Letter from the Vineyard

              Had I been a journalist in the 1940’s, I would have ripped my piece of paper out of my typewriter and thrown it disgustedly into the waste basket this morning.  I am not; all I had to do was drag my sheet into the garbage can on the lower right hand of my screen and hit the quick command for a new digital sheet of white paper and I could begin again.

This morning, I was grey and cranky.  Unusually cranky.  It’s not a state I find myself in often but reading the morning news set a sour mood and I didn’t bounce back with my usual élan.

Only this evening, as I finished errands in Hudson, did I find myself looking up at the sky as twilight began over the Catskills and think, at last, I have broken the mood.

Monday, I pack up my car and head for another week on the Vineyard, holding down the fort while Lisa, the year-round person, takes a quick vacation.  I will return then to the Hudson Valley and the week of the 12^th go to Baltimore to see Lionel and Pierre and prep for what is looking like another summer on the Vineyard, reading and being a man about books.

It may have been that the morning was, once again, grey and foreboding, as it was through my time in Nashville and since I have returned.  Certainly, the tone of politics in the country, indeed, around the world, makes one think of nothing so much as fingers on a chalkboard.

Or perhaps it is the sore muscles in my chest from the fall in Istanbul, exacerbated by a bit of a tumble I did in Nashville when I didn’t see a box in my way. At the suggestion of my friend Medora, I went out and got some Aleve, taking a couple as soon as I exited CVS.  I am feeling some relief.

There are two windows in time before I go to the Vineyard for the summer and I am debating what I would like to do.  I could go to the Caribbean to see friends or travel to Oaxaca, which has been on my list or return to Europe for a few weeks.  Or something else…

My friends, Larry and Alicia, seem fine with my being at the Keene Farm and I will be gone when the parade of friends and family take over during the summer.  I could linger in Baltimore, or not…

There are a lot of possibilities; it’s just settling on what I would like to do.  Perhaps a visit to one of the lesser Keys?  I am thinking something warmish.

While I consider these possibilities, my brother is working in the clinic in Honduras and my conference friends from Beirut are about their business in Tanzania, Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lebanon and other places.

Far off, down by the river, the train whistle blows its cry up to me, both a lament and a comfort as the sun skids down beneath the Catskills.

We are closing in on the end of February 2019 and my astonishment at life abounds.  I am living a day both unexpected and a treasure, even if I did start out cranky.

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