Sylvia's Journal

I woke up with the name of an obscure Dutch film writer and producer on my lips. I know that because I googled it. She has a 9% star rating according to the website that listed her name. In my dream a grey-haired French-speaking gentleman linked her name with an interesting AIDS program that catered to village elders, in Ethiopia and in Southern France where I found him. The Southern France place looked like a luxury resort of the restrained kind as you would see in Architectural Digest; uncluttered, with lots of ochre-colored walls, statues and olive trees in the background against a perfect blue sky. The dream contained an odd juxtaposition of settings, people and places, as dreams often do, but, now that I think of it, quite fitting with the theme of going from work into vacation mode; Ethiopia will have to be put on hold for awhile.

And so this long awaited vacation has started, damp at 5:30 but sunny now, at 7:30 AM. I will kick it off with a flight if the weather lets me. Right now, most places we had in mind are IFR and enveloped in fog, called BR in the abbreviated aviation weather language. Our choice of destinations is, once more, Owl’s Head in Maine, and as alternate Ticonderoga in Upstate New York. Bill added Martha’s Vineyard to the list because I told him I want to fly there again later next week on my own, to see my colleague Wolffy who is vacationing there. We would go to Katama, the same grass airfield where Alison, Axel and I landed on July 3, 2007; it was a magical trip that took us from Beverly, via Provincetown (where we picked up Alison) to Nantucket (for lunch) and Martha’s Vineyard (for the beach), and then back in the early evening.

Today, one year ago, Axel came home from the hospital. Sita described the event nicely in her posting (on this site, dated December 23) entitled ‘Busted’ while I don’t even mention that it was about to happen. Given that I was in the (awful) middle of my withdrawal from Oxycontin, this is no surprise to me but may be to others. It was only on his second day home I was able to focus on him again as I finally exited the withdrawal tunnel, after several days of agony.

I am now officially a guest blogger on the Technology, Health, Development blog. I was introduced yesterday by editor Aman, together with my first post. Now I have more writing to do; I have about 4 stories in the cue. It felt a bit like getting an article published. This reminds me that I discovered yesterday that I am listed as the author of a book called ‘The Naked Bachelor’ with co-authors Kurt April and Robert McDonald. We actually did write a book together (Rethinking Leadership) but we know nothing of a naked bachelor. Amazon UK lists the book as currently not available. This is too bad because I would have ordered it and see what I wrote about the topic.

Last night we cooked up a vegetable storm with the bounty from our garden and local farm stands. I particularly liked the fava beans, which I ate like a snack. They remind me of my mother who considered them a delicacy. We kids thought they were yucky. It must be a maturity thing because now I love them too. They also look darling without their jackets. If my mother had undressed them and made up a story about them shivering birdies I might have liked them. And I could have written the story and published it as a book called ‘Naked Bachelor Beans!’