Chain saws and the Eucharist

On Saturday we went to the funeral of our co-worker's husband, mentioned here last Monday. The church was full. The evening before, winds from a severe thunderstorm had uprooted trees and broken branches throughout the area. So, while the mourners gathered for the funeral Mass on that warm summer morning, the rest of the town was cleaning up, cutting away the broken limbs and dragging brush to the roadside for the chippers. After the Mass, we went the airport to pick up Mike and Lynn.

M&L had a wonderful time, meeting people, seeing sights. We dropped them off at their house where they could exchange cuddles and kisses with their children and then we went off to the camp. We were tired from the week and it was barely dark when we went to bed.

There was an interesting, if somewhat flawed article in yesterday's BostonWorks about depression and work. It's flawed because some of the facts about depression aren't presented quite right. The article claims that 15% of clinically depressed people commited suicide; it's more likely that 15% attempt suicide. The author also mixes up anxiety attacks with depression; they are related, but separate illnesses. The article cites a book named Working in the Dark: Keeping Your Job While Dealing With Depression, which I have ordered.

Anyway, it's an interesting piece, made more so for me because I had a chat with my manager about my health last week. I needed to have that talk because my health was starting to have an affect, at least from my perspective, on my ability to do my work. He was very supportive and assured me that my performance was still what he was expecting of me. That was encouraging. When I look back at my time at my previous, I can see that I was starting to go into a skid during my last couple of years there. I made some bad decisions and dug myself into a few holes. Had I known and been able to talk about it, I might have saved my manager and myself some embarrassment.

In one more example of Google not being like the rest of us, think about what Google expects of its chef the next time you go to lunch at your place of employment. BTW, C|Net got into some trouble with Google for this story

I was working at a diner on August 8, 1974 when Richard Nixon announced his resignation. The restaurant, which would normally be fairly busy, was empty, except for the two waitresses, the dishwasher, and yours truly. We listened on the radio as this Shakespearean character stepped from the stage, an odd, misshapen, seemingly friendless man who could see poetry in the histrionics of Mao and Zhou.

That was the week that was ...

and what a week it was.

Sandra kept a careful journal that she'll share with Mike and Lynn when they return from their week-long trip to Ireland, but, in sum, we kept our promise. There were six kids at the start of the week at the beginning of the week and there are six kids at week's end. We spent five nights at their house and were wide-eyed with wonder as the household whipped around us. We got to know little Cassandra, what made her happy and what made her annoyed. Matt and Joe started football practice, Michael is in weight-training after work each day, and Krista and Tess stayed with friends for most of the week. All the while, the supply depot kept churning food and milk and clean clothes. At a minimum, Sandra estimated, there were two loads of laundry a day and we never had a full complement of kids in the house for a whole day. It was a blessing to be in the middle of a whirlwind of energy and love and fun and humor.

While Mike and Lynn were in Ireland, they hung out with Paul Hill, the story whose incarceration was told in the movie In the Name of the Father. M&L will have other stories to bring back as well, but we knew that they'd befriend all whom they'd meet.

In the "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" Department: a recent edition of the The Connection radio show had, as its featured guest, Marcel Marceau. In what I can only guess is an unrelated event, The Connection is going off the air today.

A tragedy wide and deep

Last night the husband of a co-worker and friend died of a heart attack. He was a young man. Please give someone you love a hug and think of a young woman who has lost her husband and girl who has lost her father and friends who have lost their friend.

2005 Irish Ploughshares in showrooms today

We don't get much good news these days, so we should celebrate when we can. The decision of the IRA to put its arms beyond use is a great one. It doesn't wipe clean the misery caused by the decades of terrorism nor does it ensure justice for people of Ulster, but it's a start. More than 3000 people have been killed in the name of Jesus. It was brave of the IRA to make a step toward peace.

There is some interesting research news out of Harvard Medical School, supporting earlier work that indicated that the prefrontal cortex is one of the areas of the brain most affected by depression. This may lead to treatments that are faster-acting and more specific for each patient.

Twenty or so years ago, the computers we used (VAX/VMS) had a program called Phone. With Phone, you could send a brief message to another who was logged in. Almost no one used it. It was intrusive when you were logged in and useless when you weren't. We preferred email. Roll the calendar ahead a couple of decades. We still prefer email, we of a certain age, at least that's what the polls tell us. Young people like instant messaging, which is basically Phone with baggy shorts, a hat on sideways, and a skateboard.

Dinner by candlelight

Sonoma is small, elegant restaurant tucked in a small, undistinguished strip mall just over the town line in Princeton, Mass. It's a fine place for a special dinner. Sandra and I went there last night to celebrate her birthday. We had just finished our starter courses when, outside, a thunderstorm was unloading noise and lightning and rain. We asked our server if they'd ever lost power while serving dinner. She said that it had happened once a long time ago, just after a number of meals had been served.

Sandra had the lamb and I had ahi tuna. Both came with colorful and tasty sides of mushrooms, root vegetables (beets, potatoes, carrots, turnip), and a flavorful risoto. We were glad that we had a few minutes to see our food because, in a short while, the power flickered once, came back, and then went out for good. (I don't remember the exact number, but a hardware engineer told me that if the power is out for more than about seven seconds, it's going to be out for a long time. It takes about seven seconds for a circuit breaker to reset itself. If the reset doesn't work, then a repair crew needs to fix it.) The staff brought extra candles to the tables and we ate in the dim light. Even the whispers of "What am I eating?" didn't diminish the romantic mood.

On a special day

The temperature just stepped over the 90° mark. The wicker rocking chairs on the front porch are, um, rocking in the strong breeze. Heavy thunderstorms are predicted for this afternoon and evening, but the radar shows nothing right now. It's quiet here, just the low hum of the room air conditioner.

I'm working from home today. I have a number of tasks that can be done at home just as well as in the office. With vacations during this month, several of the regularly scheduled meetings have been called off. I finished one bit of tidying up and am now taking a break for lunch.

Yesterday I learned of a permanent job at the company where I'm working. The job is with a group in White Plains, but they seem to be amenable to having someone working from afar. I've started my resume through the channels. In the meantime, I guess I should keep working as though I have a permanent job. A co-worker asked me if I'd be interested if I'd like to participate in a project that will take place in October. I said that I would if my contract is extended. She said that my contract would probably last long enough for me to retire.

How grateful I am that I don't travel this world of work, of home, of family, or of life, alone. Happy Birthday, Sandra.

Alt-Tab, the boss is coming

Today, it's back to whatever passes for normal. I have a good bit of work work to address, along with some more personal business, so it's going to be a busy day. In the discussion of the report about goofing off at work, mentioned here a couple of weeks ago, a TV commentator noted the concept of the at-work personal day. Often, we're starting work earlier and staying later, such that we need time during the work day to get the stuff done that we can't get done at home - banking, web-based shopping, calls to the plumber, personal correspondence. I'm in the process of moving from one web hosting company to another and need a chunk of time to complete the task.

[The subject line refers to the trick of switching between programs, such as between your web browser and word processor, by pressing the Alt and Tab keys at the same time. That way, you can look like you're working when you've just been making your way through the American Girl web site for a birthday gift for your niece.]

Construction is underway for the new road at the camp. Many trees are down, bringing bright sunlight into the back of the camp. The contractor could very well have the work completed by the of this week. Adam and Lily spent the night at the camp on Saturday. Mike and Lynn will take the family to there for supper and swim this afternoon. It's good that the place is getting use.

My father's back is still bothering him from his fall last week. I went to his house to mow his lawn. He sat on the front steps and watched while I mowed. After a few minutes, he came over and pointed out a couple of things that I wasn't doing quite right. He went back to his observation post for a while longer and then, either satisfied or resigned, went inside.

Today's automated search for technical documentation jobs turned up listings for Gap Store Director, VP of Edication (their typo, not mine), Catering Manager, and Java Jedi.

Congratulations and a dose of virtual Vitamin I to friend Tania for completing the 2005 Ford Ironman USA in Lake Placid yesterday.

Home again

The guy at the sub shop was good-natured when I tried to pay for my order with a Canadian $20. I mumbled tiredly that we were just getting back from Canada and that my money was mixed up in my wallet. The guy was good-natured and said nice things about his trips to Canada, but still stood there waiting for American money.

The vist to the Island was brief, but delightful. Sandra's parents are wonderfully warm and generous. We talked about family and friends and the tragedies abroad.

Sandra's parents rose to prepare us breakfast and see us off. Our trip back started before dawn, with fog stretching across the farm fields. We saw shots of lightning across the Island, drove through heavy rain and some strong wind on the bridge, and reached sunshine just outside of Moncton mid-morning. It was sunny and fresh the rest of the way. There's a wildlife preserve near Calais, Maine, where we saw baby eagles sitting in their nests, getting ready for their first flights.

Gasoline prices huddle around the C$1.00/litre, about US$3.00/gallon. Prices are bit lower on PEI because the prices are changed just once a month and so lag behind the general market.

As if we needed more reminders that the flatlanders rule U.S. 1 in Maine, we saw an old farm house converted into a bakery and espresso bar.

On the way home we paid a long-overdue visit to our dear friends, Pete and Mildred, in Maine. In our honor, Pete had arranged the delivery of a new lime and fertilizer composite which he had dumped on the hay field on the approach to their old farm house.

We listened to the rest of 1776 and discussed the improbability that the Americans would have won Revolutionary War. The year 1776 hadn't gone very well at all, with the loss of New York and large numbers of people signing oaths to the King. As with other recent histories of those times, the founders of this nation were keenly aware that what they were doing and saying was shaping the future. They were establishing something bigger than even they could imagine. Sandra and I listened to this history as we drove through the places where many loyalists had landed in southwestern New Brunswick.

One afternoon, while Sandra and Marian went visiting, I walked around downtown Montague. This town of a few thousand people improbably supports two large supermarkets, a car dealership, several other large, and many other small businesses. At the center of it all, of course, is the Tim Horton's shop on Main Street. I learned there that another building on Main Street was sold for $300,000 and that the local MLA had arranged for a new federal building to be built on that site. "The old boy network pays off again," remarked one of the patron.

To bring it to a decent size, the local phone book for the east end of PEI includes a reverse listing (by phone number) as well as the traditional listing by name.

Marley, who's looking fit and trim and is having a great summer, gave us quite a scare. After supper one night, he and I went for a walk to the shore. I'll skip the full details, but he became suddenly and severely sick accented with convulsions. After a few minutes, he crawled underneath a thick spruce hedge where he stayed, with labored breathing. We thought we were going to lose him. I was able to drag him from the hedge. As we prepared to get him to vet's, he rallied, stirring a bit and eventually gettting to his feet. He was quiet for the rest of the evening and into the next day, but was otherwise alright, eating his breakfast when the time came. Our best guess, based only on the fact that it makes a better story, is that he ate one of the small jellyfish that drift along near the shore.

We leave at first light

The car is packed, save for the Thermos bottles of coffee and our toothbrushes. We'll leave at 4:30. When Woody was a boy, the trip to PEI would take three days. Now, anything over 12 hours for the 650 mile trek is regarded as dawdling.

We have one recorded book, David McCullough's 1776, and my iPod for some music. The sandwiches are packed (pb&j). We have apple and raisins for snacks and water. We plan to stop no more than three times - the first rest area on the Maine Turnpike, at the Border to fill up on American petrol, and in Sussex NB.

Did you know that USB key chain drives can withstand a washer cycle?

RoasterBoy in the wilderness

This is the first RoasterBoy post from the camp. The telephone installer completed his work a few minutes ago and left behind a copper wire that connects us to the great net.

Progress sometimes comes unexpectedly on the shoulders of a somewhat unrelated event. For example, the 19th-century road graders ledt to smooth roads and allowed for reliable mail service that led to mail-order services such as Sears and Roebucks. This camp received its electrical service as a reseulf to the New Deal's Rural Electrification project. Those poles made it affordable for us to install a telephone. Our thanks to FDR, then, for this connection.

It's warm and sticky and there's barely a breeze. I might have time for a quick swim before leave to I check in my father and then go back home. He seems to be doing ok. I'll change the bandages on his arm. He's to go to doctor's office to have them changed on Thursday.

Postings will be infrequent, if at all, for the next few days. We're going to PEI to visit with Woody and Marian and Marley. We hope to see our friends, Pete and Mildred, on the way home. I may be online for a bit while I do some work on MRM's computer.

And that's why we call them patients

It was a step he'd made many thousands of times, from the boathouse to the ground. This time, though, with the ground softened by so much rain, he didn't slip so much as he lost his balance. He fell backwards, between the boathouse and the little stone wall at the back of the flowerbed. Naturally, I was most concerned when my father hit his head, but that turned out to be a lesser bruise. He said his arm was uncomfortable. He'd hit that against the stones, too.

We went up to the camp and cut away the sleeve of his sweatshirt to reveal an arm that looked like it had met up with a dull and determined potato peeler. He agreed that a doctor should see it. He wanted, however, to have coffee first. And we did. So, 20 minutes later, we drove to one of the community hospitals in the area.

(The insurance companies have us pretty well trained. We don't ask ourselves, "What's the nearest hospital?" We ask, "What's the nearest hospital that's a member of my insurance plan?")

The medical staff was pleasant, professional, never giving the impression that they were terribly understaffed. The waiting room was full to overflowing during the time that we were there. There was only one doctor in the ER. The triage nurse examined my father as soon as we arrived and put some bandages on the wounds. It would two hours before we would get inside the ER. Then, treatment was thorough, but slow, another three hours. He received a tetanus shot which lasts for another 5-10 years. It wouldn't surprise me if he got another one then.

So, he's home now with no further treatment other that change the dressings daily and respect the law of gravity. I'll check in with him by phone today and in person tomorrow.

I'm glad that we went, but if we knew that it was going to take five hours, we probably wouldn't have gone.

"Hello, World" redux

One of the women with whom I work is retiring next week. She and her husband have built a retirement home in New Hampshire. She's the second person to leave the group, both voluntarily, in the time that I've been there. The other person transferred to another group with an office closer to her home. I picked up one of the retiree's assignments, that of managing the software upgrades for the servers that we use for our testing. She's very energetic and out-going. So, retiring she is and retiring she isn't.

Through a professional society, I am able to obtain a discount on long-term disability insurance. The cost is surprisingly modest for the quality of coverage.

If you're using the Firefox browser, there's a nifty new extension that lets you send a text message to any cell phone directly from the browser. Give it a try if you're using Firefox and you have my cell phone number. BTW, Firefox 1.0.5 is available. This is a bug-fix release. Version 1.1 is nearing beta.

I'm in the process of moving my QueenLake domains (.com, .net, and .org) to a new hosting company. There are many safeguards that are designed to prevent domain hijacking. They also make it difficult for a legitimate owner to make a change. If the next step goes well, I should be on my new server by early next week. I don't expect that there will be any changes visible to the readers of these notes.

Not long ago, a former co-worker had hear bypass surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. One of his biggest complaints was that the hospital didn't have Internet access for the patients. Which is interesting, because Children's Hospital, across town, is among the 100 most wired hospitals in the country. For more reasons that one, sometimes it doesn't pay to grow up.

As I've mentioned before, because I am not a programmer by trade, I am easily confused when I move between programming languages . 'Hello, World' is usually the first, small program that a person would write when learning a new language. This page shows how various languages would handle this simple task.

Huck's stories - the well

From time to time, I'll record some of Huck's stories. My father is one of the best story-tellers around. His stories are good and he tells them well.

The camp sits on top of a small hill that's mostly ledge. In order to dig a well, my father and his friends had to use dynamite, much more easily obtained in the 1940s. There were several guys hanging around helping with the construction of the camp after WW II, members of the 52-20 club. The government was paying returning veterans $20 for 52 weeks. They dug as far as they could by hand and then drilled holes in the side of the well wall. They packed the holes with dynamite and attached blasting caps and wires. They put old cotton mattresses on top of the hole and laid heavy chains on top of the mattresses to hold the broken rock in after the explosion. Using a car battery, they set off the charge. Seconds later, the trees were filled with cotton stuffing.

My father went into the well with a sledgehammer to continue breaking up the rubble. After hammering for a while, he discovered (insert sound of blood draining from face) that one of the sticks of dynamite hadn't exploded. It was still in the well wall, blasting cap intact.

Thereafter, when they had to blast, they would only put one stick of dynamite in at a time so that they knew if it had exploded or not.

Stop reading this and get back to work

Some of the systems at work don't have solitaire installed at all or, if they do, it's installed in an obscure place. How do I know this, you ask? A study on salary.com reports that people goof off at work, that they goof off more than management and HR think that they goof off. I'm pretty respectful about separating work and personal business, taking and making personal phone calls on my cell phone, for example. I do read and write some personal email during the day and follow some news web sites. No, my time-wasting doesn't come from solitaire or www.nationalenquirer.com. My time-wasting results from spending a half day to write a script that automates a 10-minute, one-time task.

I watched the first few innings of the All-Star game last night. Manny didn't have a good night, but Johnny and David showed why baseball is fun in Boston.

Only Fox would have a new series called "The War at Home" start on September 11th.

My sleep has been particularly bad for the past couple of weeks, waking at 2 or 3, and sometimes earlier. I'm keeping a journal to record what changes in medication, diet, exercise, or stress affect my sleep or mood. So far I've been doing better than I should. I have a couple of project tasks due by the end of the day today, so I'll see how I do under a bit of pressure.

We gave this chain-saw sculpture, made by friend John K., to my father for his birthday several years ago. We keep the cat at the camp. The mice, as we've seen, are not intimidated at all.

Working for wages for a year

Today marks a year in my current contract job. It's been the right job for me at this time. The work can be very interesting and the people are nice. For those who care about such things, yesterday I prepared a set of use cases in UML for a project meeting. That was something I'd learned in my previous job, but hadn't applied much. Here it's something new and exotic. I am, however, quite detached from most the politics and strategy of the business. I've done that and done that pretty well in previous jobs, but that's not what's needed now. Although my job title is technical writer, my work is mostly that of an engineer or technical analyst.

In the past year, I've come to think differently about work. At IBM, I thought quite a bit about career paths. At companies before that, companies that were growing, I was excited at the prospect of building something. Now, largely because my contract limits me to 40 hours per week, I just want to make sure that I'm giving good value for what I'm receiving. Long-range thinking is setting a project deadline for some time in a month or more.

Language grows, evolves, sheds dead skin. What was once radical is now sweet. But never underestimate the power of the business world to hijack language and make it do a nasty dance. This site, weaselwords, has one of my favorites: capacity release, meaning, get rid of people.

This would be a great name for a rock band, Deathwish Piano Movers, if they weren't already a company that, um, moves pianos. They've been in business for a long time and I've long liked their name.

Holden's population is a bit more than 15,000, a town large enough to have its share of drama. From a recent police log:

• Caller received copy of Telegram and Gazette in his drive without his permission; advised to call news paper to stop complimentary copies; caller says he will seek criminal complaint against paper.
• Female came into station with snake she found; assisted and discarded snake for her.
  
• Port-a-potty stolen from Eagle Lake.

Coffee for Buddha

Sandra occasionally has her nails done at a salon nearby. The salon is run by a Vietnamese woman with other Vietnamese women in her employ. They always greet Sandra warmly and are especially reverent to Sandra's mother. Each morning the owner brings a cup of coffee and places it before the status of Buddha that sits on a small shrine in the shop. Buddha likes coffee with milk.

And when we don't go to Buddha, we go to Google. You can use Google as a quick currency converter. For example, recently, we learned that a Canadian prescription cost about $C74. That translates to about $USD56 or so. More here on how to use it.

The first time you try it, you and your partner are apt to be clumsy, uncoordinated, and unexpectedly wet. Doubles kayaking isn't for everyone. We rented a twin kayak over the weekend and learned that, for a variety of reasons, that's not what we want.

My father may have a buyer for his sail boat. He was sad. As he was looking it over to prepare for the potential buyer, he inspected each of the pulleys, stays, and spreaders. He knew he could have spent all day tinkering with it, but finally just had to walk away. Even if Sandra and I agreed to take the boat and readied it for the water, it wouldn't change the fact that his sailing days are drawing to a close.

We attended the annual lake association meeting on Saturday morning. Sandra is assistant treasurer and I'm on the board of directors. Her job requires much more work than mine. Most of the discussion revolved around inappropriate and, in some cases, illegal, boating practices on the lake. (The ne'er-do-wells, of course, don't attend the meetings or don't speak in their defense.) The beavers keep plugging the dam. The police chief said a couple of times that, "the complexion of the town is changing."

There are lots of reasons that bring people to vegetarianism - religion, politics, health, preference, the after-effects of a trip to a meat or poultry processing facility, or any or all. Well, for those who don't eat meat because of the way that the meat industry treats its animals, here's something to thing about - lab-grown meat.

We have friends who don't particularly enjoy dairy products. They have their morning cereal with orange juice. I may try it, but will do so with a skeptic's palate.

Other than Karl who took over Mike's landscaping business, I can sometimes go for years without bumping into another Karl with a K. Here's the science: the relative popularity of baby names over the last 120 years.

Last week I mentioned that Google had invested in a company that was planning to deliver high-speed Internet access over power lines. News reports this morning indicate that IBM is moving into this area as well. In the meantime, we now have a POTS (plain old telephone service) line to the outside wall of the camp. We might be connected this week. Or not.

What rough beast, indeed.

The Underground withstood the German onslaught, the tunnels deep and sheltered from the bombs. It mattered not that the escalators were made of wood and were a hazard for fire. The Underground helped Londoners win a war by wearing out their adversary. A new adversary, this time, turned the depth and strength of the Underground against the people, leaving no place for the destructive explosion to go but through the railroad cars.

I wasn't able to recite all of the lines from The Second Coming by Yeats, from which the title comes. So, I did a Google search for Slouching toward Bethlehem Yeats. The Google ads on the right side of the page showed several links for treatment of bad posture.

To quote Dave Barry, regarding 7/7, it's best that I leave the reporting to the real journalists. It's probably best for this blog to go back to doing what it does best. Whatever that is.
--
ZDNet is reporting that Google, among other companies, is investing in a company that delivers broadband of Internet access over power lines. I like this concept a lot because, unlike cable and like wireless, it offers the prospect of ubiquitous, networked computing.

Recently, we learned that a one-month supply of a commonly prescribed medicine that costs $C70 in Canada and, with an American HMO, $US15. Uninsured price in both places is about $US160.

In the meantime, a Canadian government panel is recommending that the Canadian government consider restrictions on the distributions of ibuprofen. Basically, they'd like to make sure that doctors and patients discuss the risks related to heart attacks before embarking on a Vitamin I regimen.

They say that it's Psalms 33:12. I say it's Exodus 3:5.

Wired and wireless

I hadn't been in the Starbuck's in Worcester for several months. They've added electrical outlets. People who were using the wireless Internet access often had to share a single outlet to recharge their laptops.

On this date in 1896, the U.S. annexed Hawaii. Kona coffee, the only coffee grown in this country, is among the best in the world. It has the sweet acidity of the east African coffees (Kenyan, Moka). Adam and Jennie brought some Kona for us. It's often the case that the Kona available on the mainland isn't pure Kona, but Kona-style Kona-blend. The real stuff is expensive and rare. Thanks to A & J.

I am certainlyl not familiar with the many state and federal judges who would be qualified for the Supreme Court. One person came to mind as an interesting prospect - Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. He is quite conservative; there's no doubt about that. But, he's a guy you can talk to. He and Ted Kennedy are buddies. Hatch is sharp and he understands the role of technology in society.

President Nixon nominated Harold Carswell to the Supreme Court. Carswell was a man of, ahem, modest intellect and abilities. Senator Roman Hruska, R-Nebraska, rose to Carswell's defense, declaring that, even if Carswell was mediocre, there were plenty of mediocre people in this country who needed representation.

In addition to these notes, I'm going to resume a journal to record my sleep patterns and what medications, vitamins, exercise, diet, and other goings-on. My sleep has been very irregular. My mood has generally been better during the last couple of weeks.

[The Blogger spellchecker offers 'strabismus' as an alternative to Starbuck's.]

If you hear bongos behind you, it's too late.

During the night, when there is no moon, the sound of bongo drums echo across Queen Lake. Years ago, the southeast side of the lake was a summer camp for girls from New York. There was a very mean sailing instructor named Herbert. Herbert would steal the kids' lunches, make them sail even when there were thunderstorms on the lake, and censor their letters when they wrote home to complain. Herbert was so mean that he smoked, even in his bunk, because everyone was afraid to tell him that he couldn't.

One weekend, the kids had collected fireworks for a Fourth of July celebration. Herbert found out about it and confiscated all the goods. "There will be no parties around here," he barked. He put all of the fireworks in his footlocker. The rest of the camp on the lake were shooting off their fireworks, but it was quiet at the camp as darkness settled in.

Herbert had one last cigarette, as he usually did, while lying on his bunk. This night, though, he fell asleep and the bed caught fire and then the foot locker. The fireworks exploded. Herbert was on fire. Screaming, he ran to the lake, his skin falling away. As soon as he hit the water, he met up with a great snapping turtle. He pushed the turtle out of its shell and made the shell his new skin.

Thereafter, he lived in the lake and, from time to time, would seek his revenge by capturing a camper and dragging the poor soul back into the dark waters. He would signal that he had caught his prey by reaching back and pounding on his shell, as though he was tapping on bongos.
Some years later, the camp closed and the property divided up for house lots. Still Herbert, now known among the lake residents as Bongo Boy, is restless. Over the weekend, we heard the sound of bongos at a camp across the cove.

Mike is taking Tess and Krista to the camp this evening, along with some friends. I wonder who will get the top bunk.

With apologies to Ira Glass, the Tappett Brothers, and campers everywhere

---

President Jacques Chirac was reported to have commented: "We can't trust people who have such bad food. After Finland, it's the country with the worst food". And the Finns, gnawing on a piece of reindeer jerky, are wondering why they're being dragged into an international row.

Our lake association meeting is scheduled for Saturday morning at 9AM. Sandra noticed in yesterday's paper that a funeral is scheduled in the church for 10AM. I suspect that we're in for a quick meeting. The biggest issue of past years, a pit bull at one of the camps on the lake, is no longer a problem. The dog is gone. The dog's owners continue to rent the camp. A couple of weeks ago, when we were on the canoe ride with Lily, we saw one of the residents having beer for breakfast while preparing for a day of fishing.

The new Coke Zero tastes like they collected the spray from a skunk that drank a bunch of Moxie.

A local NPR station, WBUR, often uses a Rolling Stones tunes, 2120 South Michigan Avenue, as its exit theme on its Morning Edition show. The address is the home of the old Chess studio in Chicago. We visited the place, which is privately owned now, on a trip to Chicago in the 1980s. The tune was also used as an outtro on WBCN by morning guy Mississippi Harold Wilson, aka Mississippi Fats. He's no longer in radio, instead running a restaurant in Roxbury, the primarily African-American part of Boston.

Palms of victory

The centerpiece of a truly delightful weekend was our trip to Tanglewood in the Berkshires to see a live performance of Prairie Home Companion. We saw nearly all of it. (More on that in a moment.)

The Shed at Tanglewood, open on three sides, can seat more than 5,000. An equal number can sit on the lawn and listen to the show on a fine sound system. We had tickets for seats in the shed.

Moving 10,000 people in an out of a town is a considerable task. The Lenox police, assisted by the Berkshire County sheriff's Department, did a spectacularly bad job managing the traffic flow to the Tanglewood site. Granted, the route to Tanglewood takes you along some narrow roads and through the village of Lenox, but the volume of traffic is well known. They've been hosting such events, several times a week, for 65 years. The ride from the camp to the Lee exit on the Pike took just about two and a half hours, including a stop at Whole Foods in Hadley to pick up our dinner. It took us a bit more than an hour to complete the remaining seven miles, from Lee to Tanglewood. We had our tasty dinner of Thai slaw, French bread, potato salad, and coconut chicken in the car. I thought that three-and-a-half hours would be plenty of time to get us there. I was mistaken. We arrived about 10 minutes late, but, fortunately, had aisle seats.

Garrison had recently relearned a brief hymn from an aunt. He taught the hymn to us and which we reprised throughout the show:

Palms of victory
Crowns of glory
Palms of victory
We shall wear [emended @ 10:20AM]

He taught it in four parts. Peter Schickle led the bases and I found myself singing along. It fit nicely in my three-quarter octave range. I also sang the National Anthem, but spared everyone my attempts at the high notes.

The song, Palms of Victory, is a old tune. Bob Dylan used something similar in an outtake on the Times They Are A-Changin' album, Paths of Victory.

Why do right-handed people finger stringed instruments with their left hands?

There's a running joke in the MacGregor family. When Woody would go to a Red Sox game, he'd invariably leave at the 7th inning stretch and listen to the rest of the game on the radio on the way home. Often, they'd miss some dramatic comebacks. People were leaving right after the News from Lake Wobegon to get a jump on traffic. We hung around the grounds and heard a full half hour of encore music. One of my favorite performers, a regular on the show, is Prudence Johnson. She has such a clear, sweet voice. She doesn't record much, but brings a wealth of musical experience and expression to the show. She was featured during the encores. I bought a couple of Gillian Welch CDs in the gift shop.

We've attended three PHC shows and this was, IMO, the best. The music was first rate, the writing crisp. And, he read our card. I brought greetings for Huck from three of us and handed the card to Garrison at the stage.

So Prairie Home Companion has become the Lawrence Welk show for the Boomers. There were some people under 40 there, on their own, but not many. We sat next to a teenager, attending the show with her parents. She exuded the excruciating boredom that only teenagers can produce. Her parents tried to buy her things, but she would have preferred an evening at the orthodontist office. Our parents watch reruns of Lawrence Welk every chance they get. It wouldn't surprise me that standard issue for nursing homes in 2015 will be a can of Ensure, a pair of no-slip slippers, and a Garrison Keillor musical implant.

Getting out of town wasn't much better. The folks at the Department of Homeland Security should study the behavior of exiting crowds if we can ever hope to have orderly evacuations in the case of disasters of any magnitude. We had to walk along the side of the road to get to our parking area in the field. A woman honked at Sandra so that she could hurry along and wait in the line ahead.

We saw fireworks in various towns on the ride home, including private fireworks on the Connecticut River.

But we got back to the camp safely. The sky was clear, the lake was calm, and you could see the constellations reflected on the smooth water. A couple of years ago, Sandra and I took a course on astronomy, learning enough to pick out some basic features of the northern sky. We're pretty small, but we're where we belong.

The weekend weather was as perfect as you could get, warm when it was supposed to be, cool where it was supposed to be. We did experience a bit of news withdrawal. The world we'd left behind had a Supreme Court justice resignation, continued war in Iraq, the Live 8 concerts, G-8 meetings, continued famines and strife in Africa, and the missing-white-girl-of-the-week story. Naturally, then, channel 5, the best of the lot in Boston TV, had a story about a horse that was frightened by fireworks and ran away. But it came back.

That night, Sunday, we heard the eerie sounds of Bongo Boy out on the lake. More about him in another note.

Sandra will drive Phyllis to the airport shuttle station in Framingham and we will all make our way to our respective places this morning.

Good luck on your new job, Jennie.