Saturday, March 17, 2018

"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn." - John Cotton Dana


The Four'easter has been pushed to late Tuesday night and into Wednesday. Right now they're looking at another 1-3" of snow for Eastport. It will be 60 degrees and sunny out in the woods north of Elmira.

I drove by a small old-school motel yesterday called the Bidawee Inn.



I'm trying to convince Pam we need this 1951 Plymouth wagon. The Kia has 154,000 miles on it and is starting to get glitchy. She told me last night the rear latch wouldn't work for her. This beauty has plenty of room, has ZERO electronics and computers to fail, and with a straight six would get pretty decent gas mileage. It's on Craig's List in Visalia, CA so shipping costs would be modest, and with three-on-the-tree it would be a blast to drive.
A wise purchase, don't you think?

I did my laundry this morning. I'll go home with two days' worth of dirty clothes but I wanted to get that task out of the way. Monday morning before heading to the airport I'll do the bedding and towels and the rest of the cleaning.
This is a small house with maybe 1200 square feet. There's a basement with a low ceiling (ask me how I know) where the washer and dryer are, and a small attic space that's 6' at the peak with windows at the gable ends. The living area has stairs down to the basement and up to the attic in the middle of the house with rooms around the perimeter - living, dining, kitchen, bathroom, two small bedrooms, and the front hallway. It's a nice little house just right for two people.
So this house has a circle. Here I can walk around those central stairways going from one room to the next, round and round and round.
I did that as a kid in my childhood home, too.
That's one of the sad losses in today's "open concept" floor plans. Kids can't walk in a circle in the house.

This house has some things that make me go, "Hmmmm." All the outlets are 30" off the floor. There are three exterior doors, which seems unnecessary when you're never more than about ten steps from any one of them. The kitchen sink drains in about three seconds. I've never seen anything like it! Pull the drain plug and stand back lest the huge eddy suck you in and send you straight into the cesspool. By contrast the bathtub drain is slow. The ceilings are about 7'.
Just an interesting house.

Last night I had dinner at the home of Dennis and Christine. Dennis is a full-blood Shinnecock Indian, a tribe indigenous to the east end of Long Island and Christine is a Seminole from Oklahoma. The Seminoles are from Florida but her ancestors were moved west as part of the "Trail of Tears" forced relocation in the 1830s.
When Dennis took me to see the cars last week I asked him if there were any foods the Shinnecock ate which is how I got invited over for clam pie. If you like clams (I do!) you'd sure like clam pie (I did!).
After dinner and dessert we talked more about their Indian heritage and Dennis showed me some of the carving he does.
Wampum was the Shinnecock money and it's made from the shell of a clam that only lives off the north coast of Long Island - where the Shinnecock live. Dennis makes beautiful jewelry out of those shells and offered to give me one of the necklaces he made. I hesitated to accept his very generous offer of something so culturally significant. (Very few people still do this kind of carving.) In the end I told him I was honored and humbled by his offer, which I awkwardly accepted.

I ran this afternoon. The usual 25 mph winds made 41 degrees feel like 30.
I've eaten too much and run too little. I've got some serious work to do when I get home to get back into shape, never mind competitive in 10k's.

It's late afternoon and I need to shower and get read for dinner. I'm invited over to a home cooked dinner of corned beef and cabbage in honor of St. Patrick's Day. I've never had that before, so ... here we go.

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