Year End

It's been a long one and over too quickly at the same time. Much has happened that I skipped because love needs me to for now or because I was too busy. Importantly, I failed to record my parents' 50th anniversary, which I attended in Fresno, and the trip to get there, which took me through Santa Barbara and visits with many of the friends and fellow writers about whom I've written previously in this forum--my hosts George and Amy and Chryss and, since it was Amy's birthday and she had a party, a cavalcade of Santa Barbara's elite (well, they're elite to me). There was an all too brief side trip to visit Chris and Nadya in Lompoc to deliver my tiny book. Then on to Fresno, a warm and lovely trip, topped off by my surprise arrival to the celebration that my sister Kelly organized magnificently, and which included many family members, cousins and uncles and aunts, including my brother Todd and his family, and even one old high school buddy, Mark Driscoll--some of whom I hadn't seen in years. Mom and Dad were radiant as I've ever seen them, even youthful. Then the next afternoon, I drank another bottle of wine and conversed with Peter Everwine (I wish everyone this new year the gift of a fine bottle shared with an imminently wise friend), and then briefly visited Charles Hanzlicek and his wife Diane and talked about life and politics and their war of election signs with their neighbor. In many ways, this trip was both time travel and another coat of laquer over the grain.

Time is weird. It passes largely outside of us, around us, because in this moment we feel largely the same, fizzing away in our acuities and abstractions, ebb as flow, so when we re-arrive into a bubble of familiarity many years later, its passing is writ in wrinkles and frailty on others and to them, I suppose, on me. But for me (and, yes, you), now is always now, and I feel much as I did back in school, a kid with a new piece of chalk or worried about Daisy Wallace and would she be all right after the fire that took so much from her. It never leaves, the senses of possibility and concern. Certainty and uncertainty swirl, and the un becomes one like Schrodinger's cat and you open the trunk and, looking right at it, you still aren't sure if it's dead or just sleeping. Yearning mediates each moment still, if not as uncontrollably, and loss accumulates irrepressibly, and to what end is always the wrong question to ask anyway. There's never an end. There's just stopping, and there's just going until you do. So, go.

On the Road Trip that Never Ends: Skipping Woodstock

I like writing about road trips, car full of scraps of places I've been, things I ate, windshield the best movie I ever saw, skies and skies. Asphalt and shoulder and exit and merge and falling rock. That painful self-extraction from the driver seat after three and a half hours at 80 miles per to buy gas and a bag of m&ms.

But I can't go to Woodstock the way I've gone everywhere else. I can't just report on the KTD monastery and my hike up the mountain, Bread Alone, beautiful Devil's Kitchen (and the black trumpets I picked there), The Poet's Walk on the Hudson, my crappy motel, buying a little Tibetan carpet, coffee and ice cream, Annadale and Rheinbeck. You see, I was with Amy those three days, and to try to report on all these moments, sweet as they were, makes all this too complicated for here. Love is not a tourist. I can't separate it out, and so I won't.

I went to Woodstock, and then I went home, spent one more night in a Virginia motel, sauteed those trumpets in butter with pasta, and arrived home to three cats and looming fall classes. I've been waiting for distance to kick in so I could narrate all this, so I could take what's inside and put it out here. I can't.

It's a Girl

Results

We guess http://sensesworking.blogspot.com is written by a woman (57%), however it's quite gender neutral.

Thanks to George (Georgia?) and the Gender Analyzer and Julia Kristeva, and yes, we just gotta have fun.

Seven Squared

Birthday starring two classics: a 1982 Leoville Las Cases and The Big Lebowski. Thanks to Rob for the latter. Thanks to my patience for the former.

Finally

For the first time in my life, I feel that I have a president. His speech moved me. His humility and grace, his sense of purpose, his refusal to bask in the glory of his triumph and instead point to the tasks ahead, well, Yes We Can.

McCain's concession flashed a return of a candidate I once admired even when I disagreed with him in 2000.

It's good to see the results closing very late in Georgia, even though it won't be enough.

We cannot rest. We cannot rest.

(But I can't resist celebrating with a good Barolo for Barack.)

Lucky 100 for Change and Hope: Random Thoughts.

Rest in peace, Toots. I hoped you'd be around long enough to see your grandson become president.

Polls show Obama with a large lead, but polls don't vote, so you have to. I "voted," but on Diebold machines, so who knows? Mark Crispin Miller and others say maybe I didn't. And even if I did, no one can prove it. If Obama wins Georgia, it'll put me at no end of ease, and I'll have to direct my paranoia elsewhere.

Sadly, a student reports a bunch of Obama signs stuffed behind the local Baptist Student Union and supposes they were stolen from people's yards. I guess "Thou shalt not steal" can be trumped by political self-righteousness. Funny how secular humanist relativistic reasoning comes in when these otherwise absolutists need a little ethical wiggle room.

What will I do with my time now that I'm not glued to fivethirtyeight.com, watching numbers rise and fall, trends dissected, etc.? If Obama wins, I'll start looking for the next Newt Gingrich. If he doesn't, I'll be looking at election returns the way I did in '04.

On a thoroughly pleasant note, it's Andrea's birthday today. Hope Atlanta is treating you well.

South from Vermont

I headed south through rural Vermont toward Massachusetts, where I passed Mt. Graylock, Melville's whale, and the rest of the Berkshire's, beautiful country at the heart of 19 century American Literature. I wanted to get out and climb, but I had no harpoon, so I Ishmaeled it out of there and stopped at the MassMOCA museum for a stroll in converted industrial buildings to absorb whatever they were showing. The best exhibits included Anselm Keifer's sculpture and paintings. The controversial sculpture (Connecticut courts forced the owners to remove it) filled a room with concrete and rebar, contemporary ruins to complement the giant landscapes exploring war. Earth erupts in blood and flowers. Jennifer Holzer's Projections pleased as well with its elaborate use of space to project bilaterally the poems of Wisława Szymborska into a dark warehouse-sized space filled with giant amorphous shapes. Words shined on me and seemingly through me. Eastern Standard: Western Artists in China was more problematic. Some of the images were stunning, but some photographs and video installations seemed rather to sneer at the environmental degradation occurring in China. Art revealing the obvious isn't art, and it's useless as journalism. Regardless, it was a fine way to spend a morning on my way to Woodstock.

After the museum, I passed through Stockbridge along with a plethora of vintage vehicles there for some kind of auto show. Because of the traffic, I didn't stop to find Alice's restaurant or wander through the antithesis of MassMOCA, the Norman Rockwell Museum. I had to go to Woodstock. I had to find my way to the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra monastery. I had to find Amy.

Interregnum: Trip Interrupted by Trip and Cold Water and Politics

I promised to blog but I'm so far behind I'm trying to remember remembering the details of my journeys--devil's horns under my seat--but it will all come out, Woodstock and California and the adventure of living without hot water for 6 weeks. Stay tuned, loyal reader. But in the midst of these interruptions, I interrupt myself with a rant:

I. The Free Market is My Weakness

Economic crisis? What crisis? A serious depression would have been the free market solution they've been promising all along, because a true free market is absolutely Darwinian and mercilous. Now we find out how those free marketeers react when they step out into the real wild: "Help me, mommy." Every promontory leads to an abyss and woe to those without precious metal parachutes. Most of us carry lead and bears are at the bottom, snarling, hungry.

In summary: capitalism, of course, capitalism, Capitalism, Capitalism!, CAPITALISM! CAPITALISM! CATACLYSM! Oh, socialism. . . . Better red-(faced) than bread (lines, that is). Just think of the "bailout solution" as, like, ANWR's for banks, where cash can still run free, protected by fiscal rangers to keep out the greed poachers and the financial "drill-baby-drillers."

I suppose. Better if someone had figured out ideas of balance and fairness, you know, like, rules, like, say, in baseball, where competition reigns, but you generally don't get four strikes and you have to stop at second if the ball you hit bounces over the center field wall.

Look, the free market isn't all bad. It's great for ipods and fast cars and boner pills and giant fake breasts and anal bleaching and baldness and cell phones and single malt Scotch and reality TV and make-up and golf clubs and fine, leather fetishwear and all things chia.

It's just lousy for antibiotics and health care and education and nation building and natural disaster recovery and our voting procedures (those softwares are a protected trade secret, your honor). You don't want someone looking in your jaundiced eye saying first, "We've got a spectacular new ocular peroxide treatment that will take that yellow out, pronto, Susie. No one will ever know you have scirrosis." You don't want Blackwater thugs on the streets of New Orleans with semi-automatics and immunity and no clear chain of command (that's a trade secret, your honor).

Yes, the free market can do some things better, but certainly not everything. And it's funny how so many of those so-called free marketeers adulate the military so much, despite the fact that it's the biggest social(ist) program in American history, despite Donald Rumsefeld's attempts to auction as much as possible to the least competant but most well-connected bidder. It's hippocrazy season again.

II. Christian Fundamentalism (What would Jesus Do [without you]?)

Clearly, if you were are a born-again, fundamentalist evangelical Christian who believes that global warming is God's will and Barack Obama is the anti-Christ, don't you have to vote for him? I mean, if you're completely right about prophecy included in a selected anthology compiled a few hundred years after quasi-historical events? Don't you have an Obama sign in your yard? Clearly, God isn't omnipotent enough to handle Armageddon without your personal intervention, which is why you're so interested in Israeli politics, after all. Clearly, that "Render unto Caesar" detail wasn't about separation of church and state. It certainly was not about that Roman governor who sentenced your community organizer to death. So, yes, a true believer and avid reader of Left Behind books would have to vote Obama.

III. Rovey Wade

This is the most egregious fake political issue in history. This is where liberals are most conservative, and conservatives most liberal. Roe vs. Wade is a conservative decision. It keeps government out of your decisions as long as possible. The government has no business, as it were, in your lady business, period (no pun intended), or lack thereof (ok, intended). I'm pro-choice and anti-abortion with respect to my own personal decisions (nuance alert: I don't believe life begins at conception, nor do I confuse seeds with trees, and I am, to follow through, snipped), but I don't presume to impose my personal values out of inspired self-righteousness on others. In fact, I have yet to meet anyone who is truly pro-abortion, who would like to see abortion figures increase (though many pro-lifers are for the death penalty and would cheer more executions; go figure).

The problem is, pro-lifers are being manipulated (Karl). No one tells pro-lifers that Roe vs. Wade also protects women from forced abortions. No business in your business? Why should it work for the free market but not for your body? Ok, it doesn't completely work for the free market (see above), but I don't think anyone advocates late term abortions as a method of birth control, either (though, ironically, post-term abortion [capital punishment] remains popular). A significant personal and spiritual ambiguity exists here, and a decision should respect a woman's choice and her faith, whatever it is, and should ultimately strive to preserve her health. Roe v. Wade does that.

Leaving Vermont

The next morning was wine-slow and blinky, but we ate breakfast and I packed to leave. The plan was to head to New Hampshire and stop at an amazing wine store Wyn had talked about where you could get free Ch. Haut Marbuzet and we looked at maps and drank coffee quietly, weary of the previous evening's celebration. It was time to leave Wyn and Shawna's lovely home and company and head south, toward Woodstock, then home, but I had a day to kill before Woodstock.

I got in the car and drove down the hill, the gravel drive, and at the end of it, I made a financial call and decided not to go to New Hampshire. Decided to head back toward Bennington where I had spotted a motel that boasted of $35 rooms, and it was near enough to Bennington to explore the town a little more and to enjoy hiking and the view of the small lake across the road. Cash only. I liked the guy that owned the place, his hat and his moustache. "Cash only," he said, but he let me go into town to get some.

The hike lacked the beauty or views of the hike up Hogback, but it was exercise and I needed that. I stepped in mud. Later I went into town for coffee and people were gathering. A woman was chatting familiarly to several people and then she announced that she would read poetry, so I stayed in solidarity. She even read a few about central California, where I'd moved to Georgia from. Spring wildflowers and I even heard her say "Oxnard." I smiled, thought of Jackson Wheeler. She read about it as though the coastal mountains were exotic and amazing. It is. They are, but if you live there, Vermont is exotic and infinitely greener and the towns are small and Vermont seemed a liberal paradise.

I applauded the poet's efforts and went searching for something to cook in the room that night for dinner, found a nice grocery store with decent wine selection and purchased a few things for dinner, naan and a good Spanish wine and cheese and headed back out of town to make dinner (naan pan pizza and pasta and salad) and enjoy the spartan room. It had the same shower my house in Georgia had when I bought it, something plastic and cheap, suitable for summer camp. I smiled at that. It was a quiet place, a quiet night. I sipped a little of the Spanish and thought about Woodstock, about seeing Amy.

Vermont Feast: Day 3

My last full day in Brattleboro was simple. Shawna had planned a feast for the evening. Before the feast, we went on a hike up Hogback Mountain, once used for skiing, and now only for "snowmachining" (thanks, wannaveep). The trail was often overgrown, and a couple of garter snakes slithered across, frightening Shawna, until we reached the top, on which loomed a large old firetower, occupied by other hikers when we arrived. I went up, and Wyn and Shawna decided to stay below since they'd seen the view and knew the ricketyness of the tower. Wyn said I'd be able to see a hundred miles, and I would see Melville's Mount Greylock to the south and the White Mountains to the north. The occupants left as soon as I reached the top (sniff armpits--not too bad given the climb) but they talked to Wyn and Shawna while I enjoyed the view. It was wonderful and windy and the only problem was the scratched up glass windows that I had to hold open to see all the green folds of New England.

Afterwards we cut over to the road, where there was a cheesy (literally) giftshop. I spotted a chanterelle just off the trail under a tree as we approached-- small, but at its pickable peak--and so I was able to talk fungus and let Wyn and Shawna smell the delightful apricot aromas of the fresh cantharellus cibarius and then walk around the store guarding the little gold treasure in my palm. We snacked on salami and cheese and crackers and watched all the RVers who stopped to load up on maple syrup and Vermont cheddar and corny tee shirts and other chachkies. We walked back down Hogback and, just before the road, I spotted two large, perfect chanterelles under a tree and I added those to the collection, and Shawna added them to the dinner menu.

We made it back to their house in the early afternoon and Shawna immediately commenced cooking, and Wyn set the grill up for the steaks and opened the lovely Lemelson. The menu speaks for itself and for the kind of evening we savored, so here it is:

Hors d' oeuvres

Heirloom tomato bruschetta

Gravlax on cucumber
with capers & crème fraiche

Parmesan cups with herbed farmers cheese

Main Course

Grilled steak
with red wine reduction & Chanterelles

Potatos au gratin with bleu cheese

Fillet beans
with marcona almonds

Mixed green salad
with carrots & blue cheese

Wines

Lemelson Thea’s Vineyard Oregon Pinot Noir 2005
Morgan Double L Vineyard Pinot Noir 2006
Foxen Vogelzang Vineyard Cabernet 2005
Siro Pacenti Rosso di Montalcino 2005

Shawna's an amazing cook. We ate and drank too much and too well again, and talked over this divine feast all night and the stars again and I didn't want to leave this lovely place but I didn't want to kill Wyn and Shawna with their own superb hospitality. I can't thank them enough for being such wonderful hosts and friends. Come down so I can cook ya'll up something southern, and, of course, my wine cellar's always open for you, Wyn and Shawna.

Vermont, Day 2: er, mmm, It's a, all about the Ol'. . . . Mamet's, his play, um, Oleana

It was a late morning kind of previous evening, but I awakened early enough to sneak out and do some more serious mushroom foraging and to get a sense of the landscape up the hill, and found a trail up behind the house that let me explore it more. The trail led past a rocky area toward the next farm. Further up, according to Wyn, was a stone marker memorializing a triple murder/suicide that had taken place on what had been a larger farm about a hundred years ago: farmhand hot for the farmer's wife and things got out of hand, an old story. Trees, slope, rocks, a small stream. I found a few past-perfect chanterelles, some nice bicolor boletes, and one stunning Caesar's mushroom (amanita caesari) that I was tempted to try, but I don't eat amanitas, since a mistake can be fatal.

Back at the house, Wyn had the eggs out and toast in the oven coffee and we set into planning the day around Shawna's evening performance, a staged reading of Mamet's Oleana for a community theater across the river in New Hampshire. Shawna would spend the day at kick boxing, then getting ready, while Wyn would show me more of the area and run an errand or two. He showed me Saul Bellow's house, near his, and the sky opened up into muscular rain and we stopped and chatted for awhile with Wyn's friend, a Marlboro graduate who did interesting work in Physics and Photography and chi, while stopping to pick up some organic garlic. We then stocked up on provisions--by provisions I mean wine and by wine I mean from the lovely Wyndham Wines run by people who know wine very well, people who gave up academic tenure to pursue this dream, and by dream I mean I'm damned jealous. We spent maybe 90 minutes in the store, too long, since Wyn and I were going to have dinner at Alici's and we had to make the play at 8:00. Shawna doesn't eat before she performs, so we were to meet her after. Wyn and I shared some exquisite carpaccio and a half bottle of cab and I ordered a very rare filet mignon burger, which for 10 dollars was a bargain. It was served with truffle-0il fries and garnished with blue cheese, spinach, and tomato, and it was second in my experience only to the legendary burger served at My Father's Office in Santa Monica. Wyn ordered the duck confit pizzeta, which tasted very good (could have been just a bit more confit), and the server sped things along nicely so we could enjoy the food despite our limited time there.

We walked into the theater just before the beginning of the play. I wasn't sure what to expect, since I'd never seen a staged reading. I knew the play, though, having taught it once, and I found it difficult for freshman who struggled with Mamet's verbal ticks and the moral difficulties presented by both characters. I wasn't sure what to expect, but Shawna and the male lead were both stellar, and the setting, a professor's office, was perfect for making the play book just another part of the usual professor's office detritus. The play is a study in power--age, gender, and institutional power relationships--and no one comes off sympathetically. The male lead, a lawyer with much professional acting experience, crumbled magnificently, while Shawna played her character with wonderful nervous subtlety despite the tremendous vocabulary shift that occurs between act I and act II. I remember this shift seeming heavy handed when I read it, but not here. Shawn, however, deftly presented the character's discomfort with the vocabulary as she spoke it. When it was over, we headed to the Pub after all the post play congratulations and then back to the house for a little more wine and conversation, stared up and up at the beautiful stars, the milky way evanescing above the trees.

We Have Been to Vermont, Day 1

The landscape changes suddenly out of the Albany/Schenectady corridor into southwest Vermont. Route 9 changes to Route 7, billboards and traffic vanish. Suddenly an obelisk towers (I want to veer onto the side road and touch it, but my thumbs and politics are already opposable) over the valley in which Bennington nestles, famed for its writing workshop, and, according to Wyn Cooper, a place I'm more likely to run into John Gardner's ghost, since he spent much time there. I stop in town for coffee and a walk up and down the main drag, festooned with statues of people very much like an Americana statue I recall from Santa Barbara of a guy washing a window, kid sitting on his shoulders. He's here, too, or his brother, along with numerous others by the same artist. It makes me think of State Street, but it's only three blocks long, no Museum of Art or Anthropologie or Restoration Hardware or Saks. It's quiet and cute, and I don't see a chain anything, so I get a cappuccino at the non-Starbucks and head east over the Green Mountains toward Brattleboro, toward Wyn and Shawna's place in the mountains above Marlboro.

I nearly missed the turn off of Route 7, but slammed on the brakes, thankfully no one behind me. The pavement vanished and I was on back roads into the low mountains, ultimately along the Green River until I found Wyn and Shawna's driveway--steep gravel up to a lovely home with a large deck. Wyn and Shawna were there with open arms and smiles, but Shawna had work and rehearsal, so I wouldn't see her much till later. I felt immediately welcome. Their house is gorgeous, filled with art and broadsides and books, ensconced in maple and pine forest just up the hill from the Green River. After catching up about the drive, etc., Wyn readied to take me to the "swimming hole" at an old wood damn beside a covered bridge about ten minutes from his house. I suspected immediately that this would be a lovely place to look for mushrooms and, while he was getting ready, I stepped outside and found a chanterelle in the woods just steps from the back of his house. When he came out, we jumped in his sweet '63 MG and headed into the village down the river a bit. He swam while I balanced on the rocks. I was ambivalent about getting in. I'd have to undress. Wyn explained that nudity was legal in Vermont unless a community passed a specific law against it. Still, there was a couple there from NYC and, more importantly, the water was chilly, so I just stayed with the rocks and the river music and enjoyed the scenery and the sweet air. We chatted briefly with the NY couple before we headed back to the house, then into Brattleboro to shop for provisions--by provisions, think wine--to go along with the Memphis barbecue Wyn planned to pick up for dinner after Shawna's rehearsal.

We went into town and it happened to be a first friday artwalk evening, and we walked through several very cool galleries and Wyn introduced me to a few of the area artists and gallery owners. We stopped at a local brewpub for a beer, and Wyn knew everybody, it seemed, so he had to make a few rounds around the room. I sipped my beer and enjoyed the atmosphere. Wyn sat down and we enjoyed our pints. The server was also a friend who had acted with Shawna, and Wyn explained that she would soon be off to Guatemala, plans unspecified. She recognized my Califone T-shirt and we talked a little about the music before her next round was up and she had to leave. Life in Brattleboro is good. I have finally been to Vermont and I can retire the first poem I ever published ("Lunchtime in Vermont"), which was, to be kind to it, an exercise in line breaks and immature mindfuck postmodernism, as I understood it at twenty.

Later, we picked up the barbecue, supped late, and drank later--excellent barbecue washed down with big wines, including a lovely Italian Aglianico Rubrato and a Turley Moore Earthquake, both gorgeous wines with barbecue. Good wine and good food don't matter, though, if the company isn't up to the sensual pleasures. Wyn and Shawna, on the other hand, as we all love fine foods and grand vins, would make peasant bread and a jug of dago red a royal meal. We talked late, too late, about Shawna's impending performance, friends, poetry, music, art, politics, love, and who knows what else? I was there and it was a perfect evening. All I can say is thanks for my good fortune, my good friends. I hope I can return the favor one day.

Toward New England with hot plate.

Wednesday, July 30th at the crack of 10 a.m., I crawled into the Hyundai with cds and a few bottles of wine and much to think about, and set off north to see Wyn and Shawna in Brattleboro and Amy in Woodstock. While driving can be a kind of emotional peristalsis, I'll focus on the more mundane, the gourmandish kind. Instead of fast food or Shoney's or truck stop fare along the way (in great contrast to my friend at Imnotonetoblogbut's Parisian gastronomic orgy), I picked up a 10-buck hotplate at Big Lots and threw some utensils and olive oil in a bag, along with a cooler full of stuff that I'd have to throw away (bananas, organic eggs, cheese, salad fixins, juice) if I didn't take it, along with a bag of pasta shells and a can of sauce. The first night in Roanoke, VA was simple. I got there around 8ish and found a grocery story across the street to augment my simple pasta shells and sauce dinner with a full salad (nothing special, but healthier than the Waffle House and McDonald's within walking distance of my curry-scented [I'd love to have knocked on the door and held out a bowl] Travelodge). A spiced egg with a little balsamic vinegar sunnyside up on toast (roasted gingerly pinched with a fork and a spoon over the open burner) made a simple and filling breakfast the next morning before I headed north again.

I hit Binghamton, NY, in the early evening with plenty of time to walk around downtown and along the river, and to look for a decent restaurant and the ghost of John Gardner, but finding Binghamton generally abandoned, and arriving the day before Spiedie fest (one-handed grilled sandwiches suitable for Grendal), my choices were limited. Instead, I headed to the grocery store near the hotel, picked up some live clams and local Italian sausage and bread, and decided to busy myself for the long evening steaming clams in dark beer, cooking pasta and sausage, and enjoying these with bread and salad and a decent red. It's a serial process, but given the lack of nightlife thereabouts, it made the evening pass simply and deliciously, though I'd have loved to stick around and sample the full variety of spiedie's. After a breakfast of another egg, quesadilla, and a banana, I headed to Vermont for finer and more fulfilling culinary experiences.

Congratulations, Jason Lezak

He touched the wall first, sprinting from behind to wash all the mots from the trash-talking and heavily favored French team. Everybody saw it. You saw it. Michael Phelps saw it and his joy was the image the media loved, but, athletically, Jason's performance was among the finest perfomances in the history of Olympic swimming, and definitely the finest in relays. His swim was a celebration of will.

I loved it most because I didn't know Jason was on this year's team until he took his turn. I hadn't been paying much attention to the Olympics. Phelps lead off and I watched, went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and listened to the progress. I was excited to hear the announcer call Jason's name, because he was one of my business writing students at UCSB, and we used to talk about swimming and basketball (my sport) and his plans. He was serious about improving and making nationals, talking possibilities, angles that would make him better. He was committed.

What impressed me most was that he thought about swimming long-term. He talked about the work he needed to do, his faults, the demands of the sport, his desire, all the realities of the swimming world. He was very good, tall, broad-shouldered, and slim, and he knew it, but he wasn't any kind of physical freak. Yet he excelled, and I remember being surprised to read that he'd won a gold in the relay in Sydney, and then medalled again in Athens. I figured he was done, had had a great career--it's a sport for the young, after all.

Not this year. Dana Torres couldn't be my daughter, and Jason--younger than her by several years--couldn't be my son. He demonstrated what work and commitment and long term devotion can do. He's an exceptional athlete, though more for his work ethic and determination than his simple physical ability. Congratulations, Jason. You definitely earned it.

Update: Jason helped Michael Phelps pick up his 8th with another superb relay anchor, plus he picked up his first individual Olympics medal (bronze) in the 100 m. freestyle.

Just the facts

Back from Vermont and New York, and here are a few random facts. Narratives to come.

Miles I schlepped: 2600+

" per gallon: 35, freeway

Highest priced gas: $4.07 9 (Woodstock)

Cheapest gas: $3.379 (Southern Maryland)

Folks visited: Wyn and Shawna in Vermont, Amy at the KTD monastery, Woodstock.

Most beautiful scenery: Devil's Kitchen cataract from the cliff edge with Amy. (Hike to firetower above 100-mile viewpoint, VT with Wyn and Shawna was an excellent second).

Best wine: You'll have to wait. There were many and they were excellent.

Best meal: Shawna's (menu to come).

Scariest moment: Sudden downpour on 81 that washed the windshield opaque.

Museum visited: Mass MOCA.

Play attended: Olleana (starring Shawna).

Movie: The Wackness.

Subtle surprise: Server at the pub in Brattleboro (and friend of my hosts) recognized my Califone t-shirt. Hope she likes Guatemala.

Mushrooms foraged and enjoyed: Chanterelles and boletus bicolor in VT; bb and black trumpets in NY.

Worst road name: Beaver Ruin Road (north of ATL).

Best Hotel: Lakeview outside Bennington for $35, cash only and a plastic shower exactly like the one I ripped from my bathroom.

Best new custom: Motel hotplate cooking (recipes to follow?).

What I missed at home: Ninja Gun CD release party and a shed show.

Best Bread. Bread Alone's SF Organic Whole Grain Levain.

Best moment: Looking in Amy's eyes again and finding her happy in Woodstock.