One of the best things about living in Carrboro, NC was that we could walk anywhere, from Harris Teeter to the woods. Six years ago, the kids spent many happy hours splashing in Bolin Creek…On Saturday we went back for a visit. It was just like old times…complete with my boring refrain: “Don’t get your shoes wet! Do NOT get your shoes wet.”
Happy birthday to my one and only…
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo, and then some.
On Saturday morning, we met up with “my writing friend” and her family at the North Carolina Botanical Garden.
We especially liked the carnivorous plant collection:
It’s been fun comparing photos from six years ago and the ones I took on Saturday:
Another favorite spot was the chess board. Here are photos from six years ago:
And from Saturday:
On Friday night we met up for dinner with a friend from graduate school and his lovely family:
The highlight of the night just may have been the trip to the candy store, simply named “It’sugar”:
Six summers ago we moved to Carrboro, a great little town right next to Chapel Hill.
We lived in this house for a year while my husband did a sabbatical at the Humanities Center.
The two boys were in third and first grade here:
My daughter and I did our own “home preschool,” just the two of us.
We spent a happy year exploring the area and making new friends. This weekend we went back to attend the 25th wedding anniversary party of two of these friends. It was lovely to meet up with old friends and to revisit some of our old haunts. More on this later this week. For now, just a few snapshots from the weekend…
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
I found this beautiful moth on the road today…
The moth reminded me of a poem I hadn’t thought about in years. I was lurking in my high school library when I stumbled across a dusty old book that probably hadn’t been cracked in decades. It was a collection of “archy and mehitabel” poems, supposedly written by a cockroach named Archy, but actually penned by New York Evening Sun columnist Don Marquis (1878-1937). Archy pounds out his work on Marquis’ typewriter at night after everyone has left the office for the day. He types by diving headfirst into the keys, and because he can’t manage to hold down a shift key and type a letter at the same time, his poems are in lowercase. And Mehitabel? She’s Archy’s friend, an insouciant alley cat who claims to have been Cleopatra in another life and whose philosophy is: “wotthehell wotthehell toujours gai toujours gai.”
the lesson of the moth
i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires
why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense
plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves
and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity
but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
archy
1927
Here’s hoping the moth I found today was burned up in one moment of exquisite beauty.
We spent the 4th of July weekend in Arlington with my extended family. The kids were delighted to see their New Jersey cousins.
Friday
At Korshi Restaurant: “Party of 14?! You made a reservation? No reservation?! 14?
Hours of fun (?) at Brookstone in Pentagon City Mall
Still having fun…
We took the shuttle from Pentagon City Mall to Long Bridge Park to watch the DC fireworks from across the river:
Saturday
Yechon for dinner and Breeze Cafe for dessert (and the penalty shoot-out for the Holland vs. Costa Rica game):
My husband’s greatest triumph to date…separating four of my sister’s necklaces that had twisted themselves into a Gordion Knot.
Sunday
I think my favorite memory of this weekend will be sitting in my parents’ living room with my fourteen year old son, as he played them the electronic dance music he’s been producing. You have to understand, the only secular music I can ever remember being played in our household when I was a child was an old John Denver LP. Whenever my siblings and I ventured to play music of our own choosing, a pained expression would pass across my parents’ faces. Within minutes they’d ask us in no uncertain terms to turn it off. On Sunday afternoon, my elderly parents listened to the thumping, throbbing Electro house, progressive house, Melbourne Bounce, and Happy hardcore tracks my son played for them with thoughtful expressions on their faces. Every now and then, they would bob their heads appreciatively and say, “I like that part.” “You did that yourself?” “Very good, very good.” As my sister put it, “Now that’s true love.”
Want to listen?
Home again, home again, jiggity jig:
This weekend I took my husband on a belated Father’s Day date to Taste of Ash Lawn Opera, which featured performances by the principal artists for this season’s opera: Susannah. The event was held at the Trump Winery, located on a thousand glorious acres, just a little past Monticello. The Trump Winery used to be the Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyard until it was seized by the bank for defaulted loans. At one point it was listed at 100 million. Donald Trump bought it for a snip – a mere 6.2 million.
As we drove up to the Pavilion at the Trump Winery we quickly realized that there was something that didn’t quite fit into the picture. That something was us. We are not young by any stretch of the imagination, but as we, from the safety of our minivan, contemplated the other attendees making their way out of their Mercedes and into the Pavilion, we felt like a couple of blastulas.
As soon as the performance was over, we slunk out to admire the gorgeous setting…
Something about the situation made us feel a little silly…
Seriously silly:
We decided to explore a beautiful winding road to see where it led. We got a little panicky when we realized we were heading straight to the grand estate itself with no easy turn around in sight. We kept expecting to be chased away by a baying pack of coursing hounds, or perhaps by Eric Trump himself, huffing and puffing out the front door with his floppy swoop of hair and ascot blowing in the wind. We managed to turn our dusty, dented jalopy around and headed back down to earth and this spectacular, $100,000,000 view:
We interrupt your regularly scheduled program (i.e. The Grand Tour du Nord) to bring you this World Cup update.
The World Cup has profoundly changed my life in so many ways…
When my oldest child was just a toddler, I signed him up for recreational soccer. He loved every second of it. As the ball dribbled past his legs, he would crouch low with keen focus to inspect the ants crawling around on the blades of grass. As the ball sailed past him, he would gaze up at the sky and find dragons in the clouds above him.
We gave up on soccer for a few years. In 2010 we went to England to visit my husband’s family in Manchester. Our stay happened to coincide with the World Cup. Our kids watched the games on their grandparents’ tiny television, mesmerized. Since that fateful summer, all three of them have been obsessed with soccer.
That fall my father-in-law made all of their dreams come true, by sending them these Manchester United jerseys:
They like DC United too:
My daughter wrote about her impressions of her first pro game for a school assignment:
This past year our son’s team got to greet the DC United players as they came onto the pitch for their first game of the season:
My husband and I, both unathletic couch jockeys, have even managed to be conscripted as assistant coaches at one time or another:
Every fall and spring, my weekends are spent driving from field to field, not only within our own hometown, but as far afield as Maryland and West Virginia.
Even our recent vacation schedule revolved around soccer and was dictated by what time we would need to get back to the hotel to watch the World Cup games:
For all of my grousing, soccer has taught my children some valuable lessons and skills. They have learned the importance of teamwork, dedication, and of course: sportsmanship.
Yesterday, I came home to this reenactment of the Italy vs. Uruguay game:
It really is a “beautiful game.”
Tomorrow: Back to our regularly scheduled programming and: Buffalo. Yes, Buffalo.
o wonderful, wonderful 