requisite growing zone.  The live oak, by comparison did not and thought it looked beautiful I imagined it wilting in the ‘live’ winter we have here that isn’t kind to droopy, moss-covered things.  My wife, was skeptical: “we have too many oaks.”  “Ah but look at these leaves, love.  They aren’t like any other tree we have.”  “Put them over there, away from the house.”   I found a place down from the driveway near a smaller tree that had died, where there was light and then another spot that could be seen, from a distance on the back porch.  Siting them out I tried to imagine them as towering hundred-year-old giants, though I’d never see them that way. 

 

It’s been raining a lot and the soil, particularly along the slope where I dug the first whole was very wet.  I planted it, filled it in with potting soil and topped it with mulch and some tree-food and went off to dig the second hole.  In this location, the soil was wetter still.  Water seemed to be flowing into the hole once I’d dug it.  I had a call to do around 3:30PM and went back inside before I planted it in determined to have a look and confirm that willow oaks like water.  I found two or three articles that seemed to confirm my prejudice, they seem to be hearty drinkers.

Back outside, later on the hole looked like a small pond.  I filled it as best I could with potting soil and placed the tree in, telling myself I needn’t water it.  I wonderd if the two trees were already speaking to one another counselling me on a soil-istic upgrade.  Covered now in mulch it looks alright, but I’m concerned, I suppose that this may not be the ideal environment. The sun will be out tomorrow.  Let’s see how it goes. 

Wednesday, 7/14/21     

                              

The Source Like Herodotus

 

Conference calls.  Some people I suppose, certainly some of my team in China and Korea are back to meeting people face to face.  Some people are going to conferences.  I’m still a virtual attender to everything.  I rise early.  On Tuesday’s that means 4:00AM, to attend virtual meetings.  The etiquette is different for each one.  For some they expect to see you.  For many it doesn’t matter.  For some it would be nice to see you but I demur.  It’s four in the morning, thank you.  And for some, it would probably be better if I was on video, as I’d be less inclined to mute and make the coffee and empty the dishwasher.          

Back-to-back meetings takes me to beyond ten in the morning.  I might go back to bed by now but I decide to go out and make a bit more progress on the lawn with our new electric mower.  The poor device can’t take on the lawn the way it is, with weeks over overgrowth, set as it is on the lowest setting to the ground.  The crew- cut will need to wait and I raise the setting and all continues on a bit more effectively, down in the furthest section of the grass from my office window. 

I’ve read “The Analects” a few times.  They’re dry and difficult to follow the clear logic of, the way it is with Mencius “Confucian” writings which follow.  But I’d never read the Shang Shu which is also attributed to the great Sage.  Why not?  It is certainly more fun.  And here is the source like Herodotus for so much of what later comes down to us as this history that precedes it.  This is where we learn about Yao and Shun and controlling the waters.  This is why people speak authoritatively about the Xia Dynasty, when we really don’t know much at all.  And this is where the Duke of Zhou and the ideal-type of Chinese heaven on earth is established. 

 

Looking back over just what I’d dog-eared I’m a bit crestfallen to find that most of it concerns admonitions against drunken officials suggesting what punishments would be appropriate and when to show leniency.  Perhaps I was perplexed by how that could stand alongside the hard drinking Qi_Lu traditions that come down to us through the ages.  Further along though, regardless, in anchoring a the building blocks for how it is Chinse constructed their prehistoric history and their idealized rulers and dynastic cycles.  As Martin Palmer points out in the introduction, this work was at the top of the list for texts Qin Shi Huang wanted to destroy and we are lucky to have this come down through the ages as he very nearly succeeded. 

 

 

 

Tuesday, 7/13/21                                   

These Black Sponges Will

 

This is the rainy season.  I thought the rainy season was April, which this year continued on with a furry into the “May- flowers” section of spring.  It’s mid-July and the rain forest vibe continues.  The heat and humidity build up thicker and weightier during the day.  Sometime late afternoon too much water has gathered in the heavens and it’s obvious that these black sponges will need to need to squeeze their contents back down on to the earth.  A flash in the distance.  Then a rumble.  Another flash, that feels closer and is then confirmed much louder with crack, seconds later.  One, two, five, and then seventeen hundred drops. 

 

I beat the rain today during an early afternoon ride north towards Rosendale, as the sponge clouds were still drawing water.  I stopped randomly a few hundred yards from where Old Huguenot Street cross the trail, near Garvin’s and walked about obligatorily looking for some new species or other to identify.  I found a tree which Seek called a “Rock Elm” which can be found here but is more common to the west.  Not much else beyond that and a few photos of someone’s red house and later my bicycle in the distance. 

Monday night and dinner was mine.  We hadn’t wound up having a pizza night on Friday, so I felt OK plucking out the store-bought pizza dough from the bottom of the vedge tray in the fridge.  I’ve used this enough to know that it’s really the right amount of dough for two calzones.  If you try to make one large one there will be lots of extra dough that cooks out thick, flavorless, needlessly.  I made the one with chorizo sausage and the other with onions and mushrooms, both with ricotta and mozzarella. The pesto sauce I had in mind though had gone bad so tomato sauce would have to do. 

During dinner one of my daughters got on to the signs of the zodiac and with our curiosity piqued we encouraged her to read off one and then another person’s characteristics.  Reasonably well written we were all quickly finding certain traits that were remarkably on-point, glossing over whatever it was that didn’t seem appropriate, piling on my wife we all yelled out “that’s you!” which she emphatically denied.  And when we were done we could start all over comparing our traits to the characteristics of our animal years in the Chinese calendar.

 

 

 

Monday, 07/12/21

 

Lord Zhuang Was Irascible

The “Zuo Zhuan” is the only primary source account of the Spring and Autumn period in Chinese history.  There is a 2243-page, complete translation of the book translated by Stephen Durrant, Wai-yee Li and David Schaberg, as well as their translation of “selections” which I finished today.  Discrete entries, grouped together thematically rather than chronologically, in this Selection I found myself dog-earing pages that caught my attention, like the story of the hapless Lord Zhuang who was obsessed with cleanliness and, frustrated over where someone had urinated had inadvertently burned himself to death in 507; “Lord Zhuang was irascible and obsessed with cleanliness and therefore he came to this end.”  Or Yan Ying’s reply to the Prince of Qi, fifteen years earlier when asked to explain the difference between harmony and unison:

                 

“They are different.  Harmony is like a stew.  Water, fire jerky, mincemeat, salt, and plum vinegar are used to cook fish and meat.  These are cooked over firewood.  The master chef harmonizes them, evening them out with seasonings, compensating for what is lacking and diminishing what is too strong.  The noble man eats and calms his heart.” . . . “If you season water with water, who can eat it?  If the zithers hold to a single sound, who can listen to it?  This is how unison is wrong.”

 

The font must be seven-point or something similarly small which ends up making the reading slow going.  It sat on my bed table, chipped away at for far longer than should have been.  I need to pop my contacts out to comfortably read something so small.  And, once I got into it things flowed well enough and I considered this period in China while Gautama Buddha and Darius I and Themesticles also walked the earth. 

While I was reading about harmonized meats I dozed off and dreamt about the shaved beef in the fridge and a taste of it with tahini sauce the way you might dip such boiled meat into a sauce when eating shuangyangrou and how tasty that would be to recreate.  We have some tahini in the fridge, don’t we?  Potatoes . . . onions, I could taste them in my mind. 

So I created a sauce and sliced the potatoes thin and left the onion chunks large.  I stirred the sauce added the taters and the onions, dropping the beef in piece by piece so they didn’t congeal and sprinkled over it some fresh cut coriander and decided I’d bake it or a bit.  But the sauce ended up being too thick and the tastes suggested something done in unison, something lacking in harmony. 

 

 

 

Sunday, 7/11/21

Real Men Pulled Cords

 

We’d inherited a mower with this house.  I paid to have it fixed twice last year.  The place were we took it to have this done is manned by resentful people who don’t seem to like what they do or necessarily care if anyone ever returns for future services.  Still I return.  Toward the end of last year I filled the mower with the dregs of what we had in the old gas tank and it wouldn’t start. Dreading the return to the repair shop I was determined to dump the gas this year and start anew with fresh gas.  I did so and, of course, the mower still won’t start. 

Meanwhile we have a very affordable service available from the crew that come in the winter to plow our driveway.  They’re indeed so affordable they don’t seem to give a fuck about whether they come or don’t, whether they earn your trust or flaunt it, because they generally have an excuse or place the ETA out days and days and days into the future.  They were to come ‘in a few days” before we went off to Dallas last week.  Basement-level expectations, they did not of course take care of the yard while we were gone.  I wrote them when I returned and am still waiting for a reply. 

 

Enough!  The Mrs. and I headed off to Lowes to buy a new mower.  My wife had sent me an article comparing what’s available these days.  The Honda that cost just over $600. seemed to be the pick of the litter and I was convinced that that would be what we’d buy.  We argued over whether or not the decision was already made.  She wanted to know more about these new electric motors and somehow I imagined that this was somehow something that weak people did.  Real men, pulled cords, pushed mowers and filled them full of smelly petrol. 

There at Lowes my wife started up a conversation with a young gent, who introduced her to the Ego, electric mower.  Rudely, I mentioned that we had many more acres to mow than the two she had aluded do and directed things over to the Honda’s.  Marc, the young clerk was happy to tell me all about them but.  Realizing I’d been a bore, I asked him to tell us more about the Ego’s as well.  And as he did, he did so very convincingly.  Slowly, I let my prejudice fall and my pride receded and I embraced the notion of spending our $600 dollars on this electric mower.  Later Marc gave us a tutorial on cooking stoves as well.  Unassuming, knowledgeable, affable I asked if he got commissions on these sales and when he said “no” and after I’d told him that I manage sales teams and he was good, and after I’d determined to walk out with the new EG\go mower, I did what I have never done before.  I reached in my wallet, pulled out a twenty and went on a search or Marc, who I tipped for all his insights.  Shit.  We robotically tip bitchy idiots at restaurants for much less service and this young gent had actually taught me a thing or two. 

 

I took the Ego around the yard today and . . . it was quiet, effective and almost fun. 

 

 

 

Saturday, 07/10/21

Down There Now Nibbling

 

Staring up at the Gunks.  It’s been raining and raining but now, suddenly there’s a clearing and the skies are blue  I’d called my dad at 8:00AM when we usually head out.  It was raining.  “No Thanks.”   It’s 10:30AM.  I just called him back. “No thanks.”  Should I head up by myself?  I imagine the pristine setting at Lake Minnewaska.  I might find some chestnut oaks and bear oak shoots to bring back down here.  Some ground hog or deer,  must have nibbled away the striped maple I have in a pot on the side of the house.  The unsuspecting deer is down there now nibbling at the elderberry.  Tempted to escort him off the lawn but I don’t suppose it really matters. 

 

I’ll probably just do for a bike ride.  It’s the third day of a fast and it feels like it.  My normal absurd Friday morning schedule was twisted around last night with an early evening nap that yielded energy to stay productive from a call that ended at 11:00AM till the one that started at 2:00AM.  From there I was into the routine Friday morning calls that took me till 5:00AM.  I napped then before a call I’d unhesitatingly agreed to have moved till 7:00AM.  Hazy I’d set the alarm for 7:55AM.  I took the call then.  And by then, the day was underway.  

I’m listening to Trouble’s show, from yesterday for the second time.  In honor of Bastille Day she'd arranged the whole program to profile the Francophone.  We’ve got this circular gloom of Serge Gainsbourg’s appropriately titled “Comme un Boomerang” on the air just now.  There's a lovely black and white version of the clip with photos of him.  I just took the time to look up the English translation of the lyrics.  Would it surprise you that I’m not surprised that the song is about a hopeless, unhealthy, alcohol-fueled love affair?

The deer is eating grass, but he’s getting really close to the apple tree I’d planted not long ago.  That’s a trip wire, Bambi.  You can eat the weeds on the ground but you reach up to denude that granny smith tree I’m coming after you.  Over on the porch there’s a squirrel who is sopping wet.  He stood there and scratched his underarm over and over again.  I guessed that he had a tick or two.   Squirrels no doubt can be annoyed and perhaps killed by such things too.  The clouds have covered back up most of the blue.  Not clear that I would have avoided rain up on the Gunks, even if I’d gone. 

 

 

Friday 07/09/21

When It Really Rains

 

The other day I biked in the rain.  Drizzle really, underneath the canopy it was hardly noticeable.  The forecast suggested rain all day long today.  But there was a period of mere “scattered showers” from noon till two and, as the rain stopped and the clouds broke some I suited up in my anti-tick garb, pants and gaders that have all been sprayed with napalm and casually made my way down to the rail trail. 

 

Within moments of setting off it started to pour.  Crossing Cedar Lane I was doused and I considered returning.  Eh?  What did I care.  You get wet.  You get dry.  I sped along reckoning that soon I’d be beneath the canopy.  And indeed, soon I was beneath the tall deciduous tree cover and I made an important discovery that when it rains, when it really rains hard, this doesn’t make a bit of fucking difference.  The leaves catch the deluge and send it right on down when the rain is fierce.  Summer time, and then, just like that, the rain ceased and I pedaled along sopping wet but no wetter for the onward effort. 

Napping in the afternoon my older daughter burst in and hesitated.  “What?” I asked, newly awakened, annoyed.   “We have an ant crisis.” She informed me.  Bug crises seem to follow my daughters with great regularity.  There’s always one more bug for me to kill and I dismissed this call for help and attempted to return to sleep.  And later, when I went to pull out my Planter’s sunflower seed canister, I noticed that there was indeed an infestation of the nearly microscopic red ants that I’d notice a few of the other day, mobbing the cabinet and most of everything within.  Oh dear. 

 

My wife and summoned our bug-loving daughters as this was as good a chance as any to review just why it was we needed seal bags shut and not leave things in here half opened.  The ants had closed a pincer move on just about everything of interest to them on all three shelves and we pulled everything out, boiled a pot of water and set about throwing away anything that was open into the trash and anything that could be salvaged into the sink.  Chief sanitation officer, I suggested that rather than tossing the garbage into the garage we ferry it up to the end of the driveway where trash collection takes place, far, far away from the kitchen.   We’ll be need a shop now to replenish things.

Thursday, 07/08/21

Nebraska Will Ship Me

 

When I was in Annapolis for a funeral last month, I marveled at a number of tremendous oaks that lined the neighborhood and the campus of St. John’s College.  I would never have surmised that they were quercus phellos but for the assistance of my Seek app. The trip we took last week introduced me to a number of other new oaks, like the Laurel Oak and today, with idle time between one must-do task and another I looked on the web site of the TyTy Nursery in Georgia were I bought my chestnut trees from.  The Laurel Oak and the Willow Oak were there, but they don’t ship again until next February.  Nature Hills Nursery however, in Omaha Nebraska, will ship me a Willow Oak today.  So, impulsively, I asked them to send me two. 

My wife likes flowers.  She doesn’t seem to like oaks.  We have too many, she suggests.  The front of the yard is certainly dominated by a few mighty Ents.  There’s a southern red oak, tilting away from our home which I haven’t otherwise seen growing naturally around here.  I’d guess it’s a hundred years old and well antedates the house’ construction, though I might be mistaken.  Across the drive way is a black oak that nearly as old.  The leaves are broader, darker and the crowns shape is completely distinct.  Thirty yards to the right is a big pin oak and down the driveway is the common northern red oak.  This tree is mightiest of all and also the dirtiest.  I drops tons of crap on our roof is marked for death by my wife. 

 

Down on towards the rail trail there are a few naturally growing white oaks with their distinctive bark and leaves.  On a good day Seek suggests the one we’ve let grow by the shed is a scarlet oak.  But I have my doubts. Just the other day, it contradicted itself, saying the sapling was a northern red, which makes much more sense, there beneath the great northern red, mother-tree’s canopy.   I went to a high school called Oakwood.  The yearbook was called the Quercus.  My daughter goes there now.  I have an affinity for the tree, certainly, though I never knew anything about different species before the last year or two.  Now I’m keen to introduce more odd oaks on to this plot.  I don’t know how much of their growth I’ll live to see, but regardless, it will be interesting to consider how it is their leaves turn and fall, and how they affect the view of the canopy.  I’ve imagined placing them at an angle on opposite side of the driveway, halfway up to the top. 

I took a call at 1:30AM with a prospect in Islamabad.  I prefer to get up early for a call, rather than stay up late.  So, I napped late in the day and prepped for the call and was ready for things by the time we started.  A video call, I thought I ought to put a shirt on over my grubby black tee and soon was chatting with the two men on the other line who surprised me by affably insisting that I was the spitting image of Quaid-i-Azam, the Great Leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.  My hair was pulled back into a ponytail that they couldn’t seen and I looked down at my image on the screen.  Incredulous I inquired if we were talking about the same person, who’s grey hair and high cheekbones I considered in my mind’s eye.  “Well thank you.” I suggested, thinking that this was probably much better than being told I looked like Mountbatten.

Wednesday, 07/07/21

The Only Way Down

I was twenty-three?  Once.  I must have been twenty-three when joined along with a few other guys I knew and headed down to Guatemala for the summer. We took a seven-hour bus ride from Guatemala City out to Tikal.  A foot taller than most passengers, remarkably uncomfortable I seem to recall I read Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway on the way out and was calmed by all her nervous energy over place settings.  

 

I remember the remarkable sound of the screaming jungle cicada and the dull monotony of the eggs and refried beans, that was they had for a veg, you see, and the extraordinary pyramid tops that rose above the canopy.   You could climb up to the top tier and then for the final ascent there was a rudimentary iron ladder crudely bolted into the ancient structure.  From there, twenty, thirty feet above the jungle you gaze green in every direction till the trees met the cloud line. 

One afternoon, in sweltering humidity, gazing out, we saw he clouds congeal with moisture in the distance.  It would rain soon.  Yes.  We all agreed.  A daily occurrence here in the rain forest.  Why not enjoy the downpour?  And then miles off a ferocious flash.  Many seconds later the roar of thunder:  "That was amazing!  I know.  There!  Another.  Beautiful!"  The thunder following much quicker now.  "It’s coming this way."  And it was around this moment we considered the fact that the only way down from the tallest point in the forest, was a ten-foot iron ladder.  Grateful indeed, when I was finally able to let go of it and continue on down the steps to safety.

 

My mind was back in Guatemala today, on my bike ride.  The storm clouds were gathering.  I was heading south, towards Gardiner and as I passed the apple orchard with the uninterrupted view of the Gunks and beyond, I could see that we’d have rain soon.  The drizzle started on my ride home but it’s never so bad under the protection of the tall deciduous tree-line.  I was counting seconds between flashes and thunder twenty-minutes later when I approached the orchard and the big trembling aspen that had fallen last year.  Another flash and the roar of immediacy only a few seconds behind.  I was not higher than the canopy, but I was the only iron thing ambling along a flat field between one stand of trees to another. Quickening my pace, I reasoned that if it were to happen, it would at least be a quick and thorough demise. 

 

 

 

Tuesday 07/06/21

Now She Was In

 

Ambiguity.  We’d paid for this New York Times summer camp for our younger daughter.  The topic concerns theatre and food, which augers for something once-over-lightly, but we let her choose and choose she did.    They acknowledged the payment.  But the sign-in information was still forthcoming. Last night, Sunday, July 4^th,.  I wrote the relevant people and when I went to bed my wife asked me to be sure to check if there was a response before the beginning of the course, at 9:00AM this morning.

I’d been up with calls from 4:00AM as 9:00AM rolled around we still had no way to commence things.  I gave the switchboard that was supposed to open at 9:00AM a ring.  Without too much hassle I was connected with a human being, who gave off the strong impression that this was not the first time he’d stared down this problem.  He agreed to send off the login credentials for my daughter immediately.  They came as promised. And now she was in and waiting for it to begin. 

 

Not too long after my wife arose, slowly.  Yes, it's Monday.  Yes, there is plenty of work to be caught up on after our long road trip the week before.  But it’s a national holiday and last night we got awfully close.  We’ve “only” three more episodes to go.  Let’s finish viewing this damned, “Game of Thorne’s” series. This battle with the night walkers has been building for eight seasons and nearly one hundred episodes.  Finally, one hopes the ghouls with the blue eyes, will finally mount their inevitable assault, over the wall that is there to protect against them.

My younger daughter can’t believe it.  My older one is in disbelief.  But here I am on a Monday mid- morning watching television with my wife.  Not just considering television but binge-watching an entire season to closure, as if I had nothing better to do.  And I feel compelled to finish the damned thing precisely because it is cutting into things I should otherwise be doing.   Three long episodes, the first of which was the most satisfying.  Everyone cheers for Arya . But the last two episodes stretch on implausibly.   Binge watching is a lot less satisfying than binge reading.

Monday, 07/05/21

Had Belonged to Rutherford

 

It’s the Fourth of July.  Everyone else in the world seemed to know this.  A client in Australia wished me as much.  Another in the UK drew reference.  But I don’t think anyone expects that I’ll be on holiday tomorrow.  The neighbors have invited us all to a cookout.  A ‘normal’ Fourth of July, just like Joe Biden promised?  There’s that wonderful song by the Brazilian maestro Tim Maia who’d lived for years in the U.S. and spoke and sang in excellent English that a groovy day would be like the “Fourth of July.”   He must of sang that back in 1973 and been channeling Fourth of July cookouts he’d attended a few years earlier.  Unfiltered.  He makes no apologies about the reference.

My mom and sister came over mid-morning to pick up her son who’d spent the night with us.  She brought a bunch of strudel over that was delicious.  With their arrival the younger one arose and came down to tell us of her days in Dallas.  Her friend’s mom had gone all out and taken them to a drive through zoo, ice skating, horseback riding.  Yes, yes.  Dallas was very cool!.  And now, back home the party was over.  She, like her cousin had to get ready for camp, she online with the New York Times and he, parading across Brooklyn to bang tennis balls. 

 

We strode up our hill around 3:00PM.  I checked the names of a few of our neighbors to remember, as I’d otherwise be lost.  Alas, our road, Route 208, isn’t very hospitable for walking along, with no shoulder and people speeding around the corner at sixty-miles-per-hour.  I purposely strode on the pavement, to force the cars slower.  And its only three driveways down and soon we were entering our neighbors living room, considering her watercolor of the same view we have. 

At fifty-five years of age, I was probably one of the youngest folks there, which was fine for my wife and myself, but the twenty-year old and sixteen-year-old daughter didn’t have much of anyone to speak with besides themselves.  I asked one of the gents who sported a ponytail like me about his work and he mentioned that he cut trees.  Another neighbor whose husband had sadly just passed commented on one the trees in my yard she’d hoped would blow over.  Another neighbor had just lost her husband as well.  But we didn’t dwell on death or topping trees.  Rather we learned what we could about the area and the people who’d lived her before and the way that things at changed and the tale about the house next door that had belonged to Rutherford B. Hayes and his family until it was knocked down, not long ago.  I was glad to have a burger and a frank on the Fourth.  It was nice to mingle about aimlessly among people in a social setting once again.

 

 

 

Sunday, 07/04/21

 

 

As He Stormed Through

 

I was up early enough.  So was my nephew.  I asked but he didn’t seem to want any breakfast.  Rather he was keen to talk to his cousin, but God only knew when that lady was going to rise from her slumbers.  She and her mother were heading into the city today. Somewhere around midnight my little one would be flying into Newark.  They were going to visit a friend of hers and generally make a day of it.  I would chill at home with my nephew. 

He was very keen to show me his Play Station Dungeons and Dragons game.  I dutifully watch as he stormed through Mordor slaughtering orcs with abandon.  Ever the social studies teacher I tried to discern just where it was we were in Mordor.  “Does this game have a map?”  “See there is Mount Doom.”  “Can you go to Mirkwood?”  No.  This all takes place in Mordor, which seemed a rather gloomy place to draw parameters on a game.  Slaughter.  More slaughter.  A bit of danger but then he prevailed and killed more orcs and spiders.  Leap over here.  Crash down on top over there.  I wish I could heal as quick as this guy.  I soon drifted off to sleep, such was the dramatic caliber of all this killing. 

 

He wasn’t into the idea but I talked him into a bike ride with me.  I hadn’t gone riding along the trail in over a week and was keen to get out.  He donned the one helmet we had and after I adjusted the seat on the extra bike we pedaled along through town and down to the bridge over the Wallkill by Springstown Road where as he’d noticed last time, the movie “The Quiet Place” had staged a murder scene. 

 

A fellas night, I made chips and salsa, and a fine dinner of London Broil, baked potatoes and some peas with a salad.  TV dinner it would be.  Just the fellas.  I don’t usually get to do such a thing.  Binge watch ‘Game of Thrones’ while we pile down this food and wait for the ladies to return with his other cousin?  Aye.  That we did.  And once again, I stayed up after everyone else had retired, determined to see this damned series to its end.  Where was I now?  Only a few eipsodes left in season seven and then off to the final year.  

 

 

 

Saturday, 07/03/21

 

What State Are You

Home at midnight from a week of driving on the road, it was good to raid our own refrigerator where there was sharp cheddar cheese and salted sunflower seeds waiting in the cabinets.  The Mrs. made some instant noodles with a big, boiled egg, which hit the spot and then, as they all drifted off to bed, I settled in for one call and then a second and by the time the third was one at sunup and I hit the bed hard and slept till midday.  

My sister and my nephew were up in town.  He’d texted me: “What state are you in?” Which I took initially to mean, which state of mind am I in.  Did we want to go across the Hudson east to see them at my mom’s?  Could we host them over here?  Friday was upon us, and we usually go for pizza but they’d had that just the night before.  I’d had my fill of driving and asked them to join us, over here and set out to the Main Course on Main Street, where I’d ordered more than enough food from.

 

Had I heard of “Summer of Soul?”  Yes.  I had.  Would you like to watch it tonight?  It’s premiering on Hulu?  Will you stay awake if we put it on?”  No hesitation there.  I wasn’t interested in seeing it at a theatre but sure, we had it on and sat dazzled by all the timely talent.  Have you seen it?  Many wonderful performances, and a deft treatment that largely allows the music to speak for itself.  And though there were many heroes that paraded across that stage and many, many moments to enjoy I suppose watching Mahalia Jackson asks Mavis Staples to help her sing, because she isn’t feeling so well only to have her crack the air like lightening.  Having Jessie Jackson explain the last moments of MLK at the Lorraine Motel after just having visited the place was similarly stirring.

 

I’d napped during the day, and everyone seemed to marvel that I hadn’t fallen asleep yet.  My mom and stepdad and sister headed off back home and my nephew stayed behind.  “Yes.” He’d be more than happy to watch the next four episodes of “Game of Thrones” with me.  I’d fallen behind the Mrs. somewhere in Season Six and had some catching up to do.  My nephew had encyclopedic knowledge of the characters and kingdoms and proved and invaluable viewing mate.  Wired, I outlasted even him who begged off after four episodes or so.  I listened to the theme music one last time and began the evening's final show. 

 

 

 

Friday, 07/02/21

Ominous Sounding Iron Gate

Woke up in Roanoke Virginia, which seemed interesting as we were considering various locations to stay for the night.  The Blue Ridge Mountains.  What’s not to like?  We dined the night before in Charlotte, North Carolina at the farm to table joint, Haymaker, which was one of the most memorable meals of the trip, the older one didn’t fancy her ravioli.  We gazed out at the Romare Bearden Park which my wife had strolled about it before we sat down. Alas, we couldn’t see much more of the city.  No, we didn’t bother with the NASCAR museum, nor the Billy Graham library, but regardless we all left with a reasonably warm afterglow of our pass-through the city, which I remembered, as I was leaving was the headquarters for the bank that holds my modest funds. 

 

Today, we’re “close” to home, with only eight hours or so of driving ahead of us.  Determined to afford the older one and the Mrs. one more ‘new ‘state, I convinced myself that the smart thing to do today was to drive up into the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia and consider one last remarkably distinct state, before heading home.  I have some crystalline memories driving through West Virginia thirty years ago and I supposed I wanted to recreate this.  Before leaving the Fairfield by Marriott I looked up some Virginian and West Virginian folk and Piedmont blues.  Doc Boggs, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Blake, Josh White, Buddy Moss and a collection of old-time music from West Virginia with songs like “Cumberland Gap”, “Old Black Dog” and unexpectedly, “Cocaine.”

We drove on up towards the ominous sounding Iron Gate.  And way became ever more mountainous.  It took an hour and half to get to Marlinton and we hadn’t even left Virginia yet.  The gas station was a throw-back with a pump that couldn’t take credit cards.  You had to pay inside and then come out and pay.  But there was nothing to stop you from filling up your tank and driving off, save the worn decals that warned in terse language: “No pay, No License!”  The lady was pleasant inside, but she didn’t have any coffee cold or otherwise.  An hour later we’d made it over a ridge and into Marlinton West Virginia where we saw our first evidence of establishments where we might be able to get some lunch in.  The Locust Hill Inn looked nice, but they weren’t open till dinner. For the second time on the trip, I was referred to as a “Yankee,” by the affable owner who must have seen my plates and asked, “where you from in New York?” He confirmed that he was originally from Buffalo.  “Another damned Yankee.”  We ended up dining at the Greenbrier Grill and Lodge overlooking the ducks and swans on the Greenbrier River which we like the family two tables down tossed bread pieces too.  I’d never had fried pickles.  I liked them.  The young lady at the neighboring table told my wife she liked her yellow sneakers which made her day, on the way out. 

I got tired not long after and asked my wife to take over the driving.  When she did the car GPS announced that we still had eight hours and forty minutes left to drive.  “Yes.” I’d confessed.  “I knew exactly what I was doing.”  But by now it was the afternoon. 3200 miles into this trip we were all ready to be home.  Rested, sort of, I was soon driving again.  George Jones helped.  The rain did not.  There was a lot of round-about driving to get through before we could get back on highway 81.  It might have cost an extra twenty-minutes, but I was determined not to go through northern New Jersey, closed to the City, and rather cut north to Scranton and over to 84.  The rain was miserable, as the evening closed in but 84 felt familiar, even though we hadn’t yet reached New York and by the time we were on the New York State throughway, I didn’t need to listen to Spotify anymore.  I could search for our local radio stations and turn the GPS off. 

Thursday, 07/01/21