Trips

Kate and Mike Halpin, and Caitlin and me convened the first gathering of the book club and never said a word about Harper Lee books, the conversation was so good! It was a beautiful day, rain free in an otherwise rainy week.

This shows that, while un-civil war tears at the fabric of the nation, relatives can travel to Fair Haven from Virginia, Massachusetts, and nearby Fulton – primarily for the joy of family, secondarily for chin-wagging on an Olympian level, and thirdly to partake of picnic cuisine!

This gathering took place a few days before Caitlin’s 50th birthday, which was my father’s 106th – July 2. That is the day the Declaration of Independence was approved by 12 of the 13 colonies – New York hadn’t made up her mind, yet!

These pictures (click ’em) show that there is plenty of room for you and your crew next time!

And here, Caitlin captures a sublime sunset from the Bluff the night beofre:

Motorists on Cape Cod can become blind to roadside signs, such as the ones that identify Fort Hill; places with such dull names are easy to overlook! Next time you visit the Cape, look for it, because Fort Hill will blow your mind!

I visited on a 90 degree day, when the pre-fab-board-walked red maple swamp provided cool relief from a surfeit of sunshine. By the time you’ve made your way back to the hilltop parking lot, though, it’s time to find the next cool spot!

Ten days after the trip to camp at the Fair Haven bluffs on Lake Ontario, I began a Monday-Friday encampment on Cape Cod. Being a perpetual student, lessons learned on one trip are likely to play out on subsequent forays. And so, in the immediate wake of the soul-crushing Coleman camp stove failure at Fair Haven, we are blessed with the triumph of the beautiful butane* breakfast of steel cut rolled oats, apple, cinnamon, and maple syrup, alongside a plastic tube of FrenchPress coffee!

*Careful kids, it’s way hotter and way faster than the gas used in antique Coleman campstoves.

A few months ago, NY and MA cancelled all 2020 campground reservations; but I kept checking, then suddenly was able to book primetime/primesite in each state, which illustrates the random madness of the American zeitgeist in time of RepublicanTrump. Trump, by the way, exists in current form because RepublicanNixon wasn’t hung, as he should have been, for treason, by meddling in the secret Paris peace negotiations before the 1968 election, and thus extending the slaughter of Vietnamese, Americans, and others, until 1974.

Following LBJ’s quasi-abdication in March, 1968, secret negotiations to end the war were convened in Paris, which collapsed the day before the election.

From Smithsonian Magazine:
The notes were taken by Haldeman on October 22, 1968, during a phone conversation with Nixon. They include Nixon’s orders to “Keep Anna Chennault working on” South Vietnam, and also say: “Any other way to monkey wrench it? Anything RN [Richard Nixon] can do.”

Nephew Matthew was born the same month as me, as was dear Aunt Fran Conlin, and we have sought some manner of November celebration since Martha died in 2012. New wrinkle this year is the kindness of cousin Carol Read, who gave us use of Cooper* Cottage in Falmouth. With such proximity to Martha’s Vineyard, how could we resist a sea voyage on the last Saturday of November? We couldn’t, here’s proof, at the cellular** level, of this year’s blowout:

*The cottage is in a little neighborhood of streets named for American authors. James Fenimore Cooper set much of his novel The Pathfinder in dear old Oswego, my hometown.

*pictures made via cellular telephone – hope you weren’t expecting some deep philosophical malarkey here?