Hello and Welcome

While the intended audience of this blog is primarily myself, I like having readers and I like having comments as well.  The easiest way to comment is to hit comment below a post, chose the anonymous option, and then include some hint of who you are in the text.  I have to moderate each comment so don't look for it to post as soon as you manage to prove you are not a robot.  Anti-robot proofing is an annoying process, and I apologize. 
I've tried to do this without that screening, but it meant an hour of work a day.
I get about three to a dozen spam comments a day and don't want them posted.  I post nothing for money here and am not interested in promoting any website or sales schemes. 
You scum wallowing spammers might just save yourself some time and not bother putting up such comments that seek merely to promote your products or website or newest scam. 
If a website is attached to a comment, I generally I won't post it.  So give it up!!
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However, if you linked here from a discussion board, it is often better to comment on that board, so others can see it and respond.  No one here ever responds to a comment.  It is rare that anyone responds to the original post.
More Vegas related material is on Vegas focused blogs that I also write on a regular basis.  See the right menu here for links to those sites.
 

Tuesday/ Jeanette McDonald

Rain off and on today.  I liked all of it.
For the most part I read finishing my Father's Day present and reading more in Robin Hood as well as a good bit in the papers.

Jerry called and he is coming up for the wedding.  That will be just great!  I imagine I'll see a number of people I rarely see.

We grazed.   Pea soup.  Black beans.  Assorted anything.

We watched a couple Monk that we had seen before but did not remember.  They were funny.  The New Girl was not.  I'm tired of that writing.

I watched Broadway Serenade, a great old musical from 1939 done in the old fashioned way with plenty of instruments:  long rows of horns, even a long row of pianos at one point.
The music shows the mix of almost operatic style with the new swing.
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/2536/Broadway-Serenade/
I guess I am most happy when one of these old movies catches my full attention.  Jeanette McDonald sure was a pretty one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanette_MacDonald

She died younger than I am.  Bad heart.

Voting rights

The law, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, allows voters to register using a federal form that asks, “Are you a citizen of the United States?” Prospective voters must check a box for yes or no, and they must sign the form, swearing under the penalty of perjury that they are citizens.

The state law, by contrast, required prospective voters to prove they were citizens by submitting documents like birth certificates, passports or naturalization papers. They could also provide a driver’s license number from a state that verifies citizenship.

 

So some days there is good news.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/us/justices-reject-arizona-voting-law-requiring-proof-of-citizenship.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130618&_r=0

Monday and the rain is here

It was a fine, nice rain, but now the thunder and lightning has taken out a good amount of electricity from just past here all the way into East Greenbush.

We are lighted however, and hoping that the storm will now pass.

Soon we will eat some Massachusetts bluefish for supper.

Later;  It was good too.  No disappointment here.  I tossed in a bluegill and a perch that had been frozen last year and forgotten.  All was good with garlic and seafood magic spice.  Salad from yesterday was great with "brown tomatoes" a strange new dish.  They are very good.

I opened a bottle of red wine.  That makes it all good.  Since I broke my everyday glass, I've been using the nice cut glass pieces from the set I found at a West Sand Lake rummage sale.  someone had painted around them and the glasses were coated and needed a bit of work, but they sure are fine at about a quarter a piece.

7PM and the lake is a mirror.  The rain is gone.  Some of the power is back for other folks in other places.  I've had a bit of red wine.  Peter must have liked the photos as he borrowed some for Facebook. 
I got a couple more positive notes on my Vegas writing.  So life is good.

Calvin

My nephew posted this photo of his father, my brother, at Niagara Falls where they lived.

 

Father's Day

I had a fine Father's Day weekend, seeing Peter, Jen and Casey both days, skyping with Frank and Sylvia and talking to Cory and Keith on the phone. And I always know Dana is reading these  posts on my blog.  He is my best reader.

Peter gave me a book he has enjoyed:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6240790-abe-lincoln-of-pigeon-creek

and I'm about half through with it. It is a novel, but based in part on reality, a speculation of what Lincoln's early life might have been like, using what facts are available. 

And Casey drew me a fine card with quirky lettering spelling out the day's wishes in cute kid fashion.

Saturday we all went to Casey's soccer.

This is my sort of sport.  No score is kept and the kids are cheered even when they score a goal in the opponent's net.  There is no goalie so the shots are pretty easy.  Coaches are right there on the field, so except for a few parent's the game is pretty quiet.  And when coaches advise it is more a suggestion, like Casey's coach following along while one of his teammates kicked the ball down the field to the opposite net. "You still have time to turn around."  Most of the time the kids have fun.  Perhaps the game is a little long.  And Casey's team forgot the snack.  That was a tough half time.  Casey with permission managed to procure a snack from the other team.  In my opinion that showed great promise.







Photos were taken and looked at.  Casey and Boppy check out her phone pics.

 

 

 

 This photo is a bit staged. Casey's net was a small little net.  But we needed a backdrop and this one looked good.

 

 

 Next we went to Subway so I could one more day avoid my good eating habits.  I had my favorite tuna with jalapeno peppers.  I had a food long and saved half a foot for my Father's Day breakfast.

 

On Sunday Jen completely drove me off diet with a dish called "chicken riggies" which is a rich concoction of bites of chicken with assorted spices in a sauce of heavy cream. 

 

 

 

Oh, it is very good!  I love creamed dishes.  I ate my share and more. 

 

While she cooked, we fathers and sons went for a bit of a walk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 More presents today because Peter had found a free box of bells along the road, so I have three and Elizabeth has one.  One is from Florida.  One is in the clay I like common in Spain.  Some have birds.  No fish.  I guess bell makers don't think of fish.  Anyway, they are a good bit of fun and as Linda Carle's uncle used to say, Peter got it at the "Price is right.:

That Elizabeth sure is resourceful/migraine

So there we were, stuck on the island of Nantucket with folks coming in soon to take the house for the next stay.
They canceled two ferries on us and it looked like the earliest to get out, maybe, was about four thirty.
So that meant we would be sitting somewhere downtown with all that luggage in the damp and rain and wind and waiting and then have to find some hotel for the night or drive tired for the whole way home in the dark.

Well....

Elizabeth arranged a fine airplane ride.  20 minutes in the air and we were back on the Hyannis side.  It was a tiny plane, but they took all our stuff and even coached us how to repack to save the weight issues.  There was some turbulence, but it was pretty cool to see Nantucket from the air, see the ocean, and see the mainland.

I am very happy to be on the mainland again.

When we added it all up, we broke about even with the cost of the ferry and an overnight and added food as well as saving a day getting home. We were home just after dark and that was with a stop at Joe's Lobster Market in Sandwich for bluefish fillets and some quahog clams to take home in the cooler.

http://www.joeslobstermart.com/

and a fine midday seafood platter of tastes of lobster, scallop, haddock, shrimp at Sam's Seafood joint

http://www.seafoodsams.com/

I was especially pleased because I had a brutal migraine that no coffee or banana would touch, perhaps the worst in a long while.  It peaked when we were about two hours out and the last bit of the ride seemed to take forever especially driving into bright light all the way.  I was happy to see my own bed and get all the light shut out and just sleep a couple hours so it cleared for the most part.

The migraine nausea was pretty intense as well, and so not being tossed by waves for two hours was a treat in itself.

I still have a mild version of all the migraine, but not much.  Chicken broth and pepper helped a bit as it always has seemed to.

With all the bad eating this week (and it was pretty bad) I have not gained weight, so I guess I managed to survive it.  Now back to beans and greens.




 

Stuck on the Island

We will at the least be delayed getting off the island as all the morning ferries have been cancelled.
We are hoping to get out later in the day.

Awake again

Up in the middle of the night again and I see that Elizabeth has tagged me with this photograph from North Carolina.  I'm not sure how that happened here in Nantucket, but I like the photograph and so here it is.

 THESE ARE IN CHICAGO. JOANN'S SALT CELLARS

MOVIE AND DISCUSSION BOARDS/Dewey slot machines

Steve and I watched a fine old film on Cinemoi with Edward G. Robinson who plays an artist who gets involved with a beautiful woman.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038057/


And in between all this Nantucket I've had some fine exchanges on the Vegas discussion boards with readers who enjoyed my trip snippets and still have plenty to say.  It was been delightful to have done all that writing and find it appreciated by so many.

One fellow wrote about finding these slot machines in the little casinos I skipped in Henderson.  So I'll have to go just to see the antiques. 

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=dewey+slot+machines&qpvt=dewey+slot+machines&FORM=IGRE

They were called Dewey machines because they were made by Dewey Mills, but some of them did have Admiral Dewey as a slot theme much in the way they have slots with movie stars now.

House of Inner Light/Firehouse

We visited two places today that were packaged with our tickets to the Whale Museum and so free.
One was the last little firehouse to be still standing on the island.
The other was the House of Inner Light, a renovated ancient barn where two eccentric Quaker sisters lived and did their art.
http://www.americantowns.com/ma/nantucket/organization/nantucket-greater-light


The video of the great fire that destroyed so much of the business section of Nantucket was hard to watch.  It came just as the island was going into depression anyway and helped send it along.
The firetrucks were more interesting.  I can imagine that my grandfather saw similar trucks when he was young although they were used more in small areas whereas Buffalo used horse pulled vehicles.


The renovated barn was very interesting.  These two women had an idea about finding odd bits of house and putting them together so that their entire place was really a piece of found art.  They would pick up things that were left with the deconstruction of houses.  The most dramatic were the wrought iron gates and the glass windows.  The best story was of bidding high enough at an auction to buy six gold tinted columns.
Funny was the responses of the community. Some were very critical that the renovated barn was not being done to reflect the traditional architecture of Nantucket.  Others thought the juxtaposition of the gold leaf columns in an old barn was absurd.

The whole visit was delightful. In other places where there is not huge money for such preservation, this house, these women, their story and eccentricities would just have been forgotten.

I loved seeing the old barn beams and much of the structure.  I would not have liked it in the 60's as they collected huge, loud bits of painting and fabric that formed a very colorful collage that does not appeal to my sense of art.

Their own painting was more traditional, but much of that did not move me and I suspect it is their story more than their art that makes them valuable as history on this island.

 This was the garden of the house.  It had been flat and used for animals.

 Two of the six pillars bought at auction

 They made this cover with the help of their mother.   Needlework of some kind

 

 

 These are the pillars they used next to the fireplace and other decorative pieces

 A detail of one of the carved pillars used outside

 

 Looking out on the garden.  More wrought iron.

 

An inner window

 

Madeket Beach

https://www.facebook.com/ereid001#!/photo.php?v=10151492653025784&set=vb.706600783&type=2&theater

Linguine ala Steve/sconset/town

Okay, so I have been off pasta forever.
But this one was worth it.
Steve worked a long while preparing this dish, marinated the rich and delicious sauce, and it was really yummy.
Elizabeth added a side dish of chicken in turmeric and black pepper and a bit of olive oil.  And she made broccoli in quantities that assured leftovers.  Nice!
Alice added a fine salad.
Polly made the command decision that boiling pasta probably worked better with water in the pot.
She noticed the oversight when the smoke alarm brought the landlords running. 
I read my book on the history of Nantucket and then, and then I ate.

Afterwards. I did do some dishes. 
Say, who rents a house with a kitchen that has dinner plates that don't fit in the dishwasher?
Clink, clink, clink.
So I rinsed them. Loaded the washer.  Then took them out and washed them and then towel dried them.
And what about a nice metal scrubber for the stainless steel pans?  This is asking too much?
I think it is time for me to be in my own kitchen.

I have liked this adventure and the space and history and books and decorations of this house. And the location has been fine.  But we were lucky that we did not need air conditioning, and it took a while to get wash clothes, and bars of soap. 
and the layers of foam and comforters between the mattress and me were just annoying.
I like the landlords very much, and in some ways they have been very accommodating. 
I think it is time to catch the ferry.

However, last night's meal was a huge party with plenty of all sorts of talk.  With this group, ideas flow, bubble, collide... like pasta in rapidly boiling water.  I'm having a huge fun time.

And the topic might be anything.  Where else can you mention salt cellars and everyone owns one, or a box of them, or an artist's rendition of one, and so everyone has experience and perspective. I did not need my Kurlansky this trip.

Earlier Elizabeth and I took the bus to the beach at Sconset,   well, Sciasconset to be accurate, but when it is pronounced the "Scia" is silent.
Whoa.....and I thought French was weird!

Anyway
The waves were high, but it was not the terrible force of Madaket beach yesterday.

We had a seafood chowder and salad out at the point. It was good, but none of the chowders I have had on the island match what I had in Hyannis except the one with Pernod.

I took a few photos :

 

 Where we had chowder

Very nice atmosphere with large B and W photos of a young family and children.  Good coffee.

 A gambling wheel and a goose

This well was dug in 1776.  I suppose the pump to be much younger, but still an antique.

 



Then it was time to head back to the house.
We took the bus both ways.  On the way back I talked a bit with a young boy who was carrying a broken golf bag and another with clubs.  He had broken it on the course.  I told him about this book and the adventures of a young man who decided to play golf in every state right after high school.  I heard that interview on NPR

Elizabeth shopped a bit downtown and I went with her long enough to see this interesting clock

Then I drank a Maine brewed Sea Dog beer at the Sea Dog Brewpub.

 

The blueberry beer was on tap and they plopped some blueberries in as well.


Everywhere we go it is obvious that this is the season of remodeling, rebuilding, refurbishing, landscaping; folks are getting their places fixed up for the true Nantucket season. I think I like it better at this time.  There is no ocean swimming, but there are no crowds.
However, ducking in and out of landscaping trucks and men running circular saws or putting white paint on high windows on ladders is sometimes a bit daunting.
The brick walkways have been swelled until they burst with trees and their roots. The contours are more like the ocean than a sidewalk.  The streets are narrow.  It is all very quaint and wonderful, but we have to keep our wits about us and our balance in order not to stumble into some passing construction truck.
I did not photograph the construction.  Here are a few shots of the town.

 

 

 

 

 Civil War monument

 This widow's walk goes the whole length of the roof and covers two chimneys

 

I am up again at 3 AM.  This is not a good thing.  At 4:30 some birds are up and announcing their territory. 

This is our last day.