A Windy, Overcast, And Cold First Day Of Spring (Equinox)

Evie And Our Bundled Up Friends From Kihei, Maui

7:06

7:12

7:18

Well, it's 7:15 and I have been up for an hour, to a darkened sky, then one with tinges of rose, that have since disappeared and the sun has yet to rise.  Open sky off to the north, a crease in the gray, so I am not sure what the day will bring.  We have guests staying with us, high school buddy and his son who live on Maui.  Why visit Chautauqua on the first day of spring if you live in Hawaii?  To go to Red's Pancake House for breakfast, of course.

Yesterday was cold, in the low 30's most of the day and windy but with some sun.  I had a good yoga class at 9:00, tough enough that I was dripping droplets of sweat.  I was not the most enthusiastic student but I persevered.  I came straight home because I knew our friend, John Allen and his son JD,  from Hawaii were coming either late morning or early afternoon.  So when I got home, Evie was busy making Turkish koftes (meatballs), a tomato sauce, so dinner would be ready.  I quickly gathered up the trash for my weekly drive to the Transfer Station.  When I got home it was time for lunch, leftover pizza and the beginning of another afternoon of March Madness.

Evie decided to forego the gym and go for a long walk through the campground, with her headphones, so she was out for a good hour, getting in a great walk.  Our friends called about 2:30, from Peek and Peak, where they hoped to get in some skiing but the slopes had closed, alas, the day before.  There was some snow, however, so they were able to throw snowballs.

They arrived about 3:30, bundled up because they are obviously not used to the weather here and it was cold, especially the wind.  We relaxed for a bit, got caught up on their lives, then decided to take a walk over at Long Point.  We parked at the Marina and walked out to the tip of Long Point, so we could easily see our house across the water.  We took some photographs, of course, and were surprised to see a small beach at Long Point's tip.  We then decided to show them one of our 'clubs,' because it has such a great view of the lake and we ended up going inside to introduce them to some friends and we had a beer of course.

Long Point's Beach With John And Jon-Dom Allen

We were home around 7:00, just as it was getting dark, so I got the grill ready to cook the koftes and Evie got things ready in the kitchen.  Dinner was great, of course, our version of Turkish Iskender Kebab, pita bread, koftes, a tomato sauce and yogurt, a family favorite and both John and JD seemed to enjoy it.  Afterwords, JD regaled Evie with some card tricks, and the two of them played games while John and I talked about old times.  We were friends in junior high, high school, college, and we taught together for two years in Ohio.  When we went to Hawaii, he visited us our first year and ended up staying, teaching, and doing some acting.  He also managed to visit us twice when we lived in Istanbul, and has made it here to the lake three times in the past 15 years, usually around this time of year, so he can go to Red's.  Just kidding.  We ended the night looking at the Shutterfly albums that Evie makes of each of our summers, which is always fun, looking back at how quick our grandchildren change through years.  We stayed up until 11:30 when we all went to bed, tired from the fun day.

Clear Skies And Cold

6:43

7:31

What a bright, shiny morning, a brilliant sunrise, not a cloud in the sky and it's very cold compared to the past week, a chilly 21º.   Snow was even forecast for last night but it did not happen.  The lake surface is ruffled, the wind is from the north,  the flag fairly stiff at the moment.

I am beginning to think our days don't vary much, that we are in a rut, follow a routine, that there's a sameness to our lives, not that it's a problem and probably good.  Good because we are trying to remain active and healthy, with my yoga in the mornings, Evie's workouts in the afternoon, with hikes, cross country skiing, and kayaking thrown in weather permitting.  So I won't complain when I write the same thing every day.

So yesterday began for me with yoga, then coffee and a brief run into Wegman's, and ended around noon when I returned to a house bursting with music, and a wife dancing around the house.  She loves Apple Music.  It was a beautiful day, so I went outside, worked in the yard picking up twigs from the heavy winds the previous evening, and Evie opened the window so I could work to the music as well.  For lunch,  Evie had a steak and mushroom hoagie in the oven, and I heated up the rest of matzo ball soup.  And then March Madness began for me, and Evie drove off to the Y and to do some shopping.  I watched for a half hour, decided to bag them for awhile and turned the tube back on towards the end of the game, at crunch time.  So I read, took a nap, and returned to watch Michigan State get upset by 15th seeded Middle Tennessee State and Iowa beat Temple in overtime, both great endings.

Dusk At 7:30

Evie returned around 4:00, we relaxed for a bit and then decided to have our once a week cocktail hour with a Manhattan, Friday night since our friend, John Allen and his son, was going to visit us Saturday night.  Thanks to Reverie Creamery, we had another great bleu cheese from France, Fourme D'Amert, described as "one of the oldest of cheeses, dating back to the Roman occupation, 1000 years ago.  It's slightly tangy, with savory flavors with distinct notes of butter and cream." Yum.  And we had a baguette to go with it, so by the time we finished the cheese and the baguette, we hardly had a need for dinner.  But Evie made a salad, warmed up a couple of slices of pizza and we had dinner.  We then watched the new episode of The Americans, a series we love and have anxiously awaited although it was disappointing until the very end, when we could see there would be great changes.  We cannot wait until next week.

BADLANDS: C. J. BOX

I had never heard of Box, even though he seems popular, but when I read the book was set during recent oil/fracking boom in North Dakota, I decided to try it.  The novel takes place in Grimstead, the fracking capital of North Carolina.  And the new deputy sheriff, Cassie Dewell from a previous novel, THE HIGHWAY, is thrown into this macho mix of males.  She has, however, earned her spurs, catching a serial killer the year before.  He is incarcerated in North Carolina, where the novel begins.  She has been asked to interrogates him, plays to his weaknesses, and he attacks her.  The law, however, is the law and he is set free for lack of evidence.  And so it goes.  This does not seem to have much to do with the rest of the novel, however, just setting the scene and character.

The novel begins when 12 year old Kyle Westergaard, a paper boy witnesses a car accident and picks up a bundle that is thrown from the car.  Suddenly, he has lots of money and many packets of white powder.  His Mom's live-in boyfriend, however, discovers the stash, takes it away from Kyle, and tries to fence it himself, a big mistake as local drug dealers, Hispanic gangs from LA, get in the mix. They look first for Kyle, then his Mom's boyfriend, hoping to find the money and drugs.  And Cassie, now in the middle of a violent drug war, eventually wins the day, as we would expect and for awhile, at least, the drugs stop pouring into Grimstead.  I really liked her character, the book, and hope there will soon be more, like the Joe Pickett series that Box is famous for.  Box deftly balances the two stories, Kyle's emotional story with Cassie's detective work, leading to saving Kyle's life and getting the drug dealers.  As one critic mentions: "The unrelenting cold makes it a perfect beach read."
Enjoy.

The Quietness Of Morning

6:40

6:52

7:43

7:51

As I sit here at 7:15, looking at the refections of the morning sky on the shimmering lake, I contemplate the quietness of mornings, broken only at this time of year, by the sound of wild life, from ducks and geese, to song birds, to yesterday's peepers.  Only winter remains the big quiet, the only sound, the often howling wind.

A Photographer, Early Morning

A Nesting Couple Of Canadian Geese

For us, St Patrick's Day did not alter our routines much, if at all.  The only exception, perhaps, was a heavy wind on and off during the day, strong enough to knock out the electricity for a time. Fortunately, it was in the late afternoon and only for 15 minutes.  So, the morning went as usual, with yoga 10:00, a quick ride home to a wife who had been busy, as always,  and had my lunch of eggplant sandwiches ready to eat.  So she said aloha and took off for the gym, leaving me to an afternoon filled with March Madness, as the games began at noon, didn't really stop until midnight, with the West Coast games.  I channel surfed, mostly, moving from one game to another, stopping if the game looked interesting.  Soon, however, I tired of the glut of games and moved to the couch to read and take a nap, not caring what team won or lost.  I am not invested in the Bracketology.

I finished my South African book, COBRA,  and started a new one from Robert Harris, called ARCHANGEL, set in Moscow in the 1990's. with a focus on Joseph Stalin, his death and notebooks. So far, so good.  Evie returned around 3:30 and we both did little the rest of the afternoon until 5:00, when we showered (separately) and got ready to go to the McClure's for a St. Patty's Day dinner.

On the way over, we passed a couple of tree service trucks, as the wind had obviously knocked down some branches and electrical wires, fortunately, not at the Mc Clure's.  Linda had a great Irish dinner ready, corn beef, mashed potatoes, and a bit of a change, sauerkraut rather than cabbage.  All was great and we even started our evening with Black and Tans, carefully poured by Ron.  We watched some basketball on and off, at least Ron and I did, as Linda and Evie seemed uninterested, often going off to the kitchen to talk without the guys and basketball to get in the way.  We stayed later than usual, getting home just after 10:00, another fun night with Linda and Ron.  The drive home was easy, with hardly a car on the road.  Interestingly, as we drove down our road at 10:00, a First Energy Truck was blocking our road, responding to our call from six hours earlier.  It's a good thing our electricity was out for only 15 minutes.

FIELD GRAY: PHILIP KERR

This is the seventh in the series of Bernie Gunther novels by British writer Kerr, all set in Germany, from the Pre Nazi period to the aftermath of WW II, into the 1950's, at least that's as far as I have gotten at the moment.  And this is my favorite so far, though I went back and looked at a couple of reviews of his previous novels and I also mentioned that they were my favorites so far, so he seems to be getting better and better.

Bernie begins the novel in Cuban where he has been working for a wealthy casino owner.  He gets in trouble, is forced to flee from the island, along with a young woman who has murdered a corrupt police office.  Unfortunately, their boat gets stopped by the US Coast Guard and both are detained by the government.  Bernie gets locked up, not for the first time, nor the last, as the US wants to understand Bernie's role in Nazi Germany.

Like his previous novels, this book blends Bernie's past, as a detective in Kripo, a house dick at the Adlon hotel, and the wearing of 'field gray' as an SS officer, albeit against his will.  In previous books he has railed against the Nazis, the Russians, in this book, we find that the Americans, their methods are not far behind.  He is at first whisked off to Gitmo for interrogation, he assumes about his connection with Meyer Lansky, the gangster who runs the Cuban casinos.  But he is then flown to Castle Williams, a military prison on Governor's Island.  There, the Americans casual brutality, makes Bernie realize they aren't much different from any of the others.  He is then flown to Landsberg prison in Germany, where he is housed with other Nazis and interrogated by both the Americans, then French, until he realizes they are after an old acquaintance, now head of the Stasi in East Germany, Erich Mielke.  And we learn the back story of their relationship, how he saved Mielke from the SS after an assassination back in 1941.  Later, he is taken by the French to a camp after the war to identify a prisoner they think is Mielke, but once again, he says he does not recognize Mielke, saving his life.

Towards the end, he seems to collaborate with the Americans, setting up a trap for Mielke, a coup for the Americans because he is a powerful figure in East Germany.  But by now, Bernie is as disillusioned with the Amis as he was with the Nazis, and we get a surprise ending.  He sets up the Americans and work with Mielke, to reunite with his wife and disappear in Prague, the next book of the series.

The novel ends with the following quotation: "In some ways I admire them (the Americans), but I also dislike the way they don't ever live up to their own ideals.  I think I might like the Amis a lot more if they were like everyone else.  One might forgive them more.  But they preach about the magnificence of their democracy and the enduring power of their constitutional freedom, while at the same time they're trying to fuck your wife and steal your watch (figuratively)."

Every Morning Sky Is Like A Painting

6:36

6:56

7:18

7:31

7:36

I woke at 5:30, went back to sleep until 6:20, when I got up, groggy, walked downstairs, turned on the coffee and admired the waking morning sky, still dark with hints of light and color.  What a delight each morning to wake up to a different sky.  It's 42º on St. Patrick's Day and it looks like a good day for a parade if we had one.

Yesterday when I was young (this lyric just came to mind), I went to yoga at 10:00 after an enjoyable and relaxing morning.  There were only three of us and our teacher, Jen, was recovering from the flu so she suggested we have a day of restorative yoga which we all enthusiastically sanctioned.  No pain, just relaxation position for an hour.  And we listened to some interesting music, Phillip Glass's Tuscan Interludes, quite different from the usual Indian music.  It was a pleasant way to start the day.  I did not linger, came straight home like a good boy, and Evie had my lunch made, a  packaged Manischewitz matzo ball soup and a bagel with cream cheese and tomato.  The soup is really quite good, just like a Jewish Deli but in your own home.  I watched maybe a half hour of the first episode of GAME OF THRONES.  I am not hooked yet but I will stick with it for a few episodes.  I know lots of people are hooked on it and are waiting patiently for the new season to start in a couple of weeks.

The rest of the afternoon took a familiar bent.  Evie left for the gym like a good girl around 1:00 and  I read some, took a nap, listened to the politics surrounding the new Supreme Court nominee, the babble of Mitch MeConnell.  I had enough and despite the wind, went kayaking and fishing for a half hour, hugging the shoreline to avoid the gusts.  It was not much fun yet it was good to be on the lake on a surprisingly sunny afternoon.

We planned on cooking steaks outside around 6:30 but the wind picked up the sky, darkened and it started to rain around wine time, so we thought we would have to grill inside.  But just as quick as the sky darkened, it opened up, the sun came out and I was able to grill the steaks out on our grill.  Evie, meanwhile, made her famous mushrooms, sauteed over fairly high heat and finished with butter and soy sauce, a salad, and roasted some Brussels sprouts, we we were treated to a steak house kind of dinner.  We watched OJ, still fun, then a new series, OCCUPIED, produced by Norwegian novelist, Joe Nesbo.  It's quite good so we now have something to look forward to each evening for another week.

CRIME OF PRIVILEGE: WALTER WALKER

I picked this book up by mistake a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I would give it a try and got hooked.  It begins with a young college student, George Becket, in Palm Beach, FL, with his wealthy college roommate.  They both get invited to a Senator's home and there the story begins. George, middle class, in awe of the wealth and privilege parading about the house, follows a couple of college guys, the Gregory boys (also wealthy blue bloods from Cape Cod), upstairs to a bedroom.  They have plans for a drunk young lady, Kendrick Powell, also daughter of a fabulously rich father.  The Gregory's, take advantage of her drunkenness, rape and ravage her in front of a befuddled, innocent, and meek George, too shocked and scared to do anything until the last moment, when he pulls the younger of the two Gregory's off of her.  George helps Kendrick get dressed, walks her through the party and out to her car, and she drives off and George thinks that's it.  Not quite.

We jump ahead a few years and George gets a job after law school as an Assistant DA on Cape Cod. He learns of a cold case, an unsolved murder of a young woman, Heidi Telford, from Heidi's father. And George becomes more interested when the father suggests the perpetrator was a Gregory, the same Gregory's who raped Kendrick Powell.  Coincidence or chance?  George at first refuses to pursue it but then becomes interested, and the rest of the novel follows him as he looks for various leads, leading him closer to the truth, to what he has known all along.  Both families, the Gregory's and the Powell's take interest in George, for different reasons obviously and hire 'people' to keep an eye on him, making sure he doesn't make trouble.

It becomes too complicated to explain but by the end, no one gets much satisfaction although George is reconciled to the power of privilege, to how the rich are different from the rest of us...they have more money, more padding as it were, to protect them.  George ends up happy, however, having found Barbara, heir to another fortune who has taken a liking to him.  She runs a not very successful law office at the end and lives with George and her two sons.  Even though no one has been found guilty of either the rape or murder, George is finally at peace.   A decent but not great book because we get sick of George after awhile, his self pity, and refusal to take a stand until the very end.