Dick's Toys

 I've made it to my next stop. Back in the hometown with one of the people I've become re-acquianted with as an adult, and Dick and his wife Darla and I get along really well. Dick has quite a collection of toys.

Oh, wait. Actually, Dick really likes full-size toys. This is his new favorite- a '72 Cheyenne Super. He's pretty fond of Darla too.

The view from his back yard is a favorite of mine. His garden, with the hills on the other side of Cayuga Lake behind (and a corn field).

And just to round out the end of the visit with Elaine, we played Scrabble before I left this morning. I thought I might beat her, but she managed to pull ahead and win by 14 points.

I'm working on the final round of book editing, and also had some time to relax this afternoon. Very good day.

See Hometown Time

Abby Sends Me Off

This morning, I said goodbye to Irene and Abby. Abby seemed sad to see me go.

I took the slow route to my next stop because I love driving over the hills of home. I was going to name the post that, but I've used that title before, and it turned out that only one of my pictures is much good anyway. But the geography Western NY sure calls to me.

I'll let you play a guessing game again... where am I? With someone who also like word games. We played Scrabble. We tied at 276 points each. I expcted to get clobbered because I don't play Scrabble much, and am not adept at the strategy.

Then we played Upwords. I REALLY expected to get beat on this one. I was getting walloped, but then made a great play, and went out when the other person still had tiles! So, I won again. Don't get too excited. We are both good at word games.

Then we went for a little walk. This is white snakeroot, formerly Eupatorium rugosum, now Ageratina altissima. Whatever you call it, it's very toxic to farm animals like sheep, goats and horses. If cows eat it, and people drink the milk or eat the meat they can get "milk fever," which can be fatal.

Perhaps the best find of our little walk was a green heron on the marsh.

The focus isn't quite as good on this one, but we like how it's cleaning its foot.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you where I am. Think games and birds. The answer is....

See Did You Guess Irene?

A Bunny Trail to a Treasure

 

"Bunny Trail or Rabbit Trail" is an American idiom meaning (among other things) to go off on a tangent while trying to make a point, never or belatedly to arrive at the goal of the speech or conversation. Rabbits don't travel in straight lines; the etymology is obvious.

So here's how a bunny trail led to today's post. I'm a Nero Wolfe fan (a brainy and eccentric American detective created by writer Rex Stout).

I "met" Jim during the golden age of blogging. We became blogging buddies because his blog was about a dog, Dennis' Diary of Destruction. But Dennis was a Vizsla, as was my dog, Maggie. It turned out that Jim and I had other things in common like reading, writing, and some shared locations in our personal histories. So we have stayed in touch via Facebook.

Cue the non-sequitur. The only attempt I'd ever seen to dramatize the mystery series was one created by NBC in 1981. William Conrad (best known for Cannon) and Lee Horsley played Wolfe and his side-kick Archie Goodwin. It was terrible. The screenplays were wretched and Conrad just wasn't a believable Wolfe.

Jim is also a fan of Nero Wolfe. Just a few weeks ago, as a result of a word game not accepting "pfui" as a real word, he mentioned an attempt at a Nero Wolfe series by A&E. "Pfui" is one of Wolfe favorite expletives. Since I am a Wolfe fan, I knew why he was outraged that this word wasn't accepted. We've never had cable TV, and I wasn't even aware the A&E series existed. But I had to watch an episode (available on YouTube) to see what I thought. I've now watched both seasons that were produced and am on my second time through, while reading the original stories first to compare. The scripts have not been dumbed down for TV or spiced up to make them more rough and tumble. The screenwriters did a tremendous job.

Well! Maury Chaykin plays Wolfe and Timothy Hutton is Archie. Chaykin IS Wolfe (although in the pilot the directors didn't let him be quite as rude and brash as he is). Hutton took a few episodes to get into the role, but he is a believable, supercilious Archie. All the supporting characters are perfect, although possibly the best is Bill Smitrovich as the perpetually frustrated, cigar-chewing Inspector Cramer. Fritz, Saul, Fred, Orrie, Lon Cohen, and Purly Stebbins are also on the money. Colin Fox as Fritz occasionally rises to greatness.

Cue the aside. In the pilot and the first episode, A&E chose to dramatize my two least favorite of the Wolfe stories (The Golden Spiders and The Doorbell Rang). But they got the personalities of the cast and the setting so perfect that I had to keep watching.

So, closer to the point. I've always been interested in books mentioned within books. Two titles come into The Doorbell Rang, one is The FBI Nobody Knows. I assumed this was fictional, because it is a pillar of the plot. Turns out that's a real book, published in 1964, the year before the mystery was published. The other book mentioned is The Treasure of Our Tongue, which Wolfe is reading. Of course he doesn't want to stop reading and actually work. But the bank balance is low and Archie must goad the great brain into earning some money to support his chosen lifestyle.

Cue the rodomontade (one of Wolfe's words- look it up). I own every Nero Wolfe mystery, including The Black Orchids which was hard to find, and I've read them all about five times.

The Treasure of Our Tongue is also real, also published in 1964. It's written by Lincoln Barnett. It is a brief (343 pages) history of language in general and particularly of the English language. The first chapter- general history is really dated by being written in 1964, but after that, if you like words, it's a fascinating book.

Cue the mechanics. How did I find a book that old, that fast? There is a web site called Internet Archive. It is a non-profit archive library of books, movies, televison, music and more where you can borrow many things that are not yet in the public domain. And there it is! You can borrow a book for an hour at a time, but you can renew as often as needed. The text is presented as the page of a book, thus fixing what I hate most about reading things online: the too-long lines of characters. You can zoom, etc. The text is searchable. Pretty darn wonderful.

Parts of the book are frankly prescient. There is a whole chapter outlining how the English language has been debased and is declining. This was 1964, remember. Barnett should see the state of the language in 2023! He cites multiple sources of how ill-prepared high-school graduates are for college in the use of language. I graduated HS in 1965. If my near classmates were that bad, I wonder what he'd think of today's crop. For example, this quote from a college administrator: "the graduate of an elementary school today [1960s] cannot with certainty be accused of knowing any given subject, but he can be guarranteed to know no grammar."

The author clearly believes that proper language is not simply a conveyance for social snobbery. One of his final conclusions is "In the health of the English Language, the health of Western civilization may well reside."

Finally, the treasure (where all our wonderful words come from). I haven't done a quiz for a long time, but because I'm finding this book so much fun, I want you to play too. Column A is a list of a dozen English words. Column B is a list of languages/countries. Both lists are alphabetical. Match the word with where it came from. Tomorrow, I'll give the answers with explanations. Put your answers (eg A-5- not necessarily a correct match) in the comments. If you play and leave your email (unless you are sure I already know it), I'll send you my most recent short story, a dark little North-Dakota-inspired noir tale.

Column A	Column B
A. ahoy	1. Arabic
B. alcohol	2. Austrailian Aboriginal
C. budgeriar (a budgie or parakeet)	3. Bengali
D. bungalow	4. Celtic
E. cash (n.)	5. Danish
F. criterion	6. Dutch
G. law	7. Latin
H. moose	8. Native American
I. potato	9. Scandinavian
J. shirt	10. Spanish
K. Thames	11. Tamil
L. Wales	12. Teutonic

More Reconnections

 
I have a few more pictures to post from Saturday of people I knew long ago. All these people are a few years younger than I am, which makes a huge difference in how well you know each other when you are still kids. They were just coming into youth group when I was leaving for college.

This is friend, Dick Ross, who was also at the funeral. We think we hadn't seen each other since 1974. That's a bit better than the full 50 years since I've seen most of the others. He's now an Elder at the church. Dick and I have reconnected on Facebook, and we seem to have quite a bit in common.



Jon and Eda Baldwin- My apologies for not getting better pictures.



And Becky Fulkerson.


Quite a bit of visiting with Marie's friends today, but I wrote 1500 words in the morning, and we also walked 3 miles at the mall.

And, speaking of writing on North Country Quest, look what word I got in our favorite game, Quiddler, this evening. Portentious? or Coincidence?

	See Home Church
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Calm

 
I didn't take a single picture today. That's OK. It was a calm day.

I wrote in the morning, and then Marie and I had pizza for lunch and walked 6 miles at the mall.

We came home and read and discussed some of the chapters I've written, and then fixed dinner and played our word game for a while.

I like it.

I'll just add another picture of the Catskills in the distance.

	See orChid, Koi, Catskills
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Next Stop, Ithaca

 
I've made it to Ithaca, NY. The driving was messy, but I just lowed down and it was fine. The real problem is that the program that was scheduled for this evening was cancelled first thing this morning, because schools were cancelled.

So, I'm now with Elaine, which is great! We went out to eat.



We got fortune cookies. You can draw any kind of conclusions you like. So far the Dove candy wrappers have a better track record.



Since we didn't have to go anywhere, we are watching the History Channel and playing Upwords.



We had to picture the words in the middle of the game! Hiker and tent are foreshadowing of who would ultimately win (tee hee).



The score was tied. Then I got a great score and went ahead, but didn't have anywhere to play my last letter. But Elaine took her turn, and made it possible for me to play my last letter, so she had to lose 5 points. I won this round! Here's the final board.



Sure hoping for the program tomorrow to be a go. I need to stop losing money! I'm having a great time, but this trip needs to NOT be a financial bust.

	See No Treadmill at Treadwell
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Arriving in Philadelphia

 
Another day of mostly driving. Pam, Marie and I arrived in Philadelphia just after dark. Dave (Marie's son, and my "extra" boy) had managed to save us a parking space in front of the house.



We had a late dinner because the girls were out seeing a play some friends of theirs were in. Then we played a game of Apples to Apples, which was extra entertaining since nearly everyone was falling asleep on the table!



I haven't seen the girls for two years, so it's pretty amazing how much more grown up they are.

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We Hiked!

 
Today, we are back at Marie's house, where I will get to spend just three more days with her. I'd rather it be about three more weeks, or months, or years. I hope each one of you has at least one friend who is as close as the two of us are.

We were playing our favorite word game, and Marie was dealt this hand! I am not making this up.



Two big completions in the past couple of weeks. First, I finished the Finger Lakes Trail, making me officially End-to-Ender #370. All I have to do is send in my record form and I'll receive that patch.

Then we drove over to Vermont and hiked the 65 additional miles that are being added to the North Country Trail so that it will connect with the Appalachian Trail. Luke (Strider) Jordan hiked this piece last year, but Marie and I are numbers 2 & 3 to do so.

I can't get organized quite enough yet to start taking you through the days of the hikes, but here are some more feel-good teasers. When we were last at Crown Point, in 1996, the old bridge, built in 1929, was the link to Vermont.



Now, there is a new bridge, opened just last year, and you can see it here in the same perspective. This is where we began the Vermont piece. Technically, I guess we were still in New York until we were halfway across the bridge! It has pedestrian walkways, and is a beautiful crossing of Lake Champlain. Lots of history there. More on that another day.



Any day is a good day that we are hiking together. Total miles this trip- about 112. I have to add up the corrected mileages, but this isn't off by much.

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More!

 
More of the same, but no one is tired of it yet. We began today by going to Dave and Rachel's church. It was youth Sunday, and Anja was the Scripture reader. She's really growing up! She's checking the program one last time with her mom, Rachel.



Mia would rather stand over the hot air register and make funny faces. Being eight is great!



The afternoon was filled with games and eating. We played more Tell Tale, and then Telephone Pictionary (see link to description of that), and then after supper more Bananagrams.



The people in the picture are L-R: Mia, Jay (Pam's oldest son, David's cousin- he also lives in Philly and came over for the afternoon), Anja, Pam (married to Marie's brother), Marie and me. Dave and Rachel are so gracious to let us completely take over their house for the weekend. We all have a great time, even though the space is small. It doesn't matter when people are having fun and helping each other.

Tomorrow is the flower show!

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Apropos Quiddler

 
Every once in a while one of those amazing coincidences happen that just make you smile.

Today, Marie went to clean with me. The boss said he could use another hand, so that way we got to be more or less together, even though we we working hard.

But we had time for a quick game of our favorite, Quiddler, beforehand. It's a word game, and I blogged about it a long time ago. (link at end)



But, this morning, it began to pour (and rained off and on all day).

The joke, however, is the five-card hand Marie was dealt. And not only dealt this possible message, but in the exact order she is displaying.



Some planets somewhere must have been aligned! Can you tell it's raining through the window?

	See Quiddler See FLT Hiking
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I've Been Ikeaed

 


Absolutely wild day (for me). The familiar Philadelphia Skyline as a backdrop for the day. We went to a big Ikea store because Aunt Pam and I had never been to one. It was an experience, that's for sure.



Since I'm not much of a shopper, and have lost most any interest I ever might have had had in fixing up my house, I'm not sure I'll need to go again, but at least I'm no longer culturally illiterate about Ikea.

Here the girls demonstrate how to test a bed.



After we got back to the house, Rachel's sister and brother-in-law came over for dinner and games. That made nine of us in a very small row house. This is good for me every now and then- it reminds me how nice and calm my usual life is!

The adults tried a new game called Hexal. Here Dave contemplates a good move.



After dinner, we all played Telephone Pictionary. I described this one last year, but I'll explain again. Each person writes a sentence that could be illustrated. The sentence is passed to the next person who draws it. The next person has to look at the picture (not the original sentence) and write down what they think the picture is. You go around until everyone has their own back again, then show everyone how things have changed.



Amazingly enough a couple of the stories stayed pretty much on track all the way around. However, "the bat ate some bananas" ended up as "the snail ate three bowls of food and a stinky ear of corn."

Also, "Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after," became "The witch cast a spell on the princess and she fell off the cliff into the shark infested water."

Lots of good laughs, and now we are winding down for bed.

	See It's Not Technically My Family... But
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