ESPECIALLY

We’re home tonite – have been for several hours.

We’ve unpacked and sorted mail and fed Sophie Matilda and snacked and finished up reading thet last few pages of novels started Up North…

And emergency laundry is in the machine.

And now I sit before keyboard - and once again it is late and it has been a busy day.

Yesterday was a special day.

We were concluding our week or so North and winding things down.
We attended a 152 year-old chapel in Leland in the morning – a delightful Priest takes the reigns over the summer – it is a seasonal chapel – and then breakfast in a small town - good fellowship and decent food but inexperienced waitstaff –

And then home to camp for an unexpected nap –

And then off on a hike up the Whaleback trail – a lovely little hike up to a site overlooking Lake Michigan –

Have not done the trip for couple of years….

Very emotional – there we were lookin’ out at the Big Water…pure beauty with sun and waves, gentle from our height – and drift wood and beach far below – and …it was very emotional.

Could have cried. Did a little.

And yet we were so happy – and yet, could have cried. Did.

So many emotions.

The Jesuits have a saying: “Let us have the kids when they are young and we will never lose them….”, or words to that effect…

And it is so true.

50 years ago I was privileged to spend summers on one of the Arms of Grand Traverse Bay.

A veteran of WW1 gave me his cottage for a week at a time – a teenager, can you believe that?

And I drove up to the Bay and unloaded my gear and made the bed and cooked the food and built fires in the Franklin Stove and walked the beach and swam in the Bay and heard the woods sounds and took Dear Gramma Gaines there to enjoy it too and inhaled the woods and Bay air – and so many other things too – and lived the life of a Northerner – and I have never forgotten.

And yesterday brought it all back.

It was so long ago, those fifty years. And yet they seem so recent too.

And then we walked back down the trail….downhill this time, with the roots and the sand and the mushrooms and the fallen trees and the sun’s rays shining through the trees - and o my….all the memories.

Anyway, it is late and I am not sure what you will make of this…but there it is.

The North is special, especially if you have known it as a youngster.

THE DAY AFTER

Thursday morning, just turning over to afternoon.
Breakfast is over…late one this morn.

Dear Wife has gone to town with Dear Friend to grocery shoppe – Friends bringing salmon tonite – The Study furnishing veggies and a dessert.
Friends, Fellowship, Food, Drink.

As the Dear Colleague used to say, “How sweet it is.”

Low sixties last nite…low eighties today.
Cloudy with rain a good chance overnight.

Nice contrast to hot and nineties and windy.
Not for always, but once in a while.

Camp is quiet now.

Relatives have left, completing a five-day visit.
We talked and laughed and grilled and walked marinas and shopped and dined in a multitude of splendid Northern Eateries.

And talked of the old times.
And of politics; religion and theology; and the changing times we all live in.
And we did things we have done before – those things known as family traditions.

Again, how very sweet.

And now there are Dear Neighbors and ‘catchups’ and the doing of things we did not get to.

Chores and reflections and thinking and planning and thanking God for His Blessings.

“These are the days the Lord hast made – Let us rejoice and be thankful!”

HONORS

A brief message by a beloved Clergyman.

Three volleys, seven shooters.
Three shell casings given to the Widow as reminders of the three volleys.

One flag presented with softly-spoken comments by a military officer.

One bugle playing taps.

And so it went Monday at the National Cemetery in Holly, Michigan for a Dear Friend.

Grieving family and friends.
A grateful nation.

Another circle is complete.

Requiescat in pace.

UNDERCURRENTS

July is well underway.

A summer heat wave is buffeting the US Middle West and we hunker down and go about our business as well as we can.

In the 1950’s, as a youngin’, I well remember hot summers in Toronto, Canada.
Dear Gramma’s house was a two story in a pleasant neighborhood, a neighborhood where all the neighbors watched out for each other, and when the heat hit we laid low.

Definitely no AC, anywhere but maybe a movie theatre.
Stores were ovens.

After chores, and there were chores, we would luxuriate in the coolness of the old house or play monopoly or canasta or cribbage on the large front porch.

Neat!

And English Gramma assured us that hot tea would cool you off on a hot day, as would running cold water on your wrists if it really got hot.
She mopped her brow whilst she told us these bits English lore.

Oh boy.

Breakfast would be toast and jelly and tea and fruit.
Lunch was milk and thick slices of cheese with bread and butter and cookies.
Dinner would be roast beef and potatoes and veggies – with bread and gravy.

Apple slices would be dipped in sugar, as was sliced grapefruit.
It is only sugar, Son, Dear Gramma would say.

And of course, salt on the cantaloupe.

And the toaster was a two-door fold down which was anything but automatic.
We still have it in our library.
With our manual portable Royal typewriter.

But my point is not to go into all of that good stuff…but I would love to…the memories are so sweet.

But we at The Study are so aware right now of some of the undercurrents at play as we go about our daily lives.

Weddings and funerals.

And tomorrow is a burial at a new National Military Cemetery in Holly, Michigan.
We understand the burial schedule is every half hour on the half hour, during business hours.

Processions were lined up for us the last three times at a civilian cemetery.

And there are the weddings, joyous occasions.

And I just read text from an npr program regarding the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, arranged in 1938 the article said, for thousands of Vets in their 80’s and 90’s.

So much life, passion, memory, devotion, consciousness.
And then gone.

And then gone.

All that humanity.

Anyway, it is late, and Dear Wife and Dear Sophie are fast asleep and tomorrow is a day of witnessing another undercurrent and lots of ‘overcurrents’.

More later.

TRADITIONS

We have written time and time again about tradition and the importance thereof.

This early July friends and family have helped preserve a number of traditions which we look forward to.

As we have reported, June and early July this year have been times of sorrow as well as of gladness – marriages and funerals, the number of which we cannot remember the likes of.

Is that wording awkward or not?
No matter, as Dear Gramma would say.
It is what it is.

It would have been easy to let a few of the dear traditions fall by the board for a year.
In addition to the weddings and funerals, there have been and are ongoing home improvements North as well as Downstate.
There have been anxieties and nervousness and happiness and joy and confusions.
And life goes on, and Dear Wife and Dear Family and Friends conspired to walk the walk, to keep up the old things, the old ways.

Dear Daughter and Son-in-Law traveled North with us to observe Fourth of July doings.
Her Father-in-Law and Mother-in-Law could not make it this year.
They were missed but we carried on.

And beloved friends/family from The Mole Hole were in Camp as well – and we joined together to view fireworks, The Sound of Freedom of the Navy’s Blue Angels, and many meals and cocktail hours and hours of fellowship.

We put out the flag and talked of politics, religion, and other such wonderful subjects so many folk are afraid to talk about. Or which many folks do not know how to talk about.

And now we look forward to the annual family visit to another Up North village, perhaps dinner out or, failing that, delicious sloppy joe leftovers brought up by Dear Son-in-Law and Dear Daughter.

A bike ride this morning to a bikers’ coffee shop for coffee and muffins marked the second edition of a new tradition, four of us huffing and puffing along a beautiful stretch of highway, following the curves of Our Lake.

Well, one of us was doing the most puffing.

Cloudy skies; high humidity; and nearly ninety degrees. Unsettled weather. Good chance of storm.

Not a good day for our kind of boating. The Kayla Elise remains in dock.

But the villages beckon.
And there is a village potter on the outskirts of one who makes gorgeous things in clay and writes notes on their undersides reflecting any of his observations of the moment.

Neat!!

Now there is a dog to walk.

More later.

RAMBLINGS

'Tis Sunday, 4 July, a day, a date, that is perhaps one of the most important anniversaries of all the anniversaries in the history of the planet.

Fireworks!!!

Dear Wife loves them.
I am somewhat less enchanted.

But Teddy Roosevelt loved them too...and he was a good judge of things.

And so there will be fireworks.

And good ones.

In the tiny village of Northport, Michigan, there is one fine display of pyrotechnics (sp?).
They appear, they actually are igniting over your head, but way, way up high.

And the oohs and the ahhs.

Dear Wife insists we go...and we take large or smaller groups.

And we have a good time.

The funeral of Dear Cousin yesterday was well done...
Pastor was inspirational.

Funeral preps were superb.

The assembly of family was most endearing, for many reasons.

And the United States Air Force rendered full military honors.

All this for a young veteran of 1941 who risked his life on 35 or so missions over Hitler's Germany.

And did it willingly.

And did it well.

And now he has died.

All known senior relatives are gone.

Thank you, Cathy, for your kind comments.

We returned North after services.

Sad times downstate.

But now Daughter and Son-in-Law have arrived, through horrendous traffic, and they and our two Dear Dogs are installed with us in The North.

The Blue Angels are performing over the Bay tomorrow, as they did today.

THE SOUND OF FREEDOM...

The United States Military.

As someone once said, military power is simply another arm of diplomatic power...
A most vital leg of the several faceted sides of national power.

God bless the United States Military...and may our Nation be on the side of Right...
As it usually is.