I wish I was holed up in a taverna in Italy today-- how often does a nation have finalists in Wimbledon and the Euro Cup . . . on the same day?
Somebody Had to Write It
Though it's weird, trippy, and evocative-- with Vietnam flashbacks and spooky black magic in equal measure-- Herman Raucher's novel Maynard's House mainly explores this conceit:
what if Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately, but his house was haunted by evil succubi and witchery?
Poker, I Don't Even Know Her . . .
My son Alex and I both read Maria Konnikova's The Biggest Bluff-- and it inspired us to play some poker-- her story is compelling and inspirational, as she goes from not knowing how many cards are in the deck to competing on the world circuit (in a year's time) but be warned-- she's very very smart and has a world class coach (Eric Seidel) and so while her lessons are universal-- the subtitle of the book is "How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win"-- and she also has some specific tips about playing poker-- her main metaphor is to be a good poker player you've got to simultaneously be a detective and a storyteller-- BUT if you really want to know what it takes to succeed on the poker tour you've got to get real and read Phil Gordon's Little Gold Book : Advanced Lessons for Mastering Poker 2. 0 and this will lend a dose of reality to your dreams of becoming a pro-- range vs. range, combinatorics, variance, bankrolls, pot odds, PioSOLVER and HUDS, Game Theory Optimal, etcetera . . . poker competition is fierce and the fish are scarce now-- which makes Konnikova's story all the more impressive.
An Epic Hike and an Epic Ride to End an Epic Trip . . . But It Had to be the Shoes
It rained some on Sunday, but we were able to take a nice hike with the dog along the old narrow-gauge railroad tracks in Sullivan . . .
and then our last full day down east was a beauty-- 46 degrees in the early morning, slowly rising to a high of 71-- so we got up early and headed back to Acadia for one last epic and precarious hike-- the Dorr Mountain Ladder Trail . . . I highly recommend this hike but get there early, as the roadside parking fills up by ten AM; the hike was made even more precarious because of the heavy rain the night before-- we were essentially hiking up a waterfall of stone stairs-- so you really had to watch your step, but it was worth it, for the views and the interesting terrain . . .
the trail was built from 1913 to 1916 and it's a feat of mountainside engineering-- it may be one of the best hikes in the world, in terms of bang for your buck, views, instant gratification, and lack of tedium;
every turn is something new and interesting;
and you get up really high in a fast fashion
and there are blueberries at the top of Dorr Mountain
coming down wasn't quite as treacherous, but there were still some slippery sections
but it was obviously worth it-- this hike is far less crowded and far more shaded than the Beehive and offers even better vistas;
after the hike, we went to the quaint and uncrowded town of Ellsworth and had delicious burritos at 86 This . . . definitely quieter and cheaper than Bar Harbor, and then we headed back to the place for some final round of cornhole, some final soaks in the hot tub, and the big pack up so that we could get started at 6 AM on Tuesday morning . . . and everyone did a fantastic job packing up and we actually got driving at 6:16 AM on Tuesday morning-- so we'd be home in time to watch Italy play Spain, but best-laid plans, an hour-and-a-half down the road, Catherine yelled "the shoe bags!" and we all realized that we had left all our footwear hanging behind the door of the place-- and it was a LOT of footwear: running shoes and tennis shoes and hiking boots and sandals-- a few hundred dollars worth of shoes-- just enough that we had to turn around and drive back, perhaps adding three hours to our 8-hour drive . . . so we drove back, Lola got out, confused, and peed, and we got the shoes and piled back in-- but we didn't realize that now we would be headed into the teeth of Connecticut and NYC traffic AND a monster thunderstorm . . . so after several Joe Rogan podcasts (and an interesting story about Chippendale's called Welcome to Your Fantasy) we arrived home at 7:45 PM . . . over thirteen hours in the car-- Lola was a hero-- she never threw up or whined, and Catherine did a great job driving through the storm on our way to the George Washington bridge-- there was lots of flying garbage!-- and it was an epic end to an epic trip . . . perhaps one of our last true fmaily only vacations, as the kids are getting older and now have to start summer employment and all that-- and as a final treat, Italy beat Spain in PKs . . . and I never learned the score so I was able to watch the game and pretend we made it home at the right time.
The Auctioneer: A Good Book for Independence Day
The Auctioneer was a brief bestseller in1975 and then promptly forgotten-- perhaps because the youngish author, Joan Samson, soon after died of cancer-- but it's been reissued (with a Grady Hendrix intro) and it's more appropriate than ever; it's about Harlowe-- a small town in New Hampshire experiencing change-- there was a back-to-the - movement in the 60s and 70s that brought new people and culture to rural America, city slickers . . . and the city slicker in this novel is a menacing, Trump-like auctioneer who becomes very close with the chief of police . . . and then bad things start to happen, very bad things; it's allegorical like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and the prose is spare like later Cormac McCarthy books; it's the opposite of Jack Ketchum's Off Season-- which is about not messing with the locals-- in this book, the locals are messed with and messed with, not unlike what's happened in current rural America-- and there's eventually going to be some sort of falling out and it might be liberating but it also might be ugly.
Baby Seals Conquer Dave Jones' Locker
We got up early this morning-- and it was COLD-- and we headed a few minutes up the road to Hancock Point Kayak Tours, which is an old coot named Antoine's house . . . Ant, as he is called, is a Master Sea Kayak guide and he really knows his stuff . . . but he does not fool around during the safety discussion; our family was joined by another group of four-- two moms and their respective kids-- and Ant got right down to business: he explained the sequence of steps required to enable the red DISTRESS button on his radio-- which he keeps in his pocket because in 2016 a Maine kayak guide and one of the folks on his tour drowned and died-- and so he just wanted to get the worst-case scenario out of the way . . . if he drowned and died and we were able to latch onto his hypothermic corpse, we could then grab the radio out of his front pocket and call for help . . . and then he went right into the protocol for if you make a grave error and flip the kayak and need to pull your spray skirt loose and get yourself out from under the boat . . . my family found the grim start to his talk kind of amusing but it made one of the mom's very nervous-- she asked how often this sort of stuff happened and she looked and sounded quite anxious-- and we found out this was for good reason; she was a widow-- and her son was only fourteen-- and she had a rough time during COVID as a single mom with two teenagers-- and in 2018 her cousin-- A Norfolk Academy/William and Mary guy that some of my friends knew-- drowned in a riptide trying to swim out to his daughter-- so Ant's speech probably unnerved her a bit, but it turned out that the double sea kayaks were very stable-- Catherine and I managed to steer ours fairly proficiently, and Alex and Ian were such quick paddlers that they had to continually be called back to the group; we took a trip to Bean Island and then to the rocky shoals beyondy, which were full of seals-- so everyone had a fantastic time, despite the cold weather-- and then. just when it couldn't get any more scenic, we saw a couple baby seals on the rocks and needless to say, they were very very cute . . . cute enough to erase any memories of the rather dark safety speech that began the journey.
The Other Side of Acadia
The Schoodic Peninsula side of Acadia National Park reminds me of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon: equally scenic but more desolate and exponentially less crowded-- we took an excellent green and mossy hike to the top of Schoodic Mountain and explored some of the cliffs and tidepools at Schoodic Point . . . and then we had the best (and cheapest) food on the trip at Downeast Mexican . . . the place started as a food truck that fed the migrant blueberry-pickers but the food was so good that they made a year-round endeavor out of it; both the Schoodic Peninsula and the Mexican joint are highly recommended if you ever make your way to Bar Harbor.
blueberries!
Dave = Winner
Another hot day in Maine, so we didn't do any epic hikes-- instead, we explored the peninsulas and beaches in Hancock and Sorrento-- and ate lobster rolls from a roadside shack-- and then headed back to our place to play some games . . . and I took the triple crown: winning at Scrabble, a five-dollar Texas Hold'em tourney, and finally beating my son Ian in a game of cornhole-- he's been killing me lately (since he adopted the method).
Back Up The Beehive (21 Years Later)
Twenty-one years ago, my wife and I honeymooned in Bar Harbor-- and we stayed in a cottage, which was a step-up from our usual peanut-butter and jelly/hotdog camping excursions to Acadia; things have changed since then-- we have two teenagers and the park is MUCH more crowded-- but our kids were game to get up early on a very hot day and we clambered back up the iron rungs and sheer cliff faces to the top of the Beehive Mountain, which overlooks the Sand Beach-- and then we hooked around, climbed Gorham Mountain, and took the Ocean Trail back to the beach, nearly a three hour trek in extreme Maine heat; it was hard to keep up with the kids but we did it, but it definitely wiped me out . . . we ended at the Sand Beach but the water was VERY cold-- Alex and I did the plunge but Catherine and Ian did not-- and then we drove back to Hancock and took long naps in the A/C . . . I'm so glad we're not camping in this heat (and things could be worse, it's even hotter in New Jersey).
More Vehicular Woes! And a Nice Lake Swim . . .
We made it up to Hancock, Maine without mishap-- stopping for Bissell Brothers beer and Salvage BBQ in Portland-- and while our rental is a bit cluttered, it's in an amazing location, near some tidal falls full of pools dotted with pink starfish-- yesterday, we took a ride out to the Schoodic Peninsula and there was a scenic pull-off in Sullivan and not only were the views of Mount Desert Island and Cadillac Mountain majestic, but there was also a grass tennis court just below the hilltop; this was too much stimulus for the driver (yours truly) and I turned a bit too late to park and hit the curb-- which turned out to be a very high and sharp curb made of granite-- so I popped the tire and bent the rim of our last remaining vehicle; luckily, Alex and I knew how to access the spare tire in the van (because he popped a different tire on a sewer grate a month ago and we learned that 2008 Toyota Sienna's have the most inaccessible spare tires in the auto world-- you need a five sided hex nut because of a weird recall, to lower it down from a wire from directly beneath the car-- even the Triple A guy didn't have one, so the car had to be towed, but after the first flat, I bought one on Ebay and put it in the glove box) and so while Catherine called Triple A, Alex and I tried to change the tire-- and it was hot, REALLY hot . . . and we finally got the tire loose from the bottom of the car, and it was really rusty (from being under the car) and it was very difficult to remove the tire from the wire-- the metal part that held it eventually just fell apart and then we tried jacking the car up, but forgot to put the parking brake on, so it titled over-- meanwhile, Catherine found out the wait for Triple A assistance was over and hour, so we pulled the car up a bit, got the jack in the right spot, put on the brake, and slowly and sweatily jacked the car up, pulled off the old tire and put on the donut-- and then we headed to Complete Tire Service in Ellsworth, where they could have gouged us or made us wait-- they were busy-- but they were so friendly and accomodating and got a new rim and new tire on the car in less than an our and charged us a total of $237-- could have been far worse-- and then we ate lobster rolls and seafood at Jordan's, headed back to our place, let the dog out, and then got back in the car and drove to the beach at Donnell Pond, a scenic sandy cove at the end of a large lake in the mountains (and later in the evening, Ian beat me twice in a row at cornhole, which I blamed on tired forearms from jacking the car up).
Too Much To Report
I can't even begin to describe this, other than to say that we're extremely lucky and everyone is doing fine; but we are having some transportation woes, as we had ANOTHER bike stolen-- and now we know the thief went into our backyard (we had convinced ourselves that Ian left the other bike in the front of the house, though he thought otherwise) and we had to file another police report and look very very stupid-- because we did NOTHING in the way of security after the first theft; so today was home security update day-- we installed some Ring cameras; replaced our ancient, burned-out motion sensor bulbs; put some actual LOCKS on the bike shed, etc. -- this was a long day on top of packing for vacation, but then we got a frantic call from our older son Alex, explaining that he crashed the car . . . but he was okay-- so we raced over to Piscataway, in the pouring rain, to see a disturbing sight-- our Honda CRV on it's side, in the woods-- but Alex was fine-- he spun out on the wet road, possibly hit the gas instead of the brake, careened over the curb, slid on some grass, ran into some small trees and the CRV tipped over, so he had to climb upwards and out the driver side door-- he was a bit bruised and burned from the airbags, but did not hit his head or hurt anything too bad-- but the car is totalled-- so we're down two bikes and a car right now-- but glad our son is healthy and alive-- and then there's the problem that he wasn't fully licensed because we lost his social security card and the DMV had no appointments during the pandemic . . . so this is going to be an interesting insurance matter (and he's going to get a couple of points on his license) but thank goodness he didn't hit anyone or have a passenger in the car.
Summer!
Summer is here and it's already been fairly epic;
-- me, the boys, and my brother attended my cousin's father-in-law's massive 25$ a head random draw cornhole tourney and while my kids and brother-- all good players-- got knocked out early, my partner and I almost went the distance . . . my partner was decent but had an odd throw, especially since he was a young athletic 6-foot five-inch black dude-- you'd think he'd be muscling it in, but instead he gripped the beanbag delicately by pinching a tiny scrap of fabric at the corner and then flicking it up high-- sometimes it swooshed right into the hole, but it was also buffeted by the wind . . . we were beaten by my cousin Keith and his partner in the finals-- I held Keith's partner at bay but my "little" cousin Keith, who's now in his mid-thirties, came up big-- but still, my partner and I won 100$ each . . . Keith and his partner won 250$, quite a pot for chucking a beanbag;
-- I made all my appointments: dentist, physical, knee, and even got one out of the way-- the eye lady had a cancellation so I went and my eyes are fine . . . I'm also a new patient now, apparently I haven't been to the doctor since 2016
-- I finished mastering a song, called "Asymmetrical Warfare" and it sort of sounds like I want it to sound, but mixing and mastering music will always be a mystery to me;
-- Monday night, I did the 12:30 - 4:30 AM shift for our town's project graduation event, it was at the Woodbridge Community Center and I was impressed at how a mentalist guessed three times in a row what number I chose on a die (but perhaps the die was Bluetooth or something?) and I learned that if I play basketball at 2 AM then my knee really starts to hurt and I also learned that a school bus full of teenagers that have stayed up all night smells really really ripe at 4:30 AM . . . yuck).
The Guest List: You'd Kill to be On It
There were some fraternal hijinks at my wedding-- the boys "jammed' me into the Lawrencebrook for my blatant PDA with my new wife . . . in college, we would scoop offenders up and put their head in the toilet bowl to discourage any public displays of affection, so I was fine with getting dunked in the river (plus, I took a few folks in with me) but Lucy Foley's new thriller The Guest List takes these "boys-will-be-boys" rituals to the end of the bloody line . . . the book has some Liane Moriarty style reverse-chronological plotting, some well-drawn characters (and consequent perspectives) and a nod to the Murder on the Orient Express . . . everyone is a suspect . . . a fun read and you'll finish in a day or two: nine bogs out of ten.
Which America Do You Live In?
George Packer's new article "The Four Americas" adds some much-needed precision to the usual polarization analysis; he divides the left up into Smart America and Just America (which should be called Woke America) and he divides the right into Free America and Real America . . .
Free America celebrates makers and the energy of the "unencumbered individual" but despises takers that are dependent on a "smothering government"
Smart America celebrates meritocracy, intelligence, credentials, and progress-- but the losers are the poorly educated;
Real America celebrates place, patriotism, and Christian tradition but is wary of elites and immigrants who want to contaminate the values of our country
and Just America demands confrontation with the problems that we have been burying or avoiding and wants marginalized groups to gain their rightful power . . .
and while you might ask yourself "Which America do I live in?" if you're like me, a denizen of Smart America, then you'll revise that question and instead ask: "In which America do I live?"
Father's Day?
Unlike Mother's Day-- which should probably receive an exclamatory flourish and be changed to Mother's Day!-- Father's Day would do better with an interrogative: Father's Day? . . . because while moms are certain about their relationship with their offspring, dads are never totally sure.
It's Over . . .
The weirdest and worst school year ever is behind us; the graduation ceremony turned out well-- we had a great mother/daughter speaking duo from the class president and the selected teacher-- and Liz was supposed to speak 18 years ago, but she went into labor with her daughter and Brady had to sub in for her, so it was very appropriate that they shared the stage yesterday-- but while the speakers were under a tent, the rest of us were baking in the hot sun on the turf-- pretty much the worst circle of hell for me, having to sit still on a plastic chair for hours in a bright hot place; also, I was receiving work from kids up to the moment I walked out to graduation, which did NOT make me happy at all-- it seems a lot of the virtual kids who got very distracted and did nothing during the semester suddenly wanted to turn in assignments-- yuck-- but now it's all over but the crying; the end of the year party was great (though I didn't win the cornhole tourney . . . my partner was Terry and we wona few games but then he had to leave . . . I didn't know that my normal partner, a cute young lady who teaches special ed in a different school, was coming to the party-- and apparently, she had emailed me to see if we were partnering up, but I didn't check my email . . . that's not my strong suit, it's too chaotic in there-- so then I was stuck partnerless so I picked up Chantal and we beat the reigning champs, only to lose to a drunken juggernaut . . . there's always next year . . . we hope).
Your Next Book Club Selection
Grady Hendrix's The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires is his best book yet; it reminded me of the wonderful feeling I got in high school when I read a new Stephen King novel: you meet a cast of interesting fully-fleshed out modern characters and then terrible things happen to them . . . really fun and addictive.
Fightin' Zombies on Company Time
If you haven't fought some zombies in a big room while wearing an Oculus, you've got to give it a whirl-- no lag, exhausting, completely immersive, and fairly scary-- shit pops up all over the place and it's hard to shoot straight, so you end up fist-fighting swarms of undead, which fully surround you.
Best Exorcism Ever!
If you're looking for a tale of 80s high school nostalgia and demonic possession, couched in a wonderful-- but grossly graphic-- story of a life-long friendship, then check out My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix.
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