To some people, summer on the Cape is all about the beach: hanging out on the sand, dipping into the waves, paddleboarding or kayaking along the shore. To me, the Cape is so much more. It’s meadows of wildflowers with bees buzzing. Salt marshes hiding egrets and blue herons and old homes. Forest trails with tiny creeks, offering shade on hot, humid days. Surprise ponds with a lovely bench placed where one can sit and reflect on the day. I’ve loved my time on the Cape and now that it’s coming to an end, along with the summer, I’m sending…
Category: United States
Sunday Serenity: Monuments
There’s a lot of talk about monuments lately, and it got me thinking. What is a cemetery but a series of small monuments over time about ordinary people? Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to old burial places, paying tribute to long-forgotten lives by reading the stones and piecing together the histories. Each tablet is a monument to someone, memories carved into stone. In some places, the memorials are centuries old, the ones who loved them and remembered them now long dead themselves. Fathers, mothers, children, entire families have stories told by tombstones in a cemetery. One family grouping I read…
Friday Fun: The Shark Eye
Yeah, this is a post about a shark eye, but not the eye of a real shark. It’s all about a predatory sea snail. But it doesn’t eat people and it’s really cool so today’s Friday Fun post features these slimy little things I saw last night as the tide went out here in Brewster. That’s one sticking its little head out as it starts searching for food. Here’s another one sliding along the sand, in hot pursuit of dinner. They kind of glide with the movement of the water. It doesn’t look very fast, but they do move, as…
Seattle by the Sea
It’s been a year this week since I left Seattle after four years of living and working there, and I do miss it. Summer is a glorious time in the Pacific Northwest: blue skies, blue water, cool breezes, and sunshine. From October to May, it’s grey skies and gloom, but the summer makes up for it in a big, big way. So come along with me on my last ferry ride out of Seattle a year ago… The skyline always makes me smile, from seeing the Space needle to Columbus Tower at the southern end. Somewhere in there was where…
Thursday Throwback: DC Institutions
A year ago today, I was on my last business trip, this one to Washington, D.C. My traveling companion, and co-worker, was from Dublin, so he wanted to see more than the White House and Washington Monument that we’d seen back in February. And, given the political state of things, I thought it would be good to show our institutions some love. They have survived Presidents, Congresses, wars, and economic depressions, and they will survive the turmoil in which we find ourselves now. The United States Capitol building was beautiful, even under construction. The Visitor Center (under that glass at…




