Kindlized

Portrait of a study in contrasts.  Peggy and I in front of the living room fireplace on a snowy New Hamster day.  Peggy is playing Spider Solitaire on her new iPhone. Fred is reading the New York Times on his Kindle...

So, Santa was overly generous this year and a new Kindle was found under the tree by one super-spoiled Freddy.  First impressions from a new Kindle owner.

I was concerned about how well the Kindle's "Whispernet" connection (Whispernet is the wireless connection either being supplied by Sprint or AT&T, I'm not sure which).  Given that our cell phones barely work unless we stand out in the driveway, I thought Whispernet was going to be a bit problematic.  And indeed, at best I only get two bars of signal strength.  On the one hand, cruising the Web or downloading content from other-than-Amazon through the Kindle ranges from difficult to impossible.  On the other hand, getting content from Amazon is simple and without problem.

Magazines and Newspapers: Kindle may never kill printed books, but I think it (and its various e-Reader brethen) is probably going to be the death-blow to print newspapers and magazines.  Within a few days of adding the New York Times to my Kindle, we had killed the delivery of the print Sunday edition. A telling piece of evidence is that the Kindle subscription is less than half of the price of the Sunday print version... plus I now get the other six days as well, all for $14 a month. It's still an open question about whether I'll move my New Yorker subscription over to the Kindle.  According to various reports the Kindle version is incomplete and lacking cartoons.  Given that those issues get worked out, I may consider subscribing through the Kindle when my print subscription ends in 2011.

There is little as cool as waking up in the morning, switching on the Kindle, and by the time I'm sipping my first cup of coffee, I have the Times ready for my persusal.

I was disappointed to discover that there was no Kindle version of Wired, about the only magazine except the New Yorker and Cigar Aficionado (I know, I know) I read regularly.  According to the rumor mills, Wired's publisher, Conde Nast, is preparing a multimedia version of the mag for the rumored-but-probably-true Apple tablet.

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Experience.  Pros: The reading experience is ah, "book-like" enough that very quickly you forget that you're looking at a high-tech device rather than paper.  Pluses:  You can change the font size, an important factor for anyone with 50+-old eyes, as we all discover eventually.  The built-in dictionary is way cool.  Move the cursor in front of the word, and see an abbreviated definition.  Click, and call up the full definition.  I think of myself as a fairly literate guy, but I didn't know that maven is from the Yiddish, for example. The controls are simple and relatively easy to use, although I still have a tendency to poke the wrong button at times.

Minuses: The only button placement I really object to is "Previous," which is midway up the left side of the Kindle.  While it probably works if you're holding a "bare" Kindle (that is, sans cover), I'm holding a beautiful leather cover from Oberon rather than the device.  With cover on, you can't click "Previous" easily. You have to poke it.  I didn't realize how much I refer back to earlier pages until it became difficult to do.

Although text is easier to read on than a computer, the Kindle screen will occasionally reflect light until you find the right angle.  The "page-turn-Flash" that everyone complained about when the Kindle 1 was released is there, but to me barely noticeable, no more distracting than turning a page.

While I keep on reading claims that the Kindle will hold a charge for as long as a week (with the Wireless turned off except when needed), my Kindle seems to be draining the battery much faster than that.  I haven't decided whether that's a problem yet or not.  "Seems" is still the operative word.  Stay tuned on that one.

- Cover:  Believe me, you want a cover, and you want a nice cover.,  You want to be gripping and holding leather rather than plastic. It changes the entire Kindle reading experience.  So, spend the extra cash.  Mine is from Oberon Design in California.  Santa somehow knew that the cover to the left - in blue - was the one I wanted and had it ready for me on Christmas Day.

- And finally, Books.

So far, I have a few free public domain books, including Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Time Machine on my Kindle.  I'm kind of looking forward to reading old favorites, Dickens, Twain, Wells, Verne, on the Kindle.  I found the links to various archives of free/public domain eContent through one of my first Amazon purchases, The Complete User's Guide To the Amazing Amazon Kindle 2 by Stephen Windwalker, which I heartily recommend at its low-cost .99 cents.  It covers Kindle basics, probably nothing you couldn't suss out on your own, but its real value is its links to on-line content, especially free content.

My second purchase was David Grann's The Lost City of Z,  one of those "meaning-to-read" books that got lost in the daily noise and which I ws reminded of when it showed up on one of those "best books of 2009" lists.  In a couple of minutes and $9.99 later, the book was on my Kindle.

And that's both the delight and danger of the Kindle, especially for someone like me.  Read an interesting review and want that book?  No need to wait for the next trip to the bookstore or to be put on the library waiting list. And the chances are good that in a week you'll have forgotten the title, or why you thought it interesting, or will have been distracted by the next, new shiny object and not get the book. But no more of that.  Now you can have it on your Kindle in the time it takes to read this blog post.

So, a couple of house rules are already in effect: one set by Peggy and one set by me.  Peggy has me on an allowance, which is probably a very good idea, knowing me.  Me, I'm going to try the enforce the rule I use for buying physical books.  No new purchases until the books already on the "to-read" list are either abandoned or finished.

Of the two, I think the allowance rule will probably be more effective.

Too Many Goodbyes

As you've probably gathered, I don't update fhb all that much anymore (I think once every five months would qualify as "not all that much"). I'm still writing regularly over at Dreamtime, which better suits my interests at the moment.

Of course I have the issue that Bob Dylan has apparently ended Theme Time Radio Hour with the "Goodbye" show, but I still have a few more Dreamtime posts, maybe even a podcast or two, and some other plans.

It's not turning out to be a good year for radio shows we like, as today we heard the news that Jeff Turton's long-running Jazz Brunch has ended after 26 years on WFNX, which parallels the time that Peggy and I have been together. We started listening to the Jazz Brunch shortly after Peggy moved in with me during that brief (but enjoyable) period we were living together in sin. We listened to the Jazz Brunch after we married; after a move from Massachusetts to New Hampshire; after we bought our first home, a condo, and then after we bought our first house and home, the one I'm writing in today and where we heard Jeff's announcement.

A lot of Sundays. We went to see Jeff and have brunch when he was doing the live Jazz Brunches in Cambridge. We bought a lot of wonderful wine thanks to Howie Rubin at Bauer Wine's recommendations. I even went to Bauer Wine after missing Howie's regular appearances on the show. "How come you don't do Jazz Brunch anymore?" I asked. "Because they won't pay me," he answered.

We listened to Jeff's son Ben grow up over the years through his annual appearances. We learned how much Jeff hated winter and Christmas music, especially jazz Christmas music. We ate at the East Coast Grill in Cambridge because we heard about it on the Jazz Brunch. Jeff introduced us to more artists and their music than I can name now, but included Debra Henson-Conant, Madeline Peyroux, Nancy Wilson's Guess Who I Saw Today, and Sarah Vaughan's Just A Little Lovin' to acknowledge a few singers and songs we first heard on the Jazz Brunch. I spent years tracking both Wilson's and Vaughn's cuts down, and in fact only found the album containing the live version of Guess Who I Saw Today last October in San Francisco, triumphantly bringing it home to Peggy after 20-odd years of looking for it. Jeff Turton is probably directly responsible for several hundred dollars worth of CDs residing on my shelves.

In other words, Jeff Turton and the Jazz Brunch have been a big part of our lives as long as we've been together. It was evident that the end was nearing. Jeff's on-air time was cut from six hours - from 6 a.m. to noon - down to four a couple of years ago, the Jazz Brunch apparently only remaining on at all because WFNX's owner liked jazz. In the past year Peggy and I started looking for other alternatives to listen to on Sundays as Jeff fiddled with the programming to try to attract a more contemporary audience. Instead, I think he probably alienated his core listeners, like us. There are only so many jazz covers of pop tunes or weird "world music" you can listen to until you start longing for some straight-ahead Thelonius Monk or Abby Lincoln, which had all but disappeared on the Jazz Brunch in recent months.

But we still checked it out regularly, hoping that we'd hear the older programming that had made us Jazz Brunch fans, and we were listening to it today, and were at least happy to be there at the end, as we were at the beginning. We'll miss the Jazz Brunch, and Jeff Turton. Jeff you have our thanks for being part of our Sundays over the last 26 years.

As you get older, you find that few changes are good.

Demolition Days

For those asking for news of how bad the flooding in our basement was... it was this bad. Or more accurately, this was the aftermath.

About the only thing that we didn't have to take down was the ceiling, but at that point it seemed ridiculous to renovate the basement office and leave the funky, old, ill-lit, mouse-infested ceiling in. So it went too.

As did the dark, old, `60s-era wall paneling, pleasing Peggy to no end. We found that the walls had been incorrectly studded and most of the paneling wasn't anchored to anything. Hence the reason behind the walls bulging out from the pressure of the water behind them.

As did all the insulation , which was still soaked six inches up after three weeks. We were going to cut the wet insulation out, saving what we could, but the insulation was so inefficient compared to modern standards that we had it all pulled.

As did all the studding. We were going to add new wall studding in, but found that the floor studs - after repeated soaking over the years, were sodden, rotted so badly that they were crumbling, and covered with black mold. So we pulled it all out.

The rug, an indoor/outdoor, has been pulled, but is salvageable.  The pad wasn't.  We probably won't replace the pad - "once is accident, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."

 I lost about 30 years of books, happily not all of them.  Mostly the paperbacks.  Peggy lost Christmas decorations, books, boxes of memories. Probably other things that we won't know about until we try to find them.

Yes, we know, We appreciate the sentiment.  We're getting over it. 

What was the finished basement is now an empty shell.  Actually, it isn't an empty shell.  As I write this, new studding and wallboard have arrived and are being loaded downstairs.

As that frosty poet, Robert Frost, once said, "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned in life: It goes on."

And it does.  And so will we.

Rusticatin'

We're back from our annual Labor Day vacay, this time taken way up North at Beaver Cove, Moosehead Lake, Maine, where men are men and spend most of their time lazin' on the deck.

Peggy and Fred took a 3-hour cruise on the steamship Katahdin - highly recommended - which covered less than half of the 40-mile Moosehead Lake.

During his tour narration, our captain noted that the lake trout population, known locally as "togue," had been virtually wiped out because some idiot - or group of idiots - had introduced Yellow Perch into the lake. When I was a kid in the `60s, it wasn't unusual to catch a dozen or more togue in one day's fishing. Tragically, all gone now, and probably not to come back.

While visiting the quarterdeck, I mentioned to the captain I grew up on Sebago Lake, the second largest lake in Maine. "Oh, that pond?" the captain grinned at me.

We found that the only direct route to Moxie Falls involved a route that personified the phrase 20 miles of bad road. About 5 1/2 miles in on a badly rutted, washed out road with large rocks poking out just waiting to take out things without which our long-suffering Murano would probably not run, we met a beat-up pickup heading in the opposite direction. "You can't go down there, the road's terrible," the driver called.. "You couldn't make it without a 4-wheel drive. Where you headed?"

"Moxie Falls," I replied. "Maybe, I should turn ..."

"We're going right by it," he interrupted. "Follow me." And with that he sped off on another road that led off God Knows Where which a) was even worse than the one that we were on and b) our GPS, which had gamely sent us down the original road didn't even recognize as a road.

In fact, the GPS - which we've anthropomorphized with the name "Tommy," gave up trying to navigate us, except to point an arrow at where we had been, apparently in the hope we'd recover our senses and return to Known Territory. Which we eventually did after about a mile or more of following the Mad Mainer, who blasted along the road at upwards of 40 miles an hour as I crawled over ruts and rocks. As his dust trail disappeared into the trackless wastelands, I found a spot to turn around, not an easy thing to do, and headed back to where Tommy's arrow pointed. After a long long long time, we finally made it back to the point where Tommy was willing to acknowledge that there was a road there, such as it was, and then only had to spend another 5 1/2 miles crawling back out to the paved road.

We'd finally make it to Moxie Falls the following day after Peggy plotted out a circuitous route that covered about 60-odd miles to a destination that was about 20 miles away as the crow flies but, by God, had the benefit of being entirely upon pavement.

Moxie Falls is very beautiful, if a little difficult to visit.

We also found the lodge my family stayed at during our regular visits to Moosehead in the `60s - Maynards. Already old when I first came there, Maynards was established in the early 1920s, the place is virtually unchanged in 2008, the only noticeable difference that I could find is that the cabins now have a full bath. Back in 1964 it was an outside shower and an outhouse.

And we did many other things, the things you do when you're on vacay in the Great North Woods: We visited Kamp-Kamp, the largest store in Greenville, Maine where Peggy longed for moose antlers and Fred for a set of Classic Illustrated Comics that could have come straight from my bunk at Maynards. We bought hand-picked blueberries and blackberries and fresh-baked goods for dessert every night. We hiked the Lily Pond State Park, read about local things in the local paper - including the kids fined for leaping jay-naked off the Black Frog restaurant dock.

And mostly we relaxed, 'cause that's what it's all about.

It Was 24 Years Today

That my life began.

Fred (heart) Peggy.

.

Marilyn and Me

Peggy and I have kind of a three-sided family tree -we have my family; her family; and then a larger group of "family," that includes some intermarriage and blood relationships and some longtime friends who are family too as far as we're concerned. Peggy introduced her friend Bonnie to her husband, Dave, who in turn is the brother of Peg's sister-in-law. Bonnie introduced Peggy to me, and so on.

We have cousins and nieces and nephews and now grand-nieces and nephews who are all part of our extended family, some actual relatives, others not... but we're Uncle Fred and Aunt Peggy to all anyway.

The larger family celebrates group birthdays on a regular basis. The photo at your left was taken during the November birthday bash, and presented to me yesterday at the December party, the group I belong to. Back in November, one of the birthday boys - not me - was celebrating a milestone 60th, and his brothers, sisters, and nieces decided to bring in a Marilyn Monroe like-a-look to sing him "Happy Birthday," which she did in all cute breathlessness. She was a good sport, which I imagine you have to be in that sort of biz; and in the course of her act, posed for the ladies' cameras with various of the men.

Including, as you can see, the guy with the goofy look who could afford to lose some weight.

Odds and Ends

As Jailb- ah, Peggy pointed out last night, I haven't been blogging at fhb as I should, and that's true. So, here's a compendium of stuff I would blog about if I was blogging, as indeed I am right now.

I'm in serious conflict about Twin Peaks, The Definitive Gold Box edition, a 10(!!!) DVD box set that collects just about everything the TP completist would want in one place (except Fire Walk With Me, which like so much else TP-related has some weird rights issues affecting its re-release). On the one hand I have deep fan boy lust for the set, even though I already own Seasons 1 and 2 on DVD.

On the other hand, I already own Seasons 1 and 2 on DVD, and know, just know, that eventually they'll release the Twin Peaks, the Absolute Positive Final Edition We Promise, We're Not Fooling You This Time a year or so down the road with Fire Walk With Me and some other must-have items included. Don't believe me? Yet another - 5-disc positively, absolutely definitive Blade Runner set is being released this December. Downstairs I have a VHS of the original, theatrical U.S.-released Blade Runner and DVDs of the "international" version and the first "director's cut" version. I can now go spend even more on a new director's cut version (Ridley Scott has made something of a cottage industry releasing new director's cuts every few years) and the "work print" version.




If I had Uncle Scrooge's Money Bin, I wouldn't have all these "I Want" problems.











Just to prove to my wife and sister-in-law that I do have interests other than Bob Dylan, the Red Sox swept the World Series the other night.

And let's see, news to take care of on the family front. We went to our niece's Bea's wedding reception over the weekend, which was as much a family reunion as anything else and as complete a gathering as we've had since our other niece's - Christina's - wedding.

Not that I really needed evidence of the fact, but my unofficial son, Robbie, has officially grown up. We were at the bar together and he looked at me and said, "What are you drinking, Fred?" I later ended up doing tequila shots with him and his older sister, Mimi, much to the general horror of his mother and Peggy. Robbie's girlfriend - Molly, who is one hot pistolero - now calls me "Jack," as Mimi has done exclusively for years, for reasons I've now forgotten, except that Mimi didn't think I was a "Fred"-type I think. I also promised Meaghan I'd blog the event with the title I Twirled Mimi, after successfully spinning her in a slow dance without stumbling over my own feet, but I think that was the tequila shot, salt, and lime talking.

Whoo-Hoo - The Summary

Update: A photo of Dylan and the Cowboy Band at concert close in Ypsilanti, MI, a few days ago. Dylan is making the same hand gesture he used in the NH concert, which has been variously interpreted as a thumbs-up gesture (me), an acknowledgment of the crowd's applause, his version of applauding the crowd, or his acknowledgment of a hot session by the band - or all of the above. The Dylan "Eye" logo is displayed as backdrop during the show encores. The Oscar is blocked by a fan's head, but resides on the red case which can be seen at far right. Also note Dylan's keyboard. fhb


I picked Peggy up at 4:30 Friday afternoon, and we headed over to our first early-bird special since we stopped visiting my parents in Florida many moons ago. Peg had booked us at the Piccola Italia Ristorante in downtown Manchester, a couple of blocks walk from the Verizon Wireless Center. We had a waitress used to serving people who were later heading to a concert, and she was quick and efficient without making us feel rushed. If you like up-scale Italian and are in the Manchester area, go check out Piccola Italia. Great food. We were surrounded by graying Dylan fans, so we - or at least me - fit right in. I may have just been having my own flashback, but I swear to God the woman seated at the table next to me, who was at least in her mid-50s, said to her companion, "I'm starting to peak." Maybe it was the martini.

By 6:45 we were in our 3rd-row-from-the-stage seats, with a helluva lot better view than we had when we last saw Mr. D almost six years ago. That had been one very strange concert, a couple of months after the release of "Love and Theft," after 9/11. November 2001, the night before Thanksgiving. I was unemployed, laid off about three weeks earlier, paranoid about my future. Peggy had a family dinner to prepare the next day. We went anyway.

We enjoyed ourselves during that 2001 concert, but we were all the way back by the soundboard, disappointing me because I hadn't known that "G" was an entire section away from the double-letter first row seats. The view had been lousy, not helped by the audience being on its feet for the entire 2-hour show and Himself a tiny unmoving figure on stage the entire night. The music was good, but all-in-all - especially from the perspective of this recent show - it was a subdued performance, ending with Dylan's apparently unhappy arms-by the-side stare at the audience after the encore, frozen, not acknowledging the applause with any look or gesture.

Many differences six years later in 2007, not least that Dylan had two opening acts before his set. Amos Lee opened promptly at 7:00 with a half-hour solid folk-blues set that could have been improved by bringing down the thumping bass a bit for his mostly gray-beard audience. Three rows from the stage and directly under the overhead speakers, we levitated from our seats each time Lee's drummer hit the bass pedal. Fortunately, both Costello and Dylan's people had a less bass-emphatic sound mix, or we'd probably still be going "What?" several days later. At closing Lee thanked the sparse early audience for coming to see him, and turned the stage over to Elvis Costello.

"Oh, I'm in fine voice tonight," Costello laughed midway through his set, and it was a good prediction for things to come. Armed with solo guitar, Elvis marched through a 45-minute set of standards from his playbook, opening with a powerful "Radio, Radio," blasting through "Watching the Detectives," crooning a mournful "Alison," and leading the now much larger and appreciative crowd through a "do-do-doo-doop" call-and-response during a Van Morrison cover medley.

And then it was the Cowboy Band's turn. The Verizon's lights were dimmed, leaving only a small flood on stage lighting Dylan's "Things Have Changed" Oscar. The recording announced the presence of the man who had forced folk into an unnatural relationship with rock. And Dylan and Company launched into a pretty "Cat's In the Well."

Staging for a Bob Dylan concert: Song finishes, lights go down; Dylan walks over to a playbook next to his Oscar, studies it; lights come back up; band launches into next number. Repeat 16 times.

After "Cat's" came the only stumble of the evening, a raspy-voiced "Lay, Lady, Lay" that was so difficult to listen to that I was frightened about what the rest of the night might be like. Dylan seemed to be struggling after the first verse of the song, seemingly realizing that it had gotten out of his control. He tried different phrasing, different timing. Nothing worked, and the song sounded as if an embarrassingly old man was pleading with a 15-year-old hooker for a free piece of action. Dylan looked as relieved as I felt when it finally finished. "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and "Positively 4th Street" followed. Both on-target, nothing like the horror-show of "Lay, Lady, Lay" but not all that energetic either.

But something happened mid-way through the fifth song, "The Levee's Gonna Break," and the night just went golden from that point on. I'm still not sure what went on. Dylan had switched to keyboards by this point and he began exchanging sly grins with Donnie Herron, on pedal steel behind him. You could almost see the band's energy rising as Dylan began to attack - there's no other way to describe it -the keyboard for that one and for each song that followed, charging into it, shaking his hips like Jerry Lee, raising his legs. I kept expecting him to break free from the keyboard and start dancing around the stage at some point during the evening. The complaints of hard-core fans notwithstanding, it seemed from our vantage point that Dylan was much more comfortable the moment he put down the guitar and took his center-stage keyboard position. And the man is not going through the motions. He was hammering those keys, with the diamond-encrusted ring on his wedding finger flashing in the stage lights as he waved his hand above the keyboard.

Great versions of "Spirit On the Water," Honest With Me," and a beautiful rendition of "Beyond the Horizon," followed in close succession. And then an extremely spooky version of "High Water." That, and an equally powerful "Nettie Moore" following a blistering "Highway 61," had me thinking that I really want to hear a commercial live Dylan album that includes songs from "Modern Times." You have to hear how radically these songs have evolved from the studio versions to understand what Dylan means when he says that to really hear the music he has in his head you have to go see him live.

"Summer Days" was next on the slate, and then came the old warhorse, "Like a Rolling Stone."

I have mixed feelings about hearing Dylan doing this - my favorite song of his - these days. While I like, appreciate, his having it still in his portfolio some 40-odd years after his writing it, I can't hear it live without thinking of the blistering, acid-thrown-in-your-face performances of the `60s. I always see ghosts on stage, battering their way through the music, in defiance of everything, the audience, the day, the world, young, old, while I watch the contemporary Dylan weave around among those shadows, performing his slower, near-waltz-like modern version. But having said that, this was one of the best contemporary live LARS I've ever seen him perform, fast tight, grooving. Dylan was grinning like a Cheshire Cat throughout the song, leaning into the How does it feel? chorus like he was cresting a wave.

"Thunder on the Mountain" began the encore, and a surprising and very pretty "Blowin' in the Wind" ended it. Lights down for the final time, and Dylan and Band walked to the front of the stage, where a visibly happy Dylan gave thumbs-up to both the audience and band members as the floods turned on.

Sixty-six years old, the man looked as if he could be in no other place or time than where he was right at that moment.

After the show, not feeling that I had contributed enough to keeping the economy healthy, we stopped at the Dylan bling table where I bought the world's most expensive - but cool- t-shirt. I also bought the concert poster for that night, which is pretty much what you see above, except with the venue and dates changed, of course.

It wasn't till the next day that we noticed that the poster listed Dylan as playing in "Manchester, MA." A collector's item.

Woo-Hoo!

I say again, Woo-Hoo!

In the Great North Woods For a Spell - Part 1

We did a couple of things differently this year. First, we went back to the same place a year later. While we have a handful of spots - almost all in Maine - that we return to regularly, I can't remember our ever vacationing at the same place two years in a row.

Second, we stayed at the same place for the entire trip; very unusual for the Bals, who tend to flit around like birds on their vacays.

But this was a "destination vacation," as Peggy put it. And it was.

We were so enthralled by the Great North Woods last year, and so disappointed that we had only stayed a handful of days that one - or maybe both of us - floated the idea of returning to Lopstick Cabins this time around for a full week. Unlike last year though, where reservations were easy, almost all of Lopstick's 35 cabins/camps had already been booked for the Labor Day weekend as early as June. But Peg was finally able to secure us a so-called "cabin," called Kiley that to me sounded as if was going to be a bit funky and run down, given that we were paying less for something larger than the cabin we had last year. But it was a choice of Kiley or nothing, so we crossed our fingers and did the 4-hour drive up to Pittsburg.

If you clicked on the link, you'll see that I had nothing to worry about. For reasons that still mystify me, the very economical Kiley cabin was more like a spacious camp, extremely private, and with a spectacular view of First Lake. Apparently, the camp's lack of fireplace and/or jacuzzi, both of which amenities came with the unnamed "Cabin 6" that we had stayed in the year before, lowered the price.

It would have been nice to have a fireplace, but we didn't really miss it.

Ahoy! Ahoy!

"Do you want to do something different and take a boat out on the lake tomorrow?" I asked Peggy innocently. And just as innocently, she answered, "Yes."

Now, I probably haven't been in - let alone touched - an outboard motor boat for some 40-years, but at one time in my blooming youth I spent most summers in and renting such boats on Sebago and Long Lake in Maine.

Indeed, most days my commute was taking a 12-footer powered by a lil' 25-hp from one end of Sebago to the other, through the Songo Locks ("But there's just one," Peg said in confusion when I finally took her to the Locks) into Brandy Pond and then under the drawbridge to Long Lake and the seaplane base and marina my father co-owned. Because we rented to turistas whose first exposure to boating was oft times when I walked them through the intricacies of a 10-hp Evinrude, I also spent an inordinate amount of time on the water finding and/or rescuing either them or our boat from whatever trouble they had managed to get themselves into. This could include replacing broken shear pins, towing abandoned boats back from wherever they had been beached, collecting day trippers who had gone too far, too long and weren't going to make it back before dark without help, and so on.

So, while many things outdoorsy can throw me into a full, nervous Woody Allen-like tizzy, I'm fairly comfortable on the lake, having dealt with much a lake can toss at you while at a tender age. Which would come in handy.

Peggy and I struck out about 11 a.m. on a warm cloudy morning after one of the lodge hands had walked me through running the little 8-hp motor. Not much had changed in the engineering over 40 years, so we puttered off without trouble. While First Connecticut is the 8th largest lake in New Hampshire, at 2800 acres it's about a tenth of the size of Sebago, so I figured I could easily motor us around the perimeter in a couple of hours. We were at the northern end when it started to sprinkle and the sky blackened.

"Not too bad," I thought, but decided to push back across the lake to the more civilized side, as we had nothing on our side except trees and rocks, and I didn't want to try to beach and hole up there if needed. If it had been five minutes later, I would have taken my chances beaching wherever we could, as the storm just blasted onto the lake, with the wind picking up, lightening bolts crackling around us , rain cascading down and the waves starting to white cap. With us now in the middle of the lake.

Not the first time I've been caught in a bad storm on a lake, and this was one of the worse. The rule is you definitely don't want to be the tallest thing on a flat surface in a metal boat. You get off the water as quickly as you can, and you find what shelter you can. Thinking of Sebago and summer camps, I told the brave Peggy we were heading to the closest cabin's beach. Occupied or not, I figured we could camp on their porch until the storm passed. But a Good Samaritan spotted us running in, waved us to his landing, a few hundred yards further down, and offered us - to continue the Dylanesque theme - shelter from the storm inside his camp, which we gladly took.

Of course, all I had done was beach the boat, and I had forgotten to lift the engine. The wind was blowing so fiercely that it was obvious that unsecured the boat would be sailing off to parts unknown, probably ruining the prop in the process. So even though our Good Samaritan told me he'd fire up his boat and help me recover ours later, I decided I couldn't get much wetter, and went back out and lashed our little boat to his dock.

About 1/2-hour later, the storm had passed, and the very wet Peggy and Fred thanked our Good Samaritans, took our very soggy selves back to the boat, and puttered off yet again.

About 5 minutes out, the motor died.

After running through a check list of "what could be wrong," it finally occurred to me that the smell of gasoline might not be a flooded engine and indeed, I had succeeded in somehow kicking the gas line loose while getting in a more comfortable position.

So much for the Mighty Sailor. Chastened, I rehooked the line, the engine - now with fuel - sputtered to life, and back we went to Lopstick to get dry clothes. We'd bop out one more time onto the lake later that afternoon, but with still-threatening skies, never fully completed our planned circuit.

But someday we will. And that ends Day One. Still to come - Peggy and Fred find the proverbial Twenty Miles of Bad Road.

Our Trip (as interpreted by Bob Dylan)

A trip summary by cue card a la Don't Look Back.



via Dylan Messaging.com.

We're So Officially On Summer Hiatus

To your left: Bear laughs at stupid human interaction with computers and mind-melds directly with the laptop.

Even though we have a bit to go before we go, I'm putting fhb officially on hiatus for the next few weeks, hoping that the "official" moniker will prompt me to start posting again when we get back from vacay. In the interim, until I do, you can currently find more regular postings at a Series of Tubes and fairly regular postings at Dreamtime.

See you - as the song goes - in September.

The Ol' Ball Game - The Sea Pups and Slugger at Haddock Field

Peggy and I went up to Portland for our 23rd anniversary last weekend, staying overnight so we could use a gift certificate to Vignola that my brother Lee had sent down. Vignola, located in restaurant row in Portland's Old Port, is highly recommended, btw, if you're in the mood for high-end Italian. I had the pork and veal meatballs with porcini mushrooms, tomato and pancetta and Peg had the grilled quail. Both were excellent.

A little weirdly, Vignola shares a basement kitchen with a "sister" restaurant, Cinque Terre, located a building away, which serves even higher-end Italian from the looks of its menu and prices. Vignola which is positioned as "casual" in their marketing, seems to be the Jan to Cinque Terre's Marcia Brady, but it was a fine choice as far as we were concerned.

Earlier in the day, we finally went to a Sea Dogs game, something we've talked about doing since the Pups, as I nicknamed them long ago, were a Marlins affiliate. Now they're the Red Sox's AA team, and they were playing New Hampshire's Fisher Cats last Saturday, giving us even more of an excuse to go - if we needed one.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not as rabid a baseball fan as Peggy. I like the Sox, but can seldom get through a full game on the tube. We'll maybe go to one or two live games a year, dependent on how many freebie tickets come our way from family and business. But, even with subsidized tickets, a trip to Friendly Fenway can put a serious dent in your pocketbook. Parking costs are outrageous unless you can come in by way of the T. You can easily lay out $40-50 for food and beer for two - and we're talking ballpark food and watery, lukewarm beer. You take an average-sized family to a major league park and you're talking an expensive day or night.

Plus - and I don't want to go into a rant about Fenway, because I actually do I kick out of going there - but it ain't a family ballpark all that much, advertising hype aside. It's mostly a park for testosterone-infused 20-somethings, too many with foul mouths on them, and listening to the constant F-bombs being dropped can quickly get old.

So, it's kind of nice to step back in time, and get something closer to what going to a ball game was probably like in the `40s and `50s. At the Pups' Hadlock field (which again, we had quickly twisted into "Haddock Field" for all the obvious reasons), you're almost sitting on the players, no matter where you're sitting. The place was crawling with kids and family, not surprising when general admission is $6 for adults and $3 for kids. Even box seats go for only $8 and $7.

The announcer comes on and tells you "no swearing allowed," and happily, there isn't. The game isn't bad, probably no one would consider it up to pro standards, but no one seems to much care either. We're all just having a good time.


The Pup's pitcher, a guy with the wonderful baseball name of Charlie Zink, throws an interesting knuckle ball which seems to have the Fisher Cats confounded for the six innings Charlie stays in. A reliever almost throws the game away with a handful of pitches, quickly bringing the to-then-scoreless Cats into the game with five runs. But the Pups' manager apparently wakes up from whatever reverie he's fallen into and seeing that an 8-0 game has turned into a 8-5 game in a matter of minutes, relieves the reliever with a new pitcher who gets Our Boys out of the inning, bloody but unbowed.

And the promotions! Hey, there is something happening every minute at a Sea Pups game, let me tell you, buddy. You got what seems to half the school population of Maine marching out on field pre-game to be acknowledged as part of "most improved student day." You got flying lobsters, tricycle races, basketball toss contests, baseball throw contests, a different contest going on every inning change. You got a family winning an upgrade from G.A. to box seats. You got little garbage can characters wandering around the aisles to remind you to dispose of your trash properly. You got Oakie the Acorn in the stands who almost got clobbered by a foul ball. You got entire rows being awarded free pizza because a Sea Pup batter knocked the ball for a double.

And you got Slugger - pictured above - the hardest working mascot in Double A, who arrives chauffeured in his own John Deere cart and proceeds to work the crowd for a full seven innings, shaking hands, passing out autographed Slugger cards, all while being escorted by his own bodyguard as he travels back-and-forth among the fans. Slugger culminates his game by - in close order - stomping a fan's Yankee cap; leading the crowd in a rousing traditional Take Me Out to the Ball Game; and then finishing with what is apparently a tradition at Haddock Field, a full-blown singalong version of YMCA, complete with arm gestures spelling out the letters. Tired but triumphant, Slugger calls it a day at the eighth inning. The Sea Dogs win the day, and Peggy and I decide we'll catch a repeat performance in June when the Pups visit the Cats in Manchester.

On Sunday we'd take a quick trip through Stroudwater village, an area I'd all but forgotten until Peggy saw a magazine about one of Maine's oldest settlements and asked me if I knew where it was. That open-ended question triggered another "when I was but a sprout in Maine " speech, because I did, in fact, know where it was very well. I promised to take the ever-patient Peg back in the Summer when things are prettier and the 252-year-old Tate House is open.


We wound up the trip with a drive to Ferry Beach and Camp Ellis in Saco since we wanted to check out the damage from the last N'Easter. Back when I was but a sprout in Maine, my family lived for a time in Ferry Beach in a little Cape Cod on Surf Street, which, as the name indicates, was parallel to the beach.

The old house was still there, but most of Surf Street, already damaged by earlier storms, was gone. You can click on the picture to your left to get a better image. You're looking up the "street" maybe 50 yards away from where I used to live as a kid. Where you see sand leading up to the blue house used to be asphalt. And that house looks like it will need to be torn down. Most of the underlying foundation is damaged. The storm literally demolished six other houses in the area.

Reports have it that Saco won't allow the houses that were damaged to be rebuilt. The owners claim that the Camp Ellis breakwater - which you can see to the left in the background - is in dire need of repair and once fixed will stop further erosion. Or maybe reverse erosion, I guess, as the beach is reclaiming what used to be dunes, beach pines, roads and homes.

Our favorite restaurant for steamers - Wormwoods, where my dog Butchie used to go to drink with clamdiggers - was still intact, and, after making sure of that, we headed home.