The Sheila Variations

The house on the hill

Every morning, out on the Island, I would wake up at around 5 a.m., my typical morning ritual. It was still dark out. Freezing. My kitchen window faced north. There was a deep ravine in between my house and the next house, which sat isolated on its own little hill. At dusk, with the sunset light, I could see the lawn up there literally thronging with deer, cut-out in black-paper silhouette. The deer problem is pretty bad out there, but that sure was a beautiful sight. Every time I looked at the house, it seemed different. Perhaps because of its isolation - no trees around it, no other houses, on a little hill - it reflected its surroundings. On a windy day, it seemed valiant and strong. At sunset, it seemed like a little cottage from a fairy-tale. And before the sun rose, it loomed like a magical ship in the night. Quiet and shrouded in shadows. I miss seeing that house. I looked at it probably 150 times each day, just to see how it was doing. What's its mood now? How's it hanging? How's it holding up?

I think about it from time to time. It's still out there on that windy island!

Here it is at 5, 5:30 a.m. one freezing wintry dawn.

Storm on the beach

Not to brag or whatever, but I kind of can't believe I took this photo.

Actually, no reason to brag: All I did was point and shoot. This is what I actually saw that day.

Block Island

I miss being out there. Here is the frozen pond up by the North Light. It's sunset. Snow coats the ice on the pond. The reeds in the foreground, the silhouetted house - I really saw some amazing things at that pond, which seemed to go through 100 moods in the short month I was out there. Here it is in a quiet contemplative mood. A moody mood.

"[The river] has crested over the top of Route 95."

Some of the stories coming out of Rhode Island right now beggar belief. It is an flood unprecedented in Rhode Island history. I have never seen anything like it. The blizzard of 78 comes close, in terms of shutting down the entire state. Here's a video of some of the devastation. My mother could not believe the amount of water in the basement - although what she experienced was not as severe as some other towns (North Kingstown, West Warwick) - My mother had Lucy yesterday (I "spoke" with Lucy on the phone during the flooding - got a big loud sound from her that I pretended was "HI, AUNTIE SHEILA") so she couldn't be racing up and down the cellar steps dealing with all the water. Pat was coming to pick up Lucy - normally it is a 15 minute drive - it took him hours, due to the flooding and blocked off roads. Eventually, they got a pump going in the basement, which went on all night, and the situation (at least at my mother's) is under control. Other people have not been so lucky. Schools, businesses, shut down. The Facebook statuses of my Rhode Island friends are insane, pumps, and evacuations, and staying up all night hauling buckets of water out of their houses. Hang in there, home state.

The ferry ride back

It was a sunny cold day. There were way more passengers on the boat during my ferry ride back to the mainland, and certainly more cars, maybe 10, 15 cars, which made the whole "back your car up onto the ferry" MUCH more stressful, since you had to line up perfectly, going in reverse, following the directions of the ferry workers. There was a moment, I have to be honest, when I almost caved, and asked for help (the ferry guys are great, they would totally back your car up for you if you can't manage it) - but I gutted it out, and did what I had to do, lining myself up in the precise geometrically-determined-mathematically-required-algebraically-requested formation. Left Hope there to her despair, and went upstairs. Got a cup of coffee, you know, the usual. The ferry was packed. It was hard for me to find a seat, actually.

I decided to NOT sit for the journey back, and wander around the ship. There is a top deck, which in the summer is PACKED with tourists, it's a great view. And then there are open passageways around the rest of the boat, where you can stand and look out at the ocean, the mainland approaching, etc. It's really cold out there, this time of year, because of the frigid wind. That ferry goes fast, man. It's not a leisurely ride. It GOES, so the wind was a blast of frozen air.

It sure was beautiful there, up on that top deck. I was (naturally) the only person up there. And it was a bit freaky at times, I let my mind go off into horrible scenarios - If I get blown overboard while I'm up here, who the hell will know? There really is nothing to stop you from just leaping overboard, should you want to do that. But the views were amazing - and now that I had spent a month out on Block Island, and knew the island, I could see "my" spots from that top deck - the little dip on the cliff in the north-east corner, where Mum and I found that little spot we liked - the North Light, naturally - all of those places that I had come to know and love - so it was very cool to look at them from high up on a boat that is racing away from the island.

Busy day on the ferry.

Good to know.

Teenage Island girl, on the ferry, with her laptop.

The channel marker. Up close and personal. Quite a change from its lonely brave stance on the storm day, right? Compare and contrast:

Channel marker up close, as the ferry goes by it.

Channel marker on the day of the big storm.

Out on one of the semi-open passageways during the journey.

Cute little girl, occupying herself with activities, while her mother lay on her back on the booth seat, and tried to catch a nap.

The cliffs. Mum and I walked along the top of those cliffs.

The North Light. Bye bye beautiful North Light!!

On the top deck of the boat, looking towards the stern.

What it looks like from up there.

The ferry ride out

When I took the ferry out to Block Island, Rhode Island was in the middle of a crazy snowstorm. The wind was fierce. I wondered if the ferry would be canceled (they were reporting that the winds would get to 60 mph around Cape Cod). It's a hearty boat, but with winds like that, and waves like that, it was conceivable that they would say "no ferry today". My sister Jean, when she taught out there, was stranded on the mainland for a night with all of her fellow teachers, who had come back for the weekend, and then - act of God - couldn't get back and had to all crash at my parents' house. The Islanders are used to such situations. I drove down to the ferry dock, and it was bleak and so cold, but there the ferry was, waiting to be loaded up. I drove my car on (you have to BACK onto the ferry, which is, conceivably, a nervewracking experience - backing up that ramp, with cars in front of you and behind you - and you have to line up your car, going backwards, just as they tell you to ... etc. But I did fine. No biggie.) I left my car (and Hope) in the lower level and went up to the upper level, which is enclosed. They have TVs on, there are booths, and a little food counter is there as well, where you can get coffee, bagels, cereal, hell, you can get a scotch and soda if that's your pleasure. I got a cup of coffee, sat at one of the booths, and vibrated with excitement about my upcoming journey. I had thought the ferry would be packed, since everyone would be returning from Christmas and New Year's, etc., but it wasn't. There were only about 15 passengers on the boat. It was 11 in the morning. The day outside was bleak.

The ride was rough, the ocean swirling around us. You could see literal HOLES in the ocean, in between waves, and the whole landscape seemed alive to me. Crashing converging forces, rising, falling, and the boat just plows through it all, climbing up the waves, crashing down, with towers of spray at the front of the boat. It was awesome.

The ferry ride is 55 minutes long. When I saw, through the driving snow, that we were approaching the harbor, I went back down to the lower level to sit in my car and wait. It's an interesting perspective down there. The reason they have you back onto the boat, is that when it pulls up against the dock (on either side), it leads with the stern side. The back of the ferry is flat, a platform, and so when you arrive at your destination, because the cars have BACKED on, you are ready to just drive off the ramp and go, in a forward direction. So you sit in your car down there (there were only two of us that day, me and a big truck), and you watch the boat maneuver itself up to the dock, and then you wait for the signal from the ferry worker, who waves to you that now it's time.

I had zero idea where I was going, I just knew I had to drive off the ferry and take a right onto the main road and ... I'd see the real estate office there ... somewhere.

Snow drove through the air. The main drag of the island looked deserted and beautiful. It was an auspicious beginning to my wintry sabbatical.

Inside the ferry.

Two ferry workers out on the bow of the ship, during our journey. It had to be bitter bitter bitter out there.

Two other ferry passengers, a mother and son, sitting up ahead of me.

The ocean out my window.

There was a father holding a baby. The baby was laughing - the best gurgly laughing sound - for the entire trip.

Sitting in my car, down below, as we approach the dock on the Block Island side.

Ice on the sea

In Rhode Island, it is an extremely rare occurrence. I personally have never seen it, and I grew up in that state. While I was out on Block Island, one day the temperature plummeted. It was always cold when I was out there, frost on the grass and all that, and that's normal, but one day it got scary cold, which reminded me of that terrifying winter in Chicago when I got frost bite and I realized, for the first time, what WINTER really meant. I had gone out on the "scary" cold day, not realizing what I was getting myself into, and went down to Crescent Beach and only lasted about 5 minutes, realizing that the cold (plus the wind) was on another level entirely. You just couldn't be outside, basically. I fled back to the warmth of my house, and then, still not getting the picture, drove up to the airport at sunset to see the planes on the airfield, and again ... was reminded: You need to effing be inside, lady.

That night, the wind rocked my house. I lay in bed, hearing the shutters rattle. Sometimes I said outloud, "Wow."

The next day, there wasn't any more wind, but it was still damn cold - but to me, it felt like normal cold. Not scary cold. It's like going to the beach and seeing big waves, and you think they're really big, but then you see REALLY big waves, and you realize that "big wave" can't even really apply to what you saw earlier. It's a whole different animal. (Patrick O'Brien captures this amazingly in his Master and Commander books - the difference between weather and WEATHER.)

Anyway. I went to the library, like I did a couple times a week, to check my email, and everyone there was talking about the ice.

The ice on the ocean.

Ice on the ocean? After being an Ocean State girl my whole life, I have never seen ice floating up against the shore. I've seen it on Lake Michigan, but that's different. It was doubly weird because of that thing I had read earlier in The Block Island Times about the winter of 1917-18, when the ocean froze around the island. The OPEN ocean. Unheard of in Rhode Island!!

Now this was not as extreme. The open ocean remained clear, but ice had coated the shore and stretched out far enough that it was at the over-your-head point of the water. I stood on the jetty by the harbor, and I could see the little grey waves lapping up against the ice - it made a clear line. Incredible. Snow had collected on the ice, this wasn't some thin flimsy covering, and chunks of ice floated around. The jetty's outer arms were coated in ice, it was totally ice-bound, a band of white that started on the rocks and stretched out over the water.

Again, I have seen this kind of thing on Lake Michigan repeatedly, but never on the ocean in Rhode Island. The Islanders are used to weather. Nothing really fazes them. But everybody was talking about THIS. "Did you see the ice?" "Jesus, there's ice on the ocean, did you see it?"

Yes, I did.

The end that is the North Light

I wrote about my first exhilarating visit to the North Light, which is at the very northern tip of Block Island. Block Island is shaped almost like a tear drop, a bit of a wonky-shaped tear drop, and at the very top, the land comes to a point which curves off to the east just slightly and dissolves directly into the ocean.

There is no cliff drop-off, there is no "beach". It is a strip of rocky pebbly land that gradually submerges itself into the ocean. You could walk into the ocean from there and just keep on walking until you are over your head. It is very disorienting in a way, being out on that pebbly spit of land, stretching out and over to the right from the North Light - because it does look like (feel like) it is an ocean liner (say, oh, Titanic), going down into the ocean, and when it is submerged it will leave nary a trace of itself. It's a very strange place. There is no danger of a huge wave coming and sweeping you into the deep, because it's all so gradual, but that's what's so disorienting about it. You are on firm land, and suddenly you have waves lapping at you from either side - because the water on the west is trying to leap over the spit of land to get to the other side, and the same is true for the water on the east. It's gorgeous. Sitting on that pebbly spit of land is usually a huge flock of seagulls who give you weird looks when you trek out there. It's a long walk from the parking lot. The North Light is not accessible by car. It was under construction while I was there, and I saw the pickup trucks driving on the beach to get to it. It is not like the Southeast Lighthouse, which is right off a road, where you can pull over and walk a couple hundred yards to the lighthouse. At the North Light, the road (Corn Neck Road) ends. Just flat out ends. There is a parking lot right there. On one side is the ocean, and you can see the mainland from there. On the other side of the parking lot is Sachem Pond. There is a sweeping curve of beach, sweeping off and over to the right, and at nearly the end of that point is the North Light, surrounded by dunes, and then water on both sides. To get to it you have to walk down a half mile of sometimes rough beach. Then, you can walk past the lighthouse and out onto the point itself. Once you get out to the point, you are surrounded by water on both sides. It's like walking the plank, only the plank diminishes itself to a point at the end, and the space on which you walk becomes narrower and narrower. Up at the end of the "point", the currents from both sides converge, and in my many visits to the North Light, I saw this area in many different "moods". Sometimes it was a gentle lapping of one current against another, but more often than not, there was turbulence, a great meeting of two divergent forces. On a windy day when the surf was high, these converging currents would explode against one another in mountains of surf that looked like mid-ocean geysers, if you were standing in the parking lot looking out at it. Because from that vantage point, you can no longer see ANY land. It is just a line of white caps, jutting out into the sea.

The whole place is just gorgeous, and because of its inaccessibility I usually had it to myself.

Here is a series of pictures I took from my first walk out to the North Light, on a brutally freezing morning.

The North Light viewed across the frozen Sachem Pond.

Sweep of beach leading out to the North Light. I am taking this standing in the tiny parking lot, which gives you an idea of how the road just STOPS.

Again, the length of the beach, with the North Light in the distance. It's morning, so the shadows are really long.

On the beach, approaching the North Light, which is protected by dunes covered in snow.

I climbed up to the top of said dunes to get a clearer picture. It was so freezing. The roar of the ocean surrounding me filled the air.

A couple hundred feet further out on the point is a tower with a light at the top of it, I imagine because there is quite a bit of land going out AFTER the North Light, so you need a marker closer to the actual end of the land.

After you pass that tower, you are in no-mans land of seagulls, seals, and waves. No more evidence of mankind. Here is what the slight curve of that dwindling point looks like, and you can see the turbulence at the end, which can always be seen from a long ways away.

Closer to the tip/end of the island.

The pebbly spit of land has a small hump to it, so you can peek over it and see the waves crashing on the other side.

And now, photo by photo, I will take you to the very end. Of the land. There was one point where I started to feel like the masthead on a ship, facing out, seeing no land in front of me, just ocean cleaving to me. Vertigo. Awesome.

Time to head back now. Getting a bit freaked out. But I couldn't stop looking back at where I had been.

Turning around, at the very tip of the land, I can see my way back to the North Light, along the pebbly spit that is the end of the world.

Somewhere in time

Pretty much everything is closed on Block Island during the winter. In the summer, the place explodes with inns and bars and shops and sandwich places, but in the winter, all of that is scaled back. The grocery store is open. The gas station is open, but only for a couple of hours a day. The "Block Island Depot" is open (another sort of general store). The library is open. There's one restaurant/bar that is open (maybe two). But nothing on the main drag is open, and you never see anyone around, which makes for some very good exploring.

The Spring House is a fantastic old hotel high on a hill overlooking the ocean. It is a massive white house, with a red roof, and a big wraparound porch that at times feels like it plunges off into the blank air. In the summer, the Spring Hotel is a hub of activity, and there is an outside bar on the porch, where you can buy expensive cocktails and hang out in a setting that is more beautiful than you can even imagine. The porch has a bright red painted floor, and there's a ceiling which is painted a light sky blue. It's very beautiful. It's gorgeous in the summer, with soft lights and cocktails and the high view of the ocean stretching out before you. It takes on a different character in the off-season, and seems almost haunted. Not by last summer, but by the summer of 1910, perhaps. I was on the red-floored porch and peeked in one of the windows that was not boarded up, and saw an old-school main room, with thick rugs, and old-time chairs and lamps, nothing slick or sleek or modern. It reminds me of those Gone Away Lake books I loved so much as a kid. A lost fragment of a Victorian or Edwardian past, with no reminders that an entire century has gone by. (Factor in that I still have Winter's Tale on the brain.)

Of course the Spring House is closed for the winter, and I had a great time wandering around the deserted grounds on one misty quiet afternoon. There were moments where I could not tell what decade (or even what century) it was.

The theme was hearts

I kept seeing hearts everywhere on the Island. It became kind of a joke.

Block Island collage 2

More scattered images of my time on the island. I haven't quite acclimated yet, but last night was very windy (we were supposed to get a blizzard - no sign of it yet) and the sound of the wind was very comforting, made me think of the island.

The house on the hill behind my house. This is before the sun came up.

This was the coldest day. So cold it really wasn't smart to be outside. So cold that the ocean froze the following day. It was so windy that here is the sand on the beach, racing towards me like phantoms of some icy planet.

Crazy beautiful surf.

Bicycles on the roof.

On my porch, sunrise.

Out at the airport, sunset.

One of the many books I read while out there.

Old boat outside the Block Island Historical Society. There is a story behind this boat, but I do not know it. Islanders? Can you tell the story?

Sunrise shadows on my wall

The North Light, after sunset

Waves

Out at the very tip of the island - the water raced by, cutting me off from Siobhan and Ben. The beginning of the end.

Ferry coming into the harbor at sunset

Moon over Block Island

My morning hangout, regardless of the weather

Ballerina in a window

Reeds over Sachem Pond

Converging currents exploding over the tip of Block Island, the end of the land

Low tide on Crescent Beach

Ice melting on Sachem Pond (North Light on the other side)

Crashing waves. Not QUITE at French Lieutenant's Woman level, but beautiful nonetheless

Saying goodbye to the island

Watching it stream away from me on the horizon.

Block Island collage 1.

A smattering of images from my time out on that beautiful island. Part one.

Sunrise on Crescent Beach

One of my favorite vistas on the island. It always looked different.

I love barnacles.

Misty day, green roofs, ocean.

Enormous decaying jetty being submerged by giant waves.

Jean, Pat, and Lucy, walking on Crescent Beach.

Stormy crazy day. Ocean, with marker on side - showing where one of the original settlers (a Dodge, of course) had his house.

Crescent Beach again. Long slow gentle waves.

Nature is red in tooth and claw

Corn Neck Road, like something out of Wyeth - only the ocean is right beyond those telephone poles.

I'm so scared. Someone hold me.

Much of what I saw reminded me of The Shipping News

My snow-covered porch furniture

A shell in the morning light

The den in my house with the hideous leather couch. I spent most of my time in this room.

In memory

Path through the dunes

The weather on this particular afternoon was incredible. Bright sun on one side of the sky, thick black clouds on the other. It brought things out in clear and startling relief - like the statue erected here at the rotary, in 1896, by the Women's Christian Temperance Union. She is known as "Rebecca".

More of that crazy day. Black clouds beyond, the ferry gleaming like a white wedding cake in the sun.

Snowy abandoned rowboat

Wave crashing against the jetty

The mythical North Light, my favorite spot on the island

The huge National Hotel (where Jean and Pat had their honeymoon) catching the last rays of sunset.

My porch steps

More of The Shipping News

Frozen snowy Sachem Pond, with the North Light gleaming on the other side.

Early-morning Sheila shadow, on the beach by the North Light

Morning visit to the Southeast Lighthouse, there was this old furniture sitting out on the lawn. I do not know why, and it was only out on the lawn for one day. The lighthouse is closed to the public now. There was never anyone around and I always had the place completely to myself. But it sure looked pretty in the morning sun.

The ferry arriving at night.

All the ponds had frozen, and Mum and I saw these guys ice-boating out on one of the ponds. Turns out one of them was Claire's boyfriend.

Part of the "New Harbor".

Mum and I took a hike along the cliffs on the east side of the island. The views were dizzying. You can't really tell the perspective here, but that ocean visible is hundreds of feet down. Mum is on the very corner of the island.

Abandoned boat, Corn Neck Road stretching off in the distance

The famous hairpin curve. How those huge tanker trucks get around that corner is one of life's great mysteries. I've seen them do it, and it amazes me. Ocean to the front.

The Southeast Lighthouse on a frigid freezing night, snow in the air, a cloud bank moving in, the light flashing in the tower.

The Southeast Lighthouse tower on that same night.

Gatsby? Is that you??

Pat on Cooneymas Beach, my favorite beach, by far, on the island. You could see Montauk from there on a clear day.

Bloody Marys, Michael Jackson, rocks in the tub, and a random object from the cellar

During my second week on Block Island, the ferry brought me some visitors: Mitchell, Luisa and Meghan. Mitchell was in Rhode Island for 5 days and so they took the ferry out and spent the day with me. They arrived in the morning and left at sunset. It was one of those days that catapulted us out of normal time. Normal time didn't seem to exist. The day lasted forever. We barely ate, although we kept talking about eating. There were pastries brought from Providence (a big joke - "who's got the pastries?" "are you in charge of the pastry box?"), and I basically had a box of Triscuits. The thought that we could "grab some lunch", as though there were a sandwich shop open, was foolhardy, since NOTHING is open out there. I had stuff to make sandwiches, I had salad stuff, I even had some chicken - but we just never got around to eating. We were too busy drinking highly complicated Bloody Marys, cavorting all over the house, sitting out on the porch and talking, blasting music and dancing around, and bickering constantly. "SHEILA. SHEILA. SHEILA. SHEILA." shouted Luisa at me, to get my attention when I was talking to Mitchell. Finally I was like (on the verge of hysterics) - "Luisa ... what? That is not socially acceptable behavior ..." We all lost it. We decided to make Bloody Marys, so we stopped off at the grocery store after I picked them up at the ferry. Luisa decided to just have whiskey, so the image of Luisa, walking out of the grocery store, with a bottle of whiskey in a bag, and it wasn't even noon yet, was just awesome. Mitchell, thinking about Bloody Marys, said, "Oh, you know what would be good? Pickle spears." I replied, "Please don't get sexual with me. It makes me really uncomfortable."

Once back at my little abode, Mitchell, Meghan and I set about making Bloody Marys, which involved celery salt on plates, pickle juice, horseradish, tobasco ... it took a half an hour to make the drinks. Luisa who had poured herself a whiskey and sat down in the den called out to us, "I don't what YOU guys are doing, but I'M having my drink."

We sat around in my front room (with the rolltop desk) - a place I hadn't really spent any time in, but it was nice: my visitors warmed it up for me. There was so much laughter that I am surprised the house did not actually elevate up into the air with it. Luisa was describing her girlfriend's tub and how it "has rocks in it" - which freaked me out and I couldn't let it go. What Luisa actually meant was that it is a stone tub, with laid-out rocks beneath the surface, almost like a patio floor, but beneath the tile. But perhaps due to my Bloody Mary, I kept picturing pebbles in the tub, and I kept interrupting Luisa's story, like a halfwit. "She has ROCKS in her tub??" "Well, no, not like - it's like inlaid rocks beneath the --" "ROCKS? DO THEY HURT YOUR FEET?" Luisa kept trying, "No, it's more like it's underneath the --" I screamed at her, nervous and insecure, "Should I have rocks in my tub???" Like: is that a thing now? Is it a trend I need to be aware of?? The conversation, needless to say, had to stop, because I couldn't seem to understand what was happening, and Luisa was laughing too hard to go on.

The following morning, I woke up, getting used to the quiet and solitude once again, and I went into the upstairs bathroom to wash my face. I hadn't been in there the night before. As I walked in, something caught my eye, and I looked into the tub and there, lined up in a very scary Blair Witch kind of way, were three beach rocks. Placed there at some point during the day before by Luisa. The image of her doing this secretly, and then not telling anyone, leaving it there to be discovered by me, is so so funny to me.

Luisa loves cellars and wanted to go check out my cellar. I was afraid of the cellar. It looked like a place where you would be hacked to pieces by an intruder and never seen again. I was also afraid of the spiders. Luisa found a mop and stomped down into the cellar, whiskey in hand, to check out the cellar, and clear away cobwebs. Meanwhile, Mitchell, Meghan and I were dancing around to Michael Jackson in the kitchen. Luisa eventually returned, announcing, "Cobwebs are gone." She was holding something behind her back. "Guess what I found," she said. I stepped back, fearfully. And when she brought out what she had found ... it took us all a minute to even understand what it was that we were seeing. We were stunned.

I will not describe it, because the visual is best. The object appears in the montage below, and it will be immediately obvious what it is. The object became our mascot. We placed it everywhere, taking pictures of it, laughing so hard tears streamed down our cheeks. We placed it on the bulkhead in the backyard so that it could stare at the psychedelic sunset. We were giddy. No doubt. Giddy with laughter and happiness.

We didn't even care that we didn't eat. Their ferry home was at 5:30, and at around 4:45, exhausted from all the housebound fun we were having (I had all these plans to take them to the Southeast Lighthouse, which never came to fruition because we were having too much fun taking pictures of each other and wearing goofy sunglasses) - someone said, "Did we even eat?"

No, we did not.

But it didn't matter at all. The whole day was a feast for the soul.

Meghan and Luisa coming off the ferry.

Mitchell with his Bloody Mary.

Meghan and Luisa, in my front room - the awesome chairs.

Luisa with her drinks. It is 12:15 p.m.

Meghan

The sunglasses portion of our day has begun.

The sunglasses portion of the day continues. Meghan said, when she saw this picture, "I think I can see my pancreas!"

Luisa getting ready to go conquer the cellar

Dancing around in my kitchen

"Man in the Mirror" blasting at full volume

Mitchell and Luisa. They have been friends since high school.

The psychedelic sunset that night. Meghan looked up at it and said, "Really?? I mean ... really?"

Carnage on the counter.

And now. Here is what Luisa found in the cellar.

You can see why we could not get enough of him. We put him EVERYWHERE. Here are Luisa and Meghan, struggling to not fall over from laughing, placing him on the bulkhead in back, facing the sunset.

Hippie Man enjoys the view.

So stupid. So so funny.

The next morning, I walked into my bathroom to see Luisa's handiwork, left for me to discover.

Think where man's glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.

The Block Island Cemetery

I love cemeteries, and I love old cemeteries in particular. The one on Block Island is very special. It's on a hillside facing the sea, and it is completely representative of the community that has been out there for centuries. The same names dominate. Ball. Littlefield. Mott. Dodge. Champlin. I went there a bunch of times so these photos obviously came from different days. When I went there with Siobhan and Ben, Siobhan found the little "Westcott" plot, with Pat's ancestors buried there. Lots of engraved anchors and ships. Lots of vessels lost at sea. This is the ocean life. Every stone seems to have a story. It takes a bit to get accustomed to all the graves of babies. There was one family plot where there were 5 children, 4 of whom died as babies, and the 5th only lived til 24. I stared as hard as I could at the moss-eaten stones of the two parents, who both far outlived all of their children, trying to see into the past, and feel what they must have felt. Their lives seemed to be right at my fingertips, I felt very close to them, or to something. It was overwhelming. The saddest stone I saw was a tiny white rounded one, half sunk into the earth, and all it said on it was: "Infant Child". Either the name of the baby has been submerged in the dirt, or it died before it could be named. Sweet little thing. It's a beautiful place, perched on a high hill, with an amazing windy view of hills and ocean, with the ancestors of the families living there now, all buried there. In creepier moments it reminded me of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, and, even more bleak, Our Town, because nobody wants the afterlife to be like the ones depicted in both works of literature. There were times, on cloudy days, in a Spoon River mood, when all of the "He rests in Jesus" epitaphs seemed more like wishful thinking and a staving off of anxiety. What griefs lie here, what regrets, and unforgiven feuds? What things left unsaid? What pain? Having the space to think about these things, which is really the beginning of storytelling, of narratives, imagining your way into the lives of others, is one of the reasons I love cemeteries so much. But it really is a peaceful place, with families all buried together, facing seaward.

Dear Cara:

You are the most intense shark-lover that I know. Imagine my delight when I walked into my little house on Block Island and one of the first things I saw was this (below the jump). I thought of you immediately. I even considered stealing the thing for you, but my morality intervened.

Thrashing white

I arrived on Block Island in the middle of a pretty bitter snowstorm. Snow that actually collects is rare on Block Island and this was a heavy enough storm that we had white ground out there for a couple of days before it melted. At the end of my time out there, the last three days, the temperature dropped suddenly and the wind picked up, making being outside pretty unbearable. The weather itself was gorgeous, but it seriously was too cold to do anything. I am sure that the moisture that is always present in island wind added to the situation. Those were the days when my house shook all night, being throttled by the wind. That temperature drop led to the ocean freezing, so it had to be drastic. Even the islanders were shocked by what had happened.

But right at the mid-point of my time, there was a random storm that lasted one day only, and it was all about the wind. There was some rain too, but the wind was so strong that some of my actions on that day (walking out onto the jetty, for example, with towers of spray rising up around me from the pounding ocean) are a bit questionable. But I didn't care. It was an exhilarating storm, and it put the ocean into a total frenzy. I have never seen it like that, and I've seen some pretty bad weather in my day. The ocean, at times, appeared to be entirely white. This was not about white-capped breakers rolling into the shore, one after the other. There was no time between waves, they just kept crashing, and thrashing and pounding into one another, as far as the eye could see. The roar was so loud that you could feel it in your DNA. I went to Crescent Beach and climbed over the dunes to get a closer look, and the wind was so strong that first of all, the air was full of sand. I hadn't counted on the sand. I worried about my camera, but I should also have been worrying about my eyes. I had to bend my body into an almost perpendicular shape just to deal with the wind. And once I reached the crest of the dunes, the wind was so strong that I couldn't do anything but squat down to try to get some protection. It was nuts. And awesome. I talked to myself (and the storm) the whole thing. I was very articulate. I was exclaiming things like, "Holy SHIITE MUSLIMS." and "JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH.: The view from the top of the dunes gave me a long frightening view of what was going on on Crescent Beach, the big wide sweep of sand, filled with tourists in the summer. A perfect beach. But on that day, there was no more beach. The ocean had poured into the gap, and pounded right up against the dunes, directly below where I was standing. The waves, as they gathered strength and height (they had to be 15 foot waves), showed a sickly green color, streaked with white foam, the power gathering within as it curled over into thunderous surf. There was no consecutive rhythm to what I was seeing, as you often feel on the beach, even on wild days. The surf may be huge, but there is some rhyme to what you are seeing. Wave after wave after wave. This was war. It was so beautiful that I felt like I dissolved into the sand, the roaring air, I couldn't get enough. The jetties of the Old Harbor were far over to the right, with the harbor in between the long arms of rock. Even the harbor was rough on that day, although it was nothing compared to what was going on right beyond the protection. I could see the mountains of spray jetting up into the air, from the waves smashing against the far jetty. Sometimes the entire long jetty appeared to have a flowing white veil, the waves were that long and that consistent, it took over the entire jetty (unlike normally, when you get a little froth of spray at this end, then a couple minutes, then another froth of spray at the other end). The channel marker at the end of the jetty took on magical faery-lands-forlorn properties, standing up brave and true in the teeth of the storm.

People talk about safe harbors in a metaphorical way. But on that day, I could see its reality. I couldn't calm down for the rest of the day. I came to my senses and realized that the dune I was standing on was being eaten away by the ocean and I really should get away from that ocean. It was beautiful, yes, but human beings have no business trying to cozy up to such a sea. Keep your distance, say a prayer for the sailors and fishermen, and go the hell home.

Dear Mother Nature,

No need to be a showoff. I get it. Okay?? I GET IT.

Love,
Sheila

(This is Sachem Pond, at the north tip of the island, right behind the windy wild North Lighthouse. It was frozen solid most of the time I was there. It had just snowed the day before, so that dim white expanse at the bottom of the photo is the ice-frozen snow-covered pond.)

"combing the white hair of the waves blown back"

Member my post about plagiarism? Here is what the waves looked like on that windy wild day, and tell me if it's not the absolute perfect image for what was going on!!

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board." - Zora Neale Hurston

The ferry arriving on a quiet grey day. The schedule was different each day - on some days there was only one ferry, and that does something to how one thinks about time, and plans. Your thoughts circle the ferry. In the summer, when tourists flock to Block Island, there are ferries almost every hour, which is INSANE. When I had visitors come out, I found myself standing on the pier, staring out to sea for the first vision of it on the horizon. A bolt of excitement would come. Like I said: being ruled by a ferry does something to your internal clock-mechanism. It certainly slows it down somewhat. You are on "island time". But at ferry arrivals, the dock and parking lot would become a hive of activity. I would see more cars driving around than I saw on a daily basis. People standing around me, staring out to sea with me, waiting for their loved ones (and their groceries).

Drowning in green

The wind whipped around my room like a wild beast, rattling the walls, the house literally shaking. I would wake up to find my heavy wooden porch furniture upended by the gales. I slept better this past month than I have in eons. I slept deeply and thoroughly and woke up refreshed. I loved my room, especially on those windy crazy nights. Hope slept curled up on my knees. She was totally on my schedule. She is more like a dog. She is up when I am up, she goes to sleep when I go to sleep. Sometimes a particularly heavy blast of wind would bombard the house, and I'd look down the bed at her, and she'd be staring at me. Like: "I am looking to YOU to interpret for me what the hell that noise just was."

More pictures to come. It'll take time to upload them.

My little island house

I miss it already.

Snapshots

-- I got sucked into The Adventures of Mark Twain almost against my will. It has a ham-hocked script that rushes through the events of Twain's life (his wife, "You are an eternal boy ... why don't you write about boyhood?", etc.) - but Fredric March is a favorite of mine, and I had never seen it, and I found myself blubbering like a MANIAC at the end when he was honored at Oxford. March's face! Yes, uncanny resemblance to Twain, but it was the look in his eyes that really put me over the damn edge. Deep true acting can forgive even the most obvious of scripts.

-- It was so brutally cold yesterday that my windshield wiper fluid froze into little bursting stars the second it hit the windshield. Today, the ocean around the jetties is frozen. Solid ice.

-- We had two days of massive wind, roaring and throttling the house like a wild animal. It was more like a big presence, taking deep breaths, sudden pauses, and then roaring forward again. The wind felt TALL. It was wide, yes, but it was tall, too.

-- Today not so windy, but I am going to go exploring along the jetties, so I can at least witness a partly frozen ocean.

-- Watched Place in the Sun early in my time out here - of course I've seen it before - but the character of George got me to thinking about the Yo-Yo from last year. He is, essentially, empty, something broke a long time ago, and so he looks to others to fill him up. With opinions, feelings, desires, whatever - with life. He will be brutal about this, and unthinking, because it doesn't come from a place of consciousness. It comes from a place of need. He will get this or that need fulfilled, but if someone gets too close, too intimate, then that person must be discarded, because on closer inspection what seemed to be openness and beauty and connection will be revealed as yawning nothingness. What he has been presenting to the woman is a mirror, not a self. He looks to others on how to behave, how to be. And so he knows that for him, the jig will always be up. He will always have to move on. Cutting his losses. I had never quite put it into the context of Montgomery Clift in Place in the Sun before, that terrifying mix of sincerity and greed. If you knew one side, you would swear that was all there is. But just ask Shelley Winters about that other side. Oh, but you can't, can you? Girl is at the bottom of the damn lake. People like that always leave casualties, whether actually dead or no. It is an imperative.

-- Went up to the little Block Island airport last night as the sun was setting and the moon was rising (at the same time). It was honestly too cold to be outside for long, but the scene - still and expectant - in the long long shadows of that time of day - was truly something else. The little planes sitting on the empty fields, the moon was full (or almost) and picking up the light of the setting sun, and nobody was around. The airport is near my house so I do see the planes lining up for landings, and it's such an isolated windy spot that sunrise or sunset is definitely the time to visit.

-- The gas station is here has very odd and specific and limited hours. I needed to get gas today and thought to myself, "I should call the gas station and see what their hours are ..." That night, I walked to the only restaurant open on the island, a couple of doors up from my place, on a dark country street, to get some takeout. I sat there, waiting, and it was so cold out, freezing really, it took me 20 minutes to warm up. And sitting right next to me, waiting for her food, was the woman who works at the gas station. So I asked her what the hours were, she told me, and our nights moved on. Just thought that was kind of funny and indicative of what happens when you live an island whose population is so small during the winter.

-- Oh, North Light, how will I live without you?

My little house: a small tour

It is so cozy and warm. There is a front porch with a nice rocking swing. There is a front room with a big wide table, perfect for spreading out my writing on. Also perfect for my laptop. The afternoon sun coming through the slats in the blinds makes this front room a noir heaven. There is another room on the eastern side, pale blue walls - with a "kitchen nook", a counter and stools - this counter has become a repository for ... everything random. Beach glass. Change. Notebooks. The kitchen is big and beautiful, with a small window looking out over a field and a hill with a little house on top of the hill. The sun sets behind there, spectacularly. There is a steep staircase going upstairs. Three bedrooms. My room is long and narrow, with a sort of dormer window cut-out at one end, where the big bed goes. The walls are a pale green. I feel luxurious and safe in that room. I wake up when it is dark, but my favorite time up there is after my afternoon bath - when the light has started to fade. I love my room. There is a "den" downstairs with a huge wraparound leather couch that takes up all available space and is quite ridiculous and ugly. However, there is one corner where I sit in the mornings - and Hope curls up next to me, and then I don't mind that it is leather. It is "my spot". That room is where the TV is. I like it best in there on rainy freezing mornings. I start to get restless in there after a time - there's no direct sunlight - and so you feel like you're in a little isolated pod at times, and you must LEAVE it to go join the world.

There are nooks and crannies through this house that I have grown to love. I love the upstairs bathroom, but I can't stand the lighting in there. I have a candle for when I take my baths, because the lights just grate. I love the watercolors on the wall, lighthouses and beach scenes. I love my porch so much. I think it will be the porch that I really miss.

I'll post some pictures of all of this when I get home, but suffice it to say, this has been a good house for me. I am now thinking of this past month as a kind of rest cure. That's really what's been going on. I am glad I decided to take it.

"A thousand tons of coal..."

Excerpted from The Block Island Times, their fantastic "this week in history" section, by Robert Downie:

This week in history, January 28, 1923, Block Islanders were busy mining the coal that would heat their stoves and cook their meals. As the Newport Mercury reported the story soon after:

It is estimated that 2,200 tons of coal have been mined from the salt water, and off the beach, at the barge wreck off the West Side during the past week. There is still a thousand tons gradually washing up. From all reports this coal is giving excellent results in both ranges and heaters.

The wreck was the 265-foot vessel Penn - a barge with sails set fore- and -aft in a schooner rig - that came ashore on the Southwest Point. This type of vessel was the trailer truck of their day, but they were not self-sufficient, the sails only useful when going downwind.

At any given instant in the days of sail, several ships would usually be visible meandering along the horizon. The sailing barges were recognizable by the steam tug up ahead, towing one or two of the bulky vessels at a time.

In big storms, the coal from ship wrecks still washes up on beaches from Black Rock to Southwest Point, although nowadays, several decades after the last of the big wrecks, you'll most likely walk away with just a few pocketfuls.

Wind farms, deer hunting, and ghosts: this week on Block Island

Flipping through the weekly paper. Gives a great sense of the everyday life out here. My sister Jean taught out here for a year, and much of this echoes her stories (for example: ghosts do not fly over the water, a common bit of Block Island lore). Some headlines:

-- Pursuing programs for Block Island school's non-athletes - there was a big meeting about it last week, parents, teachers, administrators - and it sounds rather contentious.

-- Trade trailer storage now allowed on Island (this is a big deal for independent contractors who want to keep their trailers in their yards in between jobs and ferry rides)

-- Fuel leak postpones Old Harbor project. Sam Bird, the project's Clerk-of-the-works, said, "It means you will have to live with the old dock for one more season."

-- There is a cartoon showing a man and a woman sitting at a bar. The woman asks the man, "So ... what do you people do out here all winter long?" The man replies, "Before or after Groundhog Day?"

-- There is a section for Letters to the Editor and they all are about the proposal for a wind farm out here (a hot topic - the electric bills out here are astronomical, I have heard from Jean they are among the highest in the United States) - so renewable energy, solar power, and wind farms are big big issues out here, and all you have to do is stand still in the grocery store for 30 seconds and you'll hear people talking about it.

-- There is a weekly column by Martha Ball called "Island Notes". This week's column is about winter on the island as well as the seals (which I saw this past weekend, so I feel very in the loop):

There is damp in the forecast, the cutting wet that can make a day of moderate temperature feel more frigid than one of deep but sunny cold ... The beach has a cyclical life, its sandy covering usually beginning to rebuild as soon as it is torn away. January is often a good month, healed from the storms of the fall, before those of the early spring that leave visitors who come too soon aghast, wondering whatever happened to the dream they have held since the previous summer, sustaining them through the cold. January, though, is often a gentle month; some years it offers a smooth strand running from The Surf to Clay Head.

This is not one of those years. Raging seas and wind driven, coursing rain have left the shore battered; the north end of the crescent that faces the sea is the harsh winter beach, not the inviting summer shore. It is blanketed with mounds of stones, not the foot size rocks that have some stability but the smaller ones that shift under even the sturdiest soles. At high tide, it is not an inviting space, that last stretch, between the Mansion access and Jerry's Point where the boulders begin, is narrow and rough ...

There is sun on the beach and out on the water, sun from the south reaching past Jerry's Point in a way that a setting sun will not in summer. The tide is very high, only the top of the higher boulder showing through the water and atop the nearest are seals, one per rock, there is no room for more ...

A head pops up and I realize there are no birds on the surface of the sea, rather there are more seals swimming about, each looking for its own rock.

It is an exercise we witness on winter days when we are able to stop and watch, the seals, sleek and shining in the sun, trying first to lay claim to a rock, throwing themselves up out of the water, shimmying, flopping, rolling, then trying to maintain their hard fought perch as the swells around him.

I think they must be very cold but, of course, they are seals.

-- There is an ad for the ferry to the mainland, with website info, telephone number, etc. It shows a picture of the boat. The ad reads like this:

Ice Skates
Snow Shovels
Warm Mittens
Hot Chocolate
Cold Remedies
Long Johns
Firewood
Rock Salt ...

Old man winter will bring the cold.
Everything else comes on the boat.

-- There is a story about the "Deer Task Force", whose aim it is to reduce or eliminate Lyme disease on the island. You hear about "wind farms" and "the deer problem" out here - those are the two main topics. I myself have seen deer everywhere. They almost outnumber the population, that is how bad the situation is. It's hunting season right now.

-- Speaking of deer, there is a recipe for Venison Stew in the paper, in the cooking column, written by Becky and Mike Ballard. They write:

Now that we are in the midst of Block Island's hunting season, we looked around for someone who has had real success cooking venison. Fred Leeder's name came up, because of a venison stew he brought to a party at Johanna Ross's house last year. People still remember that great, tender, savory stew. If you don't know Fred personally you at least know him from the post office. He worked there a total of 23 years; for 13 he was the postmaster. Before that he cooked professionally on the island. Fred and his cooking skills in combination with the quantity of deer on the island are a perfect match. In fact, some of Fred's venison moves directly from his back yard right into his cooking pot ...

In the national quest for locally grown, organic, grass-fed meats, Block Island deer easily fill all the requirements. Our free-range venison is practically fat-free, tender (if cooked correctly), juicy and full of flavor. With concerns over the increase in deer numbers, what better way to help control the deer herd than to make a big pot of one of Fred's venison stews?

It's illegal to sell any wild game, but seek out a hunter friend who may be eager to provide you with a venison roast, a tender back strap or juicy ribs. Chris Blansfield suggested that two or three families could obtain an entire carcass, send it to Wakefield for butchering and then divide the packaged meats up among themselves.

-- There was a listing of the Block Island deer hunting rules and regulations.

-- There is a regular feature called "Guess This House". Photo, and you can send your guesses into the Times.

-- There is an interview with Islander Fran Migliacco, who just wrote a book called More Ghosts on Block Island, a sequel to a previous book she had written, about various spooky stories and haunted houses out here. Ghosts cannot cross water, apparently (ask any Islander) - however, they CAN travel on boats. Stories abound. Ladies in bonnets and corsets walking around upstairs, knitting needles disappearing never to be seen again - some are scary, some are benign. One lady, Iris Lewis, lived in a haunted house and told Migliacco: "The Scottish side of me has a tendency to be a little 'fey', which I resist because I live alone." I'm with you, sister. Migliacco gives this charming portrait of Ms. Lewis: "While on Island, she dressed in bright scarves and jackets, adorned her jaunty hats with bits of jewelry, and loved new adventures. At the age of 100, she was taken iceboating for the first time in her life by local ice boater Charlie Gale."

-- There is a regular feature called "News & Views from Other Islands". Happenings on Jamestown (another Rhode Island island), Nantucket, and even as far as The Hebrides.

-- There are all kinds of ads in the newspaper from stores on the mainland, and their main selling point is: "We deliver to the ferry!" Because seriously, out here, that ferry is everything. I go down to the pier just to watch it come in.

-- A list of events going on in the community this week. A sampling:
African Drumming Performance at the Baptist Church
Game Night at the Library
Fundraiser to benefit the 8th grade Cultural Diversity trip to NYC (I remember Jean's stories of taking the Block Island kids down to Harlem, there is a sister school there, and how crazy and fun and awesome it was - the kids out here are country kids, island kids, sometimes with only 3 or 4 kids per GRADE, so these trips are really great for the kids) - buffet featuring foods from around the world
-- Grades K-12 at Block Island school are asking for donations for Haiti. An address is provided, and the money will be donated through water.com, that sends bottles of clean water to Haiti.

And lastly, there is a calendar called "All Around the Block", showing literally everything going on, down to the hour, on this island all week. Things listed on the calendar:
-- Every AA meeting going on during the week. Multiple locations for that.
-- Yoga classes, beginning and advanced
-- Adult knitting circle, evenings at the library
-- Women's open volleyball - all welcome - at "school gym" (no address necessary)
-- Every religious service during the week: Baptist, Jewish, Roman Catholic, and Episcopal

And I loved this. Again, a glimpse of life here, and how it operates:

-- There is a story about a meeting of the Zoning Board. Here is a quote from the article:

The board approved an addition to a single family dwelling ... Joseph L. told the board his house had been the Gully School House until 1933. He showed the group an old photograph in which the building had a front porch. At some later point, that porch was removed. L. said the proposed addition would resemble that front porch."

The board approved the addition to the house. Good work, Joseph L., bringing in that photograph!

Island snapshots

-- "He had a way of making a simple walk down a country lane into a Grand Adventure." -- Patricia Flynn, on her husband Errol's acting ability

-- Thomas Hardy bums me out, man. But I love him. Also, when reading the poems he wrote about the death of his first wife, if all you knew were the poems then you would think this was one of the most romantic successful marriages of all time, when by all accounts it was a disaster. After her death, Hardy found a notebook where she had written a screed called something like, "Everything I Cannot Stand About My Husband", obviously meant to be found by him after her death. They were miserable. But something about her death rocked him to his core, and his poems to her following her passing ache with feeling and loss. They are amazing. His anger at God is palpable, although it's more than that. He found God to be a silly thing, a useless entity really. He was not a believer in any way, shape or form, and he wrote about it quite a lot. His poems to and about God are also incredible. But still: very somber reading. I enjoy it a lot. Always have liked his poetry quite a bit.

-- It is nearly impossible to say about a day out here, "What a nice sunny day", or "What a rainy day". It always changes. Yesterday I woke up to rain after a crazy night of howling wind. It rained the whole morning in a way that made you think it would never stop. It is my favorite kind of weather. Then it cleared up mid-morning, and I cavorted about around the Island, walking up and down random beaches, watching the long long breakers rolling in from the open ocean, the foam being whipped off the tops of the waves by the strong wind and blown backwards. Huge white clouds piled up to the north, seemingly benign, but suddenly, they were upon us. It was as though the light was snuffed from the sky. It began to rain, and there were also some hailstones falling as I raced to my car. The light and shadow that afternoon were phenomenal, as rain and sun struggled for dominance, with big lines of clouds in the sky, showing clear blue sky beneath. Gorgeous. I love how the weather changes. Storm, sun, storm, sun. It is the most like my own natural rhythm. I find it comforting.

-- Anthony Hopkins asked Katharine Hepburn while they were filming Lion in Winter, "What is star quality?" She replied, "I don't know if it's a kind of energy or a kind of electricity - I don't know what it is, but I do know I've got it."

-- Watched Fifth Ave. Girl early this morning and realized, yet again, what a good actress Ginger Rogers is. She is completely understated here, almost sad, yet nobody's fool. Not your typical wise-cracking dame, either - this is a girl who understands reality, understands she needs to do what she has to do, but there's a sadness beneath all of it. As though if only it were given the chance, a soft romanticism could blossom. I loved the crazy family, the ditzy heiress falling in love with the mechanic who spouts his anger at capitalists and his love for the proletariat and then turns around and opens his own garage (hahaha) - the snotty suspicious brother - the loony mother ... but in the center of it all sits Ginger Rogers, in a plain black suit, sitting on a park bench, eating an apple, and staring at the world around her with low expectations of it ... and that makes her sad. Not bitter, but sad. She's fantastic.

-- I wonder what the seals are doing right now. Sunning on the rocks on the west side, maybe? It's a nice day. So far.

Snapshots with Wilde bookends

-- "Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or comedy ... But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications." -- Oscar Wilde

-- Siobhan, Ben and I saw a ton of seals swimming around by the north point of the island. They would bob their big snouts up out of the water, very close to shore, and appear to stare straight at us, quizzically, like: "What the hell are you people doing out here?" The seals were everywhere. It was so so awesome.

-- The Rockefeller book is fantastic. Encyclopedic, huge scope. This is no surprise. After all, I have read Ron Chernow's magnificent biography of Alexander Hamilton. I am a huge huge fan.

-- Two days of rain. Today is beautiful. I am so excited that I get to go OUTSIDE, I'm not sure where to go first.

-- Made a list of everything I need to do when I come back home and started having a panic attack. No more of THAT.

-- The wind howled about my house last night like shrieking fully alive beast. I went to bed at around 9 p.m., my new schedule, which I am enjoying very much. I am going to try to keep it up.

-- Food is outrageously expensive out here and it makes me long for the cheap world of Manhattan, which just goes to show you the situation.

-- This morning, before the sun came up, the rain was still pouring down. The porch furniture remained dry, so I sat out there, with my coffee, in the dark, soaking up the sounds and smells. I look at the bright blue sky now and can't believe it's the same day.

-- "How much truer Imagination is than Observation." -- Oscar Wilde

"Feels like a blaze of fire.", winter 1917-18

Excerpt from The Block Island Times, This Week in History: January 16, 1918

By Robert M. Downie

The winter of 1917-18 was the worst one in 200 years or more; the extended cold wave creating the most frigid winter of modern times.

Anyone who first experiences winter's northwest winds on Block Island is jolted doubly - not only by the velocity, but by the moisture packed into every gust. It is not like the mainland. Even the weather forecasters' modern-day "wind-chill charts" fail to make an accurate comparison - they allow for the wind, but not the added discomfort of the moisture.

It began on Christmas afternoon, and no thaws occurred until February 12. Both harbors froze over, which might happen every 25 or so years. But on the mainland, Narragansett Bay was frozen too, an exceedingly unusual occurrence. The most startling fact, though, is that the open ocean around Block Island turned to ice.

The country happened to be fully involved in World War I, and a full-scale naval base had been established on the island the previous summer, headquartered at the Narragansett Inn and the adjoining Payne's dock.

The Navy's chief medical officer, responsible for the health of some 300 sailors and nurses stationed here, wrote a heartfelt account of that severe cold of early 1918.

"No electric lights. No theaters. No trains or streetcars. On account of storms, at times we did not receive US Mail for 10 days. Third highest wind velocity in the United States. Storms of such severity, difficult to stay on the ground - rain coats of little value, had to wear oil clothing and rubber boots ... Ears frost bitten. With wind blowing 76 milse and thermometer 6.5 below, feels like a blaze of fire. Woolen socks and mufflers donated by Red Cross helped some. Saw one case of frozen hands. Ice 12 inches thick on the ocean for considerable distance, no boats could land. Sick bay isolated. Flashlight used when attending emergencies ..."

I have surfed a few hundred feet off the bluffs, gazing along the promontories and precipices coming successively into view the further out I go; swum in the tumbled waters at their base, snorkeled down to the rocks a few feet under the surface; sailed all along the coast, in warm weather and snowstorms, but still cannot imagine the ocean being ice. But that winter, where I have splashed summer waves skyward a thousand times, the sea was frozen, and drifted ice piled two- to eight-feet thick around the island.

The most succince visual image, though, was left by famed island ornithologist, Elizabeth Dickens, whose farm now forms the basis of the Lewis-Dickens conservation area in the island's southwest corner.

She viewed the sea near her house with binoculars on February 6, 1918 and recorded in her diary:

"I stand on the bluff at Dickens Point at noon and look east, west, south and north with glasses and can't see a drop of water, just one sheet of motionless ice."

Some Island snapshots

-- "I cannot imagine how a casual reference to Suetonius and Petronius Arbiter can be construed into evidence of a desire to impress by an assumption of superior knowledge. I should fancy that the most ordinary of scholars is perfectly well acquainted with the Lives of the Caesars and with The Satyricon. The Lives of the Caesars, at any rate, forms part of the curriculum at Oxford for those who take the Honour School of Literae Humaniores; and as for The Satyricon, it is popular even among passmen, though I suppose they have to read it in translations." -- Oscar Wilde, responding to a critic who balked at all of the literary references in Dorian Gray

-- Standing on the jetty, watching the huge long breakers roll in, crashing repeatedly on the rocks. I heard the roar from my front porch this morning. I stood out there until I was drenched in spray, and then figured I'd better beat it before I was submerged.

-- Christopher Walken on Gene Kelly for Turner Classic Movies: "People might think that dancers are always on the beat. A good dancer is always ahead of the beat. They make the music happen."

-- Speaking of Christopher Walken, he is out here right now. I keep my eyes peeled for him.

-- "I love black and white cinema; I feel as if I discovered it." -- Andrei Tarkovsky

-- In a Lonely Place was on TV early this morning. It's one of my favorite movies and certainly Bogart's best performance. He is absolutely tortured.

-- The name of the world's first oil tanker (set up by the Nobel family) was Zoroaster.

-- Dovetail between my reading of Rockefeller's life and the book I read last year about "young Stalin". Stalin had many years as a gangster in Baku, which was a primary rival of Rockefeller's in the oil biz, and the Rothschilds, and all that. Baku has been one of my fascinations for eons, and it's very cool to hear about what it was like in the 1800s.

-- Frank Capra gets on my nerves sometimes.

-- Yesterday there was frost on the grass. A sudden plunge in temperature after a couple days of mildness.

-- CRAZY ocean yesterday. Drove out to the North Light at dusk and the scene - crashing thrashing ocean as far as the eye could see - with the little light on the small ladder near the point (I guess the lighthouse isn't sufficient because it isn't right on the tip of those treacherous rocks - they need a light closer to the actual point) flashing around in flares. Everything was deep blue and white, and the waves were relentless and enormous.

-- Read a lot of Gerard Manley Hopkins' stuff yesterday, which I believe contributed to my epic dreams last night, starring the person who introduced me to his stuff. Damn you, Hopkins! But Hopkins is one of the greatest there is, one of the poets of my heart - he makes up words, he puts them together - but never obscures the meaning. The individuality of his language is the emotional entryway into his work. His emotional punctuation and hyphenated words reminds me very much of Keri Hulme's The Bone People, a strange connection I suppose - but her preface to her novel is all about language and how she had to basically train the copyeditors who worked on her manuscript NOT to correct her work, unless there was a spelling error. Everything had to go by her first. She felt that there is a huge difference between "blue-black" and "blueblack" - it calls up a different response in the reader - and Hopkins' stuff to me seems equally as individual. "dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon", "blue-bleak embers", "fathers-forth" - Now that last one is interesting. Something in the poem "fathers forth" - but it certainly feels different with that hyphen there. The meaning is connected not only to the sound but to the LOOK of the words. "selfwrung, selfstrung, sheath- and shelterless." Some of this experimentation with sound predicts the Beat poets in the 1950s. Hopkins was way ahead of his time.

-- I love Robert Montgomery so much.

-- The commercials on Lifetime are alllll about digestion and poop.

-- I never ever want to hear the phrase "I can't make any promises ..." ever again. Come on, make a promise. Even if you end up not keeping it, see what it feels like to make a goddamn promise. A red flag.

-- Watched the ridiculous The Fountainhead, and found myself thinking so much about Patricia Neal (it was her birthday this week), and all of the tragic elements of her life. Watching her and Cooper onscreen, I thought of her heartwrenching and beautiful autobiography and the story of their love affair, and how she never stopped loving him, until he died. There's a cautionary tale there, and I've been thinking about it a lot. In a way, that's what my script is about, and what I have been working on. Can we choose the narrative of our lives? Not really - events are events - but the interpretation is up to us. Way easier said than done. Much of the marks left on us date from before the time we might have figured all of this out. The first cut is the deepest.

-- Too funny: I have found over 30 pieces of beach glass in my time out here. That first one seemed so miraculous, now I'm so over it, and just casually toss new pieces on the pile when I come home.

-- Heaven Knows Mr. Allison was on again. I was flipping through the channels - and, literary conceit, landed upon it - RIGHT AT THE HOT MOMENT in the fake cave that I had missed when the electricity came out. What are the odds. I didn't have to bide my time, watching the whole thing again - I came upon the scene, her lying shivering on the floor in her habit, and got to watch the whole thing. It's very erotic.

-- In the graveyard, there is a stone for a 16 year old girl named Annie, who died in the late 1800s, and at the bottom is engraved: "Darling, how we miss thee." The simplicity of that statement, the feeling behind it, really got to me. To me, that's all that needs to be said. Darling, how we miss thee.

-- Still obsessed by generosity and how it operates in my life. I have a tally sheet. I check things off - Me generous, Him generous, Me generous, Him generous. Tit for tat. Keeping track. So far, it has kept the madness at bay, although keeping a TALLY SHEET is mad in and of itself. Oh well. It all makes sense to me, and it feels right.

-- Speaking of generosity, a quote from T.S. Eliot jumped out at me the other day:
Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving.

"The giving famishes the craving". I don't think 10 minutes have gone by since I read that that I have not thought about it.

-- Getting ready to start Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. I am a huge Waugh fan, but I have never read that one.

-- Hope is OBSESSED with a seagull feather I brought home. She is tormented by its very existence.

-- I go out to sit on the porch with my book and my coffee, in the cold morning sunlight, and Hope sits on the windowsill staring out at me. I want to tell her to get a life, but then I remember, oh wait. This IS her life.

-- "the moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy" - e.e. cummings

-- "Why must you write 'intensive' here? 'Intense' is the right word. You should read Fowler's Modern English Usage in the use of the two words." -- Winston Churchill to his director of military intelligence while looking over plans for the invasion of Normandy. I love that even at such a tense time, incorrect grammar annoyed him. That's my boy.

-- This kills me. Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for sodomy. His library and possessions were put up for sale. He suffered in prison, yes, from hard labor, but also because he had nothing to read. His friends (the ones who stuck with him) tried to buy his books back from the people who bought them at auction - and eventually there was a milder warden at the prison who asked if Mr. Wilde could write out a list of the books he would like, and he would see what he could do. Friends began to send books to the prison. The nice warden would bring them to Wilde's cell, and Wilde would break down in tears at the sight. And, in his file, there is a letter from an "Irishwoman" - anonymous - no name - and here is the letter she wrote to the prison in 1895. It brings tears to my eyes, and makes me feel that yes, there is good, there is mercy on this planet. Listen:

Please give Mr. Wilde the book. I have never ever seen him but it must indeed be a hard heart utterly unacquainted with God's love that does not bleed for such a shipwrecked life ... I feel this book which I send, may be helpful. Faithfully yours, an Irishwoman.

Isn't that something else. Sadly, there is no record of what book she sent to "Mr. Wilde", but across the century, I salute this anonymous Irishwoman as someone who represents the best in all of us.

-- I tried to sit down and read a bunch of Emily Dickinson poems, and found she freaked me out too much. I really can only deal with her one poem at a time. She's just too huge, too brutal, too scary.

-- Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979 interview:

In Andrei Rublev, there was a scene that might have been from Mizoguchi, the great departed Japanese director. I wasn't aware of it until it was projected. It's the one where the Russian prince gallops across the countryside on a white horse, and the Tatar is on a black horse. The quality of the image in black and white, the landscape, the opacity of the overcast sky, had a strange resemblance to an ink-drawn Chinese landscape.

It's one of my favorite images in that film full of amazing images:

Island Snapshots

-- Big storm. Crashing surf. Mountains of spray. Wind so loud it literally shrieked.

-- Crazy bright stars.

-- Finished the novel Beware of Pity, by Stefan Zweig. Can't believe it is not more well-known. The fall of Empires is in it. The crackup of the world in World War I. The disintegration of certainty. The disorientation of the modern world. Not to mention an excavation of the human mind, and the emotion known as "pity". Phenomenal and harrowing book.

-- Also reading T.S. Eliot. Guess I am into disintegration and moral apocalypse.

-- Great weekend with Jean, Pat and Lucy. Pat's great-grandfather was the lighthouse keeper out here back in the day, so we took a little visit. Also, just learned that in Roger Williams' first merry band of rebels that came to what is now "Rhode Island", one of Pat's ancestors was in that first group.

-- I have been taking baths. Every day. Hope sits at the edge of the tub, meowing insistently. It disturbs her greatly, my behavior. She cannot understand it. It truly WORRIES her.

-- Percolating with ideas. I needed the mental space to percolate.

-- The weather changes so quickly out here. Sunny day to black storm clouds in a matter of 5 minutes. I go down and sit on the jetty and watch the waves crash up onto it. It's all very French Lieutenant's Woman.

-- Found my favorite beach. It is isolated. I can see the lighthouse (I believe) in Montauk across the water, wavering like a mirage. I get a coffee to go at the Depot, and drive down there in the early morning. No one is ever there. A beautiful beach.

Excerpts from The Block Island Cookbook, 1962

I found this book in my house. It was compiled by the First Baptist Church on Block Island in 1962. The pastor at the time was fondly referred to as "Pastor Lou", and the first page of the book helpfully informs the reader that Sunday morning worship is at 10:45 a.m. The book is chock-full of interest. There are a couple of major families out here (and have been here for generations, from the very beginning, actually, in the 1600s.) I went to the graveyard here, and the names dominate: Dodge. Littlefield. Ball. Mott. Other prominent names (well-known to southern Rhode Islanders, because they are still everywhere): Champlin. Northup. Sprague.

The preface begins:

The ladies of the Island have long been known for their good cooking. A distinguished daughter, Miss Catherine Ray, later to become the wife of Rhode Island's governor William Greene, sent her life-long friend, one Benjamin Franklin, a gift of Block Island cheeses which he and his friends pronounced excellent, and also a gift of Sugar Plums, "every one sweetn'd as you used to like."

That's the opening paragraph of this small dog-eared book. After that I of course had to read it cover to cover, and don't even think I am not going to try to make their pickled artichokes.

The introduction continues:

The Indians gave us the "No Cake", and very probably the hulled corn and the hasty pudding. The early settlers, being of necessity almost completely self-sufficient, relied heavily on corn and cornmeal.

We have returned in nostalgia, to the time, not really so many years ago, when every family had a pickle barrel in the cellar, complete with the delectable, quite indigestible, Jerusalem artichoke ("hardchoke" to our fathers). Tempus fugit - was it only yesterday when johnny cake - thick or thin, scalded or unscalded according to family tradition - appeared on Island tables at least twice and sometimes three times a day, when hot biscuits appeared at least once and tea was the preferred beverage? Was it only yesterday that a fish could be had just for the asking? Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis!"

The cookbook is broken up into your basic sections: Meat, Vegetables, Desserts, Fish (an extensive section, naturally). Each section starts with a Bible verse appropriate to the section. For example, the Fish section has this on its title page:

"Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets." Luke 5:4b

There are also home remedies in the back to cure "the itch of poison ivy" or provide "relief from arthritis".

The recipes were submitted by Islanders, and sometimes it's something that has been passed down, from generation to generation. Sometimes, delightfully, the recipe has a little personal story attached to it.

Some examples:

CREAM OF TARTAR BISCUITS
Mrs. Rose Champlin Starr
"This was the recipe of my mother, Mrs. Annie J. Champlin, wife of the Island's only native-born resident physician, Dr. John A. Champlin."

SOUTH COUNTY BANNOCK
Miss Hope Brown Madison
"The original recipe was a Madison family favorite served by the cook Hannah for many years at the H.G. Russell farm 'The Oaks', now Goddard Park. I have adapted it to modern cooking."

DOUGHNUTS
Mrs. Rose Champlin Starr, submitted by her daughter Mrs. Charlotte Murphy
"As anyone who has ever had one can verify, my Mother's recipe for doughnuts is an especially good one. My Uncle Frank (Payne) was especially fond of them and my son Jack said to be sure and send this recipe even if it were the only one I sent. Mom had a black cast iron kettle that was a couple or more generations old that she cooked the doughnuts in - the kind they used to suspend from a crane when cooking was done in fireplaces."

JOHNNY CAKES
Emma Mitchell Gooley
" 'Uncle Jerry' taught me to make these 'Johnny Cakes' when I was only 13 years old."

BREAD
Bertrand M. Ball
"With bread at 50 cents a loaf, we use this recipe for the daily bread of our family of six."

Sometimes, you can feel the personality of the person writing. These are my favorite recipes. The FISH section starts off with a "Dissertation on Fried Fish", written by Emma Littlefield Lee, and you can feel herself whipping herself up into a frenzy as she writes. She sounds, frankly, unbalanced, and yet she also admits that openly. She loves fish and she is passionate about it.

Our family has eaten fish, literally by the ton, for generations, and to this day we will happily settle for fried fish five times a week if we can get it. Nothing on this earth is better than a succulent piece of properly fried fish, but by the same token there is no worse fare than fish, poorly cooked. Feeling so strongly on this matter I could not content myself with submitting only one fish recipe for the book; it has become necessary to my mental well-being to expound at length on the frying of that splendid creature; the Fish.

I appreciate her honesty. She sounds cracked, and I think I would like her very much.

Emma goes on, with characteristic fervor. Her "dissertation" goes on for four pages, where she cajoles, scolds, wags her finger, and expounds to her heart's content.

Fish in all the categories MUST be fresh. It's fine eaten the same day as caught, but ideally it should be eaten the day after being caught, having been on ice overnight. Fish that has been thoroughly chilled in this way is easier to fry as it doesn't curl up in the pan."

I love how it is basically assumed that people will be catching their own fish. It is also assumed that people will be picking their own vegetables ("Pick the tomatoes"), etc. So there are times when the recipes take on a truly grisly tone.

Here is Thelma Murphy on BOILED LOBSTER:

Lobster should be alive when boiled. Most Islanders prefer to boil their lobsters in sea water - to eat them hot with plenty of mettled butter and a touch of vinegar. In fact, the Islanders eschew all manner of fancy cookery where seafood is concerned, preferring not to mask the taste of these delectable gifts of God in any manner, other than to cook them quickly and well with a minimum of ostentation.

Thelma, I appreciate your words, and my mouth is watering, but while your cooking may not be ostentatious, I certainly cannot say the same for your writing. Simplify, simplify.

Thelma appears to take my advice from the future in her next recipe, for BROILED LOBSTER, which starts off bluntly:

Kill the lobster by inserting sharp knife into joint where tail and body-shell come together, thus cutting the spinal cord.

Awesome.

E.B.D. (no name) has this to say about SCALLOPS AND OYSTERS:

Oysters are found so rarely in the Great Salt Pond now as to be considered non-existent, but scallops may be used instead of oysters in almost any oyster recipe. Scallops may be the small sweet scallop dredged up from close to shore, or more commonly, the large deep sea scallops which are often available in the market.

Captain Mel Rose (Rose is another big name out there) gets a little bit defensive and angry in his recipe for fish chowder, shouting at the innocent reader in all caps repeatedly:

Skin, simmer (not boil) until flakes come off bones to separate easily; remove fish from water but SAVE water; break in fair sized pieces ... Drain but do NOT use this water ... also heat to same temperature BEFORE mixing 1 quart of milk and 1 can of evaporated milk.

Please stop shouting at me Captain Rose.

I loved this sentence in "E.L.L."'s recipe for DAB CHOWDER:

Don't let anybody see you adding the milk; they always think you're doing something sneaky.

Al and Norma Starr seem like a lovely couple. They submitted a recipe for STEAMED MUSSELS that contains the following sentence:

We take a kettle with us to the beach and have the mussels right there. They make a marvelous beach picnic.

Thomas Littlefield submitted a recipe for FRIED COD FISH HEADS that reads like an Edgar Allan Poe poem:

Skull, clean and skin heads.
Boil for 20 minutes or until fish leaves bones.
Drain and pick out bones.
Place the fish in bread pan and press.
Chill in the refrigerator.

Louise Mitchell confuses me. She has written an essay called HOW TO COOK A DUCK and she starts with this sentence:

Forget the story about "cooking a duck on a plank and throwing the duck away.

Uhm, Louise? I don't think I ever knew that story in the first place.

Louise says later in her essay:

If blood does not follow the fork, call the duck done. If you are cooking tame duck, do not skin him. But make sure he has not been around salt water.

And how would one know that, Louise? By asking the duck?

I do think, though, that "blood does not follow the fork, call the duck done" is quite a nice sentence.

Frank Tinker cuts to the chase in his recipe for MUD TURTLE. Here is how it starts. I am picturing myself doing all of this in my kitchen in my apartment at home.

Catch mud turtle. When catching, be sure to put a gaff hook i nhis mouth so he'll bite hard on it (he won't let go). Lay turtle on chopping block, haul head out of shell with gaff hook and chop off with hatchet. After turtle stops moving (about 1 hour) cut off toes as they are apt to hook you.

Jesus Christ.

William P. Lewis sounds like a fun guy in his recipe for what he calls RICE JAZZ.

Serves four hungry people, six not so hungry.

He explains:

Call it rice jazz because it amounts to nothing more than jazzing up what was left over in the icebox after weekend guests.

Arthur Ryerson submitted a recipe for BOILED MILKWEEK. He starts off with:

This is a delicious green in the spring when the plants are new and tender. Milkweed is to be found in many of the fields here on the Island. Pick the tender tops of the plant, wash, drain and boil as you would any other green.

Arthur L. Ford only submitted one recipe, but his "resume" is listed as well: Chairman of the Council, Shoreham-by-the-Sea-Sussex-England. In a later recipe, someone mentions that she made the dish for a "reception" for Chairman Arthur Ford, so he was obviously an Islander who had traveled far. His recipe is called MY OWN FAVOURITE (note the British spelling, and also the rank egotism of the title - what dish is it, Arthur? Fish? Cake? Macaroni? Nope. Just 'MY OWN FAVOURITE'). However, Mr. Ford has a bit of the poet in him. The recipe turns out to be for poached eggs and contains the following two sentences, which show that he has a bit of a writer in him:

Stir fast until a whirlpool has been formed.
The white should be wrapped around the yoke like a transparent veil.

Florence Ball Madison has this gorgeous introduction to her recipe for THIN MOLASSES COOKIES, which gives a great feel for the sense of history on the Island, not to mention Rhode Island, and New England in general, where you can't take one step without bumping up against a founding father of one kind or another:

This recipe was given to me by a Westfield Mass. roommate at East Greenwich Academy, class 1897. Have made bushels of them for my father, Martin VanBuren Ball (born in 1838) whose chief request was "make them big". The cookie cutter may be seen in the Block Island Historical Society Museum.

Recipes are called "third generation recipes". There are recipes for "AUNT MOLLIE'S SUGAR COOKIES" or "GRANDMOTHER'S SQUASH PIE". One woman submits her recipes under this name: "By Evelyn Lee (John Lee's Mother)".

I love how Beatrice Ball Dodge (much intermarrying between these huge families, of course) starts off her recipe for IRISH MOSS BLANC MANGE:

Gather fresh moss on the beach. Rinse well in cold water and spread in the sun to dry.

There is also a section for BEVERAGES in the cookbook, and they are usually recipes that are enormous and can feed a crowd. Johnny Dodge submitted a recipe for something he called SUNSHINE SPARKLE, and the recipe yields "about 35 glasses". There is a recipe that is called COFFEE FOR FORTY. Any gathering on the Island would obviously involve pretty much every resident, so it is essential that one knows how to cook in bulk. COFFEE FOR FORTY. It kills me.

Eleanor K. Dodge submits a recipe for the beautifully named "BLOCK ISLAND, RHODE ISLAND BEACH PLUM JELLY", and it's poetry:

Wash plums. Use firm not-too-ripe plums. Boil in as little water as possible, until plums are real soft. Drain juice in a heavy cloth bag. Do not squeeze bag! Let drip until juice is extracted, then add cup for cup of sugar. Let juice boil to 224 degrees on jelly thermometer or until jelly stage (when two drops form on edge of spoon and run into one).

I love that last image. Also, I promise I will not squeeze the bag! (Unless it asks nicely.)

Mrs. Robert Schofield sends in this home remedy called ELDERBERRY BLOSSOM SALVE:

I make this every year. It is good for insect bites, chapped lips, minor abrasions, and so forth ...

Check out Mrs. Jeanne Wilde Riel's homemade recipe for COUGH SYRUP. Yeah, you might cure your cough, but your teeth will rot in the course of one weekend. But still: Yum!!

Take one large beet and hollow out the inside. Take rock candy and fill hollow, then bake in oven at 375 degrees until candy in melted. Put in jar.

Wow.

Nellie Littlefield informs us of a little local background in her recipe for SAUSAGES:

Sausage recipes were closely guarded secrets, each family having its own method ... handing it down for generations. This was particularly true of the farm families who sold meat products, each of these families having a following ... It would have been easier to get a pint of blood from a man in those days than to get his sausage recipe which he probably kept in a box with the family deeds and other papers.

Mrs. Margaret Husted Lauer (telephone call for Matt Lauer, your ancestor is calling) gives a nice little essay called TWO WAYS OF MAKING HULLED CORN:

This is a very old dish which we probably received from the Indians. In the early days it was a staple article of diet and there are still people living who remember the hulled corn man peddling the cooked corn from a large can suspended from a rope around his neck and dipped out with a dipper. It was eaten warm with milk and molasses.

I love that image of the 'hulled corn man"!

Mrs. Ruth Rose Barrell talks about the famous "No Cake"

According to the legends I've heard from the Islanders from the time I was a child, the recipe for No Cake was handed down to the Block Islanders from the Indians who lived on the Island. My father, Ambrose Rose, always said that No Cake must be made on a clear day when the wind was from the North-west.

Okay, so that one small anecdote tells me that Mr. Ambrose Rose was a romantic. A man in touch with history and tradition, and wanted to instill in his children a sense of romance and poetry. He may not have been the most practical of gentleman, he might have been a bit too dreamy, but he was well-loved, and I love him. I have no idea what I'm talking about. But that's the best thing about the cookbook. It's full of voices, clambering, chattering, gossiping. I love making stuff up.

Here is another recipe for NO CAKE, submitted by Mrs. Cemantha Mitchell White:

My dad, Frank Mitchell, used to parch sweet corn in a heavy iron fryer into which a layer of coarse sand had been poured (fine sand will stick to the corn). He kept stirring it until hot and then he would put the corn in and cook it slowly until dark brown but not burns. Then he'd sift the sand out and when the corn was cool he would grind it in a coffee grinder and we'd eat it with milk and sugar. It was like a powder but it was mighty good to me.

And I will end with perhaps my favorite sentence in this beautiful little book. It is the first sentence of the recipe for PETER MURPHY'S WILD ROSE SYRUP, submitted by Mrs. Robert E. Schofield:

Pick rose petals in the early day.

Yes, ma'am. I'd be delighted to.

On the island

-- An orgy of reading. Recuperative. I am feeling less shattered than I have. But I hesitate to even say such things. They anger the gods.

-- Mitchell, Meghan and Luisa came out for the day and it was seriously one for the books. I had all these plans ("let's go look at lighthouses!") and then all we did was make Bloody Marys at my house and talk and laugh. Oh, and also blast Michael Jackson and dance around my kitchen. Luisa wielded a mop and went downstairs to inspect the cellar and get rid of cobwebs. She loves cellars. She was holding a whiskey in one hand and a mop in the other. She re-emerged with a small statue of ... well, he defies description. He's a hippie. He has long hair, beads, and is making the peace sign. She found it down there. We then proceeded to place him all over the house (and the lawn) and take pictures of him in various landscapes. Crying with laughter. Magic day.

-- I saw a standoff on my front lawn between a barking dog and a freaked-out deer. They stood staring at each other, the dog racing around barking at it. Then, the deer charged the dog. (I saw a similar standoff at Yellowstone once between a wounded deer and a small wolf - it was incredible). The dog bounded backwards in alarm and then the deer bounded off into the snow.

-- Mum came out for the night and we took some great hikes (one out by the North Light), and then we found the trail that goes along the big white cliffs that encircle the north side of the island. The views were amazing. There was nothing between us and the abyss. And there's still snow everywhere here, so the landscape: snow, sandy cliffs, and ocean - was startling to the extreme. Then we came home and had dinner and watched Searching for Bobby Fischer. Mum found a chess set at the house and taught me how to play. For some reason, I never learned. Allison (a killer chess player) tried to teach me a couple years ago but it didn't stick. Mum teaching me how each chess piece moved was so funny. "This guy ... goes like this: two and one - like an L." "This guy can go like THIS ..." But my favorite was her delineation between the King and the Queen. "The Queen can go any which way, in any direction, as far as she likes. And the King? .... Is a LOSER." So every time either one of us would make our King move, one square to the right, left, whatever, we would start laughing. I imagined a big gluttonous slobbery half-wit king, unwilling to put down his greasy drumstick in order to save himself with rapid dispatch. The Queen, meanwhile, flies about the board. It was really fun. Mum won, but I didn't do too badly myself.

-- I have been reading poetry. A lot of Walt Whitman. I love him. Every time I read the poem about the Brooklyn Ferry, it seems like a new poem. It lives and breathes, and I feel it speaking directly to me, and that, to me, seems Whitman's point. He is squinting into the future. For me. It is such a poem of America. Of New York. Intensely moving to me.

And then there is this:

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me.
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,
Scattering it freely forever.

-- I have been taking long walks every day, choosing different sections of the island to explore. Mum and I found some good new spots.

-- I go to bed at around 9 p.m. and wake up at 5 a.m. One of my favorite things to do is to make my coffee, in the pitch-black, and go out to sit on the front porch, before dawn.

-- The other night, the temperature dropped. It had been a sunny almost mild day, but the weather changes so quickly out here. I drove up to the Southeast Lighthouse because I wanted to see what was going on. It was suddenly freezing with a bitter wind. There was some snow falling. A line of clouds lay over the ocean, with a blazing streak of sunset showing through, right above the waterline. But those clouds were low and thick. And the light up in the tower was going, reflecting off the giant mirrors. So mystical, but also so practical. A message to those out there on the sea: Beware. We are near. Beware. I stood on the giant lawn, in the quickly gathering dusk, watching that light flash, go dark, flash, go dark ... until it was finally too cold, even for a hearty girl like myself. Beauty!!

-- Found a bunch of prehistoric-looking rocks today peeking up from under the ocean. At the level of the tide when I found them, it looked like the humps of the Lochness Monster. Some prehistoric beast - struggling to be born? I've got Yeats on the brain too.

-- I watched Comrade X the other night and laughed so loudly during the last half hour of the film that I frightened Hope. Hedy Lemarr is HYSTERICAL as the humorous Communist girl. "There is pilot, then co-pilot, then co-co-pilot, then co-co-co-pilot." Clark Gable barks, "Stop stuttering." It is my new favorite movie.

At the edge of the world

Went out to the North Light early this morning, with a hot cup of coffee, and wearing my Dad's hiking boots. This is the lighthouse on the northern tip of Block Island. You can see the mainland off in the distance. You park your car in a little lot and then have to walk on a rocky crescent beach to actually get to the lighthouse. This is unlike the Southeast lighthouse which is pretty much right off the road. I parked my car. The wind was so freezing that the couple of times I took my gloves off to take a picture, I actually ended up getting anxious, because it was so cold I lost feelings in my poor stick-figure fingers. The ocean was a deep dark blue with tossing whitecaps, and the wind was deafening. I found myself shouting at times to myself (the place was deserted), "JAYSUS, it's fuckin' COLD!" I walked towards the lighthouse, which meant I walked into the wind. It was brutal. But the sun was coming up behind me, the blue waves tossed fiercely out to my right, the dunes lay down flat in the wind, and careless obnoxious seagulls bobbed on the freezing waves, staring at me in an arrogant manner.

This morning walk was so intense I found myself in tears on the trek back to my car. So so beautiful. I had also been thinking a bit about my collection of beach glass, which has connections for me with a man I once loved, who ALSO had a collection of beach glass (only his was fresh water, being a mid-Western boy, and mine was salt - we gave each other pieces of beach glass) - and I still scan the ground for beach glass, and I imagine even if I am 80 years old, I'll have a moment where I will think of that fresh-water man I once loved every time I find a piece. It came into my mind, the beach glass, and this particular beach is treacherous with rocks for the most part - dwindling down into a crescent of pebbles - not really a clean sweep of sand where anything like a piece of beach glass stands out.

I made my way close to the lighthouse, a blinding white stone building, picking up the morning sun, with the black tower, the brave light inside. I crawled around the snowy dunes trying to get as close as I could (the place is closed to the public right now), and there were times, I admit, that it got so cold, I literally huddled behind a sand dune to get some relief. The ocean was roaring on all sides. This is a point, remember. You are surrounded.

I stood on the very edge of the northern tip of Block Island, with cross-current waves streaming in at me on both sides, crashing in the middle. There was a sense of the land dipping off into nothingness. I knew I had no danger of "tipping" off the edge - it wasn't a cliff - it was a rocky beach that curved right off into the waves and that was that. Like The Titanic sinking without a trace. It was exhilarating, an exhilarating spot. I felt some vertigo at times, especially when I stood at the very "bow" of the island - so that the illusion was that there was only ocean in front of me, and that I was floating out over it. If I only judged from what I saw in my line of vision, then I was completely out to sea. The vertigo came and I actually had to look down at my boots, to reassure myself that I was actually standing on land. But what happens at this northern tip is that the water races in at it from both sides, big crashing waves on the left side, and more of a protected lapping on the right side. But make no mistake - both sides are trying to leap over the small pathway of rocks on which I am standing - to get to the other side. It must have been low tide when I was out there, shivering and freezing on the rocky outlet into the sea - and I am sure that that entire isthmus is underwater at high tide, and as a matter of fact, as I stood there, a wave from the left (the more aggressive side) made it further up over the rocks and washed a bit against my shoe.

Okay, okay. Time to go.

It was a hike back to my car, but by that point the wind was at my back (Brian's wish for me came true: Go raibh an ghaoth go brách ag do chúl) - so it actually got warm enough I could take off my gloves.

I felt exhilarated, and transparent, it wasn't even 8:30 in the morning yet, and I had been to one of the most beautiful places on earth.

I glanced down at one point, so that I wouldn't lose footing on the pebbles which were a bit uneven, and right there - right on that very spot where I happened to look down - I caught sight of a rounded piece of clear beach glass. I started laughing at the miracle of it, because I had just been thinking about beach glass on the start of the walk, and then forgot about it, because the rest of the scenery was so spectacular (almost frightening - the place was deserted - no one knew I was out there).

I no longer want to invest energy into the meaning of things because that way (for me) danger lies. I do not care to get advice to the contrary, either - unless you know me really well already (ie: friends or family). My understanding of my own narrative is my own - and it's hard-won, and well-thought-out. So no ultimate "meaning" assigned to things anymore. Let other people do that for me, if they wish.

Regardless.

I sure am glad I found that piece of beach glass. It's a nice specimen: thick and substantial. Sometimes you just find a tiny chip of green or blue, but sometimes, if you're lucky, you find a big chunk - sometimes even with raised markings on it (like it was once part of a mason jar or something like that) - albeit worn down by the sea. I like the big fat chunks, and this one - frosted over, clear and yet opaque - is a good addition to my collection. Kind of a star, actually.

On the island

-- There is only one four-way intersection on the island. No stoplights. The intersection is referred to one and all as "The Four Corners." "Excuse me, can you tell me where the bank is?" "The Four Corners." "Got it."

-- I spent the morning wandering around the Southeast Lighthouse, which is so beautiful and so intense I almost felt like I was mainlining some awesome drug of choice. This is the lighthouse that was moved, about a decade ago, because the cliffs were crumbling beneath it. It is a huge beautiful brick structure, with the glimmering mirrored lighthouse tower fat and squat. There was nobody about this morning, a sunny crisp morning, and the ocean was blindingly bright, streatching off in all directions. What can I say. I'm from the Ocean State. It is the landscape of my dreams, my comfort, where I want to always be. It's an old lighthouse, a national landmark, and I had a really good private time there this morning.

-- I am reading Titan, by Ron Chernow (whom I will love forever for his Alexander Hamilton book) - Titan is his book on John D. Rockefeller, and, as always, Chernow's writing is elegant, evocative, and highly intelligent. John D. Rockefeller is emerging before my eyes. He hasn't even gotten into the oil business yet. He's just a young man. It's a huge book, daunting really, but I am very glad I have started it. I am learning a lot - not just about him, but of the economy at that time.

-- I have been writing in a journal again. It makes me feel a bit silly, like a lovesick schoolkid, but it has been good for me. It's certainly exercising the writing muscles again. Which, I suppose if you read my blog may seem ridiculous - she needs to exercise? But I do, I really do. Writing down long passionate entries about my "feelings" have been pretty much forbidden for the last 3 or 4 years. Nothing much to write about. But I am forcing myself to, and I can feel ideas for other things start to bubble up.

-- I am now pretty much in love with Loretta Young, in her pre-Code movies. It was her birthday yesterday, I believe, and TCM had a marathon. I am not as wacky about later Loretta Young, although she is always lovely and natural - but her early 1930s stuff cannot be beat. Wow.

-- Also reading a book of interviews with Roman Polanski (what a mind), and also the letters of Maud Gonne and WB Yeats. Dear Maud, you are a WACKO, but I love you anyway.

-- Trying to read again. Creating the mental space for it again, despite how ragged everything has felt over the last year - a sort of scattering of my focus.

-- My little house is so cute. There's even a roll-top desk. And a front porch. I love my room too. I am sleeping like the DEAD. Going to bed early, waking up early.

-- I arrived out here in the middle of the big storm we just had. The ferry ride was rough (although I am sure it could have been rougher) - the boat climbing up the waves, then climbing down into the holes left by the waves, the spray flying over the bow. It was awesome and beautiful. That ferry boat. My, she is yar.

-- Walking on the beach.

-- Walking around a frozen pond at sunset, watching the big dunes waving in the freezing night wind off to the north.

-- I am going to go to the Southeast Light every day. I'll never get enough of that spot.

The beach in winter

One freezing dusk. Snow on the beach, a very odd and beautiful sight.

That'll Learn Ya reunites

That'll Learn Ya was a band formed at URI, and their heyday was when I was a student there. Their success as a local band was not only on the URI campus, although that was their main fan base. If you are a Rhode Islander of a certain age, you remember That'll Learn Ya. The lead singer, Terry Fallon, was somehow involved in the theatre department at URI, although it was right before my time, but I remember seeing him around. They were stars. Their shows jangled with energy, and their songs were fantastic. Brendan was the big fan - he was obsessed with them. In January 2008, he wrote a blog-post about one of the songs of theirs he remembered: "Robert DeNiro Movies" (a hit, if there ever was one). Read Brendan's reminiscences, and then check out the comments. Of Rhode Islanders who remember.

That'll Learn Ya was pre-Internet. Those old cassettes of their albums ... where are they now? Find-able? Yes? No? I was talking with my brother about That'll Learn Ya this past weekend, and talking about memory. We are of the generation that straddles that divide: the tech-boom divide. We remember 45s, and turntables, and lifting the handle of the damn record player arm to drop it down into the exact groove we wanted. We remember things having to LAST, because ... that was the technology at the time. It was up to us to hold onto things, keep them close and well-preserved, because if you lost such-and-such? Where would you get it again? Nothing was forever. Things disappeared back then. If you lost something, you couldn't find it again. There was no instantly-accessible Web archive where you could immediately look up any damn thing you wanted.

So That'll Learn Ya disappeared. For 20 years. Brendan is an obsessive, like myself, and he searched, for years, for those old cassette tapes - the only evidence he had of That'll Learn Ya's music. Then, suddenly, we've got the Web, we can reach out, we can put things out there into the universe, asking for help in finding something - because, whaddya know, it turns out that things DON'T disappear. Not if you remember them. But that was totally not the case back in the late 80s. I have so many memories of scouring the TV Guide on a weekly basis to see if certain things would play that week, TV movies I had seen once, 4 years before, and was DYING to see again. That was the only way I would know. What if Orphan Train plays at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday night and I don't know about it? That means it will be yet another 4 years before I can see it again. My memory of it was strong, but the ability to re-live, re-watch, re-listen - was minimal back then. This is a world that has completely vanished in one generation. Rather extraordinary, no?

The last comment on Brendan's post is from July of this year and it reads:

Recently TLY put together a Facebook profile. They uploaded a bunch of their songs with Robert Deniro Movies being one of them. There is also a possible reunion coming together.

When That'll Learn Ya joined Facebook, there was a ripple effect among my friends from Rhode Island. One after another after another "became fans" of That'll Learn Ya, and it was so strange, so good to 'see' those guys again, even though I did not know them, and haven't seen them play in two decades. What have they been up to?

Then came word that they were playing a reunion show on Saturday, November 28, 2009 at The Ocean Mist, a fantastic bar (basically a huge rickety SHACK on the beach, with a deck that the waves roll right under) - and the timing could not have been more perfect. Brendan was going to be in town for Thanksgiving. He was out of his mind. That'll Learn Ya? Reuniting? At the OCEAN MIST? While he was home? What??

On Saturday, there was the O'Malley Thanksgiving. An emotional day. Everyone left at around 6 p.m. and I totally could have gotten into my pajamas right then and never left the couch for the rest of the night. That'll Learn Ya was playing on the bill with, I think, 4 other Rhode Island bands. They were going up third, which meant they wouldn't start to play until 11 p.m. I'm an old lady. Even older now that I just had my birthday on Friday. At 6 p.m. it was inconceivable that I could be awake long enough to get my ass down to the Ocean Mist. But we were going to meet up at Jean and Pat's beforehand, and then all head down, so I succumbed to O'Malley peer pressure (so glad I did), and hung in there. Lucy was at Pat's parents' house, so the two of them were coming out too. Very exciting. Brendan and I drove over to Jean and Pat's. It was a chilly night. Everyone was sitting out on the screened-in porch. Some people there didn't remember That'll Learn Ya, others did - and we all were heading down to the Mist in one hilarious caravan. We wanted to get there by 9 p.m. After the intensity of the day, it was nice to just hang out and relax.

Jokes were made about how dead it was going to be that night at The Mist. Pretty much everyone on that porch has worked at The Mist at some point in their lives, and Katie was on call that night. She was "third" on the list, and she was hoping she wouldn't get called. Someone had stopped by there earlier that night and reported that it was totally dead. My view was - even if it was just US there, it wouldn't matter - it would be a great show. However, judging from the frenzied response on That'll Learn Ya's Facebook page, I had a feeling the place would be packed. It was Thanksgiving weekend, a perfect time. Many of us from that generation no longer live in Rhode Island, but we come home for the holiday. We would all be there. I don't know. I thought the joint would be jumpin'. And whaddya know, at about 8:30, Katie's cell phone rang. She was being summoned to the Mist to work. Which meant the crowds were arriving. Which meant they needed help behind the bar. Which meant it would be packed.

Exciting!

We all got into our respective cars and took off down route 1. Bren was driving. The road up and down outside the Mist was lined with cars. People were parking illegally, with abandon. We cruised up and down the strip looking for a space. "I have never seen it like this," said Bren. We finally squeezed into a spot that said "No Parking" directly above it, but everybody else was freely blocking fire hydrants, crosswalks and driveways, so we threw our hats into the ring. The ocean was crashing on the beach to our right, that ever-present roar, as we hurried along the street to the bar. We walked into the Mist and the place was packed, wall-to-wall people. I ended up seeing tons of people I knew - the biggest surprise being Ram, an old friend from high school. Crazy! But there were also people there that I have known, basically, my whole life. People I played tag and hide-and-go-seek with, T-shirts stained with popsicles and fudgsicles. Childhood friends. Nuts. It was awesome. I was SO glad I wasn't in my pajamas, at home, and the next morning Brendan would say to me, "It was so great, Sheila - wish you had been there." So glad.

During the show, the huge space in front of the stage crammed with people, people dancing and jumping up and down and taking pictures - shouting along with the songs, songs none of us have heard in 20 years, but the lyrics remain intact in our head - Jean leaned over and whispered to me, "I have never seen it like this." Jean has worked at the Mist for years. It was a special special night. You could feel it in the air.

But. I really must pass the baton now to my dear brother Brendan, an amazing writer - he brings me to tears on a regular basis. He did a write-up of the show which is not to be missed, even if you've never heard of That'll Learn Ya. Because we all have those things in our lives - music, a book, a movie - that reminds us of another time, a time when we were young, different, hopeful, sad, whatever. And these things, while they may seem ephemeral, hard to pin down, are actually not. They are as solid, as tangible, as the ocean pounding the sand beneath the Mist. It is strangely comforting. Rediscovering this helps us remember who we are.

Nothing goes away.

Here is Brendan's review of the That'll Learn Ya reunion at the Ocean Mist, on November 28, 2009.

And again, check out the comments. Love, remembrance, acknowledgement, excitement, plus a comment from one of the band members himself.

One of the most beautiful nights I have had in recent memory.

The beach

... during a windy sunset.

Speaking of Block Island

My sister Jean taught out there for a year, and there's nothing like taking a boat through a wintry ocean to go visit your sister. Block Island in the winter is a beautiful and bleak sight to behold.

More Rhode Island love

I am missing Rhode Island right now. I want to be back there.

Here is the lighthouse at Watch Hill, winter sunset-time.

Hope is our motto

Looking at Rhode Island's state house at sunset, it's not hard to see why.

Watch Hill, sunset

A beautiful evening walk wtih my mother in the quaintest little town imaginable. If you've seen Dan in Real Life, you'll recognize a lot of the locations - much of it was filmed in Watch Hill. It's nice to be there off-season when you're the only ones around. And the nice thing about the beach, unlike a lot of Rhode Island beaches, is that it is kind of isolated and hard to get to. There's a really interesting history here - Napa Tree Point was wiped off the face of the planet in the hurricane of 1938 - and you can see why ... it's a long thin strip of sand, completely unprotected. One little girl on Napa Tree Point was hanging on to the joist of her house when the whole thing washed away, and poor little thing floated all the way to Stonington, Connecticut. Stories abound. But boy, is it beautiful. There's an old carousel in town, and cute little houses and stores lining the main drag. And a lighthouse out on a point.

We were on the beach right at "magic hour" (or "magic 20 minutes") when the sunset hits the houses at just the right angle and all of the windows flame out into blazing red and orange.

THE HARBOR

THE HARBOR, THE INN

SIDEWALK, MAIN DRAG

SIGN IN BOOKSTORE WINDOW

THE MAIN DRAG, WATCH HILL

FENCE ON THE WATER

ANOTHER FENCE ON THE WATER

CAROUSEL ROOF, WEATHERVANE

HARBOR

HARBOR SHORELINE, GOLDEN DUNES

DUNES

GOLDEN DUNES

MUM

ENTRANCE TO THE BEACH

DUNES

HOUSES ON THE POINT

LIGHTHOUSE

WATCH HILL BEACH, SUNSET

Walking Watch Hill Beach at sunset with my mom.

A couple pictures.

Photo Sunday

Me on the seawall, freezing my arse off on my birthday, this past November.

Scanning Friday

The beach close to where I grew up. It is dawn here. I remember that that was the morning that Princess Di died. I had set my alarm to go take pictures of the dawn, and then got back in my car at the beach parking lot, turned on the radio and heard the news. The whole morning was strangely surreal.

Scanning Wednesday

There was a field near our house growing up, and sometimes we would be allowed to walk through it to get to school. We had to dodge cows, and jump over a brook, and it was all very exciting for some reason. A great place to live in a totally make-believe world. Also, this was the heyday of Little House on the Prairie, so you could almost pretend you didn't live in "the Ocean State" when you were on that field, and instead lived out on the high plains.

I am sure this photo of me was taken by either Jen or Katy, my kindred spirits at the time. I'm 11 years old or something like that.

Scanning Tuesday

There are a couple of facts you should know to put the following 3 photos in context.

1. In Rhode Island, there was an amusement park called Rocky Point. The rides were rusty and dangerous. The people who ran the rides appeared to be alcoholic halfwits. The entire place was falling apart, a real old-time carnival, and it was a BLAST.

2. One summer day, Mitchell, his sister Sandi, and I went to Rocky Point.

3. There was a ride called The Flume - like a roller coaster which ended with you splashing in the water. We rode it multiple times.

4. Earlier that summer, Mitchell had been cast as one of the show people at Rocky Point. He was going to be "Doc Abbott" - a comedian who stood on his own little stage and did horrible jokes along the lines of, "Oh, just for the halibut" and then pulling out a huge fish. Mitchell was mortified. And also rather frightened. Because the Doc Abbott stage was by itself, out in the middle of nowhere, and the possibility of being run out of Rocky Point by a bunch of heckling drunk halfwits was huge. But the final straw that broke the camel's back was the day at rehearsal when a Rhode Island girl, hired as a dancer, got pissed off because she was being made to do comedic bits and skits. She turned to Mitchell and said, in the thickest Rhode Island accent on the planet, "Allz I wanna do is dyance." Mitchell understood her concerns, but in that moment he had had it. He heard what she had to say, and then strolled up to the director, informed the director he had quit, and walked out of the rehearsal hall. "Allz I wanna do is dyance" is still a refrain amongst my group of friends.

5. Naturally, we had to go find Doc Abbott's stage. Still soaking wet from our Flume rides, we took three photos, one of each of us, "performing" on the stage.

6. I find Mitchell's photo to be truly demonic. He looks like a gleeful dictator.

7. Sandi is, to put it mildly, a fashion guru. Even when she was 16, she would wear gold lame pant suits and stilettoes and still somehow pull it off. She is cutting edge, glamorous, fabulous, and always looks put together. So that is why it is truly confusing to see her here, wearing short white shorts, and white flats. Mitchell and I do not understand what happened.

Lifeguard off duty

Charlestown Beach.

A Providence kind of night

Beth and I drove up to Providence on Sunday night. We dropped off her daughter and her daughter's friend at an all-ages show at The Living Room, and then went to meet up with Michele. It's been a long time since I've hung out in Providence. We went out for appetizers at Ri Ra, an "upscale Irish" place that I remember going to in Dublin, so it must be a "chain". There was an Irish band sitting around at a table, playing. Then we walked along the Providence River at sunset. We saw a tepid protest having something to do with socialism, we saw a man walking around wearing a headdress, we saw a traveling merry mariachi band, with bells on their boots. The statehouse caught the side of the sunset glow and just struck my heart with its beauty. I've always loved that building. Then the three of us went up to Federal Hill (you know, where the colors of the flag of Italy are painted down the middle of the street) and sat outside at an Italian restaurant, with a fountain nearby, and a Frank Sinatra impersonator (pretty damn good), and yummy food and wine. Then we walked through the soft summer night to Pastiche, a great dessert place, for coffee and dessert. We were basically waiting for Ceileidh's show to get out, and there was much texting back and forth between mother and daughter, but still, it was great to get out and have time to spend with my old dear friends. We missed Meredith and Betsy! Beth and I then made our way back to the club, through the wandering throngs of post-concert mania ... and picked up Ceileidh and her friend ... and drove back down to the southern part of the state.

It was a lovely night. It was very nice to see my friends, and also very nice to reacquaint myself with the beauty that is Providence.

Yesterday morning

11 a.m.

Breakfast on the deck of the Ocean Mist.

Setting the stage

....

Boiling the eggs.

The stuff!

The palette we have to work with.

Almost ready!

Ready to dye!!

The dyeing of the eggs

.....

Let's get started.

One down ....

Yellow!

Soaking eggs ...

Blue! I like this one because the table is glass so it looks like the bowl of eggs and the cup of dye is floating in suspension.

Getting there ...

Double-dipping. Cashel is making a half-yellow half-green egg.

Almost done!

All done!

Our finished products

....

Father egg

by Brendan. I particularly like his suit and tie. And his alarmed expression.

Mother egg

by Me. Her hair was meant to be yellow but it turned out sickly chlorine green. Cashel and I decided that she had had a "mishap" at her hairdressers. She also looks vaguely like that singing grapefruit from days of yore on Sesame Street.

Son egg

by Cashel. The red dots are NOT supposed to be chickenpox - I actually forget what they are supposed to be, but Cashel and I both decided that he had a bad case of the pox. You can't really stick with the plan in your HEAD when it comes to Easter egg design. You have to just go with how it comes out.

Daughter egg

by Me. She's home from college break. She has dyed her hair blue and says stuff like, "Everyone is so conventional." Cashel said, "She probably says that everything is 'so lame'." Exactly!!

The father's boss

by Cashel. (I love how old-fashioned gender roles are alive and well in the Easter Egg world. Mother in pearls and a hairdo, father in suit and tie who works for "The Man" ...) Also, I think the boss is awesome. He's dissatisfied. Aren't all bosses??

The Cyclops next-door neighbor

By Bren. I find him downright demonic.

Our nod to tradition.

By Bren.

The earth.

By Me. I realize that South America is WAY too low and that I have added some strange appendage to Baja ... but I did my best. And please notice that I have included Easter Island. I said to the group, "I'm putting Easter Island on now" and Cashel literally put his head down onto the table and started shaking with laughter, saying, "You're going into that much detail?" Nothing better (and I mean NOTHING) than making Cashel laugh like that.

Our group experiment.

This one was dyed in a mixture of ALL the different dyes as well as splashes of seltzer and orange juice.

2007 Year in Pictures

Patch of violets

2007 Year in Pictures

Patch of violets

2007 Year in Pictures

Statue at the beach

2007 Year in Pictures

On the seawall.

2007 Year in Pictures

Yellow leaves, quadrangle.

2007 Year in Pictures

Seafoam

2007 Year in Pictures

Birdfeeder

2007 Year in Pictures

Thanks for the heads up.

2007 Year in Pictures

New England steeple

2007 Year in Pictures

Autumn rain

2007 Year in Pictures

Cornfields

2007 Year in Pictures

Path through the woods

2007 Year in Pictures

In RI parlance: "a bubblah".

2007 Year in Pictures

In RI parlance: "a bubblah".

Autumn leaves

Pretty pretty.

My old stompin' grounds

This past Saturday - a freezing cold day - I went up to URI and wandered around, on the quadrangle - and then went over to the Fine Arts Center, where I spent the majority of my time in college. Like 80% of my time. All the doors were opened. No students - they were all home on Thanksgiving break. But I wandered around to my hearts content, strolling down memory lane. Amazing how nothing has changed!

I went down to the girls dressing room - below the stage. I could still smell the powder, the Aquanet - I could still see all of our reflections in those mirrors ... Brooke, Jackie, Liz, Nancy, Julie, Lee ... all of my friends. Actresses. Costumes hung on the rack. Hustle, bustle, quick changes, curlers, corsets, T-strap shoes, hoop skirts, aprons, bonnets ... My locker was over on the left hand side.

My old stompin' grounds

The Fine Arts Center lobby. I wandered around, staring at all the posters - shows from before my time, shows during my time, and shows after. They're all still there. And that lobby!! How many fights did I have with boyfriends in that lobby. How many embarrassing public meltdowns. How much I have gossiped in that space, whispering with Mitchell, being completely annoying because we couldn't believe what good friends we were. We drove everyone crazy. How many classes did I cut - sitting in that very lobby. LIke: Sheila. You have a class IN THAT BUILDING. If you're going to cut, at least get off the premises!! How many nervewracking waits for auditions - that's where we all would pace and wander, before being brought into the various auditions. How many improvisations were done - with Mitchell and David and Jackie - crazy stuff - David picking us all up over his head and whipping us around. A wonderful advertisement for what it was to be a theatre major. It's a beautiful space and I love how much it has NOT changed.

The box office

Posters for The Five Brothers and The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds - two shows I was in.

Poster for The Gingham Dog. David starred in that one. I played his bigoted sister.

Poster for Reckless. David and Nancy starred. Mitchell was hysterically funny as the ridiculous cheeseball gameshow host. I played David's deaf (or pretending to be deaf) paraplegic wife.

Poster for Anne of Green Gables. I played Anne with an "e". The highpoint of my college career.

Poster for Edwin Drood. I think that was my favorite theatrical experience in all of college. I just played a music hall girl, no big part ... and it was the most fun I've ever had. Jackie and I, as music hall sluts, were joined at the hip. We danced, we laughed, we did stupid bits, we heckled each other, we strutted about ... we had an absolute blast.

And now ... looking back: on my past, seen through the lobby.

My old stompin' grounds

The light lock. The actor's lounge downstairs. Hallways. Ghosts of my younger self EVERYWHERE. And not just my ghosts - but everyone's. David. Mitchell. Jackie. Nancy. Brooke. Jim. Alec. Judith. All of them. These spaces may LOOK empty, but I assure you: they are not.

My old stompin' grounds

The main theatre. Wait til you see the size of the space. We, as students, had no idea how good we had it. You get out in the real world, and you deal with scratchy black-box theatres, seating 70 people ... and you realize: holy crap, the facilities back then were world-class!

Thanksgiving weekend was always the dry tech weekend - students gone, so the technical team can put up the set for the show that opens the following week. I was happy to see nothing had changed. They are doing Little Women, and the dry tech was up and running when I peeked in. I love continuity.

My old stompin' grounds

G Studio. Scene of a million acting classes. A million rehearsals. We did a production of Lanford Wilson's Rimers of Eldritch in G Studio - and the place was transformed into an old rickety tumbleweedy kind of town. That place is full of ghosts. Kimber (teacher) smoking his pipe. Scenes being done. Meisner repetition exercises. So many things. Mitchell and I were reminiscing last night about all that went on in G Studio. And it hasn't changed at all. I auditioned for Picnic in G Studio. It was my introduction to the seriousness of what I wanted to do, and how seriously I wanted to take it. That feeling resides in that room to this day.

My old stompin' grounds

The exterior of the Fine Arts Center - where I spent the majority of my time in college. The statues say it all. It feels like so many important moments of my life happened within view of those statues. It was a freezing cold day, brisk and blue-skied. With red and yellow leaves abundant everywhere I looked. An autumnal day. Very college-y and it made me very nostalgic.

This property is condemned

As a senior in college, I lived in a house off-campus - which, at first, seemed like an awesome deal. It was a big breezy old stone house with a bazillion rooms and a huge yard. I slept in a converted porch off the side. I had about 10 roommates, no lie, the house was so big. Beth's boyfriend at the time (and now husband) was one of my roommates. Beth just told me this last weekend that the house was condemned, and it was a huge scandal. Again, it was full of college students - but things had gotten pretty out of hand, with the parties, and the noise. When the police came to inspect - they found all the boys who lived there out in the backyard playing "naked whiffle ball". (hahahahahahaha) Inside - was a filthy pit of hell. Huge scandal. Boys with pictures in paper.

I went to college in the Paleozoic Era and even then that house was known as a "party house". The infamous Halloween party where Beth became an angry clown was held there. We had parties where it felt like not only the entire college showed up - but the entire surrounding town!

The situation, though, ended up getting so out of hand - that I moved out after one semester.

Some of the issues were (and Beth and I were laughing about this this weekend, just reminiscing about that crazy house):

-- we became a kind of halfway house for every runaway in that town. I would come home after school and find 10 grubby kids wearing flowy skirts and wool caps sitting in my living room.

-- A guy named Vince lived in the attic. He had anger management issues and used to punch holes in the wall.

-- Michael - the guy who had his name on the lease - lived in a massive suite with French doors - and as I remember it, he had a working fireplace, and a silver tea service, and lovely curtains and knick knacks ... He rarely came out of his room. Why would he? It was like Versailles up there.

-- Kerry was a lovely girl, who did Tarot readings all over the house - yet the problem was that she was only 17, and so she was the gateway to the Runaway Contingency. The runaways basically took over that house.

-- There was an unspayed cat who had a litter of babies in the ashy fireplace. The kittens roamed the house. They were EVERYWHERE.

-- Vince and his girlfriend had screaming punching matches on the front doorstep. Alcohol was involved. I heard the screams once and opened the door just in time to see him punch her in the face. Good times!

-- Tom (Beth's boyfriend/now-husband) got so sick of people stealing his food from the refrigerator downstairs that he bought a mini-fridge, put it in his room, and always kept the door locked. This was seen as a massive betrayal by the throngs of people throughout the house. LIke: "who does he think he is???" Uhm, he thinks he's a person who wants to NOT have his food stolen!

-- Janine had an iguana that got loose in the basement one infamous day.

-- The kitchen became so disgusting that I avoided it at all costs. I never ate there - it was too gross - it was like Grey Gardens in there - and the dishes literally piled up in the sink and on the counters. To even get a fork to eat your leftovers was a half-hour long ordeal. Since I never ate there, and it wasn't MY mess, I was like: no fucking WAY am I picking up after the 26 runaways camping out in the living room. My boyfriend and I would literally dash through the kitchen, not looking around, avoiding it completely.

-- Since the house was stone, it was damp, and moldy. But let me just say, too - it is an awesome house - it could have been so great! Huge rooms, fireplaces, etc. My room was FREEZING though. FREEZING.

-- I would knock furtively on Tom's door, where he hid from the chaos ... and he would let me in. Beth was usually there. So we would hang out in Tom's room, a quiet space of sanity - with its own food supply. We would lock the door, too. Nope. YOU CAN'T COME IN.

-- We had to have a big roommate meeting to deal with Vince's anger issues and the holes in the wall. I remember Beth taking the lead, even though she didn't even live at the house. Beth was like, "Dude, there are like 10 holes in the wall in your attic enclave. YOU are paying for those. WE will not. YOU'RE the one with anger management issues."

-- I finally couldn't take it anymore - and I found another situation in a great big house - with only 2 roommates - one of whom I already knew. I approached Michael in his drafty Versailles enclave, with the silver tea service glimmering on the immaculate white linen tablecloth - such a contrast to the kitten-infested MANIA just down the stairs ... and told him, "I'm outta here, bro. Find somebody to take my room." My boyfriend and I packed up my room - and I remember it was pouring rain, torrential downpour ... and it had the feeling of a midnight getaway. Like: go go go go go ... before the runaways steal more of your food ... before another kitten is born on your comforter ... before Vince punches another hole in the wall ... RUN!!!!

I have never forgotten that house, though. It was quite an experience living there.

And I guess its reputation has not changed. I drove by there this past weekend - and there's a big orange sticker on the front door - which basically says: THIS HOUSE IS TOTALLY MESSED UP IN EVERY WAY. LOSERS AND MANIACS LIVE HERE. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Ocean Road

Hovering in the middle of the blue nothingness.

One of my favorite things about Rhode Island is:

10 minutes away from my parents house in one direction you can see:

And 10 minutes away in the OTHER direction you can see:

A ton more new photos here!

Scanner sunday

A gleam of gold.

This was on my way out to Block Island one wintry day. Heavy grey clouds, dark icy ocean - with this gleam of gold at the horizon. Truly spectacular - heart-stoppingly so.

Scanner sunday

A gleam of gold.

This was on my way out to Block Island one wintry day. Heavy grey clouds, dark icy ocean - with this gleam of gold at the horizon. Truly spectacular - heart-stoppingly so.

Traveling

The little train station near my parents' house. I am there all the time ... but I never get over its quaintness. It was just re-done - and they kept the feeling of it intact, which I - with my resistance to change - appreciate. They did cut down the massive beech tree in the middle of the roundabout - and that was something I needed to grieve. But other than that ... it is all the same.

A solitary walk

... in the woods near my parents house. There's a pond, and a shed with a fireplace ... and sometimes the pond freezes (I remember Mere and I skating there on a snow day) ... and it's all marshy and quiet and you can see deer and all that crap. It was getting on towards twilight so the sky was dappled ... I kept trying to capture the exact quality of the sky with my new camera and I didn't QUITE succeed but I will keep experimenting.

Photos below.

Here's that dappled sky I mentioned:

Da shed in da wood.

I guess this person had run out of Post-It notes:

The way thru.

I love this.

Mirror.

Wintry bark.

From inside da shed. Big stone fireplace. Teenage grafitti on the walls. The ghosts of a million lost virginities.

Thru the swamp.

Memory Lane

I took these photos on Easter morning. It was chilly, windy, bright. I went to my old grade school - which is no longer an active school (sniff) - but the ghosts remain. You can see how Mother Nature is taking over ... the weeds in the sandbox, the empty basketball hoops, the rust ... but this place is alive. I went to school here. I am everywhere I look. So is Betsy. And Michele. And Andrew. And Keith. And J. And Greta and Leo and Dee Dee and Kevin and ... my siblings ... This was where we grew up.

The door. This isn't really the front door - that's over to the right, off-camera. This is a side entrance - the boiler room to the left.

This is where the fabled FORT used to be - a huge two-leveled wooden structure - which could be a pirate ship, a fortress, a castle, whatever. Now of course ... it's just bushes and trees. The fort is where I attacked poor Keith, age 9, after chasing him at recess, and kissed him on the cheek. A terrifying moment for both of us. We laughed about it last week. He could not get away from me. And then of course I had to run away, shrieking. I had gotten what I wanted, but what was I supposed to do with it??? No idea. Must run away.

Here's one of the sandboxes. This one was right next to the fort. We would sit on those triangular wooden sides, our feet in the sand. When we were older, say, 10 or 11 ... we didn't play in the sandbox. But the girls would all convene there - to gossip, plan our attacks on the boys, chatter away. I also remember that Betsy used to know how to make herself faint - she would hyperventilate, then hold her breath, and keel over. This was a huge draw - kids would run from all sides of the playground to "watch Betsy faint". And she would do it in this sandbox - so that she wouldn't crack her head open on the cement. Good times, good times.

This just struck me as very desolate and poetic.

I love this.

Alaska. Off to the side and up around the corner.

The Great Rift Valley of ... er ... Oklahoma?

A bubblah. This is out the back door and to the right - we used to play ferocious dodgeball in this small brick alcove. The bubblah is kid-height - everything makes one feel like a huge giant.

Target practice!

This picture is full of ghosts. Ghosts of a bazillion 4-square games, many many years ago.

Through the glass darkly. Over to the left was my 6th grade class - where Andrew gave me the Valentine - way down at the end of the hall is the "multipurpose room" - where we would have gym on rainy days, lunch every day - and where plays would be put on on occasion. I also remember seeing The Computer who wore tennis sneakers there - on some rainy day. Huge screen pulled down ... all of us in the darkness ... who knows why some things stick in the brain.

Old messages. Hieroglyphics of a bygone age.

Florida. Georgia. Alabama.

Gather ye rosebuds.

Rhode Island: zooming in

For some reason, this strikes me as cool. Zooming in on the Map of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, circa 1880. Here's the map itself.

But I like the random zooming in ... I love maps, anyway - they're just so interesting to look at ... I like the one of the Point Judith lighthouse. And the lighthouse at the northern tip of Block Island. But also the coastline - with the names of all of the various rocks ... rocks that I know and love.

Tilting tree ...

... down the street ...

... anchored above by a star.

The Plain Girl

Maggie didn't know why she went to work in the factory, really. It was right down the street from her parents' house, they were hiring, and also, there seemed to be something stuck somewhere, a glittery ball-bearing rolling around in her gut.

And Daniel. Daniel was another ball-bearing.

Daniel, her boyfriend of a year and a half, in his first year at Harvard Business School, was seven years older than she, and he tried to get her to articulate why she went to work in a factory, as opposed to trying to do something with her degree, seek out the spotlight elsewhere. His eyes were withdrawn, baffled. He tried to be kind but Maggie had a snappy temper, which intimidated him. How could she explain to him that she did not obsess over “Why”; she did not assign the factory-job any meaning. It was just what she ended up doing. For now. Daniel was impatient for things to be settled. He never said so, but impatience exhaled off of him. There were moments when, looking at Daniel's confused and worried face, Maggie felt for him. She really did. It couldn't be easy.

Maggie slept on the pull-out couch in the den in her parents’ basement. Her childhood bedroom was being re-done into a guest room, no longer hers. She wandered through the house at all hours of the night, standing on the back porch, falling up into the night-sounds, trying to connect with the smells of nature, the sky crowded with stars, the pitch-black sway of trees in the wind. Nothing felt logical.

The basement. Random exercise bicycles, old Fisher Price toys, the flopping-over-sound of clean clothes in the drier. There was a den in the basement, with a dusty black and white television, built-in bookshelves overflowing with her father’s Latin textbooks from 1964 and fifty copies of Huck Finn for her mom's classes, piles of scratchy old records, and a muffling deep-blue rug. The pull-out couch was scratchy hard wool, the air down there was moldy-damp, packasandra crowded at the windows, the furnace burst into roaring life in the middle of the night right beside her head.

To make it to the factory line by 6 am, her alarm was set to 5. Maggie’s best friend Constance got a job at the factory, too. Constance and Maggie were local Rhode Island girls, who had worked hard to rid themselves of the accent, who had chosen the big state school over more elite far-away institutions because the theatre department was a fine one, and also, it was kind of difficult to leave Rhode Island if you were born and bred. Constance didn't live with her parents. Constance rented a windy little cabin down on the beach, where she drank wine, watched television, smoked cigarettes, read Margaret Atwood out-loud to her cat, and occasionally woke up with a crazy long-haired boy from Matunuck in her bed.

Constance had a car, and would come to pick Maggie up every morning, at 5:30. Maggie, hunched up on her parents couch in the night, waited, waited, still half-asleep. Numb. Headlights through the foggy black, tires crunching on the gravel. The passenger door was stuck closed, so Maggie had to hoist herself through the window. Constance's eyes were pissed and sad. A cigarette dangled from her shiny red lips. Maggie wondered if her friend might have been born with a full-face of pancake makeup. Constance was never without it, even before dawn.

The air was chill. They both were depressed.

"Oh, Jesus Christ," snarled Constance. "Here we go."

They stopped off at the coffee shop in bleak shuttered-up Peace Dale on their way to the factory. Nobody was awake in the "biggest little state in the Union", except for Maggie, Constance, and the sluggish high school kids making the vats of coffee in the dawn. The shop's fluorescent lights streamed across the rotary, cutting a beam through the darkness, making it look like a just-landed UFO. Owned by a fundamentalist Christian, the regulation Styrofoam cups were stamped with Bible verses. The red-lettered quotations jangled their nerves at such an obnoxiously early hour.

Jesus said 'My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work. – John 4:34

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. 1 Peter 2:9

They turned blind eyes to the redemption offered, coffee going down like a narcotic.

Constance made wise-cracks about the two of them being like the two girls in Officer and a Gentleman.

"Hey, Lynette," Constance would wearily sigh a greeting, as Maggie struggled grimly through the car window in the salt-aired dark.

Working in the factory put that movie into grim perspective, revealing it as escapist claptrap. No guy in officer whites would stroll through the machinery to sweep them away. And if one did, perchance, the other women on the line, obsessed with filling quotas, certainly would not drop what they were doing and start to clap and weep like appreciative seals, calling out, "Way to go, Maggie! Way to go!" Daniel couldn't lift Maggie up in his arms anyway. Public displays kind of embarrassed her and she was too heavy. Also, the other women on the line were, in general, bitter bitches.

Constance worked in a dark echoey corner of the factory floor, worked in a team with Ericka, a pale girl with a mullet and eternal Megadeth T-shirts. Constance and Ericka became friends. In a grim survivalist kind of way. Ericka regaled Constance with tales of her chaotic Point Judith life. A kid she lost custody of, a wacko alcoholic lobster-fisherman boyfriend, drunken scenes on the Galilee wharfs. To Ericka, "partying" was a valid answer to the question, "So what were you up to all weekend?"

Maggie found no such comrade. She was stuck over on the crowded highly-competitive "line", screwing the same wires into the same surge-protectors, and then passing it all on to the impatient woman to her right, a woman with fingers faster than a cyclone. Maggie's brain blanked out for hours on end. It was very disorienting.

The women on the "line", as far as Maggie could tell, were all married sex-mad lunatics.

"I had sex on a freakin' SUBmarine once!" proclaimed Annie, looking around aggressively, making sure that everyone was duly impressed.

"Hell, that's nothin'!" crowed Patti with an "i". Patti with an "i", in Maggie's view, was a malevolent force, a tentacled frightening woman who brooked no opposition. On Maggie's first day, Patti turned, slowly looked her up and down, and then went back to her work, without another word. Maggie tried to just stay out of her way, which was difficult, because Patti was eight months pregnant. Patti, fingers a blur over her board, called out to the rest of the cackling line, "Dave and I had sex in the bathroom at the Capitol Building up in Providence!"

Roars of laughter.

Maggie tried to fill her mind with pale milky light, she tried to call herself out of darkness like her coffee cup commanded, but the thought of Patti, lumberingly huge, having sex with her fat breathy husband at the Capitol Building was distinctly awful.

Maggie was a virgin. She didn't believe in sex before marriage, and after listening to the line women's ghoulish banter, day in, day out, she stopped believing in sex during marriage as well.

The Books: "North of Providence" (Edward Allan Baker)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

I am still on my script shelf

Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is North of Providence, by Edward Allan Baker

A Rhode Island playwright ... this was one of his early successes. I think it's a bit shrill and obvious - although I love his later stuff. Here, you can see him as a young playwright - turning up the heat on the characters, making sure the obstacles were in place - it has a bit of an artificial feel to it. Also - he fills his plays with Rhode Island references, which - naturally - I love. Here he goes a bit overboard - every other line has some reference to a RI landmark. It's funny, I still love it - but it's self-conscious. That's what this play is, even though the writing is quite good: it's self-conscious. It's like Tennessee Williams' first play - you read it, and you can see the later playwright there in embryo, you can see his themes, his concerns ... but he's a bit heavy-handed with the plot, you can see the puppet strings, etc.

The story of this play: Bobbie and Carol, brother and sister, in their 20s. They live in Providence, Rhode Island. Their father is dying of cirrhosis of the liver. They have a couple other brothers and sisters as well, but none of them are in the play. Their dying fahter was a son of a bitch. Bobbie lives at home with his parents still and is kind of a loser. He plays the Lotto, smokes cigarettes, and bums around. Carol has "gotten out". She's married, has a kid. The story of this play (it's very short) - is this: Carol comes to the house to MAKE Bobbie go to the hospital to say goodbye to his father. She has HAD it. Bobbie is refusing to believe that this is it - "He's been this close so many times before - what makes this one different?" Carol knows that this is it, and it is urgent - in her mind - that Bobbie come with her to the hospital. Of course the two of them end up fighting - and of course all kinds of old old stuff comes out. There's a ton of baggage there. The main thing is: Carol was raped while she was babysitting when she was 16 and ... Bobbie , who was supposed to have been babysitting with her, wasn't there. The two of them have never discussed it. The rape destroyed the family. Bobbie and Carol's dad had always thought Carol was perfect, called her Miss America - and after she got raped, he basically dropped her like a hot potato. His little girl was "ruined". Bobbie has never forgiven himself for not being there. He has given up on life.

Finally - all of this comes out during the play.

I'll post one of the lighter passages of the script - because his dialogue really is quite good. You also totally get the sense of siblings in this excerpt. It sounds very real to me.

From North of Providence, by Edward Allan Baker

CAROL. Anything out in the kitchen I can get for you? [He watches her put down pocketbook then looks back up at her]

BOBBIE. What?

CAROL. Anything out in the kitchen to eat?

BOBBIE. Probly something. Why don't you go look. [Bobbie gives a slight nod of his head. Carol exits. Bobbie immediately picks up her pocketbook and takes out billfold. He removes the cash and stuffs it into his pocket. Upon putting back billfold, he finds gun. He looks to the dresser and quickly puts gun in his suit-coat pocket. Pause. Carol re-enters]

CAROL. [sandwich on plate] Need I tell you what baloney is made of?

BOBBIE. Baloney is baloney.

CAROL. Tony went to see Dad the other night. He said Dad told him that if he found out Tony voted for Reagan, he'd haunt him forever. [Pause. Carol is eating raisins] You ever see that girl ... uh ... the one who had tits that stuck out like canons, uh ... she worked at Bess Eaton doughnuts.

BOBBIE. [eating] Cheryl.

CAROL. Who?

BOBBIE. Cheryl. [He puts down sandwich and looks around for large butt in ashtray]

CAROL. You smoke too much.

BOBBIE. Takes a man to face cancer. [Lights up]

CAROL. That's sick. [A beat] Cheryl, right. You brought her to Karen's wedding.

BOBBIE. Ann's wedding.

CAROL. Who was that you brought to Karen's wedding?

BOBBIE. I didn't go to Karen's wedding.

CAROL. You were too at Karen's wedding.

BOBBIE. Nope.

CAROL. It was my wedding you didn't come to.

BOBBIE. Where was Karen's wedding?

CAROL. I couldn't believe you didn't come to my wedding. I was pissed.

BOBBIE. [puts shoes on] Where was Karen's wedding?

CAROL. You went to all the other weddings but not to mine.

BOBBIE. I didn't go to Jean's first wedding.

CAROL. Nobody did.

BOBBIE. I went to Karen's wedding?

CAROL. You were with some other fat girl. I can't remember who but she was a blimpola, I remember that.

BOBBIE. Marsha?

CAROL. Fatter.

BOBBIE. Where was Karen's wedding?

CAROL. Harp and Shamrock.

BOBBIE. That the one when Uncle Ritchie was doin the strip tease and his false teeth fell outta his mouth?

CAROL. That was Kathy's wedding.

BOBBIE. At the Harp and Shamrock?

CAROL. Brunswick. [Beat] I was hurt you didn't come to mine. My only brother an you couldn't drag ya lazy ass to Seekonk.

BOBBIE. [putting sweater on] I was doin somethin. I forget.

CAROL. We were close Bobbie, me an you. Was always Carol and Bobbie. Like Donny and Marie cept we can't sing.

BOBBIE. Donna Cotter.

CAROL. What?

BOBBIE. Donna Cotter is the one I brought to ...

CAROL. Right, right. She had the legs that looked like they were upside down.

BOBBIE. [combing hair, putting on more aftershave] All you sistas married wops an I never said nothin about it.

CAROL. [on her own train of thought] We sort of ... uh drifted apart ... it was right after the ...

BOBBIE. Stop! Don't even talk about it.

CAROL. It's all right now. I can talk about it.

BOBBIE. I don't want you to!

CAROL. Too bad what you want!

BOBBIE. I don't want to hear it!

CAROL. It was strange ... well not too strange ... [Bobbie is nervously going through ashtray again] I thought it was weird that -- that you were at the trial the whole time an havin to listen to uh ... the details.

BOBBIE. Do you have to bring this shit up? Huh? Do you have to bring ...

CAROL. Yes! Talkin about it is what made it all better! It became thin an went away. It was back in another life!

BOBBIE. Let's drop the subject.

The ocean mist turkey bowl

The night before Thanksgiving, Siobhan and I drove down to the Ocean Mist - what amounts to our local pub - to meet up with Jean and Pat. Siobhan is now obsessed with Fiona Apple's latest, and so we blasted it on the way down. I have to say: I only heard the first three tracks and I was blown away. The Ocean Mist is a big rickety shack that sits right on the ocean - there are stilts underneath the deck, and at high tide, the waves roll right under the bar. Apparently, a surfer who had been struggling in the strong rip tide had washed up underneath the deck that very morning and crashed against the pilings. One of the guys in the bar had heard the thud and went running down to see a surfer face down in the sand, the waves pulling him back out. The surfer was alive - and apparently, after he sat upand cleared his head for a second - said he was fine and didn't need to go to the hospital. He strolled off down the beach, as though it were an ordinary morning. Dude - you just smashed against the pilings underneath a fisherman's bar. Maybe you should go get your head checked out? Uhm ... no? Okay, then, happy Thanksgiving!

The white birds were in their usual place, bobbing up and down on the dark waves, lit up by the lights of the bar. So bizarre. Nobody is quite sure why they congregate there, but we discussed many theories. They like the light? Fish hang out there too? The water is warmer? No idea. But the image of them never ceases to startle me - like little white origami formations, clustered together on the dark ocean, going up and down with the surging of the waves.

The Ocean Mist is one of those bars that always gives people an incentive to come back - bands, drink specials, door prizes ... Sadly, they have canceled their very popular open mike night because the guy who was running it had other obligations. So they tried to come up with something, something fun that would keep people there ...

The activity for the night before Thanksgiving was Turkey Bowling. A frozen turkey, wrapped up in electric tape ... a bunch of bowling pins set up on the stage ... and you had to sign up for your turn to Turkey Bowl.

Now before the Turkey Bowl began, everyone was totally making fun of it and laughing at how lame it was. "Man ... they cancel open mike night and all they can do to replace it is a Turkey Bowl???"

And of course - once the Turkey Bowl actually began, it is hard to describe just how INTO it everyone was. The guy running the thing had a clipboard, which we all just thought was hilarious. So official! A local dude with a Red Sox hat on, a big sweatshirt, making checkmarks on his clipboard FOR THE TURKEY BOWL.

The turkey, naturally, had stopped being frozen maybe half an hour into the thing - so it was dripping all over the place. People had to wear surgical gloves so they wouldn't get nasty turkey drips all over them. It soon became clear that you could not ROLL the turkey at the bowling pins ... because, of course, it would not roll. No, you had to HURL it at the bowling pins. So there we all were, on a cold windy night, the waves rolling underneath the bar, the white terns bobbing on the waves outside the window - cheering and shouting at the turkey bowlers. Who were CHUCKING this turkey across the stage with all their might.

Jean, in her fuzzy black angora sweater, threw the turkey across the stage and missed every bowling pin by a mile. I wish I had a photo. Jean, glamorous, black-clad, her long hair, her big black boots, shouting about how it was unfair how far back they had to stand, and could she try again. I was crying with laughter watching Siobhan up on the stage, hurtling a frozen turkey through the air. WHAT ARE WE DOING?? It was awesome.

Heaven

Swimming today. There was a heaviness in the air - The air itself was almost green, thick and heavy with impending weather. At the beach, there were thick black clouds marching over the whiteness of the rest of the sky. The clouds came from the south in a black wall. And so the sky was half black, half white. Beautiful. No rain. And the ocean was a slate grey, dark, chilly, with nice big waves, rolling in, one after the other. It takes your breath away. So does the salt air. The beach wasn't really crowded, because it wasn't sunny, but there were lifeguards on duty, and tons of surfers paddling out to meet the waves. The water was cold (at least compared to the humid air) - so refreshing you almost felt like laughing out loud. Which I did. I never wanted to leave the ocean. There was almost no seaweed. I was by myself, and I just swam and rode waves in and bobbed up and down on my back, riding up and down the huge swells, for about an hour. I never wanted to leave. Walking back to my car, through the sun which had just then weakly re-appeared, my skin felt tight and clean. Salt-soaked. That first shock, when diving into the water, is awesome. After you get used to the cold, it's kind of like ... damn. I never ever want to get out of the ocean. Ever. I'm from the Ocean State. I'm a Rhode Island girl, through and through.

I can't let it go ...

I can't leave the world of the high-school reunion yet. I can't get enough. I want more. I want our entire group to get together every weekend if possible. hahahaha

I am already on the planning committee for the next one - along with Betsy, Mere, Beth, and Leo. WHOO-HOO. The emails have already flown back and forth - where to have it, should it be a cruise, a clambake ... should we have a cruise AND a clambake? Should we have a buffet table? Venue discussions .... (Lisa, we might go for a multi-day event next time, like you had for yours.. God help us all.)

Let the good times roll.

The ironic thing is that I really disliked high school, actually. I didn't start to blossom until college - which is where I started to feel powerful, feel like I knew a little bit who I was, I felt pretty in college - for the first time ever ... College was a true release for me and I had a sense that that would be true, which is partly why I despised high school so much, and couldn't wait to get out of what I fondly called "that hellhole institution". But seeing everyone as adults has been poignant, piercing, fun, overwhelming ... and I am an emotional addict.

Gimme drugs, gimme drugs ...

No Cimment

The nostalgia continues ...

Last night, after having a long conversation with my carny friend Mitchell, I sat at my desk, and looked through my high school yearbook. I looked at EVERY PAGE. I scrutinized EVERY SIGNATURE. I read all of our little blurbs, wondering what the hell some of the references were.

Pictures of the Homecoming dance ... which I didn't go to. But the dresses! The ruffly frilly dresses of the day. The guys in tuxes. Do high school boys even wear tuxes anymore? Really cute picture of Crissy J. when she was voted Homecoming Queen.

There are so many pictures of my friend Betsy scattered through the entire yearbook that she must have paid off the Yearbook editor or something. hahaha

In the yearbook is literally one of the funniest photos ever taken of me, EVER. This is from my moment of cheerleading glory ... words can't describe it ... Whoever caught that moment on film should be given an award. My face in the photo looks absolutely manically insane. I'll post it sometime. hahahahaha

Two HILARIOUS typos in the senior blurbs - typos that are now infamous in my group of friends:

-- In Betsy's case, under "Favorite Quote" she had written: "I want to go wild like a blister in the sun." The Violent Femmes were very big in my school. Sadly, when the yearbook came out, the quote read: "I want to go wild like a BUSTER in the sun". Doesn't have quite the same ring.

-- In Beth's case: this takes a bit of set-up. We were in drama class together. One of the things that drove us crazy about our class was that after we would work on a scene, or do a monologue, or whatever - the teacher would invariably look around the room, and say, "Comments?" SHE ALWAYS did that. It drove us nuts. Like: YOURE. THE. TEACHER. What do YOU have to say? No. She always turned it over to the class, with that one word: "Comments?" Ohhh, it went up our asses!! So Beth, in her senior blurb, wrote under "Pet Peeve": "Comments." We thought to ourselves gleefully and maliciously, "Maybe our teacher will see that and realize how much it drove us crazy! hahahaha Revenge!!!!" Sadly, when the yearbook finally came out, Beth's pet peeve had magically turned into "Cimments" - which makes no sense and completely ruined our chances for revenge. Now, though: the word "Cimments" has basically been added to our collective vocabulary. A group email will go around from one of us, explaining: "Okay, so I'm at a crossroads in my life - and I need some advice ... here's the situation ...blah blah blah blah ..." Story is told in detail. And then at the end comes the inevitable question to the group: "Cimments?"

Reunion humor

Mere and I were talking with good old Chris W. I didn't recognize him at first, without the blonde RINGLETS he had in high school - now he's a big beefy man - but the second we started talking, I thought: Yes. There is Chris W! From high school: funny, goofy, nice, football player, a big brash guy - and yet, he had these Shirley Temple curls. So cute!! It was good to see him.

But anyway:

He told a story about taking his mom to see War of the Worlds. His mother hadn't been to the movies in quite some time, so she was very excited. She talked to him throughout the movie. Making comments, asides ... at one point, the people behind them SHUSHED them!!

At one point, Tom Cruise (quiet, peanut gallery) is trying to bond with his estranged son - and invites him to play catch in the back yard. Cruise is wearing a New York Yankees hat. The son is angry with his father, so when he comes out into the back yard to play catch, he is wearing a Red Sox hat. Cruise notices the hat, and says grimly to his son, "So that's how it's gonna be, huh?"

At that moment, Chris W's mother leaned over to him and kindly informed him: "The Yankees and the Red Sox have a really old rivalry ..."

We were howling. Like: thanks, Mom, I KNOW.

Reunion snapshots

-- Shelly coming over to our table and saying, "I am sorry, but all the girls in our class look SO HOT."

-- Our terrorizing vice principal was there, slugging back drinks at the bar. He was such a bad-ass. He kept us all in line. We all reminisced about the small detention room he kept off to the side of his office called "the Tank".

-- Mere and I took off our shoes to dance. No way can I get through Rock Lobster in heels.

-- Laughing SO HARD with Ram and Erin about the incident in Chicago - which someday I MUST write about. Erin came running over to me: "You are my witness! You are my witness!" Wow. Major nuttiness. The last time I saw Erin and Ram was during "the incident" ... which was YEARS ago. So we all just had to roar with laughter about it.

-- The names ... the faces ... waves of memory. John L., Mark W., Cris D., Donna O., Peter C., and on and on and on ... Chris W!! Telling us stories about taking his mother to the movies. Very amusing. But the faces ... seeing all the faces ...

-- Laughing with Cindy C. about how she was ALWAYS GROUNDED in junior high. ALWAYS. We used to sit in the back of the school bus. "Wanna go to a movie this weekend?" "Can't, I'm grounded." "Want to go roller skating on Friday?" "Can't. I'm grounded."

-- Saw pictures of people's kids. Which was so cool.

-- Leo looked and smelled like a million bucks. He wore a suit. He brought his yearbook over to Beth's house beforehand, and we all sat in the kitchen, rain POURING down outside, flipping through the photos of our class. Leo pretty much knew what was going on with every single person.

-- Keith M. Couldn't get over it when I first saw his face. Could. Not. Get. Over. It. We talked off and on the whole night, and by the end I was still getting used to his grown-up adult face. Beautiful.

-- Talking with my old South Road school classmates about the sad event of the closing of our old school. Beth has up-to-the-minute updates in this regard, so we talked a lot about the fate of our school. Keith and I laughed about me kissing him behind the fort (the fort no longer exists - BUMMER), and I got a chance to apologize for chasing him down like a wild-haired maenad (thanks for the word, Anne). We also ROARED about this enormous DOME which used to be on the playground. It was like a jungle gym, only in a dome shape ... that thing was huge, so dangerous!! Kids would hang from the top like little chimps, with no supervision. I did it myself. hahahaha You say to any kid who went to South Road School in the 70s: "How 'bout the Dome??" and you'll get a big response.

-- During dinner, many conversations about camp. We all went to the same camp - another experience that deserves a couple separate posts. Beth and Michelle's kids were, that very week, up at the SAME CAMP we had all gone to as kids. And our dear friend Betsy couldn't be with us at the reunion because she runs that week of camp ... It was sad to not have her there - but also strangely perfect that she would be THERE on that night. A place we all have such fond memories of.

-- I said something to Beth during dinner that made her do a spit-take.

-- So good to see my old friend Kate. She seems like she's doing really well ... and I had a really great time talking with her, catching up.

-- Oh yes, and the wasted woman showing up ... who ... we had no idea who she was ... and she acted very familiarly toward us ... she had no name tag. She was WASTED.

-- Friends: please add more in the comments.

Nostalgia

Intense! Nostalgia suffusing everything. My reunion was a really intense night. But not without its whimsy either. I have been listening to Foo Fighters Color and the Shape on an endless loop. Ramblings about Dave Grohl here. Especially "Monkey Wrench" and "Up in Arms" - maybe because those two songs remind me of what it sometimes felt like to be a teenager. Not the part of being a teenager that is like a Smiths songs - but the part of being a teenager that is free, full of possibility, excitement, exuberance. Yet there's something retrospective about the feel of the songs ... like you're looking back on that exuberance fondly, remembering what it was like.

That's how it felt at my reunion, standing at the bar with Keith M., with others, chatting our heads off. It was so feckin' GREAT.

I think I need to write more posts about high school. Get it out of my system. I have a couple in the works.

There was a girl from a couple years ahead of our class who came as her sister's date (her sister was in my class). She came over to talk with us at our table and said that a couple years before, she had had her class reunion - and in general, it was really awkward and stiff. She said, "Listen to how much conversation is going on in this room right now ... Hear how loud it is? It wasn't that way with my year at all. You could hear the clink of silverware on the plates."

Wow. Ours wasn't like that at all. The bar was always surrounded by a throng of people. Mingling was rampant. There was much hilarity. There was much dancing.

"Paradise by the Dashboard Light" was played. hahahahaha So was:

1. many many Michael Jackson tunes. In memory of who he once was, and what his music meant to our class

2. Rock Lobster

3. Angel is a centerfold - hahahaha

Everyone was personable, friendly, fun to talk to ... There were a couple of people I was excited specifically to see. Keith M., of course. I think I covered that. Also Andrew. Of spitball Valentine fame. Within 2 weeks time this past spring, the two of them contacted me - having found my blog. Separately. Correspondences sprung up. Pictures exchanged. I guess I'm a sucker for the past. I love to know there's a continuum. I love to have connections. The fact that many of my friends go back to adolescence and childhood (Betsy, Michelle, Mere, Beth) is one of the great joys of my life. I know it's rare. Many people lose friends along the way ... I have certainly lost a couple, but not ALL of them. And I love that. I love that these people knew me when I was a CHILD. And Andrew and Keith, while never my best friends, were certainly very very special to me ... There was a sparkle there, a fizz ... because they were "boy friends". I was, in my own 9 - 11 year old way, wildly in love with both of them. They were my favorite "boy friends" from childhood. And Andrew giving me that damn Valentine when we were 11 - the Valentine that I still have - just ... it's one of those memories that has never lost its power. And how amazing it was to write that post about the Valentine he gave me, not knowing he would eventually read it, and then have him find it so soon afterwards. I hadn't spoken to Andrew in 20 years! And then suddenly - there he was. Emailing me, and even leaving a comment on the post!! Through reading that post, he was able to see the impact his small gesture when he was a young boy had on me so so many years ago. The Internet, man. It's changed everything.

So within 2 weeks, I'm not kidding, suddenly I was getting emails from Andrew and Keith M. again. Childhood boy friends. Those two are no longer connected either ... it's not like Andrew contacted Keith saying, "Hey Sheila has a blog!" No. They contacted me separately. But ... so close in time ... after so many years ...

To see them both at the reunion - I mean, it always would have been cool to see them - but it was even cooler, because we had so recently gotten back in touch. I felt like we had so much to catch up on. Also, I felt like: because I'm an adult now, and not a 9 year old girl, I am more able to just BE with them, to just talk and listen, and be present in the moment. How many people get that chance, with people from their past?

Sigh. I am filled with emotion.

It'll calm down soon, but for now I'll just listen to Foo Fighters Up in Arms again ... because it reminds me of when I was young. When we all were young.

Up in Arms

The rain is here and you, my dear,
are still my friend.
It's true the two of us are back
as one again,

I was the one who left you,
Always coming back, I could not forget you, girl
Now I am up in arms again

Together now - I don't know how
this love could end.
My lonely heart it falls apart
for you to mend.

I was the one who left you,
Always coming back, I could not forget you, girl
Now I am up in arms again

Sniffle ....

Only in my home town ...

... would the following exchange make ANY sense.

Me: She is no longer allowed to go to the Ocean Mist.
Beth, Mere, Michelle: (all with tones of understanding) Wow. Woah ... No shit ...
Michelle: That's like being kicked out of the Unity Club.
Huge burst of collective laughter.

Speaking of my reunion:

It was a living breathing Diary Friday retrospective.

Some of these people I have known since I was 5 years old. I love continuums. I love evidence that there is a connection between who I was then and who I am now. It's strangely comforting, because so much in life has to do with flux, and change, and upheaval. It's nice to know that some things remain the same. Some things cannot be touched.

Priceless: flirting with people that you once played ring-around-the-rosy with. Flirting with people you met when YOU DID NOT KNOW THE ALPHABET . Flirting with people you knew when you only were 3 feet tall.

Yes. I did a lot of flirting. I'm incorrigible.

Tunnel of green, silver in the air

I've been away. Had to get the hell out of this city.

I missed the salt air, the green, the mist, the smell of the turf farms near my house. Also, it was my mother's birthday. And I needed to see my sister. It had been too long. And the high school friends. Needed to see them. The touchstones. My forever-people. Rhode Island calling.

The street off of which my parents neighborhood lies is, at this time of year, literally a tunnel of green. No sky can peek through that lushness. It's a green twisting corridor, undulating forward, as far as you can see.

I got off the train on Saturday and was hit in the face with a big ol' wind, all of the trees bending, the leaves turned inside out. It was muggy, hot - and very grey. New York City had also been muggy, I had trudged to the train through the liquid haze, and was drenched in sweat by the time I arrived at Penn Station. So to be confronted by a huge sweeping ocean-wind in Rhode Island was fabulous. I felt like I could breathe again. A heavy milk-like fog over everything. And the sound of the leaves, being whipped about high up in the trees, filled the air with a roar. You could FEEL big weather approaching, in that ever-present whispery roar.

Finally, a couple of hours after I arrived, the weather came. Pouring thundering rain - but that only came after the air turned a strange silver, hard to explain - but it's the way the air looks when lightning is coming. You can feel the electric potential in the molecules - the trees suddenly get very still. The leaves settle down, and a tsunami of quiet motionless-ness washes over the land. It's waiting. The landscape is waiting. And then comes the silver feeling in the air. The hair on your arms rises up, obeying that invisible silver command.

Then - in a whoosh - the silver is snuffed out, the sky opens up, and a downpour beats on the grass, beats on the leaves - and everything gets very very dark. The clouds are overhead.

I stood out on the screened-in porch and watched all of this, in thrall. The coolness of the rain, the wet air ... the almost-offensive lushness of the green - the sunflowers bending under the weight of the rain .... Damn. That's why I come home! For moments like that.

There's more to tell, but that's it for now.

Small and cool fact about my home state

There is only one newspaper in the United States that comes out on Sunday afternoon, (as opposed to Sunday morning) and that is the local paper for Westerly, in Rhode Island, The Westerly Sun.

Because The Westerly Sun comes out at 3 pm it was the only newspaper in the entire country to report the bombing of Pearl Harbor, on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941 - on the day it actually happened.

It is a teeny little local newspaper ... and it was the FIRST and ONLY on that day of days.

Some facts about Little Rhody

-- sent to me by a reader. Thank you!!

Here it is:

"6 Things You Don't Know About Rhode Island".

One thing I would add: We are the smallest state with the longest name.

Amusing moments in the piece above:

-- the status symbol of having a low number on your license plate. Heh heh heh.

Those who have the good social fortune to drive a car bearing a plate with both their initials and a low number are either very wealthy and/or involved in organized crime.

-- Buddy Cianci, our infamous mayor. A convicted felon. But responsible for dragging Providence out of the slums and into prosperity. The man has served 2 prison sentences. His last campaign he ran with this slogan: Buddy Cianci: A Man of Conviction Only in Rhode Island.

-- the whole quahog thing. Damn straight. We do not eat clams. We eat quahogs. Narragansett Bay is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

You know you're from Roe Dylin' if...

Just found this very funny list about Roe Dylindaz. (Rhode Islanders... to the uninitiated.)

Half of these I do exhibit, although I am now in exile from my homeland.

Check out this post I wrote a while back about getting directions from a Rhode Islander. In it I say: Rhode Island is the kind of state where you ask for directions, and this is what someone will tell you: "Okay, so you go down this street and you take a right where the A&P used to be ... then you stay on that road, and when you come to the end of it, take a left where the Bess Eaton used to be ... and what you're looking for is on Rt. 138 where that Tae Kwan Do studio used to be." Rhode Islanders give directions based on things that USED to be there.

Well, one of the items on this "You know you're from Rhode Island if..." list is:

You have used a demolished landmark such as ALMACS or Finast when giving directions.

Oh, I felt vindicated.

As I read the list, many many memories came to my mind:

-- You own garden tools from Job Lot. (I have a watering can that I bought at Job Lot in Wakefield. Of course I do. Job Lot's the best.)

-- Your first live concert was at The Civic Center or Rocky Point. (The first concert I ever went to was Huey Lewis at the Civic Center - which is NO LONGER CALLED THE CIVIC CENTER - but just so you know: everybody in RI still calls it the Civic Center, and will, until the sun rises no more.)

-- You still call the Rhode Island Mall the Midland Mall. (The RI Mall has not been "the Midland Mall" since I was in high school, many many years ago, but I still refer to it as "the Midland Mall" - and have to take a minute to remember the "new" name of it. "New" meaning something that is 20 years old.)

-- You know what a burger "The Newport Creamery Way" is. (Ah, Newport Creamery - which has very recently closed its doors. It's like a Friendly's, but much friendlier, and VERY Rhode Island. They sell huge chocolate shakes called Awful Awfuls. My friends and I spent more time at Newport Creamery than we ever spent in the hallowed halls of high school. Newport Creamery also put us under a spell, which I will call "The Laughing Spell". Any time we sat down to eat there, hilarity and hi-jinks ensued. So much so that we literally could not get ourselves together enough to order. The waitress would come over to our table, and we would collectively start howling with laughter. Another favorite Newport Creamery story is from my college years: a bitchy Newport Creamery waitress made the mistake of saying something bitchy to my already-very-bitchy friend Sue (I say that with love.) It became a bitch-fest, Rhode Island-style. Sue said, "I'd like to get the banana split with extra fudge, please." The bitchy waitress said, "Uhm ... that's called a Double-Fudge-Ramalama Ding Dong." (Or whatever. Basically, the waitress corrected Sue.) Sue gave her a withering glare and said, "I don't care if it's called Wannie on the Half-Shell. That's what I want, bitch." (Heads up: "Wannie" was one of our joke names for "vagina" in college.) We all BURST into laughter, and literally did not stop laughing until we left the restaurant. We were under the spell.

-- You think vodka and Del's is a great combination. (What - you're gonna tell me it's not??)

-- You put vinegar on your french fries. (Of course I do. It is the only way to go. I never ever ever put ketchup on my fries. Only vinegar.)

-- You can recognize a Cranston accent. (Not only can I recognize it, but I can do it to a T. In Cranston, all "r"s become "v"s: Cvanston Vho Diland = Cranston, Rhode Island.)

-- You've eaten at Haven Brothers, drunk. (Yes, I have. Many many many many times. Haven Brothers is ... well, God, it is actually hard to explain. It is late-night eatery on wheels in downtown Providence - and I don't think anyone who is sober has ever eaten there.)

-- You know what "ProJo" stands for. (The Providence Journal, of course.)

-- You always start giving directions by saying, "Well, you get on 95." (That is hilarious. I'm sorry, but it is. And so true. I would add to this: "You always start giving directions by saying, "So you pass the Dunkin Donuts, and then you get on 95...")

-- You know what Allie's makes. (The best donuts in the world. Krispy Kreme's are NOTHIN' to Allie's Donuts. Because there is now a freeway which bypasses the Allie's Donuts road - thereby re-routing all the traffic - I am not sure of the fate of Allie's. Do any of my friends who still live in RI know? My family and I used to stop at Allie's on our way up to Massachusetts on Christmas, Easter, etc. It was always a huge treat. The donuts are twice as large as regular donuts - huge. And steaming hot from the oven, with the glazed sugar dripping off of them.)

-- You know what a "package store" is. (When in the borders of the state of Rhode Island, I say, "We should go to the package store..." Or - no, that's true. A true Rhode Island saying is: "Let's do a packy run." A PACKY RUN. Here in the Manhattan area, I just say "liquor store." But I think "packy run" has a much better feel to it.)

-- You've gone to Cumbie's for milk or gas. (HAHAHAHA Cumbie's!!)

-- You know that there is never any school in Fosta-Glosta when it snows. (Okay, these are all such inside jokes - but I love them. "Fosta-Glosta" is the joined name of "Foster" and "Gloucester" said in Rhode Island accents - and whenever we, as children, would huddle by the radio on snowy mornings, waiting to hear if our school down in the south of the state would be canceled - the list of "snow day" schools ALWAYS began with "Fosta-Glosta". The kids in "Fosta-Glosta" were so lucky. We envied them. We lived closer to the ocean down in our neck of the woods, so most of the time we had school since the snow invariably would turn to rain or mist. That is, except for in 1978.)

Anyway, there are more amusing things on this list ... I especially like the running joke about getting your car mechanic to give you a new inspection sticker even though your car failed.

That is so true.

And now, gotta go do a packy run. I'm goin' to a pahtee t'night.

Here's a link to that list again.

Grey and Brown

The skies have been uniformly grey since I have been home. All the leaves are gone. Bare branches against the grey sky. One of the loveliest sights that I know.

One day - there was a heavy fog. Normally, in Rhode Island, the fog lifts by mid-morning ... burned off by the sun. But this fog lasted all day. A heavy thick blanket of fog. Beautiful. I took a walk around the neighborhood, scuffing my feet through the brown leaves, hearing the sounds around me ... squirrels scurrying up the tree trunks, the mild dripping of water off the leaves ... but I couldn't see any of it. The fog covered it all.

Later that night, I stood on my parents porch ... the fog had lasted into the night ... The lights from the house across the way were blurred, haloed. Everything took on a ... I guess I would call it a poetic look. Black trees tangled up in fog.

My parents and I went and took a walk on the beach during the foggy day. The waves were crazy - thrashing grey foam, continuous pounding on the shoreline. My favorite sound in the world. I found a couple of pieces of beach glass to add to the collection.

One of the amazing things about our walk on the beach was this: There was all this debris down on the shoreline. By debris, I mean flotsam and jetsam really: shells, pebbles, random crab legs, rocks, seaweed ... But mixed in with all of this ocean debris, were piles of sodden brown oak leaves. Oak leaves? These oak leaves were remnants of that massive 2-day windstorm we had early in November. Amazing. There are no oak trees near the beach. These oak leaves had traveled a long way.

I took a walk to a pond near my parents house ... a pond where my friend Mere and I went skating once when we were in high school. There is a little open-sided "lodge" on the edge of the pond, with a stone fireplace and a couple of picnic tables. It's in the middle of the woods.

I love it down there. Nobody's ever down there.

I stood at the edge of the "pond" - which was crowded with brown weeds and grass .... the trees standing tall around the edges .... the ground completely covered in wet fallen leaves. Ah, autumn!! This was during the foggy day, so nothing was clear-cut, or clearly seen.

And suddenly, I could hear the call of the geese. The geese leaving town.

That sound ... something about that sound ... pulls my heart up out of my chest. There is something so mournful about it. I don't know why. But also exciting.

Because of the fog, I couldn't SEE them above me, couldn't see the "V" formation which I knew they were in. But it was like ... a Doppler effect moment. I stared up, into the thick grey, seeing nothing, but followed the sound of their "goodbye till spring" call across the grey sky.

My friends and I went out on Friday night to this local bar which is basically a fisherman's hangout ... a dirty rickety SHACK which stands literally on the beach. It has a deck, teetering on stilts ... and when the tide is high the waves roll under the deck.

The foggy day had turned into a wild windy night. We sat at tables by the window, having our drinks, looking out at the ocean. Which was now completely rough, wave after wave after wave after wave.

The lights from the bar spill out onto the ocean - so even though it was a night, we could see out there.

Seagulls hang out on the ocean there ... bobbing up and down on the waves ... so at night ... what you see when you look out the windows of this bar, is black ocean, white foam, and across the top of the black, these little white origami-birds. It's a very odd and beautiful sight.

But this time - because the waves were so rough ... the seagulls were having quite a time. The origami-birds kept coming to life, flapping their wings, fighting against the wind, flying over the foam, trying to come to rest somewhere.

We called them "the party birds". All the other seagulls were calmly sleeping in a parking lot somewhere, shielded from the wind. But not these birds. They wanted to fight the elements.

As we sat there, talking, having our drinks, the night kept getting wilder and wilder and wilder.

Rain began to pour against the windows, coming off the sea. Pounding against the glass. Coming at us horizontally.

You know what it looked like?

It looked like ... the moments in Star Wars when Han Solo pushes the Millennium Falcon to go into 'warp speed' and all the stars turn into streaming lines.

It looked like the BAR was moving through space.

It was unbelievable.

People were warm and dry, having their drinks, talking over the music, and then suddenly would glance at the windows, and exclaim, "HOLY SHIT."

Then the rain stopped ... but it was still the wind ... There was mist on the ocean and it was being beaten off the waves by the wind. Betsy and I went out onto the deck, struggling against the wind. Because of how the rain had flown off the ocean ... the sides of the deck were completely dry. We stared down into the foam ... the waves were now crashing on the sand and coming directly under us.

There's a lot I am thankful for ... but one of the things I am most thankful for is the beauty of Rhode Island ... the beauty of the beaches, the woods, the fog ... the eerie dying beauty of November's greys and browns.

A couple things...

...things I forgot to mention, which Auntie Jean kindly reminded me of.

When I traveled home last weekend, via Amtrak, I realized what a class-stratified society we do live in and I realized that I am near the bottom rung.

Usually, that knowledge is hidden from me, because I get by. I am not living in a sodden cardboard box on the sidewalk. My teeth are not rotting out of my head. I struggle - but I have my own apartment, I can buy my own food, I'm okay.

But step onto Amtrak ... I dare ya ... step onto an Amtrak train ...

and you realize that there is an enormous class of people way up in the stratosphere above you who never EVER have to put up with the nonsense of riding on a train.

The train was literally filled with garbage. It was one huge garbage dumpster shrieking up the Northeast corridor. Every corner was stuffed with crushed coffee cups, dirty napkins, old newspapers ... Nobody bothered to come through the train and neaten things up. We just had to clear spaces for ourselves in the middle of the trash, and make do.

All the people in the car looked exhausted.

One woman, sitting two seats behind my sister and I, called over to us in this jaded voice, as we slung our bags up onto the rack, "This train ride has been one long continuous string of nightmares."

I needed to sleep - so I stretched out on two empty seats - basically surrounded by GARBAGE - and fell asleep.

It was nasty.

The other thing I forgot to tell was:

My sister Jean came to pick us up at the train station - and she left a Halloween party to do so.

She was dressed up as Smurfette.

Siobhan and I knew that, basically, Smurfette was going to be waiting for us - so when we emerged gratefully from that GARBAGE CAN OF NIGHTMARES, into the fragrant autumn night, we looked around the train platform, already laughing ... knowing that whatEVER we were going to see ... it was going to be hilarious.

And there she was.

Standing at the top of the steps.

She looked like an absolute lunatic. She had a blue-painted face. A white knitted hat. A blue turtleneck, blue running pants - and WHITE SLIP on over all of this ... and then ... these ridiculous white pumps. They looked like Barbie shoes.

And there she stood. I could see her teeth gleaming with laughter out of the blue.

Her boyfriend was the Crocodile Hunter - and while yes, he did have a rubber crocodile peeping from his pocket - he looked relatively normal, and his face was not blue.

Two days later, Jean still was washing remnants of blue from out of her ears.

Getting directions from a Rhode Islander

I am from Rhode Island, originally, and read a quote somewhere: "In Rhode Island, everything is local".

Rhode Island is the kind of state where you ask for directions, and this is what someone will tell you: "Okay, so you go down this street and you take a right where the A&P used to be ... then you stay on that road, and when you come to the end of it, take a left where the Bess Eaton used to be ... and what you're looking for is on Rt. 138 where that Tae Kwan Do studio used to be."

Local Rhode Islanders like myself will nod knowingly at these directions suffused with the past, and newcomers will be completely lost. "Tell me what is there NOW, please."

And when the direction-givers say stuff like "where the A&P used to be", sometimes they are talking about what hasn't been there for 30 years!

I love that.

My sister Jean pointed out, as well, that all directions given in Rhode Island usually contain the words "Dunkin Donuts". The moment she made that observation, of course I started hearing it all over the place.

"Take a left at the Dunkin Donuts..."
"And then you pass the Dunkin Donuts..."
"There's a stoplight, and a Dunkin Donuts on your right..."

Or sometimes the two particularities of Rhode Island directions will happen in the same sentence: "Take a right where the Dunkin Donuts used to be..."