The Best There Is

Since I wasn't there for fame or fortune, at my last (part-time) job with the Mechanicsburg library I did a lot of extra tasks upon request, just for the challenge, which had not much to do with my duties.  Two of the regular librarians often asked for graphic displays for events or promotions, and I regularly spent weekends on the garage floor cutting, spray-gluing and assembling two- and three-dimensional themed creations.  I also identified coins for patrons and helped people find obscure items (often digging in my own huge collection which is being slowly weeded out over the years).   But one incoming phone request was of the type I had been instructed to turn down:  picking up books and magazines for donation to the regular sales (a nice source of income and a fine recycling effort).  The people had a garage full and seemed old and in need of help; it all would have gone to the trash otherwise.  So I loaded my small SUV to the top with magazines and books that were, unfortunately, tainted with mildew and mostly fated to go into our dumpster anyway.  I should have looked for something, though:  copies of the defunct Holiday magazine.  But I didn't, because I had forgotten all about it, like everyone else.
Back in the 50s and 60s, you would occasionally see it in doctors' offices, but with its long-form articles on subjects too exotic for the suburban clientele, it was usually old and ignored.  I saw several in the living room of my friend Bob Freeman's house, and was struck by the frivolity of the title in contrast to the striking cover art and heavyweight content.  But that was the educated, well-traveled and urbane Freemans, whose presence in our boring-as-a-moonscape exurb was inexplicable yet lucky for me.  I only glanced at a few copies and was too shy to ask to borrow one.  Again, I should have, but I was probably too deficient in knowledge, contexts and vocabulary to understand it very well.  One internet commenter echoes what I vaguely felt at the time:  "Growing up in a rural area of northeast Texas in the 1950s, Holiday was a ticket to a different life."
They don't make them like that any more.  At 10"x12", hefty with about 220 pages of quality glossy paper, it was produced at the level of  a museum catalog.  The covers during the glory years (up to a million circulation at its peak) were icons of the international modernist style, hitting you full-on with Mediterranean gusto or minimalist German expression.  Italian-American George Giusti did several in the mid-60s, and they are classics.  Artwork inside included that superb photography of the era and the best of classic advertising, still much admired today.   The items being sold were aspirational, not mass market: Lincolns, color TVs, mink coats.  The kinds of things people who knew what pesto was and actually went to Europe would consider essential.  People who had garages, and a nice dark-blue set of Encyclopedia Britannica.
Unlike other magazines of the genre, the articles weren't  tedious fact-filled guides to hotels, restaurants and shopping: the writers were the best.  Paul Bowles (on hashish, of all things), V.S. Pritchett and Lawrence Durrell (both in the January 1961 issue), Steinbeck and Hemingway, Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury and Alfred Bester (one reknowned and one forgotten science fiction writer, both great), E.B. White and John Cheever, even Jack Kerouac (on riding the rails).
Launched at the very beginning of the postwar boom (March 1946), Holiday merged with Travel in 1977 and disappeared, along with elegant air travel.  That was our golden age, and Holiday was its record.
 

A Hundred Adventures

"Summertime is always the best of what might be."
                       --Charles Bowden

It's midsummer, the solstice.  Now is the best of summer, the ultimate fullness of spring.  July and August will beat us unmercifully with the sun we had craved so mightily in March; we find out that too much is as bad as too little.  But now, the plants are bursting with both flower and seed, the beans are forming, the tomatoes green and plentiful, so full of promise.  Early crops are in:  lettuce, spinach, chard.  The strawberries are a close memory while the blueberries and those insanely prolific red raspberries are just about to spill out.  Down South, the tough blackberry dares you to reach in and pluck it -- it will cost you, and be worth it.  The rose will not be slowed, and in this first third of the sweet season, neither will we. 

Yoko Ono, of all people, observed that Spring = Innocence, Summer = Exhuberance, Fall = Reverence and Winter = Perseverance.  We need them all and must keep them when they hide from us.

They say big cities, like New York, aren't themselves in summer, and only get normal again in September.  In earlier decades, the moneyed class, the white-shoe lawyers and financial traders, lived by the code "Sell by May and go away."  The market (stock, of course) suffered from summer doldrums and inattention, so might as well take your profits and retire to New Hampshire, Maine or Martha's Vineyard with the family and servants for three months and practice your drink-mixing skills.  And summer dalliances weren't serious and home-wrecking.  Back to the Street and Yale in the fall, to make the future...

The adventures of summer when we're young seem so big, punctuating the time that stretches out like a yawning cat.  Some go to summer camp and I wonder what that would have been like.  I always wanted to go to the Boy Scouts' Philmont Ranch, thinking that would have been the ultimate youthful experience:  the unknown West, family so far behind even a letter would have seemed to have been penned by ghosts and have no real power or substance.  Horses!  I wanted to learn to ride, even a little.  Campfire songs and easy sleep from tiredness entirely physical.  Waking early to be ready for a new adventure surely to be remembered even in old age.  I only went to local Camp Brady Saunders in central Virginia for a weekend; that had to do.  We had a blast, being senior Explorer Scouts and pretty much large and in charge.  That was well worth attending boring meetings all year, but I left after that, because more boring meetings would not result in anything that much fun again.

I experienced summer most intensely around here, at my grandparents' little house on the huge lot outside Mechanicsburg.  Leaving family behind (seeing a motif here?), I worked in the garden in the afternoons and helped my grandmother with chores quietly in the morning while grandad slept after working the night shift on the Pennsylvania Railroad.  We "processed" vegetables for canning and freezing, ate fresh cantaloupes, lima beans, tomatoes and corn, and stalked the wily groundhog who shook the farthest cornstalks and took bites out of the fallen apples (several .22 and shotgun shots, with no harm done to any groundhog) and the copperheads along the disappearing back fenceline (did get one of those).  I walked into town to the hobby shop to buy plastic models to assemble and paint (my favorite, a white 1959 Oldsmobile.  I still like those late '50s boats).  Grandad had a work car (1948 burgundy Dodge that had its own particular plastic smell) and a weekend errand and go-to-church car (1956 DeSoto Firedome four-door with probably more interior space than any Rolls-Royce and a helluva V8 engine).  They took me to the small J.C. Penney's in the old West Shore Plaza and bought me a brown cotton plaid shirt that I proudly wore on the first day of school and no one liked it.  That's when I discovered the essential truth that other people often don't know what the hell they're talking about.  It had Western details.  It was awesome.

What would a land of endless summer be like?  Australia, the Caribbean, Brazil...no anticipation of the ripening of seasons, everything blooming all year.  Whatever latitude you inhabit will have its own pace and pleasures; rum is not better than hearty ale.  Full is the life that includes everything that you can embrace or dream of.  The oak and the palm are both enduring and beautiful.  Stories of others' summers fill out the pages almost as well as your own; read in the slow afternoons and let your mind travel on the easy, warm breezes:

"Factualism will smother the imagination altogether."  -- Saul Bellow
   

Shake and Bake

Fuji Sanibel 1.0 cruiser

Mango Sport velomobile





Planet X Cafe

A real traveler wades into the unknown, is discomforted, surprised and in the end, grateful to be wiser while still whole, having tested him (or her-)self and mastered a little more of the art of life.
And then there's us.
Our third annual trip to Rehoboth Beach, DelaWHERE?, broadened no mental horizons, and no challenging discomforts were sought.  Pretty much the opposite:  we know what we like, and, well, we did it again.
Back at the Avenue Inn, a block and half from the ocean, with wine and cheese at 5 P.M., a cool indoor stainless steel pool, and a bed the size of our township.  Seems like the same hard-working and sanguine staff members are still there, and that tells you a lot about a lodging.  One of the first orders of monkey business was an early evening stop at the Pig and Fish, where our favorite outdoor table was available and Chip, the waiter with unmatched conversational skills and a wicked sense of humor, still plies his trade with skill.  Zach's favorite dish, the Pork Shank, was not on the menu, but thanks to Chip's intervention, was produced anyway and was porcine perfection, as always.  I was very happy with my white sangria.  Several times.
More San Francisco than San Fran is, the Planet X Cafe next door to the Avenue Inn was even better upon our return this year:  due to a rush of larger parties, we lost our porch spot and found a better one at a tiny table in the bar area, among the candles, beads and Buddhas.  The bartender, a ringer for Bruce Springsteen, had to suddenly handle the filled tables as well as his bar, and an amiable confusion reigned.  The recorded music was just my taste (thus excellent), and the food was, to give less praise than it deserves, creative, lovely and memorable.  And there's no reason to ever just order the usual with items such as Ginger Lime Punch on the liquid side of the menu.
Last year we were perched on the beach when the Virginia-based earthquake hit --  it felt like being tossed around a little in a saute pan.  This year's drama was all the lifeguard action.  We saw a class being trained at the north end while on a walk, and the ones near us two days later didn't seem to spend much time in their elevated chairs; they were always leaping down and sprinting to the water to deal with almost-emergencies.  They prevented any real ones from playing out, and one guard brought a goofy kid back to Chair #12 to give him a good talking-to about waving his arms about and acting like he was drowning.  Don't make me dive into that cold water for no good reason again!!
We finally stopped by Atlantic Bicycles and rented an hour on two cruiser bikes and rode most of it on the boardwalk -- the smooth forgiving wood boards and lack of cars was ideal.  Next day, Nancy had more roasting on the beach to do, and I went back for another hour, this time spent on the flat, wide streets.  That's the Fuji pictured above -- three speeds, old-fashioned coaster brakes, nice comfy seat; it was a delight.  Not driving much, but walking and bicycling this past week, got me thinking about alternate means of transportation again.  Unsafe in traffic, but with distinct advantages, the velocycle (which I have never actually seen) is a three-wheeled recumbent cycle enclosed by a fairing -- looks like a smaller, lighter version of Buckminster Fuller's ahead-of-its-time Dymaxion car.  Regular bicycles are more manoeverable, climb hills better, are easier to get on, and certainly more affordable (the Mango Sport Red Edition Velomobile, with everything including USB ports, is over $13,000), but this design uses several times less of your energy, is much more aerodynamic and can cruise at 21 - 25 MPH.  Edging closer to car than cycle, it can also have an electric motor and an aircraft type canopy with solar panels.  Still not safe competing with regular cars (and we have no suitable tiny car/bike lanes), it is tempting to think about the fact that it is twenty times more efficient than electric cars on the market now.
But we enjoyed being pretty inefficient last week.  And as they say, if you play, you must pay.  That would be two days of unpacking and laundry; well worth it, all in all.  No ginger lime punch in sight to ease the burden, but there are a couple of Delaware's own Dogfish Head 60-Minute IPAs in the refrigerator....

 

A Little Night Musing

What to do?  So many thoughts whirling around, new ideas collected in the troll net dragged through the Internet, even so many good or really silly pictures -- now that I'm at a standoff with Facebook about their (non-) privacy policies and not posting anymore, what to do with it all?
It's not helping with ideas for this lonely outpost of cheapo journalism.  Today I gathered notes and developed shaky opinions on the sad subject of directors (corporate and nonprofit boards of directors)...but even I won't inflict that on you, my loyal reader (or two).
The inspiration came from a columnist/blogger I look forward to reading in our newspaper's two-page Sunday Wall Street Journal excerpt.  The first time I read "Al's Emporium" by Al Lewis (had never heard of him, but I give all columnists one or two chances), I did a silent-movie double-take and read it all through again.  He belonged in the WSJ as much as "Family Guy" and the other subversive comedies belong on the Fox television network, since slimy Murdoch & Co. own Fox, Dow Jones and the Journal.   AND he appears on the Fox Business Channel.  You'd think, with such associations, he'd be as palatable as George Will or that National Review Online hack who appears with wretched regularity on our local editorial page.  But he's clear, factual, logical and not the least afraid to puncture and deflate those in the business/financial world who desperately need it (well, we need to see it done, even if nothing changes).  A professional scribe for twenty-five years, he has developed a style I can only admire from afar.  One of his four-word sentences at the end of a concise paragraph:  knockout punch.
Today's "Proven Job Eliminators" had me at the title.  It's about Meg Whitman, who announced last week her plan to eliminate 27,000 jobs at Hewlett-Packard.  Al notes she repeatedly campaigned as a "proven job creator" during her (Republican, of course) try at the California governor's office:  "...I have spent 30 years creating jobs..." was the claim, despite having only (supposedly) created 15,000 as CEO of eBay over ten years.  I'm seeing a vice presidential running mate for Mittens!
The second half of the essay, about director incompetence, follows "And the first job she should find a way to eliminate is the one held by chairman Ray Lane."  I think Al and Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone should continue to fill you in about directors, CEOs, business foolishness and economic train wrecks, and so, I refer you to them.  They've always got a new jaw-dropper.
So what have I got for you?
Well, today the clematis vines bloomed in red, white and blue for Memorial Day.
The Black Cherry Smoothie at Panera was cold and delicious.
We got the first box of produce, on the usual Thursday, of this year's subscription to our favorite Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, Spiral Path up the far reaches of Perry County, and I can only assure you that the giant red romaine lettuce was impressive, fresh and delicious, and is already gone.
I had the wrong type of fertilizer on hand, and as a lovely but useless result, have vigorous, tall onion plants with small, underdeveloped onions on the business end.
Gilligan, our tuxedo cat, goes nuts when the Sprial Path bag is opened, looking for corn (alas, not in season yet!) -- he puts his head inside to happily chew away at the husks.  He can smell corn before it has made its way inside from the garage.  His little black buddy, Blackberry, has his own quirk:  he insists I stand beside him while he munches the cat food in his bowl.  Another ritual is the evening snack around 9 - 9:30 PM.  They know exactly when that is and will remind me if I'm slow about it.
Pet stories.  What next, excited tales about scrapbooking, with lots of exclamation points???!!!
Yeesh.

Drowning in Your Dreams

Mankind has, with increasing speed during the Industrial Age, found ways to make more and better and cheaper and very easily available things -- to the point that the self-storage business and 3,500 square foot homes full of the latest televisions are in every town.  But one desire that can't be satiated in this way is a nice warm place to live by the water, with most of those desireable first-world amenities at hand.  Once made accessible and livable, they're for the Romney bunch to own and yours only for a week or so on a rental basis.  Those adventurers who heard of new places where living under the palm trees was, if not easy at first, at least very affordable, long before anyone else -- I wonder how, before the internet, did they find out about them?  Now developers can resell waterfront lots from a $200 purchase made in the 60s in Costa Rica or Panama for a million plus. 
But now the middle class, not too sure about Mexico or more faraway places that still have dengue fever and backroad bandits, can look to Florida or the Southeastern coast for surprising bargains due to the 2006 - 2008 real estate bubble burst.  In a previous post, I noted what we saw around Ruskin, at the south end of Tampa Bay:  many choices and prices like it was 40 years earlier.  I was most interested in established areas as opposed to the gated "arrested developments" with no hope of a neighborhood ever growing.  If you're willing to downgrade from your Northern suburban comfort a little to gain subtropical breezes, waterbirds, sunsets over the Gulf and no mornings under freezing, there are fixer-uppers just yards from the water (bay, river or canal) -- and lots of them.  And enough left over for a boat.  You could be knocking on heaven's gate in a month.
But don't. More than your toes are going to get wet.
The sea level is only rising about the thickness of about two nickels a year:  that doesn't sound like cause for extreme caution, does it?  Especially if you go along with the crowd, which is more skeptical of global warming and its effects than ever.  Well, the crowd thought getting on the hook for a $600,000 mortgage in 2005 was the way to go.  Take a look at the interactive map at http://www.flood.firetree.net/, where you can dial in several projected figures for sea level rise and see what will be inundated.  At +9 meters (that's a lot, maybe by 2100 or so), the eastern 1/4 of North Carolina, the lower 1/3 of Louisiana, south Florida, Hampton Roads in Virginia, and the Bahamas are gone.  Little Delaware and peaceful Ruskin, Florida, too.
The beaches of North Topsail Island and Nags Head (where we spent some wonderful weeks years ago) are already retreating; 2000 square miles of coastal North Carolina is less than 40" above water.  Coastal tourists in the area now spend about $2.3 billion a year.  Gone, along with the sparkling sand and the lighthouses. 
Low inland areas connected to the sea, like the valley from Sacramento to Stockton, California, also will disappear.  Storms, increasing in quantity and strength, will multiply the damage.  Salt water will intrude into, and render useless, groundwater now far from it.
Think of the human migration problem, which mankind has not been good at solving so far in history (the Palestinian refugee camps are getting old and just as miserable as ever).  Lots of Bahamians in a much smaller Florida?  You'll be better off watching the Travel Channel on one of those new TVs.



 

Beautiful beautiful

Prickly Pear cactus blooming with abandon in red, yellow and magenta, defying the desert

A chipmunk, the V8 Mustang of the rodent world

You have a favorite author most everyone has forgotten about, and you find a very old book of his in perfect condition -- on a library give-away table

Snow falling through moonlight

Cat ears

Tomatoes so red you stop and stare

The first crocus of the year, on the first sunny day of late winter; just that one

Ten irresistable little toes.  You know who you are

That so-rare moment of pristine clarity

The A Major 7 chord

Breezy sunny midmorning, seventy-two degrees

An unexpected kiss

We Don't Need No Education