Grace Notes

This has been a rough week. Everyone has them. Maybe you’re having one too. Today will be long and stress-filled. Four appointments and a ton of calls to make. Hump day, they call it. Indeed. When you’re in the midst of a week like this it’s easy to lose sight of the little blessings of life, those grace notes that slip through the dreariness and help light your way. Here’s one that happened Monday afternoon.

Every year when we go to Maine we always buy little gifts for the kids next door. One of them, Kennedy, is especially artistic, so this year we found this really cool origami kit that came with everything needed to make origami flowers of all kinds. Pam thought it would be perfect for her so she bought it.

Monday was the first day of school. Around 5:30 or so the front door bell rang and there was Kennedy with the most adorable smile on her face. She had a flower in her hand and extended it to me. “This is for you. It’s a poppy.”

She then proceeded to tell me all about how she made it and how much fun it was, and that there were plenty of other flowers she is going to make. I asked her how her first day of school went and her face lit up. “My teacher is really nice. She says that her classroom is her kingdom and when she wants to get our attention she says, “Hear Ye, Hear Ye!” And we all have to say together, “Long Live the Queen”.

The entire encounter was over with in fifteen minutes. She went back to playing in her front yard with some other kids and I went back to whatever it was I was doing. But now, as I worry about what this day will bring, I look at Kennedy’s flower that Pam placed in a little blue vase and it makes me smile.

Sometimes the way we cope with difficulty is by stopping to appreciate the simply things. Things that are lovely, sweet and true.

Thanks, Ken

Coping With Stress in 2022

My profession comes with mountains of stress, the kind that never goes away. It is hard to measure or quantify. There are times when it feels greater and more debilitating than others, but it never ever leaves. When I was younger I seldom thought about stress. Of course back then I had fewer clients with far less invested. The stakes weren’t as high. As I have gotten older and the business has grown stress is much more front and center. I am consciously aware of it’s presence at all times. To cope with it I have developed strategies to manage the stress, most of them without even realizing what I was doing. It is only in retrospect that I have come to realize what these coping strategies are.

What are my symptoms? What does stress do to me? Lots of things actually. Over the years I have experienced debilitating headaches, dealt with migraines for several years. Thankfully, those days are largely behind me. I have had bouts of insomnia, still do at times. I’ve experienced digestive issues with no known physical cause. There are other physical symptoms that I will leave out of this discussion. On the psychological side of the equation, there are seasons of great doubt. I doubt my own skill and abilities, despite a 40 year record of relative success. There are occasional and thankfully brief periods of intense fear, some of it irrational. It always passes, but each episode leaves a mark. I have managed these stress related symptoms privately. I have always considered them as part of the price of admission for work in my chosen field of endeavor. While, as a younger man, I could shake it all off by listening to a motivational speaker or watching a ballgame, once I reached my late 50’s, none of the old tricks worked any longer.

It occurs to me that one of the coping mechanisms I developed was…Maine. While Pam and I have always gone to Maine for a week or so every summer for over 38 years, it was seven years ago when we began to go for four weeks at a time. In 2016 I made the unilateral decision to rent a house on Hobbs Pond for an entire month. Since that year we have stayed for even longer stretches of time during the summer and fall. In 2022, by the time we are finished, we will have spent eight weeks in Maine. Although I truly enjoy our time there, what I have come to realize is that a big part of me needs longer and longer stays. Time in Maine disconnected from the grind allows everything to heal. The tension built up over months and months slowly drains out of the system.

But even with eight weeks in Maine, that leaves the other 44 weeks. The single hardest thing about my work is that I find it nearly impossible to close everything down, to turn off the part of my brain that thinks and ponders and second guesses the decisions of the day. I said nearly impossible. There is one thing that I have found that works. there is one thing I can do which always sweeps work thoughts away.

Writing.

Over the past decade I have written over 2,650 posts on this blog. I have written over two dozen short stories, and as of a month ago, four novels. It isn’t my job. Although lots of people read this blog, only a handful of people have ever read any of my novels or short stories. So I must ask myself why I spend so much time writing. The answer should have been self evident to me long before now, but I suppose self-deception is the easiest kind. The reason I write so much is because when I’m writing, everything else gets blocked out. Work concerns vanish into thin air once your mind wraps itself around the creation of a story. So, for me, writing is an effective mental health therapy. Maine is an effective mental health therapy. Even though eight weeks in Maine is awfully pricey therapy, writing costs me nothing.

The Husband Store

Husband Store

A store that sells new husbands has opened in New York City, where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates:

You may visit this store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the value of the products increase as the shopper ascends the flights. The shopper may choose any item from a particular floor, or may choose to go up to the next floor, but cannot go back down except to exit the building!

So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband. On the first floor the sign on the door reads:

Floor 1 - These men Have Jobs.

She is intrigued, but continues to the second floor, where the sign reads:

Floor 2 - These men Have Jobs and Love Kids.

"That's nice," she thinks, "but I want more."

So she continues upward. The third floor sign reads:

Floor 3 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, and are Extremely Good Looking.

"Wow," she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going.

She goes to the fourth floor and the sign reads:

Floor 4 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Good Looking and Help With Housework.

"Oh, mercy me!" she exclaims, "I can hardly stand it!"

Still, she goes to the fifth floor and the sign reads:

Floor 5 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop- dead Gorgeous, Help with Housework, and Have a Strong Romantic Streak.

She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the sixth floor, where the sign reads:

Floor 6 - You are visitor 31,456,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store.

PLEASE NOTE:

To avoid gender bias charges, the store's owner opened a New Wives store just across the street.

The first floor has wives that love sex.

The second floor has wives that love sex, have money and like beer.

The third, fourth, fifth and sixth floors have never been visited.

Fresh Observations

Here are a few things that I have come to realize recently:

* Peter Pan and Skippy are poor substitutes for Jif.

* Watching the number one pitching prospect for your team make his big league debut and proceed to hit three batters and give up seven runs in four innings is depressing.

* Listening to the entire Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast on the drive home from Maine is at once fascinating and horrifying.

* When the stock market rises 11% over the six weeks you are in Maine, then drops 5% the first week you return it makes you wonder about the cosmic correlation.

* Lucy was not born to live in the suburbs.

* Watching people who were all for government bailouts of banks and gladly cashed their stimulus checks argue against the moral hazard of bailing out college loans makes you grateful for the rarity of your own moral, economic and political consistency on the subject of government bailouts.

* The air smells better in Maine.

* The new Elvis film is one of the saddest stories ever told.

* Getting back into running in Virginia humidity is a form of self hatred.

* “In Essentials Unity, in Nonessentials Liberty, in all things Charity” is perhaps the finest summation of a church’s doctrine I’ve ever heard.

* How is it that a person can go away for six short weeks then forget how to run his own coffeemaker?

Social Media is About to get Hilarious

Back in April of this year I wrote this:  https://doug-thetempest.blogspot.com/2022/04/here-are-just-few-random-thoughts.html.

With today’s announcement by the Biden Administration of their college debt forgiveness program, I fully expect that social media platforms will soon be exploding with invective from all quarters, from the left for being too timid, from the right for the audacity of asking the taxpayers to pay off debt obligations entered into by willing adults. It will be brutal and unrelenting for a few weeks, then we will all move on to the next outrage. Can’t wait for the creative meme war!

It is worth noting that my biggest objections and worries from the April piece noted above, which appeared in the next to last paragraph, were both addressed by the administration…proving clearly the massive weight carried by The Tempest in shaping public policy. 

This is one of many problems that come up in the course of politics where I feel that it is impossible to craft a perfect solution. Every proposal for fixing some things is flawed, because the problem is complex. We are the largest consumer economy in the history of planet Earth. As such we can simply not afford to have an entire generation opt out of consuming because of a crushing college debt burden. If that happens we all lose. On the other hand, forgiving loans, comparatively speaking, is the easy part. The hard part is passing along the 300 billion dollar price tag for that debt forgiveness to the American taxpayer. How will the non-college educated crowd feel about that? Not to mention the college educated crowd that somehow found a way to pay off their loans? It is a no win situation for anyone proposing a fix.

I have great sympathy for the folks who say, “Look, you signed up for a loan. You understood at the time that loans have to be repaid. So why should the government or anyone else have to come along and bail you out?” Excellent question. However, we Americans aren’t always opposed to governments bailing out those who make dumb decisions with their money. In my lifetime the government has at various times bailed out the following:

- New York City

- Chrysler Corporation

- The Entire Savings and Loan industry

- Bank of America

- Wells Fargo

-The Stock market in the Panic of 1792…thanks, Alexander Hamilton!

- Bear Stearns

- Home Mortgages of one million Americans in 1933

- AIG Insurance Group

- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

-  Penn Central Railroad

- Lockheed

- The entire American Airline Industry after 9/11

- General Motors

- Ford

- Citigroup

- Small businesses via the TARP bailout of 2008

This is nowhere near an exhaustive list, but you get the idea. I mean, how do you think we have accumulated a 29 Trillion dollar national debt? So, its not that large scale financial bailouts are anything new. It’s just that the beneficiaries of this particular bailout are people that at least on some basic level should have known what they were signing up for. 

My background, education and experience leads me to be against any sort of bailout both on economic and moral terms. But that’s in a perfect world where trade offs are not required. In the world where we actually live, bailouts have become like the air we breathe. (Did you cash your relief checks from the government during COVID?) Still, when I look at this list of bailout recipients I must ask myself this question. If my government is going to bailout out anyone would I rather they bailout young, college kids with their entire lives ahead of them…or the arrogant, amoral morons who ran AIG, Bear Stearns, or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? While many of the college graduates who will benefit from these bailouts may have made bad life planning decisions, they didn’t line their own pockets through malfeasance and greed. Besides, what will most of these graduates do with their newfound financial health? Probably go out and buy a house, or a car, or some decent furniture. They may even have the confidence to start a business. On the other hand what did most of the suits at Citibank do with all that bailout cash? probably bought that fifth vacation home in Barbados.

So yeah. This is a tortured fix to a giant problem, and absolutely nobody is going to be happy about it.

But, Facebook is gonna be hilarious for a couple weeks!

A Good Thing or a Bad Thing?

Back in April of 2019 we were all in the midst of the COVID pandemic. One morning I was leaving my office after an abbreviated visit and happened to take note of the beautiful bank of flowers across the street from the entrance to our parking lot. Back then, everyone was noticing the beauty of the natural world, since being quarantined felt so artificial and confining. That particular morning I stepped out of the car, walked across the street and took this picture…

On the other side of this lovely bank of purple flowers was a thick forest of poplars, cedars, oaks and pines. I remember thinking at the time how odd it was to have such a beautiful natural environment directly across from our offices.

Then suddenly, a couple months later a sign went up announcing that a new development was planned for our little idyllic slice of nature, but since it was COVID nothing happened for months and months. Finally in January of this year we arrived on a Monday morning to discover that over the weekend, the developers had been busy…

It was such a shock to my system seeing the land stripped bare. A light dusting of snow had fallen overnight making the landscape feel almost lunar and even more desolate.

Then, this morning, after being away for six weeks, my system was given another shock when I crossed the overpass of Interstate 64 on Church road and saw what had happened while I was in Maine…

I learned that this development would be apartments. Just behind this structure is a giant parking deck that can’t be seen from the road.

Of course, there are two ways to look at something like this. One way is to view this as a loss of something. I will no longer see the purple flowers. I will never again wonder what might be lurking within the dark woods that used to stand at that spot, old and mysterious. But a second way to view this new building is as a sign of progress. These apartments will provide a place for individuals and families to live. Where do you live? A house? An apartment? If so, what was there before your house was built? Every place I have ever lived at some point in the past was part of a deep dark woods, or a cow pasture, or a wind swept field of flowers.

For me though, I suppose I feel the loss more than the gain. Perhaps if I was twenty-something and looking for an affordable place to live for a while I would feel differently. When I look at the green insulated exterior walls are all I can think about is how much longer it will take me to turn left out of our parking lot. I wonder if they will have to put in another stop light. I wonder what kind of clientele this apartment complex will attract.

But the thing I will miss the most is the flowers in the spring. They were a glorious sight to see every April.

On the other hand, maybe a child born to a young couple living in that building might one day find a cure for cancer.

…but I’ll still miss the flowers.

 

Good Things Are Coming

We made it back home safe and sound yesterday afternoon after an uneventful two day trip. Lucy, as usual, travels like a boss. Much better than either of us do. As is always the case, our house seemed huge when we walked in the door, each room bigger than we remembered. This morning I had to think for a minute to recall how to make coffee. But eventual it all came back to me like muscle memory that had atrophied. It felt good to settle back in to our home. We are lucky to have a place that we love to go, and a place we love to come back to.

There’s no telling what awaits me at the office this morning. Whatever it is I’m sure that Kristin has it all organized and laid out perfectly on my desk. Although I have not missed the work, I have missed the people there. It will be good to see them again, to begin anew my daily harassment of each of them. I’m sure they have missed it.

So, Pam had gone to the grocery store and I was unpacking when I hear a knock on the door. It’s Kennedy from next door, she’s the artistic middle child who is always painting, sculpting or knitting something. I have accumulated quite a collection of her work over the years. I’m keeping them all since one day she will probably be famous and they will be worth a fortune. Anyway, I opened the door and there she was on my front porch with her hands full of stuff she had made. I sat down on the steps and listened to her explain how she made each one. For me there was a coaster that she made at pottery class. For Pam there was a potholder she knitted, and then there was a bag of warm chocolate chip cookies…

My heart melted. First of all, she’s in elementary school yet has the skills to create this type of art. The coaster is a dog’s paw of her own design. That she would choose that to make for me is adorable. She knows how much I love Miss Lucy, I guess. But beyond the merits of these things as art is the thoughtfulness, the kind and tender heart, her desire to…give. Her little sister Sully and her big brother Cash are the same way. Their parents, Jamie and Stu, are killing it, even though they don’t think so half the time. Like all parents they are overwhelmed by the responsibility and the hard work involved in raising kids today. But they are doing something right!

I had planned on giving each of them their Maine gifts last night, but by the time we had finished dinner I was pooped. So I will go over this afternoon.

I often think about this culdesac where I live and the kids that have been raised here, including my own. Among them are one who wound up at West Point, another at the Naval Academy. There is a girl at JMU, another girl in high school who has been the go-to dog sitter and baby sitter for the entire street. There are two beautiful little ones down the street with blond curls and radiant smiles who we have gotten to see grow up from strollers to bicycles. Then there are these three knuckleheads next door who have squirreled their way into our hearts since the day they moved in.

It’s one of the reasons we live here, that we have stayed here. I watch these kids grow up, watch their parents raising them and I take heart for the future. Good things are coming.

The Calm Before the Storm

The schedule says we are supposed to leave here first thing Saturday morning, which leaves us two full days left. But there’s a problem. I mean, other than the fact that we only have two more days. The problem is that one of those two days—today—looks to be a washout. It is pouring down rain at the moment. However, tomorrow’s forecast is lovely. So, Pam thinks we should do 90% of our packing today so we are freed up to enjoy Friday’s nice weather. On paper this sounds like a totally reasonable plan. There’s only one problem…Lucy.

Actually there are two problems…Lucy, and the layout of Loon Landing.

Lucy, our famously neurotic pup, has never been a fan of suitcases and the process that goes in to packing them for a trip. Whenever we start, she immediately assumes we are preparing to leave her forever. Use all the happy voices you’ve got, it won’t make any difference, so convinced is she of our pending betrayal. Combine her conspiratorial mindset with the prospect of leaving the lake and she will be at Death-Com 5.

Then, there’s the issue of space. As you can imagine, when you pack up to go anywhere for six weeks, you bring a ton of stuff with you. Now, although we love Loon Landing, it’s smallish. There isn’t a lot of room for extraneous knickknackery. Fortunately there is a lovely loft upstairs which serves as a suitcase storage facility while we are here. So, in order to start packing, we will have to haul all of them downstairs. But, once they are packed, there isn’t anywhere to put them downstairs. We could begin loading them into the car, but doing so in a driving rainstorm sounds like a terrible idea. 

The struggle is real.

But, the plan is sound. We will pack up today, doing our best to calm Lucy’s fragile temperament. Then tomorrow we will enjoy our final day in beautiful sunshine. Later today a final shopping trip into Camden is on the agenda. We will say our goodbyes and pick up a new collar for Lucy, one that doesn’t smell like fish. Then, Saturday morning we will begin the two day drive back home. Believe it or not, we will be happy to be back home, to sleep in our own bed, to take a proper shower in a proper sized bathroom, to be back in our lovely neighborhood. It is quite possible to miss Maine and look forward to Short Pump at the same time.

Just don’t try explaining that to Lucy.

…the calm before the storm.

A Sunset Speaks

Every year towards the end of our time in Maine I start sorting through the nearly one thousand photographs we have taken looking for my favorites. Eventually I will publish my top ten in a future blogpost when I am in a place with sufficiently fast internet. This morning I want to talk about one particular picture that mesmerizes me.

Some nights the lake is too rough, the wind is up and the water is choppy. Occasionally it rains or is totally overcast. But whenever possible, Pam takes her paddle board out somewhere around 7:30 and waits for the celestial show to begin. Sometimes I tag along in my kayak. It’s a difficult business predicting the brilliance of sunsets on this lake. Some nights all the conditions seem perfect but you get nothing. Other nights when you’re not expecting anything special, magic happens. The night that this picture was taken was a night when it could have gone either way. There was a massive dark gray/slate blue cloud hanging over the entire lake except for the edges of the horizon. The sun set at 7:47 that night. Five minutes or so after, we noticed specks of yellow popping up in random spots under the huge oval shaped cloud. Ten minutes later, everything suddenly transformed before our eyes…

As beguiling as this photograph is, it is a pale imitation of the reality of the moment. Neither of us in all our time here had ever seen anything like it. The bright pink and orange highlights of color against the dark canvas of purple with tiny cracks of blue peaking through was breathtaking in real time. It made both of us feel small, very small. It felt like a presence, both beautiful and ominous. We stopped our paddling and watched the evolution of the thing. Eventually it faded away as quickly as it had come…

We come here every summer weighed down by the demands of modern life. Along with everyone else in the world, we carry burdens around. We often attach outsized significance to inconsequential things. It is the way of human beings. We overestimate our importance. We begin to believe that we are much bigger than we are. Then we see something like this and it recalibrates our hearts. There are much bigger things in the world than us and our travails.

It wasn’t the most spectacular sunset, not even close. It was simply unique and it spoke to me uniquely. Let not your heart be troubled. Come to me all you who are heavy laden and I will give you…rest.

Aqua Pup

At 6:00am I wake up to 54 degrees. Yikes! I found Lucy sleeping in a tight ball on the sofa. When I sat down and plopped my feet up next to her she hardly budged.

That’s probably only partially due to the chilly temperatures. It has more to do with the fact that yesterday this girl broke her all-time record for longest swim without a break…one hour. It’s hard to believe really. No way in the world I could stay afloat for an hour in the water. Up here, Lucy becomes AQUA-PUP.

It started when Pam took her out for a swim on her paddle board. This is one of their favorite activities up here. Pam goes out and Lucy dives in off the dock and follows her everywhere. They paddle all over the lake together. Then after thirty minutes or so, Pam heads back to the dock. But this time, Lucy had no interest in leaving the lake so she just swam around our cove for another full thirty minutes, happy as she could be. At one point we saw her trying something new. Several times she suddenly stuck her entire head under water for several seconds! Each time bubbles would rise to the surface. She somehow knew that she needed to blow air through her nose to keep from drowning. We have no idea what she was thinking. Maybe she was looking for fish? Or maybe she wants to take up scuba diving? At this point, I will put nothing past this girl when it comes to this lake. She is going to be so depressed when we leave on Saturday.

That’s right, we only have five more days. We are trying to decide how best to spend our remaining days here. Pam wants to walk the Rockland Break Water before we leave, and there’s a restaurant in Lincolnville Beach we want to try. I have one more round of golf to play.But honestly, the hardest part is ginning up the motivation to leave the lake. When the weather is perfect and the lake is calm, it is practically impossible to leave. Wednesday looks like a washout rainy day. We will probably spend that day with indoor pursuits. For Pam that means trying to finish the cross stitch pattern she’s been working on for six weeks. For me it will mean finishing my last bit of reading…

An American Journey

He has become what is commonly referred to as a man of a certain age, born in the 1950’s and nearing retirement in a nation that bares little resemblance to the one he was born into. In some respects this has been true of every age since America’s founding, change being the one reliable, inalterable fact of our national life. But he can’t shake the feeling that there is something distinctly different in the air now, and he thinks he knows when it all started. It was his first political memory.

The America that he inherited in the 1950’s stood astride the world as the one unchallenged colossus. After World War II, America seemed on the march everywhere. The economy was booming, patriotism seemed like the least we could do to show our appreciation for having been born in such a place. We were the land of Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver and Mayberry, or at least we wanted to believe we were. It was never that easy or clean, of course. Hollywood’s ability to distort reality was just as strong then as it is now. Still, America was the land of heroes, at least to him it was. He grew up idolizing John Glenn and Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. Politics was contentious but always seemed to end at the water’s edge of conflict. We had one uniting adversary, Communism. He remembers the duck and cover drills in elementary school. Everyone knew which side of the Iron Curtain they wanted to live on. America was the answer to Khrushchev and Mao, an emphatic, winning answer. All you had to do was look at them, old men dressed like clowns grinning like feral cats. Our President, on the other hand, was young and handsome with a beautiful wife. He was funny, clever and possessed a winning smile. Then he got shot.

He was still a little boy but remembers the day. It was his introduction to politics. The President had been murdered and his parents were distraught. One minute he was smiling and waving at the folks in his convertible and the next minute his brain was splattered all over his wife’s dress, and Walter Cronkite took off his thick black glasses and said, “The President is dead.”

The next year he remembers the day he saw a President with his own eyes for the first and only time. Lyndon Johnson was giving a speech in town and his father thought the family should go to get a glimpse of him, not because he revered him as some sort of God, but because he needed support…because the President had just been shot and LBJ had the weight of the world on his shoulders. So, there they were standing inside a rope with hundreds of others. A line of limousines pulled up and men with sunglasses stepped out, then the President excited the building and walked ten yards to the biggest car in the line, stopping to wave at them for a few seconds. He was as far away as second base is from home plate. He seemed to look right at the 6 year old boy. It was his second political memory.

After that everything seemed to change. The killing of a President seemed to unleash a fury of unrest in his country. There was a war in Asia and it divided the country in profound ways. Soon an explosion of protests spread over the country like mushrooms after heavy rain. Civil Rights. Get Out of Vietnam. Suddenly, the bloom seemed off the American rose. His father’s generation seemed to be the problem to some. To others it was the fault of the hippies. The divide seemed to get deeper with each riot.

One of the sharpest divides that he noticed, even as a young man, was the divide between the kind of people who attended Harvard and those who didn’t. It was the Ivy Leaguers who tended to believe that Ethyl and Julius Rosenberg were innocent. It was the Ivy Leaguers who were most likely to make excuses for even Communisms worst atrocities. People who didn’t attend college or if they did went to state schools seemed more likely to take America’s side. People like Richard Nixon. But then, he ended up being a corrupt crook, despite his protests to the contrary, so all bets were off. Nothing that has happened since has been able to change this dynamic. Even when the Berlin Wall fell and the newly released Rosenberg files proved their guilt, the Ivy Leaguers contextualized. Even when our own intelligence agency’s sins were revealed the kinds of people who loved Richard Nixon made excuses. The divide was permanent.

Years later Ronald Reagan came along calling America a shining city on a hill. It sparked something in the young man who had grown disillusioned. He so desperately wanted America to be just that, a place of hope and goodness, a country that stood for something. There were others who attempted to call the country back to unity and goodness with phrases like a thousand points of light, and building a bridge to the 21st century, or the optimistic yes, we can. But they all fell flat on his middle aged ears. Something had changed. Politics now seemed like warfare. Suddenly campaign slogans started sounding like battle cries…Courage to Fight for America, Fighting for us. 

Then came…Make America Great Again. It was clever. It called upon our best memories from back when the post World War II America rebuilt Europe, when America was admired around the world for its enthusiasm, positivity, and ingenuity. Whenever anything is ever great it’s natural for people to want it to always be. Some mocked the slogan, not even trying to hide their contempt for their own country…We were never great! This attitude helped Donald Trump win. The experiences of most Americans cause them to be grateful for their country, flaws and all. The Ivy Leaguers never seem to grasp this simple fact. And so, a poorly educated, boorish carnival barking idiot became President and the older man found himself adrift, and keenly aware of the dangers of political nostalgia.  He finds himself in disagreement with people near and dear to him. He hates that politics has such power.

With the election of Joe Biden, half the country followed the lead of their deluded hero and refused to accept the verdict. Now, when the FBI executes a search warrant of the ex-President’s home, radicals start calling for armed resistance. Now, his biggest fear for his country isn’t who will win the next election, but whether the result will bring violence and a further rupturing of the country that has been the only home he has ever had. 

He opens his laptop and pulls up the news for the first time in a while. He reads about Mar-a-Lago, armed groups gathering around FBI offices, and the knife attack on Salman Rushdi. He is overcome with anxiety for the country of his birth.

So much so, that he writes this blog post.

A Full Schedule

Today is Saturday. I have to be reminded. Sometimes the lake reminds me. There is more boat activity on Saturday and Sunday. This weekend Pam and I have many choices facing us. For instance, today we have to decide whether or not to take in the 20th annual Blueberry Wing Ding in Lincolnville. I mean, can we really afford to miss that…again?

Then tomorrow there’s the free jazz concert in Rockport…

Here’s what the advertisement says: 

I’m thinking that we miss that at our own peril!

What follows would be considered by most as a miscellaneous concern at best, but its the sort of thing that once it lands in your head its difficult to dislodge. each morning when I make my coffee I am confronted with this image…

…and each morning I think…Darth Vader. Am I right? Or am I just crazy?

A Place Where Everyone…literally…is Welcomed

Sometimes in life you just get lucky.

Last night it was getting close to dinner time and neither Pam nor I had any interest in cooking anything. We had delivered Patrick and Sarah to the airport and were feeling a slight letdown in our spirits which always happens when the kids leave. I was reading a book and she was reading something on her Kindle when she said, “Why don’t we go up to Fraternity for dinner?” That’s the general store just up the road in Searsmont. Although we have ordered sandwiches and pizza from there many times, we had never had a sit down experience there. Since I had no better idea readily available I agreed.

=

This was our view. Just around the corner from that awesome stove was a bar where an older couple sat reading the Knox Courier-Gazette, better known as the “Village Soup”, while waiting for their dinner. Soon, another couple who had finished their meal exited through those red double doors, leaving one of them opened. Then the most marvelous thing happened.

This girl waltzes in and makes her way under the abandoned table to peck at the crumbs left by the aforementioned exiting couple. She did it in a very practiced way as if she had been doing this all her life. No one seemed to notice except the table of Virginians who immediately began discreetly taking pictures. Then, as soon as she was finished she unceremoniously left the same way she had come…

No harm, no fowl…I suppose.

Then I noticed the floor in this picture, worn out and indented by people—and chickens—entering through these doors for so many years. The people of Searsmont are proud of their village. There’s a giant print of an article which appeared in DownEast magazine 8 years ago naming it the “Friendliest Village in Maine”…

While we were there we overheard snippets of conversations between the locals:

-Patriots first pre-season game coming up, and you here that the Bruins got a new coach?

-What about Tampa Bay? Wonder how Tom will do this year?

-Ten more weeks and we’ll see the snowflakes swirling.

The Fraternity General Store in Searsmont, Maine…where even chickens are welcomed.

Incidentally, my Reuben sandwich was excellent.

Ten More Days

Pam just left for Portland to take Patrick and Sarah to the airport. The four days we had with them flew by. They loved Loon Landing and even loved the two cloudy days we had during their stay. It gave us an excuse to slow down and enjoy the quiet. They spent time reading and puzzling and taking slow kayak trips around the lake. In the evenings, Pam and Sarah cross-stitched for hours at a time. We managed to have our one and only fire of the summer a couple nights ago. Last night we had a lovely dinner at Fresh&Co in Camden, then dessert at Riverducks, which never disappoints.

This morning Lucy and I ventured down to the dock for some morning fishing. We both had endured quite enough trash-talking from Patrick about the lack of success we had been experiencing during their brief stay. Lucy especially had grown increasingly annoyed. So suddenly a very nice bass hit the line and made two dramatic jumps out of the water which naturally sent Lucy in to uncontrollable hysterics. When I pulled him in I made a call to everyone in the house to come see the evidence for themselves, only to discover that they had all walked up to the guest house. Lucy was disappointed to the extreme so I made the decision to walk up to the guest house with her and the wiggly bass. Once there, Patrick and Sarah appeared at the screen door and Lucy began her maniacal growling and jumping up and down with delight. It was pretty adorable. She loves fishing more than practically anything else up here!

Now, after cleaning the cabin up a bit, Lucy and I have settled in for some reading and napping while we wait for Mom to return, somewhere around 2:00. Its still cloudy and cool, still in the 60’s for the third straight day. But tomorrow promises sunshine and 75. Ten more days before we leave for Short Pump. I am starting to feel the end coming. I’m not sad or frustrated, just grateful we get to be here so long. Besides, there may be a fall trip in the works, plus there’s always next year. Lucy, on the other hand, will be devastated.

Magic

Today dawned cool and breezy, with a soft ceiling of thin clouds turning the lake the color of gray slate. Overnight the winds had shifted from the south to the north north-west. The people who predict weather for a living tell us that the next three days will be like this. We are thrilled. An appearance by the sun is not a requirement for happiness up here. A few cloudy days offer some variety and bring the chance to see the lake in a fresh new way. The most welcome benefit is the cooler temperatures, the warmest of which promises to be in the low 70’s.

Yesterday was stifling and quite miserable, so to make things exciting I decided to take Pam up to look at a property that had just come up for sale on a lake 40 minutes away. The pictures and some of the numbers looked very promising. Plus the trip up and back would be in air conditioned comfort. As soon as we drove up to the place we both knew it wasn’t the one. This is the most frustrating part of our four year search for a lake house, the mystical absence the aha moment. Pam and I know exactly what we want in a place. We can see it in our mind’s eye. We have never been at cross purposes in this regard. Only once in our search have we both felt it when seeing a place for the first time. It was three years ago when we walked onto a place on Beech Hill up near Ellsworth, Maine. The property was for sale by owner and included the furniture, a jet ski, a powerboat, two all terrain vehicles and an old Dodge Ram pick up truck. Nearly everything about the place was perfect except for the fact that it was an hour and half away from Camden. That and the fact that the owner—along with the key to the house—were in Florida and he could not be reached. We spent nearly an hour walking the beautiful grounds and salivating over the dock and the enormous rocks that littered the back yard leading down to the water, and peering through the sliding glass doors of the deck. Ultimately, the owner pulled the property off the market and that was that. He was offering the house and all the toys for an insanely ridiculous $465,000. Three years later when I think about it I practically weep!

Anyway, so we pull up into this sketchy, trashy row of houses and our hearts drop. Inside, the place actually looked better than the pictures, but it just didn’t matter. No matter how nice it might have been the prospect of being surrounded on all sides by other lake houses featuring an architectural vibe that can best be described as shabby-shack just wasn’t ever going to happen. After twenty minutes, we got back in the car and drove back home in silence.

Reading over this its almost impossible not to pick up on a hint of snobbery. Its true. We have become lake house snobs. The fault lies with On The Water In Maine, who have introduced us to some of the most lovely lake house properties in all of Mid-Coast Maine, and the specific property of Loon Landing, which have both managed to essentially ruin us forever. we will constantly be comparing every place we look at to this place. Obviously, nothing will quite do…

We are not demoralized, just slightly depressed. We hold on to the hope that one day something will come up for sale and we will both get out of the car, eyes filled with dazzling light as the clouds part and the voices of angels can be heard singing the Hallelujah Chorus. We were turn to each other and whisper, “magic.”

Pay Back

I must begin this post with an apology. None of my readers want to hear me complain about the weather when you guys have been sweltering in triple digit agony for a month. Nevertheless, yesterday was one of those rare days in Maine where its filthy outside. Not a whisper of a wind all day with 90% humidity which made it feel like 92 degrees. Yes, yes…I know. But, this cabin has no AC. For most of the afternoon it was hotter inside than it was outside. The next couple of days promise more of the same, with Sunday’s expected high temperature to reach 93. That is a very big deal for Maine. But, enough with the belly-aching. Nature has a way of offering unexpected grace. Last night around 8 o’clock this happened…

It seemed like Mother Nature felt bad and decided to pay us back. Pam had ventured out in the midst of it on her paddle board, leaving Lucy and me fishing on the dock. Even Lucy was enchanted…

At one point it looked as if the lake itself was on fire. Neither of these pictures does it justice but its the best I can do.

Today we drive down to Portland to have brunch with Patrick and Sarah who have been tooling around that famous foodie-town for the past couple of days. After that we will bring them here for four whole days! It will be their turn to experience Loon Landing. The weather doesn’t appear that it will be as nice as when Jon and Kaitlin were here, but the weather is at the very top of things I can do nothing about. Whether is perfect or not…its still at the lake!

Two more weeks here. Time is flying.

Not as Easy as We Make it Look

So, apparently we are due for a cloudy day with a few showers possible. We have had few of either since our arrival here one month ago. I will take advantage of the cloudy/rainy conditions by doing a bit of actually…work. There are bills to be paid, I’m told, along with some misc. professional responsibilities that cannot be indefinitely shirked. Sad.

The first thing I ask myself when I wake up here is, what day is today? Actually, the first thing I ask is, “why the heck are you awake at quarter to six in the morning??” Proletarian habits are hard to break, I suppose. The early bird might get the bird in the working world, but up here all it gets you is a view of fog on a still lake and snuggle time with Lucy. Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good deal.

I would like to point out something about our life up here while disabusing you of the false notion that we just lounge around doing nothing for six weeks every year. Nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, I adhere to a rather strict schedule. My calendar is very full and some days it’s nye near impossible to fit it all in…

5:45 Wake up. Walk into living room, stand at the sliding glass door staring at the lake for several minutes listening to Lucy snoring from the sofa.

5:50 Wedge yourself into tiny bathroom for the necessary morning ritual.

5:55 Brew coffee.

6:00 Empty the cutest little dishwasher in the world…

6:10 Drink coffee while snuggling Lucy, who unlike her owner, has the good sense to still be sound asleep at this hour…

6:30 Check baseball box scores. Continue mourning the tragic loss of Juan Soto to the Padres. Peruse latest “lake cabins for sale in Maine” emails from Redfin and Zillow. Here’s one that has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, gorgeous views of a wonderful lake and 1600 square feet of living space! Now all I have to do is come up with $875,000. Sigh…

7:15 Walk down to the dock for some fishing. 

8:00 Give Pam a hug as she stumbles out of the bedroom. Watch her stare at the lake for five minutes trying to decide whether today is a Kayak or paddle board morning.

8:15 Take Lucy out for her morning perambulation after she finally wakes up. Remember to take multiple sanitary bags since one never knows whether it will be a one or two poop walk.

8:30 Begin grueling decision making process over what to eat for breakfast. Should I have cereal with blueberries, toasted English muffins with peanut butter and raspberry preserves, or should I wait for Pam to return from the lake and get her to make bacon and eggs?

9:00 Compliment wife on phenomenal bacon and egg breakfast, then load up the kayak with gear and head out for morning fishing run…

All this, and its barely nine o’clock in the morning! I’m exhausted just writing about it! Vacationing in Maine is no where near as easy as we make it look, y’all.

Reward the Things You Want More Of

As I get older, I have developed an intolerance for mean people. Rudeness and condescension bother me more than they used to. People who have known me the longest might suggest that I used to be rude and condescending at times, and they would be right! I like to think that with age and maturity, along with the help of the Holy Spirit I have been able to eliminate some of my earlier habits. Still, there are times when I can be dismissive and rude, but when it happens I immediately recognize it and apologize. But this blog is not about me, its about the roll that manners play in the business world. For me it trumps almost everything else. Let me give a couple of examples.

In Camden there are lots of gift shops. Some cater to higher end tastes and wallets, some feature kitschy stuff. Our favorite has always been The Smiling Cow. But…why? They aren’t the cheapest. They aren’t the biggest with the most variety. So, what is it? Its simple really…friendly, courteous people. Each time we walk through the doors of that place we are treated by smiling, happy people, eager to help us find what we need. If they are out of something they offer to order it for us. A couple of weeks ago I went in to buy a load of stuff for Pam’s 60th birthday. As I was piling it up on the counter, the owner, Meg, says, “Is this for Pam’s 60th? You cant just give her this stuff in a bag. Let us wrap these up nice for her. Leave them here, come back in 30 minutes and they will be ready.” I did and they were, beautifully wrapped in gorgeous paper. I’m not even sure she charged me because I never look at a receipt anymore. That’s another thing, we can get some of the same things a few doors down at one of their competitors for less money. We hardly ever shop there because the people who ring up your order look like they hate nothing more than having to deal with me. “Oh great…another customer!” The difference is like night and day. I’m done doing business with rude people. If I have to pay a little more, so be it.

There are also more than a couple lake house rental operations in town. We have used several of them, but once we found On The Water In Maine, we found our place. The other guys feature a process that eliminates personal interaction. You pick up a packet at the office where nobody is ever there. All interaction is via email and automated telephone service. By contrast, OTWIM has the most adorable office you’ve ever seen, with people who’s purpose in life seems to me my happiness and enjoyment of Maine. If and when something goes wrong—washing machine marks up the clothes, gas grill grate is rusted over—a solution shows up at your door within minutes of your call it seems. There’s no arguing back and forth, they just fix it! They appreciate our business and want us to remain customers forever, so they do whatever it takes. Wouldn’t you rather have that than being able to save a few bucks with someone you don’t even know?

I want to do business with good people, with people who appreciate me, folks who take pride in what they do. Everyone from the guy I rent kayaks from—Dan the Kayak Man with Ducktrap Kayaks, to the place where I buy t-shirts and hats. I want good people to prosper. The price? Who cares?! The difference between price and value is the difference between a relationship and a mere economic transaction. Shop where the people know your name. Use chain stores as a last resort. Reward the kind of behavior you drill into your kids, kindness and courtesy. There’s plenty of it out there, if you know where to look!

Golfing With Doug

So, one of the things I do up here is play golf. This is an activity which I have ironically almost given up back home, but up here all I have is time to do whatever I want, and how great is it to walk 18 holes without breaking a sweat? I play early in the morning when its normally in the low 60’s, and I’m finished by 9:30. I mean seriously…there’s no excuse not to play. 

My golf course of choice is the delightful Rockland Golf Club. They are always accommodating with sending me out first thing in the morning and they have really nice rental clubs. The ones I had today were brand new. Back in Richmond, Doug Greenwood is always ragging on me for playing with 30 year old clubs. “Why don’t you try playing with golf clubs made after the Reagan administration,” he always says. Well, after today I must say that he has a point. These clubs were amazing…

However, the day began with a bad omen. Since I don’t bring my own golf gear along on this trip I have to not only rent clubs but also buy tees and balls. I usually buy whatever is the course ball in the big basket on the counter….

Chaos proved to be an apt description of my round. Started off with a huge drive off the first tee, followed by three consecutive fat irons, ending with an inglorious 7. I spent the entire round trying to figure out these new fangled irons, finally discovering that I needed to choke up a full inch. Once I did that I consistently hit almost every one of them a mile…only problem was each shot was ten to fifteen yards over the intended target! 



Yes, as a matter of fact I did have 23 putts on the back nine and 40 for the round. It was not the fault of the very stylish and brand new putter, more like user error. Alert golfers will notice that I only hit four fairways and seven greens. In other words, I did what I do best…scrambled. Hit some of the most amazing recovering shots from some of the worst places ever! Had a blast though. It should also be noted that I started the round with five golf balls and played the last two holes with the last of them. If you’re keeping score at home that’s four penalty strokes! Chaos indeed!

A couple more observations about life in Maine. 

First, every crossroads that calls itself a “town” up here has one of these…

The General Store. In Maine it always includes a kitchen that makes pizza, baked goods like whoopie pies, and Italian sandwiches. The one in this picture is in Hope, Maine. But there are plenty others close by. The towns of Searsmont, Union, Lincolnville Center, Belmont, Owl’s Head, and Morrill all have their own. The sandwiches and pizza they make are amazingly good. In fact, I’m picking up one tonight from the Fraternity General Store in Searsmont for dinner. 

Another thing, most people when they think of the Maine coast thing of the rocky shores and lighthouses and such. What most don’t realize is how mountainous it is here, so close to the ocean. I took this picture on the drive home from playing golf today not five miles from our lake house…

This is the view from Moody Mountain. Somewhere out there is the lake.

One more thing. Pam decided to take Lucy along with her on a paddle board trip all the way across the lake. That long house in the distance is a place we call the Dance Hall and its probably a third of a mile over there. 

When Lucy returned she was hardly even breathing hard! She is a water baby like none other.

These Two Women

I had just dropped Kaitlin and Jon off at the Portland airport. It was 10:00 o’clock in the morning. I knew that Pam was still fighting back tears back at the lake. This is always what happens whenever one of them leaves. We had a wonderful week of perfect weather with them and we both feel grateful to have had them here, but when they leave there is always a sadness that lingers for a while. It’s a parent thing, I suppose. On the drive back to the lake I spent part of the time listening to a podcast that Kaitlin had recommended, but the rest of the time I thought about her…and her mother.

These two women have a connection to each other that I suppose only mothers and daughters have. I can’t describe it because I have never experienced it, this mysterious thing between them. Although they are both alike in many ways, they are not carbon copies of each other, a very good thing. But, they understand each other, they get each other. The one on the left made me a man when she married me. Most of the successes I have enjoyed have been because I was trying my best to make her proud of me, trying to live up to the promises I made her in that church in front of all those people all those years ago. The one on the right made me a father, handing me the hardest, most demanding job I’ve ever had before or since. She tried her best to prepare me for what it would be like two years later to become a father to a boy. Although she doesn’t belong to me, or anyone else for that matter, she and her brother remain my most prized possessions. Whenever I have a bad day, I always think about them, and in doing so it reminds me of the things in my life that I have gotten right, the very best I have done.

Now, we have six days of relative quiet until Patrick and Sarah arrive. I will once again make the hour and forty-five minute drive to the Portland airport. I will hope for more good weather. We will cherish every minute we get with them because the return trip to Portland will come way too soon. Lucy will be thrilled to have them all to herself without Frisco along to distract them. We will do anything the kids want to do while they are here. It’s their vacation after all.

But until then it will be the three of us here soaking up the rejuvenating vibe of this magical place…