Summer workers, some are not

While the installer from the phone company is stringing a phone line across a mosquito-laden swamp, the guy from the heating company is making the final connections on our gas range, and my father is learning how to set up voice dialing on his new cell phone, I'll be trying to get something that looks like a day's worth of work at the camp. Think it'll happen? Me neither.

This week we learned that lightning hit a tree in a neighbor's yard at the lake. This is the second strike in a few years. I'm not glad it's them, but I'm glad it's not us, too. One time we were expecting company at the camp. My mother had laid out the food on a table in the middle of the room. Lightning blew out a lighting fixture overhead, exploding the light bulbs and spraying the food with broken glass. We liked the people who were coming to visit, so we threw the food away.

The camp is at the edge of what was, a 100 years ago, a farm. There are still pieces of barbed wire along the back edge of the property. Lightning hit a tree, travel down toward the ground, jumped on the barbed wire, ran the length of the wire and knocked some boards off of the back of the sauna.

In Massachusetts, you have Cambridge and Amherst. In California, you have Berkeley. Coloradans, jumping up and down to catch the attention of coast-to-coast flights, shout out, "Hey, you want loopy. We got loopy right here." Hofu, human-flesh-flavored tofu.

Happy 1st birthday, Russell.

Would Kerouac have a Support the Troops magnet?

I was standing at the counter at the Verizon store in the mall, buying a new cell phone for my father and getting a free upgrade for myself. The young man next to me at the counter, holding half of a phone, asks the sales person, "Can you check again? I know had insurance on this."

Yesterday I found a solution to a scripting problem that had vexed me for more than a week. For those of you who care about such things, it had to do with handling very long pathnames in Windows. The problem had been blocking me from taking care of several other things, so I'm looking forward to visiting my to-do list anew. Tomorrow I'm going to work from the camp. We're having a phone line installed, but I expect to be working offline most of the time. I've signed up for a free NetZero account. We will get Internet access for 10 hours per month and will experience some ads.

We (I) often play the "What if" game. What if I had tried something different for supper instead of the old tried-and-true? What if I took that job last year where I'd be writing process documents for the pharmaceutical companies? It plays out on larger scales as well. People like to ask Peter Kramer, "What if van Gogh had had Prozac?" On yesterday's The Connection, the host and guests wondered what if Allen Ginsberg was releasing Howl now? Where would he shill the book? Jerry Springer? The Daily Show? Howard Stern on Sirius? "... who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, ..."

Musicians aren't like the rest of us. Here's the science.

The BBC is running this story about a big table and chair. Little do they know that Gardner has big chairs, too. I used to pick up the newspapers for my delivery route just to the left of this chair.

A couple of studies are showing that insomnia, more than just a side effect of depression, often precedes and may even trigger depressive episodes.

Eye to eye with a dragon fly

It's like there's a slit in a sack of bird seeds. A little leaks out and then more as the slit widens. Sometimes you can stop and repair it in position. Sometimes you have to lie it on its side to slow the out-going rush so you can make repairs. Depending on where the breach is, it can be difficult or easy stop the leak, repair it, and replenish the bag. I came home from work mid-day yesterday and lay down for a couple hours. I feel better, with only a slight case of overwrought similes as a side effect.

In an effort to recover the tough afternoon, I stacked wood for nearly an hour. It was warm, verging on hot, but there was a comfortable breeze and the work was mostly in the shade. A dragonfly followed me around like a pet. As best as I can determine, it was a unicorn clubtail.

Adam called late in the afternoon, reporting on their trip. He and Jennie raised money for stroke research (runners raised more than $3M total), completed their races, and brought back stories of strength and courage. We're very proud of them. Prices for Wyeth, the makers of Advil, (WYE, NYSE) peaked Monday morning and fell back.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned here that I'd had a BB gun as a kid. That surprised Adam. We never had guns around when he was growing up. But, as much as I could be, I tried to be a normal kid. I even went through that shoplifting phase in junior high school. While other kids were boosting clothes, candy, toys, and canoes (yep), I took books.

Silvio Berlusconi went to Finland and complained about the food. Pickled herring, beets, and turnip?

OK, it can stop now. I have had songs from the Anne of Green Gables soundtrack in my head since our return trip to Northampton on Sunday evening. It's nice enough music, once a year, maybe once every two years.

G'bye, Lucky. He was Adam, Jennie, and Lily's cat and passed away on Monday from renal failure.

you're going to rise up singing

The measure of a good song is in the fruit it bears. So it is with Gershwin's Summertime. The operatic original, the aching blues from Janis Joplin, the deep spirituality from John Coltrane, the rolicking licks from Alvin Lee, and the many, many others.

Astronomical summer began at 2:46AM (EDT). Meteorologists begin their summers at the start of June; September, by their reckoning, is an autumn month. Some in Europe start even earlier, in May, when the sun is already high and the days are long. Finns celebrate Juhannus, St. John's Day, during this time. Like Christmas, it's less a religious observance and more an excuse for a party. Can you have a party that goes all night long when there is no night? We didn't serve alcohol at our house, so I didn't see the drunken revels while I was growing up or didn't recognize it when I did. There would be plenty of that later.

The cool, wet spring has delayed lots of plants. The mountain laurel will be at its pink-and-white peak this weekend.

Because of a slight mixup, we received a bill for our newspaper subscription. The bill is for 34¢ and is stamped Final Notice.

No time to brew coffee? Well, here are two ways to get your daily dose - in the shower and on the tongue.

I'm sure that they laughed at Leonardo da Vinci, Robert Fulton, and Rudolph Diesel, but that doesn't stop us from at least smiling at these guys. It's all part of the Museum of Retro Technology.

Welcome home, Adam and Jennie.

What is so rare as a pixel in June?

Once again, the temperature is in the 40s so we need a small fire in the wood stove. Last evening's air was clear and dry and you could see far away places. We drove Lily home in the bright light of the setting sun. The trees are a deep green now. The shadows at dusk highlight the color. Many years ago Zenith touted their new TV that had each pixel set on a black background that made each color more vivid. One of the songs on the Anne of Green Gables soundtrack proclaims that our best learning comes through the close inspection of nature. So, look closely at a rare June evening in the Connecticut River Valley and you, too, might appreciate the technology of the last American-made TV set.

It's been that kind of weekend, delights tumbling over one another. Lily is a joy, sharp, confident, loving, and, as Jennie's mother, Diane, observed, willing. When it was time to play, Lily splashed in the water or made art. When it was time to work, she happily carried bags of stuff from the car to the camp or wielded our vacuum cleaner as needed. And, just when you both need it, she'll hop on your lap and lean her head against your shoulder.

From Mike and Lynn on Father's Day I received a gift certificate at a local store and, most precious of all, a framed picture collection of all seven grandchildren. Adam and Jennie have given me trees which we'll plant in the fall. Lynn bought Mike a popup trailer that can sleep the whole family. They had breakfast in the trailer on Sunday morning.

My father is still unsteady and uses his father's umbrella (!) as his cane. He looks thin and often tired. When I gave him his gift and shook his hand, though, I found that his grip is still strong.

On Friday we had the camp's septic tank pumped for the first time since Nixon was president. Lily officially pronounced the open tank as gross, but the nice man who runs the sanitation service said that all is in good working order. Our next task, one that would have been heretical just a short time ago, is that we will have a landline phone installed at the camp. Sandra was unable to complete several calls because the cell phone reception was so uneven. Sandra and I haven't discussed it yet, but a landline phone also makes way for Internet access.

Lily, Sandra, and I went for a canoe ride on Saturday morning. We visited with Carole, a year-round resident who wrote a history of the lake a few years ago. The cover of the book included a picture of my father sailing his boat. We continued our inspection of the lake, greeting the campers who were out, waving to the creepy guy with a mullet who was having beer for breakfast. Lo, a For Sale sign was visible on the dock of one small camp. This hardly ever happens. We had neither pencil nor pen, so we divided the memory task, each of us taking a part of the phone number to remember until we could get back to the camp. My part was the area code, 941, a Florida number.

The camp, we learned, was for sale for $250,000, down from $300,000. It had been owned by the former longest resident on the lake; he'd passed away a few months ago. Basically, it was two teardowns on a quarter acre. We talked with the seller last night and learned that they'd had an offer.

We returned to Holden to bring Lily to Mike and Lynn's for an overnight stay. Sandra and I weren't quite ready for a quiet camp yet, so we went out on the town in Gardner. We stopped in at what was billed as a Gospel Bluegrass Jam at a local church - four people playing out-of-tune banjos and singing out-of-tune with the banjos and each other. We slipped in quietly and slipped out again, leaving our donation in the can by the door. We had dinner at a surprisingly good Mexican restaurant and then drove around a bit. We drove past the three-decker that my grandparents owned. Where families from Finland, Poland, and New Brunswick once lived, we now see black and brown and yellow skins. We rode back to the camp through Otter River. We'd had such a good meal that we didn't need to stop at Lee's Hot Dog Stand in Baldwinville. Downtown Phillipston was dark and quiet.

We were up past 10PM for three nights of four. I can't say that our managers will get their full measure of our work today, but we'll make good.