Oh, and I’m not Jewish—but we already knew that.
But I do remember the post-Goldwater days when being a conservative carried such a negative social valence that admitting to conservative views made one a pariah, rather than a sensible member of the gang. And many problems as I feel about liberalism, those days were more fun.
DRMA: "Move" by Miles Davis; "How Good God Is" by Sister Wynona Carr; "Smash the Marketplace" by Screaming Blue Messiahs; "Chicago" by Fugs; "You Turn Me On (I'm a Radio)" by Joni (now "Joan," right?) Mitchell; "You Turn Me On (I'm a Radio)" by Joni Mitchell; "Does Your Mama Know About Me" by Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers.
We have always gravitated toward the main town of Nantucket, rather than Siasconset on the southeast, or Madaket at the west end (where Mr. Rogers, the Neighborhood of Make-Believe host, used to summer). My grandmother, Isabelle Tuttle, lived at Cliff Road and North Liberty; Aunt Grace lives on a lot that wraps around between Washington and Coffin Street. My mother lives further out, now, on Orange Street.
Nantucket doesn’t have the name recognition of Martha’s Vineyard, in my experience, and some of the part-time residents are irritatingly rich, and life can be very hard for year-rounders (especially for young people, from what I hear). It’s a real place, though, where beauty and history struggle against the thick overlay of image and cash. The seasonal turnover of shops, galleries, and boutiques, contrasts with the stability of the public buildings and the long-established businesses, and the inescapable sea and sand. Is it a litmus test for character? “Here’s an attractive island, hard to get to, expensive to live on—why don’t we make it look more like a chic neighborhood in our home city, only with a beach?”
On Nantucket, the raw glory of earth and air and fire and water challenge the human imagination: some try to control and gild them, while others humble themselves to give thanks for what’s offered there.
DRMA: "Hop, Skip, and Jump," by Roy Milton; "Zero and Blind Terry," Bruce Springsteen; "How Far Am I From Canaan Land?," by the Famous Ward Singers; "The Wait," by the Pretenders; "The Old Rugged Cross," by Iris Dement and Kari Bremnes; "Driving" by the Kinks; "Dear Mr. Fantasy" by Traffic; "Cry To Me" by Bob Marley and the Wailers (not the "Whalers"); "The Funky Western Civilization" by Tonio K.
The one thing that helps me is just getting up and doing things. Like the dishes, for instances, or writing a real blog post. And that feels satisfying and complete, so I feel as though I can do the next thing, and so on.
This is one reason the coming of the new school year promises as much as it threatens me. Yes, I’ll have new passels of work to do, but I’llalso have the rhythm and satisfaction of actually doing that work. And that actually helps me get more done. I can adjust to a summer schedule and begin getting productive on a less deadline-oriented track, but it usually takes me about a whole summer’s worth of adjustment time (as you see in me, today)—by which time, the school year begins again and renders the process moot. Anyway, either way, it feels good to get a few things squared away.
DRMA: "Flamenco Sketches (alternate take)" by Miles Davis; "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground" by Bascom Lamar Lunsford; "A Spoonful Weighs a Ton" by Flaming Lips; "Joe Hill" by Phil Ochs; "Midnight Special" by Dave Edmunds & Mark Knopfler.
Thank you, Jonathan, for focusing on what’s proper to the -matique family; I readily concede that this device falls short, and henceforward will call it simply “the bottle thingy.”
By the way, though you may want to prevent Josiah’s buying a Sudsy Studs calendar, I suspect that his presence among the models might boost sales considerably above what would depend on, for instance, my own physique. (That’s “physique” as in “bodily condition,”; I’m making no claim to be a sponge with a cleanser-filled handle.)
Note the unique “sleep is for the weak” t-shirt, by Small World Coffee in Princeton; bet you all wish you had them.
But there were reasons, beginning with the car breakdown, conintuing with Pippa’s coming down with a fever, then having to pay bills and do general household up-catching, having a somewhat subdued (make that “very subdued”) birthday, and then trying to install a system software upgrade that went hideously awry (several re-installs, then more than an hour on the phone to Apple, then backing up whatever I thought irreplaceable, then another re-install of the previous and the new system, then re-loading the relevant files from my backup, and so on).
Luckily, no one can possibly have been too disappointed by my quiet—perhaps the opposite. After dinner I’ll see about uploading a picture or two, beginning with Si’s modelling the Bottlematique.
[Editorial correction: Juliet had already expressed disappointment at my relative silence, and she’s far from being “no one.” On the other hand, my high esteem for her had marked that down as polite exaggeration rather than inexplicable interest in miscellaneous maunderings.]
Margaret challenged me to blog anything at all, much less a complete sentence. Aha! So there! I’m weary and bedraggled, but home and literate.
There isn’t a whole lot to say about today except that your window of opportunity for visiting Evanston without the risk of encountering me has closed. We drove all day from Rochester (where the printer did arrive today, in time for Nate to print out his first assignment and to make a tech support call to his old dad), uneventfully—unless you count the Caravan rolling to a stop in the extreme left-hand lane of the Dan Ryan Expressway at rush hour as “eventful.” We remained calm, almost, relied on the signal flashers and the already-slowed traffic to keep us safe, and eventually persuaded the van to start up again and deliver us home, with a side trip to Warren’s Shell Station (we believe in Warren big-time; as car ignoramuses, we have to operate on trust, and Warren has treated us very well).
Tomorrow I’ll begin to make good all those promises about photos from the trip, and will throw in a few pictures of Nate from his orientation week at Eastman (photos from their website). Till then, I will collapse in a heap in bed and fall deeply a sleep.
He sure seems to be doing just as well as we’d have guessed. It’ll be a long time until Family Weekend at Eastman, but we’re proud and looking forward to seeing him again. And, to be honest, we’re looking forward to finishing all the driving we’ve been doing this summer.
Though we arrived late in the day, and we were ourselves a little tired after an exhausting conversation with Steve and Halley, and Ann and David must have been weary from their family celebration of Rosh HaShanah, they greeted us with generous hospitality and indulged us with fruit and nuts (and cameo appearances from Leah their daughter and Nathan their son) and the kind of deep, rich, neuron-tickling argument that feels so good that you could stay up talking for hours and hours. We had only just touched on a whole variety of topics that might well have occupied their own evenings’ worth of discussion—but we had a long day ahead of us, and what thanks would it be to such gracious friends to keep them up even later?
But we’re eager to resume the conversation as soon as we can. Thanks so much, Ann and David. (And now I have to track down Ann’s dissertation.)
If you ever have the chance to invite them over, I encourage you to do so; we had a great time.
I’ll be blogging out the ideas they sparked for days to come—but now I have to clean up and get dressed for one more visit.
He seems like a nice guy.
Has he written any books?
Would he come speak to us?
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