It’s been done before so I won’t put up any videos, but Happy Thanksgiving! Here are a few things I’m grateful for:
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
Charles Darwin, “The Origin of Species”
I saw that quote when I was looking at what I wrote ten years ago — no idea why I quoted it back then, Darwin Day is in February. Meanwhile, this is what I wrote twenty years ago. Strange to think that the two main characters (other than myself) in that long-ago Thanksgiving are no longer with us.
It’s been months since our trip and the details are getting blurry, and I still have a bit more to get to, so here’s basically a mashup of several days where we did the tourist thing.
Distillery tours! This is a must-do in the part of Scotland we visited. Aberdeenshire, as one local pub denizen emphatically told another while I eavesdropped, is not the Highlands, but we were very close to several famous distilleries, and I think this day trip was one of the highlights for Donna and John as tour guides. We hit two on this day: Balvenie and Glenlivet, to see how whisky was made. The big parts of their presentation had to do with malting and drying the malt, and the barrel aging of the whisky — the coopery that maintained their barrels was a point of pride for Balvenie. Needless to say, we got to sample what they had, from almost-raw whisky through the world famous finished products. (To be honest, I didn’t think I’d make it through the sample flight at Balvenie, but I’m glad I did.) Very educational, and super fun.
This was a day I had to myself: John needed to do some legal/financial stuff for the house they were buying, and Donna & Anne were off on a shopping trip to Banff. I just spent the morning walking about Gardenstown, taking pictures of the different little sections: High Green where we were staying, Seatown where John & Donna’s rental (and new vacation home) were, and the harbor itself. (Mind you, all of these parts were withing spitting distance of each other — it really is a small town.)
I joined John in the afternoon, and we all went to dinner when the ladies got back.
This was another highlight, especially for Donna! She really like showing off her local discoveries, and this was an unexpected find from several years back when they were looking for fun things to do with Iain and Finn. It was fun for us too, and a real “touching grass” moment: the views all around, the look of the birds up close, and especially the feel of them landing and taking off from your hand…
The woman who owned the place was really nice too, she showed us around after the demonstration and then invited us in for tea.
Stay tuned for just a wee bit more, I have maybe one or two posts left in the series.
Happy GIS Day! Also, happy 163rd Anniversary of the Gettysburg Address!
Well, today marks the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmond Fitzgerald.
Probably one of my favorite songs, I didn’t realize until just a few years ago that it was about a contemporary event, not some ancient story of a shipwreck — the wreck was in 1975, and the song came out in 1976.
I’ve seen some joking, an uptick in Internet interest; the song and story are having a bit of a moment. Good.
I’m currently hanging out at a coffee shop (Bitty & Beau’s) downtown. They have some big, floor to ceiling windows, and I’m enjoying the view of the Fall weather outside: it’s sunny, and a a bit breezy, and many trees still have their foliage — which finally turned spectacularly colorful the last week or so — but there are a few leaves blowing by every so often, just like the groups of little brown birds also flitting about outside. The weather outside is pleasant enough, I walked over and it was really nice, but sitting in here and watching is even nicer.
I’ll head home in a bit, then walk over to Southside to meet Doug at Wishful Thinking (formerly the Bavarian Tavern), then I’m meeting Anne at Bonn Place around 6:00. Ironically enough, we’re meeting at Bonn Place to see a show featuring artists named Doug. (Another friend, and you can guess his name, is one of the exhibitors.)
We have Iris tomorrow, and we’ll probably take her up to Jacobsburg for a trail walk.
This is what I wrote five years ago, and this is what I wrote ten years ago.
We did a few things on day three, but it started out with another picture-perfect morning:
Our hike over Troup Head started among the barley fields and eventually led to a cliffside trail, where said cliff was home to a huge gannet colony. We could see them flying out over the water, and every so often we could get a view of the cliffs themselves, covered in birds.
We made two more stops on the drive home to check out some historic ruins: the stone circle on top of Aikey Brae, and the ruins of Deer Abbey.
This was a short drive from the Troup Head trailhead, and a short walk from our parking spot brought us to a sort of mini-Stonehenge where we ate our lunch — the site was built maybe 4000 years ago, and used for a few centuries in some way connected with lunar observations before falling into disuse. It was kind of neat, but I was disappointed to not get any vibes off the place.
Deer Abbey is the name of a monastery founded in the 12th century. It was converted into a manor home in the 16th century, eventually fell into ruin and is now a historic site. We stopped here on the drive home for a quick walk around.
We did this hike later in the day, starting from Gardenstown.
Crovie is the next fishing town over, less than a mile to the east of Gardenstown along the beach. There used to be a road atop a seawall between the towns, but that washed away maybe 75 years ago, leaving a footpath accessible at low tide. There is also a footpath along the cliff, from the upper village at Gardenstown to the road into Crovie just outside of town, we walked this path to Crovie and took the beach path home. (I think this is one of Donna’s daily hikes when she’s there.)
Well, the stone roof for my father’s final home has finally been installed. They put the gravestone in place sometime last week, and Mom and I visited the gravesite on Monday. It looks really good:
It was good to finally see it in place. Dad’s actual burial place will no longer be a guess, it’s a real milestone on our way to closure, and it turned out really nice. Mom loved it.
It was a good day to be at the cemetery too: quiet, sunny and autumnal, it left me feeling peaceful and introspective. I’d been feeling Dad’s death a little harder recently, especially after hearing the stone was finished; seeing it for myself made me feel a bit better.
I went to physical therapy on Wednesday and the place was closed: on the door was a notice that Dr Sewards, aka Dr Pat, aka Doc, had passed away a few days before. His obituary can be found here.
I don’t know when and why Anne first went to Dr. Pat, but she recommended him to me almost ten years ago for my knee. He was an orthopedic surgeon who almost always recommended against surgery unless absolutely necessary, and advocated motion and exercise for almost all bone/joint problems. His office was mostly a gym, with a bunch of greybeards like myself working our muscles and joints to 60’s-era rock. (Strangely enough, this office was in the building that used to be the West End Community Center, where PPRAC had a bunch of meetings and parties — my last time there, before Dr. Sewards took over about a decade ago, was for Janna’s 50th birthday.)
Dr Sewards gave both Anne and me excellent treatment and advice, and he helped lot of other people too. He was also very inspiring — he overcame some serious injuries himself, back in his youth. I don’t know what’s going to happen with his practice, without him it probably can’t continue the way it is now. His passing left a big hole in the world.
Thomas Pynchon seems to be having a moment right now, with a new novel out and a movie loosely (very loosely) based on another.
Movie: We saw One Battle After Another the other night. It was a pretty intense movie, with some great acting. The plot was a stripped-down and modernized version of the one in the novel Vineland, but I’ll leave no spoilers for either one. Just go see it. I don’t know if it will win any Oscars, but it should get nominations in several categories, especially for the acting.
Novel: Meanwhile, I picked up Shadow Ticket this afternoon. I’m only about a dozen pages in but I’m already enjoying it a lot. Reviews say it’s not his best, but I don’t care: to me it’s classic Pynchon and a whole lot of fun.
