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Saturday, July 12, 2008

Things to do in Pleasant Pond, or something for everyone

  • Wear my Bug Repellent Wrist Band ®
  • Listen to the loons call to each other at dawn. (Interesting note: Loons are bigger than you think they are - 10 to 12 pounds bigger. I have this on good authority from my sister who swam under one and got rather nervous. How was she able to get so close, you may ask? She does excellent loon imitations. She has received awards for her loon imitations.)
  • Watch Daisy leap from the dock. (NB: Daisy is an excellent swimmer. In their puppyhood, we tried to convince Bruno to dog paddle along with his sister. He was never persuaded, and we are now resigned to his aquatic aversion. Not only can she swim, Daisy can dive.)
  • Kayak to Bowden’s Rock, take off our clothes, lie on the hot boulders, swim, dry off on the hot boulders, and kayak back to camp
  • Read old copies of Down East
  • Complete jigsaw puzzles, very difficult old wooden puzzles of fuzzy & marginally bucolic country scenes featuring barns, trees in midsummer. On the boxes, written faintly in pencil in perfect penmanship: One piece missing [out of 1500] or Completed with Aunt Florence at the pond, July 1958 [ Aunt Florence died in August of that year]
  • Read several old (but not as old as the Down Easts) copies of NYRB and learn many interesting things:
  • • Akbar, the Mughal emperor, was a devout vegetarian;
  • • Beneath the deepest part of the ocean is an even deeper part called the hadal region, so named for Hades;
  • • There is something bigger than the giant squid, called the colossal squid.
  • • The relationship between Tennessee Williams and his sister Rose resembled the relationship between Henry James and his sister Alice, in certain ways.

1 comment:

Mickey and Flea said...

Bruno should ask Mickey and Flea why his humans care if he swims. Isn't it enough to have Daisy come into the house and shake down?