Wyoming

Passing through Cheyenne Wyoming, we ran into a hail storm that caused the car to hydroplane badly.  We did not go out of control but a car and a tractor trailer were off the road.  The trailer ploughed into the median strip and into the car in the oncoming lane.  Cheyenne seemed dark and dirty in part because of the rain.  We passed an oil refinery.
     Approaching Laramie, it was nicer, snow was still visible on the mountains.  We arrived in Laramie about 5 pm.  First impression : Nice little college town with tree lined streets and nice buildings.  There are lots of people and shops, many book stores, just the opposite of  DesMoines.

Sunday morning, October 17.  I sit alone in the upper room typing on the laptop and looking out the window at the maples across the street, and at the fallen leaves and the still green grass.  A tangle of power lines passes through the branches.  I have time to think this morning instead of running off to another hectic day of work and obligations.  I think God wants us to rest on Sundays for this reason, to contemplate and reflect, to enjoy his creation and to trust in his provision aside from our own efforts to keep ahead.  We need to remind ourselves that our lives are entirely in his hands.  He gives us the strength to work and the opportunities but commands us to be aware that, as it says in the book of Psalms,

Unless the LORD builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.


In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to those he loves.


  

Here's the gang at Applecrest farms in Hampton New Hampshire on our annual apple picking day in September.

Last night we attended the feast of Saint Anthony in Boston's North End.  It is quite an experience and one that anyone visiting the city in August should not miss.  But this Saturday night it was just too crowded to be enjoyable.  More people could not have fit into those narrow streets; moving from place to place was almost impossible.  There is plenty of good food and the immigrant flavor of this neighborhood survives strongly along with traces of colonial Boston.  There were surprisingly few police and good order in spite of people packed six inches apart for blocks around.  The  blue "Direct TV" blimp circled overhead in the night sky with its sides lit up with high definition tv images and advertising.

Who thought I would still be alive for the year 2010 back when I could barely imagine crossing the millenial divide. And yet I am here today with a good life ahead of me. In fact with my son Scott and Pam and her girls I have wealth beyond imagining. And I believe there is more to come although I could scarcely ask for more. I do still ask for financial security. And yet God has always provided and I know He will continue to do so abundantly. I could ask for a more distinguished career, I am hoping to become an excellent teacher and I have never given up a desire to be a writer. But in this as well, I believe God will open doors of opportunity that I scarcely expect now. I cannot complain at all about my health. And above all I am at peace with God. I would not mind being young again and undoing all the mistakes of my life, and I am not looking forward to old age and death. I think less about death now than I did as a young man, in part I think because I have come to believe that death is not the end and to know that I have eternal life in Christ. This might seem trite and formulaic on the surface but I assure you that belief did not come easily or without supernatural inner changes.

The Stewart Brothers

Two elderly gentlemen, now deceased, once lived in this house pictured above.  The building to the left was their home and the one  to the right was their shop where they worked on cars, especially old volkswagens.  They were machinists and  when I worked in Duxbury in the eighties, they were the ones to go to to have something made or repaired.  They used to ride around town in modified volkswagen bugs and sometimes one would hang out at the bottom of the road sitting on the stone wall.   I did not know much about them.  I remember when there was only one left, and then I remember noticing that the second brother was gone too.  I am not sure why but their property remains well cared for but unnoccupied.  It is prime real estate near the bay with a considerable amount of land.

Near the end of fourth grade, I was assigned my teacher for the following year. I found out that it would be Mrs. McDonough, the dreaded. I remember saying to myself on the way home that day that I couldn't believe that I was going to have the Old Battle Ax. I do not know where I got that name for her but I know that is how I thought of her.

She was old, her hair was white and all but gone on top. She was very strict and her favorite punishment, administered at the slightest infraction was to be made to write the same sentence such as, "I will not talk in class", over again until your hands were cramped in pain. She spent a part of each day reading aloud to the class from some work of literature or tell stories from her life and knowledge. She was strict but fair, ugly but with a depth of knowledge and character and a true passion for teaching.

My fifth grade year was her last year of teaching and, near the end of that year, the Phillips Elementary School of Watertown Massachusetts held a special assembly to honor her. We, her last students, participated. I remember thinking and telling my parents that she was the best teacher I ever had. I have not had a teacher since then or before who I felt that strongly about.

Real education must be limited to men who INSIST on knowing, the rest is mere sheepherding.
Ezra Pound

When I was in High School in the early 1970s, I took, as an elective a one semester course in Anthropology. My mother used to have us watch Channel 2 in Boston which did a series filmed by an anthropologist in the twenties. There were two silent films; one was about an eskimo, the other about south sea islanders. I remember the eskimo hunting seals through a hole in the ice and building an igloo; the south sea islanders filed their teeth and tatooed their entire bodies. Later, I was fascinated with a book we had in our house called Four Ways of Being Human, which featured four different cultures. So, out of that interest, I elected to take this short course in the subject.

Our teacher's name was Mrs. Kramer. She was a student teacher or a first year teacher, I don't remember exactly but she was young and I think, still attending one of the Universities near Boston. She was plain, not beautiful in the conventional sense, not vivacious or remarkable in her personality. But she was intelligent and diligent in her work teaching us. She, in one incident, made an impression on me that I have never forgotten.

She had brought a movie for us to watch. It was about negative stereotyping of blacks in Hollywood and it started with clips from Birth of a Nation and showed young black school boys struggling with their self image. The class, our class, was not paying any attention at all to the movie. Kids were talking and generally did not have any interest in it. That was when Mrs. Kramer stopped the film. She was furious. She yelled at us and told us that this was an important subject that we ought to care deeply about and she expressed such disappointment in us and so much passion about the movie and its subject that we were struck dumb and watched the rest of the movie in silence.

I have never forgotten that teacher and it has been almost forty years. And I went from uninformed and disinterested in racial injustice to passionate about it.

Enee hymself ane zow was blak of fleece
Brytnit with his swerd in sacrifice ful hie
Unto the moder of the furies thre.

                                 

Around one in the afternoon I decided to take a look at the beach.  It was high tide and a strong wind was blowing out of the northeast.  An icy wind-driven rain was my escort over the bridge.  The surf was strong, up almost to the snow fence before the dunes.  It was too cold to stay long so I just snapped this picture.  When I got back to my truck, I was soaked to the skin.

                                    

Here are some old photos I took as a boy in my neighborhood in Watertown.This is a picture of my mother and my two oldest sisters, Janice on the left and Nancy in the middle, in our car in 1964 when our Dad was running for state representative.

This is a picture of my three sisters, Judy in front, Nancy behind on the left, Janice behind on the right.  In the middle, are Bobby and Patricia D'amico who lived across the street.  In the distant background you can see the smokestack for Lewandos by the Charles river.

This is a picture of Nancy, Bobby, Janice, Patricia and on the right Peter D'amico all are standing in front of the house directly across from ours at the head of Dana Terrace.  An old woman lived here who was over one hundred years old.  She used to sit on this front porch in a rocking chair.   Her son continued to live there for some time after she died.  There last name was Ferris.

There are bees in this wall.' He struck the clapboards, fierce heads looked out; small bodies pivioted.
                                          R Frost

This house still stands behind the police station in Watertown.  It is magnificent but beyond repair.  When I was a boy, there was a row of victorians here one to the right and one to the left of this one.  I had friends who lived in both of those houses.  I remember playing in their yards and homes.  Even then, in the sixties, they were pretty much beyond repair.  Saltonstall park had been ringed by such houses.   They had been built within walking distance to the railroad station and in the center of town; this was once a choice location to live before the automobile made it possible for high income earners to move farther out into the suburbs.  To the right of the house pictured above is the corner of a red brick apartment building.  The economics or the architecture of the sixties seemed to demand that every time an ornate victorian home was torn down it would be replaced by a square apartment building.

I sat for an hour in Watertown Savings Bank looking out at the Square while a customer service rep named Rachel transferred my dad's account balances into an estate account. On the wall to my right is an old painting of the very scene the window looked out on, now facing directly on the Armenian museum.  In the picture, the spot is occupied by a large federal style building with steps coming down front.  I believe this was the old town hall.   I remarked to Rachel that my dad remembered sitting on those long-gone steps as a child.  I did not say but I remembered sitting in a nearby pine tree, now twice as tall and watching the old victorian train station also in the painting behind the town hall burn to the ground.  And behind that in the picture was the top of the old wooden church torn down in the seventies. I could have told her I remembered sneeking into that church and climbing up into the bell tower and onto the roof.  On the other side of the street facing our window was the old Federal Savings Bank building I remembered that being built in the early sixties.  And I could have told her that my dad used to send me down to Mum's doughnuts on Sunday mornings to get a dozen doughnuts; it was a little shop directly across the street briefly occupying the space before the Armenian museum was built.   By the way, the Armenian museum building was originally built for Watertown Savings Bank and I had my first bank account there.

Once when I was leaving Pam’s house late at night I was startled by a large buck standing in the driveway. He bolted down the driveway with a clatter when I surprised him in the dark.


Today there were tracks of a large buck in the snow in the backyard. About 4 o’clock I followed the tracks out into the woods. I found a bedding area near the stone wall that borders the yard. It was an area of ground roughly the size of a deer completely devoid of snow and surrounded by deer tracks; there is eight inches of snow on the ground everywhere else. I followed the tracks through the woods to the open meadow behind the soccer field. There were multiple deer trails in the area, skirting the houses on one side and the soccer field on the other.

January 10, 2010


It is Sunday morning and 9 degrees above outside. I have an interview with the Norwell schools sub coordinator following my application to be a substitute teacher. I do not know how I will be able to coordinate teaching and continuing construction work. Some work is beginning to line up for the next month, unlike December when there was nothing at all in the works. This month, following Christmas, I am in financial trouble. I worked for pay a total of six hours last week. For the first time since I sold the Watertown house I have not paid my credit card charges in full or paid my lumber bill on time. I am also not sure how much I am going to owe in taxes this year. I made almost no estimated payments. I am extremely worried.

January 9, 2010

Today is Sophie’s birthday. Last night we took eleven girls roller skating at the Carousel Family Fun Center in Whitman. Following that, the girls camped out in P’s living room watching movies and playing games and talking late into the night. P got very little sleep. Today Larry and Sue and Scott and Erin came to dinner. P was mad and resentful of me most of the night without saying why.

The walkway on the Powder Point bridge is covered with snow and ice making walking difficult. There was a flock of eiders in the water and the usual pigeons seagulls and crows hanging out on the railing. It was not too cold only about 28 degrees but the strong wind made my ears and face cold. Another new sign at the beach end of the bridge warning that there are now infrared cameras watching the beach at night.  Heaven forbid a young couple might sneak onto the beach at midnight or a group of boys hang out behind a dune, or an insomniac or poet be driven to walk the beach in the dark. More cops, more equipment every year to protect Duxbury Beach from terrorists and evildoers.