My World Tuesday: New England Tour

The end of summer brought with it two round trips to Hebron, New Hampshire, where my daughter attended an all-girls camp for five days. I enjoy the ride, though my "that's quite enough" alarm goes up about an hour before the 4.5-hour trip is up. Still, there is plenty--even if it isn't much--to see, and it's all good. Below is a view of somewhere in Massachusetts in the early morning. Things were misty and dull but very nice.

Below is a home in New Hampshire that I quite like. The people here sure do know how to organize their kitchen tools.


Just as my sense of humor was wearing out, I came across this little commercial enterprise--and discovered I was very nearly there.


Vermont and New Hampshire (and the northern half of Massachusetts) are the heart and soul of rural beauty. At the rest stop just across the southern border of Vermont, there is a display of antique farm tools (below) along with Vermont woodworking and crafts, gardening, and outdoor activities.


Below is a drive-by of some New Hampshire bovines enjoying a Sunday afternoon. The air was so beautiful and clean and sweet. They have a good life.

Back at the Vermont visitors' center is this bound-up moose that made me just a little bit uncomfortable. Caution tape around a moose? Anyway. Enough said.

In New Hampshire, he real deal was staring back at the humans who had pulled off the road to admire his gargantuan beauty. He was lovely and bright-eyed and happy to perform. I think he was probably on the tourist board payroll, but he had the freedom his Vermont cousin above could only imagine.

Going home was a sopping wet experience. We made our way through one flash flood after another. After the last deluge, there appeared this lovely antique in Massachusetts that made the New England treasure hunt that much more fun.

My World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: Coneflower among the Suzies

This coneflower was loving life amid some gorgeous black-eyed Susans at the visitor's center just across the southern border of Vermont.

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Blue

My uncle loved the work

Of Andrew Wyeth.

When I was young

He introduced me to

Christina's World:

A lonely woman in the dying grass

Leaning toward home

Yearning for home.

Her solitude is significant

She is in the foreground

And home is so far away.

He told me what he saw.

He asked me what I saw.

The same.

The lonely dignity was everything.

The impossibility, nothing.

Years later my uncle would hand me

His book on Wyeth.

I learned:

Christina had dragged herself into the studio.

She knew all about this work

But said nothing--

Just let the man tell his story.

My uncle said so little

When he opened his art books.

Just sat beside me

So we could see what we would.

Those were late summer days

When the sky was as blue as his eyes

And the story,

As plain as day.

One Single Impression

Blog Your Blessings: Fort Griswold and the Blood of Col. Ledyard

Adam: "Is his blood still on it?"

Me: "Yeah."

Adam's big blue eyes were inches from the sword Col. Ledyard surrendered to the British after the Battle of Groton Heights in New London, Connecticut, on September 6, 1781. Ledyard was looking to spare the remainder of his men after an overwhelming battle. Of course.

But of course, the British, who had been led by the traitor Benedict Arnold, killed Ledyard with his own sword and killed many of the remaining Patriot soldiers. It was a massacre.

Seems the British were mightily annoyed with their enemy because they had misread the Patriots' flag. Once during the battle it faltered, and the British took that as a signal of surrender. But no. The flag had only faltered, and the Patriots hoistered her back up. When the surrender came, though, it was for real. Yet the British were brutal in response.

"The Battle of Groton Heights was a key moment in the Revolution because the killing of Col. Ledyard and the massacre turned popular opinion agaist the British," said the docent in the museum in Groton that held this artifact that piqued Adam's curiosity.

That was a lot to take in, so we gave up on the souvenirs in the museum and stepped outside.

Up we went to the top of the obelisk commemorating this Revolutionary War battle to study the fort where the battle took place and to take a look at its companion across the river, Fort Trumbull (though Fort Griswold is an archaeological site of a First System fort and Fort Trumbull is a Third System fort that was in active military use until the end of the Cold War). From the top of the tower Adam and his brother and cousin noticed the granite slab surrounded by a fence that commemorates the exact spot that Ledyard was executed.

Out of that tower and back on solid ground, the kids made their way to the fort and checked out the granite slab. They were there a while, going on about Benedict Arnold, wondering what it was like to be Col. Ledyard and taking in what exactly it must have been like to fight there and then--even as one of the children honored on the plaque outside the battleground.

I found myself feeling downright happy this patch of ground had been left to be. That it hadn't been paved over or turned into something else. The kids could walk where so many local boys and men had fought in the interest of pursuing their own wealth and well-being long ago. Where women worked to preserve the lives of many of those men. There was a palpable silence there that was similar to the silence of other battlefields where souls linger.

The kids could look up and get a load of General Dynamic, where Electric Boat has produced many a submarine. Past met present there and left an incredible impression on these kids.

"Is his blood still on it?" tells me the fight for independence wasn't so long ago, that little kids in Connecticut could walk it, touch it, and imagine it anew. That an old struggle is real and immediate for kids who will grow into a world for which they will be responsible.

So what's that about? If you must fight, fight well. And when you fight, you honor your enemy. Unless, of course, he is Benedict Arnold. Because you never turn your back on the people you love.

Battlegrounds and military museums are important places for kids to visit that they might understand the legacy of sacrifice, commitment, and vision that shapes home. If we don't want a command performance of the Revolution, then we can't afford to forget what it was all about.

I hope the blood on Ledyard's sword never dries. That these kids never forget the treachery that was endured in the name of freedom. On a personal level, I hope these kids appreciate that decency, integrity, and honor can't be legislated; they come from loving your neighbor as yourself.

Blog Your Blessings

Skywatch Friday: Topsail Sunset

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: The Party's Over, Ducks

Wordless Wednesday

My World Tuesday: Civil War Road Show Comes to Woodbury

Today's Flowers: Rose of Sharon

The Rose of Sharon trees at my parents' home have produced an abundance of blooms this year. They have kept the bees happy.

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Allow

I think only you
Could get anywhere
Near that guy

On account a
You are here every day.
You walk all the time
And he knows it

So I think
On account a that

You could get closer
Than anyone else

And get a picture.

So it is:
You show up
And it counts.

The great white
Heron

Will be

Nearer to you
Than to anyone
Because you leave

Him

Alone

Every time you walk by

Every single day.

Think about it.
How else to be a friend?
How else to love the world?

Show up
And keep to yourself.

Look around.
Get the picture.

The joke's on me with this one. First, this is a terrible photo. Second this is not the bird near home but a North Carolina relative. This one who would glide away at the sound of my camera powering up but who was cool as could be if the Marines came flying low and loud in one of their noisy mechanical birds.

One Single Impression

Blog Your Blessings: Rip Tide II in the Granite State

When my daughter and I related to my mother how we managed to swim our way to shore after being carried out by a rip tide, my daughter said, "I thought you were pushing me away."

"Your mother was pushing you in," my mother said to her before I could say a word. My mother knew, as a mother would, that of course I was doing all I could to get her to a safe place.

It's what you do.

That was a big moment for my daughter. She kept her cool, she swam the way I had taught her too, and she kept on. She grew with every wave that swept over her little face but did not take her down. She emerged from that water knowing she was strong.

She had her second rip tide moment of the summer this week in New Hampshire. Please God, she will emerge from it with self-confidence, poise, and the joy that comes from both.

On Wednesday we drove 4.5 hours from Connecticut to somewhere in the middle of the Granite State for five days of all-girl sleep-away camp. She was looking forward to being cabin mates with a girl she knew from last year--the daughter of a neighbor whose own daughter would be there, too. Last year she had been assigned a friend. This year she wanted the same one.

But the kid didn't come. And the kid didn't tell Adella she wasn't coming. So there was my shy and gentle daughter overwhelmed by the prospect of not knowing anybody in this vast sea of girls.

She cried in that quiet, inward way of hers as big tears fell from her eyes and splashed on the ground around her. She wanted to go home. She didn't want to be there. "Take me home, mom."

"No."

My heart broke for this kid, and then I heard my mother. "Why waste five days in this beautiful place over a kid who didn't even bother to tell you she wasn't coming?" It is hard to point out to a child that someone they think of as a friend doesn't care about their feelings, that the little stinker isn't a friend at all. How many times had my mother said that to me?

How many years of my own life had I endured friends who came my way because they chose to, because they told me they were my friends? Enduring my daughter's scowls and taking in her clear and pointed anger with me for pushing her away, I thought of a person who called herself my friend for years but who was about the meanest, most selfish person I had ever met. She had called herself my best friend; I had accepted her standard of "best" and endured her for, oh, 25 years before decided I was entitled to friends who were kind. While my daughter's situation was far less dramatic--she knew the girl only through camp a year ago--I didn't want her to get into a habit of letting the choices of others shape her life, her fun, her perception of herself.

I told her the week in New Hampshire was my gift to her so she could be herself, make friends and have fun. "It's for you to be you," I told her, and I added, "You might want to get your face off the floor because when you look all sad like that, people get the idea you want to be alone and they will leave you alone." And I heard my mother again: "If you want to have a good time, you will. If you don't, you won't. It's up to you." (Or was that dad?)

I stayed with her. When she went to the bathroom, I let her counselor know she was a shy kid but a sweet one and she needed encouragement. I did all I could to weave her into the conversation of the other girls who were there. Finally, another mom whose daughter was also nervous heard me talking about playing Rummy 500 with Adella and suggested my kid teach her kid how to play.

There it was: a way in for the shy girls. Before I knew it I was told for the second time I could go. The Evil Mother Who Said No even got a kiss and a hug.

So there it is. So far, so good. I guess Sunday I'll find out if she emerges from this rip tide a bit taller and more self-confident--or not. Here's hoping.

Blog Your Blessings

Skywatch Friday: Waking Up to Topsail Island

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: Dad's Watching

Wordless Wednesday

My World Tuesday: Philadelphia Murals

While in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a few weeks ago, I ran around and photographed just a few of the more than 2,000 murals that add color and life and interest to this amazing city. These murals celebrated just about every aspect of life there.

The Mural Arts Program grew out of the city's attempt 25 years ago to eradicate graffiti in the city. Eventually, the anti-graffiti crowd realized it had to work with the creative minds behind the graffiti. The Mural Arts Project has involved graffiti writers as well as painters who create in other genres to produce artworks of high standard throughout the city.

The artists have chosen subjects that reflect the nature of life in the city and the subjects of debate that have come to this birthplace of our independence. Beautiful thing.

I hope to go back soon and to see more of the murals and to take more time with the camera. I am greedy that way. I loved the excitement of finding these murals and of being swept inside the vision of the artists. To my way of thinking, this is the ultimate American dialogue. (Click here for a few more images.)

My World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: Open Up a Little

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Copse

Dusk has come.

I walk and

Rabbits the color of forgotten hay

Dart into the undergrowth

The soundless doe and her fawn

Slip into the slender shadows

Of the copse

That keeps the river

Cool and dark

The waters slow to a whisper.

Birds on the outer branches

Of this secret place

Silence themselves

As my footfall sends

A shiver through the earth.

The fish feel the echo

Rippling through water.

A fox slips through the grass

And the geese step into

The cool dew of day's end.

Everything disappears

Into the shelter of trees.

In the distance, a dog barks.

A baby cries.

I stand still, stand back,

Hold my breath

And wait for silence

To carry off these voices.

The retreating thunder

Of my steps

Is the last sound

Before darkness claims

The sleeping universe

That casts me back out

Onto the unlit street.

I discovered this week that the word copse comes from a Latin word meaning to cut. So a copse is a small wood grown for the purpose of cutting. How and why this brought my thoughts to the works of Margaret Wise Brown and her bedtime stories for children--Goodnight, Moon, A Child's Good Night Book, The Big Red Barn, The Sleepy Book, Wait 'Til the Moon is Full, The Sleepy Little Lion--that have a lovely way of placing the sleepy child in a wonderful, settled, sleeping world where all is well, I don't know. I like to walk in the evening just as it seems the world is going to sleep. Except that I often feel like a heavy, oafish intruder as I move along. Quite the opposite of all those wonderfully assuring things I used to read to my daughter. I don't know.

One Single Impression

Blog Your Blessings: Lone Survivor

This summer I read a remarkable book about a young man who tests the limits of human endurance and then exceeds them--in the name of down-home decency that sometimes bears the names of loyalty, friendship, patriotism. It is the story of Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, Lone Survivor. Shortly after I read it, I wrote this:

I never have served in the military, but I sure do like the people I know who have. To a man, they are honest, direct, clear, courteous, true, and good. They are people of integrity who don't mess around and who genuinely honor life.

Lone Survivor is a book by a person who embodies integrity along with substantial doses of courage and strength and intelligence. Author Marcus Luttrell is the sole survivor of Operation Redwing, a military mission involving four U.S. Navy Seals tasked with finding, capturing, or killing a Taliban leader in the lunar terrain of Afghanistan.

Luttrell's book takes ample time to describe the intense, rigorous training of SEALs and to describe the operation itself. In a nutshell: you do what your told, you give it everything. No bullshit.

This resonated with me. It made me think of all those men I know who have served in the armed forces. They are not afraid of saying right is right and wrong is wrong and saying which is which lest anybody become confused. They are not men who ponder the nuances of grey.

Until they have to. Which is what happened to Luttrell more than once in the miserable, unyielding mountains of Afghanistan. Faced with grey, with choices that are not clear cut, Luttrell and his colleagues think through to the most logical choice. In seconds.

These guys face the complexity of all their interactions with others on the battlefield with the same concise, direct courage. Luttrell finds good guys amid the shale. Sweet kids. Honorable people who help him survive. He finds evildoers. And he's not afraid to tell you he hates them.

Reading this book, I realized that a good piece of what I admire about Luttrell and basically the men I know who have served is that they don't make excuses for evil. They get rid of it. That's exciting.

I have thought a lot about this book since I have read it. And I think that is what I like best because it gives me hope and teaches me courage.

Finally, I am grateful to Luttrell for making sense of what makes no sense to me when I read the paper. I am grateful for his honesty and his very clear vision.

His story taught me that for all I know, I don't know a lot. There's always more to learn. I suppose it's an attitude of humility. Lately as I have been trying to make sense of so many things going on in our country that I think have tested the limits of decency and compromised the quality of discourse on issues that affect all of us, I have thought how important it is to listen and learn, to honor the system that rare people like Marcus Luttrell fight with everything they have to defend. To pledge anew our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor.

Skywatch Friday: Sunset, Topsail Island, North Carolina

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: Smooth Sailing, Shackleford Island, North Carolina

Wordless Wednesday

My World Tuesday: The Intracoastal Waterway

Adella and I took a little boat ride on the Intracoastal Waterway from Surf City on Topsail Island on the last day of our vacation there. The waterway was started the early 20th century to create a safe passageway for boats along the length of the East Coast. This section of it is an expanded version of a natural waterway thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers. Prisoners dredged the thing in the 1900s. The rich mud they dug up and tossed aside became the little land masses that dot the waterway and support a host of maritime vegetation. The above photo is a view of the swing bridge from Surf City to the mainland. It's a lovely thing if you're not waiting in line to use it.

Topsail Island is dotted with summer mansions that, as a friend said, could be seen from outer space. The folks who occupy these trailers have a different set of priorities, I think. All the good living takes place on the water.

Some folks find a way to make a few bucks from the wildlife in the mud.

Others, like the folks on the Menka II from Beaufort, don't mind a little piracy--and shooting blank at gawking tourists.

I just kind of love the whole thing, even from the outside looking in.

My World Tuesday

Today' Flowers: In the Pink--and White

These lovelies bloomed along the edge of my parents' front yard in North Carolina. Can you tell me what they are?

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Oceans

Up at four on a grey morning

To the water with the boat

And dad at the wheel

We glide the boat

Like a sleepwalking child

Into the still waters of Westport

Well beyond the harbor

We drop our lines

And open the Thermos

To coffee sweet with milk and sugar

Rain falls

The rings that emanate from each drop

Spread into the mystery of sunrise

Burning quietly through silence

And the coffee is good.

Drink your coffee. Before it's cold.

Two flat fish take the bait

One after the other on my line.

Rain extinguishes the light.

Dad at the wheel

Takes us home.

Bury them in the garden, he says.

For the tomatoes.

I know. We don't believe in waste.

Dad leaves for work.

I dig in the sand.

One Single Impression

Blog Your Blessings: Philadelphia

After eight days of enjoying warm and easy peace alongside the steady, measured indifference of the ocean, I found myself standing beside my daughter and laughing out loud on a street corner in Philadelphia. It's strange to go from being all alone with the elements to the City of Brotherly Love and its crosswalk signs that count down for you the number of seconds you have before the forbidding red hand will tell you to stay back and stay safe. Talk about being led by the hand.

We were surrounded by signs that told us where we were, what was historically significant about being there, what came next, where to turn for the next big thing. We couldn't make a wrong turn. Constant loving supervision. Because it is a crazy world despite our combined best efforts, there were uniformed men with sidearms standing beside our significant historical treasures. And teams of inspectors making sure nobody was carrying anything crazy in her purse. And school-marmy rangers telling us to get rid of our gum because nothing is worse than gum on a historical site.

And because this is America and not everybody gets it, there was indeed gum stuck to the front step of Independence Hall. But I digress.

Inside that building, our guide took us to the Assembly Room, where the representatives of the 13 original colonies settled on the Declaration of Independence as a good thing and as a last resort in a longstanding heated political discourse with a faraway government that just wasn't playing fair. The ranger didn't hesitate to point out that it wasn't a perfect document--it did not count slaves or women among those who are created equal--but it was as good as it could be given the nature of the people in the room debating the thing. After it came the Constitution, another document that was as good as it could be in its time but which has stood the test of time and absorbed whatever changes the people have deemed necessary. Subtext: we do the best we can and keep on going; we do the best we can and keep on going.

Her words were as sweet to my ears as the crash of the surf day in and day out in North Carolina. The sound is music, a balm in a world in which fault-finding, complaining, and bickering pass for insight and wisdom. We live in the Age of the Outed Human. Show yourself to be in any way human, and we'll grind your achievements to dust and flay you. The knives are always sharp. The ranger's words reminded me it doesn't have to be that way. We have a choice.

A choice to live up to the awesome responsibility of democracy, of self-government--as much an individual way of being decent and fair and respectful as a collective one. We always have the option to stop knowing everything and start doing something.

This thrill that left me teary-eyed was brought to me by the Department of the Interior, whose interpreters are very fine teachers.

Hey, not every crosswalk sign in Philly counts down for you. Sometimes you have to exercise good sense and wait your turn. Beautiful thing.

Blog Your Blessings

Skywatch Friday: The Sun Falls Behind Yankee Stadium

Sunlight slipped away as we waited for the Yankees and Orioles to start playing on July 20. With Andy Pettitte on the hill and my three favorite people beside me, I couldn' ask for anything more--except that maybe the rest of the Yankees actually played ball, too, those first eight innings. Anyway, the view was good and Matsui saved the day. (Here are some more views of the stadium.)

Skywatch Friday