Tanned, rested and ready

Tanned, rested and ready August 17, 2017

We jumped at the chance for a sudden get-away down the shore this week, where it turned out wi-fi access wasn’t always accessible.

The ocean is still very, very big, and quite impressive. The Atlantic definitely deserves a spot in any Top 10 list of oceans. There’s not a lot of beach left at the beach where we were — at the north end of Brigantine — and I couldn’t help but wonder if these coastal islands of my native state will still be able to welcome vacationers in a few decades when our daughters are the age I am now. But that was one of the things I was trying not to think about while there at the beach.

 

These cottages aren't still there. The @&$# greenhead flies still are, though.
These cottages aren’t still there. The @&$# greenhead flies still are, though.

I was trying, instead, to think about Mr. Rogers at the grocery store. Or, rather, to think like Mr. Rogers at the grocery store. Don’t know if you saw that one, but in one episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood he goes to the store to buy his milk, yogurt and bananas. He gets to the dairy section and stops, explaining that he likes to stand there for a moment and just think about all those gallon jugs of milk and all the people and families they’ll be going home with. And then he does just exactly that, for an uncomfortably long time, and there’s this whole Thomas-Merton-at-the-corner-of-Fourth-and-Walnut vibe and you realize that Fred Rogers was living his whole life inside of an epiphany that most of us almost-but-not-quite only ever manage to catch the briefest glimpse of.

Which is to say that, yes, the beach was crowded, but that was cool too. It was neighborly.

Anyway, I’m back home and back here on the Intertubes. Not so much tanned as peeling from pink back to pasty, but rested and refreshed a bit.

Quite a bit happened over the few days I was off vacating, and we’ll need to discuss some of that, but this post is just to allow for a fresher comment thread. So here you go.


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