Sylvia's Journal

The dreaded seasonal shift, from summer to fall happened the third week of August. It’s just a warning that summer is nearly over. It gets colder for a few days; there is a distinct shift in the quality of the air and I need to wear a coat when I leave for work around 5:30AM.

But then it always gets warm again, and humid, and we are given a respite. We may even complain about the heat. Oh how easily we forget.

Our garden is producing abundance: pickling and euro cucumbers, the enormous tomatoes are finally turning red, the cherries and mini cherry tomatoes seems to be in a hurry (and tight they are), and the eggplant is growing long and skinny, touching the ground, and being nibbled on. The chard stands fierce, bright green and enormous; the cranberry bean pods are turning yellow and their contents turning dark red as their names suggests. The potatoes are working their way to the surface; the garlic and shallots are drying nicely on the porch and in the shed. The kale (sigh), well, we planted too much again and swearing to not bother next year – too much, too large and not the right kind for the Dutch kale-potato stew we like to have in the winter. The large beets that look like radishes have been eaten and done with.

After the winds shifted swimming across the cove is not quite as appealing as on a hot and sweltering day. But yesterday was hot and sweltering and I took my habitual swim across-the-cove. When I was back on the beach our friend W. pointed at something round and shiny bobbing in the water. This turned out to be a lost baby seal. It approached me as if it was a puppy returning a ball. I was reminded of the children’s book ‘Are you my mother?’ Mom was nowhere to be seen. The pup was too young to fear humans (and W’s dog). We called the harbor master who called the NE Aquarium, but when the tide was high the pup had disappeared, we hope reunited with its mom.

Although I think seal pups are cute and lovely, even up close, I don’t really like to swim with ocean creatures. Even the striper that swam below me some weeks ago, beautiful as it was to behold, made me swim fast to the shore.

Recent and less recent former colleagues from MSH came by to visit us at Lobster Cove over the weekend. There was more nostalgia, thinking of good old times, remembering who was there and who is where now,  and enjoying the very good ‘now!’  I love those visits in the summer. We enjoy Lobster Cove as if we are visitors. When we are alone we get busy with so many things that we forget to enjoy this extraordinary little paradise that we call our home.

Lobster Cove is at its best during our much too short summer, between July and September. This is the reason why I declined to travel to Togo this Saturday to attend the conference of African ortho-prosthetic technicians – a group of professionals that feature prominently in the work I have been doing the last few years with ICRC and with wheelchair service providers. I rarely go to conferences and would have loved to go to this one, seeing many friends and doing some intelligence about what is happening in this world, so different and so far removed from the usual MSH networks.

But it meant giving up one week of Lobster Cove in August, which I simply couldn’t. Instead a young colleague is going. I will meet up with her the week after to participate in a post conference workshop with teams flying in from various Francophone countries. I will be back by Labor Day.

The American Labor Day signifies ‘back to work’ rather than celebrating workers and workers parties as the rest of the world does on May 1. It’s kind of typical of the zeal of American workers – with their short vacations (holidays) and long work days that always astonish my European relatives.

Our family labor will heat up significantly after Labor Day as we are finally all converging on Tessa and Steve’s Harvest Moon wedding party (September 16), an event that has been on the planning board for many years.  Friends and family will fly in from Holland, using the wedding as an excuse to come to America at a time that is particularly beautiful on the northeast coast. I am taking two weeks off and we will squeeze in as much Lobster Cove enjoyment as we can. I see much harvesting our oysters, swimming, snorkeling, kayaking and endless corn and lobster meals in our near future. Life is good.

We have yet another celebration behind us. It has been a busy month and next month, with Tessa’s wedding coming up, will be similarly busy with celebrations.

Last weekend we had a reunion of people who all started at AVS (the Association for Voluntary Sterilization, later Association for Voluntary Surgical Contraception, and now called EngenderHealth) decades ago. Some of us worked there for a very short time (like me, only 8 months) while others spent their entire working life there and have now retired. A few drifted off to other organizations (MSH among them) but we never lost our connection to each other and the stories from that time way back when.

This was the 33^rd anniversary of the founding of the Zugsmith Society, a literary/drinking society, created in a booth at Chumleys, under the book jackets of famous people. One of those book jackets was from Leane Zugsmith’s novel ‘Never Enough’ which was promptly adopted as the motto of the Zugsmith Society. We are happy to learn that Chumley’s (holy ground for the our Society) will soon re-open again.

We celebrated our septuagenarians. There are now several among us – a weird idea, considering that when this society was founded all those decades ago we thought 70 was outright ancient.

There is always the AGM (annual general meeting) and the agenda is loose but has to include a review of the year and our accomplishments, adventures, and mishaps; then there is the gossip about those not present, and a reading from the Wine Spectator. Since we are a literary society we read Shakespeare  and studied the theme of Discipline vs Indiscipline through quotes from famous people, adding our own (mis)interpretations to their wisdom. For nourishment and libations there was good wine and lobster. As the years go by we drink less but more expensive and as a consequence our AGMs are less rowdy. When enough was eaten and drunk we assigned the organization of next year’s AGM to those not present, another ritual. We hosted this year’s meeting because we were not present last year. That’s how it goes.

For the last few weeks we have lived with a fervent Trump supporter under our roof. I didn’t know this until I called Trump a clown; that’s when all the buttons got pushed– first his, then mine, when he called Hillary a criminal.

Before I realized what happened my reptilian brain had taken the bait and we were off to an awful confrontation that left me shaken for at least 24 hours.  I don’t think I can do door-to-door canvassing for Hillary because I learned how easily I take the bait and how dumb my reaction was of trying to reason with a Trump supporter.

I reacted with too much vehemence, just like my now adversary (even though he is a member of Axel’s family). As a result I was no better in my defense of Hillary than he of Trump. We reacted kind of similar, in a direct confrontational way, quoting bogus, cherry picked or fantasy statistics and pushing forth statements that neither one of us could back up right there and then in a convincing way.  It was a ‘yes/no’ and ‘either/or’ kind of  discussion (the word discussion is related to percussion as our Dialogue colleaugues will remind us – hard and unyielding).  Each one of us quoted sources that the other considers without merit (The New York Post against The New York Times), an exercise in futility.

Later Axel had me read the New Yorker article and I recognized pretty much all the words, ‘facts’, names that my trump supporting cousin had used. I should have read that article first, be prepared for the Trump lingo and assertions.

Later, during my commute, a great time for mulling things over, I realized that I had let myself go and did not practice the Aikido turns that I learned years ago and still preach (and sometimes demonstrate) in my classes. Theory is so much easier than the real world. Our word (and heart) fencing over Trump versus Hillary was a sobering experience. It reminded me how little the the current divisiveness in American politics has to do with reason.  Right now reason doesn’t seem to have any role in this election – although I hope at some point it will.

In preparation for the party Sita moved with great purpose through the rooms on the ground floor and removed anything that could be considered clutter. We have a lot of that. She used any container she could find (and we have a lot of those) and filled them up with tchotchkes; the containers were then deposited on the floor of my office, preventing any intentional or accidental entrance.

The house looked so attractive after that that we promised to her and ourselves that we would try not to re-clutter the place. But we did, right away the next day because I had to get into my office.

And now we are trying to get back into our cluttered daily groove – the last guest left this morning, the enormous amounts of leftover foods divided, consumed, deposited at MSH, or thrown out, the recyclables picked up from the curb, and the garbage stored in the shed to keep the raccoons at bay for drop off at the dump tomorrow. Our town is trying to cut down on expenses and garbage service is reduced to once every two weeks; do-it-yourselvers can go to the dump on Wednesdays and Saturdays. This is what Axel will do before everything rots.

The daily groove will only last a couple of days more as we are having another party next weekend – this comes in handy from a booze perspective; we have lots to offer. From a food perspective we learned that when you expect 60 people you don’t have to multiply every four-person recipe (of mains and sides and dips) by 12. We will do an after action review so that by the time Tessa’s party comes around (more than 60 people) we will be pros at planning and guessing.