2026: Saturday June 27: Lake Huron

2022: Lake Michigan; 2023: Lake Superior; 2024: Lake Erie; 2025: Lake Ontario

2026: Lake Huron

Somehow five summers have gone by and we are on our fifth and final Great Lake vacation with Shaun and Steve. We are at Lake Huron, on the east coast of the state of Michigan, on a curving peninsula that has us facing west, so we get sunsets. 

This year Steve brought a telescope

We are engaging in age-appropriate activities: 

We haven't seen anything new to our life lists, but still, Great Egrets and Common Mergansers are never not cool.

Who among us can resist a pretty rock? There are rocks in piles on the deck, on window sills, in the bathroom, lined up along bookshelves. All the rocks gathered by holiday makers before us, their collectors persuaded that no, there is no more room in the car to bring any more rocks home. All the rocks that were too precious and special to throw back to the lake now left in drifts around the house.

Shaun found this shell fossil rock on the shore. 

Now, this has been quite enough computer time considering I'm on vacation, so excuse me, but I am going back to my book and jigsaw puzzle for the rest of the afternoon.  

2026: Sunday June 21: Solstice

It is Father's Day here in the US of A. I know little about the origins of the holiday, but I am assuming it is as made up and commercially-driven as Mother's Day (No, it doesn't get exhausting being this cynical. You get used to it.).  But that doesn't negate the fact that fathers are important for all the reasons. 

Here are a couple of good ones: 

This is a photo of a photo that I took in a hurry, so sorry about the quality. It is somewhere in Central Otago, 1977-ish? Bill, Peter, Sandra, Me, Nick. The reason I am showing you this particular one is because you need to know there was a time my father wore red pants and a red shirt at the same time while on holiday.

Michael and Ella, 2003-ish. I mean, come on, what cuties. 

2026: Sunday June 13: Trains

 TL;DR: Trains are cool. There should be more trains, in real life and in stories. Trains have been historically problematic. 

Santa Barbara, CA

Yesterday the largest steam engine in the country rolled through Binghamton on an America's 250th Cross Country tour, and everyone in town went crazy. I mean, they acted like they'd been fanatical trainspotters since childhood. Michael and I drove to Ithaca at peak-Big Boy time, and as we were driving out of town, Michael pointed at all the cars pulled over on a side road waiting for Big Boy to pass and said, Wow. Owego took forever to get through because every person in a fifty mile radius appeared to have taken their child out of school to watch the passing. Lots of men with fancy camera gear. I texted my friend who lives in Owego with an lol comment and she replied that she'd taken a sick day to watch, and sent me a cool video of the engine wooshing through Campville. I was like, I co-taught with you for ten years and I never heard you mention a train once, oh, except for that time you took a train to Florida and the other time you took a train to South Dakota, so I guess you do kind of like trains, ok, you get a pass, but why aren't all these other people out in force demanding we get high speed commuter rail through Broome County? 

Michael and Ella on the Sugar Cane Train, Maui, HI

If we had a train here, I would take it all the time. I love riding trains, as I tell you every time I go to New York via Beacon and Metro North down the Hudson River. You get to see the back-sides of towns, the parts no-one is supposed to see. You get to fall asleep somewhere hours out of Sydney and wake up to mobs of kangaroos hopping across barren landscapes and still not be even close to your destination (yes, that is something I did).

Me scouting for a forward facing window seat, Grand Central Station, New York, NY

I spent most of January slogging my way through Dickens' Dombey and Son, and boy, are there trains in that book. Dickens lived through the transformation of the English city, town, and countryside wrought by trains, and they're a big part of the Dombey family story, it must have been insane to see the world change like that, not always for the better. I am teaching a two semester grad seminar on United States history starting this Fall, and you bet we're going to talk about trains. How the federal government funded and facilitated the spread of railroads across North America, allowing a few corrupt men to amass vast personal fortunes, alienating Native Americans from land, leading to crises in debt for farmers. Etcetera. 

Michael admiring his childhood train set, made by a shop class in St Maries, ID. 

The book I am trying to write currently starts and ends at Binghamton's Lackawanna Railroad Station, which is not something I consciously planned, but makes perfect sense because trains are symbols of arriving and leaving and strangers and progress running you down. 

One of my favorite trains from literature is in Richard Adams, Watership Down, one of the top five books of my life. Captain Holly describes their escape from Efrafa. "What I'm going to say now is the cold truth. Lord Frith sent one of his great Messengers to save us..."

Sorry if this doesn't hang together. I'm finishing it in a hurry because. 

2026: Sunday June 7: Allie

I was Allie's 12th grade social studies teacher and since I'm friends with her parents, yesterday I went to her college graduation party. Some people know what they want early, and they go at it, and they get it. Allie wanted to be a music teacher when I taught her, and here she is, about to start a new job as a middle school band teacher at a local school. We talked about the band room being a haven for some students, we talked about music building team work skills, we also talked about music being something we teach because hey, it's music and it is part of being human and doesn't need to be justified in non-musical terms.

Me and Allie. I made her take the selfie because I always assume younger people are better at that than me. I will resist making an old-person comment about fashion coming around again in regard to the hair style of the person behind me. I mean, it's not like I'm doing anything interesting with my own hair.

 

Ella's high school band teacher was there and I got to thank him for providing a creative space for her to grow and explore in. I also got to answer the "what is Ella up to now" question several times. Oh, no big deal, just Yale, you know, following her passions. Then, because Allie's family are all from Brooklyn, I threw in a casual comment about Ella subletting in Park Slope for the summer and one of Allie's uncles strolled over and asked how much a one-bedroom in Park Slope was going for these days and I pretended I understood the nuances of Brooklyn neighborhoods. (Ok, I know Park Slope is nice, but that's about as far as my awareness goes). 

2026: Sunday May 31: Dogwood

This blog is subtitled "I owe you all letters but instead you get this," a little explanation I came up with years and years ago when letters were still things people wrote. I didn't realize until Sandra died this year that most often I imagined my posts as letters to her. She would write back regularly commenting on things I'd said. Now she's gone and I miss her replies and I'm not sure who I'm writing for anymore. 

When this little dogwood flowered this spring I was very happy. I planted it as a tiny bare stick a couple of years ago and wrote about how one day it might turn into something more. Sandra wrote back with a story about planting trees in her garden, and the tree person who told her that you really had to take care with new trees. After she said that, I was extra conscientious about watering the dogwood through its first summer, and look, this year it felt secure enough that it flowered! Yes, I know dogwoods don't actually have flowers. They have bracts. But I can't say my tree bracted, that sounds wrong.

Look at my strip of shady wilderness along the back wall, under the neighbor's pine tree. The chipmunks love it back there, among the dogwood, some bleeding hearts, a columbine about to flower, ferns, some giant hostas I dug up from a sunny spot where they weren't as happy, wild strawberries (tiny white flowers), and a lot of things that are weedy and that I sometimes pull up but they come back and it's not a battle I care enough about. There used to be mint thriving back here but a combo of pushy weedy plants and shade has diminished the creeping power of mint, which is hard to do. I'm going to replant it elsewhere. 

Bonus photo! On Friday we went to Ithaca to see I Love Boosters (mostly quite good, some iffy patches, but you have to admire a movie that actually tries to do something interesting), and after we went for the first ice cream of the season at Purity (ok, for Michael the pilgrimage is for a malted vanilla shake. I get ice cream). 

The server offered a junior size shake, which is a very smart idea. 

2026: Sunday May 24

 Oh look, it's Sunday night and I haven't posted. Contemplating posting less, actually. I don't always have stuff to say that I haven't said before. Although, I guess I'm always up for sharing another silly cat photo. 

Ida watching while I do yoga. 

2026: Sunday May 17: Cat in a box.

That's it, a cat in a box. She's yawning, but it is always funny when you catch a yawning cat, because they look like they're screaming mad.

"Love Your Baby"