Answers, Ketchup, Jam and Freaking Out a Little

Thank you for your kind words and well-wishes on my Good News post.

To answer Rachel's questions:

Location? Focus? Celebration?

Location: University of Southern Maine, Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program.

(The "campus" is in an old house in a state park; which is fitting considering my undergrad alma mater was a bunch of old houses on the edge of a National Park).

Focus: Fiction (yikes!)

Celebration: Hmm, good idea. I have not celebrated yet, but I am considering throwing a great big "Andrea's going into seclusion and you won't see her for the next two years" party, sometime after I finish my workshop pieces and before I receive everyone else's (and the holidays descend).

Last night I made ketchup (recipe from 6512) and tomato jam. I was a little sad that our own tomato harvest has been so meager this year, and that I did not hit the jackpot of free tomatoes that I did last year, and so would not be able to make these two favorites. And then I thought...why not just buy the tomatoes? Even if it's uneconomical, it would make you happy (and anyway, we can buy canned tomatoes for spaghetti/pizza sauce, so who cares about that?)

As it turns out, I found organic tomatoes for $2 a pound at the farmers market, bought seven pounds, made seven jars of ketchup and four of tomato jam and had a pound or so of tomatoes left over, so even if you count all of the other ingredients, like spices and vinegar, which I have on hand anyway, the ketchup came to less than $2 a jar, which is still less than even cheap ketchup (though a somewhat smaller jar) and a lot less than organic. And I didn't have to compromise my values and buy one of those plastic squeeze bottles I hate (we've gone without ketchup for about four months since the last jar of last summer's batch ran out).

Don't you think making your own ketchup is the ultimate badge of old farmwifery?

(By the way, if you decide to cook these two at the same time like I did, you should probably just measure all of the ingredients of one before moving on to the other, so you don't accidentally put the eight tablespoons of lime juice called for in one recipe into the other, which only calls four two. Just sayin')

While the ketchup simmered (and simmered, and simmered--plan for a good two to three hours to make this stuff), I reviewed the big packet of materials about the graduate program that had just arrived in the mail, and OMFG, I think I will die. What I really need is for an extra day to be added to each week. Or another two or three hours to each day. Couldn't just one teensy tiny little meteor strike the earth and slow its rotation by a couple of hours? Is that too much to ask. At any rate, this means I may have to take up coffee for the first time in my life. Or up my chocolate consumption by, er, a lot.

Definitely will be saying goodbye to all kinds of recreational activities like the twice-monthly Netflix movie, craftiness (I thought at least I might be able to have one knitting project going), ketchup and jam making, and sleep. Wish me luck!

Good News!

Dear friends, I have good news to share with you: I have been accepted into a graduate program for creative writing!

The process has been a long one, filled with indecision and self-doubt (and don't think for a minute that a little thing like acceptance can banish the demons of doubt!), but now that it's really happening I am really, really excited and not a little freaked out.

This will mean, no doubt that my time spent in this space will diminish over the next couple of years, but I won't go away altogether. I can see now that it will be more important than ever to nurture moments of mindfulness and slow-down time with my family, and let's face it, I'm much more apt to do something fun and creative with my kids if I can show it off on my blog.

This is one of the BIG reasons I've been trying to clean and declutter my house and finish all those nagging little projects for the last year; I want to get my household running like a well-oiled machine so that upkeep is a snap when I will need to be spending every spare (and a few not spare) hour writing and reading.

As it turns out, though, I have a lot of work to do before January that I was not expecting. I've spent the last week since I found this out getting ready to write:

• I emptied out all of my desk drawers (into a grocery bag, to be dealt with later) and tidied them, so one has office supplies, another nature journaling materials (I can't give that up), a third holds my laptop and camera, and the fourth has some reference materials. 

• I exchanged a package of blank Moleskine notebooks I had bought for our Colorado trip that never came to pass for ones with lined paper (I've only every used cheap composition books; I think these fancy ones will be a treat). 

• I bought a file box to keep my work organized. I arranged the file folders on my computer and in my memory sticks. 

• I've been reading and rereading The Productive Writer, plus this and this and this advice for finding/making time to amidst the demands and obligations of work and family.

And then...I started to write. Sunday afternoon, in between mega kitchen re-org (more on that next week) and cooking dinner, I plopped in the hammock with my laptop and typed. Kids ran around the yard and climbed in to visit me now and then. M wanted to know if any of my characters were modeled on him. After a couple of hours, I set it aside for the dinner/bath/story/bed rituals and then resumed writing. By 10:30 I had drafted a 15-page story. No doubt it is, in the words of Anne Lamott, a shitty first draft, but I went to bed flying high (and completely unable to sleep). I might actually be able to do this!

Book Review--Raising Elijah

Please check out my review of Sandra Steingraber's newest book, Raising Elijah, over at Literary Mama.

And then read Steingraber's Orion column, "Household Tips from Warrior Mom."

And then, please do get a copy of Raising Elijah and read it too.

Steingraber is one of my favorite nonfiction authors (thanks, Mom, for handing me a copy of Living Downstream at the library 13 years ago!); she has the superhuman ability to turn biochemistry and toxicology into poetry. I think you will love her as much as I do.

Transform

[So it turns out that that the autumn equinox is today at 4:05, which means we held our Welcome Fall celebration two days early. I'm so astrologically (astronomically?) out of touch. Or perhaps I'm rushing into the colder, darker seasons? Nah, can't be that. Have a lovely weekend!]

Welcoming Fall

We had a simple first-day-of-fall celebration this evening.

First we hung up a new fall banner we made over the weekend, simply by painting fabric paint directly on the back side of leaves and pressing squares of muslin onto the painted leaves.

I just cut the squares with pinking shears (btw--did you know you can sharpen even very dull pinking shears by cutting aluminum foil with them? I hardly believed it myself until I tried it; it was nothing short of miraculous) and sewed them to a length of twill tape. Very simple, very easy.

E decorated our "nature windowsill" with our autumn stuff while I made dinner. The whole nature table concept got kind of pushed aside all summer, while our spring naturey items never got put away, fell off the sill repeatedly, got soaked by rain, got mushed by DVDs and remote controls and ambushed by stray socks. I finally cleaned it up and lined up some shells and driftwood and sea glass along it a couple of weeks ago (I had actually collected a lot of nice shells and rocks and things last time we went to the beach, but someone, ahem, left them all there, along with our bucket, two shoves and a net, so I had to scrounge among our existing shell collection). Z later added a tiny bird nest he found and a perfectly intact (but dead) monarch butterfly he also found (he's my finder). E basically crammed some squirrels and owls and corn dollies in with the existing stuff, but he enjoyed himself. We can tidy it up later. Maybe.

For dinner, I made a simple squash soup, served with grocery store multigrain bread.

And for dessert, this pie, which is the whole wheat apricot apple pie from Apples for Jam, only with a lot of adjustments, as I lacked half the required ingredients. It's basically a whole wheat crust with C's applesauce inside and some brandied plums that I made last summer on top. Everyone went wild about the boozy plums--first they thought they were beets (which made E cry) and then they were appalled that I served alcohol, but I'm sure 40 minutes in a 400 degree would burn off all the alcohol, don't you think?

 Our nice evening went south when we discovered, at 8:00 that E and Z had homework--and two pages of it, which means one page was probably left over from last night, when I never even checked their bags. Of course lots of drama ensued, because they were overtired from staying up 20 minutes late last night and getting up waaay early this a.m. And that Z, he's something else. He will purposely put in a wrong answer if he doesn't feel like doing something--last time it was 18,000 as the answer to 6 + 2; tonight he glued all of the days of the week in the right places, but upside down and sideways, and for a picture of what he likes to do on the weekend, he drew himself shooting a gun. I definitely see myself in him, though not me as a first grader--I was a goody-goody then--but me now; when I'm made to do something I don't want to do, I dig in my heels. It's a trait that gets me into trouble sometimes, but I can't help but admire him (when he's not aggravating me); someday he'll be one to right injustices (or spend his whole life frustrated by injustice he can't write, perhaps, but let's hope not). In the meantime, they'll both spend 15 minutes dramatizing over two minute's worth of work. I think, perhaps, six is a little young for homework, don't you?

Nature Journaling: A Tool for Learning

One of the reasons I started nature journaling many years ago, was to learn more about the plants and animals where I lived. Over the years I have continued to use my journal for this purpose (and for many other reasons, as well). I have gotten to know the birds in my backyard, wildflowers at a nature center, the trees in the woods around my home all by slowing down and paying attention with pen and pencil in hand.

When I go birding in the spring, my nature journal always comes with me. I walk into the woods, and listen for an unfamiliar call or song, and follow it. If I'm lucky, I catch up to the bird singing away in the treetops. I train my binoculars on it, looking for telltale markings. I then pick up my journal and pencil and sketch away, making notes about size, color, behavior and sounds. Back and forth, binocs, journal, binocs, journal, binocs, journal, until the bird flits out of sight. Only then do I pick up my field guide and search, comparing what I saw on the branch, to what is in the pages, using my notes as a guide. Back at home, after pancakes and a cup of tea, I open the field guide once more, and make a detailed drawing of the bird from its photo, so that next time I see and hear it, I'm more likely to remember what I saw. This is how I began to learn the most basic of birds--chickadee, nuthatch, goldfinch--and this is how I continue to learn ever more tricky and evasive species.

During a camping trip last spring, I encountered dozens of warblers while on a short family walk. I had my binoculars, but no journal, and made notes in my head as fast as I could see the birds--orange breast, flashing tail with yellow patches, yellow chin, black-and-white, gray and yellow. Some I knew already, like the yellow and chestnut-sided warblers, and some I never did figure out (turns out several warblers can be described as gray and yellow). When we got to the car and started driving home, I looked through the bird book and wrote down the species I saw (or thought I saw). Then, over the next several weeks, I drew birds.

Now, I may not remember all of these next time I see a specimen, but I will definitely remember that the bright orange chest belongs to the Blackburnian warbler, and that the American redstart flashes its yellow-patched tail (the female being much grayer and duller than the male).

Over the last couple of years, I've started a similar process with dragonflies. I get a good close-up look at a dragon (at first only if it stopped on a log right in front of me--but now I catch them and study them close-up), sketch what I see (if my journal is nearby), take notes about size, color, eye position, wing patterns, etc., and then hit the books.

At first (and often still), all I would figure out was that I did't get enough information, or the wrong kind--I counted the thoracic stripes, but didn't note their exact shape. But this teaches me what to look for next time, and slowly, so slowly, I am sorting out families and, when I'm very lucky, figuring out a few species as well.

It may seem like it should be easier to ID dragonflies, when you can get them into your hand, than birds, which fly around hiding behind leaves, but there are some insanely minute details that distinguish one dragon from another.

Now, not everyone is going to feel compelled to identify and name every bug and beast that flutters by. Maybe it's a writer thing, or a naturalist thing, I don't know. But I do enjoy the mystery of it all, sifting through clues, narrowing down possibilities, making informed guesses and, sometimes, hitting upon the answer. Plus, just the act of getting close-up and personal with a plant under a hand lens, or a dragonfly in hand, or a tree just beginning to bud, asking it questions, waiting patiently to learn the answer, slowing down, watching and listening, bring us closer to that bird or bug or tree, and to nature in general.

Are there other ways to cultivate this mindfulness, this slowing down and getting close to nature? Certainly--poetry, painting, meditation, lying in the hammock on a summer's day all can have a slowing, connecting and grounding effect, and I enjoy them all. But learning a new species through journaling is one of my favorite ways to get acquainted with my wild side.

Previous Nature Journaling posts:  Nature Journaling: A Poetry Field Trip, Nature Journaling: Birds at the Feeder, Nature Journaling: An Invitation.  See also Nature Journaling as Meditation for more on starting a nature journal.

A Ditty Bag and a Pencil Roll

I found a few free minutes recently to crank out two quick projects for myself.

Project 1: The Ditty Bag

I've been needing something to carry my personal effects in when I go away overnight, something classier than a ziploc bag. I have a big toiletries bag for longer trips, but when I just head out for a night or two, it would be nice to have something to just throw my toothbrush and toothpaste into, so I made this ditty bag.

The oblong shape was dictated by the dimensions of the scrap I used for the lining. I could have just trimmed it down to a more proportionate size, but it turns out that it works great for long things, like toothbrushes. I've already used it on one weekend trip and put it in service for toting my soap and lotion to the pool in the mornings.

Project 2: The Pencil Roll

I bought myself a big set of (38) colored pencils last summer for nature journaling, and I've been carrying them around ever since (and adding to the collection), ratting around in the tin box they came in.

They needed a better home.

Then I ran across two quarter-yards of fun fabric I bought with no particular project in mind last winter, and figured it would be exactly enough fabric to make a roll to keep them all padded and safe and nicely in rainbow order.

My old pencil roll (below), which is just big enough for a small selection of pencils and pens, has a flap that folds down all the way, which I like a lot, both for keeping everything safely inside and as a place to lay things when it's open, and I was afraid the short flap wouldn't cut it, but once I sewed down the edges and the whole thing sat rolled up for a while, pressing the fabric in place, it seems to work just fine.

I'm not super thrilled with my pink and brown ribbon choice for the outside. I've been meaning to replace it with a piece that's aqua and grey, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

I have just a bit of this crazy Dr. Seuss tree fabric left, and am thinking I'll need to do something Christmassey with it. Any ideas?

September Gold

September is gold.

Golden light, golden weather.

Our yard is all goldenrod and black-eyed Susans,

evening primrose, and these tiny golden asters

The vestiges of summer are being left behind

--the mornings are crisp and cool, and you go into them expecting to be chilled, but find yourself shedding layers, and spending the day outdoors, warm and completely unmolested by flies or mosquitoes.  

And the harvest is coming in.

We have dozens of wild apple trees on and around our property. Some years they barely produce anything at all, and some years there is a bumper crop. This is one of those years. C and the boys have been picking them, and then roasting the apples with spices in the solar oven and milling them up into apple sauce to freeze for the winter ahead. Our house smelled like apple pie all weekend.

Other bumper crops this year: potatoes (the boys just dug them up today, and they are huge!), green beans (we heroically ate our way through two or three gallons of them before everyone dug in their heels and I froze the last gallon or so), garlic, tomatillos, poblanos! Not so good are the tomatoes, which is sad, but you can't have it all, I suppose.

The leaves are just starting to change, and I'm feeling at peace with it. Letting go a bit of my death grip on summer. Though I do want to take one last trip to the beach this year.

 Z found a gold-and-black monarch caterpillar just before Labor day weekend. We put it in a jar with some milkweed and by the time we came back from camp, it had spun a gilded chrysalis. And then we waited, and waited. E and Z learned about monarchs at school, including that it only takes ten days for the caterpillar to become a butterfly, and they became quite distraught when ours hadn't emerged by day 10.

But this morning, we could see its wings through the chrysalis, and by this afternoon, a butterfly appeared.

Z released it on one of the snapdragons he planted back in May, which gave the whole experience a lovely symmetry.

We hope it can make it all the way to Mexico before the cold weather sets in.

I hope your September is golden too, and that you're finding magical transformations all around.

September Ramblings

This weekend, I sat on the deck this weekend, looking up at the blue sky through the green leaves of the trees, and thought, "I'm really happy. I love life."

Now this is not a typical way of thinking for me. More often my mantra is, "I hate my life," so something magical was happening out there, with the sun and the dry, dry September air. Perhaps C is right, and September is the best month of all. I tried to stay with the feeling of abundance, just letting it soak into, to store it up for another day when I'd be needing so positive feelings.

I scored another batch of peaches a couple of weeks ago and I'm still basking in their afterglow. I can't help photographing them whenever they come into my home, like some sort of rare jewel.

I made this gorgeous peach pie with ginger-crumb topping, only because I didn't have enough butter for a top crust; and what a fortuitous lack it turned out to be. I will always make peach pie this way from now on.

And, almost as exciting as peaches, check out this poblano pepper growing in our very own garden!

Every summer, I try to coax the flavors of the Southwest out of this very Northern soil, and usually manage about five three-or four inch poblanos (one year, though, the jalapenos and serranos filled nearly a bushel).

This year, however, we have hit the motherload. I harvested twelve large chiles on Friday,

which I cooked up into chiles rellenos (my own recipe, on a card), served with simmered tomatillo-serrano sauce (Rick Bayless), Mexican pot peans (ditto) and red tomato rice (recipe here, though I used fresh tomatoes and jalapenos rather than canned, and medium-grianed brown rice; it turned out lovely in texture, but next time I'll use more jalapeno). For dessert, I made these Mexican chocolate cupcakes, which are to die for (I only used 1/2 t. cayenne in the cupcakes, because 2 sounded like a lot; I subbed real butter for the soy butter and shortening in the frosting; and I was out of vanilla, so used orange flavor instead, at about a 1:4 orange-to-vanilla ratio, which I must say was an brilliant addition).

(Disclaimer: all poblano, tomatillo and other garden growth--including our current green bean avalanche--other than garlic, is completely and totally attributable to C; my only contribution being to circle the plants I want in the seed catalog and, of course, cooking them when they're done).

In other gardening news, these two apples came from out tree. We have millions of wild apples (this appears to be a good year), but these are the first two from a tree we planted. We have yet to taste them; they make a good centerpiece (and because I know you're going to ask, since every person at my table asked, separately, without listening to the answer when other asked, the orange stuff is a tomato, though it looks like cheese, and almost had the texture of cheese. In a good way).

I finally got around to organizing a craft project that I've been meaning to do for, I don't know, five years: making parachutes. It all started because E and Z were fighting over the silk parachute one morning (despite the fact that no one has looked at, touched or played with it in the two years prior). I reminded myself that I have been wanting to make parachutes with napkins, thread and a peg clothespin with them, so I assembled the materials, and we put a couple together (which took all of two minutes, making me feel like a dope for putting it off so long).

Z got stung by a wasp ("for no reason!") right before we got started, so he wasn't very interested, but E and M had fun comparing the flight of the paper parachute with that of the silk one for a few minutes. And then they moved on to something else. Oh well. At least I won't be sitting at their high school graduations, weeping, "And we never made parachutes!"

I haven't told you yet about our new family addition. Meet Charlotte:

C and I are not really pet people, but E and Z have been dying for a pet from the time they could say the word, and so, after my third glass of sangria one knitting night, I agreed to take on a goldfish who needed a home. She came with the name Callie, and the boys considered, of course, Goldie and Fishy as options before E suddenly came up with Charlotte. They have already expressed concern with her apparent loneliness and are lobbying for a mate. It may take several more glasses of sangria before I agree to that.

Right next to her tank in the bathroom, I have finally gotten out of my own way enough to put together a project I started eight years ago. Way back in 2003, I began to collect a handful of sand at each beach we went to, with the intention of filling and labeling the somewhat vast collection of old bottles that already lines our bathroom shelf (I saw something similar in a magazine--probably Martha Stewart--only the bottles line the whole house and were from beaches in places like South Africa and Australia; my collection will most likely be limited to Maine beaches). I quit after three beaches because labeled ziplock bags of sand were quickly filling a drawer in the bathroom. All I needed was labels for the jars, but that was more than I apparently could handle back then (when I only had one kid, jeesh!)

Anyhoo, I was reminded of the project when C and I were on our little island last month, so I scooped some sand into our blueberry container and finally, bought some labels. Now we just need to go to lots more beaches. Now that's a challenge I can handle.

Hope September is leaving you feeling light and happy too.

Up t' Camp

We spent Labor Day weekend, as is our tradition, at C's ex-stepmother's camp.

We had MUCH warmer weather than last year (I remember wearing jeans and a fleece all weekend last year...brr!).

At one point, E decided to go for a paddle. Our host securely hitched one end of a long coil of yellow rope to the dock, and E took off. Unfortunately, no one had checked to see if the other end was secured to the bow line.

"Come back!" We called.

"I'm going to Ten Pound Island!" E yelled back, and paddled off across the pond.

His boat drifted landward not far down the shore, and M hopped aboard and paddled him safely home.

Then the two of them headed off to Ten Pound Island all on their own, while C and Z headed out fishing in another part of the pond.

While paddling was E's theme for the weekend, fishing was Z's. He caught two largemouth bass and, apparently, a pickerel (though that one got away).

I tried to not get too hysterical about Z and E eating the mercury-laden fish, but I'm afraid I didn't do too well. At any rate, they didn't consume a whole lot. Either they felt my negative vibe, or it just didn't taste as good as they had dreamed. How can we live in a world where it's not safe for a child to eat a fish he caught himself?

M doesn't fish anymore. He used to love it, and then he gave it up, just like that.

Maybe I freaked him out about the lead in fishing line (we only use lead-free tackle, though). Or maybe it's because of the mercury in the fish (though his dad spilled the beans on that one las summer). Or maybe it was the tale of the boy who got a hook in his eyeball (though that was only to get them to wear sunglasses while fishing).

When we were there earlier this summer, he was trying to help his brother un-hook a sunfish and started crying, "It's hurting it." He can be very sensitive. I told him that my co-worker's husband, who is a fisheries biologist, says those kind of fish (bass and sunfish) have cartilaginous mouths and you can't hurt them, but it didn't stick.

I myself don't see the appeal of fishing at all (seems like an enormous pain in the keister, what with all the lost sinkers and snagged bottoms and fish you have to unhook and then what? Release? Or kill, gut, cook, eat?), but he used to love it, and it makes me sad that he has no interest at all now, not least of all because it diminishes my hopes of one day C taking all of the boys on a week-long fishing trip some day.

How did he spend his weekend? Mostly reading. Which reminds me a lot of someone I know. And now that he and I finally have something in common, I want to pull him out of himself and into the world.

And me? I swam, chased dragonflies, doodled in my journal, knitted, read.

We all visited this amazing floating bog in another, adjacent pond.

I had never been on one of these before. The ground, which is, I guess, just layers and layers of peat left over from right after the glaciers melted (geomorphologists out there, correct me if I'm wrong). 

It's covered in this soft, spongy moss (grandma C told us the names of some of them, including the bright red one, but I forget), pitcher plants and cranberries. 

 Your feet sink in an inch or two into the warm water that saturates the moss. It was an incredible, strange place, and I could have stayed there all day, chasing dragonflies (and probably getting sucked under to turn into a Bog Woman for someone to uncover in 10,000 years).

E built a couple of fairy houses right before we left, which was super sweet. I'm not sure how many such things are left in these big boys of six. I get more and more clingy to each childish expression, as if it might be the last.

And everyone survived the dockside sparklers, with only very minor burns (I swear they're not my idea).

I made this little "sketchery" (thanks, Rachel, for the term) the evening after we got home, while C and I watched a movie (I had intended to do it while on our trip, but I though I'd forgotten the fabric...only it turned out it was only crumpled up inside a giant tangled wad of embroidery floss). I think I was trying for something like this, but didn't quite hit the mark. Z wanted me to add a pickerel, but it turned out the only space available made him sort of leaping out of the water or something (and later Z informed me that its beak isn't long enough). Anyway, it was fun to do. I'm not sure what I'll do with all these sketcheries once I amass a few. I thought perhaps of binding them in a soft book, like a stitched nature journal.

Hope you had a wonderful Labor Day. Solidarity!

Back to School

I saw the boys off onto the bus for the first day of school this morning. I was not at all prepared for this school year--either physically or mentally. As mentioned here, here and here (god, am I the most boring person on Earth or what?) I never do any back-to-school shopping, and this year summer just seemed to fly by even faster than usual, and I approached the weekend (which we as usual spent away) having done nothing to prepare. So Friday I bought three new pairs of shoelaces (I knew at least one kid needed them) and brought home a stack of old binders from work (I knew one kid would need at least one of those).

We came home early-ish Monday and did what I think is probably the most important thing we could do to make the coming days go smoothly--clean the house.

Then I chopped these dreads off a certain boy's head, 

cut Z's hair as well (E wanted to keep his long),  gave all three baths, trimmed their nails, combed their hair for the first time in months (thus M's nappy do) and put them to bed early.

M is in fifth grad this year, which is Middle School here.

Meaning lockers, and changing classrooms, and health class and, I don't know, girls and dances next??

(Though when I told M that girls don't think boys with eye boogers are cute, he didn't seem too disturbed).

We learned today that his gifted and talented teacher resigned, and I was reminded (again) of how little I have control over.

E and Z are in first grade, which seems huge for some reason. Maybe it's because their K-1 teacher left and their starting out with a whole new teacher (she was just hired last Thursday, but so far the first day seems to have gone OK; she is reportedly more McGonagall than Snape).

Though Z complained when I picked him up that he "didn't learn anything today."

Imagine being such a vessel, just begging to be filled with knowledge.

E looked quite miserable as we raced up the driveway hand-in-hand (thinking we were late, forgetting that the bus is ALWAYS late on the first day, due to the driver learning new houses, and new kids not being outside in time, and annoying mothers holding things up to take their kids' pictures).

He looked about how I feel each morning on my march to the gallows.

Twenty minutes of dodging the camera in the rain seemed to cheer him up, though, and he marched onto the bus without a complaint or a push.

And yet one more chapter has opened as another closes.