Author: AKMA

From CatandGirl:

Witness Protection Program Name = “Andrew Camera”

Punk Rock Name = “Andrew Lecturing” (?) (or “Intertwingling”?)

Prime Minister of India Name = “Andrew Gandhi” (Like Cat, I prefer the slant-rhyming “Nehru”)

Singer-Songwriter Name = “Mehershalalhashbaz Boston”

Science Fiction Name = “B. V. D. L. L. Bean”

Trust Fund Name = “Margaret Lloyd–Appleton” (sadly, no Roman numerals) (I wish Shirley Chisholm had been a senator, and Paul Wellstone would have been more gender-appropriate)

But everyone calls me “AKMA.” (But “Basil” would be my favorite seasoning, and would call to mind the hero of Fawlty Towers.)

Boing Boing pointed to a NASA article about the coming lunar eclipse, which will transform the moon to a deep reddish color. I wonder whether there’s any way of checking to see whether there was such an eclipse thirty or so years back; I remember driving eastward along the Pennsylvania Turnpike one night, when I emerged from one of the famous Turnpike Tunnels (perhaps the Allegheny Mountain Tunnel?), and as the horizon opened before me I saw a deep red full moon. It spooked me; surely a blood red moon made an ominous harbinger for a long solo drive — but the drive was otherwise uneventful. Just unnerving.

Today I just puttered around my office-study, got my library cards at the seminary library and the public library, picked up a cheap printer, and bumped into four people I know from when we lived here before (and three other members of the Center). I spotted a few people I suspect I recall from the past, but of whom I’m not sure enough to have introduced myself.

Let me say this: I love Princeton. I walked across the seminary campus today for the first time since we left, and I was swept away by memories of those years. And I haven’t even stepped into Trinity Church.

I did some good work here; every footstep reminds me of that. I know the tiny township, and by some peculiar logic it fits me — the improbable outfit that’s snug in the right places, slack in the right places, in a color you’d ordinarily never wear, but it fits just right and you wear it anyway. This should be a wonderful year.
Continue reading “New Beginning”

Bea and I are home, safe in Princeton.

Express trip from Maine to Princeton with Beatrice. Looks like good weather, anyway.

Today, family day with Jeanne and Gail and Margaret’s mother and father, and we picked Pippa up; tomorrow, Pip and Margaret go to Nantucket to visit my mom, and Bea and I make our way back to Princeton, where I’ll finally put down some temporary roots.

As one who has just done significant decluttering, with more crying out on the horizon when we move back to Evanston, I hail Paul Graham’s essay on stuff.

Last night’s performance at the Teen Theater Camp of the Theater Project in Brunswick, Maine — properly entitled Oz: Revisiting the Wizard — went very smoothly, and Pippa shone in her various roles as the Good Witch of the North,

a Winkie Munchkin,

the Wizard’s Guard,

Glinda the Good Witch,

and Auntie Em.

This afternoon Pippa plays the ensemble roles; I probably won’t take many more pictures (at either of the two shows we’ll see today). She was terrific, and added a great deal of vigor, character, and audibility to the production.

Pretty easy drive to Maine. Tonight we’ll see Pippa appear in the The Wizard of Oz (she’l be in three presentations, of which we’ll see at least two).

Arrived in Framingham. The backlog before the George Washington Bridge and the bridge itself were hellish, but the rest of the drive went fine. Tomorrow, in Maine!

Road to Framingham this morning. It’s hard to pull away just as we were getting familiar with the building and reacquainting ourselves with Princeton, but I’ll be back Monday.

I try to keep my mouth shut about the U.S. government, but every now and then something irks me to the point that I’m moved to comment. For instance:

White House spokesman Tony Fratto replied, “Every day this Congress gets a little more out of control. . . .”

It has been a long time since my elementary school civics classes (and even then I was a rabble-rousing lefty), but I think I remember Mrs. Jameson and Mr. Recht teaching me that the key difference between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union lay in the fact that the Communist Party controlled the Soviet government, whereas in the U.S.A. the three branches of government function to limit one another’s powers. Congress being “out of control” is a good thing for U.S. democracy — I would have thought.