Padding My Posting Total

A few leftover pictures from last summer. I went to Florida in February, after a year's hiatus, and it is something of a tradition to do a couple of sets of pictures from these trips, even though they are always pretty much the same thing. However at the moment they are all still on the camera, as I don't know, or can't remember, how to load them onto the computer, and my wife has been too busy to tell me again how to do it or to do it herself. I have another week off coming up at the end of April. I don't have any plans for this, though I was hoping to go to New York for a couple of days. We really all should be going to New York at least twice a year, even though it's expensive. In truth, it would not even be that expensive if we could stay in a more or less regular hotel room, but trying to find a place that will take 7 people seems destined to catapult the rate back into the problematic range. Life is fleeting. I know, I have spent a total of about 9 hours in New York in the last decade despite continually having some plan or other for going there. Yet it always gets put off, usually for some reasonable cause, but nonetheless I am now 42 and I still have a certain number of days I would like to spend there in the ever shortening time left to me. So I hope it works out. This is on the ascent of Pitcher Mountain, which is really a glorified hill (el 2,153 ft) halfway between Concord and Brattleboro, around where the outlying towns of the greater Merrimack and Connecticut River Valleys converge and the attuned traveler recognizes he is departing one distinctive geographic area and entering another. There is a fire tower, and beautiful views from the top of these converging valleys. The mountain is well known for its blueberries, with which the top especially is covered, hence the pail. Last summer was not a banner season for this revered fruit, I don't remember exactly why. Too hot? Not enough rain? Too much rain? We still got some, enough that even now we still have a couple of jars of jam left

This is Stoddard Lake, which is near Pitcher Mountain in this same sparsely populated, in-between geographical borderland. It has a similar calm and haunted air about it. This lake is surrounded by cottages but it is always very quiet and it usually seems as if most of the cottages at any given time are unoccupied. There is no state park or anything there, and this little beach is a tiny strip of sand about 50 feet from the road that is primarily used as a boat launch.

My son. He is a pirate. He has great hair, which hopefully will be important in late 2020s and 2030s when he comes of age--i.e. Hare Krishnas won't have taken over the government or the entertainment industry or anything and made hair declasse. There isn't really anything else to say. I may start doing more of these little retro-picture posts. I already get sentimental about these past times with the children, even though they are all still under 10 years old, and of course we went to lots of places both beautiful and historically noteworthy all over New England and elsewhere in the northeast, many of which we'll probably never go to again.