Notes from home

Back from a quick week in Provincetown with my family (celebrating a significant birthday for my mom and her twin sister). A little odd being there with family and not spending much time writing, but good to be there and to be able to introduce my family to my favorite little place on the planet. We rented a four-bedroom house just a couple of blocks from the Fine Arts Work Center -- and if anyone reading this is ever looking for a Provincetown rental in a quiet residential neighborhood for a group of 4-8, drop me a note and I'll give you the contact info, because this place was great: spacious, quiet, but just a short walk to Commercial Street. My favorite part was the rooftop deck, which offered a lovely view of the Pilgrim Monument and on which I sat under the full moon and wrote a bit. (Note: just because it's written by the light of a fat full Provincetown moon doesn't mean it's any good. But it was nice to scribble a little all the same.)

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Chapbook note: there's been a bit of a further delay, for which I apologize (my fault). It should ship at the end of this week.

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I'm not a baseball fan particularly, but tonight for the sake of history I am watching the last game in Yankee Stadium. Guitarist/songwriter Nils Lofgren and his wife Amy have written a song in honor of the stadium's demise, which you can download on Nils' website, along with his rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. Grab it here -- Nils has some other stuff available for download that's worth the effort, too. The guy is a killer guitarist and I've heard he is a sweetheart as well (I always like knowing that about the musicians I enjoy, when it's true).

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While I was gone, the remnants of Hurricane Ike blasted through, and the power at my house was out from Sunday afternoon through sometime Wednesday afternoon. I have a few limbs down in my yard, and lost a bunch of food from the refrigerator, but all things considered the damage was minimal -- especially compared to what folks in Texas had to deal with. Still, I am the only person I know who actually avoided hurricane-related unpleasantness by leaving the Midwest and going to the coast. Go figure, huh?

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Of course, the other unpleasantness that blew through while I was gone was the economy going to hell in a handbasket (not that it wasn't headed there already). I'm pretty stupid about economics, but even I can see that things are one enormous mess. Here's hoping that when Obama gets elected, he'll be able to straighten things out, though I'm afraid the first year of the new administration is going to be rocky no matter what. Yes, I said "when" he gets elected, not "if" -- I'm a hopeless optimist, and also, I saw a poll that showed him leading in Indiana of all places. If we can go blue this year, anyone can. I hope.

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While in Provincetown, I did a couple of the touristy things I'd always wanted to do but had never gotten around to: climbing the Pilgrim Monument (116 steps and 60 ramps to the top for a fantastic view), and going for a ride with Art's Dune Tours. We were going to do the sunset tour and clambake, but they cancelled the clambake part because it was too cold and windy and apparently normal people object to sitting on the beach to eat dinner with their hands turning blue and sand blowing into their melted butter. Who knew? It actually worked out great because we ended up at Napi's for dinner that night, where I had the most incredible duck with wild beach plum sauce.

On the dune tour, we got a peek at several of the dune shacks up there. I've been fascinated with these ever since I found out about them. There are a couple of them where you can actually get a short residency. Not sure I could handle it for more than a week (no internet! eek!), but I may start scheming about trying to manage a week up there in the next couple of years. I love that landscape, and the light, and the clear salty air, and the sound of the surf... it would be pretty amazing to spend some time there enjoying the solitude and doing some writing.

Photos don't do the landscape anything near justice, but here are some quick shots from the dune tour -- one of the dune shacks, and a couple of sunset at Race Point Beach. More on my Facebook.