Indeed, perseverance does work.

Charlotte and I went to camp this weekend to start closing things up and just relax in the quiet. We left Sat. AM and stopped at the Farmer's market in Groton VT for a blackberry pie. The woman who makes them does a great job- yes, we've had one before.

It was pretty cool in NH, so out came the heaters and firewood. Had supper at the local fish place and fell asleep in front of the fire trying to read.

6:30 AM was time to go fishing. I layered up and went out with coffee and an apple from the apple guy, Ed, on the Kankamaugus Highway. I had been out for a little over an hour when I heard a loud splash behind me. Turning around, I saw a loon in the water, twisting and turning and battling something. This is where the perseverance comes in.

Whatever it had was almost dragging the loon under water.

The loon was thrashing around and kept jabbing its beak into the water as if it was bobbing for apples. It soon became evident that it had caught a rather large fish.

This fish looked like it was way too large to swallow and, of course, it had to be swallowed whole or not at all. The loon would get it one way and another, but seemed unable to find the right combination of direction and placement to actually swallow it. this went on for about 15 mins., by which time the fish was obviously dead. Repeated pecking and chomping had taken their toll.

Finally , the loon got the fish in its mouth head first.

It was obvious to me that the fish was rather larger than the loon's head and I gave it no chance of actually swallowing the catch. Then, the loon raised the fish in the air.

and started gulping and gagging

And down it went, swelling the loon's neck to an admirably large size.

This was followed by a considerable amount of wing flapping and a look of "See what I did."

as he/she paddled slowly out into the lake. I figured that a fish larger than the loon's stomach could possible be would satisfy any hunger urges for a couple of hours anyway. It was a small mouth bass that weighed at least 1 1/2 pounds. But no. By the time I started in about 10 mins later, the loon was fishing again.

We went for a pontoon boat ride, but the engine unaccountably stalled down next to the boat launch area and wouldn't start, so I took this as a sign and we pulled it out and trailed it back to the house. This required getting the trailer out, pumping up the tires, and checking the lights which didn't work. To hell with the lights - Charlotte drove trailer down to the boat launch while I went in the Minnow (my fishing boat) to drag the pontoon boat in. This was relatively uneventful, and we got it home and in the yard. Then, I decided to bring the Abby B, my sailboat, home to VT. It was my turn for perseverance.

I went out in the Minnow, tied up to the Abby B and started the process. Took the jib off, took the mainsail off, stuffed it all into the cabin, took the boom off, took the tiller and rudder off, placed the mast crutch and lowered the mast.

This took about 20 mins. When I got the mast down, I realized that the minnow was floating way further away than the length of the painter, and getting more distant by the minute. We were no longer attached. Fortunately, it was floating toward the shore.

I hollered for Charlotte, who climbed aboard the Minnow and paddled in the wrong direction for awhile. Fortunately, she did avoid the rocks, and I was able to paddle the Abby B to shore, collect the Minnow and tow the Abby B to the boat launch. Came back home, got the trailer which had been pushed over a log and had to be dragged out by car rather than by hand, managed to back up over the hitch and sever 2 of the light wires, fixed the wires, and finally got ready to leave. We were now an hour later than we wanted, but we picked up the Abby B and left exhausted.

But, the loon taught me a valuable perseverance lesson. Open your mouth wide enough and you can swallow a huge fish whole.

We didn't have a clue. We didn't know that we didn't have a clue, but we didn't have a clue!

I was 20. So, of course, I knew everything. My wife, or soon to be wife, was 21 and knew only very slightly less than I since she was slightly older. She still is, but percentage-wise, I'm much closer now.

We were married by a Chinese Justice of the Peace, Dr Teyhi Hsieh (pronounced Tay-he She). He was an ex- Buddhist, married to an ex- Methodist. Interestingly, she converted him and he converted her. He was "the" person to get married by at the time. It was 1966, in Boston - Club 47, hootenannies in the basement, folk singers all over. Everyone who was anyone in that scene and getting married went to him. He was also the Honorary Chaplain of Curry College in Milton MA, the managing director of the Chinese Trade and Labor Bureau and "The Roosevelt of China". (His wife was Madame Chiang Kai-shek's personal secretary for a number of years.)

My mother gave us about two weeks notice that we were to get married. We, who collectively knew almost everything, hadn't given it much thought. But there was a child on the way and it was not in our parents stars to have this birth occur without a marriage first.

Charlotte had not a dress to wear to her wedding, but we had a friend, Ed, who purported to be a designer and who agreed to make her one. He did, and she actually wore it, although her grandmother insisted that she wear a string of pearls to help cover the expanse of bare skin showing above the plunging neckline.

As we entered the Chung-Mei Chia (It has occurred to me only as I write this that there was no Chia pet in residence - at least not that I saw.) Chapel in Brighton, MA, which was also the home of Dr and Mrs Hsieh, he greeted us with plastic leis to put around our necks. There were two 30 gallon trash barrels full of wrapped gifts and we chose one from each barrel. Dr Hsish didn't want anyone to get married without wedding gifts. We got steak knives, and two small, black and white tiled ash trays which we still have.

There were 7 of us in the wedding party. My parents, Charlotte's mother, my 2 brothers and sister-in-law, and Charlotte's grandmother. It was a very interesting ceremony, half Christian, of sorts, and half Buddhist, of sorts. During the ceremony, Dr Hsieh included a number of Chinese figurines representing love, friendship, etc that were on the mantle over the fireplace. He also included his much beloved saying (that is also printed at the bottom of his hand cartographed marriage license):

"Love each other for what you are;

Forgive each other for what you "AIN'T"."

I noticed during the ceremony that Charlotte's Roman Catholic Grandmother kept looking wishfully out the living room window. As it happened, we were directly across the street from the residence of Cardinal Cushing, which was quite visible through the window. In fact, at one point during what must have been for her a somewhat strenuous experience, she turned to Charlotte's mother and asked "When this is all over, will they really be married?"

Well, Something must have been right. We've been married through 2 children and 43 years and we haven't killed each other yet!

Human nature is an interesting thing. That's probably why so many people study it.

I keep running into the Spitzer Syndrome. Y'know - that's when the one thing that a person objects to most vehemently is what that person is doing on the side in secret. Bashing gay men while your feet are under the bathroom stall wall, family values put forth by pedophiles, cleaning out prostitutes while you're visiting them. The more a person expounds their virtues against their pet peeve, the more suspicious I become. There must be some kind of rational inherent in this, something that says if one is verbose enough against the practice to which they object and takes sufficient action to defeat it, it's OK to do a little of it yourself since you've so obviously saved so many others.

The Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, Kansas was in town recently. It's the second time they have been here. They are anti just about everything, but specifically gays and lesbians in their visit here. Vermont is the first state to legislate same sex marriage and they arrived on the date upon which it was to take effect.

They carried signs: "God Hates Fags", "God Hates America", "You Will Eat Your Children", etc. etc. I thought that they should be totally ignored, especially by the press and TV, but it was not to be. Five members of the "church" were met by about 200 local citizens. Fortunately, everyone remained far removed from physical violence, but there was a lot of yelling and such.

According to Wikipedia, "The group maintains that God hates gays above all other kinds of "sinners" and that homosexuality should be a capital crime."

This was all started by one Fred Phelps in 1955. I am very suspect of Mr. Phelps.

Why do people sign on so aggressively to extreme ideals? I think it stems from a human need to convince others that your way is right. This seems particularly true in organized religions, but it also happens in virtually all aspects of life. The need to get other people to agree with your point of view often supersedes the original subject. Extreme radicals of all kinds are perfectly willing to bomb, kill, maim, lie to and mutilate others who don't agree with their viewpoint. This need seems, in fact, to be the reason for most wars. If you can't get people to agree with you then the next step is to force them into submission, where you can work on them until they have no choice but to agree.

To some degree, we are all guilty of this. I am certainly no exception. I argue my thoughts to the point of distraction because I don't want to be wrong.

But even though it may not always seem like it, I am trying to change. Just because there is an opposing idea doesn't mean it's wrong. If I can actually force myself to listen to a different viewpoint, maybe it's a beginning. Maybe it will spread--

It was 1967.

We were sitting around in my parents house one day and I was pontificating about when our children were old enough to leave home, I wanted to move from the Boston area to VT. I had this whole plan that was to occur in about 18 years. My mother said "If you really want to live in VT, you'd better go now because if you wait, you will have put down roots and you'll never leave."

I'm sure that my wife, who wanted to live on Brattle St. in Cambridge, must have gasped in horror, but I didn't hear it.

Charlotte's best friend Kitty and her husband had just moved to Montpelier. We had visited once or twice, and if we were indeed going to go, it seemed that was the place.

We moved to Vermont in 1968, in time for our youngest son to celebrate his first birthday in his new state. Charlotte expected covered wagons and an outhouse, with kerosene lamps as the only light source since electricity certainly couldn't have been extended to the far north wilds yet. This was only passing fancy though, and we arrived in a rented truck with everything we owned and no place to live. After 2 weeks living out of the truck (the U-Haul folks were getting just a little nervous by then) and with our friends, we found an apartment and our life in the frozen north began in earnest.

I worked as a painter for my landlord, and in a local printing shop, and I then went to work for an insurance company home office where I remained for 32 years.

In the early days, there was no money. I was making just over $4,000 a year and Charlotte stayed home with the kids. I can remember sending unsigned checks to the electric company to try and get a few extra days before the next paycheck.

The fact that there was no money is really the point of all this. We did move into a rented house in about a year, and wound up buying it about 3-4 years later. Our mortgage payment was $80.56. We had trouble with that!

The things we did have were family, friends and fun. Entertainment was going to Kitty's for cooked to death "lamb briquettes" and helping to move the pigs around or fix a fence. We went there, they came to us--. No one we knew had any money, we all just pooled whatever resources we did have and laughed a lot.

In those days, when we went to Maine to visit my parents for a week everything the 4 of us needed for survival fit into an old Volkswagen bug. (I got to the point that I could change out an old burned up VW engine for a slightly newer hopefully working one in less than 2 hours. There were always 1 or 2 replacement engines awaiting their turn in the garage.) There were no kid electronics or trunks of toys and we just enjoyed whatever there was wherever we were.

My kids grew up to be wonderful people, even though they were so deprived of stuff. They spent hours outside doing God knows what and still have great memories of their childhood.

It must be obvious what all this is leading up to by now. Is it really better to have the vast quantities of modern technology and all the stuff that goes along with it? Don't get me wrong - here I am blogging on a computer and enjoying doing it. The technology is great, but not to the exclusion of simpler things. I am convinced that one of the reasons my kids turned out so well is because we had to make due for so long. We depended on each other, friends and family, for sustenance to nourish mind and body.

Although my grandchildren have more things and opportunities than their father and uncle ever dreamed of, they are being raised with much the same view of what's important. I spent 4 wonderful days with my grandson in NH this Summer. We were supposed to be there in warm weather, fishing, swimming, maybe a little sailing. Instead, it was cool and rainy the entire time. So, we played cribbage, the trumpet (him) and guitar (me), and read books in front of the fire the whole time. No schedule, no pressing need to do something. It was great and a time I will remember always.

That's what's important.