[Above photo: An evening view of Le Pont-de-Montverd and the Tarn River, the terminus of our hike.]

4 October 2025

Robert Louis Stevenson broke the trail in Travels With a Donkey in the Cevennes.  Maria and Tom created our Action Plan and led our troupe. Mme. Marie-Ange supplied the donkeys. Upio, Hashtag, and Bellou did the heavy lifting. The other 7 of us did our share of donkey duty and hiking.

From Langogne to Pont de Montvert we walked, some 8-14 miles per day, a group of pilgrims honoring not our lord but the charm of rolling hills and tiny valley towns, and always, local baked goods and pate. Sometimes we’d stay at a hotel, sometimes a gite, a more primitive accommodation. Often the latter lacked linens, so those of us with microfiber camping towels would shower, having slept in our own sleeping sacks underneath their blankets. Some used t-shirts or other clothing to dry after showers, depending on how desperately soiled they felt.

The food was variable, with an excess of sausages for supper and, in the Abby de Notre Dame, bread and coffee only for breakfast. The nuns were consistent with their stoicism, providing thin, narrow, scratchy toilet paper.  Since we’d come from lovely Lyon, the home of many Paul Bocuse establishments and the current centre gastronomique of France, the contrast with peasant fare was striking, although venison stew and wild boar pate complimented the wild cepe mushrooms foragers were bringing to each restaurant.  Cepe tarts are heaven embodied.

We’d rise at an agreed-up hour, depending on the length of the day’s hike, eat, assemble our belongings and prepare the donkeys. Halter them, curry, brush, clean their shoes and hooves, place the saddle-blanket and saddle, attach the cinches loosely, balance the saddle bags for weight and hook them onto the saddles. Full water bottles, lunches, and waterproofs and layers in our day packs, we’d set off.

The Stevenson app was a great help, as the trail changes and the signs and markings lag.  The little Cicerone book was usefully descriptive of each day’s destination.  We also encountered numerous adults hiking the same direction and they assisted with good cheer and tips.  

A pair of French hikers, Remy and Karl, were lively meal companions for a few days. A Viennese youth, heading “around the world”, was sweet and engaging. Quite a number of the other hikers, French all, were at least of late middle-age, fit contrasts  to the obese adults waddling around our cities.

The older walkers were reassuring to me. I’d worried that this might be the trip to convince me that I was actually 85yo. I was awakened but not because I couldn’t keep up; rather, the long days simply took a lot out of me.

I’m not certain that it was easier to have the donkeys carry my 8kg of stuff than carrying it myself. Leading a donkey is not a relaxing prospect, at least not for the 6 days we did it. As 24 hours grazers, sleeping in shorts intervals, if they don’t feed every 1 1/2-2 hours, they become discomfited by stomach acid and become headstrong. Lunging for their snacks required each of us leading one to decide to allow it or to assert our dominance. We were instructed by Dorian, Marie-Ange’s daughter, to be firm but kind. We were to convince them that we were in charge. It was a psychological game, as well as one very physical. The upper body workout with a hungry 600-800# animal was considerable; I developed a tendonitis and swelling of both my hands from pulling on the lead or grabbing the halter itself. In extreme instances I grabbed both the halter and the animal’s nose to gain control of the head.

It often takes 2 to drive a donkey, one on either side of the head or one in front looking ahead with a loose lead and one in back poking or pushing the animal’s hindquarters when they pause. Shaking a small branch with leaves often helps to get them started again. Tugging, as in trying to dominate a toddler who has just learned “No!” or as in trying to argue with an unfortunate suffering with anorexia nervosa, is sure defeat.

At lunch-time we’d remove their packs and saddles and put each animal on a long lead attached to a tree so they could graze and rest. They liked to stay close to each other; once we had to drop small wedges of apple, Hansel and Gretel-fashion, to draw Hashtag close enough to a distant post to tether him.  At times there wasn’t adequate feed beside the road for them and we’d have to move further along. They loved the leaves and stems of a sumac-like tree.

We purchased and carried oats, apples, carrots, endive, and lemons as treats for them. 2 of the three liked to squeeze the juice out of a lemon half and spit the pulp on the ground. I have no idea of the discrimination of donkey taste buds. Are they capable of sweet, sour, bitter and salt like us?

I bonded with Hashtag on the first day and walked with him much of every day until the last when I switched for Bellou. I’d assumed that the former was old and, thus, headstrong when hungry. I discovered at the end of the trip that his temperament was a result of  adolescence. I initially assumed I was a better donkey-whisperer than I actually was, although I was comfortable with them.  I liked them all; they are sweet and hard workers but demanded much more of us physically than I’d assumed.

A couple of frightening times included Upio getting stung by a hornet and bucking and galloping down a trail untethered. The next day as I was letting Hashtag graze, he stirred up an entire nest of hornets which pursued him up the hill into a gathering of the other two donkeys plus hikers.  All three then burst into a gallop down a long road and out of sight up a side road. We’d learned the day before to simply let go of them if they ran. Tom, Maria, and I followed and they were shoulder to shoulder, looking back at us, wide-eyed. Adrenalized, they’d outrun the hornets. We let them settle for some minutes and resumed our journey.

On the last part of the final day, as we descended the lower slopes of Mt. Lozere, the trail was narrow, rocky, and steep.  There is nothing quite like leading a large beast down a steep slippery trail, hearing their metal shoes sliding behind you on the rocky ledges they must traverse. But they were sure-footed and mindful partners in the venture, knowing the trail well. No one was crushed or even stepped on.

Of my companions, each had an interesting story.  I shall not attempt to repeat them in detail—I’ve not Chaucer’s gifts—but all revealed humor, grit, and kindness. This sort of trip is a good filter. One woman had lived in her 20’s at Findhorn in NE Scotland, for those of you who recall it from the 60’s. Her parents were Polish, captured by the Soviets and they spent 2 years in the same gulag as Alexy Navalny. Others had spouses  with varying degrees of infirmity, adjusting their lives to address the now very disparate needs of two adults in later life. One had a knee that was in trouble but still walked the trail most days uncomplainingly. A recently-married son of one is an accomplished sustainable-energy engineer who cannot find a job since our government has pulled all funding for those programs and must rejoin his Taiwanese wife there, jobless. There was always plenty to discuss and we rarely fell back upon the obvious—the outrageously corrupt and dangerous conduct of DT and his cowardly or malignant sycophants.

The countryside began as gentle hills gradually becoming steeper and higher. Much was forested with spruce, pine, larch, beech and birch. There were endless stone walls encircling emerald meadows containing immense dairy cattle, gigantic bulls, and horses. The latter were usually curious and ran over to where we were. Some were draft horses, some leggy, athletic runners. There were no Quarter Horses or Appaloosas.  All were handsome and well-fed.  We saw sheep only once, a group of 5 or 6 in a darkly-shaded pen. Previously, this was sheep country but the market for wool has vanished world-wide, replaced by petroleum-based polyester fleece.

We encountered deer hunters with a baying pack of hounds on one day. Soon after seeing them, a doe with two fawns ran frantically up a nearby meadow, then down it, and up again. Bambi! No gunshots were heard, thankfully.

We covered the middle section of Stevenson’s journey. If we’d gone further into the Cevennes National Park, we would have traipsed through the Central Massif of France with longer and steeper climbs. As it was, our climb to the Finiels on Mt. Lozere reached 1699m, a bit higher than Maine’s Mt. Katahdin (1606m). That day’s walk was about 14 miles, an exhausting end to the trip, given our donkey-work and the treacherous descent.

I spent the next two nights in a comfortable hotel in Le Puy-en-Velay, a darling medieval town with an 1100 year-old chapel (and frescoes)  atop an extinct volcano. On a higher plug was a tall statue of the virgin Mary cast from Russian cannons captured during the Crimean War after France was victorious at Sebastopol. The Cathedral of Notre Dame is the oldest point of departure in France for pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. The town has wonderful restaurants, food shops, and an astounding 500 year-old lace industry.  There is a large school for those who want to learn the practice of making lace by hand, a trying craft.

Totoom runs a very agreeable shuttle service and I was at Lyon-St. Exupery with time to spare for my flight to Porto. My nephews met me at the airport and whisked me to their lovely farm/orchard where I’m enjoying the pleasures of their and my sister-in-law’s company and the Portuguese countryside.

The Chemin de Stevenson was an unusual experience. I’m unequivocally glad that we did it as we did. I wouldn’t repeat it with donkeys, however. I would enjoy hiking the final section in the Cevennes with companions in the future, carrying my pack or with a baggage transfer service.

[Above photo: All 12 accounted for. It could be Barra or S. Uist in the Hebrides, except the house would be smaller and of sod or stone.]

6 July 2025

My memory these days appears as evanescent as the wild strawberries that for two weeks cover our meadow. How can something so sweet and lovely be present for such a short time in our lives? And then, how can our lives, filled as they are with sweetness and sorrow, be so brief?

I hadn’t realized how widespread our wild strawberries were until this year when I was here early enought to witness their blossoms—white with yellow centers—covering the floor of any sunny, grassy open space on the island. 

They evoke for me, in layers, memories of my college years. Erik Erikson showed the Ingemar Bergman film “Wild Strawberries”, among others, in the class he taught. It was entitled “Identity and the Life Cycle”, certainly topical for a group of students about to leave the safety and structure of school for the wider world.

I recall bits of the film, basically an old man travelling to his summer place in coastal Sweden. He picks up a young couple who are hitchhiking and, feeling their vigor and romantic attachment, reflects on a summer from his youth, which includes memories about a frustrated romance with a lovely young woman at that time.

Wild strawberries have that valence for me. Summer, youth, romance, joy and heartbreak. The berries are painstaking to harvest. Either they aren’t quite ripe and you must enjoy eating the attached tiny leaves and stem or you have hit the time exactly correctly and they fall off into your fingers like tiny garnets of intense flavor. All while lying on the ground and smelling the grass and earth.  Sharing that moment with a lover is exquisite.

Fireflies are also in an amazing profusion here; I’ve never seen the like. At dusk, as we drifted back to our cabins, ears ringing and eyes stunned from our modest fireworks display on the beach, we were treated to a much subtler and more magnificent show: the meadow silently pulsing with entire rafts of fireflies. It is a wonder each night. How much mating can they do? Quite a lot and while I envy them their passion, I hope they continue, as I find I love being a voyeur to their courtships. Of course, I’d rather be lighting up myself but that isn’t my fate at the moment. Or, more accurately, I haven’t the motivation to create the opportunity right now.

In addition to the mystery of their synchronous ignition, fireflies are remarkably efficient. The chemical reaction that causes their glow generates no heat, unlike even our most advanced lightbulbs.

The island is in full swing, with 19 Varlands and David and Kirsten bringing 8 friends, including kids. That’s 31 people, including Michael, the caretaker, and myself. Oh, and 12 sheep. All the humans drinking from one surface-fed well.

At Ari’s urging, we set up a gutter and water-collection system (two 50 gallon tanks) at my house for the sheep. After a couple of good rains, both were full. Now that two houses and the barn have metal roofs, I think we could supplement our well amply. The occasional drought or dry spell, combined with many of us using the well, has challenged its capacity in the past. And if sea-rise mixes salt water into the low area where the well is situated, we could likely collect enough roof-water to suit our needs.

Note my inclusion of myself in the future, “we/our”. The sea won’t rise sufficiently in the years remaining to me to ruin the well.  However, it is a challenge to think about the future here without including myself in it.

Chas is facing the same dilemma, although more immediately than am I. Susan has worked tirelessly to accommodate his needs and he appreciates it deeply .  Imagining my world without my brother in it is difficult for me, despite our differences. We’ve known each other for so long and have shared so much fun and hardship earlier in our lives.

Speaking of hardship, the careless cruelty of the recent legislation—and of the entire first 5 ½ months of DT’s reign—is breathtaking. It is astounding to me that our system of government is so vulnerable to a bully with charisma (for some—revulsion for me) who aligns with our most regressive, greedy, and callous impulses. And that he has cowed and twisted the agencies of government, including the Supreme Court and Congress, into unrecognizable positions, while forcing others to lick his boots and pay him tribute.  The detention center in the Everglades resembles nothing so much as a Nazi work- or death-camp.  In a very perverse way, his ascent is quite miraculous.

Ezra Klein’s recent podcast with Kyla Scanlon on “How the Attention Economy is Devouring Gen Z” is fascinating. They think—and I’m paraphrasing here—that the secret of DT’s appeal is that he embodies Twitter algorithms, lives them. He utters an unending sequence of brief dramatic bits causing many to become “addicted” to him like many are to social media on their smartphones. Dopamine hits. A previous staffer said trying to brief DT was like chasing a squirrel around in your back yard, his attention span was so brief.

I’ll march and give money and write postcards and email legislators but also fish for mackerel and socialize with friends and family, be supportive of my daughter and my brother and his wife, paddle my kayak, and bathe in this wonderful bit of Nature in Penobscot Bay.

I watched with wonder as my uncle Fran was true to his love for his daughter, she with rapid-cycling Bipolar Disorder. Lucy was in and out of mental institutions on both coasts, periodically being scraped off the kitchen floor in an apartment where she’d lain for a day or two following an overdose. Her older sister had graduated from Oberlin Phi Beta Kappa and killed herself the following year.   Fran didn’t collapse or withdraw, given these terrible blows. He was a fun-loving and civic-minded man, a founding partner in Seattle’s best liberal law firm, a hiker, and a raconteur, as well as a strong and constant support to Lucy.  He was able to celebrate the good parts of his life.  His has been a good model for me to emulate.

[Above photo: Poor Baby, complete with diaper, relaxing in the living room of our cabin. Ironically, she’s chosen a spot beneath an oil painting of a Border Collie looking down at, I imagine, a loch in Scotland.]

18 June 2025

I’m alone in our cabin. Michael, the caretaker, and Robin, the college-age son of one of the other owners, are in two cabins at the other end of the island. It rained overnight and continues to drizzle.

As I look through a window down the meadow, the 12 sheep are peacefully grazing and lying in the wet grass. They are enclosed in an expansive electric fence which provides  them with adequate forage for a week or two.  There is a plastic watering trough with 15 gallons of rainwater in it, although they drink from it only occasionally. They are used to getting their moisture from seaweed and grass. Unlike Gemsbok (or Oryx), those showy elk-sized herbivores in Southern Africa and the Arabian peninsula, the sheep don’t excrete uric acid pellets.  Oryx don’t drink water at all. They are so constructed that they get all their water from desert plants and then conserve it fiercely. Maybe when Elon Musk moves to Mars he’ll be able to do the same.

I didn’t think we’d be able to fence the sheep. Ari and I walked and plotted their routes, constructed elaborate chutes of fencing, and otherwise hypothesized the many ways to succeed in our quest. But the woolies never cooperated, always one page ahead of us.

We attempted several times to move them around the beach and into a pen behind the barn. “We” included Ari, her sheep-partner Suzanne, and Suzanne’s daughter, Rosie. Rosie is a bit of a magician with animals but wasn’t able to advance time and training for Ari’s puppy, Storm, in order for her to assist us. Pearl, Jon’s border collie, is a gorgeous, affectionate animal, a showdog, really, who is afraid of sheep. When Ari first brought a few sheep to her spread on land, Pearl was terrified, jumping into her arms!

Finally, Ari gathered a group of friends, including two of Suzanne’s sons, both of whom are competitive runners. 10-strong, we tried to move and enclose them one morning but at the last moment the sheep darted into the dense undergrowth and escaped. We retreated to our cabin where Poki had made a wonderful lunch. Rested and enjoying the cool of late afternoon, we tried again.   We moved the sheep from their preferred beach, Bare Ass or BA Beach (named in my mother’s day for evening swimming exploits), around half the island’s circumference to Harbor Beach, below the barn pen. There they broke, leaping up the bank where half of them ran into the pen which we then closed. Ari ran 15 miles that day, according to her pedometer. The boys likely ran 20. It all was exhausting, if exciting and fun.

There was gratification but still some anxiety, since 6 were on the loose and we had to return four of our group to Buck’s Harbor, leaving a smaller number to herd. 

The next morning we tried again. The tides had cooperated, being dead low early in the morning, which gave the sheep a greater incentive—sense of security, really—to stay on the beach rather than ducking into the thick forest for cover. This time they broke at the last moment up the bank and our hearts sank, knowing they had gone to an area where the fence was secured. Then one at a time, as in a hypnogogic state, they hopped over the fence to flock with their, we prefer to think, better halves.

At this point, enclosed in a double fence and no longer being pursued, they responded like a distraught infant to swaddling, and relaxed, grazing and gamboling as sheep are wont to do.

Exhilerated, under Ari’s newly-achieved expert guidance, we moved them into the hard pen. Sheep can easily run through or over an electric fence if frightened. But the hard-sided pen, with metal posts, welded wire fencing, and hog-panels for gates, was small enough that they couldn’t get enough of a run to hop out and was sturdy enough to withstand their pushing against it.

Then the shearing began. Ari and Suzanne each grabbed a sheep by one back leg, dragging it, struggling, over to the 4×8 plywood sheet salvaged  from the beach, gripping its head to force it down, and then flipping it onto its back. In that position the sheep were calm, dissociated, I think, from the trauma of being overpowered and their helplessness to resist.

Ari loved it and has worked hard to get a lot of shearing practice subsequent to her week-long course at UC Davis this Spring. She shears for a couple of older Maine shepherds she has befriended. She has done this on Richmond Island (“Gross and bloody, they were all covered with engorged ticks.”), on Metinic Island (“The most fun I’ve had since summer camp in 8^th grade.”), and in Machiasport this weekend.

She, with a fancy battery-pack electric clipper, and Suzanne, with hand shears, gathered 4 huge bags of wool to be processed and spun and another for garden compost. For the sheep, it was like a child’s first haircut: terror, followed by relief and a bit of braggadocio.

All the sheep are now contentedly munching away, their pasture and water changed once per week. It would be better for them, the island, and Ari, if, after shearing, they could run wild. More fun for islanders, as well, especially the children. But for the harmony of the community, she’ll manage them this way through the summer.

Toward the end of summer we’ll build a shelter out of driftwood for them in a secluded area at the top of the meadow. Next December, we’ll select a stretch of good weather and run the 12 miles in our boat to deliver a ram so there will be lambs in the spring, sheep gestation being about 5 months. And so the cycle continues.

There are so many life lessons in all of this. First about community, that of the sheep and that of the shepherds. Did I mention that one of the three rams in Ari’s barn was particularly aggressive, butting the other two and slamming Suzanne hard in the crotch? Ari jumped into the pen and wrestled the animal to the ground. Suzanne dispatched it with a captive-bolt stunner to the head, and they skinned, butchered, and placed it in the freezer, all before 10 in the morning. No Little Bo Peeps, these shepherds!

“But what about Poor Baby?“ you ask. Poor Baby was the second of twins of a Merino mother who couldn’t feature two babies simultaneously and rejected her. Put in diapers (upside down they snugly fit a lamb), she is being bottle-fed until she can graze. She is imprinted on Rosie and follows her like a puppy.  Poor Baby is incredibly cute, jet-black with a white skull-cap, more Amish than yarmulke.  She terrifies Pearl, sniffing around her, and is totally immune to fear of Storm, growling in her cage like a ravening wolf.

There are many Poor Baby’s in the world. I’d imagine all of us have felt like a Poor Baby at times in our lives. Especially Donald Trump, whose early life must have been void of love and strong values, other than greed and the acquisition of power. I suspect he was bottle-fed. My sympathy wanes when I imagine how many people he is hurting and killing from his policies, how he is making America and the world so much weaker, more dangerous, and crude. 

The monomania of these billionaires to acquire and control is an illness. It expresses the same degree of salience for them as heroin or crystal meth grips an addict. It is their primary and most reliable pleasure. They are all mentally ill, although their diagnosis is not well defined in the DSM-5 or well-managed with our current treatments.

How can his Base not appreciate this?  The Dems have certainly not helped, with their tacit supports of Big Business and their wimpy half-measures for the working men and women of our country.

Don is certainly the perfect moniker for DT. But the No Kings protests demonstrate how others can prevail. Poor Babies all.

I’ll never whine about the price of a woolen sweater again. And if I question Ari’s judgment, I’ve suggested she just say to me, “Remember the sheep.” A certain genius there.

[Above photo:  Res ipse loquitur. ]

19 May 2021

Ari and I have spent most of the past month, starting in late April, on the island in 3-5 day chapters. I’ve not visited it before the 1^st of June previously. We left Center Harbor in Auk, our 19’ Seaway, loaded with gasoline, water, food, electric fences, metal fence poles, a large and heavy roll of welded fence wire, two dogs, and last summer’s end of season laundry, on a mission.

The sheep need shearing.  And they also require containment on the meadow over the summer so they don’t poop everywhere, nibble lettuce from gardens, and upset some of the residents. I get it, although sheep poop is odorless and decomposes quickly, fertilizing the sandy, thin island soil.  

Ours have been expeditionary visits, to see if they had survived the winter and to attempt to map their habitual routes so as to better trick them into a pen.  It turns out, they may be smarter than we are, despite at least 37 combined years, excluding kindergarten, of high-end and expen$ive schooling between us.

We landed at dead low tide. It wasn’t planned or desired. It is just much easier to travel early in the morning before the wind and waves pick up. It turns out that landing at dead low is best since the beach then is less sloped and Ari could unload wearing her rubber boots without the water cascading over their tops.

There is no float yet, no moorings (although we set one up on a subsequent visit in anticipation of a brisk northerly), no water system, and no motorized vehicles to carry our stuff up the hill to our cabin. Still, we managed to lug everything up, even getting buckets of water from the well for the dogs and washing dishes.

The osprey, loons, crows, black-throated green warblers, eider ducks, song sparrows and hermit thrush all make a symphonious racket. Mackerel aren’t yet in the bay so neither are the porpoises.

Happily, the sheep are still a flock of 12 and look very healthy. It turns out that they are descendants of the first sheep to come to the New World—or at least this part of it—, 200+ years ago. They are North Country Cheviots, hailing (Do sheep hail?) from central Scotland. They were raised for meat but their wool is marvelous.  These look like puffballs, so thick is their coat. 

They sheltered under my house in the bitter of winter for quite awhile, judging from their scat. I raked out a few bucketloads and spread it on my blueberry plants and my garden patch. They moved things around under there, tossing 4 sawhorses out onto the lawn, dislocating much of the plumbing, and breaking the drain from the kitchen sink, a minor issue now repaired.  We’ll build them a shelter for next winter; there is enough driftwood, including plywood, on the beaches for a mansion. And we’ll put chickenwire around the base of my house so they don’t intrude.

We ate like royalty, as Ari is a terrific and discriminating cook. And walked and walked and walked, tracking the beasties by remnants of their wool left on wild raspberry vines, low spruce twigs, and other impediments. We strategized on how to catch them. We played Bananagrams at lunch and Scrabble after supper, she winning most games. And we laughed a lot, especially at the antics of her 9 month old pup, a pure-bred Border Collie who as of now is just very excited by the sheep without the discipline or training to work them.

It is strange, because if Ari had a working sheep dog, it could put the sheep in a pen in 10 minutes. Meanwhile, we erected long swaths of electric fencing which eventually form a chute leading to a sturdy pen we built where they will be contained for shearing. If they go into it. I certainly never would have guessed my daughter would desire to be a shepherd but since she does, I’ll be supportive.

I noted to her how fun it has been to work together on the island this Spring and rebuilding her boat last Spring. She agreed and noted that, living in Maine, it was likely we’d be working together every Spring.  Not bad!

I won’t explore the frightening mess the thieves and liars and rapists—Oh, shouldn’t they be heading to that hotel in El Salvador?—are making in DC.  But I’ll lift my sign and my voice on June 14^th , joining the multitudes. It seems like we need a nationwide work stoppage soon.

Maine weather is such a tease. When I came back from the island three days ago, it was 68 degrees and the E. Prom was filled with people at play.  The past two days it has been in the low 50’s and rainy. Summer, however, will come. My tulips are up and one of my lilacs has 6 or 7 blooms, despite not getting adequate sunlight.

It’s good to be alive—and to feel alive!

[Above photo:  A lone sailboat heading away from the shores of Portugal (Nazare), it’s sole witness a herring gull. Probably the skipper is feeling some of the same mix of fear and excitement as did Vasco de Gama, Ferdinand Magellan, Henry the Navigator, and more, moving from warmth and safety toward the cold and wild unknown.]

2 April 2025

Since it is risky to assume our courts will save our democracy, given our Scofflaw-in-Chief and the regressive warp of the Supremes, we need to support Republicans in Congress to grow a spine or at least don a spinal brace.  I’d say “Man up” but that ignores both the courage of women and the treachery of our female GOP legislators.  How can we encourage them, protect them from Trump’s paramilitary and fanatics, and assure them that opposing him will be a popular position at the polls?

I’m not sure. But a time-honored method of protesting government malfeasance, used all over the world since medieval times, has been banging on pots with a wooden spoon. For the two months I remained in Myanmar after the military coup of 2021, at 8PM in Yangon a holy din arose.  We contributed.  It sounded like half of the 5 million citizens joined in with their soup pots, banging away for 10 minutes in the dark. Then they sang a patriotic song. It sent a powerful message to the military. And, it was fun, free, relatively anonymous since done in the dark and in backyards, and was legal.

In the Middle Ages pot-banging was used in Spain as a mock moral scolding to newly-weds when they began their married life in bed together. It also was employed in noisy street processions designed to shame men who married very young women (girls). Since then it has evolved as a universally-recognized form of government censure, used both on the Left (Salvadore Allende) and Right (Pinochet) in Chile and in other S. American countries, Europe, and Asia.

I think it could be used here to put the current crop of greedy juveniles on notice and might spread like wildfire, since it is fun, effective, and non-partisan. It might contribute to the orthopedic rejuvenation of our GOP legislators. We could all start at 8PM, each in our time zone, bang away for 10 minutes, and conclude with a verse of America the Beautiful. It would relieve tension and promote togetherness without the need for thought, argument, public speaking, or wealthy donors.

I’ve written to Bernie, left a voice message at AOC’s office, contacted Indivisible, and the Maine Democratic Party. I’m preparing a leaflet for my neighborhood in Portland but don’t want to have it start and fizzle because I haven’t gotten the word out adequately.

Any suggestions? Or leads for people in your area?  Get in early as it might turn into something.

It was warm and sunny yesterday; today it is cold and sunny. At least the snow is gone and hopefully we won’t have more. Maine Spring lives up to its reputation, once again. I rented a rack space for my kayak at the East End Beach, just down the hill from my home. I can keep it there from 1 May through 31 October, giving me easy access to the coast and islands of Casco Bay. I can’t wait!

I’m taking 3 courses—film, African Politics, and crime fiction. It is great fun to watch a film a week together with 45 other people and then have an hour of group discussion, something I only did once in a class led by Erik Erikson. The use of film in education was new at that time. Our current theme is “limnal space”, or transition.  In this case, we are looking at the period between adolescence and adulthood.

The politics course is taught by a Congolese who is getting his PhD. He’s smart, knowledgeable, and cares a lot about it. He also has the advantage of having grown up in the midst of that craziness.

The crime fiction course is taught by a detective novelist and the eight books we read and discuss are all set in Boston, where I went to college and where my mother grew up and all my sibs were born. The discussions are lively and perceptive and it is startling to view new slices of Boston I’d never considered in vivid, often blood-red, hues.

At Mainely Character we are deep in the work of selecting 13 scholarship recipients from 375 applicants. It’s the only scholarship in Maine (anywhere?) based solely on character. Achievement with grades, sports, musical instruments, etc. doesn’t directly affect our assessment, other than as platforms for the students to demonstrate their courage, concern for others, responsibility, and integrity.  All 13 of us on the Board love it and many of the applications cause tears, as we note how remarkably some kids rise after terrible blows. They give me hope.

Let’s all join the barricades on April 5^th!  We’ll remind them that their cause isn’t just and that they won’t triumph!

[Above photo:  The entrance to a wealthy Roman’s home in Conimbriga, Portugal, a timely reminder that money only gets you so far.]

3 March 2025

What is happening now in our country is suffocating. However, we have to breathe what air we can find and rise up.   The revenge bus, those of us shouting “Told you so.”, only goes to the dump and back. It is a terrifying time, noting that it apparently took Hitler only 53 days to dismember the German Democratic Republic. DT is trying to break that record.

A chainsaw is an apt metaphor for EM’s operation. If you want to save money by making government more efficient, you analyze the various elements to discover what is actually inefficient, not simply close down entire agencies.

Cutting off USAID means condemning millions of children and their parents to starvation and more. Stopping funding for PEPFAR will condemn pregnant HIV-positive mothers, who were probably given the virus by their galivanting husbands, to give birth to HIV-positive infants and for children and adults to no longer receive life-saving anti-retroviral medications. Nuclear inspectors, cancer research, early warning systems for hurricanes and on and on. It will mean hundreds of thousands out of work and overburdened, ineffective government. Jeez, the IRS returns $12 for $1 spent when auditing wealthy tax cheats, so why cut those services in the name of efficiency? In a totally different category, either a surrender or a re-alignment, given your understanding, is closing off our crypto-surveillance of Russia? Let’s cozy up to the samovar, eh?

It’s nothing about efficiency. It is all about cowing the American public with a show of overwhelming, if illegal, force and restructuring government to funnel money to the super-rich. Kleptocracy, a la Russia, is the main course being prepared in the White House kitchen. Loveless and insecure schoolyard bullies will feast on it.  Those who oppose them, and their families, are in potential danger, given the repeated endorsement of violence by DT.  I do wish some members of the GOP would demonstrate the spine of Liz Cheney and Adam Kissinger’s, however. Bubba Schumer should not be on TV representing the Democrats; none will follow him.

When I had lung cancer, one of my many crazed chemo-brain fantasies was to form a cadre of terminally ill but like-minded people to assassinate those who endangered our democracy. Even then they were scheming. It would be a dreadful thing to initiate a cycle of violence, then or now, and it would be totally counterproductive. It is surprising to me how quickly my mind turns to violence in this situation, however. I suspect that I am not alone.

I just fired a contractor whose brother was fixing rotten sills on my front windows. It was a one-man job but I was paying for two. After 3 days work they’d cut off and refaced only 2 of 6 sills, working a few hours a day and disappearing. A promise to come and work an entire day to finish off the job was demolished when the brother showed up at 1 on a Monday, so drunk he couldn’t finish a sentence. Then I discovered that a box of my bits, one of which he’d used, had vanished and, a few nights of restless sleep caused me to end the entire debacle.

I hate dishonesty. I don’t cheat on my taxes, although knowing where they are now likely to go may change that. But interpersonal dishonesty infuriates me.  We had one of these experiences when we had a kitchen redone. Poki, thankfully, went over the billing and found time-stamped receipts when the carpenters had charged us as being on the job from 8-5 but they actually were on their way to work, stopping at a hardware store 45 minutes away from us at 11AM. And more of the same. This cannot be of interest to anyone except myself, but I need to write it down and send it out—self-exorcism.

I am looking at hiking with a small group in southern France next September, following the route of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels With a Donkey in the Cevennes. We won’t sleep outside, rather in BnBs with stables, as we’ll want to bring along at least one donkey for the full experience. We may use a van to transport our luggage or we may hire a number of donkeys. I loved the name Stevenson gave his: Modestine.  He seemed to have invented the sleeping bag; his was a sack of waxed canvass lined with sheepskins. It likely weighed about 60 pounds but kept him snug when living rough. The woman assembling the trip is a professor of French literature and a lively soul. Afterward, I’ll slip over the Pyrenees and visit my sister-in-law and nephews near Porto.

Ari is training her Border Collie, Storm, walking 10 miles per day so the dog won’t tear things up. She is becoming very knowledgeable about dog training and sheep, such an interesting turn for this city creature. I can’t wait to see how the 12 sheep on our island fared this winter. I expect the meadow to be remarkably verdant, what with the grazing and fertilizing. Ari has the patience of Job with this dog. Smart, sweet, and very athletic, Storm has a mind of her own and is not easy to bend to another’s will. I couldn’t do it; it is way beyond my patience.

I’m trying to think of catchy slogans for a placard I’ll carry in the soon-approaching mass protests. “Serve not Steal”. “Democracy not Kleptocracy”. “SOS” or “Save Our Ship”.  “On Life Support”.

In a push to complete my memoir, I’ve signed up once again for the 4 day writers’ workshop, Black Fly Retreat, at the Schoodic Institute near Acadia. I need nudges but I am making progress. It isn’t turning out to be what I’d imagined, a collection of interesting experiences. It is more an internal monologue, a description of my inner world and the experiences are only placeholders. But sometimes it just feels like an indulgence and boring. We’ll see.

Call and write your congressperson, local and national. The louder the uproar, the better. And there will be a huge MAGA backlash as the cuts will hit red states more than blue. The leaders of this destruction all have more money than they can spend so why take it from working people?  I assume all the destroyers’ mothers had sour milk. Or sour personalities.

[Above photo: Built on the hill overlooking medieval Guimeras in 1401 by the Duke of Braganca, it houses magnificent and immense tapestries relating to Portugal’s various attempts to conquer N. Africa. Eh, you suggest a little baseboard heating?]

7 February 2025

We’ve had repeated snowfall over the past 2 weeks. And it’s snowing again! However, just a flurry this time. A large blizzard is expected on Sunday. While I enjoy the ease and comfort of the tropics and the mild climate of Berkeley, snow excites me, even when I don’t go out in it . Shoveling a passage to the street this morning so I could move my car there and allow the plough guy to clear our lot felt surreal. A little warmth and all this heavy stuff blocking my way would turn to water and drain down the street.

I have another virus, complete with a racking cough and cold sores and exhaustion. Following my Christmas Covid, I wonder if my system is gradually shutting down as I steadily ascend in age. I’m not pleased with the state of things in my body at the moment, however, I’m still planning a cross-country ski getaway in NH or VT with Harold.

Nor pleased with the body politic. It is alarming, what passes for governance in DC now. I think that it will be important to save anger for strategic postings, not simply the hysterical rant I feel like shouting right now. We are likely going to have a surveillance state soon.

It is ironic that I have been following and empathizing with my students and Burmese friends re. the hideous events that have transpired in the past 4 years (1 February 2021) since the coup and now find myself receiving care and condolence from them. They couldn’t talk substantially in public tea shops for decades. The stranger(s) next to them were likely spies. I wonder how soon before we experience that, albeit electronically, previously so unimaginable here.

The suspension of USAID and PEPFAR funding (the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief) are devastating to the developing world, including to our own credibility and relationships there. China will surely seize the opportunity to fill the vacuum. An estimated 26 million people are alive, especially in Africa, because of PEPFAR programs, George W’s brilliant idea and for which reason alone we must treat him with some respect. We can expect the HIV prevalence to increase dramatically, as well as maternal-child transmission and an immense new group of AIDS orphans. Malawi still has at least two coffin-makers in every small village.

It is stunning when a small bunny in the open, surprised by a wolf, say, freezes, hoping against hope to look like a rock or a bush. Fight-fly-swim-flee-freeze, a menu of responses to extreme danger. One doesn’t make a wolf nicer by being nice to them, however. It just assures them an easier, more rapid dining experience.

It is curious, because if you or I took our [extremely young] helpers into the inner workings of the Treasury department, we’d be arrested in a minute. Rightly so. Isn’t ATF part of Treasury? Why is the Musk walking free?

Morality, as defined by Kohlberg many years ago, comes in 3 stages. Simplified, in Stage 1 I won’t do something bad because I might get caught. It is where many toddlers function, including the current Toddler-in-Chief. Most of us hang around Stage 2—I want to fit in. I want to think of myself as a trustworthy person. I want the approval of my peers. I want to live in a society where people follow the rules, with occasional minor dips into Stage 1 (Was that conference in Marseilles really a fully tax-deductible business expense, even if I only attended 1 of 5 days? Who will know?) Stage 3 is for extraordinary circumstances where I will disregard the law to pursue a higher good: My child is starving. I cannot see how to get food any other way, so I shall steal a loaf of bread. Or, this person is trying to plant a bomb; I’ll attempt to kill him.

Our Constitution clearly isn’t going to protect us in our current situation, since the arbiters of it are the current Supreme Court. Sociopaths, except monarchs, weren’t a consideration when it was written. I hope our Democratic leaders and the powerful people in a position to oppose this wild and unconstitutional dismantling of not just our government but of our democracy will do their best to move quickly to apprehend and constrain the dismantlers. While we cannot descend to their depths, we must not remain constrained by the same laws, rules, and, even, scruples to which we’d adhere if we had mutually agreed upon them.

They are not striving to make America stronger, “Great Again!”, or work better for the mass of its people. They are tearing it apart, our international friends and potential allies are being alienated from us, and the country is becoming a vector of hatred, greed, and unrestrained threats in the world, which clearly will lead to enemies and weakness, if not collapse.

Earlier, it was easy to feel lulled into “Oh, that’s just the way he is.” Or, now, “My head is spinning. I feel hopeless.”

It is clear what they are doing, establishing a kleptocracy, the rule of a few rich robbers. Just recall how long ago the Bolshevik Revolution was and how every subsequent generation in Russia has suffered under the yoke of authoritarianism, despite the many and courageous who have tried to throw it off. We need our own Alexy Navalny, quickly.

Arrest them, before it is too late!

[Above photo: Old Man Winter lives under my patio, snugged up against the stone foundation. He is obviously quite excited by the chilly polar influx.]

12 January 2025

As I was checking in with my students in Myanmar and Thailand this morning, several mentioned that it was “Winter” and cold. 23C. Which translates to 73F. I told them it was -3C here most of the week, not even particularly cold for a Maine January.

But the cool is welcome, as is the 1 or 2 inch dusting of snow we received yesterday. I had to sweep the snow off Poki’s windows as Molly, Cass, and Freya arrived at 11AM yesterday from LA via Manchester, NH to borrow the car for a few weeks. Or at least until the air quality in LA improves and they can return home. They are lucky to have a 4 season summer cottage in Sedgwick, ME. 22 of their friends have lost their homes to fires in the LA area.

And the Donald raves nonsense about non-existent declarations which Gavin Newsom should have signed as the reason some of the water tanks have emptied out. And something about DEI as explaining the fires. Or not sweeping the forest floors. How about kindness, caring, constructive ideas rather than mad ravings for political points? Or silence, allowing the grownups to deal with the problems. And who will believe him, I wonder? Tens of millions. At least no repeat of MTG’s Jewish space lasers. He’ll probably manage to work some bestiality into his rant, given time.

My dear brother, who is struggling mightily with illness, is feeling much better, now that he has left the tin man with no heart behind, switched care providers, gotten off the ill-prescribed medication that wiped him out for 6 months, and resumed some exercise and eating.  And feeling hopeful.  A letter has been sent to Dana-Farber and to the tin man’s boss at New England Cancer Specialists.

We all, and here I mean physicians, will err. It is impossible not to in a long career, given the stresses, variables, and personal frailties involved. It is in the nature of the complex beast called health care. But we need to acknowledge our mistakes, apologize to their recipients, and learn from them. It seems pretty simple until you toss in a physician’s ego. Ironically, the chances of a malpractice suit are so much less, the insurance underwriters drum into us, if we are transparent and appropriately humble about our inevitable errors.

I seem to be losing steam writing my memoir. I think it is because I am finally pushing hard enough to realize my limitations as a writer. Or perhaps because I am losing steam in general. It is discouraging, but I’ll likely keep plugging away, just to do the best I can so my children can have that bit of history if they are interested. My guess is that interest might develop late in life as they are looking back. Or maybe not.

In the no good deed goes unpunished department, I contracted Covid 4 days before Christmas, most likely as I was collecting signatures at a street fair for a ballot measure to decrease gun violence. Except for one day of 101 fever and shaking chills for a few hours, the worst aspect was the isolation and my loss of smell and taste. No Christmas supper for me! Before I realized I was ill I’d gone to 2 parties and gave it to a friend who is still staggering from it.

My kayak is stowed in the basement and my idea of a paddle on New Year’s Day is down there, too. Too wet and cold out on the water. There was a group hike yesterday,—5.7 miles with 1600 feet of ascent up Mt. Zircon and return— but I was unable to attend as I had an increasingly painful, swollen foot. I saw a doc and started antibiotics and it feels almost normal today. A small speedbump on the path of life.

Not a lot is happening with me and I am loathe to waste the effort of reviling those about to assume power and more riches in our country on 20 January. Or even to puzzle some more at how half the country can accept his BS. As I said in 2016, “My car isn’t running very well; maybe if I drive it over a cliff into the sea it will work better.”

On the other hand. My worry is that—and their desire seems pretty obvious to me—Trump and Company, LLC want to increase the wealth gap, destroy the educational system, pit people against one another, and induce fear to make people more malleable. Then there will be a definite small, elite Uberclass and a large impoverished Unterclass. The latter will be disposable worker bees. There will be a gradual but immense purge, not unlike the Cultural Revolution in China, and much of education and especially science, the search for understanding and truth, will be degraded, along with the Middle Class. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3%ers, and the like will be the Praetorian Guard.

I recall our guide in Cambodia saying that when the Khmer Rouge began their rampage, his father, who had been a schoolteacher, broke and threw away his glasses. Anyone with glasses was presumed to need them to read and anyone who could read was the enemy.

This is presumably a fever-dream induced by my infected foot and the antibiotic I take to treat it.  DT has secretly been taking classes in compassionate mediation and international relations online at Mar-a-Lago and is going to surprise us all with his polished, effective, kind, and fact-based leadership, once inaugurated.  

I’m awaiting the arrival of local mayhem—my daughter with her puppy, aptly named “Storm”. Until then I’ll escape with Captain Aubrey and Stephan Maturin as they ride the Sophie across the Mediterranean Sea in Master and Commander, searching for prize ships. As wretched a human being as Patrick O’Brian allegedly was—he abandoned his wife and kids, didn’t support them, and retreated into the Pyrenees with his mistress—he wrote well, creating a mesmerizing series of tales for those of us consumed by the sea.  Ari tells me that the current Daily podcast has an interesting look at Alice Munro and distinguishing the art/artist from the flawed person.