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Transition
20 December 2025
The Bellamy River toggles between temperature swings, topping ice and snow with flowing surface water Koyaanisquatsi, Dear Reader, is a Hopi word that translates to “life out of balance” or “a state of living that calls for another way of living.” Koyaanisquatsi is also the title of 1982’s wordless documentary directed by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke. That film made a big impression on me—and on my late mother Virginia, who had my husband David spell it out on the chalkboard she kept in her Clearwater apartment so she could put a name to how she experienced life much of the time. So, on this Saturday night, it’s not surprising that the past week’s events have repeatedly brought both film and term to mind, even as I so clumsily tap this out on my laptop keyboard, accustomed as I am to the much more familiar setup of remote keyboard and mouse disrupted last week by a Microsoft update that rendered that arrangement unusable until tech support can arrive come Monday. Oy.
The times are out of joint. The season’s prompts to comfort and joy repeatedly collapse into horror and outrage. First last Saturday came the all-too-common report of yet another school shooting, this time during a final exam at Brown. Then on Sunday, another mass shooting, this time on a Sydney beach during a Hanukkah celebration. And then most terribly, perhaps because the victims were so well known and loved by so many, sometime in between those horrors came the savage murder of Rob and Michele Reiner, apparently at the hands of their middle child, Nick, news made even worse by the appalling, deranged response of that loathsome troll, our Felon-in-Chief, the leader of the free world Koyaanisquatsi indeed.
Open water now on the Madbury reservoir after last week’s warm rain Inevitably, even horror and disgust temper in the course of a week’s passing. But tomorrow at 10.03 am, the winter solstice arrives in Madbury, New Hampshire, along with the shortest day of the year. The light will return. But what of hope? Mike “Meathead” Stivic, the character Rob Reiner played in Norman Lear’s breakthrough comedy, All in the Family, consistently countered his father-in-law’s ignorant, racist, misogynist, anti-Semitic rants with rational counter-arguments, but also with enough empathy that he could speculate about what might have shaped Archie Bunker into the bigot he became. Praise be to such enlightened comedy. Our current late-night comedians also comfort as they mock the inhumanity of Donald J. Trump and lament the corrosion of what on his last broadcast of the year Jimmy Kimmel, his voice husky with tears withheld, called Superman’s credo of truth, justice, and the American way. Indeed. I am, for the first time in my life, ashamed to be American. And of the many retorts to the President’s nauseating response to the Reiner family tragedy, Seth Myers’s was the most eloquent, a heartfelt tribute to a great-souled artist and an excoriation of the banal evil of Trump. Watch it if you haven’t.
So. There’s the double-edged sword of technology that can connect and comfort as well as stoke hatred and, at the least, baffle (as was the case with my recent computer cockup, leading to repeated conversations with a Dell technician in New Delhi who was rather less than deft with small talk as he waited for uploads (“And do you live alone or with a family? Do you have pets? Often people who live alone have pets”). Comedians reinforce our recognition of norms now exploded, and art can unite a room full of strangers experiencing together the pain of and consolation for unspeakable grief, as it did in the movie theatre where I watched Chloé Zhao’s extraordinary rendering of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, so Shakespearean, as James Shapiro pointed out, in its evocation of the green world and the artistry necessary to re-work old material into compellingly relevant experience. Rob Reiner’s art endures, too: go watch Stand By Me again, or A Few Good Men.
Madbury Reservoir before the warm rain Does the longevity of art counterbalance all the losses of late? Getting old is famously not for sissies, and balance can be a literal and figurative casualty of aging. I’m certainly aware of diminishing capability, and trying to balance that recognition with a plan for action has me attending death cafés and finding inspiration in the Peacock series The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. But there’s consolation, too, in understanding why we’re in the mess that we’re in. Anna Lembke, Professor and Director of Addiction Medicine at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, posits an explanation for a culture out of balance in her 2021 book, Dopamine Nation, and on successive episodes of the Hidden Brain podcast, “The Paradox of Pleasure” and “The Path to Enough.” Using her own embarrassing personal experience of addiction to raunchy romance novels, Lembke quite compellingly explains how our modern world of overconsumption (of drugs, food, shopping, media, etc.) leads to anxiety and unhappiness. Arguing that the relentless pursuit of pleasure, so easily accessible online, creates a dopamine deficit, our brains’ attempt to restore chemical homeostasis that ultimately spirals into anxiety and depression, Lembke proposes solutions to reset our reward pathways and restore a healthy balance of the brain chemistry attending our experience of pleasure and pain. She’s made me examine not only my own habits, but also suggested some insight into what drives our chronically over-indulged ruling class, especially a “leader” so wretchedly hollow that he can only find pleasure and self-worth in demeaning others. Of course he wants to shut down any person or medium capable of inspiring insight. Defund PBS! Mock the murdered Reiners! Censor anyone who fails to lavish praise! And make sure your name precedes that of a fallen president on the nation’s performing arts center. Pathetic.
I’m writing this on solstice eve: after tomorrow, the light begins to return. I’ve resolved to put into practice the methods of the Swedish death cleaners: discard what distracts and burdens. And I remain grateful for the many helpers in my life: my neighbor, who lifts the KitchenAid mixer too heavy for a recent hernia repair; the house painters who honored me as a favorite client by inviting me to their annual company dinner; my friend who every week shares an hour’s account of the ups and downs of negotiating this moment in our lives; my fellow book lovers who convene monthly to talk about how what we read illuminates our world and our place in it. So what if the mail brings mostly glossy booklets advertising expensive cruises, expensive retirement communities, and expensive hearing aids? It also brings Christmas cards with news and good wishes for the coming year. So what if a shopping quest for a simple cake plate leads to a queasy disgust at the amount of crap we are encouraged to buy? It also stiffens my resolve to cast off and lighten my load. And you, Dear Reader: you’re out there, too, receiving, considering, and, I hope, getting something out of this desultory philippic. Here’s to you.
And here’s to the light. As the carolers sing: Let nothing you dismay.
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Savannah
5-8 November 2025
Lovely Madison Square, one of Savannah’s 22 squares, this one memorializing Sgt. William Jasper, who saved his regiment’s flag though mortally wounded in the Revolutionary War’s Siege of Savannah, 1779 Here on the last day of November, a month crowded with incident, I again pick up an account of my earlier travels south to Savannah, affording escape from a dark-by-4.30, so dreary and wet New Hampshire, while anticipating our first snow storm of the season coming soon.
Reader, we are transported back to Georgia on Guy Fawkes day, the fifth of November. Having driven my enormous rented Chrysler Pacifica (the “manager’s special”) back from Hilton Head to the Savannah airport (when only one person emerged from that beast, the Dollar agent was sore amazed: “Only ONE of you?”), I was Ubered to the Embassy Suites in downtown Savannah by Stanley, humorously dressed as Santa, and on arrival was favorably impressed both by the lobby and the attentive service, offering me a lovely corner room on the fifth floor with a fine view of the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge spanning the Savannah River.
Uber Santa Stanley 
The Embassy Suites’ imposing lobby in downtown Savannah Brother-in-law Richard and nephew Daniel arrived soon after, and together we navigated our way to the Mercer-Williams House just in time for a tour of the place first made famous by the 1994 non-fiction novel by John Berendt, and then by the even more famous 1997 Clint Eastwood film, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, starring John Cusack, Kevin Spacey, and a very young Jude Law as well as several memorable actual Savannahians like the late, great Lady Chablis. The handsome Renaissance Revival house on Monterey Square was designed by New York architect John S. Norris for General Hugh Mercer, great grandfather of songwriter Johnny Mercer, its construction in 1860 interrupted by the Civil War, after which Mercer sold the unfinished structure to John Wilder, who completed it in 1868.
Richard and Daniel at the Mercer-Williams House When it was purchased in 1969 by antiques dealer and master preservationist Jim Williams, the house had been vacant and neglected for almost a decade. His painstaking restoration lasted two years, and was then grandly furnished with Williams’s private collection. Scandal and its representation in art, however, keeps the Mercer-Williams House such a popular tourist attraction, for Williams, thanks to a combination of cultivated hospitality and shoddy police work, notoriously got away with the murder of his gay lover, only to die in his handsome home less than a year after he was acquitted. Actor Kevin Spacey’s uncanny resemblance to Williams no doubt helps keep fascination with the Mercer-Williams house alive. The Williams family still own the property, maintained as a museum open to the public to benefit local historic and charitable organizations.
After an informative tour (but no interior photos allowed), we made our way back to our hotel to change for dinner, perhaps still under the spell of a more gracious era than our own.
Architect Hyman Wallace Witcover’s magnificent Scottish Rite Temple (1912-23) on Bull Street, now owned by SCAD and home to the Gryphon Tea Room Dressing for dinner, however, proved a thoroughly unnecessary gesture, as we were the sole guests at the 22 Square restaurant, where I nevertheless enjoyed my very tasty shrimp & grits and Daniel had his first gumbo mac & cheese. We noted the Peach Cobbler Factory on Barnard for future reference, as well as how very much the city was coming to life after 9 pm. Wearied by a day’s travel, we, however, retired to our suites.
The Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge (1991) seen from the Embassy Suites Next morning we met our Genteel & Bard guide, Julianna from Savannah, at the corner of Bull and Oglethorpe, for a most informative walking tour. Julianna knows her history, is an accomplished storyteller and Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) grad, and gave us a great 2-hour walkabout, finishing at the Basilica Cathedral of St. John the Baptist.
Julianna from Savannah 
The Moorish/Gothic/Classical façade of the Artillery Bar, built for the Georgia Hussars in 1897—Arabian architecture for Arabian horses?—home of the potent Artillery Punch 
The Green-Meldrim Mansion by architect John S. Norris (1850), and Sherman’s Savannah Headquarters. Did Southern Hospitality save Savannah and this Gothic Revival treasure from Atlanta’s fate? Perhaps. 
An inviting porch with haint painted ceiling on live oak-canopied Jones Street 
SCAD properties abound in Savannah 
The twin spires of the Cathedral Basilica of St. John, 1873 
After some excellent grilled cheese at Mirabelle Savannah, the little coffee shop across the street, we made our way north on Abercorn to the Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarters, a Greek Revival beauty designed by 20-year-old English architect William Jay for Richard Richardson, built from 1816-19, and in 1825 honored with a visit from the Marquis de Lafayette.
The Owens-Thomas House, architect William Jay, 1816-19 
The porch from which Gen Lafayette spoke, 1825 
Owens-Thomas Garden Façade 
Slave quarters room in the carriage house 
Carriage House with Slave Quarters Our knowledgeable guide Jason confirmed the fun fact about porch ceiling paint Julianna had shared the day before: “haint blue” was a color that warded off ghosts and evil spirits, at least according to the Gullah, the once-enslaved African-Americans of the low country and sea islands of coastal South Carolina and northern Georgia. That belief came with practical value, however, as the paint’s mixture of lime, buttermilk, and indigo naturally created lye, a known insect repellent and deterrent salutary in a malarial climate. The house tour lived up to its reputation as both informative and evocative, and admission includes access to both the Telfair Academy and the Jepson Center.
Guide Jason explains how symmetry requires the blind window above him 
Owens-Thomas formal entrance . . . 
. . . and upstairs landing bridge After a day on foot, we opted for an Uber ride to the delightfully funky Treylor Park restaurant on Bay Street, followed by a stroll past City Hall and down (take the elevator between the Hyatt and City Hall) to River Street’s tourist shops and arcades for some ice cream, an encounter with Zoltan, and another Uber back to our Hilton home.
City Hall, Renaissance Revival by architect Hyman Wallace Witcover, 1904-05 
Zoltar prognosticates on River Street Our last full day together we drove along the causeway flanked by Spartina marsh grass to the Tybee Island Light Station and Museum for a (to me) challenging climb up the 178 steps to take in the view from the oldest and tallest (145 feet) lighthouse in Georgia, as well as a visit to the Head Keeper’s Cottage, built in 1881 and lovingly restored to the last lighthouse keeper George Jackson’s era, 1920-1940, with some of the family’s original belongings.
Tybee Lighthouse, 1773, rebuilt 1867 
Tybee’s 1st order Fresnel lens and light pattern 
The author “conquers” acrophobia 
Keeper’s Cottage with flag at half-staff for V.P. Dick Cheney Across the street in Fort Screven, a battery that was part of the U.S. Coastal Defense System until it was decommissioned in 1945, the kindly volunteer docent kept a record of all visitor’s home states, and gave us a good tip about where to have lunch: right next door at the North Beach Bar & Grill.
Happy Richard and Daniel enjoy the funk We giggled over Tybee Island’s reputation as the Redneck Riviera/Truck Stop-by-the Sea; monikers I think now rendered obsolete by gentrification.
That left us just enough time to drive back to Thunderbolt, Georgia for a guided tour of the storied Bonaventure Cemetery led by raconteur and historian Steven, a consummate performer and purveyor of dad jokes.
A tomb with a view 
The Mercer family plot Steven let us know that the Bird Girl once among the cemetery statuary had been so threatened by the fame attending its appearance in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil that she’s now housed in the Telfair Academy for safekeeping—with replicas available for sale in the gift shop.
A notorious murder monetized at the Telfair Once again pleasantly pooped after hours of walking, on returning to our hotel we decided to Uber to a dinner of some really excellent pizza at Vinnie Van Go Go’s (watch that pizza dough fly!), and then passed the time awaiting seats at the bar by cruising the lively City Market, home of Byrd’s Famous Cookies. We passed on the cookies, but enjoyed cobbler back on Barnard before returning to our home-away-from-home for one more night.
Queuing for pizza at Vinnie Van Go Go’s Richard and Daniel drove back to Safety Harbor the next morning after breakfast, and I took my time packing up for my afternoon flight back to Boston, routinely checking flight status until I learned of my original flight’s cancellation: the Federal shutdown took its toll. That proved a perk, however, as I was able to stow my luggage and stroll to the Jepson Center for a good long look around, including a close examination of highlights from the Glenn Close costume collection on display there: amazing artistry (and for such a tiny waist!).
A Close costume from Dangerous Liaisons 
. . . and the pannier under it 
More glamour for Glenn Close 
Rooftop sculpture at the Jepson Center 
Black Girl on Skateboard . . . (Vanessa German, 2022): my favorite piece on display What followed was less fun: another delayed-ultimately-cancelled flight out, a night spent at an airport hotel, an early flight the next morning and a l-o-n-g layover in Baltimore before arrival in Boston 28 hours after originally planned. ‘Twas a good, rich trip nonetheless. I’m already keen to return to Savannah.
But Madbury also has its charms—and charming visitors, too. This young fellow appeared just outside my kitchen window the day after Thanksgiving, and we locked eyes for so long I wondered at a possible visitation. Well, snow coming tomorrow. Time to settle in. Home sweet home.
Have we met before? 28 Nov 2025 Artillery Bar, Bonaventure Cemetery, Embassy Suites Savannah, Genteel and Bard tours, Green-Meldrim Mansion, Julianna from Savannah, Mercer-Williams House, Owen-Thomas House, savannah, Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Scottish Rite Masonic Temple, Talmadge Bridge Savannah, Tybee Island Lighthouse -
Commonwealth Utopia
22 November 2025
Symphony Hall, Boston, 21 November 2025: Yo-Yo Ma implores our humanity Last night Yo-Yo Ma brought his Bach Project home to Boston for a sold-out Celebrity Series concert in Symphony Hall that was for the first time simulcast to over 20 venues across the Commonwealth. In a 19 November interview on Boston Public Radio, Ma, who has since 2018 toured six continents performing Bach’s Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, explained that “there’s something special about this music”; he practices not to play perfectly, but “to serve a need that is somewhere out there.” Describing his Bach Project as a listening tour wherever he went to play, Ma asked who was using culture to strengthen the fabric of their community, and learned from the answers that there talented, intelligent, and kind people everywhere.
That message informed what amounted to an astonishing, moving, herculean performance. For nearly three hours without intermission and only a few remarks in between the first four suites, Ma played all six complex movements of all six complex suites, initially joking that we would know when we were approaching the end of each because all ended with a gigue, and then mouthing “gigue” as he began to play it. Even disregarding the skill, artistry, concentration, and a lifetime’s dedication required to perform such demanding works all from memory, the physical stamina demanded is gob smacking. The program itself made clear that because there would be no intermission, audience members were welcome to enter and exit the hall quietly as needed, and when after Suite 4 ended well past 10 o’clock with two more suites to go, and some people, however sheepishly, made their ways to the doors, Ma concurred: “I know it’s a LOT of cello, but it’s all I got!”
Of course it’s NOT all he’s got. The program was preceded by a video of Ma taking questions from people around the world, answering each with such animated delight, and, for example, demonstrating whale song on his cello, that I said to my friend Vicky, “He’d make a great grandpa.” Well, he IS one, four times over, and those grandchildren and the legacy our generation will leave them were clearly on his mind throughout the performance. Ma turned 70 on 7 October (I was delighted to note my proximate birthday on 8 October, though Ma is three years younger) and proudly declared his performance a birthday present to himself. Never losing sight of serving the community, he explained that the little cards we found in our programs were actions to be taken. Before playing Suite 2, which he described as fertile ground for imagination, Ma invited us to let our dream for our communities in 2050 come to us. That dream we were to record on the card (my modest one: a full-time librarian and affordable housing). Then, offering Suite 3, music for taking action, he instructed us to swap cards with a stranger in the audience, who should take it home and plant it: there are perennial seeds embedded in the paper. Let the dream take root and grow.
Introducing Suite 4, Ma explained that in writing his first three suites, Bach had set out to learn everything about what the cello could do. Having done that, in Suite 4, he discovered he could multiply the voices only four strings could play by having the audience’s memory and association, providing harmonies not actually played, perform as well as the musician. Then came the somber Suite 5, dedicated to all those who have lost something—health, love, purpose—but especially those who had lost their (emphasis on the word) dignity. Finally, with only the slightest pause, uninterrupted by applause, Ma proceeded through Suite 6, finishing that final gigue with a flourish that brought all to their feet, cheering.
No one at that point expected an encore, but after a second bow, suddenly stagehands were pushing a shiny Steinway D on to the stage, and Ma was telling us that as an old guy, he thought it very important to introduce young talent. That talent proved to be Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.
Yo-Yo Ma and Mayor Michelle Wu play Schumann, Symphony Hall, 21 Nov 2025
In the words of Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Immigrants! We get the job done!”The hall exploded with delight, and well into the third hour of performance, Ma and Wu performed Schumann’s Ave Maria. At the finale, more cheers and stamping. Wu congratulated Ma, who flashed several heart hands to the crowd, embraced Wu, and exited stage left.
For a time, we all shared Yo-Yo Ma’s passion and generosity. As we made our way through the scrum exiting onto Mass Ave well past 11 pm, I saw a young boy of perhaps 8 posing for his mom with a huge grin on his face in front of the Yo-Yo Ma poster twice his size. There, I thought, is our future.
Thank you, Yo-Yo Ma, for reminding us of our common humanity, and of what is possible if we share and act on our dreams.
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Hilton Head Reunion
2-5 November 2025
Beach access from the Monarch resort, Sea Pines, Hilton Head SC Last week I made my first visit to Hilton Head, where my college suitemate Karen, with Pete, my acting teacher and Karen’s late husband of 50+ years, often spent their holidays. My trip began smoothly enough with another first, a chauffeured drive to Logan airport and a non-stop flight to Savannah.
A cute family waiting at the Logan gate 
Savannah approach: the marshland crazy quilt There at the SAV baggage claim I met up with Karen, her bereavement still sadly raw, just arrived from her home in Chattanooga, and in an absurdly large Chrysler Pacifica (the Manager’s Special) drove to Karen and Pete’s gated getaway within the Marriott Monarch complex on Hilton Head. Located inside yet another gated community, Sea Pines makes up the southern “toe” of the foot-shaped island, where rigorously enforced HOA restrictions ensure a pleasingly tasteful uniformity of custom architecture and a color palette complementing the island’s natural beauty. Even the McDonald’s blends right in; no garish golden arches here. Our handsome two-bedroom, two-bathroom villa is lovely, but given it was the first day of the dreary return to Eastern Standard Time, we were barely able to check in, drop our luggage, and scamper to the Coast restaurant next door before the sun set to enjoy a cocktail and light dinner of tortilla soup, crab cake, and salad at a combo firepit/table whose warmth was welcome in November, even 11 degrees of latitude further south from my New Hampshire home. I augmented my cocktail cognizance by observing Karen enjoying a mango margarita with a Grand Marnier “floater,” a vacation in a glass. After supper, reruns of The Diplomat, conjured by my fortunately remembering how to log on to my Netflix account, put us happily to bed.
Our handsome Monarch villa 
Our flaming table at Coast restaurant Still on ATT (Anxious Travel Time), I woke early the next morning from a nightmare about an imagined English Department faux pas (I recall my dad saying when he dreamed of his work life he was “always in trouble”). But the serene beauty of the tastefully landscaped Monarch quickly dispelled the dream hangover, and while Karen slept, I made my way through the carefully landscaped courtyard, speaking along the way to a woman memorizing the names of butterflies displayed on a helpful sign the better to impress her soon-to-be visiting granddaughter.
The Monarch courtyard with boardwalk over koi pools 
The Monarch gazebo 
The beach at Sea Pines is broad and beautiful, the sand as fine and white as that of my hometown St. Pete, and, like that beach of my youth, adorned with sea oats.
After a quick stroll, I returned to the villa to find my friend ready for the breakfast I suggested we enjoy at the Harbour Town Bakery, located under a live oak like all others on the island dripping with Spanish Moss (“neither Spanish nor moss”) inside the former lighthouse keeper’s cottage (1880), the perfect venue for an avocado toast and very well-heeled company.
Harbour Town Bakery and Cafe The day was perfect, so we took strolled to the nearby Hilton Head lighthouse, its octagonal tower privately built from 1969-70, aiding navigation to a marina predictably full of handsome crafts.
Hilton Head Lighthouse As my dad questioned every time we walked by the marina in St. Pete, “Where do these people get all this money??!! Adjacent shops clearly profited from plenty of discretionary spending (no cash, only credit): lots of nautical leisure wear and appealing tchotchkes, as well as more than one pedigreed, though artificial pooch, abound. The rich ARE different.
Beachwear for a dandy, complete with oyster shell bibelot 
The well-accoutered, if artificial, companion 
From there we drove to the nearby Stoney-Baynard ruins. Originally built by Revolutionary War hero Cpt. Jack Stoney in 1793 of tabby plastered over and scored to resemble masonry, and later acquired by William Baynard in 1840, perhaps as a result of Cpt. Stoney’s bad poker hand, the Baynard house was once a grand antebellum plantation overlooking the Calibogue Sound. When Union forces invaded Hilton Head Island in 1861, the Baynards evacuated the property; the residence was raided and served as Union headquarters before being burned. The distance from the main house to the kitchen and slave quarters intimates the suffering that war was meant to address. Given the division that currently roils our country, gazing at the romantic ruins brings “Ozymandias” to mind: “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”
Stoney-Baynard Ruins, 1793 
Remains of the slave quarters 
Karen strolls the former plantation Heading back to the Monarch, we made some provisioning stops, first at a gorgeous Fresh Market, where an elderly woman at the coffee bean grinding station wondered aloud if Fresh Market would mind if she ground her own beans there, a dilemma of privilege I nevertheless understood: one might thriftily travel with one’s own coffee beans, but who travels with a grinder? At the CVS, I spotted the first Black face I’d seen since arriving on the Island: Black Santa, accompanied by Mrs. Black Claus. What might the Stoney-Baynard slaves make of THAT, I wondered?
Diversity on Hilton Head But a lovely dinner awaited me that night: Karen treated me to the chef’s table at the Smith’s favorite restaurant, The Sage Room, where Chef Martini and colleagues delighted us with excellent Chilean sea bass and almond crusted tuna, preceded by a witty, delicious, and CHEAP (at $2!) appetizer: the Snow Pea Martini with pineapple soy reduction and Dijon aioli.
Sage’s snowpea martini, served with chop sticks After another nightcap of The Diplomat reruns, we went to bed happy.
The next morning we had breakfast on our porch of inviting prospect, and then set out for the Shelter Cove sculpture trail, an alluring boardwalk augmented with art and poetry that runs along Broad Creek, with informative signs about flora and fauna, decorative purple Muhly grass (Muhlenbergia sericea), and fine views of marsh grass (Spartina alterniflora) burnished by autumn, the liminal territory so important to the coast, providing critical habitats and food for wildlife, filtering and cleaning the brackish water, and protecting the coastline from storms and erosion, the grassland ecosystem that gives Savannah its name.
Breakfast view from the porch 
Shelter Cove sculpture trail along Broad Creek 
Purple Muhly Grass (Muhlenbergia sericea) There’s a fine Veteran’s Memorial at the end of the trail, and two handsome apartment complexes, WaterWalk at Shelter Cove, overlooking the well-maintained path and the creek beyond.
Shelter Cove Veteran’s Memorial We took advantage of proximity to take a tour of WaterWalk, including a sumptuously decorated beach-themed apartment, with appropriately high-end swag available: small free bottles of prosecco, cork screws, bottle insulators, and tote bags. Lovely to think of living there, though the width of the hallways (and the age of the well-heeled residents) were reminiscent of assisted living facilities, and the monthly rent of $3500 + utilities only confirms the dearth of affordable housing—not just on the island, but across the nation. (My Greensboro friend subsequently confirmed that $2300-$3500/ month is the going rate for apartments in her North Carolina neighborhood.) But what does one expect where the public bathrooms include sunscreen dispensers?
From WaterWalk we made our way to SurfWatch, another Marriott property where Karen and Pete have stayed, this one at the northern heel of Hilton Head. SurfWatch boasts more appealing boardwalks and Spartina, the natural world beautifully integrated into the complex, with an inviting beach-side pool flanked by private cabanas and another gorgeously wide beach.
We stopped at the beach bar for a snack of pita, spreads, and an uplifting margarita, and then, as the sun dipped, made our way to Mitchelville, founded by the formerly enslaved, and the first self-governing town for African Americans in the U.S. The beach was handsome here, but wilder (as the sign warned), and the beach-side accommodations more modest.
Mitchelville coastline 
We ran out of light before we could see the town, but enjoyed a very tasty pizza dinner at Michael Anthony’s pizzeria market café before returning to the solace of our beautiful villa and more Diplomat reruns.
Old friends’ pre-pizza toast I packed up that night, and next morning after breakfast, made my way back to the Savannah airport to return the behemoth Chrysler Pacifica, musing all the while about the 51 years since Karen, as Cecily Cardew, and I, as Lady Bracknell, acted together in Furman’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest—some of the most fun ever, that play.
Cecily and Lady Bracknell in 1974 Our lives certainly diverged after graduation, but this reunion of two now-widowed old friends was just as certainly tonic for me, and I hope for my beautiful, grieving friend.
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Good / Bad / Good News
26 October 2025
No Kings rally at Weeks Crossing, Dover NH, 18 Oct 2025 Last night I watched Rachel Maddow’s extended coverage of last weekend’s No Kings rallies, seven million Americans protesting across all 50 states in multiple venues, cities large and small. The Weeks Crossing rally in Dover, New Hampshire (my 6th protest of the Felon-in-Chief) was the largest of the those I’ve attended, coupled with the least number of middle finger salutes from passersby. Progress! As Maddow opined: think how many more would have protested had the Mango Man not waited till after the demonstrations to desecrate and demolish the East Wing of the White House, the in-your-face epitome of his contempt for the People’s House, Democracy, and the Constitution. “I can do what I want,” he crows, which includes broadcasting his puerile, scatological AI-generated video of King Don dumping excrement on the peacefully protesting citizens he swore, hand on bible, to serve. Is disgust with the Notorious P.I.G. gaining momentum? I think so. As Martha Stewart would say, that’s a good thing.
Protest # 6 for yours truly Clearly, however, the Mango Mussolini believes in literal enshittification—the term Cory Doctorow coined to describe the decline of technological products and services over time. That’s bad news in both senses of the term. I had my latest encounter with tech enshittification last week, trying to announce my on-time arrival for a flu shot appointment at the local Walgreens, a simple check-in made nearly impossible by the “time-saving” QR code we were to scan, which (slowly, because of bad wi-fi) took me to a multitude of screens with questions I’d already answered online, but had to answer again lest my presence not be announced. So, I scrolled and scrolled, giving new meaning to doom scrolling because this took about six minutes until my phone screen froze, my having arrived still not on anyone’s radar. The pharmacist then had to come find me and ask me all the same questions a third time, this time in person. Administering the shot then took all of 6 seconds.
Deciding to counter this frustration with a humble treat, I then went to McDonald’s to console myself with a “big breakfast”—something I would occasionally do in grad school days (when it did not cost over $11!). I’d not been in a McDonald’s for about a decade, and so was unprepared for the unmanned order counter, now replaced by large screens where customers are supposed to figure out how to place their own orders. An associate finally saw my distress and came out to help me, confessing that when she tried to take her granddaughter out for lunch the previous week, she only succeeded in ordering 3 Cokes. She took my order, but when I went to acknowledge that I was willing to “round up” my tab for charity, the credit card screen would not acknowledge my touch—nor that of the associate helping me, nor that of the manager, who repeatedly banged on the screen until the charge went through—without rounding up. A nice metaphor for what handing our lives over to tech is doing to us. More bad news.
Meanwhile, the drought in NH continues: glorious weather, but for all those depending on wells for their water supply, the low buzz of anxiety about another thing we can’t control is ongoing.
Bellamy River or Trickle? 
Madbury reservoir levels way down But, it IS beautiful out. And the New York Times recipe for cheesy pumpkin pasta with kale turned out well.
And yesterday’s regional meeting of the New Hampshire Library Trustees Association in the lovely, new, light-filled Barrington Public Library once again affirmed that there are lots of smart, committed people quietly, successfully keeping truth free and accessible to all.
Barrington Public Library And best of all, young Eric Lu, 27-year-old classical pianist from Massachusetts whom I had the pleasure to hear play back in 2016 at UNH when he wowed the audience in the Johnson theatre and kindly autographed my copy of his 2-cd recording of Chopin’s 24 Preludes, on Monday, 20 October, beat out over 180 competitors from all over the world to win the Olympics of the piano world, the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.
Eric Lu in Warsaw, photo by Aleksandra Szmigiel / Reuters He had placed fourth in the competition at age 17 in 2015, and returned ten years later to take home the gold and 60,000 euros. Dear Reader, watch his performance in the final round of the competition on YouTube if you are in need of some uplifting good news.
May the good prevail.
Nute Road pasture, 19 Oct 2025 -
Flower Power
13 October 2025
Mums at the Wentworth Nursery, Rollinsford NH, 12 Oct 2025 The grey morning of 8 October, my birthday and day 5 of a frustrating case of laryngitis, did not begin auspiciously. I woke from some sad dream morbidly wondering who would, when the time came, take on the task of spreading my ashes around the flower beds of my home, joining those of my father, mother, sister, and husband among the daffodils. Then I knocked over my bedside water glass and had to scramble to clean up the spill that immediately seeped under the glass topping the dresser stacked with books, partially read New Yorkers, and a daunting array of supplements.
Birthday bouquet from Jennifer First order of business: hydrate (the better to prep for an IV insertion) and get to a medical appointment. But traffic was stalled just before the General Sullivan Bridge, the only way across Little Bay to my Portsmouth destination. An earlier accident was the cause, I later learned, one I happily was NOT involved in, despite the symmetrical allure of ending my earthly voyage on the very day it began.
Traffic at a standstill on the Spaulding I nevertheless made it to my long-scheduled CT scan at Mass General Brigham’s Pease facility in good time to “enjoy” my barium sulfate smoothie and the tender ministrations of Megan and Christine, who guided me into the high-tech donut hole with minimal discomfort. Welcome to septuagenarian birthday celebrations.
Birthday breakfast of champions 
Megan and Christine cheerfully assist The MGB facility on the former SAC base is nicely landscaped and quite handsome, however, and though rueful about the clinical start to my birthday, I was grateful for the health care out-of-reach for many of my fellow citizens, a situation that on day 8 of the Federal shutdown is only likely to get worse.
Mass General Brigham Health Center, Portsmouth NH Trying to avoid mental doomscrolling about the State of the Nation, I rewarded myself with a breakfast bialy at Kittery’s Beach Pea bakery, where I also picked up my birthday cake, and then drove on to New Castle, stopping first at the Riverside Cemetery, established in 1868 and affording all its residents some pretty enviable views.
Birthday breakfast #2: Bialy at Beach Pea Bakery 
Autumn display at Kittery’s Golden Harvest grocery 
Riverside Cemetery, est. 1868, New Castle NH The overcast skies proved appropriate for the spooky season. Later walking the beach at Great Island Common, I felt no urge to immerse myself in the between-the-rocks plunging place that had so delighted me throughout the sunny summer: fall has indeed arrived. Instead, I admired the finesse of the three Moran tugs guiding a freighter into the mouth of the Piscataqua, and snapped a few photos of the sea grasses attired for autumn.
My summer swimmin’ hole: not so inviting in October 
A Moran tug approaches its freighter, Whaleback Lighthouse in between 
Great Island Common in October En route home, I stopped at Emery Farms for some decorative pumpkins, admired the foliage on Hayes Road, and planted the next 10 daffodil bulbs of this fall’s campaign; there will be 100 newcomers flanking the garden steps come April.
Emery Farm pumpkins: weighed and sold on the honors system. Yay! 
The sun comes out on Hayes Road, Madbury NH Then it was off to the guaranteed physical and spiritual uplift of Ruth Abelmann’s yoga class, followed by my usual Wednesday night pasta dinner at home, this time completed with a slice of Beach Pea chocolate/raspberry cake, and finally the latest dropped episode of Slow Horses.
Namaste (photo by adjacent yogi Claire) 
Beach Pea Chocolate/Raspberry Cake I take it as a birthday treat that this episode 3, “Tall Tales,” was my favorite of all 5 seasons so far: Jackson Lamb, deliciously profane, witty, and squalid as played by Gary Oldman, so cleverly spins a spy tale of STASI interrogation that he both distracts the Dogs keeping the Slough House team in lock down and prompts his “joes” to perform the coordinated assault that frees them. I’ve watched that delightful scene three times now, and may yet watch it again—despite the uncomfortably recognizable “destabilization strategy” at the heart of Season 5, “London Rules,” based on Mick Herron’s 2018 novel of the same name. How do you create widespread chaos and division in five easy steps?
- Compromise an agent (seduce one of the good guys into inadvertently helping the bad guys)
- Attack the village (evoke terror with random violence that harms civilians)
- Disrupt transport (keep people from traveling freely)
- Seize the media (create a viral media distraction, diverting the public and news outlets from a larger, more sinister plot—aka “flood the zone”)
- Assassinate a populist leader (a politically motivated assassination maximizes chaos and further destabilizes the government)
Yikes. Sounds all too familiar. No wonder I’ve inadvertently memorized the “Strange Game” lyrics Mick Jagger so memorably recorded for this series. Life in these Un-tied States has indeed become a strange game.
The brilliant Gary Oldman as down-on-his-luck spook Jackson Lamb in Apple’s Slow Horses But the next day, following up a tip from Ruth about a dahlia display in Newmarket, I discovered a compensatory counterbalance to the gloom of dispiriting news and a lingering virus. Estate gardener Spencer Scott maintains a spectacular garden of 250 dahlia varieties in a waste space adjacent to a Newmarket parking lot on Bay Road.
Estate Gardner Spencer Scott among his beauties, 9 Oct 2025, Newmarket NH That night would bring our first frost of the season, so he was on site to offer bouquets of the bounty that would not last the night, and to answer any questions. Spencer’s love of his garden was evident as he detailed how he cares for his plants, harvesting seaweed and grinding it with a mower to enrich the soil, feeding and watering each plant directly to its root system, experiencing two hours of such care “as no more than 5 minutes,” and turning bleak to beauty.
Flower power: it cast a spell, a tonic reminder of goodness in the world, and a most welcome start to my 73rd year.
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October Accounting
4 October 2025
Wild grasses at Gnawwood Here it is, Dear Reader, nearly two months since my last post, well into my birth month, and I’m struggling to account for all that has transpired since last I addressed you.. What’s been happening? My last hummingbird deserted the feeder outside my kitchen window over a week ago, no doubt bound for warmer climes to the south, and the house now makes the snap, crackle, and pop sounds that I long ago learned signify lower humidity, not some intruder. Autumn has arrived after the driest summer on record in New Hampshire. The leaves are turning early and dropping fast.
I did at last finish painting the deck railing with penetrating oil, readying it for winter. Oh, the MANY surfaces of a Chippendale pattern! And 100 more daffodil bulbs await planting—for the first time ever assisted by an auger bit, once I locate the 20V cordless drill necessary to twirl it. I’ve made little progress in discarding—another planned summer project—though half our LP collection has now found another home to make way for the 28 Murphy Family photo albums my late mother so carefully kept and my brother-in-law so kindly sent me. I also spent WAY too much time preparing last Monday’s book talk for the Madbury Library on “Will to Live: How and Why My Book Came to Be,” both a lamentation about the demise of Shakespeare requirements in a culture with too few common denominators, and a reminder of just how much effort and energy a well-crafted lecture requires. Thank goodness I’m retired.
Vetting applicants hoping to become our new Madbury Library Director helps to fill my most recent days, along with two book groups, some volunteer driving, and the ever-increasing demands of an aging home and body, punctuated by correspondence with peers fighting the same geriatric battles. Tai chi and yoga classes help, as do walks in the glorious New England fall. These sustain.
Durham Town Landing on the Oyster River But there have also been losses beyond remedy: the unexpected passing of my acting professor and friend of 52 years, Pete Smith, who first gave me the courage to step onstage. Pete became the devoted husband of my college suitemate, Karen, and the beloved founder of both the Warehouse Theatre in Greenville, South Carolina and the Theatre Department at Sewanee’s University of the South with its very fine Tennessee Williams Center. Pete leaves a lasting legacy in the generations of students he trained and inspired, but will be much missed.
Furman U’s 1974 production of O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, with Pete Smith as James Tyrone, me as Mary, Dean Coe as Edmund, and Bill Iannone as Jamie Closer to home—literally just up the street—a shocking murder/suicide in August left a family of five suddenly, horribly reduced to a single surviving three-year-old, a baffling tragedy that has rocked our little town, reminding us of how little we know the lives of others in our digitally connected and yet dangerously isolated world. The daily, nearly hourly assaults on democracy of the Felon-in-Chief continue to confound and depress. Jimmy Kimmel’s muzzling proved temporary, but Colbert’s has not, and today marks day four of a government shutdown irresponsibly, perfidiously blamed on racist lies about funding healthcare for illegals. And we’ve lost that talented artist and humanitarian Robert Redford. I’ve been mourning him by streaming films he either acted in or directed that I’d not seen before, including two from 1992, Sneakers (fun with an amazing cast!) and A River Runs Through It, starring the young, luminously gorgeous Brad Pitt. The scripted line describing Pitt’s character, Paul Maclean, just as aptly described his director, Redford: “He was beautiful.” In every way.
Redford directs Pitt in 1992’s A River Runs Through It My privileged life nevertheless affords me the leisure to buffer horrors in the micro- and macrocosm. Reading the role of Nancy Sandberg in David Moore’s scripted version of his 2018 history, Small Town, Big Oil, the tale of how three Durham women bested Aristotle Onassis’s plan to build an oil refinery on Great Bay, gave me a first-ever chance to play someone who was also watching from the audience.
Playwright David Moore on book with the heroic duo Nancy Sandberg behind him, and Dudley Dudley behind her 
The Bay that Sandberg, Dudley, and Bennett saved 
What MIGHT have been a refinery, now preserved as Wagon Hill Farm 
Monarch still in residence at the Wagon Hill Farm Community Garden And returning to the refurbished Huntington Theatre in Boston as the new season began with Jez Butterworth’s play The Hills of California, something of a British mashup of Gypsy and Crimes of the Heart, brought me all the reassurance of purposeful assembly in a sacred place, which is what the theatre has long meant to me.
The Huntington Theatre, Boston More “No Kings” protests loom.
Cataract Ave Bridge Protest, Dover NH, 1 Sept 2025 So does Halloween: this year the seasonal decorations that appeared in the Home Depot by early September are more grandly animated (and expensive!) than ever. What does THAT say about our cultural moment I wonder?
Horrors at the Home Depot Me, I continue to commune with the wild birds, the rafter of turkeys devouring (even more, I hope) ticks, and the deer who’ve decimated hostas and hydrangeas but still manage to spark joy. Change is in the air.
We prepare for the worst, hope for the better.
Reflections at Wagon Hill: Nature’s Impressionism -
Gundalow
6 August 2025
The gundalow Piscataqua moored at the Marcy Street dock, Portsmouth NH (the vertical-lift Memorial Bridge to Kittery in the background) In this brave new world of OpenAI offering both “companionship” for the lonely and the undoing of education as I once knew it, I’ve been seeking solace from such discombobulating changes in the macrocosm—and in my personal microcosm as well. The latest physical annoyance in the latter: floating bodies—chips of bone in my knees, floaters in my eyes—common, alas, to advancing age. Last week’s solution: fight floating bodies with a floating body of a third kind. The gundalow is a flat-bottomed sailing barge that first appeared in Maine and New Hampshire rivers in the mid-1600’s, and used tidal currents for propulsion supplemented by a single triangular (“lateen”) sail brailed to a heavy yard to harness wind. The heavily counterweighted yard attached to a stump mast allows the yard to be pivoted down to shoot under bridges while maintaining the boat’s way; with a draught of only 3 feet, gundalows were very active river craft in the 1700 and 1800’s, sometimes delivering cordwood to brickworks to fire their kilns, and picking up cargoes of finished bricks in return. They were practical and elegant in their practicality.
Last Wednesday the Seacoast Village Project, a nonprofit network of older adults working together to improve their odds of aging in place, afforded me my first chance to sail on a reconstructed gundalow, the Piscataqua, and to visit the newly restored Wood Island Life Saving Station at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. Until recently that structure was a romantic ruin off the Kittery coast, tantalizing me from my first arrival in Portsmouth over 30 years ago, so this was an offer I could not refuse. The day was fine, the company enjoyable, and the maritime history captivating, from the first glimpse of the Piscataqua moored at the Marcy Street dock behind Portsmouth’s Prescott Park in its late summer full blooming splendor. Here, Dear Reader, is a photo essay of a delightful outing.
Prescott Park in full summer glory 
Cannas, hydrangeas, and salvia bloom in front of Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth 
Canada Geese turn Prescott turf into obstacle course (tariff revenge?) 
The Piscataqua crew readies the ship for boarding 
Old Salt Peter Cass volunteer crews 
Wood Island and Whaleback Lighthouse on the horizon 
Arrival at the Wood Island Life Saving Station, 43.0640oN 70.6974oW 
Charismatic WILSSA (Wood Island Life Saving Station Association
President Sam Reid explains the exemplary history of the Station and its restorationIn 1908, the current Life Saving Station and a tool shed were built by Sugden Brothers of Portsmouth NH for the US Life Saving Service. Its Duluth style, so called because the first examples of this style were built in and around Duluth, Minnesota to serve the Great Lakes, was designed by architect George R. Tolman. (Duluth, Minnesota, by the way, takes its name from French explorer Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Luht, the first European to navigate the St. Louis River in 1679.) Tolman’s 1908 structure replaced the original Jerry’s Point Station #12 across the harbor in New Castle NH which had been requisitioned by the US Navy. Federal ownership of the Station was conveyed to Kittery ME in 1973, but absent funds to maintain the historic property, it fell into disrepair, and in 2009, Kittery planned to demolish it.
Lacking the money even for demolition, in 2011, Kittery advertised a Request for Proposals for non-profits interested in restoring and reusing the Station on behalf of Kittery. That’s when the newly formed Wood Island Life Saving Station Association was formed, and proved the only respondent to the RFP. With construction help from both the Maine National Guard and the Maine Army National Guard—and $7 million in funds and grants raised by WILSSA—the Wood Island Life Saving Station opened as a museum of maritime history in 2024, honoring the bravery of surfmen over 100 years earlier with the motto “Helping Others, Then and Now.”
The Mervin F. Roberts, a fully restored 1930’s surfboat, rests on a custom-made steel cradle mounted on a one-of-its-kind marine railway for expedient launch. The 8-man rescue craft was named for one-time owner Roberts, decorated WWII Naval officer and beloved longtime resident of Old Lyme, Connecticut. 
The Atlantic-facing side of the Station, with lookout tower characteristic of the Duluth style 
View from the back porch: Whaleback Lighthouse (1872) 
A pleasant porch perch 
21st-century power for the 1908 Station 
Whaleback seen from the observation deck 
Original plaster in the pantry 
Gundalow skipper guides us to harbor . . . 
. . . passing the creepy, derelict Navy Brig (1908-1974) 
. . . and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard 
The Piscataqua crew lowers the sail A lighthouse (as Virginia Woolf certainly knew) has an uncanny and oxymoronic appeal: lonely, forbidding, and unreachable, yet illuminating and salutary, warding off disaster. And the romance of Wood Island’s Life Saving Station coupled with the nearby Whaleback Lighthouse is undeniable. The courage and dedication of strong men willing to save lives while risking their own in perilous seas is a tonic antidote to the selfish vanity of late-stage capitalism (think Gordon Gekko’s mantra: “Greed is Good”).
And the complex story of saving the Wood Island Station so that it might continue the altruism of its original purpose is a tribute to our better angels. Add to that already rich tale the story of our first Treasury Secretary, the now (thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda) reanimated Alexander Hamilton, and the good vibes emanating from Wood Island continue to resonate, for it was Hamilton who on 4 August 1790 persuaded Congress to fund ten Revenue Cutters (fast coastal patrol boats) to collect customs duties at US seaports, creating the oldest continuously operating naval service of the U.S. This merged with the US Life-Saving Service in 1915 to form the US Coast Guard, which in turn incorporated the U.S. Lighthouse Service in 1939; Hamilton is thus credited with founding the U.S. Coast Guard, and became part of our high spirits on a sunny summer’s day.
The Coast Guard celebrated its 235th birthday last Saturday with a fireworks display over Portsmouth Harbor free for all to witness—and to contribute to the Portsmouth Food Bank, Gather—there on New Castle Common
A good day, salutary for body and spirit. Hail to thee, Floating Body!
The gundalow “Piscataqua,” on the Piscataqua River, Portsmouth NH
Photograph by Ralph Morang -
On Wisconsin
29 July – 2 August 2025
Windhover Hall at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Santiago Calatrava, architect, constructed 1997-2001 The coincidence of birthdays in July—my brother-in-law Reed “Chad” Andrew turned 91 on the 13th and nephew Rob Andrew 58 on the 25th—brought me back to Wisconsin once again this year and a most welcome reunion with family, some very fine brunches, a return to the still astonishing Milwaukee Art Museum, and a rather disconcerting sense of the distance, both metaphorical and literal, between coastal New Hampshire and the Midwest, deliberately exaggerated by my returning to New Castle Common on the eve of my departure out of some sense of closure that so often now accompanies my travels. Putting things in order (in case of no return) includes a quasi-ceremonial “last look” at what I love.
Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse and Coast Guard Station
viewed from New Castle Common, NH
Wild Morning Glories on the Common 
Seventeenth-century home on New Castle Arrival in Milwaukee that Tuesday evening was easy if somewhat disappointing: the airport Best Western I’d booked for its capacious indoor swimming pool let me down, its unairconditioned atrium rain forest humid and sweltering in the heat wave, and the pool crammed with children playing Marco Polo. I passed on a swim. Last year the funky bar and grill In Plane View’s patio was just the place to enjoy a post-flight burger, but this time the heat sent me on a search that led me first to a place with senior karaoke at full volume (nope!), at last ending in the Mexican place right next to the sad Best Western for a dinner of mediocre tacos.
I made up for such fare the next morning with a fine brunch at Blue’s Egg and Bakery en route to the Andrew home in Portage, and the warm embrace of family.
Dubliner Benedict at Blue’s Egg: corned beef and leeks on rye toast
with poached eggs and paprika aioli
The welcome committee l to r: Chad, Jan, Pam, and Rob Over our two days together, we did a lot of catching up and some walking around the Saddle Ridge development amidst drumlins and a kettle lake called Swan Lake (thank you, glaciers of 30,000-10,000 years ago, for the landscape). We made a pilgrimage to the home of superior grilled-cheese-and tomato-soup lunches, the Sassy Cow Creamery in Columbus (“Unlimited Milk Refills!”); took in the open skies and rolling cornfields as well as the depleted little downtown of Pardeeville; played Sequence (made me wonder if the gay version would be “Sequins,” a speculation I kept to myself); and for breakfast enjoyed Jan’s excellent Baked French Toast Casserole (via a recipe from appropriately named pioneerwoman.com).
The Sassy Cow Creamery in Columbus WI 
Pardeeville WI downtown 
Miles and miles of cornfields 
Visiting Sandhill Cranes 
Watercraft at the Swan Lake Marina, Saddle Ridge, Portage Time passing, however unacknowledged, was inevitably, wistfully on everyone’s mind: will another such reunion be possible next year?
My perhaps obsessively acute awareness of my own accelerating aging made me wonder, and sent me back to Milwaukee searching for solace, comfort I happily found both at the Wisconsin chain Culver’s (home of butter burgers and frozen custard—and good, plain, reasonably priced food; wish we had a Culver’s in NH) and in the Mitchell Park Domes, Milwaukee’s second botanical conservatory, beehive-shaped conoidal glass domes designed by Milwaukee architect Donald L. Grieb in 1955, constructed from 1959-1967, and dedicated by Lady Bird Johnson in the fall of 1965.
The Mitchell Park Domes, Milwaukee The three domes—Tropical, Desert, and Show—proved unexpectedly charming, especially the tropical one, no doubt exotic to native Wisconsinites (aka Cheeseheads) in winter, but homey to this Floridian. The Desert display pointed out the importance of date palms that for the first time made me realize that Date Palm Avenue, South in St. Petersburg had resonance beyond my home address.
Inside the Tropical Dome 
Helicomia rostrata, False Bird of Paradise, native to Central and SW America 
Alocasia sanderiana, native to the Phillipines 
Cubanola domingensis, Tree Lily, native to the Dominican Republic 
Echinacactus grusonii, Golden Barrell Cactus, native to Mexico Having bailed on returning to the disappointing Best Western, I was pleased that the La Quinta in New Berlin just west of Milwaukee proper was indeed newly refurbished, quiet, and comfortable, though I’m not sure the badger on the wall exuded hospitality.
Bucky Badger greets me at the La Quinta, New Berlin WI I slept long and next morning had a fine sustaining Saturday brunch at nearby BrunchBerry, bustling with weekend trade and complimentary cream puffs.
Breakfast Bar at BrunchBerry, New Berlin WI 
Garlic Herb Cheese Omelet with Cowboy Potatoes Since my flight home did not leave from MKE until 6.30, I had decided to spend most of the day at the Milwaukee Art Museum, whose iconic architecture I’d first discovered last year only days after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at the Republican convention; admission then was free in honor of the visiting conventioneers, but downtown was crawling with not-so-Secret Service in large, black, tactical vehicles, lending architect Calatrava’s futurism a disconcertingly dystopian cast.
Not so this year. I arrived in the cool underground parking lot at MAM just in time to make my way up to the sky bridge across Art Museum Drive to witness the noon closing of the Brise Soleil (sun break), the most iconic feature of Santiago Calatrava’s Quadracci Pavilion, its 217-foot wingspan not only practical in controlling the sunlight entering in and thus the temperature of Windhover Hall, but evocative of the sails and seabirds just behind the soaring structure perched on the Lake Michigan shore.
Sky bridge at Milwaukee Art Museum 
Brise Soleil et moi (photo by some charming Italians from Chicago) The closing takes 3.5 minutes, and occasioned lots of camera swapping among visitors eager both to video the event and record their witnessing of it. Back inside Windhover Hall’s 90-foot glass nave, a crew of Museum personnel were setting up for a wedding, which made me realize that the uplifting if secular sanctity of that space was just what Calatrava had in mind: the flying buttresses, pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and soaring nave are a Gothic cathedral reimagined.
Windhover Hall’s ceiling, 90 feet above the floor 
Prep for a wedding beneath the nave’s ceiling, Lake Michigan on the horizon 
Schroeder Galleria leading to the European Collection The collection housed inside, though not expansive, is choice and very well captioned. I was heartened by the number of young families visiting on this sunny Saturday, and impressed by the kid-friendly opportunities to not just appreciate, but make art. One of the young gallery staff even pointed out to me a place to sit and recharge my phone: everything at MAM felt both elevated and accessible.
St. George slays the dragon, Tyrol/Austria, 1475-1490 
Strong but compassionate George 
Edge of England, Cornelia Parker, 1999 (chalk, wire, wire mesh) 
Typewriter Eraser, Claes Oldenburg, 1976 (the year I entered grad school) 
Decorative arts, including an IBM Selectric (1961); its typeball printed my dissertation in 1984 
Honeywax, Kiki Smith, 1995 (how I feel most days since 2016) I had tea on the lakeside porch where last July I had had to deal with the bogus Amazon publishers who were trying to scam me out of rights to my own Will to Live manuscript, a phone call all the more memorable for being so out of place in such a blithe setting.
Lakeside porch at MAM 
Inside the Café, promenade on the horizon Good to be back at the same spot with that mishigas finally resolved. And the promenade of passersby deploying an amusing array of transport amused: strolling, jogging, running, rollerblading, scootering, pedaling 4-seater canopied surreys, riding bicycles, Segways, and one motorized unicycle.
After a final visit to the American collection, I walked to the south façade of MAM to discover the wedding party who would later celebrate in the Windhover nave and dine in the Baumgartner Galleria. Tacitly wishing them well, I set my gps for the airport, and 8.5 hours later, returned to my home sweet home.
Wedding party on the south lawn at MAM Blue’s Egg and Bakery, Brise Soleil, BrunchBerry New Berlin WI, Culver’s, Gothic cathedral re-imagined, La Quinta Inn, Milwaukee Art Museum, Mitchell Park Domes Milwaukee, New Castle Common, Pardeeville WI, Santiago Calatrava, Sassy Cow Creamery, Tropical plants, Wedding in the Quadracci Pavilion, Windhover Hall, Wisconsin badger -
July so far: Good Trouble in the Summertime
22 July 2025
Standing united on 17 July 2025, Dover NH I’m was up this morning far earlier than accustomed for this retiree, as Levi Ellis and his painting crew arrived at 8 am to restore my shower and apse ceilings and our big deck to their original pristine state. And it’s unusually cool for mid-July in New Hampshire, a welcome reprieve from the heat of past weeks: 66o upstairs with no ac and widows open, low humidity. Brilliant blue sky. There’s the drip drip drip of the Trump/Epstein saga on recently defunded NPR, and I woke to a tick crawling on my neck. But the day is too fine for pessimism, and however sleep deprived, I’m thinking of what’s been a very fine July so far.
For one thing, last Thursday’s “Good Trouble” rally on 17 July, the fifth anniversary of John Lewis’s passing, I judge a success. Ninety hot minutes at the intersection of Washington and Central Ave in Dover, New Hampshire garnered some middle finger salutes, but also lots of approval honking, some even from big rig 18-wheelers. I stand by (and below) my protest sign: Only Ongoing Organized Outrage Overcomes Oppression. Maybe, just maybe the Opposition is gaining some momentum, and we shall overcome.
It’s the month of celebrating the birth of what my late husband always called the Un-tied States—now, it seems, as untied as ever before. But I’ve always loved the Fourth of July, forever associated with my bon vivant Uncle Kenny, his glamorous wife my Aunt Mart, and their beautiful daughters, the “Big Girls” Bevy and Bobbie, respectively four and two years older than me and always gorgeously turned out. Every summer the Murphy family made the 3-day pre-interstate drive from St. Pete to Dayton to visit the Murphy grandparents, and every Fourth we went to the Senseman home in Kettering adjoining a country club; in her terraced back yard Aunt Mart would stage a big cookout always followed by a tremendous fireworks display over the neighboring golf course. Every year one firecracker was launched with a parachute which, if found and claimed, meant a prize (of indeterminate worth), and every year, flanked by the Big Girls, my beautiful cousins, I ran through the dark, half flying because suspended by the grasp of the taller cousins, to Find The Parachute. We never did. Didn’t matter. The thrill remains.
My beloved Uncle Kenny died on the Fourth of July 1984, the evening I was in the parking lot of the Danville Manor shopping center out on the Danville, Kentucky bypass with the Centre College Chair of Humanities, Milton Reigelman, who took me to see the fireworks after my day of hunting for an apartment where I would start my first year as a just-hired assistant professor, the beginning of a new life. I toast Uncle Kenny every Fourth, and try to celebrate as often as possible the Spirit of ’76, which this year takes on a new urgency.
Julee’s spectacular appetizer at this year’s Fourth party 
Food and Fireworks for the Festivities 
Foodie photographers Julee, Shiao-Ping, and Carol record the moment This year the serendipitous simultaneity of invitations from two different sets of friends in western Massachusetts got me the first road trip of summer. First stop: Easthampton, where good friend and colleague artist Brian Chu currently has his first show at the Oxbow Gallery, and friends of my baby professor days Ann and Sheldon now have a lovely home with their son Peter close by their daughter Rachel, son-in-law Joe, and new grandson Simon, truck aficionado and light of everyone’s life. Brian’s paintings, another of Ann’s gorgeous dinners, catchup time on the porch (with the appearance of TWO foxes), and a visit to the Smith College art museum next day were a real delight.
Centre College Reunion (Ann, Georgeann, and Sheldon) with Chu paintings 
Adam’s Point, NH, Oil on canvas, Brian Chu, 2020-2025 
And then it was off to Granby, where Wendy (retired from the Mount Holyoke Art Museum and now practicing underwater seamstress), Nora (ABD art historian just returned from Rome), and resident guard dog (Gali)Leo were immersed in delayed Fourth of July party prep.
Wendy, ever the organized hostess 
Nora, sous chef 
Leo, Noble Briard How delightful to be back at Bencontenta, the temple house that helped inspire David’s and my Gnawwood.
Bencontenta Back in NH for a day, I was soon off to Maine for my first visit to the venerable Ogunquit Playhouse, famed summer stock venue since 1937, to see a fine production of the 1950 musical Guys and Dolls with my stylist of 30 years, Teri, followed by a fancy dinner at MC in classically Downeast Perkins Cove. I’m happy to report that “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” remains a show-stopping success. And who could say no to MC’s Pavola (cold brew gelato, caramel, chocolate, and coconut crumb)?
Teri at the Ogunquit Playhouse 
Guys and Dolls set design by Adam Koch & Steven Royal 
MC Perkins Cove Pavlova July’s been good. Beloved, gracious, and well-spoken Rotarian Ric Erickson was honored with a bench at the Madbury Public Library while he was still around to enjoy it, and the Library initiated its premier free July concert series: first the Southern NH Ukelele Group, then last Tuesday, Portsmouth’s New Horizons Band. Nothing says summer like a band concert on the lawn.
Ric relishes his tribute 
The Southern NH Ukelele Group at the Madbury Public Library, 8 July 2025 
The New Horizons Band plays the Madbury Public Library, 15 July 2025 And my favorite series, The Bear, is back for a fourth season, which has me wondering why the Democrats can’t implement Chef Escoffier’s hierarchical brigade system. As Will Rogers opined: “I’m not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.” But still, the Strafford County Dems, however ungainly, are organizing.
And the peach crop is in at Union Lake Orchard, the daylilies are in bloom, and fresh coats of paint inspire a fresh take on cleaning, organizing, and downsizing as the second half of 2025 is well underway.
Levi, Pete, and Corey bring the deck back to life Soon I’m off to hear the UNH Sea Trek Program’s Sea Chantey Singers on the Library lawn, and I plan to enjoy it all—for summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Perkins Cove, Maine, 13 July 2025
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Georgeann Murphy 