Lift Up Your Hearts!

It is my habit to walk in the early mornings, taking laps around our pool; they're short, but they add up, and the predawn time is gentle and the coolest part of the day. There's something magical about watching the world gradually become visible, and hearing the morning symphony change from insects and frogs to awakening birds.

Just before 5:30, today added something that brings back a smile even as I write about it. On one of my rounds my eye was caught by a spot of light in the east. That's not unusual, as we see the lights of many planes on their way to or from the Orlando International Airport. But this light was orange.

Moving to where I could better discern what my peripheral vision had picked up, I realized that I had one of the best views ever of a launch from Cape Canaveral. The rocket was high in the sky by the time the sight cleared our roof, but it had been launched at an unusually good angle, coming nearly straight toward us. As I determined later, it was the Starlink 10-42 mission, the record-breaking 36th flight for this particular booster.

The orange plume in the clear, dark sky was stunning, and I watched until it winked out at MECO (Main Engine Cutoff).

The flag still stands for freedom, and they can't take that away.

You know you're aging as fast as the country when you tell people you were almost a quarter of a century old when America celebrated her 200th birthday, and they say, "Oh, wow...." But I remember celebrating the Bicentennial in Philadelphia, and hearing President Ford speak there.

I approached this post feeling entirely inadequate to write about America's 250th birthday. It demands something more profound, more intense than I can give at the moment, despite my deep feelings. I love our country now more than I ever have, perhaps because never in all my decades as an American have I felt our freedom to be in more danger, and the number of those attempting to take it away—or give it away—to be so overwhelming. But the flag still stands for freedom.

Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA was from my children's era, not mine, and it doesn't often come to mind when I think about patriotic songs. But the other day I heard it, unexpectedly, and it equally unexpectedly brought tears to my eyes. I paused and stood taller as if I were hearing our national anthem. It's a fitting tribute to a great country.

If tomorrow all the things were gone
I'd worked for all my life
And I had to start again
With just my children and my wife
I'd thank my lucky stars
To be living here today
'Cause the flag still stands for freedom
And they can't take that away

And I'm proud to be an American
Where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me
And I'd gladly stand up
Next to you and defend her still today
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land
God bless the USA

From the lakes of Minnesota
To the hills of Tennessee
Across the plains of Texas
From sea to shining sea
From Detroit down to Houston
And New York to L.A
Well there's pride in every American heart
And it's time we stand and say

That I'm proud to be an American
Where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me
And I'd gladly stand up
Next to you and defend her still today
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land
God bless the USA

And I'm proud to be an American
Where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me
And I'd gladly stand up
Next to you and defend her still today
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land
God bless the USA

I'm not unsympathetic to those who are genuinely suffering in the heat. I spent the first 30+ years of my life in the Northeast, where air conditioning was almost unheard of, even in critical care hospitals. The laboratory where I worked in the 1970's only had air conditioning in the computer rooms, and that only because—like art—the machines would not work under conditions that people were expected to endure with patience. Even in Florida, my grandparents' house, like most buildings before the late 20th century, had no air conditioning. (It was, however, intelligently built: two blocks from the ocean, and constructed for maximum cross-ventilation, to take advantage of every breeze.) I know unrelenting heat.

So how did we manage?

• Buildings, like my grandparents' house, were built to take the heat into account, with cross-ventilating windows, breezy porches, and shady trees arching over the roofs. Central Florida as it is built now could not exist without the HVAC industry.
• House windows were habitually opened as soon as the outside air cooled off at night, which it did most weeks of the year in the Northeast, and closed when the day began to heat up. This practice has a power that I didn't fully appreciate until we moved to Florida, where the nighttime cooling is ofttimes non-existent.
• Swimming: in ponds, lakes, pools, and/or the ocean. Plastic kiddie pools and running through the sprinkler helped a lot, too. When we first moved to Florida, we kept the A/C set in the 80's, and spent a lot of time in the pool. That kept us cool, but took a terrible toll on our energy. Once we gave in and brought the inside temperature down to the high 70's, we used the pool less—but got a lot more accomplished.
• Another advantage the more northern climes have is that the really unbearable temperatures are only for a short time. When we lived in Rochester, there were usually only two or three weeks in the summer when I was reduced to nursing my baby while immersed in a cool-water bath, and planning excursions based on whether or not the destination was air conditioned. In Florida, sans A/C, that would be the majority of the year.
• A few very lucky people had jobs in air conditioned buildings. As for the rest of us: we suffered; we endured; we dialed down our activities to keep our bodies cooler and our minds saner. And we looked forward to the first hints of autumn.

But that was then, and this is now, and now what makes it possible to have a comfortable, productive society is air conditioning. It's no secret that the closest thing the American South has to a secular saint is Willis Carrier. Air conditioning is as critical in the Sun Belt as heating is in the Snow Belt. Having heard people seriously suggest that the cause of France's heat wave is American air conditioning, I can only say, "Come back and talk to me about giving up my A/C after you've lived a winter in your country without heating." Better yet, discover air conditioning for yourself. Even if you only need it for a few weeks out of the year, you'll feel better, and can be pleased with how low your A/C bills are compared with ours, just as we Southerners feel better about our heating bills in winter when we look at yours.

You might also consider investing in public places of respite, as I've seen in various cities here, where people can come in to get warm, or to get cool, depending on the season. As I said in my last post, one can stand a much greater intensity and duration of heat or cold if one can occasionally retreat to a more comfortable situation.

And gelaterias. We all need more gelaterias.

Now that we're back from three weeks in the Mediterranean region, people are wondering how we survived Europe's heat wave. The answer is simple: the same way we survive Florida's summers. Nowhere that we went did the temperatures exceed Florida's numbers: high 80's to low 90's were the worst we experienced. That's actual temperature. Having lived more than seven decades with that as my measure of ambient temperature, my brain rebels against the modern "feels like" idea, which always makes me feel more miserable than I am. For what it's worth, the UV Index at its highest in a day was generally 8—like a normal Connecticut summer. In Florida at this time of year that number is routinely 12. I was barely aware of the UV Index until I acquired the dminder app for my phone to help me keep track of the vitamin D my body is making. If I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt, a 10-minute walk in the midday sun at UVI 12 easily gets me 2000 IUs (and a warning that it's time to go inside). On the UV Index scale, 1-2 is considered Low, 3-5 Moderate, 6-7 High, 8-10 Very High, and 11+ Extreme.

Our first four days were in Florence, and were undeniably hot, because we wanted to make the most of our short time there. Our hotel was convenient to everything we wanted to see, so we walked everywhere and were on the go most of the time the sun was up. (Sane Floridians avoid the midday hours outside if possible. "Mad dogs and Englishmen," you know.) The Mediterranean sun was intense, the humidity was high, the cobbled sidewalks a challenge to walk on, and Florence's many staircases a trial for legs accustomed to flat surfaces. What made this only a minor inconvenience?

• This was early in our trip, when we were fresh and eager.
• Hats and sunglasses. Generally I hate wearing a hat, but keeping the sun off my face was a necessity.
• A Floridian's practiced eye for finding shade. Walk on the shady side of the street. Rest in a shady spot. It makes a significant difference, even when the humidity is high.
• Air-conditioned respites. This is huge. As with cold in the winter, one can stand a much greater intensity and duration of heat if one can occasionally retreat to a more comfortable situation. In our case, we spent much of our time walking from one museum to another, and generally recognize that great art survives better in a hospitable climate. So do people, but art refuses to be bullied. The museums were comfortably air conditioned—not the frigid situation one finds in Florida restaurants, for example, which is why I keep a sweatshirt in the car at all times and occasionally pull it out even during the hottest summer days.
• We didn't hesitate to adjust our schedule to accommodate our physical needs.
• Frequent gelato stops. Never underestimate the importance of this Italian staple.

For the remainder of our trip, we were on a Princess cruise, visiting Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Montenegro. The ship itself was over-airconditioned, but an occasional trip to the blistering sun of the top decks took care of that nicely. And the otherwise-excessive A/C was admittedly glorious upon returning from a long, midday excursion of hiking, under a cloudless sky, through ancient ruins.

Overall, to those who asked us how we managed in Europe's "terrible heat wave," my first thought was always, "What heat wave?"

But I do understand unrelenting heat, as I'll explain in my next post.

Our resident pilot-in-training has now obtained his Commercial license!  Despite what it sounds like, that doesn't mean you might catch a glimpse of him in the cockpit next time you take a flight. However, he is now eligible to earn money as a pilot—it's the next step in the process. Earning a Commercial license requires more training, new manoeuvers, many more flight hours, and a lot of "book learning," culminating in a written exam, an oral exam, and the nerve-wracking, practical "check ride" flight. We're very proud of him!

P.S. He still makes great desserts, too.

I've been out of the country for three weeks, and I never look at Tik Tok anyway, but I hear that it has been blowing up with European visitors to America (mostly thanks to the World Cup), expressing their pleasure, appreciation, and astonishment at how different their experiences were compared with all they had been told about the U.S. Some of those commentaries made it into Facebook Reels, and I enjoyed seeing them. Everything from the trivial (discovering ranch dressing) to the profoundly encouraging (finding that the Americans they met were friendly, helpful, and delightful—not at all they way we had been portrayed to them back home.

It works both ways, too. During our recent three weeks in Europe, we met many new people from many different countries, including England, Scotland, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Greece, Italy, Germany, Montenegro, Turkey, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Brazil, and the Philippines. We discovered that without exception they were interesting people, delightful to converse with, rational and reasonable, and that we held much in common. What's more, I saw no anti-American sentiment at all. I'm sure it exists, but in three weeks among ordinary folks, we met only friends.

...Not one, not two, not three, but FOUR armadillos cavorting all around.

They are voracious bug eaters, and welcome. I see them most often in the early morning, just before dawn.  When I can't really see them, let alone capture them with my camera.

In my More Fun post, I mentioned that my "I've had fun before" cartoon was a "four-way collaboration among me, my grandson, Copilot, and Claude." Here's more about that.

For a long time, I've had simmering in my mind the idea of making a cartoon (meme?) illustrating my frustration with having a far different sense of what activities are enjoyable, or pleasurable, or "fun" than much of the world I live in. The point of the cartoon would be the idea that I've experienced what the world calls fun, and I find it overrated. After finding my father's own commentary on fun, I was inspired to bring the idea to fruition.

My first roadblock was finding a suitable background image for the cartoon, something that illustrated what people conventionally vew as fun, or a fun activity. Searching through clipart and online images was not producing helpful results, and Copilot, which I usually use when I need to create a drawing, was not doing the job this time. Having found Claude extremely helpful in other projects, I decided to move into its space and give it the problem.

Claude was great at helping me figure out just what I wanted the image to convey, but then I ran into a major snag:

Claude can't draw.

This is where my grandson entered the scene. He suggested that I ask Claude to write a prompt for me to use with Copilot to help it understand what I was trying to do. This Claude did with ease, and Copilot nailed the idea in an image. I then refined the image through several back-and-forth sessions: Claude looking at the image and pointing out what worked well with my ideas and what needed tweaking, me questioning Claude for its opinion on what changes might make the point more clearly, and then going back to Copilot to implement the results. Eventually, we reached the "good enough is better than perfect" stage, and the cartoon was born.

I found the process to be an interesting collaboration. Working with Copilot felt like dealing with an excellent artist who was a bit slow on the uptake. Claude couldn't draw but was smarter and had a good eye. Noah provided the key that nudged me out of the rut I was in, and I put it all together. Claude called it a perfect creative team:

• Copilot: the talented studio artist who executes brilliantly but needs very clear direction
• Claude: the creative director with opinions but no hands
• Your grandson: the spark of inspiration
• You: the producer who held the vision, made the calls, and knew when it was done

I call it fun.

I love my father's sense of humor, and I love the way he write. I recognize that not everyone does, but as I write for those who enjoy my stories, and not for those who can easily pass them up, today you get another excerpt from one of his letters, written in January 1981, about a ski trip taken by the Boy Scout Explorer group he and my siblings were involved with.

We made it to Resica Falls Friday night without any problems, although we were in a rather intense snow flurry for about the last ten miles. We got the cars unpacked and the Health Lodge warmed up a little and then everyone went to bed at a reasonable hour to prepare for the coming day. John M., a neighbor and parent who also had driven a load of Explorers, and I stayed behind in camp while the rest went to the Camelback Ski slopes. I have long ago concluded that skiing is much too expensive a sport for me to take up seriously, and therefore there was no point in my getting battered and bruised on the ski slopes on a once-a-year trip. So I stayed in camp to make sure that dinner was ready for the crew when they got back.

After a certain amount of reading before the fire, I set about the preparations for dinner about 11 a.m., while John M. worked at rejuvenating the wood supply. I planned chicken curry for dinner and so the first five hours, more or less, were spent cutting the meat off 40 chicken legs. And since I had all those chicken bones, it seemed reasonable to make chicken noodle soup. And since I broke each of the 80 chicken bones before putting them in the pot, it can be said that I broke more bones on the ski trip than everyone else put together.

When the others got back, the soup was waiting for them and many proclaimed it the best soup they had ever eaten! Of course, I recognize that for people who have been exercising all day in the cold, anything tastes good, so building a reputation as a soup-maker was rather easy. The chicken curry also went over well—even the rice turned out well. So now I am thinking of retiring from cooking while I am ahead.

In view of all the excitement over the weather these days, it seems appropriate to publish my father's story of one of my happiest childhood memories, which he called the Great Ice Storm of 1964.  If you find yourself struggling under bitter cold, sheets of ice, and loss of power this weekend, I hope you will be able to turn the event into an adventure that your children will still remember with delight sixty years later.

The Great Ice Storm of 1964

by Warren Langdon

In December 1964, while we were living on Haviland Drive in Scotia, NY, an ice storm wreaked havoc throughout the area and left us with an adventure that I recorded in letters to my father and other family members.  I recently found carbon copies of those letters and am rewriting them.  It is my intent to copy the letters exactly as written except for misspellings and for words that are crossed out.  Words that I have added I have put in italics, thus identifying the parts of the story that might suffer distortions caused by my faulty memory.

Part 1

December 9, 1964

Dear Dad,

What an adventure we have had this past weekend!  It all started on Friday, the day that Lynn and Linda were supposed to go to the Girl Scout camp on Hidden Lake for the weekend and I was to stay home and baby-sit with the other three children.  We all had great plans, but Friday morning brought freezing rain that had not let up by noon.  At that time Lynn backed out of the trip, feeling that the weather was not proper for taking the girls out.  Just before they were to leave at 3 o’clock the trip was canceled, and the freezing rain continued to fall.

I had been at work all day.  The part of the Laboratory that I worked in was housed in a large multistory building that belonged to an entirely different part of the Company.  Our offices were in a corner of an otherwise unoccupied first floor.  I had not been outside all day and the first inkling I had that things were not normal came when all the lights went out at what I suppose must have been about 5 o’clock.  The entrance to our office area was a fairly large room with desks for two secretaries and off this room was a moderately long hallway with offices on both sides.  When the lights went out I was the only one in the area and I had to grope my way down the hall, through the entrance area and out to the out-of-doors.  Of course it was dark at that time of day and since all electricity was off, there was essentially no light coming into the building.  To make matters more interesting, as I was groping my way up the hall a fire engine with siren blaring drove up.  (I found out later that some equipment that was running on the fourth floor was connected to sound an alarm in the fire station in the event that the power went off.)  I went home and do not remember any difficulty getting there.  The streets must have been well salted/sanded.

I arrived home about 6 o’clock to find a fire in each fireplace and candlelight removing the darkness from the house—the power had gone off at 1:50 in the afternoon and that is a time that is etched in my memory, for that is when the clock stopped, and that is what the clock read for better than three days—every time I looked at it.

When I got home Lynn had supper ready—baked beans cooked over the fire in the fireplace.  They were burned a little, but they tasted good.  All evening long we could hear trees snapping and branches falling as limbs bent and broke under the weight of the ice that was coating them.  And in Scotia, every time a limb fell it took down a live power line.  We could watch as the whole sky lit up brightly with the red, orange, and yellow light, and often the green that signified vaporized copper.  The light was so bright and the sky so completely lit up that I thought it must have been the northern lights, even though they were in the east, but I have been assured several times since that it was all caused by high voltage power lines coming down.  I never believed that it could be so bright from so great a distance, but I suspect that the low clouds did much to enhance the effect.  But the fire department and the police in Scotia were very busy setting up barricades and otherwise coping with the problems of downed power lines.  Our fire department got not one single call on Friday night—mostly, I think, because all the lines that went down in our district were dead when they went down.

Friday night Linda and Alan slept in sleeping bags in front of the fireplace while Nancy, David, Lynn, and I slept upstairs as usual.  It was a little chilly upstairs but not bad.  Linda watched the fire down stairs and put an occasional log on as she woke up during the night.  We awoke Saturday morning to behold an awful mess outside.  Almost every tree in our yard had been broken to some extent, although the two oaks in the back and the pines seemed unbroken.  But the locusts and the wild black cherry trees were badly hit and they are now rather drastically thinned.  The back yard is a mess, but our yard is not nearly as bad as some of the yards nearer Spring Road.  But Scotia was far harder hit.  Not only has the tree damage been worse, but almost every tree limb that fell took down a power or telephone line or blocked a street.

When the power went off Lynn was caught with a wash done but not dried, so one of the first chores on Saturday morning was to go into the village and see if there was a Laundromat open.  At that time I did not realize just how badly the village had been hit since they had power when I came home from work on Friday.  Linda and David went with me and we actually had very little trouble.  The streets we traveled on were mostly clear and there was very little traffic out.  There was enough power in the business district that a Laundromat was open and we dried the wash with no problems.  We also went to a drug store that had some power.  Their electricity came from two streets (they are located on a corner) and the part that came from Vley Road was on and the part that came from Fifth Street was off.  We came home still not realizing just how many live wires were still coming down and how much damage had been done in some parts of the Village.  The house of one of the men I worked with was without power for a full week.  Things were bad enough that the sheriff’s cars were making the rounds of the Village with sound systems warning people to stay home unless it was absolutely necessary to go out.  A state of emergency was declared, but I still do not know what that means.  In spite of all the live wires that were falling, the only fatality so far as I know was the Mayor’s dog.

When we got home we made an effort to prop up the little wild plum tree in the front which was sagging badly and had one main branch broken, but beyond that there didn’t seem to be much to do and it didn’t make much sense to start cleaning up yet.  We spent the day not accomplishing very much, but not having a hard time of it either.  We had plenty of wood—in fact, on Friday, Linda and I had taken a couple of wheel barrow loads to a neighbor whose husband is a traveling auditor and was out of town.

Saturday night we cooked hamburgers over the charcoal grill, doing the cooking in the garage where the car lights helped us see what we were doing.  Lynn used paper plates and paper cups as much as possible to cut down on the dish washing that was required since we were not in a position to heat much water.  But cooking over the grill gave us a chance to have a good supply for the dishes.  As far as I was concerned it was a privilege to wash the dishes as long as there was hot water to do it in.  The water in the hot water tank was still rather warm and that, together with what we heated on the grill made dish washing easy.

Saturday night we moved Nancy’s crib down into the living room and we all slept downstairs.  Nancy was in her crib; the other children were in sleeping bags in the living room; and Lynn was on a mattress in the living room while I was on the roll-a-way bed in the family room.

I suppose it was inevitable on such a weekend.  About 3 a.m. the telephone rang (Don’t ask me how it was that no one had electricity and everyone had working telephones.) and I was told to report to 72 Spring Road as there was a fire there.  (The fire station was without power too, so the siren did not blow.  Don’t ask me why the power lines were down and the telephone lines were not.)  I dressed and got there before the fire trucks did and actually had some trouble finding the place as no one was out to flag me down.  I overshot and by the time I got back the fire engines were there.  Then I could see considerable smoke coming out of the attic ventilator.  It was a case of a fireplace in an interior wall and a hole in the mortar of the chimney.  Either heat or sparks had set fire to the wall and it was a rather stubborn blaze.  I tended the truck and ran the pump and never got inside, so I don’t know just how bad the damage was.  I gather there was considerable damage to the wall but essentially none to the rest of the house.  I gather the owners are back living in it now that the power is on.

I see that I am at about the limit of the paper that I can send to Ethiopia for one stamp so I will close and continue later except to say that we got our power back at 8:00 p.m. on Monday and are absolutely none the worse for wear.  I’ll tell the rest of the story later. 

Part 2

December 15, 1964

Dear Dad,

I left off last week’s narrative telling about the fire we went to at 3 a.m. Sunday morning during our week end without power.  As I mentioned, I ran the pump and tended the truck, standing out in the wind and snow flurries and getting very, very cold.  I kept thinking how nice it would be to go home after this was all over and have a good hot bath;  then I would remember how impossible that was with no hot water, so I just shivered some more.  We put the fire truck away by candlelight and returned at 11 o’clock to finish the job properly by daylight.  I got home the first time about 6:30 a.m. which meant I no sooner gotten back into bed, after first building up the fires in the fireplaces, than the first of the children started waking up, and there was no more sleep for that night.

Sunday Lynn again went in to the village and did a laundry, primarily to make sure we had plenty of diapers.  Both the Dietzes and the Campbells called to offer us any help that we might need.  The Campbells were without power only about 28 hours and the Dietzes never did lose theirs.  The only thing we thought we might want was a hot bath, but Sunday was a pleasant day and it seemed easier to stay home than to go out, so that is what we did.  I did make a point of shaving in some rather lukewarm water but that is as far as we went toward cleaning up.  A neighbor lent us his two-burner gasoline stove for our supper, so we had some hot gravy and a hot vegetable to go with some left over roast beef.  We also cooked some baked potatoes in the fireplace and we dined like royalty.  Of course I didn’t time the potatoes very well and they weren’t done until everything else was gone, but then, what better dessert is there than hot baked potatoes with butter?  The gasoline stove got put to good use for heating water and it was a real pleasure to wash dishes under these circumstances.

Sunday night it got cold outdoors and was an official four degrees by Monday morning.  Inside it was 44 degrees in our hall where the thermostat is and it was less than 34 degrees in the upstairs bathroom.  (My recollection is that we had a Celsius thermometer hanging in the bathroom and it read barely one degree.)  But in the family and living rooms it was warm enough that no one suffered.  Monday there was no school and I decided not to go into work.  Lynn packed up and went in to the Campbell’s in Scotia and they all had hot baths and a hot lunch while I watched the fires at home and took advantage of the deserted house to proof-read a rather lengthy report we were having to write.  After lunch I abandoned the house for an hour or so and went also to the Campbell’s and had a hot bath.  That was a feeling of real luxury!  I think that the thing I missed most during the time the power was off was copious amounts of hot water.  Lynn also used the visit to the Campbell’s to do another wash and to put some of our freezer foods in Mrs. Campbell’s freezer.  Fortunately we had not had much perishable in our freezer when the power went off.  There was bread which didn’t matter, some frozen vegetables and frozen strawberries that we could eat before they spoiled.  But our really valuable frozen foods—the 12 quarts of blueberries—Lynn put in Mrs. Campbell’s freezer.  Things were pretty well frozen on Monday morning, but were beginning to soften.  The only thing we lost was about a gallon of ice cream.

As I returned from the Campbell’s I noticed the power company crew working on the broken line on Haviland Drive, and others were working on Spring Road, so it looked like we would have power by sometime Tuesday for sure.  I returned to the Campbell’s for supper and a very pleasant dinner it was.  Linda and Alan were invited to spend the night with the Campbell children, and they did—-not because of any hardship at home but because they enjoy playing with the children.  The rest of us returned home for another night without heat and light, but sure it would be the last such night.  And as we sat before the fire the lights suddenly went on.  It was almost exactly 8:00 o’clock—-the power had been off just over 78 hours.  So with the furnace running at last we knew that we could let the fireplace fires go out and we set about the business of finishing the defrosting of the freezer and the refrigerator, and giving both of them a good cleaning.  And when we finished that job we probably got colder than at any time during the weekend.  The fires had died considerably while we had been working, and the furnace had only barely begun to raise the temperature in the house.  In fact, when I left for work on Tuesday morning the furnace had been running for eleven hours and the temperature was only up to 63 degrees.  Monday night Nancy and David again slept before the living room fireplace, but Lynn and I slept upstairs where the electric blanket would nullify the effect of the cold bedroom.  And so ended the big adventure.  No one suffered and no one was unhappy.  But poor Nancy—-in the years to come she will complain that she can’t remember a bit of it.

Editor's commentary:

• If, like me, you cringed when you read about using our hibachi-sized charcoal grill in the garage, know that (1) our garage was drafty, and (2) my father was not only an engineer but a fireman, and well aware of the dangers of burning charcoal in close spaces.  I certainly don't recommend the practice these days, but he knew what he was doing and we were in no danger.
• In those days power lines and telephone lines were two different things, with the power wires being strung higher than the phone wires, and thus perhaps more vulnerable.  "Landline" phones (there was no other kind) carried their own power, independent of the electrical service.
• His apparently incongruous concern over the cost of postage to Ethiopia was because that is where my father's sister and her family, to whom he sent copies of his letters, were living at the time.
• I am still puzzled by his description of the frozen food situation.
  1. Why, if it was 4 degrees outside, did they worry about frozen food?  Why didn't they just put it outside?  If they were worried about animals getting to it, then if my memory of the temperature of our garage was correct, that would have done just as well as a convenient, walk-in freezer.
  2. How on earth did we let a gallon of ice cream go to waste?  Surely our family of six could have polished that off easily enough.
• Poor Nancy, indeed.  The ice storm is one of my most cherished memories.  What more could a child want?  The family was together, school was closed, and we “camped out” at home.  Toast never tasted so good as that which we grilled over the fire on our marshmallow sticks.  I liked being responsible for keeping the family room fire going.  Ordinary life was put on hold while we enjoyed working and playing together.  (You can tell I was not the one responsible for making sure there were enough clean diapers.)  The sun turned the ice-covered world into a crystal paradise, and the exploding transformers were as good a show as any fireworks display.  While it is true that we always enjoyed being with the Campbells, the way I remember the night spent at their house was that I felt I was supposed to be grateful for heat and hot water and the chance to have a “normal” night, but I really resented missing the last few hours of an enormously pleasurable adventure.  I suspect I didn’t communicate this to my parents at all at the time, but I’m surprised at how strong the memory of the disappointment is to this day.

As I've mentioned before, I've been enjoying going through (and digitizing, where possible) my father's old journals and letters. I particularly like coming upon examples of his sense of humor, which often relied on either exaggeration or understatement, or both. The following, from a mid-1988 letter, made me smile this morning.

Last Monday while I was carrying an ancient and defunct television set out to the trash, my back gave way. It was not a heavy load--certainly not more than 20 pounds--but even though I had no trouble getting it up the basement stairs and through the house, the problem came without warning as I was descending the front porch steps.

Over the next several days, interspersed with other news, Dad reported feeling fine enough to spade the garden, then feeling considerably worse, finally consulting a doctor and getting x-rays which revealed a compression fracture. He next visited an orthopedic specialist, who was not concerned about the x-ray results, since they showed only something minor that might have happened many years ago. Based on Dad's description, the doctor concluded that the problem was muscular, and prescribed "time and a heating pad." When Dad then asked what kind of activities he could could indulge in, the doctor replied, "Anything you want." For anyone reading this who knew my father, the alarm bells are now going off....

Dad did limit his activities to the extent that he did not go bungee jumping, nor bowling, the latter having landed him back in the hospital on a previous occasion when his surgeon had told him that he could "do anything you feel like doing." He did decide that that heavy gardening was still on the table, and paid for that the next day, but the orthopedic doctor was apparently right, and the references in his letters to his back petered out. In the end, he was left with the following conclusion:

I guess this confirms my feeling that television is bad for you. But on the other hand, if you have one, keep it.

Yesterday, January 6th, was the holy day of Epiphany, celebrating the revelation of God's Light to the Gentiles (the Three Wise Men) and marking the end of the Twelve days of Christmas.  Recently, however, some people have tried to appropriate that day for political purposes—Left and Right alike. 

I will have none of that!

Before dawn yesterday morning, I was up performing the ritual of Chalking the Door, a practice we ran into in Europe before spending a few years in a church that honored that custom.  We still have the chalk which was officially blessed in 2020.  It only gets used once a year, so we're not likely to outlive it.

Lord God of heaven and earth, you revealed your only begotten Son to every nation by the guidance of a star.  Bless this house and all who live here and all who visit.  May we be blessed with health, kindness of heart, gentleness and the keeping of your law.  Fill us with the light of Christ, that our love for each other may go out to all.  We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

'Way back in the 1980's, my family enjoyed spending time with good friends who owned a summer camp on a lake in Vermont. The following is a story from the year my father made the mistake of being part of camp-opening at the beginning of the season. Names have been abbreviated to protect the innocent and the guilty. I hope you find that this tale of minor summertime woe brings you a little bit of cheer this Christmas season, if only because it didn't happen to you. It's funny how we often find misfortune to be humorous as long as it's sufficiently distant in time and space. But don't feel bad about that. Dad would have laughed—that's why he wrote it the way he did.

Friday, 5 June 1987

I was the first to arrive. I expected D. around 9 or 9:30, A. and J. around 2-3 a.m., and E. even later. What I found in the cabin did not leave me overjoyed. When the camp had been "winterized" the refrigerator had been unplugged and the doors propped open as they should have been, but what they failed to do was remove what appeared to have been some popsicles and something that had been wrapped in aluminum foil and was about the size of a pan of brownies. Whatever it was, it had long ago spoiled and left a very unpleasant odor in the kitchen and a mess in the freezer compartment. At this point I went out and bought some sponges for cleanup and some bottled water as the water system had yet to be made operable. When I returned, I set about cleaning up. In addition to the mess in the freezer, the refrigerator was full of what I at first thought were mouse droppings, but which I later concluded were egg cases as they were too uniform and shiny to be droppings. They may also have been seeds that were stored there by some creature for future use. The refrigerator door contained a shelf with depressions for holding a dozen eggs and each depression held at least a half dozen of these seeds or whatever. Anyway, with sponges and ammonia I cleaned up everything but the smell. Out of all this I came to two conclusions: 1) Next time I won't be the first to arrive, and 2) when the guys go up this fall to close up the camp, J. should go to take care of the details that the guys tend to forget. As you will see later, this latter conclusion was reinforced during the weekend.

About 9 o'clock I got a call from E. saying that D. was leaving Middletown about 8 o'clock which meant he would not arrive until around midnight. I had held off having dinner until D. arrived, but I now decided that D. would have eaten by the time he arrived and it was time for me to find some dinner. I went to the Checkmate restaurant and found they were closed to the point that they would sell only ice cream. While I was wondering what I would find open at that hour of the night, I concluded that there was no reason I couldn't fix my own dinner. So I went into Fairhaven and to the Grand Union where I bought the ingredients for a fried egg sandwich and then returned to camp where I fixed just that.

D. arrived around midnight. He snacked a little and we went to bed about 1 a.m. J. and A. arrived around 2:30.

Saturday, 6 June 1987

E. arrived about 6:30 and with that we all got up. A., D., and E. got the water system working after a little problem getting the pump primed. But when they turned on the water to the house, a large spray emerged from an elbow in the cold water line to the bathtub in the main bathroom. Clearly they had not opened the faucets when they drained the system. So while the pump-installers went to play golf, J. and I tackled the elbow problem. Naturally the elbow was old and nothing like it has been made in years. The people at Gilmore's Hardware threw up their hands, but at Tru-Value they put together a combination that would do the job. Having finished this repair, we turned on the water, only to find a stream pouring out from under the house. A soldered joint in the copper tubing to the wash basin in the small bathroom had come apart and that is where the water was coming from. J. and I went back to Tru-Value and bought a torch, solder, and flux and made the repair. This would not have been difficult except that we were working with a clearance of only about six inches between the house and the ground, and not only was the working space cramped, but I also made a reasonable effort to avoid setting the house on fire. So now we turned on the water again and all was well until I ran water into the wash basin. Now water gushed out of the basin drain pipe which was broken near where the copper joint had come apart. Since there was no leak except when the basin was used, the solution this time was to pass a law that the basin would not be used until repairs had been made.

Now we could open the line to the water heater so we could wash dishes in hot water. I opened the valve, and was showered from the water pouring out of two big cracks in the copper line into the heater. So once again we went to Tru-Value where we bought some couplings and a length of tubing. I cut out the bad section and soldered a new piece in its place. Now we could turn on the water again, and this time water sprayed from an elbow on the bathtub in the small bathroom. By now it was nearly closing time for Tru-Value and besides, we didn't dare go in that store again today. So we went to a hardware store in Fairhaven, but they did not have exactly what we needed to put together a substitute elbow, so we returned to camp and resorted to heating our water on the stove.

In the meantime, E., A., and D. had not only gotten the water pump running, but had played 27 holes of golf, and put the dock into the cold Vermont lake on a chilly and windy day. So we had a light supper of hot dogs before everyone fell asleep, woke up, went to bed, and fell asleep again.

Sunday 7 June 1987

We were slower getting up this morning than yesterday. I got up about 8 o'clock and J. and D. followed at decent intervals. Even E. did not sleep as late as A.. The first trip out was to Tru-Value (where else?) for the needed elbow, which I installed, and we soon had hot water. I consider hot water one of the most luxurious necessities for the good life at a camp, or anywhere else.

It's Christmas Eve, and I have many things to say but no time to write. Instead, I offer this beautiful King's College Choir rendition of O Come, All Ye Faithful, with its glorious descant, and on the last verse the magnificent Willcocks chord on "Word."

You're welcome! Have a

Very Merry Christmas!

Heather reported seeing this awesome car/bumper sticker combination in the Walmart parking lot.  Who says Walmart customers are illiterate?

This wasn't the actual car she saw, but an image I found online, taken by someone from a school student pickup line.  The best comment I saw to that was "Gonna take them forever to get home."