You arrived home by 1645 hours last night. Stopped to pick up the mail, grocery, unpacked, sorted out clothes for washing, etc. We’ll run through your short day-by-day notes and then have a talk before setting this material online. While on the way home through New York you and Carol stopped at a rest stop as a fellow was coming out and you said to Carol, “He looks like Bob.” She said, “Yes, he does.” Nothing more said on the subject but you are missing the idea of seeing him and getting together as you have.
It is in the first three books, Amorella – Robert and Richard heading off to Taco Bell for some lunch and an hour or two of discussion on writing, literature, films and women – usually a combination of those and assorted other subjects like politics and hypocrisy.
We will switch some characters a bit to allow you and Bob to continue your one on one relationship. – Amorella.
I am thankful for this, though I had not consciously thought it possible. Who is the “We”? You and who else? – This sounds arrogant of me, especially in this context. I am please that such a connection, even imaginary, is possible. I miss the man.
Below are the reversed dates during the trip to the Upper East Coast:
12 September 11
Beautiful morning for a quick drive to Concord. Stopped at Alcott’s then to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery to meet the authors, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Alcott and Emerson. Sitting in the Visitor’s lot waiting for Carol and Alta.
Night. Carol is watching the Republican debate on CNN as you are staying at a Best Western in Utica, New York. You had lunch at Via Lago, a quaint little deli in downtown Lexington after visiting several special places in Concord. You dropped Craig and Alta off at the La Quinta in Sumerville (North Boston), took I-93 South to I-90 West near fifteen hundred hours and stopped for the night at nineteen hundred hours.
Your soul lingers up on ‘Author’s Ridge’ in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. You have a photo or two I would like you to put in your blog once you are home – no need to put any of this online before hand.
11 September 11
Ten-thirty and we are sitting in Theatre One at the JFK Presidential Library at the beginning of our tour.
You are more impressed than you are letting on, orndorff. You remember John Kennedy and Robert who you and Carol worked for when he was running for President.
We finished the exhibits and are in the Pavilion awaiting a quick lunch at the JFK Cafe. Watching the planes coming in for a landing at Logan International with the flag at half staff as today is ten years later from where most of us older folks can remember where we were and what we were doing just like we did on 22 November 1963.
You remember as do many others around the world. Nothing new under the sun, boy. People, living and dead, are always remembering. Helps to sort out what time does not do, stand still. – Amorella.
The others are looking at the surrounding sites, the old school house and the gristmill and the chapel. I am sitting in the parking lot of Longfellow’s Wayside Inn where we just had an excellent Sunday dinner. They were most accommodating. I explained we were from Ohio and that we stayed here in summer of 1972. I had clam chowder, chicken potpie, squash, mashed potatoes and for dessert, Indian pudding (pumpkin bread and molasses) with ice cream on top. The others had something similar while Carol had fish. Most excellent, as it also was earlier in life.
You are feeling heartansoul thankful for such a good day as this but don’t know how to express it when you already have. – Amorella.
The brochure from the Wayside Inn says this about its history.
“America’s oldest operating Inn has offered hospitality to ten generations of wayfarers. When first licensed, it was called ‘How’s Inn’ or ‘The Red Horse’ by Colonel Ezekiel How when he succeeded his father in 1746. After publication of “The Tales of a Wayside Inn” in 1863, the ‘Red Horse Inn’ became Longfellow’s Wayside Inn by popular acceptance. Colonel How led Sudbury farmers to Concord on April 19th, 1775.”
Dusk. You just received word from Jean Noble Litzinger that your old high school friend Bill Miller is in the hospital and not doing well. You wish him well because there isn’t anything else you can do. – Amorella.
The other day while traveling from Acadia to Boston Alta (the retired social worker) used two words that caught your attention because there are times in the blog you would have used them had they come to mind: “internalize” and “projecting”. Today, while at the Kennedy Library on the campus of the University of Massachusetts-Boston you regenerated what was already internalized about the Kennedy years. Within an hour of leaving the JFK Presidential Library you read in the Wayside Inn brochure:
“THE WAYSIDE INN is a non-profit educational and charitable trust. The original trust was established by Mr. Henry Ford in 1946. After a disastrous fire the Inn was restored in 1956 by a grant from the Ford foundation.
Presently the Inn is administered by a non-paid board of trustees who are dedicated to preserving the Inn as an historical shrine. Revenue from the Inn’s operation is used to maintain and continue its restoration.”
When you read the above you thought immediately: ‘Why couldn’t insurance companies, all health oriented private companies, be non-profit?’ That’s where you are, boy. Don’t let go of it. – Amorella.
Tomorrow we are off to Concord and Lexington after we check out of our motel, then we drop off our good friends, Craig and Alta Brelsford, at their Boston motel for tomorrow night for their flight out of Logan and return to Tucson on Tuesday. We will then head west on I-90, stop for the night, and return to Cleveland Tuesday evening.
You spent a good half hour studying Emerson’s lecture on Transcendentalism and come away suddenly feeling understood by a dead man. – Amorella
It sounds as though I am a fool, which upon circumstances such as this, I cannot deny. I have no idea if Emerson would understand my thoughts, it is “transference” in that I should be understanding Emerson not the other way around. Such arrogance and silliness on my part. Trying to become wiser I become more foolish. This shows me my true self-centeredness that I cannot help but to admit.
No argument from me on this, boy. You can sleep through it. You can sleep through most anything. – Amorella.
10 September 11
Today we took a six and a half hour Boston tour from Waltham and returned to our motel at Waltham. Our guide was Rob, a very informative and entertaining fellow of some personal honesty, enough to make him delightful.
After this, and later, supper again at the Naked Fish. And, after setting up tomorrow’s schedule for the Kennedy Library at the University of Massachusetts on the GPS you began reading on Concord and the Transcendentalists. You set out to copy Emerson’s lecture (1832) “The Transcendentalist” after scanning several googled sources. Your soul moves your renewed enthusiasm tonight. Enough to rest on. – Amorella.
9 September 11
Left the cabin at 0820 hours and arrived in Salem in time for the 1300 hour tour of the House of Seven Gables. Very interesting and a fun visit as I haven’t been here since 1992 with Kim and Carol and I visited the House in the summer of 1972. Quite delightful; and we also stopped to visit Old Burying Point (Charter Street Cemetery). Any easy trip on Rt. 128 to Waltham where we are staying for the next three nights at the Best Western Motel. A very good fish dinner at the nearby Naked Fish Restaurant. Tomorrow we have breakfast provided and a special (to us) six and a half hour tour of Boston proper.
8 September 11
Sitting on the shore of Long Pond. Quite serene – could be in Canada just as easily. Mud beach but no swimming allowed. Craig is looking at maps – the others coming back from a walk. Will be looking for lunch shortly. We ate at a quaint little place called Cafe Dry Dock in Southwest Harbor. Most everyone got haddock sandwiches or chicken salad sandwiches. “Cabin” and chats around the dining room table.
7 September 11
Drove though Seal Harbor to see fancy homes, ala Martha Stewart. Looked to buy one on Cooksey Drive, “Ravenscleft”, but at 7.5 million it is a bit over our heads and feet. Had lunch (again) at Jordan Pond House. Popover, lobster quiche, veggies, and blueberry crisp alamode (again).
6 September 11
You are at the east parking lot off Main Street looking towards the many sailboats in Bar Harbor. The others are shopping the great variety of enterprising local commerce painted a variety of calm or bright colors; this is after eating at Geddi’s. You and Carol shared an “Italian” thin-crusted wood fired pizza, you with a side of clam chowder and Carol with a garden salad. The fishy salt air mingles with common sense and turns the nose a crank but otherwise not too bad a place. I was somewhat expecting a Provincetown the way I remember it from 1964 but, alas, that was not to be. Subtle differences exist comparing the Maine rocky coast with the California rocky coast. Subtle enough to notice but not to articulate. It was a rainy drizzle of a morning but now the sun is peaking out from lifting fog.
5 September 11
Mid-morning. You are sitting at the Visitor’s Center handicap parking at Acadia National Park while the others walk up the fifty-two steps to the great woods surrounding the center.
Another outlook ‘Schooner Head” but the fog has rolled down below us – saw a lady in a red dress or robe standing on the deck of a very large Maine styled house a hundred feet overlooking the rocky cliff below. Very cool almost ancient looking unless you are from southwest England – then it would look like home in the mirror.
Another stop, “Sand Beach” which is 500 feet down. I’ve seen a beach before so the others are heading out. This is a larger island than I thought it would be, higher too.
***
You are upset with yourself for mentioning the four by two by two foot granite stone blocks along the park road would make good gravestones and that at the “Sand Beach” parking lot you saw a fellow who looked like Bob, with white beard and all crossing in front of you.
I am because although I said ‘gravestone’ as a joke it didn’t seem like one actually – I thought Carol and I could have a common flat stone as far as length of the stone would be. The man did look a bit like Bob body-wise in his healthier days of a couple of years ago, and his face and beard and hat was very much Bob-like.
A few more stops, more ocean, more rocks, more trees or more trees, more rocks, more waves crashing into and up rocks and more ocean. The views are getting to be ditto-makers; however, the wind is brisk and cool and very, very autumn comfortable as I sit along the left side of the road looking at the mountains ahead. Good day so far.
4 September 11
For breakfast we ate at the Savory’s which was most organic and quite good, especially the whole grain pancakes; and then a good drive from Buffalo to Freeport, Maine where we spent the night at a Super 8 Inn. We had supper at Naked Barbeque which similar to Smokey Bones and Hogg’s. Again, we are quite comfortable after our local sojourn to the L. L. Bean outdoor clothing ‘monster-sized’ store with free shipping.
3 September 11
Twenty– fifty seven hours and you are in the near back handicap parking lot of L. L. Bean and have been listening to the last forty-five minutes a free “America” concert (about forty yards from the car) on this Saturday night. Lots of people. Carol and Alta are in-store shopping. Concert is winding down with the last song. People coming out hauling their L. L. Bean camping chairs like they’ve been to a state fair. A most awesome Saturday night in Freeport, Maine.
We stayed at a Red Roof Inn in Buffalo which was fine after we switched rooms because the toilet tank had no water in it. Good deal, ten dollars off and an upgrade in room for our inconvenience.
*** ***
Late morning. Quite cool and cloudy early, now sunshine and blue sky. The cat’s nature is content to watch a few leaves float to the ground. Hunting instinct, you think. Not unlike you and Bob on the search for the Great White Page that needs some harpoon-fed ink for a filling.
I bought a quill at the House of Seven Gables. A reminder of what a writer is – a feather with a shaped point. I used one once to see what it was like. I used number two pencils freely. Fountain pens, ballpoint and felt tip pens and have settled on keyboards though I still carry a ballpoint or pencil and a piece of paper. Pencil and paper set beside the lamp next to our bed. Pencil and paper also set near the tub in the bathroom as well as in both cars. I like to be ready if something crosses my mind, something important to me, something curious more than profound. Bob was more focused and thoughtful and subtle with his word choices. Pray tell, who will the characters be that I might, through imagination, delight in Bob’s company once again.
Merlyn and Arthur, my boy. You being Arthur who is more fitting to your nature as a character. – Amorella.
Two likely characters of fiction if ever there were any. I like it already. I am surprised though that Merlyn has a role in the first Rebellion. How can this be carried by the legs of reason?
It is a matter of science, old man, the observer effects that which is witnessed; in this case even if it is after the fact by human standards.
You rattle the iron chain of events and it vibrates to the first link.
Mid-afternoon. You just finished a few hour job working on the crab apple tree. When you were gone a storm blew down the remainder main four-inch stalk trunk which Tim King graciously cut up and removed from the grass. You were left with a three foot tall, eight and a half inch diameter trunk which you finally took down using a combination of a small ‘branch trimming’ electric chain saw, a hatchet used mainly as a wedge, a hand band saw, and a sledge hammer which eventually knocked it down. You are waiting for the battery powered chain trimmer to better trim the branches down for city pick up tomorrow or Monday.
After 2150 hours. We watched a few shows we’d cable-copied while gone. However, after watching the shows after the fact does nothing to the shows.
It does something to the machinery. Physics happens with a click of the remote.– Amorella.
We are talking passed one another here but I will sleep on the concept of Merlyn ‘affecting’ the outcome of the First Rebellion after the fact.
Obviously, without the first rebellion one cannot have the second. – Amorella.
I reviewed the chapters and found ‘Arthur’ is indeed mentioned in chapter four, scene three:
**
Clotho’s voice alone and within, “In your dreams, Merlyn, only in your braiding dead man’s dreams.”
"I thought in the concept of will be but the concept may be, came instead."
A new voice says, “Merlyn, welcome.”
“I must have swum here,” replied Merlyn. “Are you who I think you are?”
“I am Arthur.”
“Where am I?”
“In Avalon, where else? You will enjoy this Place of the Dead where things are born again. It is the Fortunate Isles, like home but with contentment and peace.”
**
I find it strange that Merlyn must ask Arthur where he [Merlyn] is. Yet it is obvious that Merlyn knows much more than Arthur at this point.
Under the circumstances this works well does it not? – Amorella.
It has a different meaning under present circumstances.
As does the book, orndorff. Post. Sleep well. – Amorella.
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