Scary Things

I'm afraid of spiders and Texas. A ginormo spider web IN Texas would pretty much complete my worst nightmare. Details...

Maine Trip

A trip to Maine from NYC that starts with a disembodied JetBlue voice stating "Well folks, we're all set to go. We just need to find a captain" does not bode well. "We've made some phone calls, sent up some smoke signals and hopefully we'll find one in the Tri-State area, if not at this airport." Great. They did finally find someone, after a good 45 minutes on the tarmac and then we were off. More photos here

This trip was good, one of the better -- as we had stipulated "No plans. No fancy dinners or guests or organized anything. Just relaxation." It wasn't easy for my parents to pull that off, but they did. The house and grounds were amazing, lush and full of flowers and late-August life. Highlights included meeting the new dog, Sasha (a Keeshond, Dutch barge dog). There were also some interesting scary bugs around. Swimming in the pond was glorious: deep, cool, cognac-colored water (it's man-made, clay-bottomed and spring-fed.) I wish I had more pictures, particularly of J. and P. and the dory. Dang.


We also visited Boothbay Harbor, bustling with large tourists, and after the obligatory lobster lunch overlooking the harbor, took a quick run in P.'s very cool handmade dory.

Now that I'm back, in between scratching the horrid mosquito bites on both ankles, I'm planning a week (off) of culture, food, wine, entertainment and art. I'm off to Pearl Paint now to buy supplies for the painting that J. has requested for her birthday. Not sure yet what medium I'll use... hopefully I'll be inspired at the store.

Fire and Light

A detached sense of dismay turned to a sickenly familiar feeling of sadness when I learned that the two firefighters who died in a fire yesterday at the toxic Deutsche Bank building were from Engine 24 and Ladder 5 of Battalion 2 -- the fire station just up the street half a block from my apartment building. This morning there were no fewer than six news trucks with their antennaes rising to two stories and my brief glimpse at a gathering of people outside revealed the hunched shoulders and lowered heads of the grieving.

I'll never forget, of course, walking by there after 9/11: the ever-regenerating piles of flowers, the firehouse's purple bunting, and later the plaque and glowing acrylic tribute poster commemorating the 11 (!) men who died that day at Ground Zero. The sadness and shock were palpable then. And now two more.

I work kitty-corner from the shrouded, doomed Deutsche Bank building and have been watching it from my cubicle over the months. It shrinks imperceptably day by day and has now dipped below my vantage point when sitting. Good. Let it be gone as soon as possible.

* * *

A week from now I'll be surrounded by the green of southern coastal Maine, my family, and that slow, lazy, poignant feeling of late August. The only thing missing, I assume, will be the fireflies that lit up the night lawn last month. On one moonless night, we noticed that the usual flickerings of little light sources had suddenly bloomed into thousands, blinking in the grass, the air, festooning the stone wall, and up into the trees. It was a firefly convention! Magical.

Speaking of dark nights, there's a remarkable article by far-flung correspondent David Owen called "The Dark Side" in last week's New Yorker magazine decrying the lamentable phenomenon of light pollution. You can't access it online, unfortunately, but you can view some animated New Yorker cartoons. How very cool is that. I particularly love the one with the cat. The cat with the gun.