Entry 9:

Rhodeman,

It's true, I'm not Bambi's biggest fan. I used to feel warmer toward deer, but living in southern New England cured me of that generosity. John McPhee is quoted as calling them rats with hooves. Maybe that's going a bit far, but the deer population has exploded, and with a decreased habitat, they have acquired a taste for flowers, and shrubs, and ornamental trees, and ground cover, and on and on. I tried various talismans to preserve a few springtime buds, like deodorant soap on sticks, deodorant soap shavings scattered around, human hair, and other tricks, to no avail. I think you even tried to "mark" the day lily bed one year. But Bambi and his mom just kept eating and eating. Yummm, thank you for these tender morsels. I remember a friend of ours saying that at his home on Fire Island, he watched a deer stand up on its hind legs and eat from the bird feeder. Those newly emerged fauns are fun to watch, at least for the first few months. But the crows are more my style.

Janet Jackson has pierced her ... ?! What would we do without our weekly Enquirer? Although I used to want you to hurry and pass it along, lately I've found the perfect reading time. It's the perfect antidote to the Sunday Times. I'm sure our mail carrier rues the number of our subscriptions. I wonder if our mail carrier finds the range of our subscriptions different from most?

As for California, I don't know about you but I will "take" some batteries with me. One of our more frequent conversations has been about how people misuse bring for take. "Bring" sounded so dissonant--at first. Whether we bring or take batteries, I am counting down our few remaining months on the East Coast. Two more semesters at the university and a dissertation (small task), and I'll be ready to leave.

Thinking about language, did you see the article in the special vacation section in the Times this morning? The writer offered tips for getting around a foreign country without speaking the language. You and I have used all of her tips, such as carrying a dictionary and pointing at the word, pointing at other people's food in restaurants, using gestures and writing numbers down. What she did not talk about was the knot in my stomach at the end of the day. When we travel to country where I don't speak the language or read the alphabet, I am made aware of how difficult it is to be illiterate. The last couple of years while working in Connecticut's prisons, I have met many men who neither read nor write their own language. Although there are opportunities to gain literacy in Connecticut's prisons, I've often wondered what difference it would make to make it a condition for release. I am not naive enough to think that the ability to read and write would keep people from committing crimes, but lacking that ability does not help those men. But the mood in this country is not about helping people in prison grow, it's about punishment. I think a more productive spirit is to realize that to improve the potential for those men is to influence the lives of their children. In turn, those children might make more adaptive choices as adults.

Yesterday's flight was short. After I took off I headed down toward the shore where the sky looked clearer, but storms cells were building to the north. So I flew back to Chester and worked in the pattern: flying rectangles with a landing. Tedious but necessary to keep up one's skills.

I have to get some work done. It's time to book our August trip.

xo,
G