Putting things in more or less order

A good vacation doesn't fit in a box, tied up with ribbon, that you can open years from now to say, "Yes, that's what it was."
A good vacation has time enough to look over the handiwork of spiders who've woven their webs in the overnight and now those webs glisten in the morning dew.

A good vacation has unplanned visits, particularly with young ones who bring their own views of us and what's important.

A good vacation marks transitions, from young to not-young, from before-adventure to after-adventure.

A good vacation lets us learn about the big world in our small corner.

Fisher Museum - Harvard Forest

A good vacation lets you sleep as much as you need to, work until it's time to swim, swim until your toes are pruney, air-dry on the bench until the mosquitoes have had their fill, and talk for a long time because there's always this one more thing to say.
A good vacation spills out of the box, onto the floor, and leaves tracks all around your house and yard and life.
It was a good vacation.

Ikea numbers

• The probability of placing an upside-down board in an Ikea project: 1.
• The probability of two or more people, each assembling the same Ikea piece of furniture, making the same mistake: 1.
• The step you will have to redo: 3.
• The number of times that one's grandfather, a cabinet maker, rolls in his grave: ∞.
• The number of better ways to spend a \vacation day with your wife: 0.

Father's Day 2013

I'm a very fortunate guy.

Not only did I  receive some clever and thoughtful gifts, but, most importantly, we got to spend time together as family. We ate well, laughed loudly, and heard good stories of hope and adventure.

How to lose a sale and win a customer

While cutting firewood this weekend, the chain slipped off the bar on my chainsaw. In the process of re-

tightening the chain, a small clip and, I later learned, a bearing fell out of the sprocket assembly and into the underbrush. I took it as an omen to stop work for the day. I put the chainsaw into the back of my car.
I went back to Holden the next day to tend to a few other errands and brought the chainsaw to the repair place near our house, Parker Power Equipment. They have worked on other saws before as well as our lawn mower and snowblower.
The young man behind the desk looked at the saw and said that they don't always have the right Stihl parts in stock, that I might do better to go a Stihl dealer such as the one in Worcester. I had errands in Worcester, so I went to the dealer. They had the parts and installed them at the counter.
Both places did well, but Parker did better. They said that losing this sale was better for me, the customer. They were right. My chainsaw could have been with them for several days while they tried to get the right parts for this simple repair. They earned my loyalty as a customer.

Plans for the weekend? The weather says, "Ha!"

What's been weirdest among the many weird aspects of this weekend's weather has been nearly two days of precipitation with a strong northwest wind.
In typical patterns, systems move up the east coast, dragging a cold front behind them. The cold front shifts the wind to the northwest and brings in colder and drier air. In this case, the wind started to shift on Friday. The rain continued, hard, through Friday and Saturday. Lighter on Saturday night, we saw or thought we saw some snow mixed in.
Three months earlier, we would have called the a three-day Nor'easter.It's not uncommon for winter storms to strengthen as they get into the Gulf of Maine. Bombing out, they call it. The weather charts don't show that this happened, only that the systems moved slowly.
There are breaks in the clouds now. There are whitecaps on the lake.
The fireplace, even if we had good, dry wood, doesn't put out enough heat to fight against the wind and cold. The porch of the camp has single-pane windows with broad exposure to the northwest wind coming across the lake. When I was a kid, we had a pocket door and a pocket window on the wall that separated the porch from the main room. My father removed those during a renovation in the 70s. We could have used them this weekend.
We're burning wood that's long past its prime, stuff that was cut five or more years ago. My plan had been to cut and split the fallen hemlock that's in the front yard. There was still plenty of good meat on much of the tree. Split, it'll be good for both the fireplace and sauna. It was too cold and rainy on yesterday and on Friday, though, for me to spend very long outdoors.
The rain will stop. The winds will calm and shift again. By the end of the coming week, it'll be 90.

Reading by Kindle light

For the second time this week, we lost power. It was earlier in the evening this time, about 5:30. We listened for our neighbor's generator. Sure enough, the low hum was rolling across the cove.
Ours is such an exciting life. Friday evenings are anchored by several PBS shows (Newshour, Beat the Press, This Old House) plus a couple of items on DVR. As a half hour became an hour, we set ourselves up for a different time.
We heard the sounds of the Northern toads in the swamp, a long, low call offered to potential mates. We had a round of checkers. Sandra won two of three. We had our supper on the deck by the sauna and lingered until the black flies and early mosquitoes drove us away.
The dark filled the house and eventually the outdoors. We could see our neighbor's flag, waving in an easterly breeze. The hour became two. We read for a while, Sandra on her iPad, me on the Kindle. At nine, we went to bed.
I'm usually awake a couple of times during the night, for an hour or two each time. I woke at midnight, read for a while, went back to sleep, and got up again shortly before three.
National Grid, our electric company, has a website that let's you check on the status of outages in an area. Cell phone coverage at the camp is faint, barely 1 bar.

(National Grid uses Amazon Web Services, AWS, to handle its outage map.)
Sitting by the window and with the phone high, I waited and eventually collected enough bits from the sky to get to the website and learn about the state of things.

As I was reviewing the information, the WiFi signal icon came on. Odd. I looked at the floor and noticed that the lights on one of the power strips was on. The power was restored an hour earlier than estimated.
Dunno what happened. My guess is that a transformer blew out, affecting a small part of a small town. I stayed up for a while longer, drifting off at first light.

VZW giveth, taketh away

When we watch British detective shows on TV, I regularly marvel at the quality of cell phone coverage available to all. They can be in the catacombs of some office building, out in the barrens and moors, or on the North Sea coast. The cell phone rings. They talk.
Around here, and certainly at the cove, an unaided phone struggles to gain one bar of 1G service. Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint all have the same reception. Other folks in the lake may fare better, given the variability of terrain and the amount of granite between their locations and their carrier's towers.
With a MiFi gadget from Verizon, we could get passable Internet connections, provided that the receiver was set in the proper location, high on a north-facing wall.
Last year, we tried something different, a network extender from Verizon. The device sits on a window sill and fetches the faint signal from the tower over the hill, just enough to make the connection. The rest of the call is routed through our cable Internet service (Comcast).

It works well. All calls are clear and steady. Occasionally, we'll miss a call and it will go straight to voicemail.   Sometimes, the GPS setting is way off. My phone may report that I'm in  Gloucester. (When we use it in Holden, the location can show up as Cambridge.) Overall, though, we've been pleased with the performance. It's more than paid for itself.
That we need it at all is a point left for another discussion, having to do with the way that our national telecommunications policies have built an expensive, inefficient, and unreliable wireless system. (Imagine if you could drive your car only on certain highways; to drive on others, you'd have to change cars.)
Mark Gibbs writes in Forbes about several dubious features in the way that Verizon has implemented this much-needed product:

• Even though calls are routed through my Internet service from Comcast, Verizon charges me for the minutes and/or data that I use over the extender. The data shouldn't be an issue (I hope), because I use WiFi connections on my phone. 
• Any Verizon Wireless customer can connect to the network extender.It would be more of a concern if we lived in a more densely-populated area. The nearest neighbor is more than 150m away.  In theory, someone fishing just offshore might be able to connect and make calls.
  It's possible to give priority to selected numbers, but there's no way to whitelist just the phones in the household. 

AT&T. and Sprint have network extenders You can restrict access to certain phones to use them. Verizon has delivered a product that makes their bad coverage better, but manages to dent that outcome with bad policies. 

Light by sound

We lost power this evening for nearly an hour and half. To confirm that it wasn't just us, we stepped outside and heard the sound of our neighbors' generator. It kicks on automatically and can run for a long time on propane.
A rain shower had come through, but no thunder. I called the electric company and learned that it wasn't a widespread outage. A crew was on the way, but they weren't sure how long it would take to get us back online.
There was enough light for a brief walk around the cove. In case you're wondering, the mosquitoes are here and hungry. In the damp air as the darkness filled the woods, they found us delicious. We made our way along the dirt roads and paths. At each turn, we could hear the low hum of the generator and knew the power was still off.
Our neighbor, a retired dentist who served in the Korean War, has a flag in front of his house. He keeps a light on the flag all the time, even on generator power. Now at twilight, the flag stood bright and strong.
We returned from our walk and settled in to whatever it is that people do when there's no electricity. Sandra lit the hurricane lamp and we talked. In time, the lights came back. Outside, across the cove, our neighbor's flag waves gently in the quiet light.

One spring morning at the cove

There was no wind last night, so the cold fell straight from the clear sky onto our fair settlement.

It was in the low 50s inside the camp when Dame Judi decided that it was time for the household to rise and shine and give her her breakfast.

We had one of our earliest first saunas last night. We have a lot of spruce pieces left over from the construction project two years ago. Spruce burns hot and fast and pops loudly. The aches of the day's work softened and soon were gone. 

A month ago, the ice was still thick in the cove. Our first dip was tentative and brief. The second lasted a minute or two. There were a couple of guys fishing nearby.

"You got a sauna in there?" one of them asked.

"Yep," I replied, neck deep in the water. "We'd be even crazier otherwise."

The camp came through the winter in good shape. We lost one tree, a hemlock, just a week ago. It snapped about eight feet from the ground and fell sideways in the front yard.
It had been dead for awhile, likely because of the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, and should have been culled when we had the tree guys here last year.

All the other trees look ok, but it's still early. The maples, birches, and oaks are still two or more weeks away from full foliage. 

Our neighbors visited yesterday afternoon, reporting on their winter and plans for the summer. At their shore, they'd been scolded by a male duck that had been protecting his mate. We later saw both ducks touring the cove.

In the evening, after sauna and supper, Sandra went outside and identified the sound of the Northern spring peeper in the vernal stream nearby. Our project this season, among others, is to listen to and catalog peepers and then frogs. 

It's that transition time, when something of what you need is at the other place. We have a list of things that we forgot to bring yesterday. Let's hope that we remember the list when we go into town today.

We've had our breakfast and our second cup of coffee. It's time to split wood for this evening's fire. 

Fading snow

With temps climbing into the 60s today, I decided to tempt fate and move the snow blower from the front yard to its summer place by the sheds. The last chunk of snow, well, really, ice, is almost gone from our deck.

The corner of our yard, sheltered from the sun, is still snow-covered. At the camp, there's still a foot or more of ice that's been pushed into the cove by the strong northwest winds.

I'm guessing that it will take at least a week, maybe even two, before the cove is open. We're still hoping to open up around the first of May.

What the small road tells us

Already the camp road is covered with needles and leaves. There are pine needles and yellow leaves from birches and the early maples. Near the water, the maples are orange and bright red.

It was a great season at the camp, four months of that second cup of coffee on the front porch, brought indoors by the cool of early fall. We had lots of time to ourselves and big gatherings in celebration of milestone birthdays.

The heron, great big improbable bird, greeted us in the spring, went away, and bid us farewell in the fall. An eagle surveyed the cove.

We worked, real for-pay work, but we could take a swim when it was hot. It was a full summer. We took one weekend off and acted as if we were vacationers in town, doing touristy things and toured the lake by kayak and canoe.

A friend used to remind me that biblical storytellers would say that an event came to pass, not that it came to stay.  A few years ago, some of you might remember, we started to live at the camp. The death of my wife's father and chronic illness of her mother flipped those plans onto another path. With the resilient support of her family and caretakers, Sandra's mother is doing pretty well.

We have a few ideas for next year, but we're not through with our ideas for this year yet. I have a good array of work ahead. I have friends I've not seen recently; it's easy to let people get away.

We have clusters of birthdays, holidays, and birthdays again. Laid out on a calendar, it looks crowded, but each one is special and worthy. Each birthday forces a hard question: how well do we know what's important to the person having the birthday? With little kids, it's easy because they'll tell you directly. As people grow, however, they might not even know themselves and so we have to try to help.

We worked hard to put things out of reach of mice and squirrels who will come in from the cold. We brought home the obviously edible stuff and packed everything made of cloth or paper in bins. The acorn crop was a bit better than average, so we can look forward to a cold winter.

My father said each fall the wet leaves are slipperier than snow. We drive carefully on the road covered with needles and leaves.

In which a stick becomes a root

Sandra has been in California for a few days, celebrating her friend-since-childhood Janet's birthday. She returns this evening.

On Saturday, I took care of my errands early with a trip to the dump and then the grocery store. I settled in for a couple of days of being alone.

The productivity folks suggest that you add a time estimate to the items on your to-do list. That way, it's easy to pick off short tasks and feel productive, even if you're a bit unfocused. My list was a mix of big and little things - paperwork for a couple of nonprofits, cut down a small tree that is growing too close to the utility pole, pay the bills, split firewood, and on like that.

Most of the things I was able to dispatch with ease. The firewood is like that. Some of the wood has been lying on the ground for a couple of years. (I thought I would be getting to it that summer, but those plans were overcome by other events.) Surprisingly, the bark protected most of the wood, leaving it damp but still solid. It split easily. In 20 minutes, I had enough for a day's burning.

Other chores went walkabout. I had some forms that were worth about 15 minutes. They took two hours and are still not done. They are state forms. Something happens to arithmetic when it enters that world. Numbers that should add up nicely produce random results.

It's easy to get discouraged and weary when you spent a long time on a simple task. You can walk away and do something else, which I did plenty of times. At day's end, though, in spite of many tasks crossed off the list, that remaining undone lump stands proud and defiant.

While walking around the yard, I bent down to pick up a stick. It was a root. I tugged on it, tearing up the ground for a couple of feet. The first set of clippers that I found was dull and couldn't cut the sinew. The next set was sharp enough. I cut it cleanly, repacked the tear in the ground, and went about my day. The root will grown back next year.

When the moon hits your eye ...

When we remodeled the camp, we^[1] reused a couple of small windows. One is in our bedroom. For a couple of nights, about 2;30, the moon is at just the proper angle to shine directly into my eyes. The skies have been clear so that, even in its waning phase, the moon is bright. When that can happen again is an exercise left to the astronomers.

^[1]When I say we, I mean people who know which end of the hammer not to hit their thumbs with.

Of storms and poetry

After yesterday's thunderstorms, the skies have cleared and a strong, fresh northwest wind is bringing cool air. I just got the fire started and soon it'll be warm for our breakfast.

Rocco doesn't like thunderstorms. He finds a place in the house, oddly, it seems, by a sink, such as the kitchen or bathroom, and stays there for the duration. No enticing of any sort, even cookies or supper, will get him to move until the storm has passed.

I recently talked about this with another dog owner. He mentioned how his new young dog went through obedience school and was trained to stay calm in noisy situations. Thunderstorms, though, are different, with the  low-frequency rumbles that can be felt long before we can even hear them. This friend said he'd put his dog in the dog's crate and, to add to the calm, would read Robert Frost's poetry to the dog. It seemed to work. When storms came, the dog now goes to his crate and waits for the poetry reading. If a storm comes at night, the dog will its master, expecting to hear Birches.

We tried this with Rocco. Of course, he's much older and his fears are deep. He didn't budge while Sandra read The Road Not Taken.

The storms, as I'd mentioned, have moved on. Rocco's already asked me once if it's time for breakfast. Not yet, but soon.

Notes on standing still

Our neighbor across the lake has a better view of our cove and reports that she's seen two herons, perching, in flight, paroling. From this vantage, we've only seen one at a time. When standing, they're improbable beings, a bunch of sticks and feathers. In flight, though, from take-off through glide, they're gorgeous. Last evening, we startled one as we came along quietly in our kayaks. It grabbed the strong southerly breeze and took off.

We're due for some hot weather. The season's first heat, like the other season's first snow, brings a bit of alarm among media types. Even when you know that it's going to be just hot and nothing more than that, it's difficult to displace the thoughts of alarm. Will the bridges melt? Will small children and old people spontaneously combust?

Astrological summer begins today for those of us on the top half of the globe. (Meteorological summer began at the first of the month.) The longest day of the year, however, will take place on June 30, when we get a leap second.

On the solstice, of course, the sun doesn't really stand still. We're the ones who need it to stop, if only for a moment, so we can consider where we've been and where we will soon be.

A listening tour

We're in the center of a small high pressure cell, so it's nearly calm. The sauna smoke rise nearly straight up, drifting just slightly to the west-southwest. Once the fire in the stove gets going well, it'll burn cleanly and we won't see the smoke.

We toured one side of the lake by kayak this morning, admiring the early mountain laurel, noting the camp for sale just around the corner, and looking for neighbors. We didn't see anyone and only heard Elijah, the small dog who lives at the point of the cove.

Sometimes, you set out to explore with the idea of learning something specific. We need to do that, to learn intentionally. Other times, though, we go out with our ears tuned to whatever sounds come our way. What we learned was that it was good to be on the lake, paddling easily, letting the little bit of wind push us.

After our tour, we jumped into the water. Rocco went first, anticipating that we'd follow soon, which we did. The rainy weather has cooled the lake considerably. It was refreshing.

A rainy cove day

When I was a kid, the roof on the camp was simple, just sheathing covered with tar paper and then shingles. We could hear the rain on the roof.

My father had thought he would live at the camp year-round after he retired. He added a heating system, including the oft-mentioned oil tank. He added a layer of foam insulation to the ceiling and covered it with particle board (plywood made from pressed wood chips). It looked nice, was warmer, and took away the sound of the rain.

As a part of last year's renovations, we put on a metal roof. It looks great, will last our lifetimes, and has brought back the sound of the rain.

The temperature has dropped to the lower 50s. A cold northeastern wind pushes clumps of fog and rain across the lake.

I worked in the yard for a couple of hours yesterday and, by the forecast, that may be it for this weekend. We've enough dry wood to last a long time. Was it three years ago when we had that chilly, wet June? This week is setting up for something like that. I'm grateful for a lot of things. Now I'm grateful that I don't have to work outdoors in all kinds of weather. I know people who do and we are in their debt.

This year's view from the cove

Jupiter is still bright in the west in the evening sky, bright enough that I can see it without my glasses. I couldn't see the boat out on the lake. I could hear the voices of the boaters, but I couldn't see the boat. Jupiter, though, I could see.

The lake water has warmed enough that we can stay around for a few minutes between visits to the sauna. Two weeks ago, it was a jump off the dock, hit the water, and get out as quickly as possible. We'd get back into the sauna, but our legs felt like they were covered in cold cloth.

After sauna, the aches of body and soul were gone. There's a lot to do in cleanup, routine work, and new projects and most of the work calls on muscles that haven't been called on for a while. There's a pile of rocks to be moved, a stack of wood to be split. leaves to be raked, trees to be trimmed.

Most of the work can become meditative, only the work, only that rock that needs to move 40 feet to the south. A wheelbarrow would make the work easier, taking four or five rocks at a time instead of just one. This way, though, I get to think about each rock and where it should go. If I had a plan, I'd use a wheelbarrow.

When my father was my age, he put an oil tank in the cellar, sideways. That the heating system never worked reliably isn't the point, I think. He did stuff. If it worked, that was good. If it didn't work, he'd move on. The oil-fired heating system never worked reliably and was replaced by a barrel wood stove that worked fine for 30 years.  The barrel stove connect to the chimney that was to be used by the oil burner.

The lake has warmed so that a thin bit of fog settles on the surface in these cool nights. Heating and cooling take away the aches of the day.

 

One weekend in May

We had a fine celebration on Saturday, honoring Michael for his graduation from Assumption College, Tess for her 14th birthday, and mothers Marian, Sandra, Jennie, Lynn, and Karen.

We went out to lunch, 20 of us. I tried to sit at the kids' table, but was asked to leave because Cassie wanted to sit with her cousin, Caroline.

There was plenty to discuss at the other end of the table. Jennie has completed her book and sent it to her publisher. Joe will graduate from St. Peter-Marian in a couple of weeks; he will go to Southern New Hampshire University in the fall.

After the lunch, we brought Marian back to the nursing home, noting that we'd be missing Mother's Day celebration with Elvis.

Mother's Day itself was a quiet day at the camp. In memory of Elvis, we had peanut butter and bananas for lunch.

We're still settling in after last year's wonderful renovations. Few things are where they were and lots of things aren't there at all. My father kept puzzling quantities of unexpected parts, such as a jar full of 1/4" brass screws, but we couldn't find a single wingnut. We have long lengths of antique rubber extension cords, the type that don't kink or get inflexible in the cold, and yet we found only one electrical wire cap, which is two fewer than what we needed.

Sunday we had sauna. The water is fresh but no longer cold, in spite of recent rain and no special warm spells. We have a good supply of leftover pine from the construction project. It's dry and burns hot. Mix in a little oak and maple and you get a great fire.

From a time with crowds full of laughter and hope to a time sitting on the bench overlooking the cove, hearing the planes heading down Route 2 toward Boston, it's how the days are now.

The law of averages

Steam was rising from the water, steam because the water is warmer than the air, steam that's unusual in mid-June.
Continued on Telegram Towns ....