I looked for another calming sea shot for Chris, but failed to find one. How about this photo to take your mind off Manny. It’s just the back, but it does make you want to see the rest of her dress.

I looked for another calming sea shot for Chris, but failed to find one. How about this photo to take your mind off Manny. It’s just the back, but it does make you want to see the rest of her dress.

We’d tried for years to attend one of Daniel Merriam’s July galley openings at the Abacus in Boothbay, but always had other commitments. This year we made it, and though our tastes have changed somewhat, we were still enthralled by his new work. We also noticed that we can no longer afford his art. Prices ranged from eight thousand to fifty.

Sitting on the deck, sipping espressso, Diane completed the entire Saturday Globe crossword puzzle. Isn’t that what vacations are about? Unless your name is rakkity.

I pulled our almost seven year old laptop out of the closet, wiped the hard drive clean, installed OS X and added a wireless card, and now I have a perfectly good traveling machine. I wonder if you could install XP on a laptop running at 333 mhz?

Anyway, here we are sitting in the Townsend Ave Coffee House and Wine Bar (How perfect a combination is that? Come for breakfast and coffee and stay for lunch and dinner). By we, I now mean I. We arrived together but after coffee and postcards dutiful Diane has slipped off to the post office and to browse the local stores.

Walking by our table on Robinson’s Wharf, in Southport, ME.

Diane rolled her eyes as this band on the library common played Sousa Marches, but I rode the time machine back to an era I only knew from Saturday Evening Post covers, and perhaps one political rally in Nevada, Missouri, when I was fifteen. I missed the photo op of the day – hands on hearts during The National Anthem.
Closer View
Matthew drove up in his Mazda and joined us for a day and a half. We played three games of scrabble (they had no chance), and two games of mini-golf. In the first game Matt had two holes-in-one, but my sloppy score keeping ( I kept inserting his scores into my column) forced us to play that second game, in which Diane won. “It’s the sport I’m best at,” she said.

We’re off to Boothbay Harbor . Back Sunday night.

How about a flower without the pistils and stamen? See , I really can change.

I wonder how rakkity is?

rakkity

Last Saturday, I had a disastrous 6-game racquetball match with Dominic (5-1 Dom). And I really want a return match, but it will be a while before I can have a chance to get back at him. You see, I have an arm problem.

After the games, I drove home tiredly to continue where I had left off my on-going hacking at the 40-foot weeds in our back yard. One of these “weeds” is a big pine tree with a long branch that used to overhang our kitchen window and back door, and I had long wanted to get rid of that lousy branch. So I pushed up my 20-ft ladder against the inner part of the branch and climbed up 8 or 10 feet, chain saw in hand, and started sawing through. No problems. I figured this would be my last cut of the morning, and I’d go have lunch. The branch cut off smoothly, fell away, and then there was an abrupt upswing of the inner part of the branch, the ladder fell forward, and I fell backward.

There were two mistakes on my part here — 1) I had no one spotting me (Beth was out shopping) and 2) I should have put the ladder against something more solid than the branch. Oh well, “should haves” don’t count in the real world.

I landed on my butt, and felt a sharp pain in my left wrist. I stood up and looked down at my arm, and shouted, “I just broke my wrist!” (Those of you who hate gory details can skip to the next paragraph. Mike can continue reading.) My left arm hung down straight, but it took a sudden shift sideways just above my hand. “Now that’s serious”, I said to myself. There was blood dripping from somewhere, but I couldn’t see from where. “It must be a compound fracture, with a bone sticking out underneath”, but I didn’t want to
look. I staggered to the back door and punched 9-1-1 into the phone. Sitting on the kitchen chair, I heard the 911 guy answer, and noticed that I was dripping blood onto our nice hardwood floor.

Apparently I was still in shock, because the pain hadn’t reached my brain yet. Weakly, I gasped, “I’ve broken my wrist” into the receiver. The emergency man was very professional, getting my name and address, asking whether the paramedics should come to the front door or the back. He had me stay on the line, and assured me that an ambulance was on its way. The pain was now increasing, and I must have been panting, because the 911 man told me to breathe slowly, and keep my head down.

In less than 10 minutes, there was some activity outside. Just as a paramedic came up the front lawn, Beth also came inside, not yet seeing my jagged wrist. She said, “An ambulance seems to have come to one of our neighbors…” Simultaneously, she noticed my wrist, the blood, the disarray, and the paramedic coming through the front door.

A few minutes later I was being rolled out to the ambulance. The paramedics were taking no chances on my back, and had tied me down and immobilized against a hard plastic ribbed board. Beth asked if she could come along, but they told her to follow separately. So, for the first time I saw the inside of an ambulance, The paramedic who rode in the back with me was pleasant and professional. I told him the last time I had been in in Prince Georges Hospital was in 1984 when my daughter Katie had been born–a more joyous occasion, and certainly not at the trauma center.

Inside, after the emergency docs had had a good look at the trauma, I finally got some pain meds. Lots of repeated questions–name, address, age, all requested by at least 5 different people. One doc did some subtraction after I told my age and date of birth, and said, “You’re one year older than that, aren’t you?” Maybe he was testing my mental capacity, which, admittedly, was only at the 20-30% level, but I pointed out that my birthday was yet to come this year, and, “I never count my birthdays in advance.”

Somewhere, long before surgery, one of the docs had re-aligned my wrist bones, so they were now in a straight line. I never even noticed! The surgeon looked at it and remarked, “Someone must have re-aligned your wrist.” (Don’t these guys talk to each other?)

After X-rays, the trauma surgeon told me (and Beth, who, thankfully had arrived) that it was a bad break, and he’d have to use a Titanium plate, and screw some of the bones together. Beth followed me and my gurney through the corridors to the surgery room, where she kissed me goodbye. A few breaths later, I was in dreamland.

I woke up in the recovery room, and was re-assured that the surgery had gone smoothly. Beth helped push my gurney up to my room, which was shared by someone with much worse problems. There was loud moaning and groaning from behind the curtains. At one point while Beth and I were talking quietly, the guy behind the curtains started a telephone conversation. We overheard something like, “…the guy shot me in the elbow, and shattered my forearm”. Beth and I looked at each other. “I guess that puts things into some kind of perspective, doesn’t it”, I thought.

After an uncomfortable night, and an unpleasant breakfast, Beth came in and used her considerable skills to get all the forms signed by appropriate doctors and speed up my departure. (Thank you again, Beth!) I wished my roommate a speedy recovery, and headed out the exit.

Now I’m home, coping with one-handed buttoning, one-handed bottle opening, and the hardest thing of all–one-handed shoe tying. Next Monday a local doctor will have a look at the wrist, and send me to a physical therapist. Maybe I should dig out those many Mark Jenkins stories from old Outside magazines, and recall some of his pointers on how to handle physical therapy and recovery from broken bones. Or I could go back to the hospital and compare notes with my roommate with the bullet-shattered arm. No, I don’t think so.

Michael & Tricia
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Dan Downing & Mark Schreiber
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Molly and Michael

Michael & Tricia
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Dan Downing & Mark Schreiber
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Molly and Michael

Taken earlier today in Ginger’s backyard.
Full View

Jaime and I have figured out that we’re just about the same person. I am her when she was my age. She did gymnastics till around the same age, we have similar backgrounds of Quakerness, care about many of the same things, think the same about many of the problems of life, etc. It’s fascinating. I love being about to talk to her.

Last night she came into the room and she said ®Well, I think Gladys just said ®no more parasites now that we have the water filter®. I thought she was always using one®. I did too. But the way she said it made me laugh so hard I cried.

I saw a huge iguana yesterday (and got a photo of it!)and told Jaime about it and then wanted to tell Carlos. So, I said ®CARLOS! Vi un… quÈ es? CÛmo se dice este?® And acted like an iguana. Or my idea of an iguana. I put my hands out with my fingers moving a little and opened my eyes wide and stuck my tongue in and out and looked over at Carlos. He looked a) totally confused and b) totally scared. Jaime was cracking up. We laughed and cried about it for about 5 minutes and then she mimicked me and said ®What am I? OH RIGHT! A crazy ass girl on a wall!® and we cried some more. ®Carlos, you need to understand that when you spend all day trying to speak another language, you can’t have fun. We’re just having fun in our own language!® said Jaime (in spanish). It was classic.

Love and Light, Hil

First of all, the photo classes are somewhat great and somewhat terrible. IÂ¥ve realized that the kids here are so unused to cameras that they canít get over the idea that cameras are for themselves and for fun and for pictures of their friends and to the idea that photos are to create a message and a feeling. So weíll see how the photos come out. They might be pretty boring. IÂ¥m teaching two ®classes®. The one in the morning has two kids – a really sweet boy and equally sweet girl. They totally got the whole idea that photos are for more than just your friends. When I was trying to explain that we werenÂ¥t going to be taking a lot of pictures of people because ®fotos son por m·s de personas. Son importantes porque pueden tener….® ®mensajes?® said Karolina. It was wonderful. So the morning kids understand it. In the afternoon I have 5 kids. And they totally donÂ¥t understand that concept. PS Dad, one of the cameraÂ¥s CF cards really isnÂ¥t working. Every time I take it out and put it back it in says itÂ¥s ok, and then I take a photo and it says ®CF®. So IÂ¥m just going to go without it. I think it might also be something about the ages. Because the morning has two 11 yr olds, and the afternoon has 12 and 13 year olds. The 11 yr olds are still at the point in their lives where they might really enjoy school. They say they do. But as kids get older here, they often stop liking school since most really donÂ¥t go to college. Carlos, on the other hand, is so motivated. ItÂ¥s amazing. HeÂ¥s going to college. I can just tell.
Also, I¥m realizing that I understand enough Spanish certainly, but not a lot. Like, I get general ideas but if someone said something and was sad I couldn¥t tell you if they were REALLY sad or if it was UPSET more than sad or what. I get general concepts but if I wanted to say that the pig was squealing it¥s frickin head off (as it is now in a house nearby), I¥d have no way to say that. I¥d have to say ®he¥s making a lot of noise® which does not connotate the same thing.
OK, so: please don¥t freak out. There was a guy in the internet place who came up to me and asked me fore my email. I lied and told him I was using my moms. The next day he did the same thing and said he wanted to write me one and I was like ®Eh, what¥s the worst thing that could happen? Not a lot. I¥m leaving soon and could kung fu his ass if I really needed to® So, then he said he wanted to speak in English with me and he¥d come to the library today at 11:30 to do so (he never did). So he sent me this:

Sorpresa! ha recibido una postal de Yahoo!
de “Alexander” (alexbad79@yahoo.com)!

Para ver la postal, pulse la siguiente direcciÛn del web en cualquier
momento de aquÌ a los prÛximos 30 dÌas.

http://es.view.greetings.yahoo.com/greet/view?AT7QZEJ4X9ZIW

Si no funciona, vaya a http://es.view.greetings.yahoo.com/pickup y copie y pegue
este cÛdigo:

AT7QZEJ4X9ZIW

°Disfrute!

El equipo de Yahoo! Postales

So you can look at that thing if you want (Please do. I think it¥s funny. Jaime did too. And then we almost puked together).
I¥m about to send him this email back (right before I leave so I don¥t have to talk to him about it):

Tengo un novio en EstelÌ. Quiero solamente un novio. Nada m·s. Pero si quiere estudiar ingles, puedo ayudarle.

Tenga un buen dÃŒa, Hilaria

I think it¥s HILARIOUS. (Don¥t you worry. I don¥t ACTUALLY have a boyfriend in EstelÌ. Most of the boys there are grosso. Jaime says she¥ll defend me if he comes near me. HAAAAHAHA. We think it¥s funny.

I LOVE YOU GUYS! LOVE AND LIGHT, HILARY!