The House Of Seven...Volvos

If Life is Learning, one of the things I have Learned is that They stop making the things you like. Several years ago, the heirs of Dr Bronner, be they cursed forever and fall victim to incurable diaper rash, changed the soap I had used for twenty-five years, ruining it, and forcing me to Find Something Else. In 1992, L.L.Bean stopped making the pants I had worn for years, on the very eve of our first trip to China, and there I was, believing I would be heading to the other side of the world with all my pants in shreds and tatters, until, at nearly the very last moment before we headed to the Mysterious East, I found a source for substitute pants in Boston.
But the worst shock was a year and a half later, when upon our return to Maine in the midst of the coldest and snowiest winter we have ever had here, I discovered that Volvo had stopped production of its 240 series cars, vehicles that I felt were the epitome of automotive marvelousness.
We had two at the time, the 1988 wagon we had bought new and fetched from the factory in Gothenburg following our trip to Israel for Rachel's sister's wedding, and the 1986 sedan that we bought in 1991 when Louis was born.
For a time we limped along with just those two. Well, quite a time-- about a decade in fact.
Then I came to the realization that we needed to Prepare For The Future. Volvo was never going to make rear wheel drive cars again, and I was never going to drive front wheel cars. I was 45, and hoping that it was about Mid-Life Time, if not earlier. It was 2002 and the newest 240s were nearly ten years old. Did I, I asked, want to be looking for replacement cars in ten or fifteen or twenty years? No, I answered. What should I do, I asked myself? Prepare, I answered!
And so we began (okay, so it's an editorial "we") Our Quest-- an Automotive Acquisition Campaign. The Goal: to assemble a fleet of twelve operable 240s and a group of parts cars. This would, I felt, enable us to send off each of the boys into the World with a decent, albeit slightly aged, vehicle, and leave us enough cars to see us well into our elderlyness.
In retrospect I see that I should have limited myself to one car per color, or one car per model year, but it's too late for that, and model years and colors aren't the point. The point is to have a working fleet, and we are well on the way. We have Martin's red sedan (1984), the mostly green 1980 former wagon that is now our truck, the white 1987 wagon, the white 1991 wagon, the blue 1986 wagon, and the two aforementioned vehicles, still well running daily drivers, mostly.
Parts cars we have made a good start on as well. There's the wrecked red sedan in our driveway, the blue wagon in the back yard, the white wagon at the auto body shop, another wagon hidden in a garage across town, and a blue sedan next to said garage.
There is a substitute available, actually-- a very similar car. Made with front engine, rear wheel drive, similar capacity, very safe, but sold in the US only with automatic transmissions, and at an unviable cost--$50,000 a pop. So no Mercedes E320s for us. We shall stick with Volvo 240s and drive happily, though perhaps not very rapidly, into the future. It's hard to be pure, but standards must be maintained. In the unforgettable words of the noble Galaxy Quest crew--"Never give up--never surrender!"

Happy Garden-- the vines are creeping up the house, the pansies are still a-bloom, the lilies have come forth and the nasturtiums are going strong.
 

Hump Day

The third week of June delivers with some regularity a slight decrease in the buggy population, a bit of drying of the mud left as a memento of endless April Showers and May Monsoons, a flurry of New Flowers (even some we can identify!), and The Longest Day. I suppose, if one were given to astronomical musings, which we are usually not, that rather than thinking of June 21st or the 22nd as The Longest Day, we might think of it as The Shortest Night. But we are largely, for all our inclinations to push the envelope of bed time, Day People. This is especially true when the weather is pleasant-- bright but not too hot, and devoid, as June often is, of snow and sleet and slush.
But much as we enjoy these long days, I dislike crossing the mark, because as soon we get here, the days immediately start to get shorter, the long slide down to December 21st begins, and even as the weather continues it's odd, time lagged increase of warmth despite fewer minutes of sunshine every day, there seems to be a chill in the heat, a harbinger of long, cold Winter Nights and short, cold Winter Days.
This is ridiculous of course, but there it is. Some people are afraid of cats, others won't fly, and there are those of us who dread the coming of the Summer Solstice because it means the days will start to get shorter. Actually, this makes perfect sense, unlike fear of cats or flight, but one tries to be diplomatic.
Enjoy the weather. It won't last.

Round And Round

The kittens have stumbled upon Many Mysteries since their arrival here two weeks ago. Life is, after all, quite the Mystery to baby cats as everything is New and Strange. One of the Greater Mysteries seems to be the front loading washing machine. If we leave the cover down, the cats will hop up on it and bat at the laundry as it goes around, first one way, then the other. Being unable to reach the moving laundry through the glass door puzzles them.
I can understand that puzzlement, but what puzzles me is their interest in the dishwasher. The cats will sit in front of the closed dishwasher for inordinate lengths of time, usually just staring, but now and again batting at the door. There is nothing to see-- it's a dishwasher door. Nothing moves. All is still. And yet they will stare intently at the door as though watching a team of mice were juggling catnip filled golf balls. What are they seeing? Do they have some sort of X-ray vision that allows them to see the spinning arms, the spraying water?
There are other less profound Mysteries, such as the baffling propensity of the cats to wage war on our bed every morning between 4:00 and 5:00. The waging of war doesn't bother us so much, we just don't understand why this daily Gettysburg must be reenacted in the immediate area of our feet. And given that there are two vessels of cat food, placed immediately next to each other, it is puzzling that they choose to eat not only at the same time, but catty, if you will, corner. That is, their hind ends are next to each other, but the heads cross over, so that the cat on the right eats from the left bowl and the one on the left eats from the right bowl, so one cat is always leaning over the other, and the other is sort of squashed by the one who's having trouble reaching. Why don't they just line up in little parallel cat rows?
So they have their mysteries, and we have ours. We anticipated many things, when these cats came-- an increase in noise and tumult, as well as the fun of having new kittens crashing about-- but we didn't really anticipate this large increase in the amount of Domestic Mystery. Perhaps the cats will come to An Understanding of the washing machine and the dishwasher, and maybe they will grow tired of daily hostilities played out in the mountains of our knees and the valleys between, or at least relocate to some other venue, and then the Level of Mystery will abate.
Then again, with cats, who can say for sure? Perhaps these conundra will vanish only to be replaced by new, improved causes of bafflement.

I had a hunch that hanging several baskets of nasturtiums by the stairs leading to the house would be colorful, but what the picture doesn't convey is the heavenly smell one sweeps through in the transition from outside to in. 

Small Summer

Brunswick, Maine, with a population of about 22,000, is the state's largest town. But if that sounds like there are a lot of people, so many that one could live anonymously, forget it. A trip to the grocery store takes anywhere from fifteen minutes to half an hour longer than it would just getting food because you *will* meet at least some people you know, and some of them might be people you need to Catch Up With, which can take a while.
Maine Street, which is Brunswick's main street, is not long. It would be easy to walk the length of the downtown and back, stopping to gawp at the eleaborate window displays at the furniture store and the Salvation Army and the art galleries, in under half an hour. But it is nonetheless impossible to turn onto Maine Street and drive down for a minute or two without spotting someone you know, either in a car or a truck, or maybe walking along.
Of course, if there is a Big Event-- say the parade at Halloween, or Memorial Day-- then one simply loses count of the people met. This reinforces the dictum that one should Be Nice to people, because one *will* encounter them again...
Of course this meeting of people one knows happens less in the winter, when everyone hunkers down more. You can't really see out of your car very well in winter--the windows are fogged up, there's only sunlight for six hours a day, it snows, the roads are icy so you have to look at where you're going instead of off around. But in the summer time, it's light past 8:00 at night, people Take Walks, linger by the town gazebo, stand around the baseball fields... It's incredibly social, and it's marvelously pleasant to pass the time with people one knows but doesn't see often-- to talk about the weather, the tomatoes, the last parade, the next town meeting, the new sidewalk construction, the children, the new cats, and the hope for Morning Glories creeping up the side of the house...

Proto Flowers. This time of year, all of the sudden seed prices fall through the floor. At ten cents a packet it's tempting to try a few varieties. If even one or two actually grows into a flower, you're not only ahead of the game financially, but you can bask in the glow of success, having grown a mutant asian sunflower From Seed! With over 30 chances to win this agrilottery, I think our chances are fairly good. Stay tuned! 

Cats In The Belfry

We have had cats before. When Rachel and I were first married, a friend of a friend who raised Siamese cats found herself with an unwanted litter. It seems that Poppa had broken through a screen door to get at Mama, and the resultant issue was not pure. So she wanted to divest herself of these half pure-bred Siamese, half who-knows cats. Thus we came to live with Terrance, named for T. H. White. When we lived in the woods in Maine the years following graduation from Brandeis, the cat would go for walks with me through the woods. If the grass and underbrush got too thick, she would hop up on my shoulder and ride there until it was easier for her to walk. She lived with us during the Years In The Bus, when we were graduate students in Michigan, sleeping between us when the temperature fell below zero, waking up to a frozen water dish without complaint, only inquiry.
Back in Maine again, now in our first house in Brunswick, she suffered through the arrival first of Martin, and five years later, Louis. Never afraid of even the most gigantic people, she never liked children--ours or anyone else's.
When we went to China in 1992, we prevailed on our friend Deb to take her in while we were gone. We could have gotten her into China but I was afraid she might become lost or eaten there, and thought she would be safer in Brunswick. She did very well at Deb's house, and in fact the two of them bonded to the extent that prior to our return at the end of 1993, Deb asked if Terrance might not stay with her rather than return to Chez Connelly. We had gone to China with two children and were coming back with three, and so decided that everyone concerned would be happier that way, we decided to let Terrance stay with Deb.
We visited her now and again as she became a senior cat, and in time she died, having lived 19 years. She was one of the smartest cats I have ever known, and a pleasant companion. We had a great time together.
Well, somehow, as the years passed, I found myself developing an allergy to cats. This, combined with our frequent travel and the growing number of children underfoot led to our not getting any replacement cat. Our life was hectic enough, and if I went into a house where a cat resided, I would start sniffling within forty minutes, whether the cat was in and amongst us or hiding in the basement.
Then, two or three years ago, we were staying at our friend's house in Washington, D.C. and I awoke one morning with a cat on my chest and I suddenly realized we had been in the house for two days with nary a sniffle! This cat was no ordinary cat, but rather a mutant bit of biological waste, the product of a crazed veterinarian who was trying to breed cats that resembled the south Florida panther. Those that measured up were kept and rebred and those that did not were sold off fairly cheaply. This cat was one of the cheapies that didn't measure up. In a moment the possibility of having cats once again was thrust upon us.
We didn't act on that possibility immediately, as we still had the children and we were still traveling a good deal. But earlier this year, those realities were pushed aside and we determined to Try Cats Again. After waiting for the vet to have some biowaste to get rid of, and coincident with my Dad's planned trip to visit us, a pair of mutant cats were acquired with the aid of our friend (who now has three of them, including one "good" one) and driven up from Maryland by Dad and his pal Nancy, to the delight of all the children, and your blogger.
The cats are teeny tiny hairy balls of excitableness and fun-- the children vie for turns patting them, having them in their bedroom at night, dangling things for them to bat at, chase and chew. They play together, fight with one another, eat at the same time, and sleep curled around each other. Massively fun, as kittens tend to be, we are very happy to have them aboard, even if it does increase the level of domestic chaos slightly. But there is something comforting in having a cat sit on one's lap, something strangely pleasurable having a kitten leaping at the sheets over one's toes, something humorous in a cat's inclination to chase a pencil across a room or knock itself off a cardboard box.
Oh, and one other thing. The cats have been with us a full week now, and nary a sniffle from yours t. For that as well as all the happiness we get from having them around, we rejoice and say Amen.

The Flowers Along Side The House-- they're coming along. Morning Glory and Moon Flower vines are creeping up the strings that run from the foundation to the soffit. Given time, sun and water, we hope for big leaves and pretty blooms later this summer. 

Crew

Eighteen years ago I rowed with the Bowdoin College Crew Team for two years. I have never been in better shape. By May of 1988, I could run seven miles, then turn around and run five miles the next day, or work a rowing machine flat out for an hour, or run up and down a 13-story building without stopping.
The reason I was able to get in such good shape is because I was a member of a team. I knew that if I didn't show up for practice, that it would be noticed. So I never missed practice or the regattas. On my own, the idea of daily exercise might be something I would think of doing, but it always fell to the bottom of the list, an endless list, of Things To Do. At least until I joined the crew team.
I think it is generally easier to get something done that someone else expects you to do. If asked to do something and you say yes, then there is more pressure than there would be if you get a notion and think, "Oh, I should do that.."
In a way, a blog, even though it's self-generated, exerts a subtle pressure on its author to add, to update, to stay at least close to current. We've all seen websites that say, "Look for new products in January,2001!" three years later, websites covered with faint electronic cobwebs and protonic dust. It's fine to have a static website, but it has to be written as such, so that it's not out of date for months or years.
So even if it's just a short comment on the unusual weather, the passing of the school year, a holiday observation or a longer rumination, the site requires frequent, if not constant, attending to. Perhaps using the writing portion of the brain on a regular basis, just as exercising on schedule will improve muscular fitness, will improve the tone of one's brain. There is at least that hope....

The Secret of Happiness

There is an old Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown says that the key to happiness is to have a convertible and a lake. If it's sunny, it's a good day for a drive, and if it's rainy, it's good for the lake.
I think a garden fills the bill for both kinds of weather. If it rains, it's good for the garden, and if it's sunny, it's a good time to go plant something or weed or just check out everything and make sure it's all growing according to schedule.
Farmer blood must run through my veins, but of course it's Irish farmer blood, so success is anything but a given. At any rate, the madness sweeps over me some years, some days, and I come home from the farmer's market or the feed store or a nursery with flats of flowers, pots of tomato plants, eight varieties of lettuce, three varieties of chard, bags of soil, manure, compost, stakes, string, and seeds.
This week, the madness was especially strong, and I filled the back of the car three times, on Tuesday and Friday and again Saturday. Pansies, nasturtiums, tomatoes, more tomatoes, peppers, basil, flowers I never saw or heard of, lilies, peonies, strange herbs...
Louis, under orders, had turned over the main vegetable garden, so there was a place to put most of the stuff. And the garden up against the house and the one on the other side of the yard soaked up the rest. Well, most of the rest-- the nasturtiums went into a pot which I hung by the front porch, where no one but the neighbors can see it.
After hours spent groveling in the dirt, most of me hurts, including strange places that never hurt. Still, the results are, for the moment, satisfying. Everything is cheerful and green and sort of orderly. There is the possibility that in six weeks everything will be higgldy pigglety, overgrown, turning brown, consumed by wilt or mildew or insects, but a garden is nothing if not an exercise in optimism and hope.
So for now we can stand back and look at the vegetables in their rows, the flowers in their beds, and enjoy a momentary sense of accomplishment. And tired, fall into our own bed with visions of pesto and tomato sauce and salads that are, we hope, to come in time.

Phish

HOW VERY PRETTY IS THE FISH

by Ben Hillman

with a sequel

THE REVENGE OF WARDEN HAKE

by Michael Connelly


How very pretty is the fish
It swims with fins and tail.
It eats up other fishes
And never goes to jail.

With bars so cold of iron made
And locks of hardened steel
The cruel warden gives the fish
But bread and air for meal.

The bread was baked with deep sea mud
The air was stale and must.
The fishy cried "Alackaday!
This surely is unjust."

The warden turns his dungeon key
To see his sacly guest.
Bullets spray the corridor
And rip apart his chest.

The fishes free their thankful friend
They say "Let's call it quits."
They line the jail with gelignite
And blow the place to bits.

How very pretty is the fish.
It swims with fins and tail.
It eats up other fishes
And never goes to jail.



THE REVENGE OF WARDEN HAKE

The dampish geist of Warden Hake
Began at last his search
To seek the so-called Pretty Fish
Who'd left him in the lurch.

This vi'lent fish had shot him up
And blown apart his jail.
The Warden now would hunt him down
And hang him by his tail.

The fish had shot him in the chest
And put therein a hole
That left him just a burning hate
Within his steaming soul.

The Warden talked to Diver Dan
Who gave him his first tip:
"You'll find the fish yer lookin' for
Beneath yon sunken ship."

The Warden eyed the sunken ship
And sensed the Pretty Fish.
He grinned a hollow grin and knew
He'd get at last his wish.

He opened up the cargo hatch
He shot but not to kill.
He grabbed the fish and told the fish,
"You'll breathe no more through gill."

They hanged the Pretty Fish till dead.
Yes these are just the facts.
The warden called the swordfish in --
And made him kippered snacks.

Soccer is a lot like Baseball, at this age-- there's lots of running, missing the ball, the scores are high, the rules don't matter, and it's important not to forget the water bottle. 

The Word

It's actually not so much any one word as it is words in a row. Books, books, books-- There are so many books to read, and there is such an insufficiency of time, I can't see how to manage the demands of one versus the supply of the other. There is on the one hand a growing number of books on the demand side, and a shrinking amount of time on the other side, so the problem just gets worse and worse as the backlog of unread books grows and grows. It feels almost as though one grows stupider over time, as the pile of unread books becomes higher and higher. Thus the amount of knowledge unknown increases constantly.
I have long advocated an extension of our time system-- I think days should be 30 hours, weeks should be ten days long, and that years should be extended to eighteen months. This might not be enough, but it would be a good start. Jumping from 168 hours per week to 300 would give us all quite a bit of extra breathing room, and the extra six months-- especially six months of ten-30-hour-long-day-long weeks-- would really provide a lot of extra time for doing Those Things That One Doesn't Get To Now.
But there seems to be considerable resistance on the part of the Time Authorities, so we are left with this inadequate system, and a severe shortage of time, and all these books that need to be read. Perhaps we could ask all the publishers to funnel their books through Reader's Digest, famous for their Condensed Editions.
In the mean time, if anyone has a solution to this growing problem, even a stop-gap, short-sighted, or half-baked solution, please let me know.

June? Already?

The weather is one of those useful topics to have handy when as a liberal Democrat you find yourself in a room full of GOP zealots that for one reason or other you don't wish to antagonize. Mark Twain one claimed to have written a book without any weather in it, and Jerome K Jerome called weather forecasting one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting and innocent populace.
I remember not paying the slightest attention to the weather the summer that Martin was born. When Fall came, everyone I talked to complained about what a rotten summer it had been, how it had rained every weekend for ten weeks in a row. I had not the slightest recollection that there had been any weather of any kind.
But now, the weather really does merit comment. We have had April Showers all through April, and throughout the month of May, and now it is the first week of June, and it rained yesterday, it is raining today, and is scheduled to rain into the weekend. Just how, one wonders, is one to plant a garden in this climate, without turning into something like the Tar Baby? We managed to get the garden turned over on one of the few dry days in April, anticipating that we'd be able to plant in May. But it rained most of May, and now it's Really Getting On Time To Plant, and it's muddy, damp and cold.
I am reminded of reading once that weather is one of those things people complain about but no one seems to do anything to fix it.
They are saying that Saturday will be only partly cloudy, and that it might not rain. I predict that if this happens no one in New England will be answering telephones, everyone will be outside trying to get their tomatoes and peas and beans planted ahead of the currently predicted thunderstorms due on Sunday.