Tag: Dunwich

Tomorrow is Another Day

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So today was a day of penance.  Sins of omission had to be paid for with sins of commission.  The pool fence has a gate with a closing/locking mechanism that requires the two posts and the door to be in rather finicky alignment to work properly.  Well, it’s been getting more and more out of whack for the last couple of years but I’ve been putting it off because … well because I’m a very lazy man.

But yesterday the pool guys opened up the pool so I figured I couldn’t stall any longer.  I had all my tools (drill, 200-foot extension cord, screwdrivers, pliers, wrench, two different socket sets and drivers, a small sledge hammer, wheel barrow, shovel, ear protection, eye protection, hacksaw) and the kits I was using to shore up the two posts and the hardware I needed to repair the gate.  The wheelbarrow and shovel were to fill a hole next to one of the posts.  I had dug it and filled it with large stones (~fifty pounds each) to hold the post in place but this wasn’t doing the trick.  So, I removed the stones and replaced it with dirt and compacted it with the sledge hammer.  But unfortunately, I couldn’t get at this post because of a large concrete planter that Camera Girl had filled with plants right on top of the post so I had to wrestle it out of the way.  Who knew concrete and dirt were heavy?

Finally, I could get to work on the posts.  But when I moved the planter, I must have covered over a hornet’s nest.  Because now they were looking for their nest and couldn’t find it.  So, they came looking for me!  So, I’m banging the reinforcing post into the ground and bolting it together and drilling holes into the post while dodging and swatting hornets.  So, I’m swearing and moving erratically to escape the bugs and Camera Girl sees me as she’s walking in the yard.  And she comes over to see what’s wrong.  But she blows up when she gets any kind of bug bite so I’m yelling at her to stay back.  So, she thinks I must be going crazy but after additional arm waving and hollering she retreats.

Finally, I finish with the first post and quickly manhandle the planter back in place and the hornets find their home.  So I go looking for Camera Girl to explain what was going on.  She yeah-yeahs me and tells me to get back to work.  The rest of the job goes fairly well.  Of course, I make approximately a thousand trips back and forth to my tool room in the garage because nothing fits and all the hardware is wrong.  But eventually the posts are square, the gate is straight and the lock works (more or less).  I put away all of the various tools and head to the pool to empty the skimmer for the first time.  But I can tell something’s wrong with the pump.  It sounds wrong.  I turn off the power and I see smoke coming from a union near a valve that the pool guys replaced yesterday.  The union cracked and the pump has been running without water for some unknown amount of time today.  I sigh.  Yep.  One step forward.  Two steps back.

As Scarlett O’Hara wisely observed, “Tomorrow is another day.”

Serenity Now

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So today was finally the day.  I had an appointment to get that bad tooth pulled.  I drove myself there with Camera Girl riding shotgun.  The understanding was she’d drive home after I had been dosed with enough lidocaine to allow me to chew razor blades.

We got there and the dental assistant immediately found a problem.  My dentist had listed the wrong tooth.  So, there were more x-rays and phone calls and running around in circles.  Finally, the oral surgeon walked in looked at the x-ray, looked at the tooth and said, “Serenity now!”  So of course I replied, “Insanity later.”  And he started to laugh uproariously.  If I were the type to worry maybe I might have taken all of this as a bad sign.  But I’m a Seinfeld fan and I figured that a Middle Eastern oral surgeon who likes Seinfeld must have hidden depths of wisdom.

Well, the man did his job flawlessly.  He numbed my mouth completely, pulled the tooth in one twist of his wrist and installed the implant post in nothing flat.  He was good at his job and cheerful to boot.  And a few hours later he called my home to check in on me and answer questions.  He was like the opposite of my dentist who can’t do anything and avoids contact like the plague.

But that implant post means that for the next few days I’ll probably be living off “Ensure” and very carefully avoiding the healing tissues around the implant.  Also, I’ll be on antibiotics for another week so I won’t be at my most robust.

When I got home, I decided to walk around the yard to take my mind off my medical issues and I came upon one of the preying mantis egg sacs that I planted on various branches six or eight weeks ago.  And what do you know?  The little critters hatched out today.

Now there’s scant assurance that even one of these tiny critters will make it to Labor Day.  There are just so many insects, spiders, other invertebrates, frogs, toads. salamanders, snakes and even rodents and birds just waiting to devour them that if two of them survive it will be a miracle.

But I like to bet on long shots.  When school ends and Princess Sack of Potatoes arrives to visit for the summer, I hope to point out some thriving mantids in various areas of the yard.  She is particularly enamored of the preying mantis ever since she saw one in a story book called “The Very Quiet Cricket.”

Tonight “High Noon” was on tv so Camera Girl and I watched it.  I had forgotten that Grace Kelly (playing his wife) actually shot one of the outlaws in the back and scratched the face of the head villain just as he was about to shoot Gary Cooper.

Now I’ve been aware of the political leanings of the director of “High Noon” and how the townspeople leaving the Marshall to his fate was a metaphor for the lack of support that the blacklisted film industry people got during the McCarthy era.  Well, I’ve never placed much importance to this subtext.  But I will state my opinion that Gary Cooper’s character getting help from his wife in the way he did brands him as terminally low energy.  He might as well have been Jeb Bush.  A total loser; very sad.

Well, anyway it was a very successful day and hopefully my recovery will proceed smoothly.  Serenity now.

Fun and Games in Dunwich

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Last night Ithaqua, the Great Old One known as the “Wind-Walker” took a walk through our corner of Dunwich.  This morning when I arrived for breakfast Camera Girl said, “Don’t get excited.”  These are three of my least favorite words.  This is what she showed me:

Well, that’s not technically right.  When I first saw it, the tree was hung up in the branches of two trees on the left side of the driveway.  It took considerable yanking on the trunk with a rope that I managed to throw over it before it finally came crashing down on the ground.

Camera Girl told me to call the “tree guy” and have him take his chain saw to it and get it out of the driveway.  This didn’t sit right with my rock-ribbed conservatism and spirit of self-reliance.

I got out my bow saw and other paraphernalia and got to work.  I sawed the trunk.  I took a hammer and a pry bar to it.  I used an automobile jack to jack up one side.  I even climbed on top of it and jumped up and down on it.  Finally, a combination of all these actions succeeded.  Seven hours later a tired but morally self-satisfied man emerged drenched in sweat, favoring a sore lower back and triumphant over this malevolent natural disaster.

I think Winston Churchill will forgive me if I paraphrase him in saying, “Never have so few owed so little to me.”

So unfortunately, when I went to the endodontist on Thursday, he confirmed that there is indeed a crack in the root of that molar.  And that means that a root canal will not prevent the tooth from becoming infected again.  The tooth must be extracted.  So, I said “Okay, let’s do that.”  Imagine my chagrin to discover that endodontists don’t extract teeth.  And as it then turned out neither does my dentist.  In fact, at this point I don’t think he does anything at all as a dentist except refer me to other dentists!  So eventually I found a dentist who will extract the tooth but not until Tuesday (it’s Memorial Day weekend you know.)  All talk about implants will be delayed until this simple procedure is completed and I can eat food without my mouth aching or worse.

But it has been an educational experience into the arcane world of dental specialty practices.  Most of my discussions with the office personnel consisted of them warning me that I would have to pay them the full amount of the procedures and attempt on my own to get my dental insurer to reimburse me some pathetic subset of my outlay.  Well, one thing for sure.  A lucrative dental practice does not guarantee good taste in office art design.  Some of the photographic decorations that I sat looking at as a patient were not that inspiring.  Although I did like them better than the abstract paintings that some of their colleagues favored.  Honestly there should be laws or at least professional ethics guidelines to protect people suffering from dental pain from being exposed to these awful things.  Well, Tuesday is just around the corner.  Surcease from sorrow is a mere ninety-six hours in the offing.  Unless the climate gods unleash a biblical plague of fiery hail I should be “detoothed” by Tuesday morning.

Rufus Panhandles a Meal

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A funny thing happened yesterday.  I was heading out to take some photos of a patch of bugle weed that is in bloom.  I had my camera backpack on and I was carrying a small tabletop sized tripod.  And as I walked out on the deck in front of the kitchen a baby fox came walking past me on the upper driveway.  When I closed the door, he noticed me and stopped and turned.  What a strange moment.  Now Camera Girl loves to see the baby foxes when they’re denning in the swamp so I wanted to get a photo for her so I desperately tried to get my camera out of the pack and in hand but the little fox trotted toward the shed and disappeared before I could free the camera.  I followed him behind the shed and looked down into the woods and pond but he was gone.

Camera Girl was out shopping.  When she got home, I told her about it and she was very excited.  She always enjoys when any foxes show up on the property but especially when pups (kits?) are around.  So, she was thrilled when a little while later it returned on the driveway.  And she went and got a bunch of chicken scraps and started feeding it.  I told her to be careful and keep her distance.  A fox walking around in the open in the daytime is a questionable occurrence.  They say that rabid animals tend to show up during the day so I cautioned her.  Well, before you know it, she’d fed the creature and then she put out a small bowl of milk and at that point I’m afraid maybe it’s moving in with us.

I went out with my camera and saw him ducking in and out of a space under the shed.  I got a few not-so-great photos and watched him for a while.  He was young and he didn’t look that strong.  I tried to imagine how a kit that young would be on its own.  I wondered if the den was under the shed but I never saw any sign of the parents or den-mates.  Could his parents have been killed?  It didn’t seem likely.  Was he sickly and abandoned?  Maybe.  After a while he didn’t reappear so I went in.  Camera Girl left out more food and milk.  But by nightfall it was still there.

Last night I heard about how exciting it was that the little fox was about.  I warned her that it wasn’t so good having it around.  I told her it was a health hazard for the dogs to have a wild canid around spreading various diseases they could catch.  She yes-yessed me but I could tell she was hoping it would stick around.  I was preparing myself for the headaches this new “pet” would cause me.  Oh well.

But today Rufus was nowhere to be found.  Even a fresh portion of food and milk wasn’t enough to lure him back.  Is he gone for good?  Maybe.  Camera Girl is disappointed but I can tell she still has hopes.

To be continued.

The Mill Rate

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It’s once again time in Dunwich to produce the town budget.  And even though it’s a slightly unusual place, we still have to go through the whole public hearing thing with the First Selectman leading the proceedings and calling for the vote.  Of course, when the budget is rejected, it always leads to “problems.”

Last year when First Selectman Cthulhu asked for a show of hands on the nays it was very noticeable when one of the nay sayers was snatched off her feet by that irascible public servant and crunched and swallowed.  This was regrettable but it was noted that several nay voters seemed to change their mind in mid-count.  So, there is a history of gentle persuasion being brought to bear at these meetings.  That probably explains why over the years the voting population has progressively skewed pro-budget.

And that’s fine.  We really do need to be flexible when it comes to the finances.  With the COVID funds now completely dried up and New England state budgets straining under the weight of “sanctuary guests” from the third world filling residences and hospitals we can no longer expect the state to fund all the various mandates that they seem to invent by the hour.

Of course, Cthulhu has taken a decidedly idiosyncratic policy twist to the question of sanctuary guests.  He has been housing all of them in his own residence.  Funny thing is none of them have reappeared.  Strange kind of sanctuary.

But it is important that we keep our spirits up when the question of the “mill rate” surfaces.  In Dunwich what that refers to is the rate at which Bishop’s Mill is sinking into the swamp.  This year it was determined by the town engineer that it was sinking at a rate of two inches a day.  Now this doesn’t sound so bad but by the end of March the main entrance was entirely submerged and so the various flour products were being delivered to the customers by ejection from the third story window.  Which is fine except that a couple of times they crushed some of the customers.

This year the budget has included a special charge for the First Selectman’s rigging enterprise to raise and relocate Bishop’s Mill to higher ground.  Now this was done once before.  And it didn’t go completely without a hitch.  The mill broke up in the Great Old One’s claws and when Gerontius Bishop complained he sort of fell into the First Selectman’s mouth and sort of got eaten.  Kind of.

To obviate the same kind of situation the Bishop family has agreed to pay a special fee for extra reinforcement of the structure to allow for any miscalculations.  But the town has agreed to defray some of this cost and thus the Budget debate.  The estimate for this town expense by the riggers (the First Selectman) is $2,500,000.  Yeah, that’s a lot.

So as a kind of compromise action a few of us got together yesterday and went down to Bishop’s Mill and soaked it with gasoline and burned it down.  The First Selectman, who is also the acting fire chief of the volunteer force, arrived at the scene about twenty minutes after the flames had guttered out at the water line.  He announced that the rigging operation would obviously no longer be needed but that the contract would still be honored and the budget would proceed on the same basis.  He really is a very determined fellow.  And he is incredibly “persuasive.”

You know, you really learn how to roll with the punches in Dunwich.  You really do.

April Fool’s Day 2025

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No thirty inches of snow!  No ice storm!  No baseball sized hail stones!  April Fool’s Day didn’t punish us here in New England.  It’s a bloomin’ miracle.  It’s a pretty nice day so Camera Girl handed me her “Honey Do” list.  The one item I’m stalling on is walking the property with a garbage bag and a stick with a nail on it picking up all the trash that has blown into the wooded areas.  As Sergeant Snorkel told Beetle Bailey, “If it don’t walk, if it don’t talk, police it!”  But it’s annoying.  It makes me feel very uncharitably toward the whole human race when I see what kind of stuff they toss out the windows of their cars.

So, I was driving down the main east-west road in Dunwich in a section that is full of blind curves and rolling hills when up ahead about a quarter of a mile I see something in the road.  I see it’s moving but it’s too short to be an adult human so I slow down.  “Could it be a child or is someone sitting or kneeling on the road?  And then I can see.  It’s a huge tom turkey with his feathers and wings all puffed up.  He’s in the oncoming lane and he’s staring me down!  So, I creep past him looking for his harem.  But I couldn’t see them.  Either they were shielded by the trees or they were gone.  But Tom was sticking to his guns and wasn’t afraid of me.  So, I left him there and in my rearview I could see him still standing there like some blithering idiot trying to act as crossing guard to an invisible flock.

After cutting down the raspberry canes last week I’ve been hoping to see some leaves sprouting up from the dirt.  So far nothing.

But the hellebores are coming up.  More confidently in the sunnier areas and tentatively in the shade.

And likewise for the daffodils.  We have three different stages of development depending where they are on the property.

The hostas near the house have just broken ground.

And this little crocus is bravely showing its colors.

So winter is climatically over.  I will now stow the shoe spikes, snow shovels, ice scrapers, snow blower, snow boots and all the rest of the paraphernalia that litters the mud room and move forward into the growing season.  And now that the ground is completely thawed, I can begin things like fixing fences, gates, damaged wood and all the other weather-beaten components of my poor house and adjacencies.

And I will move the lawn mowers to the front of the shed and contemplate that fateful moment when I drive the mower over the grass for the first time this year.  Right now, it’s unimaginable.  Some of the grass is overly long and soaked with winter water in the soggier areas of the west field.  Some areas are worn away by snow, ice and rain.  Other areas are dead and brown.  Cementing the whole thing over sounds like a better solution.  But in just a very few days the darn thing will revive and life will return.

And in honor of this projected return of life I have put out ten preying mantis egg sacs.  I purchased them from an American company that said they are Chinese mantids.  Well, why not?  Apparently, they’re already outcompeting the Carolina mantis right here in New England.  Who am I to stand in the way of Darwinian selection?

The only thing left to cap off the beginning of spring is the reappearance of the pond turtles.  They have not made their reappearance but Camera Girl will keep me apprised of their status.

“O brave new world that has such people in it!”

Dunwich Spring 2025 Has Sprung

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Today is Camera Girl’s birthday.  But being a woman, she doesn’t want to play up the whole getting older thing.  So, we call it St. Patrick’s Day and celebrate by having corned beef and cabbage.  But since boiled corned beef and cabbage is kind of blah, she makes it her own way.  It’s kind of Italian corned beef and cabbage.  The meat and potatoes are roasted and the cabbage is sauteed separately in olive oil with minced garlic and seasonings.  It’s really quite good that way.  This was also the day that the mallards returned to the puddle.

And the last of the great southern glacier melted away and left the great southern mud field.

I also used the warmer weather as an excuse to cut down all the raspberry canes in our garden.

This was a controversial act because depending upon whether we have summer or fall plants we will or won’t get any berries this year.  Apparently, summer berries take two years to produce berries while fall berries are one year berry producers.  If we have the two-year type then cutting all the canes means we’ll get nothing this year.  This will make me decidedly unpopular with Camera Girl and Princess Sack of Potatoes because they are big fans of this fruit.  But a man’s got to do, what a man’s got to do.  I was at an impasse.  I couldn’t tell what we had and figured solving it once and for all was the way to go.  May the Lord have mercy on my soul.  Well anyway, I’ll put out a bunch of fertilizer and try to maximize the growth we get this year.

Camera Girl was out feeding Moe the Crow and his wife Flo the Crow when she noticed that a large raptor was in one of the trees over the puddle.  After being alerted I sprang into action and captured some poor-quality photos through the balcony door window and a lot of intervening branches.  I think it’s a black vulture.  So now carrion birds are joining the menagerie.  Only in Dunwich.

Well things are moving forward and spring is in high gear.  We had a bunch of rain and so far, the Compound seems to have escaped any major winter structural damage.  And considering how much more and higher speed wind we’ve had in the last three or four years that’s encouraging.  This winter there have been nights when sitting in the living room and listening to the wind howling like some combination of a freight train and a banshee has been a little discouraging.  I mean I hate to be one of those old guys who claims that things were so much better when I was a youngster but honest to goodness, I think with the wind it must be objectively true.  And as a climate change denier this is inconvenient.  Although it’s as likely for the climate to be warming or cooling without the help of anthropogenic factors to blame.  So, it is nice that we can start to emerge from our winter cocoon and begin to enjoy the outside world again.

And so, slightly ahead of the calendar I hereby declare that Dunwich Spring has sprung.

Oh, Damn the Power’s Out

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We now return you to your original program already in progress.

So yesterday Ithaqua, the Great Old One known as the “Wind-Walker” knocked out my electric power and internet connection.  What a vindictive jerk.  Well, the generator kicked in but it caught me flat-footed.  I hadn’t loaded my post for yesterday or the night before’s, “Photo of the Day.”  So, apologies.

I went through the whole dance.  I charged up an old flip phone I keep for just such situations and tried calling up my truly useless power utility and my truly useless cable company.  And spent about fifteen minutes with each trying to escape from their AI and get information from an actual human being.  Completely in vain.  The power company told me it was after their business hours so no actual humans at all.  The cable company had humans but they are actually worse than the AI.  They know nothing, they care about nothing and they sound so bored all I could think of was the, “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” monkeys.  I noticed that both outfits promised to call me when they knew something about restoration of service.

Power returned almost 24 hours later around 3pm today.  And ten minutes after restoration the flip phone rang and both companies called to say that service would soon be restored.  Words failed me.

Being cut off from television, the internet and any news of the outside world was at first annoying.  But by late this morning I think I was starting to enjoy it.  I watched a movie on DVD (Mel Gibson’s Hamlet) and some music on an MP3 player (Traveling Wilburys) and felt relief that I wasn’t entranced on YouTube or X.  But all too soon Camera Girl saw a convoy of utility trucks heading down our road.  So, she dared me to get up and follow them.  I drove about a mile up the road and there was a truly colossal white pine being sawn into manageable pieces and stacked by the side of the road.  An hour later the generator cut out and the phone started ringing and civilization had me by the throat again.  Oh Ithaqua, we hardly knew ye.

So now I have to find out what I missed.  As far as I can tell, nothing.  Democrats prancing around trying not to look irrelevant, ridiculous and despicable, but failing.  Trump and his merry band running around breaking stuff and calling out world leaders as losers.  Cable news companies firing their half-witted staff by the bucketful.  Check, check, check.  So basically, nothing happened while I was hurled back into the nineteenth century (well, kinda).

But there was some progress.  We got some warmer (if windier) weather and the majority of the ice melted off the bottom driveway.  So, I went out there with various shovels and hammer-sliced it off the blacktop and piled it on the grass.  And I went to see what condition the west field was in.  It’s the wettest area of the fields and in spring it can be 6-8 inches of mud that makes it a bad idea to walk on it.  But it’s drying nicely and maybe tomorrow I might go back there and cut down the older raspberry canes and put down fertilizer for their spring growth.  And I took out a pair of binoculars and looked at the trees and sure enough the buds are ready to bust open anytime now.  So, ignoring the world for a day was a great thing as far I can tell.    But I’m back and ready to chronicle whatever tomfoolery the usual suspects get up to.  But it’s good to see the world is finally shrugging off winter and Dunwich is ready for spring, renewal, new life and all that crap.

Fat Tuesday

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Well, let’s see.  Today is Mardi Gras.  Interestingly, it is celebrated in Dunwich but with a local twist.  Because the Great Old Ones are devout Roman Catholics (go figure) they forego eating humans during the entirety of Lent so tonight they have a wild party where they make an enormous cauldron of jambalaya (5,000 gallons) and garnish it with any local elected officials they can find within the town limits.  So, for that reason I’m currently hiding in an abandoned fallout shelter with the Elder Sign emblazoned on the bolted hatch.  Above me I can hear the screams of the Dunwich Town Clerk, Treasurer and Tax Collector as they’re paraded down Bourbon Street on the way to dinner.  Well, nobody likes them anyway.  They voted to increase taxes and wouldn’t let us put up that Trump sign behind the Town Hall so boo hoo!

It’s kind of boring down here.  All I have is an internet connection, a dart board and ten thousand sugar cubes.  I’m trying to build a pyramid with them but it looks kind of crooked.  It really adds to my respect for those Egyptians.  First off, I now see why they didn’t use sugar as a building material.  After all, the slaves building the pyramid might be tempted to lick one of the blocks surreptitiously.  Multiply that by a billion licks and now you’re looking at real issues.  I’m guessing type 2 diabetes would have been rampant, so there’s that.  It really makes you think.

But now Donald Trump is starting his speech.  He’s speaking to a joint session of Congress and the Democrats are all holding what look like ping pong paddles with catchy slogans like “Trump Sucks” and “Pelosi is Still Hot” emblazoned on them.  After a particularly provocative anecdote about how ugly Chuck Schumer’s wife is up jumps Billy Dee Williams and threatens Trump with a golden handled cane.

Trump jumps down from the podium and joins Billy Dee in a spirited fencing match.  I believe he borrowed an umbrella from Speaker Johnson.  Luckily for everyone involved the Sergeant at Arms trips Billy Dee from behind and put him in a full nelson hold before giving him the bum’s rush.  After taking a few bows, Trump returned to the lectern and continues his remarks on his photos from his trip to Las Vegas with Mitch McConnell.  Riveting stuff.

Oh wait, I made all that stuff up in my head.

Actually, Trump’s address was quite effective.  He gave a long list of the frivolous causes that DOGE discovered that have wasted literally billions of dollars of taxpayer money.  One of the funniest revelations was of the age of some of the social security recipients.  I guess the most egregious was a man who was reportedly 350 years old.  Now this was just one case.  There were also actual millions of social security beneficiaries that were over 120 years of age.  Think of that.

He described the atrocities that illegal aliens have caused to our people; the murders and rapes and the fact that he has now closed off the border and is deporting illegals at a record pace.  Trump reported that the military with the aid of the Pakistani government have recently apprehended the leader of the group responsible for the suicide bombing of American troops during the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.  And he reiterated how incompetently Biden managed that withdrawal.

He announced his intent to end the Ukrainian war and revealed that Zelensky has sent him a message saying he is now ready to get involved in peace talks and also wants to sign the rare earth metals contract.

Trump highlighted the steps he’s taking to lower energy costs.  And he highlighted all of the failures of the Biden administration.  It was a very long list.

All in all, it was an entertaining talk.  The impression is of a President confident in his ability to make America great again.  The Democrats on the other hand appeared to be a bunch of petulant children.  Interesting.

The Human Element

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Einstein is said to have made the imaginative leap when he based his Theory of General Relativity on the notion that time (t) is just another dimension to go along with the three spatial dimensions (x, y, z).  Space-time.  When we talk about the where of a particle (or a person) we must also specify the when.

So yesterday when I travelled back to the place where I was born, I would have to travel back in time to reach my place of origin (x, y, z, t = 0, 0, 0, 0).  But Einstein also said that for matter time can only travel forward.  But maybe the mind (or the soul) isn’t composed of protons and electrons; leptons and hadrons.  Because I had an uncanny feeling I had stepped back into an earlier era.

After battling New York City traffic that defied belief, to attend a family funeral, I walked into the little Roman Catholic Church that I attended as a child and was transported into my past.  Sure, a few little things had changed.  They had freshened up the paint on the ceiling over the altar and on the bas relief stations of the cross but the stained-glass windows, the icons around the altar and the pews we sat in triggered memories that perfectly mirrored my surroundings.  And then there were my cousins and their children and their children’s children surrounding me with proof that the world I left behind decades ago still existed in a very human, very tenacious way.  God said be fruitful and multiply.  And we have.  From a tiny family that set foot on this continent less than 150 years ago there are now a whole town’s worth of descendants.

And some of the latest additions were unknown to me by name.  But just looking at their faces I could see the kinship.  And in the middle of the Mass one of the youngest made such a noisy nuisance of himself that he forced his mother to retreat to the annex to return the ceremony to dignified order.  But this outburst was of the very nature of the family.  We are noisy, somewhat spoiled, sometimes rude but genuinely good natured and extremely funny people.  And we do enjoy each other’s company.  Being surrounded by this small army of family felt so right.

One of my cousins remarked that it was a pity that only such occasions rounded us all up together again.  He spoke nostalgically about when we were all living within blocks of each other within the Italian ghetto that we all were now flocking to for this solemn occasion.  He reminisced about the parties and get togethers we used to have on a regular basis; holidays, birthdays, weddings, graduations, births.  But I reminded him that no one’s grandchildren could hope to afford the multi-million-dollar price tags that now attached to the buildings in this once humble neighborhood.  What young people could afford to buy houses here now?   I kidded that we would have to buy a whole town somewhere in the middle of nowhere if we wanted to live together in this modern and expensive age.  He ruefully nodded his head in agreement.

Quickly the ceremony ended and we said our goodbyes.  I wasn’t headed out east to the Long Island cemetery.  I was headed north toward New England through the grid-lock of the outer boroughs and onto the highways beyond.  But we made one stop before we headed home.  There was an old time Italian Bakery that specialized in Italian pastries.  They had sfogliatella riccia (seashell), coda d’aragosta (lobster tail) and various other pastries stuffed with cream that we would eat on Sunday nights when we were kids.  The only problem with this wonderful store was the old woman who had run the counter.  She was a sharp-tongued shrew who carped at everyone who entered the store.

I entered the store today and found the shelves still lined with all those Italian delicacies.  But now the store was run by a Chinese family that had bought the recipes for the pastries when they purchased the business.  And thankfully the pastries were just the same!  And even better, the young lady running the counter was entirely friendly and polite.  A miracle!

After too many hours I returned home with my small cache of desserts and told Camera Girl of my epic journey.  We’ll eat the cakes with our coffee this week.  And that will remind me of what I learned.  Einstein was wrong about not being able to go back in time.  You can.  What you can’t do is go back to the same place.  It’s always different.  But it can be worth the trip.