THE WALK
Author: janpriddyoregon
‘4 Dead in O-hi-O’
The best-known popular culture response to the deaths at Kent State was the protest song “Ohio”, written by Neil Young (who was Canadian) for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Gary was playing the song early this morning, one of only two he plays on specific days. The other is for the day he failed to pass his draft physical. Both are connected to the Vietnam War, then often spelled Viet Nam.
Forty-nine years ago today.
“The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre, were the shootings on May 4, 1970, of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, during a mass protest against the bombing of Cambodia by United States military forces. Twenty-eight guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.
“Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the Cambodian Campaign, which President Richard Nixon announced during a television address on April 30 of that year. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.
… “The question of why the shots were fired remains widely debated.
“Many guardsmen later testified that they were in fear for their lives, which was questioned partly because of the distance between them and the students killed or wounded. Time magazine later concluded that “triggers were not pulled accidentally at Kent State.” The President’s Commission on Campus Unrest avoided probing the question of why the shootings happened. Instead, it harshly criticized both the protesters and the Guardsmen, but it concluded that “the indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.”
“The shootings killed four students and wounded nine. Two of the four students killed, Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller, had participated in the protest. The other two, Sandra Scheuer and William Knox Schroeder, had been walking from one class to the next at the time of their deaths. Schroeder was also a member of the campus ROTC battalion. Of those wounded, none was closer than 71 feet (22 m) to the guardsmen. Of those killed, the nearest (Miller) was 265 feet (81 m) away, and their average distance from the guardsmen was 345 feet (105 m).
“There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of 4 million students, and the event further affected public opinion, at an already socially contentious time, over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.”—Wikipedia
There was a march in Seattle after the killings at Kent State. It was 1970, and Gary was working at the University Book Store since the year before while he was still 1A. (Few businesses would hire a man with that status—who knew when he might be called up for the war?) His physical in June of the previous year changed his status to 1Y, and he was “safe.”
That day, the management of the book store told employees if they wanted to participate in the Kent State march, they were free to go. Feelings about the war had shifted dramatically in the country. Increasingly, soldiers were not viewed as heroes, but as victims of an unjustified and criminal violence.
Gary walked from work and remembers looking down a major street as he marched and seeing a solid wall of people walking before him. 
I was still in high school during those years, of course, but I also went to marches, including that most significant one. Thousands of people started in the University District, marched downtown and then back to the U District on the Express Lanes of I-5, because the mayor closed the lanes to traffic. News reports I can find describe the day in a way quite different from what I recall. Many thousands of students marching, yes. Police in riot gear, not so much. (That was a different day when I was shoved from a sidewalk onto a street downtown by officers in riot gear. Imagine the threat I posed, all 114 pounds of me!)
There are three distinct memories I have of that day in May 1970. As we walked through downtown streets, professional people came out of office buildings in their three-piece suits and in pumps and walked with us. I saw that happen. We passed buildings I knew, though I saw no one I knew. Perhaps Gary and I were walking together then, but that is not part of my memory. It was the sense that so many people opposed the war, so many ordinary decent people agreed the killings were unAmerican.
I walked quickly to get to the front of the marchers. I would not attend the rally at the end, because I had to get back to my mother’s car. I was in a hurry, because I had to be at work for the evening and closing at my job at Taco Bell where I’d been working since the year before. Because it was not my first march, I recognized people—some of them specifically from other rallies and some in a sort of general way. A handful of dark-suited men at a previous march taking photos were not part of the anti-war movement. On that day, despite the many thousands of people I saw, there were people who did not belong, men I thought of as paid agitators. Some scruffy men at the front of the Kent State march were not familiar. They turned over trash cans and newspaper stands. These strangers were trying to start trouble, trying to make a peace march violent and we didn’t let that happen. As we righted trash cans, people standing on sidewalks cheered us.
At work that late afternoon, I had changed into my uniform but I was still wearing my black armband. My boss confronted me, asked me why I was wearing it, told me to take it off. I did remove the band, but then he said it served those protesters right that they were shot. They had no right to go march, that they were throwing rocks. I said, fine, you go downhill with a handful of rocks and I will stand uphill with my rifle and let’s see who gets hurt. This exchange happened in the front, but with no customers around. I was shocked, horrified, and I remembered the people who had joined the march downtown, the ordinary adults who marched with us. And then I turned, walked around the steam case, past the sinks, the stoves, and his office, and out the back door. I got in my mother’s car and drove home. I found out later from the assistant manager that Rob thought I was in the bathroom for at least an hour before he realized I’d left. He wanted me back, but I never went back to work at Taco Bell.
I often recall those days of marching for peace, our optimism that we could make the world a better place, that our protests would change the world. In some ways they did. Anyway, times did change.
Rob would watch the store sometimes from across the street, using binoculars to ensure there was always someone up front, that we did not close early, that we did the job right. He also shorted our paychecks and did not pay us at all for closing, and I had gotten very good at that, developing a system that covered all the cleanup and mopping and storing of food to get us done and out the door in minutes.
When I found out that a new boy I was training was already paid more than I was, I confronted Rob. “But Tim is a boy and has a car,” he said as if even an idiot could see that. I might have had a car if he’d paid me more, I said, though in fact my money was set aside for college. It was really a terrible job.
I am proud of that day, start to finish. I am proud of the anti-war movement. Increasingly as I age I wonder what sort of madness takes us into sport and war with the foolish notion that the “best man” wins?
Sometimes good people are shot while crossing campus between classes. Sometimes good people have to stand up for what is decent and right. And, of course, often the “best man” is a woman.
NEXT?
Yesterday morning ravens came to eat the stale bread we threw out. An eagle flew low over our heads, and we found the pile of abandoned “treasures” dumped from some child’s bucket. It must have looked like food. Only two gulls stood in the stream. The sky was bright blue all day.That afternoon I counted twenty-eight whimbrels.
There are even more this morning and we are walking out as this goes post goes live. I like thinking someone will read this while we are a couple of miles north on the sand.
To prepare for today’s post I checked back four years ago to the first time I (almost) retired.
I entered a classroom as a teacher-in-training in 1975, had my first job later that next year at a private girls’ prep school. After moving home to Oregon I worked as a substitute teacher for a long time in the English Department, but I quit teaching altogether this past March. I taught high school for over thirty years, and I substitute taught for another decade.
Each April morning between about four and about seven, I spent writing. I do this sitting up in bed. Some days I went right on writing for the rest of the day. It was a busy, reckless month. We went away for two nights. More recently, windows have been open sometimes this week. The ocean is always calling. Today we will get our longer morning walk.
Another retired teacher asked me recently what I would do now that I am retired? It is a good question for which I have no answer. Will I do something new, or merely divvy up my time in a slightly different way? I suspect the later.
What I miss is community. During the past month, various workshops, and my MFA program, I found that writing group I feel I needed. . . . At least for a month or couple of years or a few days at a time, but not regularly. What I have are a few people who will, if I ask not too often, read my work.
My original writing group was twenty years ago and it was only me and one student. B was the first sophomore we skipped over Sophomore English into the most rigorous junior class. This was pretty much necessary since she was, in skill and ability, far beyond her peers. She needed the challenge. She was the one junior in my senior class as well, and one day I walked out of the Faculty Room and there she was coming out of the Library. “Do you want to write together this summer?” I said. She agreed. We thought we would try writing a novella, just for the challenge because it is longer than a story and neither of us had written anything long. We weren’t even sure what a novella was, so while I was busy ending the year in yearbook, B researched.
After school ended in mid-June, we began writing and meeting weekly to share and respond to each others’ work. Neither of us wanted to look bad to the other. We worked hard. The manuscripts forged ahead, the stories growing beyond what we’d expected from ourselves, beyond our early goal of seventy pages or so of a novella. I discovered what a messy process I have, and B discovered she could do anything.
By August we each had a full length novel. Since I had a publishing connection, our books were read by HarperCollins. They liked B’s quite a lot. It was far the better of the two. (A senior editor wanted to see more, but HC was about to undergo a transformation and this went by unexplored by B.)
B has published since—poetry and academic writing, books, magazine and journal articles. She is a professor of English and much in demand. I have had publications too.
Later, I nominated a student for a writing award, which she didn’t win. But she went on to an MFA in fiction.
A third student was for a time a respected slam poet. And a fourth student completed an MFA in poetry from a program that rejected me twice.
Many of the students I had the pleasure of working with for a term or the better part of a year, have gone on to careers in education, the military, the government, and various professions and occupations in the private sector. Many of them earn more than I ever have. Many are smarter and more talented than I am. They are good in their various fields.
Someday they will retire too.
I receive emails about submission opportunities almost every day, but I rarely send out fiction anymore. I don’t know what I will do about writing. Duotrope shows many fiction submission in the past 12 months, but these were nearly all agent queries about the most recent novel, and now that is completely rewritten. I am not sure what to do about that. I have other work to submit, but that will take some organization. The poems too. I keep thinking I should print them all off and see what I have. There is a warp on the loom, waiting to be completed. Two quilts fight in my head. I have worked on a pattern for a grandchild’s cardigan.
Several times I have joined writing groups in the past twenty-odd years. More than one fizzled. Another decided fiction was too much trouble. Another turned out to be social, and I did not want to drink wine and smoke dope. (That word, “dope.”) I don’t know what new thing will be that I pass on to.
That word “passing.” We pass tests, pass by, pass it on, pass Go, pass through, pass as something we’re not, pass out, pass under or around, pass over, pass away. Time Passes. So many ways to leave the building.
Francesco del Cossa
Allegory of May – Triumph of Apollo, a fresco by Francesco del Cossa (c. 1430 – c. 1477) was an Italian Renaissance painter of the School of Ferrara.
“Cossa is now known for fresco decoration of the summer pleasure villa/palazzo known as the Palazzo Schifanoia, located just outside the city gates. Together, they painted a series of the elaborate allegories around the themes of zodiacal signs and months of the year. These were only partially restored in the 20th century, and there are three that are reasonably assigned to Cossa. Of these, one of the most remarkable images is the horde of naked toddlers in the Allegory of May – Triumph of Apollo.”
“The façade was originally decorated with a cornice of feigned battlements, its surface smoothly stuccoed and decorated with geometric designs of highly colorful imitation marbles, which have been lost, lending a somewhat dour public face to Palazzo Schifanoia that was not what Borso d’Este intended. The rich white marble entrance door survives, though its tinted colors have weathered away and art historians disagree whether it is to be attributed to the painter-designer Francesco del Cossa or to Biagio Rossetti. Above the arched door, flanked by pilasters, the Este arms are displayed and the unicorn, a symbol of ducal benevolence and the source of patronage. In 1493 the terracotta cornice was added to designs by Biagio Rossetti, who was also commissioned by Ercole I d’Este to extend the palace.
“From the Salone dei Mesi the visitor once passed directly into the gardens reached by a monumental stair from the summer loggia, structures that were demolished in the 18th century. After the Este left Ferrara in 1598, the palazzo was inherited through successive heirs, eventually by the Tassoni family, its frescoes whitewashed over. Eventually, during administration of the duchy as part of the Papal States, with a Habsburg garrison, it became a tobacco warehouse and manufactory. When Palazzo Schifanoia came into the possession of the comune of Ferrara in the aftermath of World War I, only seven of the months in the Salone remained legible.”—Wikipedia
Listing this under the category of “color” is a stretch. I had to create “ART.”
Camp NaNo day 30: The Last Day
Camp NaNoWriMo word count: over 45,000 as I type this before 7am, Tuesday, 30 April 2019
So. I complete my month of furious (not angry, just driven and desperate) writing, and I outstripped my original simpler goal of ten thousand words. I have journaled and written essays and book reviews and worked on stories and revised a novel and begun revising another, and not all those words found their way into my official word count. I completed reading and reviewed several books, for example, and only one review is included in my NaNo pages. I wrote emails, responses to news, and rants about politics and population and poverty. Most of what I wrote will never be read by anyone other than myself. Sometimes I merely thought about things.
Expect nothing more from me for a while.
Camp NaNo day 29
Saint Lucy, by Francesco del Cossa (c. 1430 – c. 1477)
Camp NaNoWriMo word count: 43,032 by early Monday morning, 29 April 2019
The light was coming as I typed on Sunday, early-early.
Food52 is promoting a new cookbook that recommends buying small and often, using everything up as you go along, and yes! that is what I have been trying to do lately. Most of the Food52 article is common sense advice I already follow, but confirmation is always welcome. My crisper has only one lemon and some apples. I supposeI should make some sortofapple tart, preferably without sugar. Last night I thawed out the next-to-last last season’s pesto and made a pizza to use up the fresh mozzarella. Years ago when our fridge died I tried earnestly to get by with one of those tiny dorm-sized fridges, the ones about the size of a generous waste-paper basket. Milk and cheese and butter filled it. No room in the tiny freezer compartment for berries or peppers or anything beyond either an ice cube tray or frozen peas. One the other, not both. Condiments were a huge challenge, and my family thought I was mad. I argued that we really could not afford a new refrigerator at the time. That was not entirely true. Eventually I gave in and we bought a new fridge. There is this attitude that we must have twenty cubic feet or more of chilled storage, but many Europeans manage with tiny refrigerators or none at all by purchasing what they need for a meal and then using it up. Americans tend to gather stuff in the their fridges until they could condiment a regiment and the crisper goes sodden and has to be emptied directly into the trash. I have too many spices too. I dumped a jar of very-much out-dated dried Italian herbs the other day in order to have the jar for an herb I use frequently. I am wondering if my herbs, spices, and condiments should be marie-kondoed like my clothes closet—taking note of what flavors spark joy and discarding the rest?
I have emptied both crispers now, used the sourdough start for the pizza dough, and consumed the recommended daily amounts of fruit and vegetables. The cheese drawer still contains seven cheeses. There is real bakery bread waiting to be toasted. (The stuff sold in plastic bags bears almost no resemblance to actual bread. Even the “whole wheat” slices smash into a lump the way we once turned Wonder Bread into a ball as if it were raw dough.)
A TNYT story reveals the impact of our poor diet on mental health because “most Americans are overfed in calories yet starved of the vital array of micronutrients that our brains need, many of which are found in common plant foods. A survey published in 2017 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that only one in 10 adults meets the minimal daily federal recommendations for fruit and vegetables — at least one-and-a-half to two cups per day of fruit and two to three cups per day of vegetables. Nutritional psychiatrists like Dr. Ramsey prescribe antidepressants and other medications, where appropriate, and engage in talk therapy and other traditional forms of counseling. But they argue that fresh and nutritious food can be a potent addition to the mix of available therapies.” We all need, as my mother would say, to take better care of ourselves.
Inhale a bit of a horror story and found a market to submit it to. Tuesday is the final day for Camp NaNo. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will finish this task and move on to something else.
Camp NaNo day 28
Camp NaNoWriMo word count: 42,051 by Sunday morning, 28 April 2019
The New York Times reports on longterm plans for Guantanamo Bay where prisoners include a man who had been “confined to a box the size of a coffin while held at a secret C.I.A. site and waterboarded 83 times to break him” and is expected to age and die there.
This in a prison in a country we do not talk to and where we are not wanted.
We got a short walk on Saturday morning, then we went out again later. Agates and shells, no glass, and later, trash.
We tried to watch the newer Oscar Wilde film but it was too sad and pathetic. The new Avengers film seemed silly even for a cartoon, the theater smelled of vomit, and the loud giggling and hysterical laughter nearby was annoying. (We accurately predicted who would die.) We lasted less than an hour. I can’t help thinking that the loss of a significant portion of the world’s human population might do the world nothing some good. (Clearly not “half of all life” gone—the trees and whales were doing just fine—which evidently happened in the last episode that we did not see.) Very sad, of course, for those left behind, but overpopulation needs some sort of solution and is the greatest threat to Earth today. The villainous Thanos may have been on to something.
One of the poetry assignments I used to give my students from the Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux book, The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry, was a creedo. It is a list of beliefs and includes “ridiculous” or unlikely beliefs. When I wrote this with my students I invariably listed having more than two children is a sin. It was one thing I did not share, not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings.
Among the things I “would never do” was eat raw chicken.
Among the things I believe: creativity keeps me sane, I can trust my husband, and no one “deserves” a terrible death.
I spent some time weaving. I considered submitting to a writing contest, but didn’t.
A male California quail wandered into our front yard. And that was charming.
Camp NaNo day 27
Camp NaNoWriMo word count: 41,478 by Saturday morning, 27 April 2019
One thing: I could go the rest of my life without yet another version of Les Miserables. I never liked that story to begin with.
And second, watching Shields and Brooks on PBS Friday evening, I am reminded that I would prefer not to have to vote for yet another old white man for president. [Insert here every disparaging remark spoken by white men about Hillary Rodham Clinton during the last election—and remind yourself that she still won the popular vote—and apply those terms to any old white man currently running for 2020. Many of the women too, but it is the old white men who irritate me—old white men talking about other old white men. Then apply narrow and smug to the men you are thinking of.) No, I never liked Biden. No, not even if he were the “reassuring” choice, and no, I do not think he gets it. Those who think saying he is sorry if he offered because “times have changed,” do not get it. His perpetual invasion of women’s personal space is not merely offensive because times have changed, it was always creepy. His intentions are largely irrelevant because sexual harassment is not based on the perp’s intentions but on the victim’s perceptions. All those offensive men after the Anita Hill hearings who said they thought women liked being harrassed, that they were flattered by the attention. Can’t you take a joke? That is the essence of sexual harassment law—and Biden is dodging responsibility with the way he talks about his actions. Admittedly, his behavior bothers some people less than others, it was always troublesome whether anyone complained or not. The only thing that has changed with the times is that women feel freer today saying they are offended.
Don’t get me started about BS.
A review on Rotten Tomatoes has the writers of The Avengers series talking about what death in a film most shocked them, and all I could think of was: more middle-aged white guys talking about the deaths of imaginary white guys after writing a series about yet more imaginary white (mostly) guys. And look at the image on top. Seriously. Does no one even notice?
We deliberately chose to stay at a place without media or internet access. And the greatest thing about being at the Sylvia Beach Hotel for most of three days is that I did not have to see or hear a thing about Trump. He is not a decent human being.
I ran into a former student Friday at the coffee shop—these happy meetings happen often—whom I had not seen in 19 years. It was impossible to believe she is in her later 30s; she looks just the same. Friday was my last writing-meeting with another former student, which has left me a little sad. I know many writers who have writing groups. For years I tried to find a writing group. One group liked getting high, another did not like fiction. One did not like me. I spent most of yesterday writing, feeling sad, and accomplishing nothing beyond that. I had left soup in the fridge when we went away and we had that for breakfast. I made toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch. I did not walk on the beach. We have nothing for certain planned for today. Three more days till the end of April, the end of the Camp NaNo challenge. The sun shines. It is time to shut down.
Camp NaNo day 26
Gary spotted a robin’s eggshell on Nye Beach pavement the day before yesterday, exactly like this one.
Camp NaNoWriMo word count: 39,039 by 6:30 Friday morning, 26 April 2019
On our way home from two nights away (“We’re on vacation!”), we stopped several times. Gary bought a double-scoop ice cream cone. I bought batik fabric. One of my favorite fabric stores in Wheeler had a sign in the door. After 35 years, the store had closed. Last October! Such a lovely store and such lovely people we will miss. Next door in the antique mall, twenty feet from the front door was the table we had decided we needed just a few days ago. Round, 42” in diameter, and paintable. Probably a hundred years old and ill-used, but exactly what we were looking for and inexpensive. It has already been painted many times over the oak, so no guilt when I add three more coats of dark green.
This morning I will need to find something to share with my writing friend. Most of what I have accomplished in the last week is the novel and I cannot very well print of a couple of hundred pages to share. A chapter? The shortest chapter? Something else? Seriously, everything I have worked on is long.
This morning I reversed order of the first two stories in my novel-in-stories, LISL. I had moved an afterword into chronological order at the beginning. (Yeah, I know—it is always hard for me to keep things in chronological order. My literarily seems to happen in chronological order. I connect the hereandnow with an event when I was six and with something I hope to do next year. All of my writing is written out of order. All my stories longer than a few pages skip around in time. That alone, should have been a warning.)
LISL, set in Arizona in th early 60s, now needs a read, start to finish. It need close attention and revision, though I have spent hundreds of hours on its individual parts and the stories as a whole. I could see, even in my swift review, that I may have done some things right, and there is an overall tension and some humor. (Humor—not Homer—seems to be coming back to me after all these years.) And doing that is just one more way of avoiding the tedious task of summarizing the other novel, EMD. As to the latter, I have just read a review of two memoirs about the deaths of mothers:
“ ‘Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them,’ writes Michelle Filgate in her essay “What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About.” But when a mother dies, leaving her child without the home of her love, that task of returning is supplanted by the task of grieving. Grief, then, becomes the new home.”
The review suggests another scene for the Arizona stories. And I have written a brief preface:
He would say later that he did not know how he survived his last summer in Arizona. They were not free-range children but completely feral. They wandered out of the yard, off their block, and into the desert where none of them were killed by snakes or falls or as a result of getting lost. They were innocent and careless and their foolish adventures were wild with fun and full of fear. And through it all there was the chaos of his family, the loss of his mother, of what it all meant.
It is a short novel, but technically it is also a cycle of stories and not at all short for a collection of short stories, which is how it is disguised.
I am sitting up in bed, the doves coo-cooing to one another. It is flirtation and I am in love with my home, with the skim of spruce-tops I can see from over the curtains in my bedroom, Gary bringing me coffee, the promise of labor.
Camp NaNo days 24 and 25: AWAY
The view looking north from the bed of the Jane Austen Room of the Sylvia Beach Hotel.
Camp NaNoWriMo word count: 38,287 by Thursday monring, 25 April 2019
EMD word count: 70,242, 240 pages, an imperfect but respectable length.
TUESDAY. We were away in the morning and the point of being away is to be without the normal day-to-day distractions. Usually this means I do not bring my computer. No news. No television. I am offline for a day or most of a couple of days. Offline, what a concept! But I brought my computer and worked throughout the drive south.
Before we left, however, I reread the flash nonfiction “Constellations” by Abby Mims on Brevity—nothing short of spectacular! A daughter recalling her mother and child, the hard loss of one, the welcoming of the other. It is the kind of story I am trying to tell in my novel. I wanted to reread it so I copied it into a file to avoid the temptation of internet.
The first blue heron was walking in Tillamook Bay, the second flew north to our south, thirty miles further along in our journey. Lunch at Ové’s Northwest was marvelous. We both had the three-cheese toasted cheese sandwich and then we checked into the Melville Room at the Sylvia Beach Hotel, lay down in the king-sized bed and promptly fell asleep for an hour. As I type these words, I am sitting in one of the chairs in that room and admiring the beach far below. Most of the rooms here have an unobstructed view of the ocean.
Gary is sleeping in the chair beside me, the tide is half in at Nye Beach. We are in what is called “the library” here at the Sylvia Beach. We are eating very well indeed, and I think the release of tension trying to deal with the duplex and spending a great deal of money on the duplex and the house pretty much wore us out.
I have begun reading What I Didn’t See by Karen Joy Fowler and realize it is not a new book, not even new to me since I recognize at least four of these stories. They are very fine.
WEDNESDAY. Yesterday, after we checked in, we were both so sleepy that we worried we might be ill or poisoned or drugged. I had two glasses of Prosseco, one with lunch and one with dinner, separated by several hours and that does not seem enough to explain our lethargy. I think we were merely exhausted and stressed and relieve to be away. I feel fine this morning.
At breakfast this morning, the sun is shining and Dorothy Dunnett was recommended to me. I think I may have read one of her historical novels, and that I did not like it because I objected to the historical accuracy of the psychology? [My arrogance. My hubris.] I suppose I should, at the very least, try her again even if I have read her before. I am unnecessarily and painfully petty about some things.
A crow brought his food to the deck railing just in front of me, ate and cawed, and when she was finished she walked north on the railing to the other corner and wiped her beak clean before flying off.
THURSDAY. A street sweeper works it way slowly around the loop while Gary makes a pot of super-strong coffee and brings me a cup. We have brought our own grounds so that Gary can have coffee strong enough, and the crew had only set up the coffee-maker with a filter, no coffee or water when he got there. As we sipped our first cup he said, “If someone pours from the pot I made, they will get a surprise.” Gary’s coffee is as near espresso as it’s possible to be.
Once he’d poured out our second and a half cups each, he put everything back the way it should be. He says this was a good idea of mine to bring our own ground coffee.
Out for an hour onshore this morning we found limpets and ugly-clams, a few interesting rocks, almost no trash, and four pieces of seaglass. The wind had died almost completely and only began to come back up as we returned in time for breakfast after 8:30.
We are feeling well rested, I finished reading Fowler’s marvelous collection of short stories this morning and reasoned more about the novella though I did not work on it. My novel is in better shape than it was (with the arc of action and emotional intensity shifted well toward the end) and Ada Limón has given me the sweeter epigraph I needed. I had thought the final chapter was secure, but I have revised slightly and I think it will be stronger still before I am done. For Camp NaNo, I think I will reach 40k words, or even 50k by the end of the month, depending on whether I continue work on the novel or shift over the novella, whether I write entirely new words to post here, or make only smaller edits not worth transferring. I have five days to the end of the month. We will head home a little later this morning.
