"I'M DIGGING THOSE KICKS, MATE"

It took me a good minute or two to figure out what this guy was saying, in his heavy Australian accent, as we passed one another on the hill on our bikes. Then it came to me: he was referring to my Giro Joe bike shoes with fluorescent shoelaces.

As I was getting hooked up for another acupuncture session yesterday, I thought to myself, "Digging Those Kicks"--now that's a good name for a band. It would have to be country, with a distinctly Down Under Aussie twang, with 3 guys and 2 women band members. 

As I lay there with my leg twitching wildly, I tried to occupy my mind with thoughts of the Kicks' debut album: "She Stung Me Like a Ray." Here are the tracks:

1. She stung me like a ray when she walked away (Title track)

2. You done me wrong, you red-bellied snake of a man

3. Tasmanian tiger by night, Tasmanian devil by day--she's my reptilian-carnivorous- marsupial love thang

4. Feelin' nothin' but grief here on the barrier reef since you said goodbye

5. Darlin' come back--she was nothin' more than a pickup pick-up

6. Backin' out of this outback triangle of love

7. I should'a ditched that bum a long time ago--he was pure eucalyptus sap

8. You're not the only dingo in the desert

9. My baby's comin' back--she's my boomerang lover

10. Emu emo, Foster lagrimas: I'm cryin' saltwater croc tears in my Aussie beers

11. Tasting tempura with my laughing kookaburra woman

12. His was a cheatin' heart, but he'll always be a sweet pig-footed bandicoot to me

Green Mountain Sketch #1

Boom, Boom, Boom

Baby, you're a firework
Come on show 'em what you're worth
Make'em go oh, oh, oh
As you shoot across the sky
Baby, you're a firework (Katy Perry)

When Darth Vader (born James Earl Jones) tells Costner not to sell the farm, Costner listens. Of course he does; we all know what happens to Storm Troopers who don't follow the Dark Lord's directives. Finding yourself on the wrong side of the guy who's already on the dark side of the Force is not a place anyone wants to be.

When the best badass of all time tells Costner that Iowans will drive from all over the Hawkeye State to his field of dreams to watch their heroes play--and fork over their money without even thinking about it--that's exactly what happens. He builds it and they come, as expected.

So, as I stand on the edge of a sweeping cornfield in Stowe, Vermont on the 4th of July, under a cloudy sky immediately following an impressive downpour, I watch the Green Mountain plates arrive, one after the other. My wife and I take our place alongside locals and tourists on the road's shoulder. Some folks remain in their cars with their windows rolled down. Others unfold their chairs to get a birds-eye view of the fireworks.

I can't help but think that tonight, in this lovely town, on this most patriotic of American days, I just might see some legends emerge from the stalks--Mantle and Williams perhaps--to have a catch. Dang, I wish I had my glove. No sign yet of a heavy breather with a cape and light saber.

This wisp of reverie is soon interrupted by the first BOOM of the evening, and by the conversation going on beside me between a Mom and her daughter.

Daughter: (Boom!) "That one almost hit me."
Mom: "It's nowhere close to hitting you."
Daughter: (Boom!) "That one was even closer to hitting me."
Mom: "They are not going to hit you. They are far away."
Daughter: (Boom!) "Is there a bathroom around this place?"

Of course, Mom was correct--the fireworks were a good 200 yards in the distance. But in all fairness to the young girl, her question was legitimate. The only possible private place to go was in the cornfield! Wandering off among those stalks on this night, and in the dark, risked making her a part of the Show. And I'm not talking about baseball anymore.

Make 'em go oh, oh, oh. As you shoot across the sky. Baby, you're a firework.

Drift? Would!

At the intra-coastal swing bridge all vacationers are obliged to stop at the guard station and swear an oath to “Sloth,” the god of island idleness. Although we have been summer regulars for more than twenty-five years and have not yet seen any such signs, we are sure there must be some that read: “Walking on the beach is prohibited. Please wander aimlessly.” Shells are in such abundance on this island that we need not seek them; they find us.

Topsail Island is a 26-mile long barrier island off the southeastern coast of North Carolina. The name “Topsail” traces its origin to a time when this was a barbary coast, where swashbuckling pirates—with bad teeth, worse breath, and awful taste in hats—talking parrots, and peg-legs hauling kegs, of rum, routinely sailed these waters freely, long before anyone had ever heard of Captain Jack Sparrow or scored a hole-in-one at any Blackbeard miniature golf course.

The legend is that these buccaneers would hole up in the island’s coves waiting to prey upon unsuspecting merchant ships, until the dim-witted, or perpetually inebriated, or both, ships’ captains gradually realized that they could spot the top of the subtle skull and cross-bone sails and thereby take evasive maneuvers. If the legend is true, and considering both the dynamism of the English language, and changes in American common usage in particular, I suppose “Topsail” is far preferable to “The Island of Easy Booty,” which rumor has it was a close runner-up in the “Name That Island” contest.

Topsail is about a 6.5 hour ride, by car, from Washington, DC, unless one is forced to take a circuitous route, entering from the northwest, either to avoid I-95 or to sneak in behind a hurricane moving furiously up the coast. Every once in a while, simply to remind Oprah, Hillary, J.K.R, the Mother Queen, and the rest of us that she is still at the top of the A-list of the most powerful women in the world, Mother Nature will whip up one of her patented late-summer tropical cyclones. Although this year Irene inflicted minimal damage, the island has fared poorly in years past with the incursion of Fran, Ike, and others of their ilk, who have swept homes and dreams into the sea.

The island is the home to three towns—North Topsail Beach, Surf City, and Topsail Beach—all of which can be missed in the blink of an eye. Scattered across the three towns are a smattering of small grocery and “notion” stores, one bank, a couple of gas stations, about a dozen restaurants of different degrees of sophistication, surf shops, marinas and boat ramps, some family parks, and some fledgling spas. There are about a half a dozen motels on the Island, but the vast majority of summer visitors, which are families, stay in cottages, such as “A Shore Thing,” “Sea Section,” “Tax Breakers,” “Going Coastal,” and “Flip Flops.”



In sum, there are few amenities, even fewer distractions, and essentially nothing to do here, which is precisely the point.

That being said, the island offers several attractions. Topsail Beach is a sanctuary not only for the weary and computer-screen bleary seeking rest and relaxation, but also for baby sea turtles needing free passage from their nests in the dunes to the sea, and for their parents and family members, who can receive services, as needed, at the Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Hospital. Local residents, businesses and vacationers all have donated money, time and materials to sustain this operation over the years.

The island is also a fisherman’s paradise. Anyone—male or female, young or old, novice or expert—who simply drops a line from a pier, casts from the shoreline, or sets out in a boat—merits the title “angler.” The “Gamefish 2011” and “Silver King Anglers 2011” scoreboards at one of the island’s three piers capture the exploits, both pictorially and statistically, of the most competitive, thereby keeping outbreaks of fish stories, which are as frequent as hurricanes at this time of the year, to a minimum. Flounder, red drum, sea mullet, bluefish, Spanish mackerel, sea bass, grouper and wahoo—none of which I could identify at a Coast Guard line-up—end up as often on laminated place mats as they do in foul-smelling buckets or on vacationers’ dinner plates.

Pirate legends aside, the island boasts some interesting history. Topsail Island was a US Government secret missile test site after WWII and several missile observation towers still stand as testimony to this period. A local area guide notes that the Navy developed the ram jet engine on the island, an innovation in aviation history as significant, yet not as well known, as propeller flight developed by the Brothers Orville at Kitty Hawk. Nonetheless, these two discoveries certainly justify North Carolina’s license plate claim to “First in Flight.”

Tortugas, trawlers and mechanized birds, however, are not what bring folks like us to this island every summer. We come to witness the cerulean sky, listen to the symphonic sea, feel the sand between our toes, and enjoy the warm water swirling around our ankles.



At approximately 6:45 a.m., an enormous orange orb rises silently from the sea on the far eastern horizon. By 7:10, already in all its yellow splendor, the sun is high enough to cast a golden, shimmering reflection that cuts like a watery pathway from the horizon to the western shore directly in front of the beach-front cottages. By the time the sun reaches its highest point in the East, the sky has transformed itself from a soft gray-blue hue to a silken, silvery cobalt blue.

On the most perfect days, there are no clouds in the sky. On the slightly less-than-perfect days, the sky is full of wisps of white cotton candy that resist being swirled. On the stormy days, particularly at night, Poseidon will sometimes shrug, thereby letting loose a barrage of thunder claps and blinding bolts of lightning heralding either another great adventure or a science experiment gone seriously wrong.

Pelicans rule the sky. Consummate aviator-anglers, they fly perpetual reconnaissance missions throughout and across the days in perfect formation as they scan the sea for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They glide effortlessly in single file, no more than six inches from a cresting wave, for a moment disappear behind it, and then reappear just in time for us to witness the death-defying dive of the most daring of the spotters, hell-bent on securing whatever the sea is offering on this day.



Not to be bested, each morning the sea announces itself with a thunderous roar, which it heroically sustains throughout the day and night, empty or full coastlines of spectators notwithstanding. Each successive wave unfolds in much the same monotonous, hypnotic manner: first the cresting, accompanied by a primal pounding, followed by a clap, a splash and a frothing fizzle in rapid succession, after which the wave takes its bow and returns to the sea in this relentless ebb and flow of reassuring, persistent regularity. The trance-inducing effects of this mesmerizing process are well-documented. By August 1 of this year, local authorities had received a half-dozen reports of “excessive reveries,” all of which included mermaids on boogie boards serving cold Coronas to middle-aged men with receding hairlines and bulging waistlines.

Although the unobserved life under the sea remains a mystery to most casual beachcombers, the aqua-marine ocean offers pleasures to those who can hold their gaze without succumbing to dubious maritime imaginings. Dolphins are arguably the highlight of life on the ocean’s surface, as they swim in schools, rising and dipping behind a lazy shrimp boat at it makes its unhurried, repetitive journey from west to east at mid-morning. Flying fish always make us wonder about the size of the creature from which they are flying. Darting minnows—some in pools of standing ocean water at low tide, others in receding waves—are a fleeting delight, given their place in the sea’s food chain.



In contrast to the high-flying maneuvers of the Soaring Pelicanos, legions of terns (both left-handed and right-handed), pipette-legged sandpipers, and piping plovers pass their days pecking furiously in the sand in search of crustacean treasure, shuttling madly this way and that, constantly in motion, hardly ever bothering to take a rest or flight. In contrast, gulls spend their days scavenging the beach, feeding off the unremitting hard work of their colleagues. The only thing keeping the gulls from being ostracized from the community of island birds is these birds’ failure to raise, for just the briefest of moments, their little heads from the sand and bear witness to the banditry of these gulls. Encouraged by vacationers pandering to their wishes, the gulls spend a good part of their time squawking at us for refusing to indulge their bad behavior.

Burrowing crabs are best viewed at night with the aid of a flashlight. This year the hurricane dredged up a mother-load of varied and collectible shells in a place that is already well-known for its rich cache. The dunes and sea oats and sea grass remain, but are increasingly and unfortunately sharing space with mud balls that have washed ashore—a blight on the otherwise pristine beaches. The company responsible for taking sand from the sound and dumping it in the sea to build up the beach and combat erosion, apparently dredged too deeply, which has resulted in thick mud deposits that become concentrated balls as they are tossed and turned by the waves.



Above and beyond the natural beauty and wonders of the island, we seek solitude and breathing space, uninterrupted time to read, and much-needed Vitamin D. We also welcome the opportunity to entertain unfettered thoughts that take us forward and then backward and then forward again in time. Recently, however, at least some of those thoughts have become predictable—as predictable as that spot on the top of my foot, now scarlet red, that always seems to evade sunscreen—and they come in waves—of nostalgia.

For a couple that moved frequently around the world with young children—from Chapel Hill to High Point to Greensboro, NC; to Lome, Togo to Bangui, Central African Republic; to Frankfurt, Germany; to Atlanta then to Boston and finally to Potomac, MD—Topsail has always been our constant port-of-call, an anchor for the kids during the years of constant transitions.

Now, as the boys, grown and graduated from college, move to their own rhythms, and juggle the myriad responsibilities of adulthood, Topsail has become for us the home of bittersweet memories: the Hungry Hippo, 500 rummy and bingo games played; the circles drawn in the sand; the horseshoes thrown; the sand castles built and the “drip people” conceived to populate them; the shovels and buckets rescued from the surf as they quietly drifted out to sea at high tide; the waves ridden; the nerf footballs thrown; the videos watched; the stories told; the pictures taken; the dancing bathing suits dried on outdoor clotheslines; the laughter shared with family and friends; the unconscious ordinariness of spending time together.



These days, we stuff all those memories in a big blue bag, carry them with us down to the beach, set up our umbrellas and chairs in the sand—as we have done countless times over a quarter of a century—sit, stare at the sea, and smile gentle, wistful smiles.

There’s nothing else to do.

The Science Habit

My colleague—a medical doctor and infectious disease specialist—judged her child’s middle school science fair today. It’s that time of the year. A judge at my boys’ science fairs was never a position to which I either aspired or ever anticipated being called—and for good reason.

For one, I’m not particularly fond of fungi, elongated soft-bodied invertebrate animals, or food coloring—especially when they all are combined in the same container to prove some point. For another, I have never in my entire life participated in a science fair. In the 1960’s, in my Catholic elementary/middle school, we didn’t have science fairs—our lives revolved around the Baltimore Catechism. The only science project I can remember was a friend’s pickled bologna and Velveeta cheese sandwich, on white bread with mayo, which spent 4 weeks in his desk, in a plastic baggie, in a brown paper bag. Why that experiment, in that peculiar habitat, is a topic for later discussion.

Had we had a science lab with a microscope, we could have learned a lot about bread mold and spore disbursal. But eventually, some joker would have surreptitiously coated the scope’s optical lenses with charcoal, creosote, tar or some other impression-leaving substance, which would have sent the nuns into a frenzy (and that occurred frequently enough already). The nuns knew us all too well, which probably explains, in part, why, instead of a lab, we had a mobile science “cart,” which they locked in a closet and rolled out once a week for what I vaguely recall as a series of demonstrations about the physical world. Frankly, back then, those demos seemed more like magic acts than hard science.

Of course, eight years with the nuns was like one extended-run magic show! They were always pulling peculiar things out of all those secret compartments in those imposing black and white habits. They had a special talent for making n’er-do-wells disappear and then reappear. I’m convinced that they would have liked to have sawed most of us in half, but even the corporal punishment that they faithfully inflicted upon us had limits. That didn’t stop them from throwing things at us—primarily chalk and chalkboard erasers. Thankfully, the parish priests at least had the good sense to lock all the sharp knives, hatchets, blindfolds, ankle clasps, and the spinning wheel in a storage room in the convent.

They could do mysterious, supernatural things that would make us doubt our very impressionable eyes—like emptying the contents of one poor student’s messy desk onto the floor and flinging it, and then him, down the hallway. Or, like a black and white bowling ball upending an array of bowling pins, a nun once knocked over a half-a-dozen students in about 5 seconds en route to grabbing two blabbermouths in the middle of a pew during a church service, and dragging them both out of the church by the tips of their lobes. They never knew what hit them.

With these kinds of random acts of entertainment available on a daily basis, we never really missed the drama or PE classes that were routinely available to our public school peers. Of course, It’s challenging to have PE when you don’t have a gymnasium. But ducking all those in-coming chalk projectiles, or running out of the classroom to see a student belly flopping down the hall on his stomach, or dodging a nun on a mission from a higher order, kept us all on our toes and in good shape.

We did have “recess,” in the school’s parking lot. Although we weren’t permitted to run, so as not to shred our school uniforms, we did spend a lot of time walking, almost always in pairs. School entrances and exits—at the beginning, middle, and end of the day—were always executed in double file. Confirmation and Holy Communion? Everyone had to have a partner. May procession? Grab a partner, round we go. Religious ceremonies at Christmas and Easter? No one walks alone. (R2D2 and C3PO must have gone to Catholic school.)

Getting back to my unfortunate friend and the random science project, had we had a cafeteria or a lunch room, he could have trashed that sandwich without anyone being the wiser and just satisfied himself with the chocolate Ring Ding he had received from Bernadette in exchange for his Twinkies. Instead, all of us ate our sandwiches, slurped our soup from thermoses (I used to hate how the noodles would always get stuck on the bottom of the container), and drank our milk from 5-cent cartons—in silence—at our respective desks, on a table cloth we brought from home. As everyone knew, nuns had eyes in the back of their heads. My friend understood that his only chance of squirreling away that rejected sandwich was to let his science book provide cover for the bag when he quietly placed both securely in his flip-top desk, as Sister wrote with great earnestness her notes on the board for the next class.

All this to say it’s little wonder that I struggled through introductory physical science, biology and chemistry in high school, and opted for psychology over physics in the 12th grade. I steered clear of the hard sciences in college, of course. But if there is one thing I learned in Catholic school, it was how to survive the mayhem. Those skills have served me well in the 20+ years I have been working in Africa. Now if I could just get a side gig as a judge voting some wackos off an Island, I would be as happy as a toadstool in a fairy tale—or a science fair.

Ten Reasons Why You Should Visit Berlin

1. The Brandenburg Gate is so much bigger than the Mona Lisa: to see it you don't have to shout "fire" or stand on the tour guide's shoulders.

2. The Chef's Special at the Esplanade Hotel: braised knuckle of lamb with peppered sweetheart cabbage and pan-fried potato noodles, with a side of Zantac.

3. If you like Pizza, this is the place for you. There are more Pizzerias per square mile here than there are Dunkin Donuts in Boston. If you are looking for a cop, however, I'm afraid you'll have to visit or call the police station. I couldn't find any of Berlin's coffee-drinking finest in the Pizzerias.

4. Berliners' fascination with a fried egg and bacon as a garnish for just about any meal you order. My favorite: fried egg and bacon on my fried egg and bacon.

5. To appreciate how cyclists, pedestrians and drivers can co-exist in the same space without anyone the worse off.

6. The Alton Hotel: stand under the balcony where Michael Jackson suspended his infant in mid-air, while shaking and scratching your head, again.

7. Stand at multipe spots along where the Wall used to be, thinking about all those LeCarre novels and spy movies in which it figured so prominently.

8. Berlin Beer and techno disco.

9. The Berliners can handle just about any language you throw at them: English, French, Spanish and more.

10. Finally, the best thing about Berlin: it's not Frankfurt.

IT'S A SHORE THING, Part II

Parents being parents

Moms tend to do a lot of negotiating on the beach. For example, I overhear one Mom say to her son as they pass behind my beach chair: “Is that a deal?” Moms also do a lot of refereeing: “Oh, stop it, you two, it’s her turn to play with the bucket.” Otherwise, Moms just lay down the law: “Brendan, I said come on.” “Stop throwing sand!” and “Stop throwing the seaweed!” are two commands I hear frequently; both bring back fond memories of my childhood spent on the South Jersey shore.

When parents are not being so litigious, they seem to be having a lot of fun, sometimes more than the kids. Many state-of-the-art sand castles and fortresses I see today bear the distinctive signature of frustrated architect-engineer Dads. I see several Dads still engaged in a big dig long after their kids have moved on to more interesting parent-proof activities. Moms love those photo opps of their children buried up to their necks in the sand. It’s one of those rare moments that they can get them to hold still long enough for a photograph.



Dads also are the source of an unlimited number of improvised beach games. Most commonly, I witness father-son competitions that involve the tossing of balls of all shapes and sizes into holes in the sand, into sand buckets, or into any available receptacle, such as a picnic basket. Unfortunately, these games never seem to end well.

At some point in the competition, an argument invariably breaks out over some alleged misinterpretation of the “rules.” For example, is a point earned if the tennis ball goes into the bucket but then spills out when the bucket tips over from the force of the throw? Amidst much gnashing of teeth, hollering, and screaming, someone usually storms off down the beach, or pleads his case at the Supreme Court of Mom. The kids also throw tantrums from time to time.

Today’s Dad also plays improvised games with his daughters, of course. I watch one Dad counting the seconds his two daughters, in turn, balance on one foot on the base of an upside down sand bucket. While Dad’s eyes are fixated on his watch, Mom regularly peers over the top of her sunglasses, and then gazes over the top of her summer novel, just to make sure none of the other children is drowning.

Grandparents being grandparents

A grand-dad is wearing a Boston Red Sox bathing suit and holding in each hand a large sand bucket—one blue and one yellow. He is trying to get his three grandsons, all of whom appear to be under 10, to accompany him to the ocean’s edge to help fill the buckets with water. Not one is listening to him. They are all furiously digging in the sand. Grandpop doesn’t look too upset. He must be accustomed to being ignored. I watch as he just stands there in the sun, for a long time, with those two buckets in his big, lobster-sized hands, his stomach hanging over his suit like patriotic bunting over the upper deck at Fenway, with a dazed look of bemused resignation on his face.

In a sign of the lengths to which some grandparents will go to please their sons, daughters, and grandchildren, at least a dozen of them are in the water with the kids. The water temperature today is 67 degrees. When I stuck my big toe in, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. These folks are all octogenarians. Why aren’t they all dead by now? They must be aliens. It’s the only reasonable explanation.



At these temperatures, the lifeguards should be obliged to plant, alongside the green “safe to go in the water” flag, a blue one, which indicates the color humans are likely to turn for being foolish enough to heed the green flag! I suppose these grandparents all deserve those “Greatest Grandparent In the World” t-shirts they wear with such pride.

It sure takes a lot of stuff to have fun

A cursory inventory of supplies families “needed” this week at the beach follows: buckets of every size and color, pails, sand molds, short-handle shovels, long-handle shovels, sand trowels, beach towels, personal towels, chairs, loungers, free-standing umbrellas, sport n’brellas, umbrellas attached to chairs, sun protection gazebos, play pens with canopies, footballs, soccer balls, kick balls, nerf balls, Velcro balls and paddle-catchers, lacrosse sticks and balls, surf boards, boogie boards, skimmer boards, Coleman coolers (some with wheels, some without), Igloo coolers, no-name coolers, baskets of food, paper bags with food, cell phones, ipods, cameras, camcorders, books, magazines, and a variety of wheeled vehicles to cart all this stuff from the parking lot to the beach and back!

Fashion statements (and mis-statements)

There’s probably a rule in New England that all adolescents and adult males (for females I heard it is voluntary) must wear a Boston Red Sox cap at the beach. Yet, no two caps are the same. I see green caps with a red B; blue caps with a red B; red caps with a blue B; light blue caps with a slightly darker blue B; and even hunting caps with a pair of black sox on the back and a black B on the front.

Grandparents don’t wear baseball caps much, but many of them should be forced to do so. Every evening, lifeguards should collect all those straw hats, Australian bush hats, fisherman caps, pork pie hats, and other awful things these people put on their heads and just toss the lot of them in a bonfire (the lids, not the people or their heads!).

Shepherding and stewardship

What do you call a bunch of sweaty, freckled-faced kids who complain that they never get to do anything fun? Summer campers, of course!

Well, a trip to the beach is just the thing to improve the dog days of summer and put an end to all that barking and whining. Unfortunately, the New Hampshire State Association of Summer Camps picked my vacation as the week to re-enact the D-Day invasion of the Normandy beaches. The day-campers just keep coming, relentlessly, wave after wave of them, day after day.

On one particularly sunny day, a large group of campers, all clad in orange T-shirts, arrives first. Their counselors stake out their territory by planting in the sand two yellow flags emblazoned with big red hearts. The banners flap furiously in a strong ocean breeze, making it easy for everyone to keep their bearings. These are clever, maintenance-free demarcations of the boundaries of the theater of operations.



The beauty of this strategy is confimed by the behavior of another contingent, which eschewed uniform-colored t-shirts for the campers, as well as the flags in the sand, opting instead for multi-colored shirts for the kids and orange highway cones to establish their territory, respectively. Unfortunately, in their rush to the ocean, several eager campers knock over the cones, thereby calling into question the ability of the group to reconnoiter on the beach in the event of a crisis, such as a jellyfish reunion, Class of 1972.



It is obvious that the “red heart” counselors are the kind of leaders that would never issue a command that they are not prepared to carry out. The blue tee-shirt, surf-based lieutenants lead one brigade of campers into the ocean, where they fully engage with the kids in water maneuvers. At the same time, the turf-based counselors in their pink tee-shirts establish a beachhead: the kids dig trenches and construct fortifications as the counselors supervise the work from several comfortable beach chairs. This is not the first time these counselors have led a beach command.



In contrast, all the counselors from the “conehead” division seem perfectly content to supervise their charges from the shore, using the opportunity to talk and laugh among themselves. In this group there is no division of labor: all the campers are in the water at the same time! The closest the coneheads come to establishing a recognizable beachhead is when they have their kids place towels on the sand before charging into the water. Lots of non-campers leave their towels on the beach (duh!), however, and flat towels on a flat beach are not easy to see, thereby calling into question the wisdom and experience of the coneheads, as well as the judgment of the poor parents who entrust their children to these well-meaning, albeit uninspired leaders.

Although I’m not a betting man, I would be willing to wager that I could guess, with a high degree of accuracy, which campers were smothered with sunscreen before pouring out of their respective buses on this brilliantly sunny day!

*****

I suppose that a week like this every few years reminds me of how good I’ve had it in on that serene, tranquil North Carolina island, where I plan to return next summer. I’ll be sure to pack a copy of this posting, however, just in case I catch myself complaining about those relentless black flies that annoy on windless days in the mid-90s. If my wife must bear the burden of my whining, I won’t blame her if she buries me in the sand while I am napping, places a bag of pretzels on my head just as the fishing boats pass, and then posts a picture on Facebook of me with my new "trashmen with wings" friends.

IT'S A SHORE THING, Part I

It is Labor Day, the unofficial end to summer. My wife and I are fortunate to have enjoyed two beach vacations this year: one on Martha’s Vineyard, in July, and the other on the coasts of New Hampshire and Maine, in mid-August. Having spent the last twenty-five years vacationing in August on the North Carolina coast, on a sleepy, relatively deserted barrier island, I had forgotten how entertaining a crowded beach could be. Mind you, that it was entertainment was not immediately apparent; there were a few “opening acts” that we were obliged to endure, all of which had me longing, at first, for those Carolina blue skies, sea turtles, and dolphins to which I have become accustomed at the end of every summer.



For example, at several New Hampshire State-owned beaches, I spent a lot of time scooping sand out of every bodily orifice each time someone picked up his or her towel en route to lunch, a better spot next to friends, or the shower. Even when vacationers don’t mean to kick sand in your face, they do. There are just too many bodies squeezed into a parcel of beach the size of three postcard stamps.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2008 approximately 17.0% of the adult population in New Hampshire smoked cigarettes. That same year there were 34 states with higher smoking prevalence rates. Comparatively speaking, the “Live Free or Die Prematurely State” fares better than most, and prevalence has been declining since 2000. If this trend continues, perhaps the State’s one million plus citizens will vote to change their motto to “Smoke-free: Live Long and Prosper” and send Mr. Spock to the State House in Concord. Unfortunately for me, all those adult smokers bring their butts to the beach during the second week in August.



And where are the fashion police when you need them? Men and women of a certain vintage who ignore the extended Shakira rule—hips, upper arms, mid-sections, and thighs don’t lie—are lucky to leave the beach without any indecent over-exposure citations. And what’s with all the tattoos? As for our dear friends to the north, I heard that they frequent New Hampshire beaches in August because on the Canadian coast it is a felony to wear speedos, dark socks, and Birkenstock sandals, all at the same time, in public, in the middle of the afternoon.

Finally, in case you haven’t heard, New Hampshire - seagulls are scavengers! They can locate even a temporarily unattended bag of pretzels, tear open the plastic, and litter the beach with my favorite snacks faster than water freezes in Vermont in January. Those aggressive birds are equally adept with bags of potato chips and chocolate chip cookies.

I suppose there is a silver lining to all of this. According to the Bird News Network of the American Bird Conservancy (I am not making this up), these “trashmen with wings” perform a valuable service: they consume dead animals, organic litter, and other materials—such as snacks high in salt and transfat—that could pose a health threat to humans.

Perseverance does have its benefits. In just a couple of days of rubbing elbows, literally, with all these White Mountain-turned-beach- enthusiasts, a visitor can walk away with much more than just sand in his trunks, second-hand smoke in his lungs, and life-scarring memories of sloppy, cheap tattoos in private neighborhoods. I had the good fortune of sampling some delicious seasonal American pie, New England-style. I’m happy to share a few slices.

Girls being girls

A little girl, about three years old, is wearing a white bonnet that is tied under her chin and a butterscotch-colored bathing suit. She is carrying a pint-sized plastic yellow pail. She meanders about 20 yards down to the ocean, opting for the scenic route. It takes her a good five minutes to reach the water’s edge. Her mother, taking baby steps, never leaves her side.

Upon reaching her destination, the little girl bends over, letting several gentle waves of water splash into her pail. The pail is about one quarter full when she begins her journey home. Upon reaching her family site, she pours the water in a hole. The sand absorbs the water immediately. Quite satisfied with her effort, the little girl returns to the sea.

This activity goes on for a very long time—so long, that Mom eventually turns over escort duty to her husband, who is also well-schooled in babystepping. Eventually, apparently satisfied that her mission is accomplished, the little girl settles down on her blanket and takes a nap. Inspiring!

Four elementary school girls with flamingo-thin legs are each squeamishly clutching a part of some unrecognizable creature from Davey Jones’s locker. They are in a mad, synchronized dash to the ocean, squealing at the top of their lungs. They unceremoniously dump the beast into the surf. Holding hands, they immediately turn and run to their beach spot, reaching decibels unknown to modern acoustic science en route. I am guessing that they imagine the beady-eyed creature is already in hot pursuit with the aim of exacting his revenge.

As this freckled foursome rushes by on my left, my attention is drawn to my right, where a pogostick of a young girl with a ponytail is turning cartwheels down the beach. I lose count after ten; an acute episode of vertigo forces me to direct my attention elsewhere. The truth be told, I’m down-right afraid to look over my shoulder, half expecting a herd of baby elephants with interlocking tails coming my way in search of peanuts. They are not going to be happy when they discover the seagulls have already cleaned up. All I am missing is my worst nightmare: some clown with blue flippers and a big, red, sun-burned nose! This is becoming a very scary place.

Three middle school girls giggle for thirty consecutive minutes as they bury themselves up to their necks in the sand. After a few minutes, two of the three, Lazarus-like, emerge from their self-imposed tombs. The other, still giggling, realizes she doesn’t have the strength to escape her self-imposed interment. Immediately, the other two, without consulting, dig her out. They all titter.

I can’t help but think that if these were three middle school boys buried in the sand, the weakest of the three might still be on Rye Beach, as I write, struggling to secure his freedom, minus the new sunglasses and baseball cap he was wearing when he started.

While this “Thriller” drama unfolds, a girl of about the same age walks by with a curious look on her face, pulling behind her the smiling, albeit gritty visage of Hannah Montana on her skimmer-board.

Unlike their younger counterparts, the three teenage girls who lazily stroll back and forth along the beach in their micro bikinis and macro shades have no task today other than to “be seen” by their contemporaries of the opposite sex. They are immersed in what appears to be an incisive conversation that I am guessing addresses, at some point, the mind-boggling immaturity of boys their age. Otherwise, they are completely oblivious to everyone and everything around them. Whatever!

Boys being boys

First-born son (with great emotion): “Mom, some little jerk with a yellow truck crashed into our sand castle and destroyed everything we have been working on all day. He just took off and didn’t even say sorry.”

Middle son (calmly and earnestly): “We could build another one.”

Youngest son (resolutely): He’s not interested in discussing the case; he’s already in hot pursuit of the perp, NYPD-like.

Pre-school boys spend most of the day chasing seagulls and other aquatic birds and otherwise running aimlessly in circles. They never seem to tire or come close to catching the birds. Parents probably don’t approve of this behavior, but will tolerate just about any kind of physical activity that will guarantee that these still-evolving, quasi-human dynamos fall asleep by 8:00 pm that evening.

Too-many-to-count elementary school boys are digging in the sand and building sand structures, in relative quiet. But when the time comes to knock everything down (either to begin anew or to move on to something else), Braveheart-worthy cries of conquest, death, and destruction can be heard from one end of the beach to the other.



Kids this age also spend a considerable amount of time imitating their older siblings. Two brothers, one after the other, rush by me pushing yellow dump trucks across the tightly packed sand. The size of the trucks is proportionate to the size of each child. I am guessing the older brother tried losing his tailing sibling earlier in the day, but by now has given up. He recognizes, reluctantly, that his younger brother is not only persistent, but also lightening fast.

Kids this age also get temporarily lost a lot. I see them wandering around the beach after a swim or some other activity in search of their parents and siblings, some on the verge of tears. I watch one Dad, who is supervising his younger son, doing his best impression of a Southwest Airlines flagman, elaborately signaling to his older, red-headed boy, about seventy-five yards down the beach, where to turn to find his mother. Each shrug of the shoulders and palms-up gesture by the lost boy, however, triggers an even more elaborate series of gestures from Dad.

After a time, however, flocks of seagulls and other lost boys from other families are paying so much attention to Dad that he is forced to abandon his rescue operation from afar. Of course, just when he convinces his younger son to leave behind all those undiscovered treasures among the rocks, the prodigal son falls into the arms of his mother.

Two middle school boys are goin’ fishin’. They each have a rod, one tackle box between them, and are both wearing camouflage baseball caps and long shorts. The shorts have more pockets than the sea has fish. As they walk by, I hear the taller boy tell his friend that he had a catch “this long” last week. At first, I think the smaller boy is looking up to his friend simply because he is taller. But then I realize, from the twinkle in his eye, that he is in awe.

Three teenage boys throw a football for about thirty minutes. When they return to their beach site, they ostensibly feed the seagulls. In reality, they are competing to see who can be the first to strike a bird with a gluten projectile. They are thoroughly enjoying themselves and completely engrossed in this contest. The triad of disdainful bathing beauties has not registered on the boys’ radar screen. The guys are also blissfully unaware that their present actions are providing further evidence for a failure to reject the immaturity hypothesis.

To be continued…

Your Cheating Heart

Since moving to the DC area in 1997, I have publicly professed to a monogamous relationship with one newspaper: the Washington Post.

Every morning I pick her up at the end of my driveway, in plain view of my neighbors. Five days a week she accompanies me in the car on the drive to the train station, where I resist the temptation of not one but two free commuter “express” dailies that two guys are always trying to push upon me. We sit together quietly on the train to and from work. Anyone seeking proof of our intimate relationship need look no further than my fingertips.

It hasn’t always been like this. When I was young, I ran around with several rags. Every day I would read the Philadelphia Bulletin, Daily News and Inquirer. Back then, everything I learned about the pleasure of reading I learned from these three. It was a difficult juggling act, however, and once I moved to North Carolina I decided to go cold turkey, taking up with only the Sunday NY Times, which was a satisfying relationship that usually lasted an entire week.

Although those days of messing around are over and I find myself largely fulfilled by my Post, I have to admit that similar to the former POTUS and Georgia peanut farmer, from time to time I do lust in my heart for another. When I travel by air, both domestically and internationally, I occasionally hook up with Miss USA Today. I feel so much better now that this long-guarded secret is out in the open.

She has the perfect format for cheaters such as I who are fearful of getting caught by the Circulation Manager from the Post—who, undoubtedly, flies in airplanes from time to time—and therefore are looking for a quick read. Most articles start and end on the same page. Most are heavy on description and light on analysis. Each page is crammed with multiple stories. There are even sidebar summaries of the highlights of each of the four sections—Newsline, Moneyline, Sportsline, and Lifeline—for those of us who are particularly worried about who might be looking over our shoulder.

She has other attractive features as well. The publishers liberally use color throughout. Page one always carries a creative graphic that summarizes survey results on a topic of interest under the heading “USA Today Snapshots.” For example, a recent edition shows adult parents’ reporting of “must-have” accessories when on a family driving vacation. A pie chart of the results—a GPS and a DVD player were the leading vote getters at 28% each—is displayed on the front headlight of a car.

Her colorful weather map is stunning with multiple-day forecasts for the largest US cities. During July and August, however, all that burnt orange is a bit garish—kind of like that nightmare I had once about being locked in the University of Texas bookstore for two months. I cannot resist spending a bit more time reading the Sports Section, which in the Spring even publishes rankings and scores of college and high school baseball from around the country!

Every day in Section A there is a half-page summary of news from every state, titled “Across the USA.” These are one-paragraph blurbs of often obscure news items that would normally be buried in the metro or regional section of a major metropolitan newspaper. During my occasional trysts over the years, I have only perused those states where I was a resident at one time in my life—Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts—or where I have spent considerable time—Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, New Jersey, Texas, Vermont, Virginia. I don’t believe I have ever read anything about the states that I cannot locate on a map—places like Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, and Nebraska.

On my way back from Atlanta this week, however, early in the flight I finished a novel I was working on, and had nothing else to read but my USA Today. Feeling a bit wicked, I decided to read the entries from all 50 states, D.C, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Now I understand why the paper has no comics. Some of this stuff is so rich that not even Dave Barry could make it up! A sampling from a few states from the Wednesday, July 14th edition, with my opening editorial comments, follows. I swear they are all true.

Obviously, bananas played a central role in this drama.

Ohio: Medina – A truck crash left animal carcasses all over a county road and the driver’s pet monkey stranded atop a utility pole. The State Highway Patrol said the frightened monkey scampered up the pole after the truck, hauling carcasses for a meat-processing plant, flipped over while going into a curve Monday. The driver was unhurt, but the monkey had to be coaxed down.

I guess I won’t be using my brand new pair of paddle flippers this year.

Massachusetts: Orleans – A 15-foot great white shark has been spotted just south of Nauset Beach on Cape Cod. Chatham Harbor Master Stuart Smith said a spotter plane saw the shark Sunday chasing seals into breaking surf. A spokeswoman for the Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs said there is no need to avoid the beach but people should avoid swimming near seals.

Did anyone check the trunk for marshmallows?

Maine: Belfast – A man is facing charges he set a 1982 Mercedes-Benz on fire two weeks ago, then posted photos of the burning vehicle on Facebook. Police said Asgard Gilbert, 36, told officers he saw the car with a “small campfire” in the back seat. Gilbert was arrested Monday on a felony arson charge after police scrutinized surveillance tape from a local store.

What happens in Jefferson City stays in Jefferson City.

Missouri: Jefferson City – State residents soon could have more chances to play bingo. Gov. Nixon, a Democrat, signed a law letting bingo parlors open earlier, close later and offer games twice a week instead of just once. The law also increases the amount of money bingo operators can spend on advertising.

Not yet he isn’t.

D.C.: An investigation into the theft of a Metrobus is still ongoing, but officials said they are already taking steps to enhance security at Metro facilities. William Jackson, 19, was charged with un-authorized use of a vehicle and fleeing an accident after he entered a bus facility Friday in a driver’s uniform, drove off, picked up passengers, then crashed the bus. Jackson is not a Metro employee.

Sounds like a roller derby team to me. I would have gone with “Chips.”

North Dakota: Jamestown – What officials here bill as the world’s largest buffalo statue now has a name. The Buffalo City Tourism Foundation on Tuesday said that Dakota Thunder was the winner of a naming contest of the 26-foot tall, 60-ton bison statue that has stood near Interstate 94 for a half-century. Runners up: Dakota Spirit, Benny, Sir James and Beauford. An official naming ceremony is set for July 24.

Only in Utah

Utah: Salt Lake City – A man claiming to run a religious order is soliciting “ministers” to sign over their assets to his church and take a vow of poverty to avoid paying income taxes, the U.S. Justice Department said. Federal lawyers are seeking a court injunction against the Orem-based operation headed by Kevin Hartshorn, who said he’s unaware of the government’s complaint.

Don't Cry For Me, Argentina

When the high and mighty powers fall, their descent is often hard and fast. There’s no need to look any further for our latest examples than this year’s World Cup in South Africa. In the 2006 tournament, the Italian and French teams played one another in the final. The match ended in a draw, or, as the Brits prefer to say, “level,” with the Italians eventually winning the penalty shoot-out, 5-3.

According to Wikipedia, 715.1 million fans around the world watched that game, which is a mere 27 shy of the number of shoppers I tangle with at my neighborhood Home Depot on any given Saturday morning. This year, however, neither team made it past the first round. To make matters worse, the French exited the tournament with their collective tails between their legs.

First, a player was dismissed from the team for insubordination and refusal to apologize to the coach following a shouting match. The next day, the remaining players went on strike, refusing to practice two days before their next win-or-go-home match. Of course, anyone who has traveled to or through Paris, usually during peak tourist season, should not have been at all surprised. “Striking” is to the French—be it airline pilots, baggage handlers, grounds crew, rail operators, bus drivers, or taxi drivers—what baseball is to Americans: a national past-time.

When asked his opinion about the players’ decision not to practice, the French coach, drawing upon the rich French heritage of diplomacy, was quoted as saying, “An imbecility, a stupidity without name.” In French, it sounds much worse!

Then, just prior to the match against South Africa, the French Minister of Health and Sports, not to be upstaged by the coach, gave one of the most memorable pep talks in the history of athletic competition. Expecting a rousing version of “Come on, guys, let’s win one for the Sarkozy, or at least for Carla Bruni,” the players must have been mortified when they heard her tell them: “You have tarnished the image of France.” They went on to lose to the South Africa side, 2-1, which eliminated "Les Bleus" from the competition. To top it off, the French coach refused to shake hands with his South African counterpart. Mon Dieu!

Hoping to limit the blow to his country’s national honor, President Sarkozy took immediate and firm action. He called an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health, Sport and Inspiration to consider options. He consulted with Thierry Henry—the former captain of the French team and guy who no one in America recognized in those Gillette shaver ads a couple of years ago with Tiger Woods and Roger Federer. What was the marketing division thinking? Finally, he ordered instructional videos on motivational speaking for all his cabinet members.

It didn’t used to be like this. I happened to be in Paris in 2006 on business, when the French were at the top of their game and on top of the world. The highlight of that tournament came well before the final match: in the quarterfinals, the French beat Brazil 1-0. I watched the game on television in my hotel room and ran down to the Champs-Elysees immediately after to witness the massive and exuberant celebration that followed, a merrymaking second only to the outpouring in Philadelphia in 2009 following the Phillies World Series triumph. Interestingly, both celebrations had one thing in common: lots of cops trying to keep people from lighting themselves, their fellow humans, and random four-wheeled vehicles on fire!

Of course, there’s far more to do in Paris at this time of the year than watch soccer matches. The Eiffel Tower was way bigger than I expected. The Mona Lisa was way smaller than I expected. The Parisians were way nicer than I expected. Going for a walk in Paris, particularly on the Champs-Elysees, is a serious pre-meditated affair, requiring exquisite preparation. I felt as though I had been dropped into the middle of one continuous, outdoor fashion show, where people are most definitely walking to be seen.

There are far too many attractive women squeezed into one city—like a concentrated epidemic of beauty—far too much kissing in public, and an over-abundance of delicious wines and cheeses—the French may be on to something here. The motorists drive and park curiously, far more peculiarly than their counterparts in New Jersey. I didn’t think it could be possible, but I’m afraid it is true.

I still don’t understand why any woman would pay $500 for a Louis Vuitton handbag or $300 for a microscopic-sized purse that won’t even hold a pair of magnifying glasses. I may understand, however, why any woman would feel obliged to buy a new pair of shoes, even if she didn’t need them. (Come to think of it, when did “need” become a criterion?) There is a well-appointed shoe store about every ten steps, or so it seems, each with a dazzling array of fashionable styles and colors featured in the window. The pressure is enormous!

Paris is also home to the best-dressed and best-groomed salespeople in the universe. It’s far more entertaining to look at them than at the over-priced merchandise. I’m guessing that the salespeople in the stores on the Champs-Elysees outnumber the shoppers 2 to 1—and there are a lot of shoppers!

As for the World Cup, I hope former President Clinton is successful in his advocacy to bring the tournament back to the States in 2018 or 2022. I do have one piece of advice, however, for the US World Cup organizing committee. Please don’t schedule any games in Florida in June. My son, who was ten years old at the time, and I drove from Atlanta to Orlando to see Belgium play Morocco in the Citrus Bowl on June 19th, 1994, when the U.S. hosted the tournament.


The air temperature was about 98, it was about 110 on the “pitch,” as the Brits would say, and 120 in our section of aluminum bleachers! The North Africans ran the Belgians crazy all day but could not overcome an early goal and lost 1-0. Partly out of sympathy for the Belgians, and partly to stave off my and my son’s own dehydration, I spent about $200 on drinks alone that day! Once again, I should have listened to my wife and followed her lead: she and our younger son spent the day at Sea World.

Mightier Than The Sword

If I hadn’t had first-hand experience using this implement from time to time during the last twenty years, I might not have believed what I read in an article in the April 21 edition of the Washington Post. I can unequivocally confirm, however, the essential facts of that story.

It really does write upside down.

I’ve written with it while lying on my back in bed, under a mosquito net, by the flickering light of a Chinese candle, after the oil lamp ran dry in many an African town that are still waiting for electricity’s arrival.

It really is dependable.

I’ve used it in the Central African rainforest, under a blazing East African sun, and even in the middle of a Saharan dust storm that blew through a West African village in which I was working.

It really is versatile.

Even though it costs less than 60 cents to manufacture, I never hesitated tucking one into the breast pocket of my dress shirt in combination with a Jerry Garcia or Vineyard Vines tie. Not once was I ever ticketed by the GQ fashion police.

Nevertheless, there was quite a bit of information about this unassuming five-inch government-issue item in the article that surprised and amazed me. Apparently, it can stand toe to toe with the specifications (16 pages!) of the best federal government procurements.

“The ink cartridge shall be capable of producing, under 125 grams of pressure, a line not less than 5,000 feet long.”

Wow! That’s about 16 football fields!

“Blobs shall not average more than 15 per 1,000 feet of writing, with a maximum of 25for any 1,000 foot increment.”

Where do they teach this kind of technical writing? I would love to meet the official “blob” testing team. “Good afternoon, Mr. Naimoli, I’m the Main Blobster, and these are my assistants, Mr. Blobble Head and Just Call Me Blob. By the way, we happen to be blobbers who blog. We’re blobber-bloggers.”

“Writing shall not be completely removed after two applications of chemical bleach.”

Say what? This product should carry a consumer warning, like the kind on cigarette packs: “Caution! Wear with expensive dress shirts and ties at your own risk!”

“It must be able to write continuously for a mile and in temperatures up to 160 degrees and down to 40 degrees below zero.”

I guess they had to come up with some exotic travel perks and sturdy walking shoes for the poor entry-level staff responsible for ensuring compliance with this spec.

What is this tungsten carbide-cobalt Superhero?

Move over, Ironman!

It’s a ballpoint pen, with the white-lettered words “Skilcraft U.S. Government” stamped on the plastic barrel.

According to the article, blind workers in Wisconsin and North Carolina assemble them as part of a 72-year old legislative mandate. Although production has declined precipitously during the last two decades, many federal agencies, particularly the military, are still procuring them.

Frankly, I had no idea so many people were still placing pen in hand and putting both to paper. By the look of some of the chicken scratch I’ve witnessed over the years—primarily among physicians—I’m surprised there isn’t better regulation of this activity.

I would enthusiastically endorse a public writing test, for example—kind of like a driver’s test. To obtain a writing license, the applicant would have to compose three legible sentences on a 3x5 index card that any random state trooper with cool shades or a Catholic nun could read in the dark, with only the aid of a flashlight and votive candle, respectively.

On second thought, it’s probably better that most humans have either abandoned the pen by now or by-passed it entirely in favor of the keyboard, the keypad, or both.

Curiously, as I was writing the draft of this posting—with a ballpoint pen that was not a Skilcraft, on a yellow legal pad, en route to Texas from Maryland via Southwest Airlines—the passenger next to me leaned over at one point and said, “I haven’t seen anyone write longhand in a long time.”

“In fact,” he continued, “I don’t think I or my kids could do it anymore,” as he tapped away on his laptop keyboard.

A quick glance around the cabin revealed he was in excellent company: the only people using pens were the stewards, who were taking beverage orders, and I.

“Well,” I said, “I am writing a little nonsense piece about writing and thought it only appropriate that I pen the first draft,” as I gradually released my grip on my rubber comfort, Pentel Hyper G07 (which, by the sound of it, should probably come with protective goggles, an insurance policy, and a permit to operate).

He smiled and nodded approvingly, and then added: “You know, Stephen King wrote a draft of one of his novels with a #2 lead pencil.” “I can’t remember which one,” he continued, “but you should ‘google’ it.”

‘Google’ it I did. It appears that King prefers to write many of his drafts in longhand, on a steno pad, with a #2, just as my traveling companion indicated.

Of course, forty years ago, I wasn’t allowed to use any kind of ballpoint pen, permit or no permit.

In St. Kevin’s parochial school in the 1960’s, the good Sisters of St. Joseph limited our writing options to the #2 pencil, a la Mr. King (whose novels, by the way, are only a tad bit scarier than life at St K’s back then); a fountain pen; or bloody knuckles (a great name for a heavy metal band, I might add!).

Think about Meryl Streep’s character in the movie “Doubt” and you get a fairly accurate picture of daily life, or should I say strife, as I experienced it in the
60’s.

Handwriting, or “penmanship,” as the nuns preferred to call it, was a very serious business at St. K’s. The wooden-ruler-packing Sisters, in those menacing long black habits, which hid hundreds of interior pouches perfect for squirreling away contraband confiscated from Catholic adolescents during what must have seemed to the nuns like interminable days in the asylum, saw to it that we mastered this fine-motor skill.

We were graded on penmanship. We actually had a handwriting class that met several times a week, during which we learned to write longhand according to the “Palmer Method” handbook.

Everything we needed to know about writing was contained in that thin handbook, which the school loaned to us. To protect the school’s property, we were obliged to cover this and every textbook. Most of my classmates’ parents bought plastic covers, available in different colors, each with pre-fab sleeves into which the front and back covers would slide effortlessly. It took all of 30 seconds to complete the job with these covers.

In contrast, my father insisted on covering Palmer’s primer and all my books with brown paper, which he cut from A+P grocery bags. He had a special knack for pulling the paper taught around the binding and back and front covers, without a single wrinkle, with the exception of the natural creases in the bags. He wrote the title of each book on the cover with a black magic marker.

It was time-consuming and an old-school routine, but all my books were original works of art! He was way ahead of his time with respect to saving the Earth.

As I remember it, good penmanship, according to Palmer, began and ended with good mechanics, chief among them resting the wrist flat on the paper, knuckles turned up. I always wondered whether the nuns had signed a pact with Palmer: “You position those knuckles; we’ll take care of the rest!”



We were taught to resist the temptation (oh there were so many we were taught to resist back then, it was difficult keeping straight what did and did not buy us a ticket on the express train to hell) to roll the wrist on its side. When you finish reading this, pick up a pen, if you can find one and remember how to use it, and observe how naturally the wrist rolls over.

The Palmer handbook provided a series of wrist-down exercises to foster proper technique and discipline. Of course, handwriting wasn’t the only discipline-inducing activity at the K, but that’s another story for another time.



I still remember all those repetitive “push and pull” strokes and “oval-making” exercises we used to practice with the wrist flat on the paper and the pen nestled between the thumb and fore-finger. Not an easy task!


The last time I remember practicing those exercises was in 1984, in an OBGYN’s office, in Durham, North Carolina. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t the kind of place the nuns envisioned us applying our skills when they first introduced us to Palmer.

I accompanied my wife to one of her first appointments with her doctor early in her first pregnancy. We were sitting in the examining room—well, I was sitting; she was reclining, resplendent in her white Gucci examination gown, on the paper-covered stainless steel table,staring at the ceiling above. Too bad I didn’t have a Skilcraft with me; she could have written, upside-down, her thoughts at that very moment!

In any case, I don’t remember why the OBGYN and I started talking about handwriting once he came into the room, but it turned out that he, too, had learned the Palmer method when he was young.

To prove it, he took out his pen and started doing “push and pulls” on the examining paper upon which his patient was reclining. Next to his push and pulls I demonstrated some of my best ovals. In turn, he repeated my ovals, and I his push and pulls. Once we got started, we couldn’t stop.

I’m sure we punctured quite a few holes in that thin paper, with all those repetitive motions with our dueling ballpoints. Once we finished, we stood there for a time admiring our work.

By this point, you can imagine how agitated the patient had become, her initial bemusement with our adolescent manipulations now nothing more than a distant memory. I suspect she would have kicked us both, if she could have.

Needless to say, that was the last time I set foot in an OBGYN office with my wife. To her credit, she did allow me to chew some gum—an infraction that trumped poor handwriting at St. K’s, and usually resulted in an after-school supervised session of blackboard eraser clapping—while I watched her give birth to the first of our two sons, neither of which, I might add, have any chance whatsoever of obtaining a handwriting license.

In the birthing room that night in February twenty-six years ago, as I chewed away without fear, it was my wife, the OBGYN and his assistant who impressed everyone with their own version of pushing and pulling.

Although I enjoy cursive writing—I am fairly certain the nuns never called it that—I don’t have much occasion to use it. Almost all my correspondence is via email or text messaging these days.

I type the annual holiday letter, but do address, by hand, all the envelopes. It is an end-of-year tradition to which I always look forward.

My daughter-in-law asked me to write her “Save the Date” wedding announcements and envelopes two years ago, a task I accepted with great honor and pleasure. Of course, some people thought it was my wife’s handiwork, but that didn’t bother me.

I also must confess—another exercise we practiced diligently at St. K’s—that I don’t adhere to all the Palmer method techniques when I write in longhand today. My penance: “Thank the nuns for your better-than-average penmanship!”

Thank you, Sisters of St. Joseph.

Soon I will have access again to those extraordinary Skilcraft ballpoints, thanks to a modest job transition. But I don’t want the Sisters or Stephen King to find out.

I might end up being forced to watch “The Shining” in a dark, musty cave reeking of sulpher and chalk dust with nothing more than a #2 to chew on.

Hope Springs Eternal

For a sport in which almost every dimension of individual and team performance is quantified and summarized, the game I’m watching today holds no statistical significance whatsoever.

For a sport that fields nine players at a time, usually with the highest-paid stars in the lineup, it is possible that none of them will play in today’s game; at best, some of them might play a third of it.



For a sport in which the home team usually thrives on playing in its own ballpark, the game I’m watching today is being played 1,000 miles away from the home team’s ballpark.

Why, then, would 7,000 people pay between $12 and $33 to watch the Philadelphia Phillies play the Houston Astros in the middle of a weekday afternoon in March in Gulf Coast Florida?

Even after seven Springs of watching Grapefruit League games in eight Sunshine State stadiums—like today’s game at Bright House Field in Clearwater—I can’t presume to speak for the other 6,999 spectators in the stands, but I am reasonably sure that at least some of them are here today for the same reasons as I.



The majority of folks who attend these games generally fall into three categories. The first group is made up of the retirees who have lived most of their lives outside of Florida but now call the state home year-round. The second group consists of “Snowbirds”: retirees who pass three or four winter months in Florida but live elsewhere the rest of the year. The last group, of which I am a member, is composed of empty-nesters, young couples, and families on vacation for a week or two.



As generationally different as we may be, we all have one thing in common: we yearn to escape the East Coast and Mid-western snowdrifts, the back-breaking shoveling, the plows that dump the snow just cleared from your driveway back in your driveway, the numbing cold, and those damn ice dams in the gutters.



This place, this stadium, is where we meet to put out of our minds those not-so-distant, unpleasant memories to make room for the distant, more pleasing ones we associate with this splendid game of Spring and Summer.

At game time today—precisely 1:05 pm—the temperature in Clearwater is only about ten degrees warmer than it is in Philadelphia. Everyone in the stadium knows this thanks to a first-inning ritual—a 30-second weather broadcast on the jumbo screen in left field—which features a local meteorologist who announces, with a broad smile, the current temps in Clearwater and Philly.

In years past I have witnessed dramatic differences—from between 20 to 40 degrees. On those occasions, I can attest that the beneficiary of the loudest cheers of the day is not a baseball player but rather that forecaster with the shining white teeth!

Temperatures in the 70s, warm gulf breezes, the smell of sunscreen mixed with the aromas of cheesesteaks and brat fresh off the barbi, seagulls circling and sometime alighting in centerfield, even those distracting ballgirls from Hooters down the right and left field foul lines make it easy to forget about those back-to-back killer snowstorms in Maryland in February.



The second reason I love to come here is for the access. In no major league stadium can a fan get as close to so many players, managers and coaches (most of whom are former players) as he or she can in a Grapefruit League park. All the parks are autograph- and photograph-friendly, and the players and coaching staff expect and seem to genuinely enjoy the interaction with the fans.

While taking some pictures prior to the start of the game, at one point I had to step aside for two retirees who were making their way down the stairs and onto the field. Turns out they were on their way to meet with the Phillies manager. I was close enough to take some pictures of all of them.

When I returned to my seat before the first pitch, I had occasion to talk to one of the guys, who happened to be wearing one of those tropical fish shirts that even AARP members can only get away with in Florida. He was sitting in the seat in front of me and when I asked him how he managed that slick move, he explained that he and his buddy had gone to school with the manager, but that they hadn’t seen him for over 50 years! Despite the passage of time, the Phillies manager recognized them and invited them down to reminisce while he autographed some baseballs for them before the game. Now that’s access!

Unfortunately, I’m not able to send Trop Fish Shirt the nice digital photograph I took of him and his school chums. He may be the owner of a cool knit, but he has no email!



Young fans sitting in the first ten rows always have a reasonable chance of walking away with a souvenir baseball every half inning, as players routinely toss them to the kids in the crowd on their way to the dugout.

In the third inning of today’s game, an "adult" stepped in front of a kid and intercepted one of the balls—the kind of signature move that has earned the City of Brotherly Love sports fans a somewhat tainted reputation. The player who tossed it and followed its flight into the hands of this villain was on the verge of going ballistic when the “adult,” taking note of the reaction, quickly came to his senses and turned the ball over to the child, thereby avoiding a potentially ugly scene on this lovely day at the park.

For kids of every age, there’s a certain thrill associated with being so close to the playing field, which all these stadiums afford. Today at Bright House the grass is intensely green and appears to have just returned from its regularly scheduled appointment at the Aveda salon. The infield dirt is Crayola chocolate brown, lightly dampened about 20 minutes before game time, with a result so perfectly smooth and serene it’s almost a shame anyone has to run on it. The grounds crew tends to the infield with enough care and precision to make even the gardeners at Versailles blush.



The game itself is accessible to the fans. Parents can take their kids without having to dip into the college tuition savings account. Women can get into and out of the restroom within five minutes! Concessions are plentiful and the lines are manageable. If you prefer, you can let the food and drink come to you.

Although this arrangement is no different from what one finds in the major league parks, the vendors seem more casual, even entertaining, perhaps because they don’t have to walk so far lugging around those back-breaking containers filled with beer, soft drinks and peanuts. It might also be that they have fewer badly behaved customers to contend with, although beer went on sale here this morning at 11:00 am.

For example, the middle-aged, pony-tailed “Beer Man” works the crowd hard, but takes time to chat and joke with the fans. During “last call,” he pleads with the crowd to buy one more beer so he can get a haircut and buy a new pair of shoes for his aching feet.

“Lemonade Man” has a standard mantra, which is amusing in the first inning, annoying by the fourth, but then as familiar by the seventh-inning stretch as the crack of a bat: “Dehydration, just say no. Lemonade, just say yo.” Cos-tan-za!

Even though “Italian Ice Man” is hawking three different colors—red, white and blue—today there are no takers. A couple of minutes later, he reappears in a yellow lemonade shirt carrying a rack of tall cups with those built-in straws. Unlike his colleague, however, he doesn’t have a catchy tune, and just can’t move his product.

Finally, for an avid Phillies fan such as I who hasn’t lived in the Philadelphia area since 1976, last attended a home game when the club played at Veterans Stadium, and only catches the Phils on TV or when they come to DC to play the Nationals, there is something comforting and reassuring about being surrounded by a community of like-minded souls, all wearing old- and new-school red caps and shirts!



I had to chuckle, however, at a few of those $95 replica jerseys with “C. Lee” on the back, a star from last year’s team who was traded during the winter to Seattle.

For a few blissful hours, I am in my comfort zone; I feel connected to my extended family, and to all those memories, good and bad, dating from 1960, when I first became assimilated into the Pinstripe Collective. Between 1960 and 2009, the 49 years I’ve been following the Phillies, they have played 7,952 regular season games, winning 3,936 of these, or 49.5%. Not that I’m keeping score!

This is also a very aberrant Philly crowd. Everyone is relaxed. There are smiles all around. Only gulls, no boo birds are in attendance. A lot of people are kicking back and enjoying themselves, the weather, and the game. Of course, today’s game has no effect on the pennant race. This is not to say that the fans are not paying attention or holding the players accountable—far from it.

For example, a shortstop fighting for a roster spot as a utility infielder made two fielding errors on easy plays in consecutive innings. In the next inning, upon fielding the ball cleanly and throwing out the runner, he was serenaded with a Bronx cheer. When he tipped his hat to the crowd, everyone laughed. If that were to happen in July, the shortstop wouldn’t dare make such a gesture, and it might not be boos alone reigning down on his head.

One of my greatest pleasures is to talk up the people sitting in my section, just to find out what brings them here and where they come from. I especially like the retirees, many of whom have Spring Training season tickets and have a very long and intimate history with and love of the Phillies organization. They are not bashful, however, about expressing their discomfort with the way the game is played today or with the amount of money the players “earn.” Some of them actually care who wins today’s game.

As I watch the 9th inning unfold, during which the Phillies eventually score a run to break a tie and win the game on a clutch pinch-hit single, my mind begins to wander.

I wonder how many of the key players will remain healthy throughout the 162-game season and thereby keep alive the promise of another successful campaign.



I wonder what Gail and I will do with the rest of our day. Hit the gulf beaches? Play a round of miniature golf? Dine on the beach? Stop at the Salvador Dali museum on the way home? I forget momentarily that we’re empty-nesters—we can do whatever we want! Maybe we’ll do everything.



And what about next year? I’m hoping I can talk Gail into two Spring trips: one back here, and the other to Arizona. I’ve never seen a Cactus League game!

That just doesn’t seem right.