Lift Up Your Hearts!

Looking back at my Lenten disciplines for 2009, I find it was a surprising exercise.  While I can't say I was perfect in keeping them, two worked so well I intend to continue the practices.

The computer goes off at 9:00 every night.   When I stick to a 10 p.m. bedtime, my life goes much better, but that's not always easy, especially when I'm in the middle of a project and "just one more thing" can lead to midnight or beyond.  Not only are most of my projects computer-oriented, but for some reason computing is one of those areas where I blink and two hours have passed. If I get nothing else from this discipline, at least I'll be better rested.

Discipline 1 was downright pleasant, except on days when my evenings were taken up by other things, like choir practice; then I felt entitled to at least a few minutes of computer time after getting home.  But even then the rule kept that time short.  I enjoyed having the excuse to stop work, and it dovetailed nicely with Discipline 3:

I'll spend between a half hour and an hour reading each day.  Preferably the longer time, though I haven't managed it yet.  I know; that's hardly a sacrifice.  But I've noticed that over the last several years my reading has become even more fractured and fragmented than it was when I had small children at home, if that were possible.  I read blogs, articles, and news stories online; I listen to audio books in the car as I run errands, I skim magazines.  I read books in five-minute gulps as I can throughout the day—on visits to the "reading room," while eating, while falling asleep at night.  What I'm missing is concentrated time on a single, book-length topic, and I have a very large stack of quality books—many recently purchased and one overdue at the library—on which the derivative of my progress is negative.  I'm hoping that a short, but consistent, dedicated time will reverse the trend.

Finding concentrated reading time during the day was more difficult than I had hoped, but turning off the computer an hour before bedtime led naturally to reading afterwards.  It was especially enjoyable because Porter often joined me.  I finished G. K. Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils (oops, not reviewed yet) and made good headway on Thomas Dubay's Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel on Prayer.  I'm almost halfway through that one, and without the Discipline I quite likely would have set it aside, as it is more difficult and less inspiring than I had hoped.

It was Discipline 2 that was most revealing.

I'm giving up reading and/or working puzzles while I eat.  Most of you will find this odd, but it is a real sacrifice for me.  I agree wholeheartedly with C. S. Lewis, who said, "Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably." There's no reason not to combine them; I'm doing this because it's a great pleasure I can dispense with for 40 days as an exercise in self-denial, without troubling anyone else or falling terribly behind in my work.  Exception:  Porter and I sometimes do puzzles together during meals; for obvious reasons I'm not abstaining from them.

This was unbelievably hard, and the strength with which I resisited it tells me I've hit an area in my life that needs work.  Whenever I had food or drink in front of me, I cried out, body and soul, for a book or a puzzle—as an addict must cry out for drugs.  It's amazing how many ways I devised to cheat:  working on the computer I justified if I didn't let myself read articles, blogs, or e-mails; going through my Penzeys catalogue needed to be done so I could place an order, even though it involved reading the spice descriptions; we watched movies during dinner; I would clean the refrigerator while eating, organize the cupboards while eating...anything but sit-down-and-eat-and-nothing-else.  Such a waste of time to do nothing else!  Once I even caught myself adding words to my crossword puzzle between bites, because, after all, I wasn't actually eating when I put pencil to paper.  It was easier when I had someone else to eat with; alone, I was miserable, until I finally discovered I could diminish the craving by taking my meal onto the back porch and enjoying the lovely spring weather.  Even then I couldn't stop Li'l Writer Guy from working—that's going to require an intense course in meditation techniques, I suspect.  I lived for Sundays:  On the Sabbaths I released myself from this Discipline—though I usually continued the others.

I could probably lose 30 pounds by forcing myself to do nothing but eat when I am eating.  I'm thinking of marketing the Full Attention Diet.  ("Fad diets are not the answer to your weight problems—FAD is!")  The rules are simple.

• Eat whatever you want, whenever you want.
• While you are eating, do nothing else.  No reading, no watching TV, no working, no walking around—just eating.  The only exception is for mealtime conversation, with which nothing should be allowed to interfere.  You may eat while listening attentively to what other people have to say.  (It goes without saying that you don't eat when you are the one talking.)
• Don't eat mechanically; take time to enjoy the flavors and textures of your food. This should be easy, since you'll have nothing else to do.
• Give yourself time between meals to enjoy the other pleasures that you normally associate with eating, so you won't be tempted to view mealtime as the only time you have for them...and to keep eating so you can keep reading....
• Brush your teeth after every time you eat.  The reason for this last rule is to minimize the read-between-bites syndrome.  Trust me; if there's a loophole, I'll make use of it.

Today at the grocery store I bought sugar.  This is not a confession; I refuse to feel guilty for the purchase.  After all, displayed prominently on the package was this warm-and-fuzzy logo:

I wonder, though:  What am I going to do with my five-pound bag of H₂₂O₁₁?

We're not much of a pet family.  We had a cat for a few years, but he didn't get along with the new baby.  He was old and accustomed to having all our attention; he did not like the intruder.  (A few years later she returned the favor by becoming allergic to cats.)  He left for greener pastures, i.e. other family members who returned him to his spoiled, prince of the family position.  As the kids grew older they acquired a few pets—two hamsters and a cockatiel.  We enjoyed them all, and even paid for surgery on a hamster that could have been replaced for $2.50, but I never did understand people who treat their pets like children.  I'm not saying that's wrong, just that it doesn't appear to be part of my makeup.  What's more, we tend to travel a lot, which is a lot easier to do if you don't have pets to worry about.

So...those who know us may be surprised to discover that we have recently acquired some new pets.  Many new pets:  about 2000 red wiggler worms.  They live on our back porch in their own recycled-battery-casing worm condominium.  I've been admiring these garbage-converting little guys for four years, and finally took the plunge with a visit to the Our Vital Earth worm farm in Apopka. There I met Bernie and Carl Moro, both in their 70s and more spry and active than many of us in our 50s.  They started their worm venture as a retirement project after discovering how well home vermicomposting works in Australia. You can see a news story about Bernie and Carl here.

As with all new pets, it's going to take a while to get things running smoothly, but when they've all settled in nicely they should begin to turn our kitchen scraps, dryer lint, vacuum cleaner dust (minus the occasional button and pin), and paper into fantastic fertilizer for our garden.  Animal products are out, except for egg shells, because they attract rodents, and also tend to smell up an otherwise—supposedly—odorless system.  A little milk on leftover breakfast cereal is fine, I'm told, and these amazing worms can even turn small doses of battery acid into harmless fertilizer.  But I think I'll skip the cheese, even if the Swiss do compost theirs, rather than face the prospect of rat visitors to our porch.  The occasional mole is quite enough.

This isn't a money-saving proposition, since we have fixed-fee garbage collection, and it will be a long time before our $234 investment can be returned in fertilizer savings.  But it certainly feels better to be doing something useful with our waste rather than adding to the landfill, and I'll be happy to have worm castings and worm "tea" with which to pamper our fledgling garden.  Family and friends who wish to venture into vermicomposting may be able to get away with a lower initial cost; we bought the whole package, both to get the best start we could and to support the business.  We can certainly lend out the instructional video, and if you procrastinate long enough we should have enough worms to give some away.

Here are a couple of videos about the vermicomposting system.

Update 23 May 2009  If you watched the videos, you saw the hemp "moisture mat" that covers the worms and their food.  Our unit did not come with one of those; suggestions were to use damp newspaper or an old towel or t-shirt.  We don't get the paper, so rather than raid our neighbor's recycle bin, I went the old t-shirt route.  When bagpipe music starts emanating from our well-educated worm bin, I'll let you know.

This time I had my camera ready.  Click on an image to see the whole, larger picture.

Up, up and away...

Separation—you can see the boosters falling away from the shuttle if you click on the the picture to enlarge it. 

Close-up of shuttle (left dot) and two separated boosters (right dots).

Afterglow.   The picture doesn't do justice to the colors.

Lord of the Rings fans may remember Shire Year 1420, when "the fruit was so plentiful that young hobbits very nearly bathed in strawberries and cream...."  That's what life has been like at our house for the past few weeks.  It's strawberry season in Florida, and we've been treating ourselves to strawberries on our cereal, strawberry shortcake, strawberry-yoghurt pie, and—fresh rhubarb is also available now—strawberry-rhubarb crisp.  Life is delicious good.

Driving home late last night we were treated to an unusual privilege:  seeing a Delta II rocket—this one carrying NASA's Kepler satellite—soar into space.  At first I thought it was an airplane...but at such an odd angle...and the color of the light wasn't right....  Then Porter remarked that it looked more like a rocket, and I remembered the Kepler launch.  Soon the flaming tail became obvious, and we delighted in the sight until it turned; the rocket must then have been moving directly away from us, as we were able to follow the bright glow until it winked out.

The beauty and wonder never gets old.

  (Nasa photo)

Although we couldn't fully appreciate it at the time, being neophytes who didn't know any better, we sang for several years in one of the best small church choirs ever.  It has been downhill since then, meaning no disrespect to our various choir directors nor to our fellow singers, but times and situations have changed and we have been mostly reduced to singing music that would never have enticed us into choir if we hadn't been already hooked.  But—O frabjous day!—this Lent we will be singing John Stainer's God So Loved the World!  I believe it has been a dozen years since we last had that privilege, quite long enough to make us not mind so much that we have neither the voices nor the rehearsal time to do it anything close to justice, and simply rejoice in being able to sing such music again.  Here, for your listening pleasure, especially those of you for whom this will bring back lovely memories, is a performance by the St. Paul's Cathedral Choir, which is a tad better even than our best.  :)

Sitting with us on our back porch, enjoying our porch swing, our neighbor announced that no one should be inside on a day like yesterday (low 54, high 82, sunny, breezy, low humidity).  When I'm working I'm afraid I hardly notice the weather, unless a breeze sweeps through the window and disturbs my papers.  But she was quite right.

We began the day with a trip to the Winter Park Farmer's Market.   Farmer's markets are not as much fun in Central Florida as I've experienced in other places:  for the most part, agriculture has moved too far away from us, and if you look carefully at that fresh-looking piece of fruit you just might discover that it was harvested in Guatemala.  Some so-called farmer's markets resemble a craft show with food vendors more than a place to find the ingredients for your next meal.

The market in Winter Park is better than most around here, and a great place to stroll through on a lovely day.  We breakfasted on crêpes (mushroom/spinach/Swiss cheese), the best I've had since Paris and enjoyed wandering amongst the many plant and flower vendors as well as the produce stands and food booths.  At Winter Park Honey we picked up a jar of pricy ($15/lb.) but sublime Blackberry Twist honey. That's not honey with blackberry flavoring added, but organic, raw, unfiltered honey produced by bees who have supped (sipped?) on the nectar of blackberry flowers.  You will not believe how wonderful it tastes.

We admired the Winter Park Dairy booth.  Theyhad some of their lovely-looking artisan, raw-milk, bleu cheese for sale.  Unfortunately, I don't care for bleu cheese, but after having tasted a sample I can say that if I were to grow to like bleu cheese, this would be it.  They usually sell "100% natural, un-pasteurized, un-homogenized, pasture grazed, pesticide free, growth hormone & antibiotic free" milk  as well (labelled, as per Florida law, "Not for Human Consumption - Pet Treat"), but something had gone wrong with the batch and they had none to offer this time.

We shared an almond croissant (tasty, but unlike the crêpes was not good enough to bring France to mind), ran into some old friends and traded stories of our children's exploits since high school, then picked up a loaf of artisan bread and a half gallon of unpasteurized tangerine juice before making the pleasant walk to our car.

Saturday was also a good day for yardwork:  clearing the roof of leaves, and raking, sweeping, and bagging a small portion of the leaves in our yard.  Yes, those of you who envy our snow-free lives might consider that here the leaves fall plentously from our trees not once but twice each year.  We use our snow shovels to scoop them into bags.  Porter also removed a three-trunked camphor tree that had sprung up in our backyard; it was too shaded to grow properly itself, yet had reached the point where it was shading an oak tree we wanted to cultivate.  After much-appreciated showers, we returned to the above-mentioned porch swing and enjoyed some time reading together, and still more time with Porter reading and me celebrating the drowsy, summer-like day by...drowsing.

My nap was not sufficient to keep me from nodding off in parts of the evening's Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra concert, but it helped.  The Artistry of André Watts featured—who else?—André Watts performing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4, as well as the Sibelius Symphony No. 5 and Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin.  This was either not one of the OPO's most inspired programs or I was unusually picky, for if nothing was wrong, few things really seemed right.  And why couldn't they have presented such an oboe-heavy program while we still had Jared Hauser?  I'm sure our new principal oboe did a fine job on the difficult Tombeau; there's nothing I can find to fault, except that...well, I guess that she wasn't Jared.  I don't know.  But if it wasn't an awesome concert, it's always delightful to end the day with music.

Lovely weather, delicious food, hard work, inspiring books, and good music, followed by a pleasant night's sleep.  Can't be beaten.

RIP Paul Harvey.

As someone relatively new to the Liturgical Year, I have nothing authoritative to say about Lent, but I love this season.  As a penitential season it is much easier to celebrate than Advent, which gets entangled with the secular celebration of Christmas.  And Lenten disciplines have all the fun of New Year's resolutions but with a statute of limitations.

Why would anyone share something as personal as Lenten disciplines with the world?  Three reasons.

• People blog about all sorts of personal things.  (Okay, this makes it four; it's not a legitimate reason, but it's too obvious not to mention.)
• In future years, when I wonder (because I can't remember) what I did for Lent in previous years, I'll be able to find it here.
• Publishing my disciplines makes me slightly more likely to be able to stick with them.
• Several people have asked about ideas for different ways of approaching Lent besides the traditional abstention from meat or sugar, and my disciplines are usually on the odd side, as I've written about before.

What I thought about giving up for Lent this year, but ruled out almost immediately:

• The computer  Foregoing this time-sink would, indeed, free up much time for prayer and re-orienting of my life, but the cost would be too great.  The computer is my primary means of communication with far-flung loved ones, nearly my only source of news, and is required for most of the work that I do.  Giving it up would plunge my life into more chaos, not less.
• Blogging  Giving up blogging seems to be a popular Lenten discipline, but it's too good an exercise for my mind, as well as my way of keeping in touch with family and friends.
• Genealogy  This is another tremendous time-sink, but since my current goal is to eat this dinosaur in small but steady bites, it makes no sense to fast for nearly a month and a half then be overwhelmed after Easter.  The sooner I get my recent research entered, the more likely I am to be able to decipher my chicken-scratch notes.

What I finally settled on:

• The computer goes off at 9:00 every night.   When I stick to a 10 p.m. bedtime, my life goes much better, but that's not always easy, especially when I'm in the middle of a project and "just one more thing" can lead to midnight or beyond.  Not only are most of my projects computer-oriented, but for some reason computing is one of those areas where I blink and two hours have passed. If I get nothing else from this discipline, at least I'll be better rested.
• I'm giving up reading and/or working puzzles while I eat.  Most of you will find this odd, but it is a real sacrifice for me.  I agree wholeheartedly with C. S. Lewis, who said, "Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably." There's no reason not to combine them; I'm doing this because it's a great pleasure I can dispense with for 40 days as an exercise in self-denial, without troubling anyone else or falling terribly behind in my work.  Exception:  Porter and I sometimes do puzzles together during meals; for obvious reasons I'm not abstaining from them.
• I'll spend between a half hour and an hour reading each day.  Preferably the longer time, though I haven't managed it yet.  I know; that's hardly a sacrifice.  But I've noticed that over the last several years my reading has become even more fractured and fragmented than it was when I had small children at home, if that were possible.  I read blogs, articles, and news stories online; I listen to audio books in the car as I run errands, I skim magazines.  I read books in five-minute gulps as I can throughout the day—on visits to the "reading room," while eating, while falling asleep at night.  What I'm missing is concentrated time on a single, book-length topic, and I have a very large stack of quality books—many recently purchased and one overdue at the library—on which the derivative of my progress is negative.  I'm hoping that a short, but consistent, dedicated time will reverse the trend.

That's it.  Nothing spectacular, nor difficult.  But definitely different.

Did you ever wonder where your Ash Wednesday ashes come from?  Traditionally they come from burning the branches from the previous year's Palm Sunday, but these days the ashes that mark your forehead on this first day of Lent might be from right here in Central Florida. Read about 84-year-old Ralph Higginbotham's family ash-making business in this Orlando Sentinel article, which also includes a good explanation of Ash Wednesday and Lent.

Under Higginbotham's direction, the family makes several hundred pounds of the smooth, black dust from sabal palms every year. He makes the ashes by slowly roasting palm trees in steel drums.

He uses no flammable liquids in the roasting and no pigments to darken the finished product.

A single 25-foot palm, cut and left to cure in the sun for two years, will yield about 5 pounds of ash. After grating and sifting, the ash goes off to suppliers in California, Illinois and Rhode Island, who sell it to churches and dioceses across the country.

I'm trying to digest and document the genealogical data I gathered during my recent visit to the NEHGS Library in Boston.  There's much too much to handle all at once—and too many other duties calling—but I am focussing at the moment on getting into publishable form some significant progress I made on one of Porter's lines.

This line includes the first set of Welsh ancestors I've found for Porter.  He's happy with them, even though he worries that Wales is uncomfortably close to Ireland.  He's afraid I'll eventually find Irish ancestors in his tree—not that he has anything in particular against Ireland, but because he will no longer be able to blame my quirks on my Irish blood.  :)

These Welsh ancestors are making my head spin.  I have Welsh lines, too, but haven't yet tried to carry them back beyond the immigrants.  This line of Porter's goes much further into the past, well into the time—which actually isn't all that far back—when Welsh names followed a patronymic system rather than having fixed family surnames.  So I am struggling with names like Gruffyd ap Einion of Gwyddelwern ap Gruffyd ap Llewellyn ap Cynrig ap Osbern Wyddel of Cora y Gedol.  Granted, one gets a lot of genealogy worked into a name that way, but entering it into standard genealogy software is a bit of a challenge.

I think I'll go clean the house.

After all the travelling we did in the last quarter of 2008 and in January of 2009, I, the homebody, was really ready to enjoy a few months with nowhere to go. But "the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley," and in this case I'm thrilled.

Ever since we moved away from Boston, I'd been waiting for Porter to get a job assignment back there so I could stay with him while doing research at the New England Historic Genealogical Society Library on Newbury Street.  He's been all over the country, but never to Boston...until now.

Last week there was an important class being held just outside of Boston, which Porter wanted to attend.  Unfortunately, IBM has had a freeze on educational travel for quite a while.  There's a way to appeal for an exception, but the process can take time.  In this case, Porter learned at 5:00 on Friday afternoon that if he would take care of the airfare and car rental, and do what he could to save money on hotel and meals, he could go.  That meant leaving in less than 48 hours!  He's used to travelling on short notice (though not usually that short), and I guess it's a testament to how much more travelling I've been doing myself recently that I was able to manage it as well.  Those of you who know me know that flexibility and decision-making are not my strong points, but how could I pass up a trip to Boston (even mid-winter) when I could fly on his Southwest companion pass, stay in his hotel, and spend a week at my favorite library?

We even managed to fit in our weekend commitments, such as dinner with friends (Friday), a gardening class at Leu Gardens (Saturday), and church (Sunday), without panicking over preparation time missed.  We managed to get two of the last seats on the one Sunday flight still available, and were winging our way to Providence while most of the rest of the country was celebrating Super Bowl Sunday.

One friend asked if we purchased our winter clothes for the trip.  We didn't, but it was fun remembering that both the boots and the gloves had come from Boston in the first place.  :)  Despite the heavy clothes, we still managed to fit everything into carry-on luggage only—further evidence of having had more air travel experience.  We're not up to Rick Steves' standards yet, but much better than we were.

I've used this post as an opportunity to learn a bit about making my own interactive Google maps, so you can see some of the locations and travel routes here.

View Larger Map

Porter's class was in Bedford, which turns out not to be convenient to any part of Boston's good public transportation system.  No hotel approved by IBM was within walking distance of a reasonable station, so Porter graciously braved the Boston rush hour traffic to transport me to and from the Anderson/Woburn RTC station on the Lowell line.  The Anderson RTC is relatively new—too new to be on any of the maps we had from when we lived there—spacious, pleasant, and warm. The last feature turned out to be particularly important this week, for although the temperatures had moderated from the bitter cold snap of the week before, this Florida girl still finds below-twenty temperatures a bit nippy.

On our way from the Providence airport to Bedford, we drove through Norwood, checked out our old apartment (they've built a whole new house in the formerly-vacant lot next door) and other landmarks, and ate at the Thai Thani restaurant:  it's small but pleasant, and one of our favorite in-town places to eat when we lived in Norwood.  Because of the Super Bowl we were the only customers.

Our first hotel, a DoubleTree, was only a few minutes from the class site, but Porter found a Radisson in Chelmsford for $50 less per night.  For Diamond members like Porter, Hilton properties often provide enough gratis food for both breakfast and dinner, so we had thought we might justify the more expensive hotel by saving on food expenses.  However, this was definitely not that kind of DoubleTree.  The breakfast was okay, though nowhere near the sumptous fare of the DoubleTree we stayed at in Scotsdale, Arizona.  But dinner?  We made one meal out of the potato chips, cookies, and oranges that were provided, then packed our bags and moved to the Radisson.  As it turned out we also saved a little on meals there, though the hotel provided nothing, because from then on we skipped breakfast in order to get me to the train station before the notorious Boston rush hour traffic became totally unbearable.

Monday—while we were still at the DoubleTree—I spent in our hotel room, because the NEHGS library is closed on Mondays.  True, there's plenty more I could have done in Boston, but it was good for Porter to be able to concentrate totally on preparing for his class instead of driving me around, and good for me to have a full day to prepare for the rest of the week.  I spent the day glued to the computer, flipping between my database and the NEHGS Library catalog, making a list of the resources that I thought might be helpful.  Having neglected genealogy for the better part of the past year—and knowing that even with four days ahead of me there would never be enough time to begin to cover all I wanted to—I needed to maximize my efficiency.  Besides, the intensity of diving into my work as soon as Porter left the hotel and not coming up for air till he returned was good preparation for the following days.

After breakfast on Tuesday Porter took me to the station, where I bought my tickets and climbed aboard the commuter train to Boston. Natsukashii!  When we lived in Norwood I would take the Franklin Line into Back Bay or South Station, but the Lowell Line into North Station was similar enough.  There have been some changes since our time, however: the subway tokens have given way to a more modern, card-based fare system.  At North Station I purchased a 7-day unlimited subway pass; for the number of rides I actually took I didn't quite get my money's worth, but the flexibility made the $15 purchase worthwhile.

The Green Line T was always my least favorite of Boston's subway lines, and that's one thing that hasn't changed.  But my first ride was pleasant enough.  As I exited the Copley station I was blessed by gently falling snow.  By evening the snow was not such a blessing, but it made for a very pleasant walk to the library.

It seems incredible that it was four years ago I wrote the following:

[Li'l Writer Guy] rather likes to imagine he’s seated in some academic cloister, inhaling the intoxicating scents of polished wood, leather, and books old and new. On the table before him are the paraphernalia of his profession: stacks of books, pads of paper, writing implements, bookmarks, his laptop computer. Lost in thought, he stares out the window, but he’s not seeing the cityscape. Now and then he rises, and paces between the table and the stacks. At the end of the day, he reluctantly packs up, puts on his coat, and steps into the outside world, blinking owlishly and realizing dimly that time has not stopped for others as it has for him. (Any resemblance of Li’l Writer Guy’s fantasy land to the New England Historic Genealogical Society Library is not coincidental.)

And yet my return to that fantasy land might have been after an absence of a mere week, had not the photocopy system changed in the interim so that my card was no longer good and I lost whatever value had been stored in it.  I'm sure it was less than $5, however, so I wasted no time on regrets but set right to work.

The above description pretty much covers it.  I set up my computer at a desk on the sixth floor, now thoughtfully equipped with surge-protected power strips and free wireless internet access.   Occasionally I stopped to admire the falling snow out the window, but mostly tripped back and forth among the desk, the stacks, and the copy machine.  The main difference between imagination and reality is that in the fantasy version there is plenty of time and I'm not desperately scooping up as much data as I can carry.  Someone asked me what, in particular, I was researching.  The answer is, nothing in particular—and yet everything.  By virtue of the power of exponential expansion, a mere 10 generations back gets one person over 1000 ancestral lines to investigate.  Perhaps someday I'll come to the library for the purpose of doing an intense investigation of one or two questions, but for now I'm still at the stage where there are hundreds of books that might shed light on my family.

At about 4:50 the lights began to flicker, and I realized that I was off by an hour in thinking the library closed at 6:00.  I sent Porter a hasty Pidgin message and scrambled to pack up.  Reversing my morning's travels, I ended up back at the Anderson station where I had a fairly lengthy wait for Porter to arrive, as the beautiful snow had turned into a storm sufficient to snarl the already dense rush hour traffic.  Since by the time we arrived at our new hotel Porter had been driving in the dark and the snow for over an hour, we elected to eat dinner at the hotel dining room and then crash into bed.  It was a portent of things to come—so much for the plans I had had to accomplish things unrelated to genealogy in the "off hours."

On Wednesday we wasted no time on breakfast, but went straight to the train station.  The traffic on 495 was fine, but we weren't on 93 very long before it slowed to a crawl.  I made the 8:30 train, however, and was soon picking up where I had left off so hurriedly the day before.  Most of this day was devoted to one particular line of Porter's, and I believe I made an interesting and exciting discovery, but I'll say no more yet because there's still work to do before I'm satisfied of its authenticity.  The library is open till 9:00 on Wednesdays, so I stayed late, though not till closing.  The traffic was much better, due to both the later hour and the improved weather—although it was quite cold (in the teens), the roads were clear of Tuesday's snow.  We ventured across the street from the hotel for some decent, though not spectacular, Chinese food at Hong & Kong's before collapsing into bed once more.

Thursday we left a little earlier, and the traffic was so much better I caught the 7:38 train.  A good thing, too, as the rest of the trip was delayed, first by the breakdown of a train ahead of us, then by multiple breakdowns on the Green Line.  By the time a Green Line train came there were so many people waiting that the trip would have made a sardine claustrophobic.  As we approached the Arlington station I remembered having looked at the map and wondered why the NEHGS travel directions specified going to the Copley station instead of Arlington, so I happily exited the car one stop early and found that it was, indeed, a better choice.  I walked into the library two minutes after it opened and once again set to work.  The day was pretty much the same except that I didn't even notice this time that I'd missed both breakfast and lunch, I was working so intently.

At closing I took a different path, walking to the Back Bay station where I caught the Franklin line to Norwood.  That would have been really natsukashii except that the train was so crowded I had to stand up the whole way, making it impossible to look out the window and wax nostalgic as we passed the old, familiar stations.  The reason for this trip was to visit some friends from our Norwood church.  Porter joined us soon after I arrived, and we had a great time re-connecting.  If I have any regret about this trip it is that we did not have time to see several other people we would like to have visited.  Guess we'll have to come back.  :)

Friday was the last day, and a short one as Porter's class ended at 3:00.  Although the Green Line was still delayed, I arrived at the library before it opened, so I ordered a cup of tea at TeaLuxe across the street, which our friend Madeline had introduced me to at one of my first visits to the NEHGS.  After that it was full speed ahead once more.  There wasn't enough time; there never is.  But I was ready to leave, feeling saturated with data and having $46.75 worth of copied pages to digest upon returning home.  (My original plan had been to enter the newly-acquired data each night after dinner, but that went by the board the very first night.  I have many weeks' worth of work ahead of me.)

If my goodbyes to the NEHGS were a bit on the sentimental side, my Green Line farewell was made with much less reluctance.  At least on my part—the T itself was perhaps unwilling to let me go, as five trains came in the outbound direction before one going my direction.  At least that one was going as far as North Station.  Part of my quarrel with the Green Line on previous days was that most of the rush hour trains went only as far as Government Center, two stops before North Station.  I never did see a train that would have taken me beyond that; what those going to Science Park or Lechmere were supposed to do, I don't know.  At any rate, this one—so crowded I rode just inside the door, well in front of the while line everyone is supposed to be in back of, and hoping no sudden jerk would impel me out of the car—did get me to the station, where I caught my final Lowell train.  This time when he picked me up at Anderson, Porter took 128 to the Mass Pike, thence to 395 and 95 and finally to Old Saybrook for a delicious dinner with PJS and B&A.  If the primary purpose of this trip was for Porter's class, and the secondary for my genealogical research, the most important one was to visit family.  We spent Friday night in Granby with DSTB, where we delivered a box full of the most amazing and diverse collection of bottle caps that ever thrilled a nine-year-old boy.  We all had fun sorting them on the kitchen table.

We were joined Saturday by PJS for a day of game playing.  Of course Uncle Porter and the boys played PlunderChess and Lord of the Rings Risk, but I really enjoyed Hoopla.  Another highlight was attending a Suzuki cello group lesson at the Hartt School of Music. After dinner we headed for Salem, where we really had time for nothing but a night's sleep, going back to Saybrook early in the morning for the 8:00 service at Grace Episcopal Church.  We checked out a few things related to our upcoming marriage celebration, and truly enjoyed meeting and hearing the rector, Father Charles.  It's a beautiful church.  We had chosen the 8:00 service because it was Rite I, and because we had a brunch date at 10:00, but unlike our church's Rite I service, this one had no music at all, which made it feel a lot less like worship.  Perhaps this summer we can attend a later service.

I loved experiencing the cold and snow of Boston, and I loved even more the weather gift of this day: a touch of spring.  The sun was out and the temperatures above freezing, so ice was melting and the ground gave out the most delicious scent of warming earth.

After brunch and some more visiting time—though again not with everyone we wanted to see—it was time to drive back to Providence and catch our Southwest flight home.  We walked in the door about 8:30, exhausted and happy.

Why do I like our church?  Well, for one thing, during yesterday's service there was not one mention of the Super Bowl.  :)

I did afterwards, in the form of a friend who is a florist commenting that she had the day off because no one schedules a wedding during  the Super Bowl, which led Porter to comment that Super Bowl Sunday may be the only holiday truly observed and respected in America.

Although we watched only about 30 seconds of the game, that half-minute included the game-winning touchdown.  Porter feels towards the Steelers only slightly better than he does towards the Yankees, but I send congratulations to all of our Pittsburgh-area, and Pittsburgh ex-pat, friends.

With a hat-tip to Bill H., another Steeler fan, here's the Super Bowl ad you didn't see.  I believe NBC should have the right to choose the ads it shows, but I like this one, so you can see it here.  No ad revenues generated.  :)  It's safer to watch it right from here; if you go to the YouTube site itself, I recommend avoiding the viewer comments, and I don't vouch for any other videos that might be suggested.

For the amusement of our friends and family, particularly those who were in New Hampshire last week, we are under a hard freeze warning.

All persons in east central Florida venturing outdoors this morning... should dress in layers and wear a hat.

Okay, okay—stop throwing things!