New England shuffle

We’ve had an interesting few weeks in northern New England. I went up to New Hampshire in mid-July to walk in the Whites, and stayed with H, A, and sweet B in Concord for a few days, then returned for our good times in Burlington before returning home, I thought, for a week.

But that Friday night H, who had been doing a rotation in the Emergency Room, returned home late in the evening, only to return by midnight...as a patient. She had suddenly begun to suffer excruciating abdominal pain, which one of her colleagues quickly diagnosed in technical doctor talk as “a great honking gallstone.” She underwent a laparoscopic cholecystectomy on Saturday, during which her gall bladder was removed through her belly button using multiple small incisions and a camera. But the GI people discovered more stones, and on the Sunday she had ERCP (endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography) to remove at least one stone remaining in her biliary duct. I headed north to ferry the baby around as needed, and to be with H as she recovered. Which she did, quickly and smoothly—she was back at work this past Monday. The side benefit of all this pain and treatment was that I had more of a chance to hang out and chat with her than I’d had in ages. I’d like to find a way short of a medical emergency to allow that to happen.

Late last week, dear friends became a grandparents when their eldest daughter gave birth to a beautiful and healthy little girl, while dear friends of a younger generation welcomed an equally beautiful and healthy son. Much joy all around.

And last Saturday was sweet B’s second birthday. A splendid time was had by all. Singing, funny hats,  Elmo cake, blowing out candles, gifts, friends, and all sorts of gaieté de coeur.

B loves fire trucks and garbage trucks (big, complex, and noisy), but she’s utterly fixated on backhoes. This is our current video fave.




As befits a future heavy-equipment operator, she’s doing very well on her colors, letters, and numbers—though she’s still skipping directly from five to eight on her way to 10. Her manners are coming along nicely, too. She often (not usually, mind you) says, “peetz” on her own when she asks for something. We occasionally get a unsolicited “tenkoo,” too, and I’ve been fooling around in a call-and-response sort of way that she seems to enjoy to elicit a jolly “youekun.”

Now actually at home, I’ve been scrambling to get my phone system’s answering machine/service to function properly. The cable people who now supply service claim the problem is with the phones themselves. The phone people...well, you know.  I’ve run out of ideas and have begun thinking seriously about getting rid of the land line altogether.

Finally, I’m looking forward to welcoming the Concordites to Woodbury for the upcoming weekend. A is running another triathlon up the road (too soon after surgery for H), old friends far too infrequently seen are coming for dinner Saturday evening, and more old friends will help consume mimosas and brunch Sunday.

Next week? Perhaps a couple of 4,000s. Watch this space.

Tenkoo for reading.

Bucolic Hinton Waldrist

The previous post was encouraged by the coolness described and fascinatingly displayed in this piece on HuffPo.

A Village Lost and Found.

Sweet B’s favorite song

 We wo, we wo, rot you!!



After Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, of course.

Lies and metaphors

Here’s an interesting passage from Colm Toibin’s review of Wendy Moffat’s new biography of E.M.Forster in this morning’s New York Times Book Review:

... novels should not be honest. They are a pack of lies that are also a set of metaphors; because the lies and metaphors are chosen and offered shape and structure, they may indeed represent the self, or the play between the unconscious mind and the conscious will, but they are not forms of self-expression, or true confession.

 I learned in high school a worthless but not ridiculous definition of a novel: a long work of fiction. Toibin’s assertion is a nice, concise go at answering the obvious question: what is (or isn’t) fiction?. I had terrific English teachers at school, but I would have killed for an atmosphere that would have allowed “...they are a pack of lies” to enter the discussion.

---

This review was paired with one by David Leavitt of Selina Hastings’ new bio of Somerset Maugham, and in reading them I learned something that amazed me: Forster was five years the younger. If asked, I would have said Forester was at least a decade older. But he was essentially finished as a novelist with A Passage to India in 1924, while Maugham carried on long after.

The forest and the trees

A few weeks ago, I saw this article in The Guardian, and I’ve been reading about the potential ban on some of the British blogs I follow. It reminded me of something, and I dug around on the back of my office shelves to find this:

When I left local politics over a decade ago, the local reporter asked me what my greatest achievement had been. “World peace” didn’t seem to fit, and I had to tell her there wasn’t one accomplishment I could honestly point to and say, “There. That’s mine, and the town’s much better for it” (I didn’t tell her what I’d really come to believe after 25 years or so, which was that while I’d been more than willing to perform what I’d thought of as my public duty, the town would have looked essentially the same if a random resident had been pulled in off her tractor to sit in the chairs I’d occupied.)

But reading about the utterly wrongheaded proposed Scottish camping ban reminded me that there was this one thing. I attended a Selectmen’s meeting one evening to learn that our town’s insurance carrier and attorneys had told us that to avoid lawsuits we had to close down the small crag in our park to technical climbing. I made a loud noise, and after some discussion my two colleagues agreed to announce a temporary ban for the express purpose of seeing if we could work things out.

I took a good look at state law, made sure our parks met the tests set by the legislature to avoid liability (basically, post appropriate signs asserting climbers’ personal responsibility, and make no Town effort to protect or improve safety—no fences at the top of the rocks, for example). I jawboned a little with the contiguous land owners, individual climbers, and climbing groups, we put up little informational kiosks (with emphasis on the positives and just a few “no’s,” and we worked with our insurers and lawyers to make sure all the i’s were dotted and all the t’s were crossed.

It wasn’t all that hard, actually: Gather facts, understand the problem, talk to those with some stake in the outcome, keep everybody in the loop, broker an agreement, and take the smallest necessary action that would serve the general good. I was given this plaque by an organization that was, I think, as surprised that I’d cared to make the effort as they were delighted we’d succeeded.

So there. That’s mine.

I’m still working on world peace.

(And rooting for those working to see that wild camping remains unrestricted at Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, where I’m standing, soaking wet and very happy, in this photo.)

Thanks, Mac

Last week, the dreaded “Kernel Panic” box started popping up on my desktop computer. A few days later, as I knew it would, everything stopped working, and it was time—past time—for a trip to the Genius Bar and, probably, a new hard drive. Uncharacteristically, I had saved the box (and the styrofoam fittings!) the 2006, 24-inch iMac had come in, so I packed everything off, and made my way to the Apple Store about 45 minutes away.

My particular genius ran some diagnostics and confirmed my diagnosis, so I paid my $332 and left the computer. Told I’d be able to retrieve it in 5-7 days, I headed off for northern New England and forgot about it.

Wednesday, on a back road in Vermont, I got a surprising call. It was an Apple rep. Repairs were backing up, she said, parts were not coming through in good time, she couldn’t give me a reasonable date for completion of the job ... and would I accept a new computer instead?

No dummy I, even under this sort of avaricious pressure, and knowing Apple no longer made 24-inch iMacs, I asked which computer they were going to give me. A 27-incher, I was told.

No dummy I, especially under this sort of avaricious pressure, permission was granted.

Yesterday, I wandered into the store at about 10:15, and wandered out 10 minutes later under the considerable weight of a brand new 27-inch, 3.06 GHz, 1 TB iMac with one of those tiny wireless keyboards (not bad, really, and I’m sold on wireless, but I may go back to my full-featured one) and a Magic Mouse (terrific).

A little effortless Time Machine magic, and I was up and running by early afternoon.

Nary a glitch in the whole process. Wonder Bread used to build strong bodies 12 ways. I’m amazed and gratified in at least that many.

Merci beaucoup, Pomme.

Busy B

Some pix I wanted to load yesterday but didn't have access to:

B at Henry's. Fork in straw? Check. Yellow sugar packets covered up? Check. Blue sugar packets a-counting? Check. Now, where's the sticky jam?

Slab climbing on the lake shore.

A swinging traverse at the playground.

Climbing in.

(Does this remind you of Kayo, the Moon Mullins kid who used to sleep in a dresser drawer? If it does, you’re probably an American pushing 60 at least.)

And patting the Blue Cow (“Boo Moo”) before dinner downtown.