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A hundred-year flood on Sunday
There are only two places I consider home, Connecticut and the Lower Hudson Valley in New York. Even though I left both years ago, I still keep in touch and I still visit, most recently about seven months ago. They both still hold big spots in my heart.
That’s why it hurt to see what happened Sunday evening in the Hudson Valley, with 7-plus inches of rain deluging and devastating places I know quite well, including Cornwall, New York, which took some of the hardest hits.
“Travel is impossible,” the Cornwall town Twitter account said.
Some of the pictures I’ve seen are jarring, with cars swept aside and roads damaged. I know those roads well. I remember how long it took West Pittston, Pennsylvania, my grandparents’ hometown, to recover from the flood of September 2011. I hope it doesn’t take Orange County that long.
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A rainy day at the beach
When I was a kid, a rainy day at the beach was an excuse to read. And in coastal Massachusetts, where I spent my childhood summers at my grandmother’s beachside cottage, there were a lot of rainy days.
I was thinking about that because it was a rainy day at the beach today.
A very rainy day at the beach.I felt disappointed because I was planning on actually going to the beach, after a few days away. I was looking forward to swimming in the ocean, reading my book under an umbrella, and looking out at the Atlantic Ocean again. I love the Atlantic Ocean.
I could tell a lot of people were wondering what to do on a rainy day at the beach. I had lunch out, had Starbucks, went to a mall (which has definitely seen better days), and went to a bookstore. And then I went back home and spent most of the afternoon listening to podcasts and reading. I also have been writing more, and I enjoyed the time doing that, too.
All in all, a pretty restful vacation day, even if it didn’t include the beach itself.
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Goodbye, chain restaurant
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday.
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Pulling at the thread
I am sure Threads looks cool. I don’t know, ’cause I am not planning to join.
For 15 years, I posted early and often on social media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, then Post and Mastadon last year after it looked like Twitter was about to implode. I had some trenchant things to say, some useless things to say, and a lot in between. I posted probably 70,000 times between 2008 and early 2023.
And then I stopped.
I have barely posted since April. I have turned my face away from Facebook. I am not really tweeting, nor posting on Insta. And I am also not reading, either. I still post on LinkedIn, but that’s about it.
I have no desire to post on Threads.
I don’t think it’s going to change, either. I mean, maybe. But it feels like after nearly four months away, I have broken that habit. I see that it would help me when it comes to my blog. But the psychic cost of social media was too much. I can’t see feeling that way again.
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Along a human made river
The Atlantic Intercoastal Way in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. One of the things I hate most about living inland is being far from the sea.
I am two hours from a Great Lake, but it’s not quite the same as the Atlantic and Pacific oceans I grew up along. And for this week or so only, I am back close to the Atlantic and I have been taking advantage of it as much as I can.
But one of the things that I don’t really have my arms around is the Intercoastal Waterway, which is an inland waterway route that stretches from the Florida Keys all the way up to, purportedly, Massachusetts. (It’s, er, complicated.)
And yet here it is, in front of me, an unwinding river way two boats (or more) wide, with docks and all the trappings of the ocean without natural waves. The only waves are the ones from the boats, some of them quite large, that pass by, like right now.
According to the sign, it goes from Massachusetts Bay to Key West. Although I had only been vaguely aware of it before I encountered it in South Carolina about two decades ago. My bad: I have barely been that way. I am a Northeast kinda guy.
It does look like fun, though.
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Beach sojourn
Not a ton to say. Just spending the evening lapping up the waves and feeling the sea air.
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This way, the sea
There ahead lies the ocean. Not exactly the best day for a visit to the beach, as it’s raining and near dusk. I am only glancing at it, at least for today. hopefully I get to explore more.
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‘Risk is our business’
The original “Star Trek” could be both the best and the worst of science fiction. I believe that 100, 200 years from now, “Star Trek” is still going to be one of the cultural touchstones that remain. Part of it will be the relationship between Kirk, Spock and McCoy, and part of it will be the sheer beautiful, hopeful and multicultural vision of Gene Roddenberry & Co. for the future that I hope years from now will be.
As a writer, some of it is great. It employed some of the best science fiction writers, including Theodore Sturgeon and Harlan Ellison. I’ll put up “City on the Edge of Forever” as one of the best TV episodes ever, not just “Star Trek.” And then there’s this, from “Return to Tomorrow.”
“Risk, risk is our business, that’s what a starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.”
William Shatner is often taken to task for overacting, and it’s true. But he could also deliver a speech like this, fully believable.
There’s more, the whole way through.
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I heard somebody say
The ’70s had some great music … and this is another fine example from The Trammps.
Plus it’s a two-for, because “Disco Inferno” was a minor hit in 1977 and a huge hit the next year with “Saturday Night Fever.” Hard to overstate how big that movie and that soundtrack was, for John Travolta and the Bee-Gees and disco in general. I was too young to see “Saturday Night Fever” but my mom did and played the soundtrack so much that year.
Even if I can’t believe that a popular song had the lyrics, “burn this mother down.”
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Smoke and feeling ill
Been sick the past four days, and I haven’t been feeling too productive nor too interested in doing much of anything.
The illness is either a summer cold, which happens, or it’s a reaction to the smoke from the Canadian wildfires that has descended upon the city where I live. (I live in one of the smokiest cities over the past few days, even though we’re far away from the fires.)
Don’t know which it is, although I was feeling pretty healthy until the smoke led to Code Red readings on Wednesday. I woke up the next day with a sore throat and I ended up having to spend more time outside, which didn’t help. Nor did it help that I wore a mask outside the whole time. I am one of those people who could care less what anyone thinks about wearing a mask.
I’m prone to upper respiratory challenges, which was made worse by a near-fatal bout of pneumonia nearly 25 years ago. My lungs haven’t been the same since, which made it imperative that I stay as far away from Covid as I could. (And in that, at least, I have been successful so far.)
Yet I can take a lot of precautions and still, apparently, get tripped up. I don’t know whether it was a cold virus or the smoke from the fires. I would just as easily attribute it to a cold except for the timing, which is just right for it being smoke.
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About Me
Journalist and writer. Loves writing, storytelling, books, typewriters. Always trying to find my line. Oh, and here’s where I am now.
Nows and Forevers 
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