Around Here

The week between Christmas and New Year feels like a hiatus. Business as usual is touched with an air of suspension. I went to the local beach with a couple of neighbors, to the bistro for a beer. A musical duo was doing covers of Earth Wind & Fire, Jimmy Buffet, The Drifters, Sunday-afternoon-at-the-beach fare. It was crowded and content, post festive, filled with buff young dads, going just a tad soft... in other words in their prime. Fit young mothers, the most beautiful women in the world. Gangly children, abstract and tanned. "Children are Egyptian," artist Andrew Wyeth once said of their austerity, not at all like Renoir's sugary confections. A couple of boomers were dancing. Ruth told a story about persuading her son to be a medic in Vietnam to keep him safe from mortal combat. In his first month there, his company was ambushed and a Vietcong insurgent broke Alec's rifle over his femur, breaking that too, bit him on his shoulder, and made off with all the p...

I’ve been spending time on the water, paddling the Great Caloosa Blueway, a random piece at a time. Civilization shrinks, out there, to the size of my boat, and whatever I’ve brought along... a carton of chili, a coke, some shortbread, first aid, a towel, tea, and a camera. With the weather expected to turn rainy and cool late in the week, it looked like my last shot at a sunny outing for a while, so I thought I’d explore the coast of Glover Bight preserve, a six mile round-trip to the southwest.  After putting in at Bimini Basin, a leisurely paddle down several connecting canals brought me after an hour or so to open water, where a pair of looping dolphins escorted me out to Redfish Cove. The wind picked up there and a bit of a chop shifted my focus from taking in the scenery to negotiating the deep water. Mother nature, like most of her sex has a way, at times, of returning your attention to where it belongs. “Hey, mister... I’m down here. ” Yes, m’am.  My little Old Town ...

I thought I’d surprise my brother, who usually takes the shuttle from the airport, and pick him up at the gate. Southwest Regional is a newish airport, whose spaciousness puts me in a spacey frame of mind. Its service roads are freeways, with exit ramps with multiple choices. I wasn't able to access the right path to the parking garage until I had first chosen wrongly, twice, and had to drive the big loop back to the main entrance only to return to the enigmatic trident of forking ramps once again. Finally I managed to take the one as yet not taken, which proved fruitful. Once inside, there was time to get a cappuccino at Starbucks. And there was still time to check my hair. So I set the coffee down on an enigmatic service box outside the men’s room and went in for an evaluation and a ruffle. Back outside, no sooner had I lifted my coffee off the enigmatic service box, than a public address announcement informed everybody that the alert code was “...