Motif Number 4 - The Bean

   Cloud Gate, a sculpture by Anish Kapoor, in Millennium Park in Chicago.  Everyone, with the possible exception of Kapoor, calls it The Bean.

   

Motif Number 3 - A particular obelisk

  

Motif Number 2 - Sea kayaks at Bearskin Neck

Motif Number 1

  

Postcards from Rockport

   

   Sitting on the T-wharf that juts out into scenic Rockport harbor, while Rachel and a friend meander on Bearskin Neck and KC naps on the bench beside me.  A warm, humid Labor Day weekend. 

   A cormorant dives and swirls among the baitfish just below the wharf.  I know what they do, but have never been able to stand above them and watch them swoop and turn under the water.  I try to snap some pictures, but they move so fast.  A man comes to watch and say, "Wow, look at that duck diving under the water after the fish!"  I generally don't correct strangers, and no doubt they often forbear correcting me, but this seems egregious.  "Actually, it's a cormorant," I say gently.  And he seems pleased to have learned something new.  "Cool.  A cormorant."

   About which I learn something new myself when I get home and look at the pictures on my laptop.  Cormorants, at least this type, have the most incredible blue eyes.  Cool, indeed.

   After the cormorant has his fill and moves off to bob out in the harbor, a boat comes in to off-load its catch.  A woman has gotten out of her car.  She comes over to see what's happening and calls back to her husband.  "Honey, they're bringing in the crabs." 

Postcards from P'town

      If you are vacationing on the outer Cape, which you should do, and you go to Provincetown to walkabout on a Friday evening, which you should do, and you walk up and down Commercial Street, which you could not help but do, you will see all the gay couples and singles and small traveling packs that you would expect, and then some.  And if you walk east from the docks and the main square and peer between the buildings on your left, and the sky is clear and the moon is full, you can cut behind the buildings and the parking lots to the beach where you can see the most beautiful evening scenes of the boats and the bay and the moonlight on the water.  We did that, and took some happy pictures there.  And then, when we had seen enough of the moonlight on the water, as if you can ever see enough, we walked back through the parking lot where a young man had run out the back door of one of the places to stand alone on the asphalt, his head bent forward, his fists pushed up tight into his eyes, crying as he stood there alone.  We sought only the carnival, but were reminded nonetheless.  Hearts are breaking, too, under every moon.

Kilroy was here, in Brandon

   On a Saturday night in July, after two days of fishing with my brothers, we attend the Brandon Town Players production of Kilroy Was Here, at the Brandon Town Hall in Vermont.  The program notes inform us that the Town Hall was built in 1861, in time to be the gathering place where Brandon -- a small farming village then and not much more than that now -- sent an astounding 116 of its men off to fight for the Union.  Vermont, I think, sent more men per capita to war than any other state, and has been doing so ever since.  Just before the show starts, one of the actresses asks all the present and former service men and women to stand and be recognized, and a notable percentage of the audience stands to accept our applause.  She then asks the we all consider donations to the Town Hall restoration fund, which is trying to raise $120,000 to update the bathrooms in the basement of the Hall, which she politely describes as "tired."

   The night is warm, the stage is small, the players are a mix of the very well cast (the slim, angular guy playing Kilroy looks just right in his khaki army clothes) and the we'll-make-do-as-best-we-can-with-those-we-have, including the 60-year old women playing the young USO hostesses and the similarly older men playing Kilroy's army buddies.  The singing is quite good and the staging makes the most of the small room in which to work.  The dialogue is slow.  But there are humorous moments and a good time is had by all, especially during the patriotic numbers.  When a giant American flag is unfurled at the end of the first act, and again at the end of the show, many in the crowd respond with a real excitement and passion, some even waiving tiny American flags they have brought with them.  People clap along enthusiastically with the marches.

   The show, like the great old building, like the entire evening, is corny, old-fashioned, and sincere.  Entirely free of sarcasm, irony, cynicism.  I was hot, and uncomfortable in my metal folding chair.  But I loved it.  And was happy to slip a few dollars in the barrel for the building fund before I left.