Category: Uncategorized
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Summer’s lease hath all too short a date
While the arrival of pumpkin spice on local menus precociously suggests summer’s end, the autumn equinox is still over a month away. Still, the New Hampshire days grow appreciably shorter, the UNH outdoor pool sends warnings of early closure, and back-to-school anxieties bubble up in my dreams—even as my third fall of retirement signals that…
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Leaving Portage, Going Home
25 July 2022 On Monday, my last morning in Portage, I for the first time spy the pair of Sandhill Cranes that visit the Andrew home most every morning to enjoy the dried corn left out for them. Seeing them is a timely treat, and racing to the window in my underwear affords the chance…
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Excursion from Portage WI, Day 2
24 July 2022 A Sunday drive and cookout were a tradition in my family, with the usual destination a picnic table at Fort De Soto Park in Tierra Verde, Florida, just south of my hometown St. Petersburg, 1,136 acres on five interconnected keys on Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, home to mangroves, palm…
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Excursions from Portage WI, Day 1
23 July 2022 The Andrew family had a full range of Wisconsin attractions planned for this Saturday, and after our cereal and Pero (a non-caffeinated coffee substitute), we set out through miles of really beautiful farm land to the Amish-run Mishler’s Country Store in Dalton WI, a treasure trove of bulk spices, old-fashioned candy, fancy…
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On [to] Wisconsin 21-22 July 2022
Made it to Milwaukee Thursday night, 21 July, on a late flight from Manchester via Baltimore/Washington with only two slight catches. One: the parking lot in Manchester has converted to a system that does not issue tickets encoded with your entry time, but instead somehow records that info on the credit card you use to…
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Recombobulation
Returning at 2 am early Tuesday morning, 26 July, from a long weekend with family in Wisconsin, I am too travel-weary to do much more than open windows—the house closed up over the very hot five days of my absence was 87o when I walked in. I turn on the bedroom ac, shower, text of…
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Getting rid of things
F. Scott Fitzgerald, master of concluding cadences, finishes his short story “Three Hours Between Planes” (Esquire, July 1941) with this phrase embedded in his final sentence: “the second half of life is a long process of getting rid of things.” Nearly paralyzed by the prospect of sorting through and discarding the accumulated stuff of two…
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The Fourth of July
It is the Fourth of July, and I am having trouble concentrating. My setup for a dinner party to begin at 6.30 is complete—beer and wine cooling, the New York Times’s Juneteenth peach-molasses chicken soon to be grilled, the salads made and strawberry-rhubarb cobbler baked. I’ve prepped the staging area for fireworks later, and loaded…
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Southern Sojourn Day 19: 31 May 2022 Narberth PA > Madbury NH
My final travel day is a long one, though it begins well enough with coffee at the GET café in downtown Narberth, a short walk from Ann and Barry’s home. The café is staffed by disabled workers who work carefully, deliberately, and cheerfully to get every order right, and after a couple of attempts, they…
Georgeann Murphy 