By all means click on the images!
We're in Chatham, Massachusetts USA, in a tiny 2-storey cottage on the shore of Mill Pond, at the end of Eliphamet's Lane (I don't know who Eliphamet was). If I had a sailboat -- there are about 20 moored in the Pond -- I could sail a mile under a drawbridge, through Stage Harbor, and (if I were suicidally insane) would be merrily sailing on the Atlantic Ocean.
At night about every 20 seconds the beam from Chatham Lighthouse flashes across the Pond. At dawn and sunset there are deer, big bunnies, leaping fish, Canada geese, and long-legged wading shorebirds. The cottage was originally a clam shack, where clam and oyster fishermen would bring their haul in; the cottage is surrounded by about a million oyster shells. We've seen a black bird dive straight down from quite a height to fish. A few meters down the shore is a full-blown boatyard which returns its repaired boats to the water down a ramp of brown rusted railroad tracks by a slow winch.
Some idiot has a motorboat moored in the pond, and though he/she/it has never used it while we've been here, the idiot flies Old Glory from the mast day and night, rain and shine.
Well, idiots can love our Flag too. Who am I to say that it's unpatriotic to wear the Red, White and Blue as a thong or bikini?
New neighbors moved into the cottage next door two days ago, a couple from Long Island with a very new baby named Julia, I think short for Juliana. Just after sundown as I was outside having a smoke, I heard the young mother sing a lullabye to put Julia to sleep. In the dark it was beautiful and haunting. The next day mom was kind enough to write the words for me:
Los pollitas dicen
pio pio pio
cuando tienen hambre
cuando tienen frio
and my Spanish is just excellent enough to translate a text intended for the infant Julia, who perhaps knows how to say "Papa" and "Mama":
The little chickies say
pio pio pio
when they are hungry
when they are chilly
I hope my request for the lullabye has not made mom self-conscious about singing at night. Today if I see my neighbors I'll ask her the Spanish word for lullabye.
ATTENTION ALL PROTESTANT
DIVINES READING THIS POST:
DIVINES READING THIS POST:
Our cottage neighbors live on the eastern half of Long Island, and drove here by taking the ferry across Long Island Sound to New London, Connecticut -- just as I did 10 years ago.
Of course I was riding shotgun in a black hearse with a dead body in the back that reeked mildly of formaldahyde. Other than that, our ferry trip was exactly like theirs.
S.W.M.B.O. found this cottage for our week on Cape Cod via an Internet ad which promised us Wi-Fi. At first it seemed our laptop was receiving the Wi-Fi signal, but demanded a Secret Password, which the cottage owner had neglected to give us. We had important e-mail business to do when we arrived, and ended up having to drive 5 miles west to a highway D'Angelo's Sandwich Shop with a huge sign that said
FREE WI-FI
and conducted our business while eating submarine sandwiches and clam chowder. Yesterday S.W.M.B.O. spent 40 minutes on the phone with Todd and Tifani at the cable company, and managed to get the fucking Internet working, so this essay is largely an exercise in proving once again -- like my backpack train trip through Quebec and the Maritimes -- that I can roam Planet Earth dragging my laptop AND post to my blog. Nihil Obstat.
The map with the Sea Serpent in the Atlantic Ocean was also created here on Mill Pond. The light green state (technically a Commonwealth) is Massachusetts; brown is Connecticut; the darker green is the USA's smallest state, Rhode Island.
Besides Chatham, the map shows Wellfleet, which is the centerpiece of our trip, because it still has a Drive-In Movie Theater; and Provincetown, which is the only Honky-Tonk place in all of upscale, chi-chi Cape Cod. Provincetown is one of the USA's homosexual Meccas, and its airport has direct flights to another, Key West, Florida.
My brother in Maryland is having a bit of a Health Speed Bump, and I may at any instant have to disrupt my holiday and dash down to see him. From here I'll take the bus to Kingston, Rhode Island, where I can catch AMTRAK's premier medium-speed train, the Acella, to DC. The USA is the world leader in slow, unreliable trains.
I still like trains more than I like flying. A lot more. Unless the plane is very tiny and screwy and the flight is somewhat terrifying, like the Short-Take-Off-Landing on the island of Saba (cf. YouTube, keyword: Saba), which has Earth's shortest airstrip (not counting drug-smuggling airstrips). If the pilot fails to stop in the very short length, the plane falls over a cliff and all aboard crash on ocean rocks about 300 feet below.
Okay, I'm gonna post this crapola now before the cottage is struck by lightning, the power and the cable go out, and we are electrocuted.
~ ~ ~
Enjoy first run double features every night starting May 23rd at the only Drive-In Theatre on Cape Cod. Built in 1957, the Wellfleet Drive-In hosts a 100' x 44' screen, and a state-of-the-art FM stereo sound system that decodes modern sound tracks. Don't have a radio? That's OK! Mono original speakers are available for your listening pleasure. There's a playground and snack bar too!The Wellfleet Drive-In Theatre is open from late April through mid September.
Fri. June 5th thru
Thurs. June 11th
UP
Rated PG for action and peril
8:35pm
&
STAR TREK
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action and violence and brief sexual content
Starting approx.
10:25pm
PSYCHO BEACH PARTY (NR)
&
OFFICE KILLER (R)
$12 per person
NO theatre passes accepted
NO discount coupons accepted
A NIGHT AT THE DRIVE-IN!!!
Thursday, June 18
Movie at Dusk
Fri. June 12th thru
Weds. June 17th
UP Rated PG for action and peril
8:40pm
&
STAR TREK Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action and violence and brief sexual content
Starting approx.
10:30pm
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