Tatami mats

   … in our room at the ryokan in Takayama.  The hostess fixes our first pot of green tea and then bows and leaves the four of us sitting around a low table.  Sipping the hot tea.  Looking at the spare room, which, save for the low table and the tatami mat floor, has almost nothing in it.  Except everything that matters in this world.  

American Elms

   A fine piece in the Sunday Times calls New Yorkers to contemplate the elegant American Elms that grace Fifth Avenue and portions of Central Park.  Our writer Guy Trebay touches all the bases -- citing Olmsted, quoting Dickens, interviewing a vice president of the Central Park Conservancy -- and scores at the end with this simple wisdom:  "Look up."  

   I have done it.  And taken two pictures in Central Park not so different from the one in the Times this morning.  Like thousands of others, I'm sure.

 

This is the one from the Times.

A good bitter memory

     My first bottle of Campari begins its tenancy in the cabinet above the refrigerator, which I could simply call the liquor cabinet except that it also houses our cereal, cooking oil, and blender.  Someday, maybe, I'll have an old house with a proper little bar, like (above) the front room at the Echo Lake Inn.

   The Campari is new, but somehow not the taste.  I've met some close relation.

   Finally it occurs to me:  the bitter Italian soda you can sample, along with other odd Coca Cola products, at Epcot.

Green Mountain Boys

      A good dump of snow hits Vermont just in time for our ski weekend with B's family and the Ira Lapps.  We're not as big a crowd as we once were.  KC, Dan and Rachel have now retired from skiing.  Kate, at UVM, stays in Burlington for the weekend.  Megan, incredibly, is in Hanoi -- the first stage of her semester abroad.  The last afternoon, skiing with Phil, is joyous.  It's cold, but we're dressed for it.  The snow is terrific.  The light is good.  We ski quick and clean. Like this is where we're from, and what we do.

Salt cod

   It's a fine thing that in the North End, in 2014, you can find salt cod being sold out of a rough, wooden box.  

The elusive North End

   The North End eludes my camera.  The narrow streets.  The authentic corner markets.  The old men who bring their chairs out on the sidewalk to visit and smoke.  It's all so wonderful to see, but hard to photograph.  At least for this amateur.

Here I am

   I was thirty when I decided to try doing some personal writing on a sustained basis.  Why it happened then had something to do with buying our first personal computer and reading John Cheever’s journals, which was the sort of writing (the type, not his quality) that was running through my head.  Coincidentally, I had read not so long before a piece of advice, or maybe warning, from some famous writer that one should not try to write anything until at least the age of thirty.  And there I was. 

   The wisdom of waiting to thirty, I suppose, is that before then you haven’t lived enough, or gathered enough perspective, to make any damn sense.  The problem with waiting to thirty is that you don’t get all the juvenile writing out of your system as an adolescent.   And so I had thirty years of life on this earth, and as a writer I was going on twelve.

   Then I wrote some, but not enough, as kids and work and softball and fishing and travel and all the other stuff of life asserted their own priorities, and now I am here.  Nearly fifty years old, with five electronic volumes of pieces I have written.  Some that seem good to me.  Some not so much. 

   Now my oldest will be off to college in a few months, with her sister just three short years behind.  More time for writing seems close, like a clearing in the woods just up ahead.  But I will miss the deep woods, too.     

    At some point I finally told my wife about the little bit of writing that I was doing.  I told her nothing was finished, of course, and that it was all just for myself.  She said, matter of factly, “I guess I'll have to get this published when you die.”  
    Can you imagine this, some woman saying this incredible thing to you, without even looking up?

(2011)

Boulevardier

      Boulevardier:  1. A frequenter of Parisian boulevards -- more broadly, a man-about-town.  2. A cocktail made with equal parts rye whisky, sweet vermouth and Campari, garnished with a generous slice of orange peel.  

   The first usage I learned from Stephen Presser, a professor at Northwestern Law, circa 1986.  I distinctly remember his delivery:  eyes closed, rising up on the balls of his feet, thrusting his ample torso forward, gesturing grandly.

   The second I learned from a young bartender at Mezze in Williamstown.  A likable guy who talked fast, loved his craft, enjoyed talking to customers -- but not too much -- and was excited to introduce you to a new drink that you "really will like" and actually do.  

   A conversation with the bartender wandered around bourbons for a little while before he suggested the boulevardier, a descendant of the famous Negroni, which is the same drink with gin instead of rye.  Bracing, spicy, bitter, sweet, delicious.  Utterly pleasing.  The second one, too.