A Top Ten List No Nation Wants To Be On

Oman

Iraq 

Saudi Arabia

India

Malaysia

Ethiopia

Libya

Sudan

Mexico

Algeria

Whenever you see any of these nations in the news it's usually because someone has whipped out an AK-47 or machete and slaughtered a bunch of people. Sometimes it's because someone has blown themselves up at a crowded market, or driven an explosive-laden truck into a police station or something. You hardly ever see a headline about one of these countries announcing an exciting new vacation resort being built. No international conferences chose these countries for their annual meetings. Neither do celebrities choose to build exotic getaway homes there. Why?

At first glance one might say...poverty. Well, yes, some of these countries are quite poor, but not all of them. India does quite well in spots. Saudi Arabia has plenty of wealth. A second look might suggest the scourge of radical Islam. But, the last time I looked, there weren't a lot of Muslims in Mexico. So, why do so many terrible things happen in these countries? 

ANSWER: This is a list of the ten hottest nations on the face of the earth.

I dare say that if my wife lived in the Sudan and had to shop for groceries in an outdoor market in 110 degree heat, it wouldn't be long before she too would be sporting a bomb vest!! Everyone who knows Pam assumes her to be the kindest most loving person they know...an observation which is generally true, but let the air conditioner go on the fritz around here and it's like I'm sharing the house with a cross between Jack the Ripper and Charles Manson. So, when she casually responded in Maine to news of a murderous rampaging truck driver in Nice, France with a plaintive plea, "Why can't these people just come to Maine?"...she wasn't far from the truth.

So, as we soldier on through the rest of this brutal summer weather, let us say a prayer for the unfortunate souls who reside in places like Kuala Lumpur. And the next time horrible news comes to us from places which feature scenery like this....

...lets not be too quick to judge!

Heat...I had almost forgotten

This morning, for the first time in quite a while, I dressed for work...white dress shirt, dress pants, dress shoes and a tie. I left my house and walked to my car in the garage, started it, turned on the air conditioner and drove to my office. It was 8:00 am when I arrived. The short walk from the car to the office door wasn't too bad, a little muggy, but not so bad. At noon, I walked outside of my air conditioned office towards my car and was welcomed back to Short Pump properly. The air was heavy and damp. The power of the wall of heat that faced me on my short walk was staggering. But, I reminded myself that having been gone the entire month of July, I had missed the worst of it. Today was what passes for a cool spell to my beleaguered Short Pumpians, the high temperature only expected to reach 90.

But then...I reached my car.

My Cadillac CDS had spent the past four hours sitting in the sun, soaking it all in on a spongy blacktop. When I opened the door and got inside it was like...it was as if...I need to give this some thought. How to describe the heat coming at you from the inside of a car in Short Pump...in August?

Picture a Malaysian whore house... in the midst of a power outage... at 4 o'clock in the afternoon...in the middle of monsoon season.

How about the prospect of hopping an empty cattle car and laying on the metal floor with the doors closed as you inch your way down the tracks outside of Bangalor, India in April.

Imagine you're unlucky enough to be a woman in Saudi Arabia and are forced onto a chain gang laying asphalt dressed in a full body hijab.

Ok...maybe not as bad as that, but after being in Maine for a month, it was pretty awful.

Good to be back...

Made it back to dear old Short Pump at 2:30 this afternoon. Have spent the past few hours getting reacquainted with my house. It seems bigger somehow, but the yard feels smaller. Lucy was quite surprised to be back. It was as if she never expected to ever come back here...and she was fine with that. But now that she's back, she's a very happy dog.

The mail had been collected by the US Postal Service all month, and delivered to us in a double grocery bag. Took me thirty minutes to sort through it all. Based on my consumption behavior over the past thirty days, the marketing colossus which is the American banking industry saw fit to send me no less than eleven credit card offers. I took surprising joy in ripping all of them up. There were several bills and a few checks so, some good, some bad.

It will be the same tomorrow at work, some good, some bad. It was actually that way in Maine too...more good than bad but still a bit of both. Such is life. Our month on Hobbs Pond was a delight, a treasure trove of memories that can never be taken from us, making them even more valuable as years go by. But every one of them was made possible by the very mundane things done here in Short Pump, the work, the day to day.

So, I don't despair at returning here. I miss Maine. I count the days until I can go back. But I will never resent the here and now or wish it would pass. Tomorrow I get to go back to work to make it all happen again. I have missed the people there. They are every bit the blessings to me that the loons on the lake have been. Come to think of it...I get to be surrounded by loons all year!

Pam is at Martins replenishing the shelves. Lucy is happily asleep on her sofa spot, and I am writing this in my library while listening to a live performance by Duke Ellington...Take the A-Train...

Good to be back...

Last Day...

Day 29

This will be our last full day in Maine. We will head into Camden Deli for some blueberry pancakes. Pam will stop by the Smiling Cow to pick out her whirlligig thing...a polished bronze thing that catches the wind and twirls around. Something like this...

She's wanted one forever so today she will pick one out and have it shipped home since there won't be any room in our car. We will kick around in town for a while, then make the drive back to the lake where the packing up will begin. It's hard to believe that this month is almost over. It has flown by. While doing so, it has exceeded our wildest expectations. The weather hasn't been perfect, but pretty close. The house wasn't perfect but pretty close. We never once got bored or ran out of places to go and see and things to do. The fishing was crazy. The lake was beautiful. The call of the loons, enchanting. We read a load of books. The television was on maybe a couple of hours all month...for an inning or two of baseball. Having no wifi was a hassle, but we managed perfectly well gobbling up data on our cell phones. Having Paula and Ron for a visit and of course, the kids, was wonderful. But we also enjoyed our time just the two of us. Lucy was a champion. She has had the time of her life and is now a lake dog for life.

We will miss everything about Duck Cove Cottage and Hobbs Pond. It will be a strange feeling tomorrow morning pulling out of here. Gratitude and sadness.

Waiting On The Storm

Day 28

Astute readers will recall that ten days ago I played a round of golf at the Rockland Golf Club with three wonderful Mainers in a driving rainstorm. Well, today I decided that I couldn't leave this place without playing that course in the sunlight. So I left the house at 6:30 this morning with no tee time and took my chances. By 6:55, I teed off as the first golfer of the day, with rented clubs and a push cart. Two hours and twenty seven minutes later, I walked off the 18th green with my Map My Fitness app telling me I had walked exactly six miles. It was the finest six mile walk of my life.

I shot an 86. Not horrible, not great. 

Two stories... My worst shot of the day was a badly hooked tee shot on a par five which featured a partially blind tee shot. The minute I hit it, I knew it was deep in the woods and hopelessly lost. But when I crested the hill, right in the general area where my shot probably entered the woods were these guys...

Yes, a flock of wild turkeys reminded me just how bad my shot actually was!

My best shot was on an uphill, into the wind par 3 that the scorecard said was 215 yards but looked much longer. I hit a 3 wood to 15 feet...

Me, being me...I left the birdie putt two foot short!

This terrific course featured lots of gorgeous views which I hadn't noticed in the monsoon earlier. Pictures don't really capture the beauty...

This particular one is of number 16 I think. I took it because to the left rear of the picture is a big house on the mountain that overlooks not only the course, but Rockland harbor as well. The water can be seen beyond the spruce trees on the right.

Now, it's 4:30 in the afternoon and we are waiting on a storm to pass through. It's all over the radar about ten miles away. I'm on one end of the great front porch writing this blog while chewing on beef jerky. Pam is drinking her afternoon coffee and eating French horns. There is no illustration that better sums up our relationship!!

A Bad Dinner...sorta.

Day 27

So, last night...after a long and lazy day spent recuperating from waiting on our four kids for a week...Pam and I decided to drive into Rockland for dinner. There were over thirty restaurants to choose from in our handy Guide to Midcoast Dining magazine. We finally decided on this place...

Archers on the Pier was described as being located, "directly on Rockland's pristine waterfront." Analysis? True.

Then we were told, "come enjoy an innovative and tasty menu." Analysis? Misleading. Unless by "innovative" they meant...make patrons wait an hour for a table, then another thirty minutes for their food to arrive, resulting in ravaging hunger which would make boiled cardboard seem tasty. The best part of Archers was arriving and leaving. We parked on the far end of the harbor and took a gorgeous walk around the bay on a wide and flowered boardwalk with the sun setting behind us. When we arrived we were told that there would be a twenty minute wait. We found a seat at the outdoor bar and ordered a Cajun shrimp appetizer which turned out to be the very best thing we ate during our two hour stay. The breeze off the ocean was divinely inspired, it's staggered timing, perfect! Actually, we could have sat out there eating Cajun shrimp for two hours and left happy. But unfortunately, eventually our table was ready...inside, next to the kitchen, in very close proximity to two talkative Italian 

retirees from Ohio. It was a loooong night. This was the before-selfie...

We didn't take an after-selfie...good thing. Still, worse things could happen to people than having to spend over two hours at a restaurant. We could have caught the Zika virus or even worse...been forced to watch the Democrat Convention. I heard that Bubba was particularly gifted/disingenuous in his attempt to describe his relationship with Hillary as a romance. So, thank God for slow service.

Last couple of days have had Pam on edge. She doesn't do well if she's "hot." Although, outside has been a pleasant 82 or so, this house has been a bit toasty at times. No air-conditioning will do that. The beautiful ceiling fan above our bed would ordinarily provide welcomed relief from the sometimes muggy conditions. But in our case the fan is merely ornamental since turning it on would send Lucy scrambling out the door in a full fledged panic. So, we soldier on! 

Three more days here. With each passing day, the real world gets closer and responsibility starts to cloud the mind. Soon, this will all be over. Bummer.

Motives Unclear?

Day 26

When I scan the Internet for news, the headline is everything. For instance, if the words "Beiber" or "Khardashian" appear, the story isn't getting read. This is why I love the Wall Street Journal so much since every story in the paper begins on the front page, hardly any of which contain those two words, making my news gathering experience more efficient. Now, I'm aware that I probably miss many perfectly fine articles because of poorly written headlines, but that's life...you win some and you lose some.

But lately, a particular type of headline appears more and more in my news feeds. It is some variation of the same theme. This morning, it comes from the UK's Telegraph...

Isis Knifemen slit Priest's throat while yelling "Daesh"...motives unclear.

Yes, Telegraph, perhaps these Knifemen were unhappy with the Priest's views on Eucharistic adoration. Or maybe they were unhappy with the inconvenience of his confession hours. Why, just the other day there was the story of the Baptist Deacon who barged into a mosque shouting, "It is God's will!!!" and chopped that Imam's head off. What? You don't remember that story? Me neither, because it didn't happen. But, if it did does anyone believe that the New York Times would report that the killer's motives were unclear? It's like the old joke about the headline in the New York Times the morning after a meteor destroys New York City...METEOR WIPES OUT CITY....woman and minorities hardest hit.

...but enough about the path of death and destruction being cut through the world by radical Islam. Let's change the subject to something more uplifting, like the fact that even though all my kids are gone, Pam and I still have four more days in this beautiful place. There are still things we want to do and places we want to see. If I were reporting on our activities for the New York Times, perhaps the headline would read...Local couple frantic to cross "things to do on vacation" off of their list as vacation draws to close...MOTIVES UNCLEAR.