The Summer of '69 - Lighting the Fire

                       “Education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire.”
                                         – William Butler Yeats

My high school alma mater is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.  Opened in Park Ridge, Illinois in 1964, the first graduating class of Maine Township High School South, including a young Hillary Rodham, received their diplomas in June 1965.  Four years later, on June 10, 1969, I stood in my black graduation gown in the school’s very warm gymnasium waiting to step onto the stage to receive my own diploma.  The Class of 1969 was only the second graduating class to spend its entire high school career at Maine South, and the last graduating class that was required to adhere to a strict student dress code which required men to be clean shaven, and to wear their hair cut above the collar.  Bob Dylan reminded us . . . the times they were a-changin’.

The last episodes of Star Trek and the Smothers Brothers Comedy had aired on NBC and CBS respectively during the previous week.  Joe Namath quit the New York Jets and Mickey Mantle’s #7 was retired by New York Yankees.  The Beatles release the “Ballad Of John & Yoko” in the US and Tommy James & the Shondells released "Crystal Blue Persuasion."  Warren Burger was confirmed as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and President Nixon announced that 25,000 troops would be leaving Southeast Asia by the end of the summer to begin the “Vietnamization” of the war.

In the weeks following graduation we watched as more racial unrest erupted in cities across the US.  The three-day Stonewall riot in New York City would mark the beginning of the modern gay rights movement.   Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island in which Mary Jo Kopechne drowned.  Charles Manson’s cult family committed the Tate-LaBianca murders in Los Angles, and Hurricane Camille took the lives of 256 along coastal Mississippi and Louisiana.  There was also unrest and uncertainty brewing beyond our borders.  A brief war erupted between El Salvador and Honduras over a soccer match.   A revolution in Libya would bring Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi to power, and British troops began their militarily intervention in Northern Ireland.

With over a half million men and women deployed to Vietnam, the war continued to rage in Southeast Asia a year after the Tet Offensive despite the planned withdrawal of some US troops.  On June 27, Life magazine displayed portrait photographs of all 242 Americans killed in Vietnam during the previous week bring the war even closer to home.  The US began a secret bombing campaign over Cambodia and more than 11,000 US troops would be killed in action in 1969.  Hô Chí Minh died that September but his death brought the war no closer to a conclusion and the Selective Service began a draft lottery in December 1969.

During that summer, and perhaps for the first time, we began to look in earnest beyond our own planet.  Two American astronauts landed on the moon’s Sea of Tranquility, taking one small step for man yet one giant leap for mankind while a third orbited on board Apollo 11.  Pioneer 10 began its long voyage to Jupiter and eventually beyond our solar system while Mariner 6 and 7 began sending photographs of Mars back to Earth.

Closer to home, American youth continued to make their voices known as they flocked to the Newport Jazz Festival, the Atlanta Pop Festival, the Seattle Pop Festival, the Atlantic City Pop Festival, the  Texas International Pop Festival, the New Orleans Pop Festival, and the Woodstock Music & Art Fair.  The Rolling Stones played a free concert in London's Hyde Park.  It was another Summer of Love imprinting itself across the cultural landscape of America.  Even the Boys of Summer heralded change as the long-shot New York Mets defeated the Baltimore Orioles to win the World Series for the first time in their short history.

After graduation my family moved to the suburbs of Milwaukee where I worked on a  construction crew during the week and returned to Park Ridge on the weekends to hang out with my friends as we prepared to begin our college careers in the fall.  We had picnics and spent warm days on the shores of Lake Michigan.  Despite all that was going on in the world around me, it was a mostly carefree summer, a time to spend with friends and to begin looking toward my future.  How was my high school education going to pay off?  What was I going to do with the rest of my life?   One of my buddies planned to join the Marines that fall; unlike the rest of us who hoped college would somehow keep us out of the military, he wanted to go to Vietnam.  He visited me at my college in Florida later that year after he finished basic training.  He shipped out to Vietnam in early 1970 and was killed in action shortly after his arrival in country.   It would be a summer not to forget for so many reasons. 

I am reminded of “Summer of 69,” one of my favorite songs by Bryan Adams:

    Oh, when I look back now
    That summer seemed to last forever
    And if I had the choice
    Yeah, I'd always wanna be there
    Those were the best days of my life.

At the time those relatively carefree weeks after graduation did seem like the best days of my life.  I had put another chapter of my life behind me and I was entering into an even bigger adventure.  I had no idea what life had in store for me.

Now I look back over these forty-five years and I am thankful for everything.  They were not years of simply filling the bucket of all that life has given me.  Back in the summer of 1969 I lit a fire that is burning ever brighter with each passing year.  

    And now the times are changin'
    Look at everything that's come and gone.

I would not change a single thing. 

 Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.

The Longest Day

"It's a hell of a war, but God willing, we'll do what we came here to do.”
                – John Wayne, in “The Longest Day”

Today we mark the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France.  On the morning of June 6, 1944, after months of planning and preparation, over 150,000 US and Allied soldiers made airborne landings in coastal France followed closely by landings on the beaches of Normandy.  An armada of several thousand ships of all sizes and descriptions had slipped out of English ports in the darkness and crossed the English Channel to the European mainland where four years before Britain had retrieved its  battle-worn troops from the beaches at Dunkirk [Dunkerque].  As the Allied soldiers once again stepped ashore, they were greeted by a murderous hail of machine-gun and mortar fire by deeply entrenched German positions along the Atlantic Wall.  Having fought in North Africa, across Sicily and up the boot of Italy, the Allies and Operation Overlord were finally taking the war back to western Europe for the final push to defeat Hitler’s Germany. 

The expectations of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of all Allied forces, were simply stated.  "You are about to embark on a great crusade. The eyes of the world are upon you and the hopes and prayers of all liberty-loving peoples go with you . . .  Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory."  Later that morning he would broadcast an announcement to the peoples of western Europe, telling them of the landings and declaring, "all patriots, young and old, will have a part to play in the liberation."  Today there are less than five thousand survivors of those who saw action during the initial stages of the Allied invasion.  We owe them, and all of those who died there or have passed on since then, a deep debt of gratitude.  These days we tend to throw the word “hero” around too carelessly.  But these men and women were all heroes in very sense of the word.

My father was part of that effort although he was not involved in D-Day or its immediate aftermath as the Allies attempted to move deeper into France.  He fought in Patton’s Third Army which landed in Cherbourg, west of the Normandy beaches, that July and  then began to move across France just after those who landed on D-Day and shortly thereafter finally achieved their breakout from Normandy.   I knew about that part of the conflict from what my father told me as a young boy when I anxiously asked him “Dad,. What did you do during the war?”  It was not until a few years later that I began to fully understand the momentous importance of what those brave men and women accomplished on D-Day and the long days, weeks and months that followed.

I was thirteen years old when I finally saw The Longest Day, the 1962 Darryl Zanuck-20th Century film based on Cornelius Ryan’s 1959 book on the D-Day invasion of France (Ryan also wrote the screenplay).  It happened to be on the twentieth anniversary of that watershed event of the 20th century as well as my last day of 7th grade.  After our release from school I walked up to the theater on Pack Square, in Asheville, North Carolina, and sat through two complete showings of the three-hour film.  It was my first introduction to that historic struggle to turn the tide of war against Nazi Germany.   Fifty years later this film, despite all of its Hollywood trappings, is still recognized as perhaps the most complete effort to capture on film the scope and importance of that seminal historical event. For those involved in the invasion, it truly was “the longest day.”

So let us take a moment today to remember those living and dead who were participants in that great struggle.  They all did what they came there to do and we are all thankful for their sacrifice.

Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.

Remembering the Tiananmen Square Massacre

A quarter of a century ago something quite unordinary occurred in the world’s most populous country.  Almost thirteen years after the death of Mao Zedong, the founder and “Great Helmsman” of the People’s Republic of China, a young generation of Chinese students, largely from the University of Beijing, congregated in the 109-acre Tiananmen Square, to demand more democratic reforms in a country celebrating its 40th anniversary.  The ruling Communist Party sat quietly by, allowing the students to vent their frustrations and make their demands, and having done so, the hope was they would soon return to their studies and classrooms.  But they did not leave, and with each passing day and week their voices grew ever stronger and strident.  Before long the ranks of the students were joined by others long tired of government corruption and in the desire for more personal freedoms.  Soon the assembled masses swelled to an estimated three million and spread well beyond the square.  Nobody was going home and the government realized it had lost control of the situation.

Enough was enough.  The nascent seven-week pro-democracy movement finally ended on June 3-4, 1989 with the Communist government declaring martial law and ordering heavily armed soldiers and tanks of the People’s Liberation Army into the streets of central Beijing to restore order.  Yet the protestors did not back down in the face of an overwhelming show of military might as they attempted to block the advance of tanks and troops into the Tiananmen Square from every direction.

Without provocation the PLA units opened fired on the demonstrators several miles from the square, killing several.   They inflicted heavy civilian casualties as they continued moving toward the square and soldiers fired indiscriminately on nearby buildings lining the route of their advance.  The local populace, incensed by this unnecessary violence and killing, quickly took to the streets to attack the soldiers and tanks.  The casualty rate grew on both sides.   As the PLA units approached Tiananmen Square demonstrators there were warned not to oppose the implementation of martial law.  By this time, however, word of the death toll elsewhere in the city had reached the tens of thousands of demonstrators in the square.  The moment of decision had arrived . . . to depart or to continue their non-violent protest. 

Despite pleas for calm by some of the protest leaders, the largely peaceful demonstration descended quickly into violence as the units of the PLA arrived in the square.  They were pelted with rocks and bottles and several vehicles were set ablaze.  In an attempt to seal off the square and to isolate the demonstrators, several more unarmed students were shot or killed as tanks and armored personnel carriers overran and crushed the tent city erected there.   The indiscriminate killing continued for several more hours until the PLA had finally secured the square and forced the demonstrators to leave.  But it did not end there.  The PLA pursued and attacked them beyond the square and  dozens of civilians were reported shot in the back as they fled.  The blood continued to flow in the streets of central Beijing.  

The government eventually regained control following the military's seizure of the square.  With suppression of information about the crackdown the death toll estimates have varied widely, from several hundred to a few thousand.  Leaders of the demonstration were arrested and jailed and the fate of many remains unknown to this day.  At the time the Communist regime in Beijing justified its actions as suppression of counter-revolutionary agitation resulting in brutal attacks on the PLA by the demonstrators.  Those in the government who originally condoned the demonstration were quicky purged and the government began the process of a state-enforced erasure of the pro-democracy movement and its bloody finale from the collective memory of the Chinese people.  Now, 25 years after these events, it is still forbidden to speak of the uprising and the resulting judicial murder of dissenters.  Images of the protest on the Internet have been censored in China.  If its actions were justified, why is the regime so afraid to talk about it now?  I think the answer is quite obvious.

What can one say about a country that will murder dissenters in cold blood?  A country that cannot reconcile itself with its past is a country living in self-denial, a country that will fail learning from that past.  Even though the Chinese government has attempted to erase all memory of its crimes against its own people striving for basic human freedom and dignity, it is important that the rest of the world stand united in its condemnation of the cruel and unnecessary slaughter of a people brave enough to stand up for their beliefs in the face of their oppressors.

Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.

A Stroll Down Memory Lane

I spent a lot of time at the McKeldin Library, my old stomping grounds on the campus of the University of Maryland at College Park, between 1976 and 1984.  I was enrolled as a graduate student completing my doctorate in Germanic Studies, and the library was situated just a short distance from my campus office.  Since completing my degree thirty years ago I have had little opportunity or reason to return to the campus and I had forgotten just how many strong and pleasant memories I have of the place.

Since my retirement four years ago I have renewed my membership in the alumni association which offers me inter alia borrowing privileges at all of the campus libraries (there are eight at last count).  I have been taking advantage of this by re-familiarizing myself with the stacks and the layout of this old book barn and using the peace and quiet it affords to work on a number of new projects with all the materials I need close at hand.  Most recently I have worked on a novel-in-progress in a quiet corner.

The place has changed quite a bit since I last worked there.  Gone are the banks of wooden cabinets housing the thousands upon thousands of dog-eared bibliographic data cards needed to locate books and other publications in the stacks.  They have been replaced with computers which allow for a different type of fingertip search.

As I searched the library’s holdings on Halifax during World War II, I have been  overcome by curiosity (and not a small measure of hubris) as I typed my own name into the computer catalog’s search box.  And there it was - an entry for my doctoral dissertation completed back in November 1984.  A few minutes later I made my way  into the stacks where I located that 344-page monstrosity, now hardbound in two volumes, one of the signed copies I had to submit to the Graduate School faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the PhD degree.  I could not help myself.  I carried the volumes back to my work table in the reading room and spent the next hour or so perusing the product of long days and nights spent in this library those many, many years ago.

The title is not something that rolls right off the tongue, but typical for a dissertation, I guess - Spatial Behavioral Patterns in Selected Short Prose of the German Democratic Republic [East] and the Federal Republic of Germany [West] as Evidence of Developing Cultural Diversification.  Despite its long-winded title, the study itself is a rather straight forward (remarkable for me) examination of postwar German fiction literature as a means of tracking and evaluating how Germans in the two German states handled space differently and how these modalities served as benchmarks to measure the development of two distinct German cultures over the course of almost four decades. The conclusions drawn by my study demonstrated (at least my examination committee believed I was successful in my approach) how and why literary historians and critics must look at the sociological and anthropological sub-texts of literary works in order to properly understand their meaning and importance within the cultures that produced them. Pretty heady stuff, to be sure, or so it seemed at the time.

There are two (at least) recurring nightmares that every graduate student experiences; that the only copy of a thesis or dissertation is lost or stolen and one must go back to the beginning and start over, or one’s advisor dies or disappears under mysterious circumstances and one is left alone without any clear guidance as to how to carry on. I was lucky to avoid both of these as well as a third somewhat unique to my circumstances.  Almost five years to the day after I successfully defended my dissertation, the Berlin Wall, much to almost everyone’s surprise, fell and a year later the two German states reunified.  I still shudder to think what would have happened had I been called to defend my conclusions - that the two postwar German states were gradually, but steadily, giving rise to two distinct German cultures - faced with the reality of one of the more momentous and unexpected events of the late 20th Century.  I am still confident, as I was then, that my ultimate conclusions are sound, and despite the political and economic reunification of Germany, there are still two distinct cultures, in the sociological and anthropological meaning of that word, in evidence in the reunified Federal Republic of Germany.  That said, I am glad I was not put to the unnecessary test of my wits and my wherewithal.

So it was a treat, to say the least, to discover these bound volumes of this hard fought study just a short distance from where many of the outlines and early drafts took shape. They awaken many fond, old memories.  But past is past, and my visits to McKeldin are now focused on new projects.

 Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.

The Cheese That Brings Back Memories: The Bon Bree Cheese Brick is Back!

This posting is a follow-up to “Cheesehead Revisited - Part 2” originally posted on July 24, 2013 [http://lookingtowardportugal.blogspot.com/2013/07/cheesehead-revisited-part-2-dispatches.html ] 
As Paul Harvey use to say at the end of his daily radio broadcasts, “And now you know the rest of the story.”

I have previously written that I find it gratifying to learn there are others out there who share my “hankering for a good hunk of cheese.”  I mentioned my particular love for the Bon-Bree cheese brick, a true Wisconsin Lake Country tradition, produced by the long defunct cheese factory in Mapleton (it closed sometime in the 1980s).  And not long after my original posting back in 2009 [“Confessions of a Cheesehead - Part 2” posted May 17, 2009 - http://lookingtowardportugal.blogspot.com/2009/05/confessions-of-cheesehead-part-2.html ], I began to receive regular comments from fellow afficionados who enjoyed my story of discovery and my own enjoyment of and dedication to Bon-Bree.  We all mourned its passing into cheese history.

One of these contacts was Bob Kapsy who lives not far from the site of the old Mapleton factory in rural Waukesha County northeast of Milwaukee. He had seen my 2009 blog posting mentioning my interest in Bon-Bree and we both agreed it was a black day when the late Terry Shaw, the Oconomowoc cheese maker responsible for Mapleton’s Bon-Bree, decided to close up shop.  The good news, however, was that Kapsy, a local wine merchant, was partnering with Lloyd Williams’ Homestead Farm and Creamery, a six generation family farm in Delafield, in the hope of soon producing an artisan “Mapleton style cheese” replicating the consistency and taste of the Bon-Bree cheese of old.  Williams would make the cheese and Kapsy would take on the responsibility of sales and marketing.  In doing so, they hoped to answer the prayers of Bon-Bree’s many loyal and longing disciples – to reintroduce “The Cheese That Brings Back Memories” – while in the process making the Williams family farm financially sound.

Williams knew Terry Shaw, and years after the Mapleton cheese factory closed, they visited the Dairy Business Innovation Center and the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, where they tested several batches trying to recreate the original Mapleton recipe.  Sadly, Shaw passed away shortly thereafter and Williams carried on their plan alone.  Luckily he soon joined forces with Kapsy and they quickly discovered that you cannot patent a cheese recipe, but you can the trademark the name.  They did just that and the rest is new cheese history.

For four years Williams developed cultures and refined the recipe while looking to the future marketing of the new Bon-Bree.  He wanted to bring back what the old Mapleton customers grew to love while initiating a new generation of cheese lovers to what he believed was a truly artisanal product.  Secure in the belief that a satisfactory recipe was in hand, Williams began to produce several test batches while Kapsy sampled them at local wine tasting events and when visiting local groceries and markets.  Kapsy was kind enough to keep me in the loop on developments and to share some of these early samples with me, sending them through the US Postal Service to my home here in Maryland.  There was concern that the cheese would not withstand its transit through the mail, but I assured Bob it would be OK.  After all, my family sent blocks of the original Bon-Bree to me in college in Florida and Arizona.  I even had Bon-Bree shipped to me during a year I spent studying in Germany.  Surely it would hold up on the trip from Wisconsin to Maryland.  And it did.  I could not wait to sample it.  As I have previously reported, the color of the new brick is more white than the buttery hue of the original . . . something which only occurs with proper aging in “bringing back the Bree.”  Otherwise it looked, felt and smelled the same as the Bon-Bree of old. 

It was not long before Kapsy called me last summer to announce,“We have cheese!”   Better yet, he was shipping me a sample of the final product.   I was in heaven!  The bricks were properly aged – Williams cautions that “you can’t rush a good thing” – with the plan to soon have cheese in stores.  Like its predecessor, the new Bon-Bree brick cheese contains no preservatives, synthetic proteins, bovine growth hormones, or artificial coloring.  It is 100% natural milk from pasture-fed Holstein cows using primarily cheese cultures and salt.

By late August Bon-Bree went into full scale production at Ron Henningfeld’s Clock Shadow Creamery, an environmentally “green” and carbon-neutral urban cheese factory situated in the Walker’s Point neighborhood on Milwaukee’s near south side since 2012.  It produces grass-based organic cheese products in small batches.  It is “very much a hands-on process” Henningfeld confesses. 

Initial distribution of the new Bon-Bree brick cheese was limited to a couple dozen stores, including several Piggly Wiggly outlets and the Mars Cheese Castle, a highway icon near Kenosha since 1947 where I have bought cheese since I was a kid.  It is also served in a handful of local restaurants in southeastern Wisconsin.  One can purchase bricks – the original along with versions containing carroway, dill and chive – online
[http://www.bonbree.com]. 

Publicity and customer reaction have been over the top and Bon-Bree now has its own Facebook page.  Fans of the earlier Bon-Bree, myself included, are ecstatic in their flights of nostalgia.   And the food establishment has been laudatory.  “It tastes a little like a cheese curd, it’s a bit like mozzarella, it’s soft like Monterey jack,” writes Nancy Strohs, the food editor of The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.  “Buttery, creamy, pleasantly salty [only 3% salt content], a little sweet, a little nutty.”  It may soon be available in the relatively new Mariano’s grocery chain in the Chicago area.

I am delighted to report that the fine tradition of Mapleton’s Bon-Bree has been resurrected and is once more available to those of us who have enjoyed it in the past, and to all those who are now discovering it now for the very first time.  Nothing says happiness like a brick of Bon-Bree Cheese . . .  “The Cheese That Brings Back Memories.”

Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.

That Magical Campus: A Return to Thomas Wolfe's University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This past weekend I was lucky enough to find myself back on that “magical campus” as famous alumnus Thomas Wolfe described the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the oldest state university in the country having been established there in 1789.  Most of the students there, and dare I say perhaps some of the faculty, were only a twinkle in their parents’ eyes the first time I visited the campus to conduct research in the North Carolina Collection housed in the Louis Round Wilson Library (some of my correspondence has managed to find a home here).  I have returned many times since for one reason or another thus disproving Wolfe’s old saw, “you can’t go home again.”  A lot of water has passed under the proverbial bridge since that first visit many years ago, but I was happy to see that the town and campus appeared pretty much the way I always  remember them.  I could certainly find my way around without consulting a map or asking directions.

The reason for this latest trip?  I was invited to chair a session of papers presented at the 36th annual conference of the Thomas Wolfe Society.  Indeed, Wolfe has been my reason for each of my previous visits to UNC-Chapel Hill; either to attend earlier gatherings of the Society, or to conduct research in the Wolfe papers in the Wilson Library (I have also ferreted through the more extensive Wolfe papers and manuscript collection at Harvard’s Houghton Library).  It was nice to catch up with old friends and colleagues while making the acquaintance of a number of young and budding American and foreign Wolfe scholars who will insure the future of Wolfe studies.  It all made for a delightful weekend on his “magical campus.”

It is difficult to spend any time in Chapel Hill or on the UNC campus without invoking Wolfe’s name; it was here he flowered into one of the premier 20th century American writers.  Born 1900 in Asheville, in the western Carolina mountains, Wolfe arrived in Chapel Hill shortly before his 16th birthday having graduated from the North State Fitting School, in his hometown.  UNC numbered around one thousand students at the time, nothing close to the enormous present-day campus with an enrollment of almost thirty thousand   The University offered him his first opportunity to escape his native landscapes and the culturally provincial environment of Asheville.  It also provided him a large degree of independence from “his crouched family,” as Eugene Gant, Wolfe’s alter ego, describes his in the original “O Lost” manuscript of his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel (1929).  “He was happy, full of expressive joy . . . He was closer to a feeling of brotherhood than he had ever been, and more alone,” Wolfe wrote describing the fictional Eugene Gant.  “His isolation was in his favor.”  Like Gant, Wolfe was able to spread his wings for the first time in his life, to rub shoulders with others, especially those students from the wealthier Piedmont and coastal areas, who grew up much different than himself.  He was not exactly a “mountain grill” his father looked down upon, but he had only a very limited exposure to the bigger world beyond Asheville.  His eyes were opened wide, and his time at UNC would eventually lead him to Boston, New York, Europe, and literary fame.

In a later letter Wolfe described his time in Chapel Hill as “close to magic,” and the UNC as “the magical campus.”  But it did not seem so during his freshman year.  Being six foot-three and weighing less than 140 pounds, Wolfe was a clumsy lad outfitted in old and ill-fitting clothes.  He lived in a boarding house on Franklin Street, still the main commercial drag adjacent to the original campus, and lived a mostly solitary and lonely existence . . . so much so that he hesitated returning for his sophomore year.

His father forced him to resume his studies, and it was a good thing he did.  Once back in Chapel Hill, Wolfe began to take a real interest in his course work and campus activities.  He studied English literature under Professor Edwin A. Greenlaw (the building currently housing the English department is named in his honor) who pushed the young Wolfe to do more than what his other instructors expected of him.  He began to flourish as a member of the “Dialectic,” or “Di,” one of the two literary societies on campus he joined as a freshman.  Perhaps we can say the “die was cast.”  Wolfe joined the writing staff of the University of North Carolina Magazine, and The Tar Heel, the campus newspaper of which he later became the managing editor and editor-in-chief.  He would also serve as the editor of Yackety Yack, the campus annual.   From a lonely freshman he gradually evolved into a campus leader much in demand, exercising what he called “the huge pretense of idiot geniality.”

During his last two years on campus Wolfe studied under Professor Frederick Koch who instilled in him an avid interest in drama and the theater, an interest he would continue after graduation in George P. Baker’s 47 Workshop, at Harvard University.  While at UNC Wolfe wrote two one-act folk plays - The Return of Buck Gavin and The Third Night - both of which were performed by the Carolina Playmakers toward the end of Wolfe’s time in Chapel Hill.  He also performed the leading role in the former.

The main core of the UNC campus . . . the one Wolfe came to know . . . has not changed all that much since he was there.  The brown-brick buildings bordering the forested central quads extending southward from Franklin Street are still there and look much like they did in Wolfe’s day almost a century ago.  So is The Old Well, the iconic campus meeting place.  One evening at dusk, I wandered this magic landscape from Franklin Street to the Wilson Library where I heard Joseph Bathanti, the current poet laureate of North Carolina, read from his work.  It seemed entirely appropriate that he conjured up shades of Thomas Wolfe and his western Carolina mountains where Bathanti continues to live, write, and teach.  How could he not?  

In the past, the Wolfe Society has always met at the Wilson Library with its rich collection of Wolfe papers.  This year, however, we moved our proceedings to the venerable, elegant Carolina Inn, just a few blocks away.  Completed in 1924, four years after Wolfe left Chapel Hill, the Inn has, according to its official historian Kenneth Joel Zogry, served as the “University’s Living Room” for the past 90 years, hosting countless meetings, receptions, weddings, and banquets celebrating faculty and students past and present.  Its simple elegance oozes Southern charm and hospitality.

“The Carolina Inn,” writes Zogry, “was born of a bad night’s sleep.”  John Sprunt Hill, a Carolina alumnus and trustee who went on to become a prominent lawyer, banker, philanthropist and trustee responsible for the expansion of UNC at Chapel Hill, visited the campus in 1921 as head of the school’s building committee.  He stayed at one of the Franklin Street boarding houses, and offended by the heat and frequent nocturnal visits by vermin, he walked along the edge of the campus one night, and according to the local legend, pledged to build a proper inn befitting the oldest state university in the country.  A lover of literature, Hill was also largely responsible for the construction of the Wilson Library, which opened its doors in 1929 and eventually housed the North Carolina Collection which he also endowed.  In 1935, Hunt and his partners donated the Carolina Inn to the University, stipulating that the profits from its operation would support the Collection.  It seemed only right that the Wolfe Society would hold its meeting at the Carolina Inn seeing that the proceeds would benefit the preservation of the Wolfe collection and other important North Caroliniana. 

Upon graduating in June 1920 with 144 others, Wolfe scribed the senior class poem, “1920 Says a Few Words to Carolina.”

        They’ll think again of this night here
        And of these old brown walls,
        Of white old well, and of old South
        With bell’s deep booming tone.
        They’ll think again of Chapel Hill and-
        Thinking – come back home.

Wolfe final novel, You Can’t Go Home Again, was published posthumously in 1940.   He may never have returned to his magical campus, but I have done so with every opportunity offered to me.  I look forward to coming home again.

Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.

Remembering . . . A Celebration of Memorial Day

I am taking time today to remember and to thank all of those brave men and women who serve our country past and present, especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedoms we continue to enjoy.  They should not be forgotten.  Unfortunately, our country often ignores and fails to take care of our returning veterans.  It seems a shame that one has to die in order to receive the attention, the respect, and the basic dignity one deserves.  Let us make an effort to properly honor all who have served, the living as well as the dead.

Why Make Poutine What It's Not?

Son Ian and daughter-in-law Katie sampling some authentic poutine

This is a follow-up to my earlier posting - “Une Maudite Poutine” - on June 21, 2009: http://lookingtowardportugal.blogspot.com/2009/06/une-maudite-poutine.html

A good friend of mine just gave me a clipping from the May 3-4 “Adventure & Travel” section of The Wall Street Journal; an article by Adam Leith Gollner entitled “Quebec’s Baddest Poutine.”  Gollner, a native Quebecker, visited a poutine festival at which several chefs had gathered to demonstrate new ways to “enhance the dish’s fundamental triumvirate.”

Anyone who has ever had honest-to-God authentic poutine, or who is someone who reveres it like I do, knows that poutine is just about as simple as it gets.  French fried potatoes, thick beef gravy [sauce brune] . . . the thicker the better . . . and melted cheese curds; no mozzarella or pepper jack or whatever cheese you prefer . . . it has to be fresh cheese curds.  That’s it.  Nothing else.  It doesn’t get any simpler, or better, or tastier than that.  You put other crap in it and it ain’t poutine!  Why would anyone in their right mind want to “enhance” it?

Perhaps the answer can be found in the fact that you no longer have to go to Québec or its nearby borderlands to find decent poutine.  It has spread throughout Canada and now it is quickly making inroads in the USA.  I know of a few places here in Washington, DC - all well-respected establishments, including one situated on Pennsylvania Avenue two blocks from the White House - that serve a decent, authentic poutine as does a local Wonky Truck found around town.  I recently learned that a new poutinerie has opened in my old stomping grounds in Tucson, Arizona.  Still, the wider its reach, the greater the propensity to make poutine something it is not, to make it “better” by adding more ingredients and coming up with more mind-numbing ways to serve it.  Again I ask you why?  Potatoes, beef gravy and squeaky cheese curds that “sound like a rusty door hinge swinging open between your teeth.”  That is all you need.  Finis!  

So when I read in Gollner’s article about a poutine festival dedicated to new and improved ways to make and serve poutine, I naturally figured it took place in some far-flung locale like Las Vegas, or Miami Beach, or New Orleans . . . or even Shanghai.  But no.  It took place in Montréal of all places!  Within a few miles from the original’s humble and somewhat debatable birthplace!   And the winner?   “Poutine a la General Tso” courtesy of an establishment called Poutineville with three locations in the Montréal area.  They offer an assortment of “poutines haut de gamme” [specialty poutine] which involve tomatoes, eggplant, mushrooms, and various meats prepared in various ways.  And all topped off with a special poutine sauce.  Le blasphème de l'ordre le plus élevé!  I don’t even want to think about it.  To quote Gollner: “The problem with aiming to make poutine fancy is that the dish is meant to be trashy.”  Amen to that! 

And while I am on the subject of poutine, I note with interest that earlier this week the word “poutine” has entered into the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary along with 148 others, including such food offerings as “pho,” “turducken,” and “pepita.”  I should note here, too, that the dictionary defines poutine as "a dish of French fries covered with brown gravy and cheese curds.”   How much more definitive does one have to be?  The editors also state that they could not find the word being used prior to 1982.  Obviously the editors were not hanging out in Québec back in the 1950s.

Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.

A Day on the Clay Banks and the Gooses

It is spring again and that always means it is time to repair to the gentle solitude of Tilghman Island, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, for another outing on the Chesapeake Bay on board Captain Bill Fish’s 46-foot Nancy Ellen.  I have written here about previous outings on the Bay, and so it is only right that I share my latest adventure.

My last outing was in October 2013, at the tail end of the rockfish (striped bass) season.  I did not post a report following that trip, promising that “what happens on the Nancy Ellen stays on the Nancy Ellen.”   But now I have thought better of it.  Intending to live line, we filled the bait barrel with dozens of spot jigged from the depths of the Choptank River on blood worm offerings, and then quickly made our way to the edges of the shipping channel near Sharp Island Light.  And we were rewarded with a cooler full of late autumn rocks (in the 18-24 inch range) and some handsome chopper bluefish.  In fact, the rocks were few and far between as we watched the Bay’s water churn to a froth by several “blitzes” as schools of blues lashed through balls of baitfish and occasionally feasting on one of our proffered spots.  A fine way to end another sporting season on the Chesapeake Bay.

This spring’s trip began like all the others.  Our fishing party arrived on Tilghman Island the night before, enjoying good food and drink before turning in for a few hours sleep.  Unfortunately, 5am came around too quickly and we dressed for the day not knowing for sure what the weather gods would throw our way.  We drank some coffee and nibbled on some muffins and by 6am we had gathered at the marina on Knapps Narrows to board the Nancy Ellen and prepare for another day of fishing for rocks.

The trophy season, which commenced back on April 19 and ran through May 15, ended the day before our trip.  During that season each angler is allowed only one fish daily and it must measure a minimum of 28 inches.  All rocks caught in certain tidal tributary rivers must be released while most of these waters are closed as the fish are still on their spawning runs.  The rules changed for our trip, on May 16.  Each angler is permitted two fish measuring 18–28 inches, or one fish 18-28 inches and one fish over 28 inches.  Angler may not have two fish exceeding 28 inches in their possession.  Who knew how our luck would run?

Much to our chagrin, the last day of the trophy season saw several inches of rain fall over the Chesapeake watershed, and fears ran high that the inclement weather had scattered the fish from their favorite hang-outs.  The recent reports before the rains had been most promising.  The recent warm weather had brought the mid-Bay’s water temperature into the high 60s, and the post-spawn rocks were moving down from their  tributaries - in our case the Choptank - and back into the open Bay.

Not to be dissuaded from our mission, the skies were mostly clear and the sun rose behind us as we motored down the Narrows to the open Bay where the wind quickly caught us full in the face and the water roiled beneath us.  Throttling up the engine, Captain Fish pointed us toward the southwest in the direction of the “CR” buoy in the main shipping channel.  Arriving near there we quickly moved to a fish grounds known locally as the “Clay Banks” situated along the steep western edge of the shipping channel near buoy “80.”   Here we deployed the planing boards and began to spread our dozen or so weighted trolling rigs at 30-40 feet to the stern, each with a dual skirted ten-inch white or chartreuse Sassy Shad bait.  Then came the wait.  I had a sandwich and a can of beer and watched a freighter silhouetted by the sun as it moved upbound for Baltimore.

It was not long and came the cry “fish on” and we brought two nice rocks on board measuring 24 and 36 inches respectively.  With our first fish in the cooler and our lines returned to the water, we continued to troll over the Clay Banks.  Several other boats were running trolling patterns near us and Captain Fish and the other captains continuously exchanged notes and plotted strategies.  The instruments were showing occasional balls of baitfish, but no more cries of “fish on.”   The rough seas and what we agreed were hit and runs by smaller fish were playing havoc with our trolling rigs and we spent a great deal of time resetting our lines.  Still no fish.  

With nothing much happening, Captain Fish took us farther south and west, to an area known as “the Gooses” (there is a “Winter Goose” and a “Summer Goose”) in the vicinity of buoys “78" and “78A” and not far off Plum Point and Chesapeake Beach, on the Western Shore.  Captain Fish shook his head.  “Every time I take you boys out we end up down here.”  He stared at the instruments and his location plot.   “I keep saying I ain’t going to come back down here and yet here we are.”  But the truth of the matter was he wanted to catch fish just as bad as we did, and he was willing to go anywhere the fish might be hiding out.

Even when the fishing is slow, we manage to find ways to enjoy our time on the water.  Some will find a spot to stretch out and catch up on the sleep they failed at the night before.  Some sit out on deck to watch the other boats while enjoying a sandwich, some fried chicken, and a can or two of beer.  Or we will chat with the captain; tales of previous trips, the long winter and cold spring, the comings and goings here on the Bay.

Toward mid-afternoon the instruments showed larger concentrations of baitfish, and not long after that came the long awaited “fish on.”  Within the next hour we had brought three more rocks on board, all of which measured well over 30 inches.  And just as quick as it started, the run was over and once again we were trolling over vacant waters.  But we had five very nice fish in the cooler, and being far enough south it was time to bring in the lines and store away the equipment.  I am sure Captain Fish would have loved to have put us on more fish, but I don’t think anyone came home disappointed.  These are the chances and gambles you take.

And what a difference a day makes!.  The rough seas and the cloudy skies of the morning gave way to sunny skies and more placid waters by mid-afternoon and this all made the fishing a bit easier to enjoy.  So all in all it was a very successful outing on Chesapeake Bay on board Captain Bill Fish’s immaculate Nancy Ellen.  Perhaps we did not catch as many fish as we would have liked, but the ones we caught were beauties.

I look forward to each and every one of these trips; a chance to be with good friends as we enjoy the bounty the Bay has to offer.

    Though inland far we be,
    Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
    Which brought us hither.
            ~William Wordsworth, “Intimations of Immortality”

Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.

Working for the Summer

It has been a rather cold and nasty spring here in Maryland after a long, cold and nasty winter and it has been hard to get motivated to do much beyond that which absolutely has to be done.  Still, I have been doing quite a bit of writing, focusing almost all of my attention on some new fiction.  There is the novel-in progress which is moving forward at a slow and steady pace, and now there are two novellas in draft about which I am very excited.  I will be reading from these new works during our annual summer hiatus in Maine.

And speaking of Maine, I made a couple of recent trips up there.  In late February and early March I spent a few days of my annual winter retreat with my good and longtime friends at the Tall Timber Lodge, in Pittsburg, New Hampshire.  I have been going there regularly for several years and I always enjoy the opportunity to revel in the sub-zero temperatures and the deep snows.  I also visited with other nearby friends before setting off to Mid-Coast Maine to visit more friends; to check out the lake cottage at True’s Point, in New Gloucester; and to explore some of my favorite summer haunts turned lonely and quiet at the height of the winter season.  And with a late winter storm moving through the Mid-Atlantic I had to postpone my return home for a couple of days  which permitted me some time in and around Portland, Maine and Manchester, New Hampshire with a side trip to Robert Frost’s farm at Derry and to some of my favorite literary sites down in Concord, Massachusetts.

I returned to Portland, Maine a couple of weeks ago to attend a conference and while I was there I sneaked off one more time to New Gloucester and the cottage on True’s Point.  It came through yet another rough winter and I was happy to see the lake ice free and everything seemed to be in order.   I am already chomping at the bit to be back at the lake for a summer of writing, reading, and enjoying a much needed and well deserved respite from Washington, DC’s hectic pace.  I also have several readings and lectures scheduled during our time in New England

So I am working for the summer and the return to Maine.  There is much to do around here before we head north at the end of June, including a quick trip to Chapel Hill over the upcoming holiday weekend to attend the annual gathering of the Thomas Wolfe Society.  I will be catching up with old friends and colleagues and chairing an interesting session of scholarly papers.  It will be nice to get back in the loop.

Summer is almost here.   I hope it will be worth the long wait.

Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.

Celebrating Another Birthday

Three score and three years ago his parents brought forth in Chicago, Illinois, a new baby boy,  conceived in love, and dedicated to the proposition that all men should live and let live.

Now we are engaged in a great birthday celebration, testing whether this boy, or any boy so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure (I sure as hell hope so!).  We have come to dedicate this day as an appropriate celebration of his birthday.  It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this fellow far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what this boy accomplished here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished life which Steve has thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- to properly celebrate a life of fun and happiness; in this we take increased devotion and we here highly resolve that Steve shall live another three score and three and shall not perish from the earth.

My Favorite Library - New Gloucester, Maine

My wife SallyAnn and I have been coming to New Gloucester every summer since 1988, spending delightful weeks at a restful camp on True’s Point, on Sabbathday Lake.  At first it was just two or three weeks each August; cherished time away from our regular routines at home on the edge of Washington, DC.  These earlier visits were filled with days at the lake and on trips exploring ever corner of Maine.

Since my retirement from the Department of Justice in the spring of 2010, however, we have been spending our entire summers at the lake camp, coming up in late June and leaving for home in early October.  We are finally able to enjoy the rhythms of summer as it comes alive and as it passes into early autumn and the lake prepares for another quiet winter.

The lake camp has become our home away from home and we have made an effort to get to know the community better and to take advantage of all that it has to offer.  We have become regular visitors to and big fans of the New Gloucester Public Library and it seems like hardly a day goes by that we don’t stop in to pick up or return  a stack of books to keep us company during those pleasant days and evenings at the lake.  More often than not we will stay for awhile. SallyAnn will work on a puzzle and I will do some research for one of my writing projects.

Most of all we have enjoyed getting to know Suzan and Carla; not just as congenial and informative librarians, but also as friends with whom we stay in touch throughout the year.  Then there are all the cheerful Volunteers and Friends of the Library that make it such an inviting place to visit. 

We have enjoyed participating in the annual Summer Reading Program, signing contracts for how many books we hope to read by the time the season ending party rolls around which we celebrate with a show by the Library Players.  Then there is the pet show, the monthly crafts nights that SallyAnn has enjoyed.  I have also enjoyed the opportunity to read and share poetry in the gazebo.   I can’t think of a much better place to be.

We look forward to our arrival at the lake each summer, and the library is one of our first stops after our arrival in New Gloucester.

Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.

A Little Night Music

Photograph by  Rick Runion, The Lakeland Ledger (2007)

I was hoping to be in Lakeland, Florida last night to bid a final farewell to my old and dear friend.  Unfortunately, schedules and inclement weather made the trip impossible. But I have been thinking about Bob and I am sad I could not celebrate with his family and many friends his long and memorable life.

Bob MacDonald passed away peacefully last September at age 83.  SallyAnn and I returned home to our lake cottage in Maine after a glorious early autumn trip into the Great North Woods of New Hampshire and the rolling hills and farmland of southern Québec beyond.  The resident loons were sharing their haunting song from somewhere across the lake and there was a touch of autumn in the air.  SallyAnn turned in after a long day, but I stayed up to check my e-mails and to do a little writing.  One of the e-mails caught my attention; it was from an old college chum informing me that Bob , a dear friend for over four decades, and along with his wife Ingrid a honorary godparents  to our son Ian, had passed away earlier that day.  I never did get any writing done that evening.  Instead I wandered down to the lake’s edge below the cottage and sat for a long time on the pier listening to the call of the loons. It was a sad song indeed for such a sad time.

As I sat there I thought back to the last time I saw Bob.  It was in March 2010 and SallyAnn and I were in Lakeland to attend a memorial service for Mel Wooten, another   friend and mentor from our college days.  Perhaps the most memorable moment of that evening - certainly for me - was when Bob, a brilliant and gifted concert pianist who had been artist-in-residence at the college since 1963, stepped down to the stage to play Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns,” from A Little Night Music.  I have listened to Bob play this particular song many times over the years and I think of him every time I hear it.  It is a song of anger and regret, but not when I hear Bob play it. So, when he sat down to the small upright piano on stage - a far cry from the Bosendorfer grand piano he was accustomed to playing - and his long, graceful fingers tinkled out the first notes, I knew I was going to hear him play it again.   Bob had turned 80 just ten days earlier and Sondheim would be 80 the next day and so this song was all together appropriate for the occasion.   Despite this flight of fancy, I could not help but notice that Bob seemed much frailer than I remembered from six years earlier, a gentle reminder that none of us are as young as we used to be. That all changed, however, when he sat down before the keyboard and all the power and muscle of his immense talent overshadowed the passing of so many years.  Little did I know that would be the last time I would hear him play this lovely song . . . and the last time I would see my dear old friend.  I have to admit that my eyes turned a little misty as a flood of memories came rushing back. 

I have known Bob and Ingrid, his wife of 53 years, since I first set foot on the campus of Florida Southern College back in the autumn of 1969.  By that time Bob, who first came to FSC in 1964, had become an institution on campus and a local celebrity of no mean talent.  He was well-loved and greatly respected by everyone on campus, not just his music students.  Getting to know him I learned that he arose from rather humble beginnings, a descendant of Scottish immigrants to the rural environs of Dillon, South Carolina.  Playing honky-tonk piano at age 16, he served two years in the US Air Force and later studied music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where his roommate was the late actor Andy Griffith with whom he traveled in an entertainment group.  He received a Master’s Degree in Music from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, and later his artist diploma from the Hochschule für Musik, in Vienna, Austria where he met his future wife (they married there in 1960) and where he made his concert debut in 1957.  His American debut at Carnegie Hall came shortly thereafter; a program including a Beethoven sonata and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”  Bob went on to perform solo and with numerous symphony orchestras over his long and distinguished career.

When I first met Bob he was in his late 30s, a young and vibrant presence . . . a veritable force of nature who held the chairmanship of FSC’s Department of Music as well as the esteemed position of “Artist in Residence.”  Later in his long campus career he would add the directorship of the college’s highly acclaimed Festival of Fine Arts.  Despite those humble beginning, the Lakeland Ledger described him as a “quintessential gentleman with old world manners.”  This was Bob to a tee.

I got to know Bob more intimately in 1971-1972 when he and Ingrid served as resident advisors for a group of American students in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany.  I was gratified when they urged us to spread our wings and make the most of our studies and our induction into a new culture and a different way of doing things.  I have long said that this year was the most important single year of my life as it pointed me in the direction I wanted to go and informed me what I needed to do to be successful.  And I give Bob and Ingrid most of the credit.  It would not have been possible without them.

Returning to the USA and Florida Southern College I now counted Bob and Ingrid as good and loyal friends and this friendship has lasted the four decades since our time together in Germany.  SallyAnn and I would visit with Bob and Ingrid whenever we returned to Lakeland since graduation, and I cherished the times we saw them here in Washington; in the late 1970s when Bob and Ingrid performed at the Corcoran Art School, and again in 2000 when Bob performed on the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage representing the State of Florida.  On a sadder note, in 1997 I joined him at the funeral of his brother Charles, a noted military historian whom I had come to know here in Washington during my own career as a federal government historian.  Unfortunately our times together after that wonderful year in Freiburg were too infrequent and all too short.  And now he is gone and there will be no more time together.  At least not in this world.

But Bob was more than a talented musician and revered teacher, mentor and friend.  His wife Ingrid frequently confided that Bob always had a tendency for the dramatic and that perhaps he had always been a frustrated actor.  He himself admitted that one thing that will never die is the joy of showing off.  In fact, in addition to his musical talents, Bob, frequently in the company of his classically trained wife, appeared in several stage productions, including “On Golden Pond."  He also had the lead in a production of “The Man of La Mancha.”  In 1976, while Bob and his family were on a tour of Germany and Austria sponsored by the State Department, Bob was cast in a small speaking role in the film production of Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” then in production in Vienna.  He had to turn it down as he needed to return to his teaching duties in Florida.  Nevertheless he worked for a time as a stand-in for Len Cariou who was starring in the film opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Diana Rigg.  Bob was truly a renaissance man and we will not soon meet the likes of him again.

So last night there was a little night music, a memorial send-off at Branscomb Auditorium on campus where Bob had performed so many times.  Everyone knew it was the one he himself would have wanted to attend.  There were performances by some of his former students and former colleagues.  Diane Willis Stahl, an accomplished opera singer and an associate professor of music at FSC, performed “Ave Marie” with the accompaniment of Paula Parché, one of Bob’s former students who has followed in his footsteps as chair of the music department.  Diane and I sang together as members of the college’s Concert Choir back in the day with Paula as our accompanist.  Bob and Ingrid’s daughter Sona, whom I remember as a precocious ten year old during our days together in Freiburg, and who is now an accomplished singer and actress on stages throughout Europe, also performed along with Bob’s grandson Skye.  Sona sang some of her dad’s favorite songs, including “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” while Skye sang and performed on a piano a song he had composed for his grandfather.  The final song of the evening was played by Bob, a recording of “Always” by Irving Berlin which he had arranged. 

Ingrid had the last word.  The memorial concert was what Bob would have loved most of all . . . a good show, and a full house.  I wish I could have been there last night, making the house a little fuller this one last time.  Rest in Peace dear friend.

Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.

How Much More Winter???

Today is Groundhog Day.  Each year since 1887, on February 2, one in a long line of resident groundhogs named Punxsutawney Phil, has emerged from his hibernation den on Gobbler’s Knob near this western Pennsylvania town, and prognosticated when winter will end.  Well, in 1942 "war clouds have blacked out parts of the shadow" and
Phil did not make an appearance at all in 1943 when he was probably off serving his country during World War II.  Otherwise, Phil has regularly and reliably done his duty.   If Phil fails to see his shadow, this means there will be an early spring.  On the other hand, if the sun is shining that morning and he casts a shadow, one can expect at least six more weeks of winter. 

This year some hoped Phil might also predict the winner of today’s Super Bowl contest  between the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks, but he demurred.
        A Super Bowl winner I will not predict,
        but my weather forecast you cannot contradict.
        Why that's not a football but my shadow I see,
        It's six more weeks of winter it must be!
Early this morning Phil saw his shadow and was frightened back into his burrow where we were also spared the horrible drubbing of the Broncos this evening.  So this long and rather tedious winter will be with us for a while longer. That is, if you choose to believe Phil.

There are some other groundhog forecasters out there and their prognostications do not always comport with Phil’s.  I read this morning that Shubenacadie Sam, who has been predicting the beginning of spring in Nova Scotia since 1987, came forth about a half hour before Phil’s appearance and called for an early spring.  Further research revealed that Balzac Billie, the “Prairie Prognosticator in Alberta, also predicted an early spring while Wairton Willie, in Ontario, predicted a long winter.  Springtime in Canada is all relative, I guess.

The same goes here.  General Beauregard Lee, in Liburn, Georgia, and Smith Lake Jake, in Birmingham, Alabama, contradicted Punxsutawney Phil by predicting an early spring.  I am certain Georgians and Alabamans and others in the Deep South hope they are correct as they continue to recover from last week’s uncharacteristic arctic weather.  They should not rest easy, however.  The General, who is 90% correct in his annual forecasts, saw an early spring in 1993 and a month later Georgia and the Southeast suffered through a blizzard still referred to as the "Storm of the Century.”  The two official groundhogs in North Carolina - Raleigh’s Sir Walter Wally and Queen Charlotte in that city - were not quite as optimistic about the arrival of an early spring.  They both saw their shadows.

Closer to home, French Creek Freddie, in rural West Virginia some 200 miles south of Punxsutawney, predicted an early spring as did Buckeye Chuck, the official state groundhog of Ohio since 1979 who resides in Marion, north of Columbus.  Staten Island Chuck, aka Charles C. Hogg and the official rodent forecaster for the Big Apple known for his adversarial relationship with the city’s mayor (he bit former Mayor Bloomberg and this year the newly inaugurated Mayor de Blasio dropped Chuck while receiving the official prediction), joined with his Pennsylvania brother to deliver the bad news of a longer winter.   Who knows what the future will bring.

Later this month I am heading up to northern New Hampshire and western Maine for my annual winter escape to the Great North Woods.  Having grown up in the upper Midwest, I have always enjoyed winter.  Middleton Maury, in southwestern New Hampshire, has also predicted six more week of winter and so hopefully I will be greeted by the snow and ice I will travel so far to see and enjoy.

Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.

Happy New Year!!

 

Another year has come and gone.  It seems that each year passes quicker than the one before and I am chalking it up to age.  The older one gets, the less time one has left.  That said, it makes sense to let the past go and focus on the future.

Bernie Geyer, a friend and fellow DC-area poet who moved to Berlin with her family earlier this year, shared Paulo Coehlo's blog posted yesterday, and he captures what I am thinking as I prepare to confront both promise and consternation with an equal measure.

I like Coehlo.  He helped me address my shelves and boxes of books in the wake of my retirement; to keep what I needed and to find homes for those I no longer required. Again, a new way of looking to the future and not to the past.

TOMORROW
No one can go back, but everyone can go forward.  And tomorrow, when the sun rises, all you have to say to yourselves is:

I am going to think of this day as the first day of my life.

I will look on the members of my family with surprise and amazement, glad to discover that they are by my side, silently sharing that much-talked-about, but little understood thing called love.

I will pass a beggar, who will ask me for money. I might give it to him or I might walk past thinking that he will only spend it on drink, and as I do, I will hear his insults and know that it is simply his way of communicating with me.

I will pass someone trying to destroy a bridge. I might try to stop him or I might realise that he is doing it because he has no one waiting for him on the other side and this is his way of trying to fend off his own loneliness.

I will look at everything and everyone as if for the first time, especially the small things that I have grown used to, quite forgetting the magic surrounding them. The desert sands, for example, which are moved by an energy I cannot understand – because I cannot see the wind.

Instead of noting down things I’m unlikely to forget on the notebook I always carry with me, I will write a poem. Even if I have never written one before and even if I never do so again, I will at least know that I once had the courage to put my feelings into words.

When I reach a small village that I know well, I will enter it by a different route. I will be smiling, and the inhabitants will say to each other: ‘He must be mad, because war and destruction have left the soil barren.’

But I will keep smiling, because it pleases me to know that they think I am mad. My smile is my way of saying: ‘You can destroy my body, but not my soul.’

Tonight, before leaving, I’m going to spend time sorting through the pile of things I never had the patience to put in order. And I will find that a little of my history is there.

All the letters, the notes, cuttings and receipts will take on their own life and have strange stories to tell me – about the past and about the future. All the different things in the world, all the roads travelled, all the entrances and exits of my life.

I am going to put on a shirt I often wear and, for the first time, I am going to notice how it was made. I am going to imagine the hands that wove the cotton and the river where the fibres of the plant were born. I will understand that all those now invisible things are a part of the history of my shirt.

And even the things I am accustomed to – like the sandals which, after long use, have become an extension of my feet – will be clothed in the mystery of discovery.

Since I am heading off into the future, I will be helped by the scuff marks left on my sandals from when I stumbled in the past.

May everything my hand touches and my eyes see and my mouth tastes be different, but the same. That way, all those things will cease to be a still life and instead will explain to me why they have been with me for such a long time; and they will reveal to me the miracle of re-encountering emotions worn smooth by routine.
--- From Manuscripts Found in Accra  (2013)
[[ http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2013/12/31/tomorrow/ ]]

It is so easy these days to look for the bad in everything.  We are conditioned to be suspicious of anything and everything.  Always looking for the ulterior motive.  And I will be the first to admit that I am angered too quickly by the behavior I confront everyday.  I am too quick to react; to not consider why someone might say and do something that does not conform with my idea of how things should be done.  This is not to say that there are not strange goings on out there.  But one should take a step back and take a deep breath before passing judgement.  This I resolve to do in 2014.

So once again, thank you Paulo Coehlo for making me rethink the possibilities and option confronting me. 

Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.

Celebrating Our 39th Anniversary!

SallyAnn and I are celebrating our 39th Anniversary today.

The first photo was taken at our wedding reception in Pensacola, Florida 39 year ago this afternoon.  We enjoyed a short honeymoon in Florida and New Orleans before I moved my bride to our new home in Tucson, Arizona where I was attending graduate school.  We resided there until July 1976 when we moved to our present home in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC.

The second photo was taken yesterday at Jefferson Rock, in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia (where that state meets Virginia and Maryland at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers).  Thomas Jefferson visited here in October 1783 and wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia (1785) that "this scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic".  I agree. Certainly worth the short drive from our home in suburban Washington, DC.  It is the site of the October 1859 attack by John Brown and his band of abolitionists against the town's strategic federal arsenal.  A pitch battle between the Union and Confederate forces also occurred here in September 1862.  Sally Ann and I have been visiting here regularly over the past 30+ years . . . a fun place to escape the city and the 21st century.

SallyAnn is my sweetie and my best friend forever.  Here's to at least 39 more year together!

Wishing Everyone a Very Merry Christmas!

Return of the Metropolitan

I have now returned home to suburban Maryland after a long month traveling in the desert Southwest and throughout California from the Mexican border to southern Oregon.  It is difficult to fathom that Sally Ann and I have only been home five weeks since the end of June having also spent three months at the Sabbathday Lake cottage on True’s Point, in New Gloucester, Maine.  Sally Ann, who has spent the month of November visiting Florida and cruising the Caribbean, has also returned home and so we have a lot of catching up to do.  It feels good to settle back into our own lives and routines again, especially as we enter the holiday season.  Too bad that I have come down with a horrendous head and chest cold which promptly knocked me off my feet.

One of the items high on my list of things to so is the resumption of regular postings on the Looking Toward Portugal blogspot.  I will soon be sharing excerpts from my travel diary recorded during my recent road trip on the western edge of America.  It should be up in the next week or so, depending on my recuperation.  I also have several new random notes to post later this month and early in the New Year.

In the meantime, however, it is time to get better and to reacquaint myself with the more fast-paced life of the metropolis.  Here’s wishing you and yours a festive a safe holiday season.

Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.

White Rabbits, White Rabbits, White Rabbits!!!

" 'Rabbit rabbit rabbit' is one variant of a common British superstition which states that a person should say or repeat the word "rabbit" or "rabbits", or say the phrase "white rabbits", or some combination of these elements, out loud upon waking (or first moment) on the first day of the month, because doing so will ensure good luck for the duration of that month. Today, it is a frequent tradition in many English-speaking countries." 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_rabbit_rabbit
I have been humming this tune all day as I drove across Southern California and Arizona.

Wishing Everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

On the road to Arivaca, Arizona - November 2013

I can’t believe it has been two months since my last posting.  Writing and posting a blue streak during the three-month hiatus at our lake cottage in Maine over the summer, we returned home to Maryland at the beginning of October. There I was faced with several pressing deadlines to address before departing home once again in early November for a month-long trip throughout southern Arizona and California.  Now I have just returned from a long road trip up the coast of California from the Mexican border to Oregon.  I am spending the Thanksgiving holiday in San Diego before heading back to Tucson this weekend, and home to Maryland early next week. 

Let me take this opportunity to wish one and all a happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday . . . wherever you might be.

Check out the "Looking Toward Portugal" Facebook page for more information and photos.