Two Weeks

The European idea of at least a month of vacation every year seems to me eminently sensible. Of course, who the hell can afford that. Not me. Those “active” vacations - scheduled daily to the hilt...with lots of things to do, places to see, people to talk with - are anathema to me. I can’t think of anything less like a vacation. I conjure up notions of rest, reflection, timelessness (at least being able to not care about time), quiet joy.

Now twenty years since I had a two-week vacation - lots of 5 or 7 day journeys but not more - I leave in the morning for two weeks in a cottage on Lake Michigan. It sits behind a tree-lined quiet lane right on the beach. Best of all I traded labor with my friends who own it in exchange for rent. There is no TV and no internet, no computer, no dvd player. Hallelujah.

I take books, camera, lots of paints and things to paint on, and my cheap guitar. My gal and I are also taking along some pleasant wine, enough to last.

This is a blessing and a thrill and brother I aim to enjoy it.

A Moment in Time

Two weeks ago I returned from my brother’s home in South Carolina with the family slides - missing for possibly fifteen years and only recently found to be stored in box of my nephew’s stuff. I still have not managed to put them in some order and get them transferred to digital disc. Some of them are faded or turned a reddish hue that suggests long ago times.

I don’t even own a projector so I randomly draw one from the small green box and hold it up to a spotlight. There, magically before my eyes, is a scene at the dining room table in the house I grew up in. My mother sits at the center, looking almost girlish in her thirty-something style. She looks so damn young! At the left her sister Marlene sits with a casually raised arm holding a cigarette. Everyone smoked then.

My grandpa Saul stands behind them in the living room casually listening in on the conversation. His easy and elegant style is drawn from a time before my generation changed all the rules about casual dress. Amazingly, I have to imagine that he must have been then about the age that I am now. I don’t know the date of this photograph.

To the right my Great-grandma Schneider holds court, making her points more strident by that expressive wave of her arms. I can hear her thick Polish accent and, more likely than not, an account of something with which she disapproves.

A moment in time. 

DS

I give thanks to this televised entertainment show - The Daily Show - and to John Stewart and his comrades for providing relief, remedy, comfort and laughs in lieu of the steady stream of corruption, greed, arrogance, stupidity and narrow-mindedness that passes for much of what we call Congress in these here United States in the year 2011.