23 October 2023

As my birth month draws to a close, I can report I’ve enjoyed weeks crowded with happy personal incident.  And so, Dear Readers, as I suggested last post, it’s the helpers I catalog here, turning away quite deliberately from the horrors of the 24-hour news cycle.

Here they are, in chronological order:

Heather Cox Richardson, whose daily, always grounding posts, “Letters from an American,” both inform and solace with the balm of historical perspective.  Her 29 September appearance at the Portsmouth Music Hall’s “Writers on a New England Stage” program, beginning hours behind schedule due to that day’s extraordinary rainfall in NYC, testified to the loyalty of her following.  NO one complained; rather, we all waited patiently and gave her a rock star welcome when at last she arrived on stage.  As my friend Carol remarked:  “That audience would have followed her over a cliff.”  Richardson’s account of how our democracy got to where we are now, what has changed, and how we can move forward bear review:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/heather-cox-richardson-2023/id1709704692?i=1000630049353. 

Richardson’s offhand remark about how hard it is for an author to let go of her book also struck a personal bull’s eye with me as I so slowly review my editor’s track changes to my own magnum opus, Will to Live:  Learning from Shakespeare How to Be—and NOT to Be (coming asap to Amazon, Dear Readers!).  The problem:  by the time you finish writing the book, you know more than you did when you began, so the impulse is to go back to the beginning and re-write—a vicious, unending cycle.  Richardson’s friend’s advice:  when you get to the end of your book, START THE NEXT BOOK!  Since Richardson and I are fellow Libras and share a birthday, I am taking that advice as also meant for me.  She is, however, a decade younger, and on her birthday this year earned fourth place on the NYT non-fiction bestseller list.  Well, you gotta have a dream, right?

My nephew and niece, Rob and Pam Andrew, visited me from Oklahoma over my birthday weekend and made good on their insistence that I am an important part of their family.  Among their thoughtful gifts:  a Shutterfly album full of family photographs of my late Andrew parents-in-law, who departed this life before I could ever meet them in person, and a book formative in Rob’s young life so I could “get to know him better.” Also, a fine dinner out, and—best of all—their comfortable, excellent company, which made turning 71 a real pleasure.

The next week Shiao-Ping and Brian made sure the celebrating continued by introducing me to a wonderful, nearly deserted beach, part of the Wells Reserve in Maine, after which we had a fine meal at Dufour in South Berwick, another first for me.  That Friday, 13 October marked exactly four years since they and so many other friends and family gathered at Gnawwood to remember my David.  Still in the initial throes of grief shortly after David’s death, SP and Brian scooped me up and took me to another beautiful shore, Parsons Beach in Kennebunk, for the salutary balm of a day by the sea.  Helpers indeed, those two.

The day after our Wells Preserve visit I made my way back down to Boston to see the Huntington’s production of Fat Ham, James Ijames’s reinvention of Hamlet as a comic Southern backyard barbeque and coming-out party.  The Wimberly Theatre at the Calderwood/Boston Center for the Arts is an intimate 372-seat space, and I sat in the center of the third row, happily close to the action.  Riffs on Hamlet are lots of fun for me, and I always feel right at home in theatres, so while the play itself lacked some of the pizazz I expected, the mise en scène and jolly, OTT performances helped me shuffle off care for a tight 90 minutes. 

The next Monday, 16 September, brought a delightful opportunity to celebrate someone else:  Susan Sinnott, Director of the Madbury Public Library, where since last April I’ve been serving as an alternate trustee.  Nominated by us trustees and now in her 10^th year of serving Madbury, since 2019 in the lovely new library she helped establish, Susan won this year’s NH Library Director of the Year award offered by the New Hampshire Library Trustees Association, further distinguishing the MPL among the other 233 NH libraries.  So gratifying to see the hard work of a saavy, modest professional appreciated for the talented helper she is.

Then two days ago, an extraordinary helper of another kind, Dr. H. Jack Myers, who passed away last February, was eloquently celebrated by his friends and family in a very well attended and gratifying memorial gathering at the Durham Community Church.  Surgeon, pianist/organist, and vocalist with perfect pitch (he and his wife Vicky, also a gifted musician, met in local vocal group Amare Cantare), Jack was clearly adored by patients and fellow medical professionals alike, and with Drs. Sonneborn and Paul co-founded the excellent Seacoast Cancer Center at Wentworth Douglass Hospital in Dover.  Vicky and Jack lived just down the road from me for years, though it took my meeting Vicky at a Tai Chi class just a few years ago to introduce me to Jack, who bore his own final illness with humor, fortitude, and grace.  Each of the 13 speakers (13!) who shared memories of Jack was succinct, witty, and affecting.  A good day, celebrating a good man who touched—and saved!—so many lives.

And then, there is Public Radio, my constant helper and companion, filling my days with entertainment, enlightenment, and the best company:  my Public Radio Pals.  Most recently, a re-broadcast of Radiolab’s “The Fellowship of the Tree Rings” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4e-HMtsdOY) helped me put into context the blooming of my morning glories well into late October (a phenomenon also confirmed by my friends Marianne and Otto in Munich) and brought home once again the importance of the phrase E. M. Forster used as epigraph for his novel, Howards End:  “Only connect.”  Listen, as I did, to learn how tree rings yield information about hurricanes, shipwrecks, pirates, low solar activity (the Maunder Minimum from 1645-1725), sugar plantations, slavery, and the birth of capitalism.  Dendrochronologists and paleoclimatologists unite to reveal how the past predicts the future.  Here’s to the scientists and the science they serve.

Closer to home and Halloween, there’s my good friend Jennifer, enjoying a moment on a West 10^th street stoop in NYC, and helping me recall how much I have always loved Halloween.

And thanks to the Durham citizens, led by John and Maryanna Hatch, who in 1974 saved Wagon Hill from the oily grasp of Aristotle Onassis, a real David-over-Goliath victory. Because of them we still have preserved in perpetuity some of the most beautiful views on the seacoast.

Helpers all, I salute you!