letter to my favorite fifth grader preparing for the first day of school

                       every two or three years i reread mark twain's great saga from start to finish finding 
                       it as fresh as when i first read it. with the spirits of huck and jim pushing me i have 
                       been up and down the mississippi many times. though i travelled on big boats 
                       rather than intimately by raft i like to believe i've caught glimpses of them. it's certain 
                       they're still there behind some island or up some creek.

                                                                              -thomas hart benton

in just a few days you will begin your first day in fifth grade and i don't know how you're feeling about it, but i hope you're excited. i know fourth grade was sort of frustrating for you. maybe you felt restless and a little bit like what you wanted wasn't quite what everyone else wanted. and i got to thinking about my own fourth grade year and i suppose i know a little bit how you feel.

my grandma claimed she met him.

i hated fourth grade. not all of it. not the part where we learned the whole history of the state of missouri and went on a field trip to the state capitol building which was, and still is, full of paintings by thomas hart benton. they are huge murals covering whole walls and they can make you cry, they're so pretty and sad and full of life and suffering. and i loved all the books i read, but mostly i read them alone. all by myself, sneaky and secret-like. because my school just didn't seem all that interested in the whole learning thing. or reading. you can ask your mom. she didn't like things too much that year, either.

i would sit there in my fourth grade class, staring out the window or drawing in my notebook or secretly reading a book resting on my knees while our teacher would drone on about subtraction. in fourth grade! not fancy subtraction with fractions or decimals or negative numbers. just regular old subtraction that i learned way back in first grade. so i felt like it would be okay to occupy myself with other things. this did not suit my teacher at all. things got really frustrating when my teacher accused me of doing something i hadn't done and then took me outside into the hall while another teacher watched our class. she brought with us into the hall a wooden paddle and she paddled me with it. i didn't cry because i was just too sad to cry. i felt like that moment was confirmation i would never fit in there, would never figure out how to be the right sort of student for sitting in a desk in that room.

you can probably guess that your nanny had a fit when she found out a teacher paddled me at school. i don't think those school people were quite prepared for someone like your nanny, who is mostly kind and gentle but will get a little wild when her children get hit with a board. and although my teacher never did anything like that again, she never really taught me much and she certainly didn't make me feel welcome there in school. and i'm wondering if maybe fourth grade is just a tough year for some folks. maybe kids like you and like me are frustrated in fourth grade because we're already ready for something new, something different. fourth grade sure can feel like a straitjacket for some people. 

that brings me to fifth grade. i walked in the first day pretty nervous. we had just moved to town and i didn't know anyone. fifth grade was completely different. we had four teachers. four! and we went from room to room for our classes the way high school kids do. each room was full of wonderful things to explore- globes, maps, models and charts. i could not imagine even for a second needing to stare out the window or sneak a book into my lap. there was so much to see and so much to do and teachers seemed to want us all to see and do so much cool stuff.

let me tell you, fifth grade teachers are different. because they teach a single subject and they're really good at it, they have fun teaching. they will answer all sorts of interesting questions and if you ask a question your teacher doesn't know the answer to, she will say, "wow! that's a really awesome question but i'm not really sure how to answer it." and then she'll suggest you all go home and try to figure out the answer yourselves and report back the next day. probably she'll show up the next day with some sort of demonstration that answers your question, just in case nobody in your class could find out. you never know. but fifth grade teachers are joyous specialists. they love learning just as much as you do and they want everyone to love learning, too.

in history we made pemmican and in math we dove right into wild fractions with mixed numbers. and my science teacher brought in a cow's heart when we were studying the circulatory system. i looked at a drawing of a human heart in my science book and was amazed that the cow's heart was so similar. because we are both mammals. we have so much about us that's the same, although cows have way cooler digestive systems. fifth grade is when you really start seeing how things are connected and the whole world starts to make more sense. and it was awesome enough then that i can remember it thirty three years later. thirty three years!

the thing that surprised me most was how much we read in english class. out loud. silently. sometimes we wrote our own stories. i tended to write about misunderstood little girls who would one day be appreciated for the very things people hated about them at the moment (especially thier uncanny ability to be right most of the time). and i was surprised that many of the stories we read from real books in fifth grade were about just that. frustrated people, many of them the same age as the girls in my stories, the same age as me. the same age you are right this very minute. and they all had to struggle, had to go through some version of fourth grade or something even more awful, through something that made them doubt themselves and feel hopeless. but then each and every one of them found a way to speak up, step up, change things.

expect a lot from fifth grade. expect a lot from your teachers. it is their job and their passion to give you everything they have and good teachers will know that. you have already realized that you love to learn new things and so you need to expect a lot from your own self, as well. everything you've done in school so far has been preparation for this year. fifth grade is the year of great exploration so wear sturdy shoes and keep your eyes peeled. go out and take on the world! i will be right here waiting to hear all about it.

building

first i ought to say i don't think brooklyn needs a big fat sports arena slammed down right in the middle of everything over on atlantic and flatbush. and i don't believe i'll see the affordable housing that's supposed to be coming with this grand new construction any more than i expect to see the cleaned up and "family-friendly"coney island gleaming with fancy new hotels snuggled up by the high rise housing projects.

big brutus and the rain (and us)

but i am a sucker for machinery, so much so that i married the sweetie at the largest electric dragline shovel still alive today. cranes and tractors and other beasts capable of moving great piles of earth or iron or steel or even trash do to my heart what little kittens do to the hearts of most folks. and because of this i've found a thousand reasons to wander past the mean-spirited construction going on at atlantic yards this summer, including today's five mile round trip trek to sahadi's for a bottle of orange flower water which, sadly, they no longer carry.

cranes in june

there is plenty to do and see along the way and the walk is pleasant, full of pretty bakeries and shops with old and rusted things. but on my orange flowerless return trip i stand a long while at the corner of fifth and flatbush to watch a crane operator drop a big checkmark-shaped piece of metal delicately in place among the other bones in this monstrosity.

the crane is one of two i can see from where i stand, tiny bodies hidden below what they've already built, their red booms stretched like the necks of hungry animals. a cable suspended from the boom point ends at what looks like a bobber you'd tie to your fishing line. the bottom is red and white stripes. the top is a blue field with white stars. at this bobber the cable becomes two cables, stretched wide to affix to the checkmark at two places, not as far from one another as i would have thought. and then hanging from either end of this piece of metal is a length of rope, each nearly as long as the metal itself.

all along the beams that have been welded together, all along the finished part of the skeleton of this arena, there are cables running maybe waist high, affixed from time to time to the beams like streetcar wires. there are men, tiny as ants, fastened into those cables close to the edge where the checkmark hangs like a feather in the sky. the men stand there under it and do not even think about what might happen if that slab of metal suddenly drops from its fastenings. i spend my first few minutes watching them thinking of nothing besides that.

the crane lowers the metal piece once and something is not quite right. the cables lift it silently back up,  swing the whole thing around, then lower it again. the men on the skeleton begin to move like flocks of birds, into two loose groups, shifting with the movement of the metal hanging above them. they move through the sky like it is where they live, which, i suppose, is mostly true. they do not once look down. and when the checkmark descends for the second time men from each group grab the ropes dangling from its sides and guide it to where it will live. from the start of that second try to the moment when metal sits up against metal is not quite five minutes.

there have been blocks in my past, wooden ones and plastic ones that snapped open and closed like alligator mouths. there have been lincoln logs and tinker toys and ring-a-ma-jigs with pieces that click together so easily a three year old could build an arena with them. and i know up close on the corner of flatbush and fifth avenue there is the noise of machinery and the yelling of those men to one another. there is that checkmark of metal hanging above their heads, more than two thousand pounds wrapped in skinny cables, but from where i am standing so far across the street it looks effortless.

drive

a 1970 chevy impala four door hardtop sedan with a v-8 engine is 18 feet of unbridled automotive fury. it is also just over six and a half feet wide. and in may of 1985 my own dear parents handed me the keys to more than 3,500 pounds of detroit steel and said happy birthday. i am telling you this so you will know that i know what i am doing. that i have known for a very long time.

however, knowing what i am doing and having a license to do it are two different things. let me tell you now you shouldn't ever let a driver's license lapse. ever.  because without one it is difficult to get a credit card. buy a house. register a rowboat with the d.e.c. fly on a plane. it is very, very difficult to convince people you are who you say you are if you have no evidence other than the word of your parents who may or may not be of questionable integrity. so when my license lapsed without warning me about what would happen i decided i was not about to stand in a million person line and take that whole driving test over again just to prove to the state i know how to do something i'm not even planning to do so they can give me a license to do it. using the man and the man's desire to keep me jumping through hoops as an excuse to avoid doing something isn't such a good idea, either. but i got myself a fancy state i.d. non-driving. for walking around and buying bourbon and it suited me fine. for a while.

but recently i've become restless as a passenger and the sweetie has been encouraging me to visit the d.m.v. to get myself legalized. so i go every time i have a day off. rosh hashanah. winter break. spring break. summer. i go to the d.m.v. at atlantic center, downloaded license application already filled out and clutched in my sweaty hands. i get in line. and no matter what time of day i go, even thirty minutes before the place opens, there are hundreds of folks already in line. and i know what you're thinking. you've seen me exaggerate before. i am not exaggerating now. i believe that before lunchtime the d.m.v. in brooklyn processes more people than the total population of my entire missouri hometown, including stringtown and oscie ora acres. before noon. so i go and i stand in line until i can't breathe, until i've forgotten my name or until the screaming of miserable children cuts through the backs of my eyes or the anger between others somewhere further up the line threatens to boil over into spitting or purse throwing. and then i trudge back home, determined to go again the next day. depending on the length of the school break, maybe even the day after that.

but because we went wild and bought ourselves a new car in the ancestral homeland a week or so ago we had to do some licensing paperwork and the sweetie was willing to take a day off and do the work upstate, where the d.m.v. is a little quieter. because unlike me, he isn't even willing to attempt to stand in one of those lines. we go to the margaretville d.m.v. together. i cannot keep the terms standing, stopping and parking straight in my head, although i know i will never put my car in front of a sign that says any of those things, just to be safe. i feel clammy. it is a long time since i've taken a test and i think it may be the first time i've ever been nervous about how i'll do. yes, i was that sort of child. we are third and fourth in line, the sweetie and me. the first man is there to license a small farm vehicle because he was yelled at by a policeman. the d.m.v. lady says there's no way to license the vehicle but the man says the cop insisted it had to be licensed. kafka. dickens. dizziness. the man, who has already apologized to us for taking up so much time, finally decides this conversation will not change and goes home. this does not bode well for my own efforts.

the next transaction is quick and then the sweetie gets started with his paperwork and i am at the counter. i have my expired walking around i.d. from the state of new york. i have a notarized copy of my birth certificate. i have read and reread the forms of identification required and i know i have what i need but i am nervous. "you need a social security card," says the lady behind the counter. now, if i knew where my social security card was, i'd hand the thing over to her, but i don't. i do know that as soon as i have a valid license, i can get a new one and i will, but that doesn't help much right now. i smile my best smile and take a deep breath and tell her i don't need the card, that i checked the state website and what i have is sufficient. and yes, i did actually say sufficient. watch cops. awkward formal language is a common response to guilt and fear. she looks me over like she can't believe i haven't gone home yet and she clicks around on her keyboard. she looks surprised, then frowns, then takes my i.d. "this is expired," she says. already at 9:15 a.m. i have made her so tired she can barely think. i tell her i know, but that it still sufficient. i know for a fact it will work for three years after the date on it. she clicks around again and mutters three years under her breath and looks at me like i ought to be ashamed of myself. i am too nervous to be ashamed. she shoves the written test across the counter and tells me to have a seat.

there are twenty five questions. i begin to think like a ninth grader with a learning disability. i figure i can probably miss seven of the questions and still have a shot at driving. i answer them slowly and carefully. the fact that, as a high school teacher, i sit through at least one drunk driving seminar per year is very helpful. i reread every question, make sure i've answered them all. i put my name at the top and stand up. when i had the test over the counter the woman asks if i'm sure i'm finished. she is sure i am not. i was pretty sure but her tone is enough to make my insides feel all silvery and cold. she takes the paper, exasperated with me beyond words. but when she turns back to me everything has changed.

she says that in all her time working for the d.m.v. she can only think of maybe one other person who aced the test. i am so rattled by the taking of the test i'm not sure what she's saying but i can tell by her smile i passed.  i mention i took the test once before when i was sixteen and that i've spent about twenty years of my life driving successfully but she is still happy and i can tell you right now i am happy, too. and yes, i am the sort of person who will text my sisters to let them know i got an A+, perfect, minus zero score on my written test. i am, indeed.

she puts me over in front of the camera and i stand there while we wait for the machine to warm up. she takes my picture and tells me when the formal permit will come in the mail. she hands me my temporary permit. she asks me if i want to see my photo to see whether i'm happy with it or whether i want another. now, this is an opportunity pretty much every single person i've ever met dreams of having. the opportunity to retake a driver's license photo. i can hear a choir of angels. i can see beams of golden light. i look at the photo on the screen. it is hideous. i look like a squirrel-cheeked crack addict. i look like a very tired drunk. it is fine, i tell her. and it really is.

burying ground

one day pretty far back, historically speaking, the good folks of the city of new york looked around and realized the wells they'd dug and the rivers and springs on their skinny island were browner and dirtier and more full of typhoid and the like than they'd been before. they'd been making do with beer and whiskey and tea, but that will only go so far. you can't have a big city without any fresh water and a city on an island in the ocean doesn't have as many choices as it might if it found itself elsewhere. so the city did what must have seemed like a reasonable thing at the time. it began a process of impounding water from on up the way, up in the mountains of the mainland where the city didn't think too many people were using it. after all, who on earth would want to live up in the middle of nowhere when they could live in a fancy city on an island? especially when you factor in all that whiskey.

impounding is basically the lassoing of water into big piles in one place for quick and easy use in another place. because water is water, these piles came about when the city built dams along parts of the upland rivers, creating spectacular snaky lakes sitting high above the valleys originally carved by those slithers of water. the first damming happened more than a hundred and fifty years ago and the most recent happened four years before i was born. the water reached up and stretched out tendrilly fingers all over the land in valleys, smoothing out the lowlands and reflecting the mountains pretty enough the city folks even began to be proud of themselves for creating a resort scene up there where there had only been cows and bears before.

but you have to know that all those lassoed and harnessed wild waters surely had little towns snuggled all up against them, dot after tiny dot along the ribbony valleys before the waters rose up. and when the city decided how tall they'd need the water to be in each valley, they took away all the towns sitting below the line they decided on. that's right. took them right off the maps. some towns relocated whole and entire up on the banks of the new water. some didn't. but at the edges of the water where the towns used to be there are signs. former site of olive. former site of arena. and before they left, the folks in all those tiny places had to dig up their buried ancestors and take them to higher ground. there are things you just don't think about until you're in the middle of them.

whole groups of dead and buried folks, alone and clustered by name, were packed up and moved from every one of those little towns. arena, brewer, cannonsville, cat hollow, duffy, edgett, granton, old arena, rock rift, rock royal,  shavertown, union grove, wakeman. the water came up and buried the land and the trees and the roads to where things used to be. and a whole bunch of those dead whose families could not be found were carted off to a hillside just north of the water, west of the shavertown bridge, settled back again by what family they had with them underground at the time, and then town by town they were replotted, remapped.

you can see the history of the valleys right there on that hillside. the names of people that have given themselves over to be the names of towns. lamb after lamb across the stones of child after child living and then quickly dying in a time when a cough could mean losing half a family. masons and farmers and soldiers from the civil war. some stones weathered away to nothing because people had been living in those valleys so long and quietly burying their dead near enough by to visit from time to time. a few stones are set into the earth facing backward to all the others in their rows. there are small plugs of cement with metal signs skewered into the ground above the empty grass in some places with names typed onto white paper encased in plastic.

and those stones, markers for boxes of dust and bones, sit there on the side of the mountain. you can stand there in the middle of all of them and look out onto that valley below. you can't see it from where you stand at the edge of the clean lawn, but just beneath those trees is that lake glittering with impounded water.

the somethingth of july

photos and video generously supplied by the baby sister. 

 it would be easiest to blame the parents because they are the ones who handed us our first explosives and the small crumbling bits of burning wand for lighting them. i do not recall when i was not allowed to set fire to wads of gunpowder wrapped in bright paper although i am sure there must have been such a time. maybe, because i am the oldest, when i was two or so. maybe three. but the middle child was born breathing brimstone and her own child is steeped in it, too. it is his birthright to throw fire into the sky.

so it is only fair that when we figure out we can make it out to the homeland for a few days, we call the child to tell him first. the sweetie asks the child about his fourth of july plans and the child goes over them halfheartedly, insisting it can't really be much without us there. now, what he means is without the sweetie. because the sweetie will strap a rocket to a styrofoam plane. he will light a whole box of ladyfingers at once. he will run out into that delicious smoke to light fuse after fuse after fuse. i hear the sweetie ask if the child thinks he could put off the fourth for a few days so we could join him. there is a scream from the other end of the phone. the sweetie has to hold the phone away from his ear and i can hear the screaming from across the room. the child will postpone the fourth of july.

i miss a call from the child while we are in maine. the message says he is hoping to do facetime on the phones so we can go with him to choose fireworks. instead, he sends a picture of himself with some sort of monstrous paper-wrapped cardboard tube. so we will know he's getting the right stuff.  his mother says he has started a countdown, how many days until we will be where he is. how many days until the sky goes sparkly.

when the smaller child hears we're coming, he puts his own spin on things. this is the child who speaks to the dog endlessly on the phone. dog language. child language. but his take on the visit is that the dog will be arriving on his own. by subway. to visit him. when he talks to me on the phone, a rarity since i am not the dog and therefore not who he really wants to talk to, he tells me he is waiting. he tells me about all the toys in his basement he is ready to share with the dog. he tells me, with great pride, about his yard, about all the grass there for the dog to pee on. he tells the dog. he tells me. he tells me to tell the dog.

my own mother starts her phone conversation asking me what her son in law will be wanting to eat. this is important. she will make anything he puts on the list. and because he lives a quasi-gluten-free lifestyle, he starts with bread pudding. because my own dear mother makes better bread pudding than anyone around. he says pineapple upside down cake. he says carrot cake. this is not just because he does not have these things at home. my mother's versions of them have ruined people for eating lesser attempts. not just my lesser attempts. the attempts of real cooks. he asks for meatloaf. my mother does not even pretend to feign interest in what i might like to eat. they will all be happy enough to see me but this is because i bring what they really want. the sweetie. the dog. the general wildness.

and so on a very hot evening some time well after the fourth, we eat a good meal where there is meat loaf on a platter and creamed peas with new potatoes in a bowl and where there is a gluten-free (and unsurprisingly delicious) pineapple upside down cake. and then we stand on the middle sister's deck, wrapped in bug spray and oppressive air, waiting. the sweetie straps the rocket to the styrofoam plane. he leans his tall self out over the corner of the deck. the middle sister lights the fuse. the smaller nephew says the single word fly. and it does. the plane slips smoothly out of the sweetie's hand trailing sparks and glides out over the yard. it hesitates just a second.  it shoots up, arcs over and turns into a shower of stars.

possum of destruction

the word possum refers to a beady-eyed, thumb-footed, stink-flavored american marsupial with no clear redeeming value. for much of my childhood i did not know that an o existed in the beginning of the word and to this day i do not know a soul who pronounces it. that o is a waste of time, just like the animal it's stuck on.

and now, our drama unfolds:

pretty new fig leaves emerging above poop-smothered ones

i head to the kitchen window because beyond it is the farm. two feet square on a third floor fire escape. the tomato plants are grumbling so excessively about water that even though the sky is threatening golf ball sized rain, i fill up my grandma's iced tea glass and head over to give them a sip. they remain wilted, ungrateful. the basil sits below the two plants, giggling that good smell out onto everything. the feathery carrots are ready to thin. the beets are still unsure about being so high up. they slide out one leaf at a time, tentative and small. the cucumbers are reaching out to the fire escape rails, plotting to take over everything with those still not yet tendrils. and my fig tree, lovely thing given to me by a favorite waitress at our favorite diner, has been putting on serious, lush leaves after a near death experience involving pigeon poop. the fig tree is the fanciest thing on the farm, the thing i love most.

stump of sorrow

i lean out to check those new ruffly leaves. i scan the farm but cannot find the tree anywhere. it is not likely the tree moved by itself and there have been no winds to speak of, nothing that would take one tree in the middle of a whole farm. there is an uncomfortable rustling among the other plants. the sullen sky squeezes two more shades of dark into itself before my eyes finally fall on the pot. and the stump. a four inch fig tree stump sticking out of the pot, sheared off clean at the skyward end. there is a frantic moment where i look around for the top of the severed tree, thinking foolishly that if i find it i can put everything back together with duct tape. or gaffer's tape. it comes in many pretty colors including, i am sure, trunk and leaf.

i cannot at first imagine what sort of monster would assassinate a baby fig tree like this but then i recall that fourth floor fire escape raccoon last month and also the rabid raccoon i saw in the park a week later. i begin to think hateful things about raccoons. i also begin to worry if somehow my plants are contaminated with rabies and how rabies might manifest itself in plants (hint: it does not. they are plants). i am imagining all sorts of ways i might meet up with and destroy this frothy mouthed murderer with the support of what i expect will be my now sentient and justice-seeking garden, when the part of my brain that actually does the real thinking taps me on the shoulder and starts listing off reasons a rabid raccoon wouldn't do this. mostly, it tells me, raccoons don't eat trees. and a rabid raccoon wouldn't be able to get all the way up to the farm. rabies makes legs into the enemy.

so i call my mother to lament the loss of my fig tree and she suggests a possum because of its hideous gnawing skills. there is some evidence to suggest she may have had past negative experiences with possums. she is very careful to mention, more than twice, that i should not approach said creature if i see it. i think a bit of how terrifying my childhood must have been for her if, more than thirty years after the fact, she still feels compelled to warn me not to touch a gnaw-mouthed slab of stink and hatefulness. and although i am careful to reassure her that i will in no manner engage any possum i might find poaching plants on my fire escape, i am already envisioning myself, looking strikingly like teddy roosevelt, engaged in a battle to the death with this freakish trainwreck of nature, north america's only marsupial, who has no business living the way he does, walking around on sidewalks, gnawing off people's fig trees when it's pretty obvious to anyone around that those fig trees are the centerpieces of people's fire escape farms.

brave sweet potato, a friend to fig trees

i am pretty sure vengeance killing of possums is not yet legal in brooklyn and i am absolutely sure that if i attempt to stage the beast's death to look like i acted in self defense i would somehow end up knocking myself off the fire escape, securing my own hideous end. so i am forced to wait, steeping in my sorrow. the sweetie and i go away for two weeks. we visit both families. i water the farm plenty before we leave even though i know what i am doing will have amounted to very little when we return. i expect nothing.

valiant possum-defying fig tree

when we get back i see the indoor lavender is withered as are the pothos scattered around the apartment. i hesitate to look out the window. it is a scene of ugliness. the cucumbers have given up their fight entirely, tiny tendrils still clutching at scorching fire escape rails. tomatoes and basil are brittle sticks, brown and ugly, smelling like nothing but a dusty car heater. there is a lone beet plant, a late growing shoot, peering up at the afternoon sky. and a fat pot of carrots is wilty but still entirely alive. i reach out to grab one of the two leafing sweet potato plants i set into the dirt of my dead fig tree. this is when i see it. a tight cluster of ruffly, dark green leaves. and they look unbearably like those little clusters of leaves on the broken trees in my own homeland. i am glad now i was too heartsick to toss out that stump of fig tree before we left but the ugliness is not over. there will be more to face. pigeons. possums. boll weevils. fire breathing robots. there is work to do.

postcards from maine

i'm trying out a new format. it's a little bit reckless. i might have got carried away.

i took about five million photos of sunsets. i am working on the theory that i can store them up for use when i am back in brooklyn and cannot see the sky unless i am standing directly in the middle of the street.

the sunsets here were relentless. we got one every single day!

sunday evening. diving platform.

monday, maybe. lance and stephanie in the kayak.

this sunset had a few islands thrown in for atmosphere.

wednesday's sunset from the window seat in our bedroom.
 

 we woke up one morning to three luna moths on the screens of the porch. they didn't say much, but they were pretty, anyway. they have those crazy yellow feather antennae that look like they would be very soft. i wouldn't mind having a room full of luna moths to walk through when i'm feeling mean.

fishing, golden oreos optional

there was some fishing from the little dock by the house. as i understand it a very old, wise, bearded fish lives under the dock. even though he swims with a cane because of tailfin arthritis, he is still the most powerful fish in the lake. the sweetie caught him once, i think, but after a pleasant chat, the two parted ways on friendly terms. one of those sunsets accidentally got into this photo. i think i mentioned they are relentless things. and they're everywhere!

what began as a quiet attempt to overcome a fear of whirlpools, lightning and lake monsters evolved into an epic battle of good over evil. or something. kayak wars: the rise of the kayak! except in the case of the sweetie, whose kayak, according to his brother, sailed along like the monitor. look it up. you'll get it when you see the pictures. it's an ironclad.

the monitor is the ship on your left.

maine is what we in missouri would call a dry state in terms of fireworks. although the sweetie and i are adorers of massive explosions, we figured the loons would be happier with a smaller scale celebration and so we decided to obey the law for a change. besides, we had a promise from a ten year old of a late fireworks extravaganza waiting for us in missouri. we played it extra safe by standing on the dock, surrounded by lake. bring on the sparklers!

here there be pirates, matey. or something

we spent an afternoon in bar harbor. there are plenty of fancy ships and tons of touristy shops. there are lobster versions of almost everything and you can get blueberries in syrup form, chocolate form, lotion form and soap form. a good shopper will find the moose helmets. there are three styles to fit all your moose needs, both nosed and nose-free.

 here you can see the mysterious ice cream lobster in its natural habitat- a sidewalk in maine. i think that may be the ice cream lobster's personal bodyguard there beside him on the right. you can't be too careful when you're an ice cream lobster, i suppose.

can you see it? it's that red light between lance and stephanie.

we are, all of us, a lighthouse adoring people. we figured the only lighthouse on mount desert island ought to be something awe inspiring. turns out it's a stubby little dachshund-ish thing painted white and stuck onto the low side of a bluff. being taller than the light is not really a challenge. secretly, though, i thought it was cute enough to hug. but i didn't. maine needs some serious lighthouse action because of its rocky coastline. in brooklyn, you could steer a ship right up onto the smooth beach. your only danger might be one of those syringe fish or condom fish that prowl the shallows around coney island. in maine, giant stabby rocks lurk just below the surface, waiting to gut any ship foolish enough to wander by. so thank you tiny lighthouse. you are a hero to all. 

sweetie on the rocks

one of grandma's sofa paintings

even though the coast isn't what most folks would call swimmable, it's pretty impressive in its rocky wildness. i am already missing it and am plotting how to get back there again for one of the next hot seasons. because in the summer, in maine, the 83 degree afternoon we had was described on every news channel in great detail as a dangerous heat wave.

our last evening together we went out to eat lobster at a local place. some of us had lobster and some of us didn't, but there was pie and cake and creme brulee at the end. and we all had what we had together. we sat out on a big porch with a view of a pretty river. afterward, a stranger offered to take a family photo. we took quite a few, but i think this one captures us best.