Separation anxiety

I want to feel like I’m returning home.
Instead, I feel that I am leaving home.

Even after 8+ years, I can’t wrest my soul from the Jersey Shore. My separation anxiety, it seems, is geographical as well as human.

I am in “soak up” mode, sucking in the brine at the Spring Lake boardwalk, as if I could find a way to make it last all the way back to Sarasota. I linger outside of No Ordinary Joe’s in Red Bank until my coffee is cold, obsessively scanning the streetscape. I gaze out at the Navasink River and imagine myself on one of the sailboats floating by.

I admire those who boldly stride into the future.
My neck cranes toward the past.
I cling.

So I make lists of the good stuff : I have a job, a roof over my head, healthy children, good friends et al. I mutter thanks to the universe for the opportunity to be here again this summer.

And I don’t know what else to do but keep moving, dragging myself into the forward. Well, I do purchase a lottery ticket each week. The belief in magic dies hard.

Something funny happened on the way to the publisher...

I became a blogger.

So I’m pausing to pat myself on the back—a bit—for crossing the year-one blogging divide. Not a small feat, or so I’m told. According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned.

I started this site last August 19, with a post about my daughter, without whose help I never would have made it off the ground.

I was not what you would call an enthusiastic blogger. Publishers and agents, who said they liked my second book, a few even loved it—yet they would not take it on. Since I no longer had my newspaper column , I was left without a “platform” they moaned, a demonstrable readership. (Even being called “early Nora Ephron didn’t help!)

Enter blogging. By casting my writing out onto the web, they opined, I would attract a following, create such a platform and thereby become publishable. That’s the theory, anyway. Reality, as always, tends to get in the way.

Richard Jalichandra, chief executive of Technorati, has reported that at any given time there are 7 million to 10 million active blogs on the Internet, but “it’s probably between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs that are generating most of the page views...There’s a joke within the blogging community that most blogs have an audience of one.”

Okay, so my audience exceeds that, but not by nearly as much as I had hoped. Like many folks of my generation, I find myself so overwhelmed by the marketing of this thing that it freezes me into inaction.

So until/unless I figure it out, I have come to terms with what is. I am determined to continue—even if I am an audience of one. It is, at a minimum, a date with myself, a date to show up on the page at least once a week, to continue and not get tossed away. This is no small thing in my life. I meet this commitment—others, not so much.

I’ve had three months of free time to work on my second “novel” and have done next to bupkis, nada. Whatever creative juices have been given over to me dried up. I am the Sahara of the literary world. Continuing here, on this site, is helping me make peace with that and move on.

Next week I will be back in my “real life”, back in Sarasota, back at work in B&N. This blog will continue and at some future time I hope to find my way back to that book or on to new ones.

Hope you stay tuned...and it wouldn't hurt if you would pass the word along to others. Thanks.
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Curtains for Camelot

The curtain has fallen.
Cut the applause and standing ovations,
There are no more encores.
Time to dim the lights and leave the theater.
Camelot is done.

It matters little what the remaining Kennedys of the so-called younger generation do, with the death this week of their “Uncle Teddy” the “dream” has died. (Even if Caroline does resume some political quest.)

And even knowing the Kennedy “Camelot” was as mythical as the literary one, it still saddens me. At first, as I watched Edward Kennedy’s casket escorted from his boyhood home for the final time, I couldn’t put my finger on why that might be.

Then it hit me—my adolescents and young adulthood was bound up with that family, for good or ill.

I will admit that as a teenager I enthusiastically bought into whole bag, delighting in the contrast between JFK and Ike. I felt as if the world was opening up, just as I was approaching adulthood, possibilities unbounded. A series of well-aimed gunshots cut short the lives of JFK and RFK . Others, like the affable JFK Jr., were lost to their own fatal misjudgments. But there always seemed to be another Kennedy to step into the void and feed the myth. Until now.

The “dream” that died with Teddy was not the one of political dynasty, power or privilege. It was the dream of my—and my generation’s—youthful view of this country and what our lives might be. As much as we boomers hate to admit it, the torch REALLY has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born to a very different reality and impatient with the masses of us clogging the road to their new millennium.

the puny penis defense

Now the world knows mondo rip-off artist Bernie Madoff’s “other secret” thanks to his self-proclaimed former mistress Sheryl Weinstein. Bernie, she says, is puny in the penis department. This I learned last night watching the “news.”

And as we women all know, size CAN matter, both for good or ill. That’s the hard truth of it. So suck it up, guys. If you doubt me, check out HBO’s “Hung, ” a kooky comedy about an over endowed divorced high school basketball coach who needs money after his house burns down an bills himself out as a “happiness consultant.”

So now pundits are pondering if his super fraudulent life was the result of his less than adequate genitalia. Bernie was simply “overcompensating.” Shit, he must have a penis the size of a Ken doll. Come to think of it, Ken was sans genitalia. Oh, well. At least Madoff had balls, eh? He never met a buck he couldn’t steal. He even took his honey for all she was worth, she claims.

So now it’s out. His penis made him do it.
Hey, they once laughed at the Twinkie defense.

missing Woodstock

So I’m missing Woodstock—again.

Forty years ago, I was the same chronological age as many of those at the hallowed festival. But in reality I was much older. I spent the time almost unaware of the goings on. You see, I was already married with an 7 month-old daughter. My choices had already constricted my life to a tiny yellow five room ranch house in Point Pleasant, NJ.

My Aunt Sally, on the other hand, summering in a nearby bungalow colony, responded to pleas for food. I did have a tenuous connection.

But as years have melted into decades, the distinction has faded. The images of the place, masses of flesh, mud and drugs, mixed with music , joy and freedom have sunk into our very souls. All of us feel we were there. (Gone, by the way, are less savory images of drug overdoses, overflowing toilet facilities and the like.)

That’s how I feel now, watching the celebration’s 40th birthday. It does, however, remind me how much of my own “era” I observed rather than participated in—such as civil rights marches and sit-ins. My only sit-ins were in the pediatrician’s office.

That child, now a 40 year-old resident of London, was certainly worth it. I would make the choice again. I would, really. I've never much cared for crowds after all.

Julie & Julia & Me

Yeah, so I’m blogging about a film about a blogger. Sorta.

Julie & Julia is one delightful flick. Even being interrupted by a 45-minute evacuation from the theater didn’t hurt. (We were never told why the alarms went off.) The performance of Meryl Streep is everything you see in the trailers. It was just fun, so much fun I was sorry to see it end.

But along with my engagement in the dual storyline, (I’m not going into that here. It’s just a google away.) I found myself reacting strongly to the experience of nascent blogger Julie Powell working her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days—and that of nascent chief Child’s in France.

I could certainly identify with Julie’s concerns that she’s just sending her writing out into a literary version of lost in space. I still feel that way, even after almost a year. Is anybody out there? Does anybody give a damn?

I chuckled at her delight when her blog receives its first comment, only to find it’s from her mother—real close to home. And her excitement at getting 65 comments from “people I don’t know.” Here, I started slipping over into more dangerous territory—envy. Powell developed a real conversation with her “readers” who even sent her gifts through the mail.

My own stats, which are too easily checked, are silly low. Yet I am determined to continue. The climb up is incremental. Unlike Julie, I have no “gimmick.” That’s what the reviewers are calling her Julie/Julia project. However, I beg to differ.
What separates me from both Julie and Julia is passion, a focused passion. In both their cases it is food. Well, not just food. I am passionate about food, eating it that is. Their passion lay in the process, in the preparation of (and then the consuming of) said food.

Julie nurtures a love of cooking as a means of getting her through an otherwise drab existence (not unlike Child, by the way), before she starts her project. It’s not an artificial construct. Without that innate passion, neither of them would have soldered through to the end. Julie, her year of cooking dangerously, and Julia, fearlessly going where no American woman had gone before. Neither had a smooth ride, although both are blessed with amazingly supportive spouses.

The so-called “gimmick” of cooking her way through Child’s tome, is really what we journalists call a “hook.” It’s a means to draw people into the young woman’s life, as she struggles and juggles to navigate the year without losing her job, her husband or her sanity.

For Julia, her passions fall upon her rather late in life. She is still a virgin at 40 when she meets the man she marries—also a most passionate relationship, by the way. Her cooking career begins after as “something to doooooo.” Julia masters the cooking easily enough, but getting that now familiar opus published, while following her adored husband with his diminishing career around Europe almost proves her undoing.

What saves the film from ending up as a fairytale, is the reaction of then 90-year-old Julia Child to Julie’s blog—she is unimpressed, calling the young woman disrespectful and not serious. Thankfully for the upset young woman, this news comes to her after the project is complete and accolades pour in. Her husband rightly reminds her that it’s the “Julia in her head” that matters.

Since Nora Ephron combined a bio partly penned by Child and her grand nephew, along with Julie’s book on her project for the movie, we are left with the real sense, that if Child were still alive, this film would not have seen the light of day. And that would have been a shame.

where the heart is...

Since my return up north for the summer, I have been considering the subject of “home.” What exactly is it? Where is it? Is it “where the hat is”? And if it is, as some say, it’s where the heart is, can the heart live in more than one place?

I’m not sure I know the answer, but I am sure that many folks surely have the same questions. Well, fairly sure. OK, so maybe I’m among the few who bother to think about these things. So sue me.

Regular readers of this space are aware I feel deep connections to several places separated by both time and space.

When I travel back to Syosset, Long Island, the Nassau County neighborhood where I came of age, there is indeed a sense of homecoming. It is a static homecoming, set in the 1950-60s and viewed through childhood eyes. My brain tends to screen out changes and emotions are stirred—egged on, I’m sure by the loss than comes as we age.

The pieces written on my time here in Rye, NY (see: what I did on my summer vacation, August 21, 2008 and return to Rye, June 11, 2009.) also touch on my youth, on the summers spent in the Catskills. Another visceral connection. A decided chunk of my heart is home amid the cool green mountains of New York.

Then there is the Jersey Shore, where I’ve spent the bulk of my adult life, where I raised my children, did my best work. I can get so gut wrenchingly homesick for the sights and smells of the place, it drives me nuts. But unless my children are with me for a “down the shore” foray, Point Pleasant, the actual town in which we lived holds little sway. I am somehow more connected to the neighboring town of Point Pleasant Beach, perhaps because it has both a real downtown and the boardwalk where much time was passed. And maybe it’s because my house of 40 years was stripped of its uniqueness by its new owners. I avoid going down that street now.

But this year, something weird hit me. I feel the most at home in a place I have never lived. How can that be? That place is Red Bank, where a best friend puts me up every summer. I walk downtown for coffee, which I drink outside at a café table. The view is identical to the photo on my home computer. From there, I easily travel to walk the Spring Lake or Point Beach boards and to visit others. And the hospital, a short walk from my friend’s home, has a dynamite view of the Navasink River from it’s café. Having lived across from the Manasquan River for decades, I love watching the action on a river.

Sadly, the one place I still do not feel at home is where I’ve lived for the past 7 plus years—Sarasota, Fl. I wish I could will myself to feel that sense of belonging that comes with being “at home.” In moving so far from all I know, alone, I acted against type, gambling it would shake up my moribund life for the better. The best I can say right now is that the jury is still out. I am better at hanging on to old connections that making new ones.

It surprises people—even those who know me fairly well—that my apparent extroverted nature is severely tempered by an introverted soul. I dislike parties, crowds and find it difficult to join things. When I first moved, I went to some social mixer-type things, simply looking for friends of either sex. I even went on one date. It was excruciatingly boring and painful.

The first two people I hit it off with, moved away. I do work with good folk and will return in the fall, once again, with determination to reach out some more, somehow. Yes, I’m well aware the fault is in me, not the place. I realized recently that I am much more comfortable as an observer, rather than a participant, so finding my way to journalism makes perfect sense.

I also tend have a tendency to blend into the lives of my friends instead of building my own—sounds a bit like a book concept. You know, a woman who lives her life by shuttling from one friend’s home to another, adopting and adapting to their lifestyles before moving on. Oh my, how hollow is that!

Whoa, this piece has taken an unsettlingly whiney turn. Enough of this.

Billy Joel, the voice of my Long Island youth has his own take on the subject as he sings:

Well I never had a place that I could call my very own.

That's all right, my love, 'cause you're my home...You're my castle, you're my cabin and my instant pleasure dome.I need you in my house 'cause you're my home.

A decidedly romantic, but methinks very dangerous concept of “home”.

Perhaps the simplest answer:
When someone asks “where are you from,” what’s your first response?

Death take a holiday

Enough already!

The month of June was over rife with celeb deaths, it seems to me. Yeah, I know, it’s probably not statistically aberrant. I mean, folks die all the time and under those well-known skins, celebs are just human. (I know, it comes as a shock.)

But the never ending list of famous endings still seems a bit much—like their expiration dates all came due. They were all ages, also. The exits ranged from the natural and odd, quick and drawn out, painful and seemingly peaceful, expected and shocking.

June. Of all months to have death busting out all over.

This is where the internet comes in handy, for a list of those who have moved on. I confess these are a few names in there I’ve never heard of. And I know I’m getting on in years, cause quite a few of these folks aren’t that old to me.

Deaths in my extended family bunched up in August. We always seems to be marking one anniversary or another. When my uncle died some years ago, my aunt noted it was on one of those anniversaries, to which a cousin quipped: “It’s hard to find an open date in August.” (And yes, we laughed.) We have a rough sense of humor in our family, what can I say?

And July continues the trend. As I write this actor Karl Malden, 97 has just died. And from what I read, Patrick Swayze and Walter Cronkite won’t be far behind.

Perhaps that bit about celebs dying in threes should be amended to dying in droves.

For the morbidly curious, here’s the list in chronological order

June 3
Chicago blues legend Koko Taylor dies at 80
David Carradine, Accidental Death at72
1950s-'60s tenor saxophonist Sam Butera dies 81

June 7
Singer-songwriter Kenny Rankin dies of lung cancer at 67

June 8
Actor Johnny Palermo dies in car accident at 27

June 10
Jack Nimitz, Sax Player, a Big Part of Jazz History, Dies 79
Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section Keyboardist Barry Beckett Dies 66
Ink Spots guitarist Huey Long dies at age 105 in Houston

June 14
Bob Bogle, Original Member of The Ventures dies at 75

June 23
Ed McMahon dies at 86

June 25
Farrah Fawcett dies of cancer at 62
Michael Jackson dies at 50
Sky Saxon - Band Member of The Seed dies 63

June 27
Gale Storm, singer, star of '50s hit TV series, dies 87

June 28
Infomercial Pitchman Billy Mays Dies at 50
Fred Travalena, impressionist and singer, dies 66

June 30
Harve Presnell, 'Fargo' Actor, dies at 75 from pancreatic cancer

Jon & Kate plus 8 divorce lawyers ?

I confess.
I’ve watched Jon & Kate Plus 8, maybe half a dozen times—long before the present troubles. I was sucked in by the shear logistics of it all. And frankly marveled at her ability to keep on top of it.

But I found the so-called “reality show” uncomfortable viewing, even then. She was not a happy camper, or so it seemed. It wasn’t just that she continually told him what to do, but she was decidedly unpleasant about how she did it. She comes across as a bullying harpy. So it’s no surprise that a recent “poll” finds 61% of the country siding with him in the divorce action.

That’s not a bandwagon onto the which I will jump. Yes, she is easy to dislike, often roiling with anger and disapproval. But every coin needs a flip side to exist. And Jon is Kate’s. He is a whimpering mass of passive aggressive manipulation. And I know from first-hand experience, how such a person can subtly provoke one to rage. In my own youthful, brief marriage, I was more a Kate than a Jon.

Ironically, the photo always accompanying the story of the split comes from the episode where the kit’n caboodle flies to Hawaii and the couple renew their vows. Yes, I happened to catch that one. Leaves me wondering if that was the network’s idea or the couple grasping at straws—they didn’t have to pay for.

Although I read there is a prayer website dedicated to the couple, I also find the silence of the Christian community telling. Kate’s book publisher was a major evangelical house and the series drew heavily from that sector for its support. However, I’m not among those that believe that the evangelicals are any less likely than the rest of us to slow down to rubberneck at a roadside disaster.

Their network, TLC is banking on us to tune in for what I am afraid will be a media circus of a divorce—cause a reasoned, measured split won’t make for good ratings. They are so confident reports have them procuring a Trump Tower apartment (or its equivalent) for Jon so the pair can separate and continue filming.

I won’t be among those watching, though. Living through my own crumbling marriage and watching those of people close to me is fall apart is enough, thank you.

Somehow, I doubt the couple will provide a public service by showing us how this should be done. The two appear to agree on only one thing: The show must go on. Why? So the Gosselins can afford to divorce without sacrificing their bloated lifestyle? Give me a break.

return to Rye

They say that the sense of smell is the strongest evoker of memory. It certainly is so in my experience. The brine of the Atlantic mixed with damp wood brings back the NJ boardwalk—perhaps an endangered sense memory, though, as wood slats are replaced with recycled material.

But there is no replacing the smell of upstate New York. It smells like the 1950s summers of my childhood. I know, I’ve written about this before, but every time I return to the countryside north of New York City, it washes over and transports me.

It’s rich, green, damp and laden with as much memory as foliage. Salad days made concrete. Bungalow colonies with names like Blueberry and Kraus’s, and day camp color wars. (No, it wasn’t much like Dirty Dancing. That was much too upscale. Yet the film is oddly evocative. The 1998 flick, A Walk on the Moon, with Diane Lane was closer to our reality.)

So I returned yesterday and had my first morning walk with Angel, my friend Martin’s dog. The morning was dark, raw and wet. Lovely for me, not so much for Angel, who struggled a bit with her arthritis. Instead of lunging ahead, she was content to trot alongside and poke around. That was OK with me and my arthritis. We are both seniors.

I drank it in, so refreshing, mountain cool, like the fall days I so miss since my transplantation to Sarasota. Even the grayness was a pleasant change from the drumbeat of Florida sunshine.

So I settled inside today, to cozy up and read. I promised my friend Paula I would give Twilight a try. Sorry to say, that so far the immensely popular franchise leaves me bored. And considering how many hundreds of those books I’ve stacked, I am surprised and disappointed.

Later...

riding the auto train

Friday,
June 5

12:50 p.m.
Phase one of my sentimental journey is complete. I sit in the Amtrax station in Stanford, north of Orlando. I am up at 5:30 to pack the car in between sheets of rain, clean out the fridge and drop Abbie off at the vet to board for a week. She is not a happy camper. By 10, I am on my way, stopping to down a bacon, egg & cheese McGriddle. There is something about being on the road that awakens the sleeping fast foodie in me.

I make great time, even though traveling I 4, especially during the week, is a nightmare. It’s one of those congested, shopworn roads constantly under construction--not to mention passing all the theme park exits and golng through downtown Orlando. On a good day, it's a 2.5 hour trip.

It’s one of those hurry up and wait scenarios, since the train doesn’t leave unit 4, but they want you there by 2. If you don’t get there even earlier you get a bad dinner seating and end up sharing your space with anxious parents and screaming infants…so I wait.

The Sanford station is old and shows its age. The small concession stand is shuttered. I’m glad I brought a salad to munch on as I chose the most popular 7 pm dinner. The food has always been quite tasty. And as a lone traveler, I’ve been lucky with dinner partners. On my first foray, I sat with a couple who spends summers in the Catskills with my favorite aunt. Once, I dined with three recent college graduates on their way to starting independent lives. It's among my favorite part of the trip.


I pause here to talk a bit about the storied train which has always intrigued me. It is the only one in the U.S, and at 3/4 of a mile in length, the longest passenger train in the world. There are no stops, just a straight run from Stanford to Lorton. (OK, so there is one stop to take on water, in the middle of the night in Florence, SC, ironically where I stop to spend the night when I drive.)

The trip takes about 17 hours and pulls into Lorton about 9 a.m. Then another round of waiting. This time for your car to be offloaded. My luck has been running out here. For the second year, I wait 1.5 hours to get back behind the wheel of my little red Honda Fit. The train carries 222 of a maximum 300 cars this trip. (Most of them in VERY boring shades.)

3:15
I settle into my seat and luck out. The nervous Nellie in the window seat en route to her home in Boston freaks because a kid is sitting behind her and dashes off to a pair of empty seats. So I'll have two seats to myself.

The sky opens up again and the day turns gray, sleepy grey. I am winding down but trying not to nap, cause I wanna sleep the night. It makes the trip go faster. My eyes are getting heavy, though, having been up since before dawn. I so wish the train would get underway already. Oh god, am I doomed to listen to cell phone conversations for 1,000 miles?

4:32
OK, so I’m beginning to feel like one of those airline passengers stuck on a runway. We are still sitting. This is a first for me. Dunno what the problem but antsy am I. Wanna get a going!

4:50
I am reminded of the worst part--the airline-like bathrooms. Oh, for a posh sleeping car with private bath and turn down service.

I have a soft spot for trains. They are another one of my many time machines, carrying me back to my Long Island childhood and the "change at Jamaica" cry of the conductor as my mom and I head into the city for a Broadway matinee. (Even in
London, I prefer them to the Underground which is way too deep underground for my taste-- unless bombs are falling.)

There is just something earthy and connected about a train, Without the need to drive, I am free to contemplate the passing sights, right now lush green farms with real trees and three horses grazing under shade trees by an inland water of some kind. Not a palm tree in sight. It could pass for the New Jersey or Pennsylvania countryside.Then there is the rhythm, the vibration accompanied by the clickity clack, very retro. Full disclosure: If you are sensitive to motion, be sure to bring meds, as the lateral motion can turn the tummy.

Being an old form of transport, trains pass through the old sections of towns, sometimes quaint, but more often simply shabby. As we slip by farms and homes, I find myself wondering about the lives contained within, something I used to do as a child, passing time in the back seat as my dad drove home from my grandparent's house in Brooklyn.

7 p.m.
A pleasant dinner of flat iron steak, fresh veggies and a raspbery/chocolate desert, with the affluent, as usual, on their way to Cape Cod and the like. I am the only one, however, who leaves a tip. UG!

9 p.m.
Lights are dimmed but I continue reading until 10 under the shallow overhead lamp.

5:30 a.m.
I give up trying to sleep. Although I've brought my own blanket and pillow (and a pair of comfy socks), my body refuses to find comfort. All the maneuvering, reclining, foot rests do no good. I long for a pair of Bose earphones and my sleep number bed.

6 a.m.
I head to the dining car for a early breakfast and meet a nice couple celebrating their 58th anniversary. My spirits lift.

9 a.m.
We pull into the station on time and hear the announcement to "detrain". My mind skips to Geroge Carlin's "deplane" riff and I chuckle.

10:30 a.m.
..and my sentimental journey continues on to Point Plesant to suprise a friend.

Leaving paradise

I’d be dancing on air, if I had the time that is.
I’m too busy being busy. On Friday I get to leave paradise for a full three months.

Three months away from air so viscous it’s actually visible. Three months away from shelving books and screening out the incessant cries of toddlers forced to share the Thomas train table. Three months.

Late last Friday I received approval for (unpaid, of course) Summer Leave. There are few such glorious phrases in the English language. Each year I manage somehow to make it back “home” for an extended period. A young friend will move into my condo and care for my 14-year-old cat, Abbie.

Call it snowbird light.

By now, I am so homesick for the Jersey Shore its all-Bruce-all-the-time, combined with live streaming images of the surf and boardwalk. I dream of REAL rye bagels from Hand Rolled Bagels on Purdy Ave in Rye, NY,(Yes, I know rye bagels from Rye. What can I say? I don’t make these things up.) raspberry bomb ice cream, from Ryan’s on Shrewsbury Ave, Tinton Falls, NJ, and “Chinese” food that doesn’t make me gag. Dare I forget, NEW YORK CITY, the Yankees, TV channels with the correct numbers, the Spring Lake and Point Pleasant Beach boardwalks...

How, you ask, can I afford on a retail salary to take such time off? My bills don’t go on leave, that's for sure. I can’t, but I do it anyway. I am aided in this endeavor by dear friends who open their homes to me. In return, I make myself as useful as possible—house and dog sitting, as well as general chipping in.

This year the Feds will also chip in. Tomorrow I turn 62 and start my reduced Social Security the second Tuesday in July. The amount is small, but welcome (see previous post: pennies from heaven). I also usually manage to pick up a little cash with odd jobs here and there.

This summer I will once again divide my time between a spacious home on the Long Island Sound in Rye, NY, and a cozy Dutch colonial, a block from the Navesink River, within walking distance of No Ordinary Joe’s Cafe in downtown Red Bank, NJ.

SWEET.

My time will be spent reconnecting with friends and family—and myself. I am looking forward to focusing on my third book , a second novel. Of course, I will continue this blog, which began at the close of last summer’s leave.

Tata for now. Much to do. Gotta run.

Coming up next: Riding the Auto Train. Stay tuned.