1 Boring Old Man

AM: Yesterday, our guide for today’s peat bog adventure was along on our history tour trek [in training]. I think it’s his first ever guiding experience, and he was full of enthusiasm about today’s trip, announcing the forecast of clear skies – great peat bogging weather. Weather.com agreed. But today, it’s rain all day, and fog, ergo, no bog, ergo no foggy bog blog. Pity… I’m passing on the suggestion of a tour of the mustard factory in Eastport, but am warming up to the idea of lunch at Monica’s Gourmet Chocolates.

My daughter had a post about being fifteen and a R.E.M. sort-of-goupie, commenting on a felt linearity with the "then" her and the now forty year old her. When I was fifteen, pop culture was in flux. Around the World in Eighty Days edged out The Ten Commandments and The King and I for the Academy Award. But something else was on the way – Elvis had three of the top five songs. I was in military school, longing to escape, listening to Rhythm and Blues at night on a Nashville Station WLAC and buying West Coast Jazz Records with Chet Baker and Bud Shank. Something else was coming, and none too soon for me. Unlike my daughter, I was hoping to escape linearity with the mid-nineteen-fifties if at all possible. Like I said, vacations are like time travel. If your trip back in time gets rained out in your vacation spot, you can travel back in your mind.

I know what she’s talking about with linearity. I’d call it continuity of experience, but that’s just semantics. But it’s different at almost seventy, the history in things matters a lot more to me. When I was fifteen, or even forty, history wasn’t in the center ring [except maybe in my work, engaging people to consider that their history had something to do with how they are]. I remember when a friend retired, I asked him what it was like. He said, "every day is a weekend." I don’t think that’s right, at least not for long. Weekends are for a break in the week. In retirement, there’s nothing to break. For me, being retired is different from before. Everything is about history. Now is the sum of all the thens, and I have to invoke my Buddhist self to make now be just now. Yesterday, we visited FDR’s cottage on Campobello Island – the venerated FDR. Remember him, the President with polio, a live-in mistress, and the savior of Western Civilization. Well, in his second year, he was hated for  running up the deficit and taxes – so hated that he backed off and caused another Recession in his second term – a then in the now [or maybe vice versa].

The thing about history being in everything ought to seem comforting – put things in context. I’m not sure it is so comforting to me. It makes me intolerant when people get so caught up in now that they forget both then and later. Right now, the one that sticks in my craw is that deficit topic. I spent the last few years raling about the climbing national debt under Reagan, under G.H,W.Bush, then under G.W.Bush. Now, when we need to go into debt to jump the economy [that they crashed], their latter day saints are howling about the debt and the deficit. I don’t find any comfort in that history at all.

But enough of this old man talk. The rain’s abating some and a trip to Monica’s Gourmet Chocolates is coming soon. Time future still wins the day sometimes…

PM: Monica’s Gourmet Chocolates for lunch doesn’t disappoint, nor did Vinney at Bold Coast Smokehouse for mail order Salmon Pate` and Gravlax. Which brings me to the yard Gastropods in Maine and several discoveries since the last report. Since my original confusion between snails [with shells] and slugs, I’ve seen only slugs [many slugs]. Yesterday, walking to the car I made a dramatic discovery. Slugs, at least some slugs around here, molt. And I finally saw another snail with a shell that looks a lot like its cousin slugs. Here’s the portraiture, including the discarded slug skin from a molt:

slug

discarded slug skin

snail