August 21, 2026

Our flight made it to Fairbanks around 11:00 PM local time, meaning 3:00 EST. We trudged to the baggage carousel, grabbed the suitcase, then herded with 20 other exhausted seniors to the door. A woman with the cruise line lectured us on the contents of our tour packets. We listened, bleary-eyed, surrendered the suitcase to the handler, and marched to the hotel bus.

A few streaks of light blue decorated the horizon at the fringe of the night sky. Not exactly the midnight sun, but an attempt.

The Alaska land tour and cruise is a first for us. The Vietnam-Cambodia adventure, which required applying for a visa, was comparatively a breeze. Before leaving home for this Holland America junket we faced an onslaught of details-packed emails and text messages reminding us to set up accounts, log in, register for side excursions. We accumulated a thick file: numbered tags, reminders, briefings, and sales pitches.

At home, South Carolina suffocated in 90F heat and choking humidity. Central Alaska is overcast and cool.

In the morning we wandered the eight blocks to downtown Fairbanks. It was around nine Monday in the state’s second-largest city (population about 30,000), but not much was going on. The side streets, laid out in a grid, were nearly free of traffic. We walked past vacant lots, small frame houses, a few businesses. The main thoroughfare, Second Avenue, was quiet.

We noticed the electrical-connection posts installed along streets and the outlet cords protruding from radiators of parked vehicles that plug into the posts to warm batteries and oil pans on minus-30, minus-40, and lower winter days.

We straggled across Second to a city park along the Chena River, which runs through the city. A sign reported on the Chena Flood of August 1967, when after a week of rain the river rose over its banks and flowed through downtown. Office buildings displayed lines showing high-water marks.

That evening we met Bob, who I know from the Office of Naval Research years ago and his wife Debbie, who arrived in town on the back end of their cruise-first, land-second tour. Bob was both amused and dazed by the regimentation and bureaucracy of the cruise. We got a nice dinner, talked about ONR days, kids, health.

The next day we got to the Morris Thompson Historical and Cultural center, a museum offering fascinating education on Alaskan life, the richness of the natural world, the months of winter deep freeze. We saw a film made by Dick Proenneke, who lived alone for 30 years in a wilderness cabin in southwest Alaska. His cabin now is a state landmark. Inspiring, but scary. Others have perished trying similar feats.

The city, the region, the state are permanently braced for winter. City buildings are mostly austere concrete blocks with small windows. Local folks already are in thick jackets and wool caps, clothing stores are stocked with Eskimo-type parkas and boots.

The cruise lines, Holland America and Princess, use Fairbanks as a transit point. They circulate their people through town to jump off by bus to Denali National Park or excursions to the Canadian hamlet of Dawson, once a booming mining town, now an in-and-out tourist stop. You can get a short, expensive flyover visit to the Arctic Circle, which rates an “I was there” certificate.

Some, including us, will head to Anchorage to board the ship. Those who do it in reverse, cruise before land, come to Fairbanks for their flights home.

So the hotel lobbies fill up with senior citizens coming and going, lugging their bags or bending under their backpacks, mostly in winter jackets, some showing off “Midnight Sun” sweatshirts. They sprawl in the lobby sipping coffee and people-watching.

On the last day, Holland America took over. They sent us with a couple of hundred others on a paddleboat ride up the Chena to a fishing and hunting camp modeled on those built by the Athabascan natives who lived in the area thousands of years ago.

 Before boarding the boat, just for fun, we sampled a simulated -40F chamber, the point being to give the tourists a sense of local winter extremes. Some wore parkas, I had a sport coat and summer shirt. I stepped in and gasped. It was invigorating for a few seconds. I lasted about two minutes.

The antique paddlewheeler pushed us upstream to the camp, near the merging of the Chena with the wide, fast-flowing Tanana River, which eventually joins the mighty Yukon. We watched poised young Athabascans, college students and new graduates, teach eloquent lessons about the lives of those ancient people. They explained and demonstrated fishing and food preparation techniques, hunting for moose, caribou, bear, curing of furs and hides, the creation of beautiful and warm clothing.

The brief side trip, two or three hours, reversed our ebbing enthusiasm for this adventure and restored some confidence in the generations now rising. The young guys and gals showed us skills, energy, sparkle and spunk, stepping up to entertain the grayheads, which can be tedious.

Most of us, after all, came following orders of the tourism gods. We left happier, smarter, and hopeful that this state, and maybe the country, will be OK.           

August 17, 2026

I shuffled forward in the security screening line at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California. In the X-ray booth an alarm sounded. A grim-faced blue-shirted TSA officer ran his wand over me. I tried again, another alarm. Another wanding, another alarm. After the fourth alarm he thumbed through my wallet. I found two quarters in my pocket, the fifth wanding was the charm.

John Wayne is much smaller than its nearby cousin, Los Angeles International (LAX). It’s farther from Hollywood, but only 15 miles from Disneyland. There’s a statue of John Wayne, less traffic and congestion. Otherwise, it’s a cookie-cutter replica of any American airport: pricey coffee shops, restaurants and bars, magazine and candy counters, souvenir places.

On the way out from GSP (Greenville Spartanburg) the TSA fellow had given me a red “old guy” card. Don’t bother taking the laptop out of your duffel bag, he said in a friendly tone, okay to keep your belt on, too. No slack in Santa Ana. I removed my belt and put the laptop in the plastic bin and stepped into the booth. The fun began.

This was my trip home from my uncle’s funeral, reported in last week’s post. It was going to be a long one, Southwest Airlines from Santa Ana to Phoenix to Nashville to Greenville. About five hours of flying plus four hours of waiting. 

Throngs of travelers slog through the security lines, dump their stuff in bins, empty their pockets, hold their arms up to be X-rayed, then maybe wanded. They trek through the concourses looking for their gates with a focused, distant stare. Where are they all going? Vacations. Business. Family visits. School. Job interviews.

The romance of flying cultivated by Pan Am, TWA, Eastern, and Lockheed’s giant Super Constellation and Douglas Aircraft’s DC-6 turboprops is long gone, along with those airlines and aircraft. The experience is more like riding a city bus.

Gone are suits for men and dresses for ladies. Summer flying now is like the rest of life: teeshirts, with sleeves and without for guys; tanktops and bathing suit tops for gals; souvenir sweatshirts. Very short shorts for men and women; also those long drooping ones that hang below the knees; running shoes, sandals, and flipflops. In winter all of the above plus a jacket. It could be about maximum comfort. It could be about anything.

Still, for some of us, the sensation of taking off, watching the earth fall away, cruising above the clouds, the feeling of being swept along effortlessly to distant places, is exciting.

In Phoenix, after a 50-minute flight, my gate area was packed with passengers. Agents shouted like carnival barkers. Phoenix is a major Southwest hub. The deep-blue, red, and orange aircraft taxi in and out of gates. Outside it’s 100-plus degrees, you sympathize with the guys out there loading bags. From the windows, the barren desert hills bake in the Arizona sun. A chicken sandwich and a bottle of water cost $23.00.

Southwest used to be different, no fees for bags, more laid-back about boarding. Flight attendants dressed casually and told jokes about the pilot. Now it’s as militarized as the others. Instead of calling boarding groups from the crowd loitering around the gate, passengers queue up in “odd” and “even” lines. Agents yell about bin space and threaten to force people to “gate-check.” Other airlines do that, too. Southwest flies only narrower Boeing 737s, so often less bin space.

I got lucky on the Phoenix-Nashville leg, an aisle seat in the emergency exit row, so slightly more leg room. The flight attendant needs a verbal “yes” that you’re willing to handle the door if that were needed.

The flight is three hours, easy after our back-to-back 15- and seven-hour flights on the Vietnam trip in January. My center-seat partner was a handyman going to Tennessee to build a walk-in bathroom for his mother. He was upset, and he let his seatmates know, that he couldn’t access the in-flight wifi with his cellphone. And sure, for some folks it can be awful to be without wifi for three hours. He yelled at the flight attendant. He never did get connected.

The Nashville gate area, like Phoenix, was bedlam, agents shouting flight numbers, destinations, boarding groups. I recalled, wearily, our time living there four decades ago, when what is now gigantic Nashville International Airport was tiny Nashville Municipal Airport with one tower and one runway. Two airport staffers, pushing wheelchairs, offered a lift. I said no thanks. I told myself I’m not that decrepit.

Lugging my bag and a cup of yogurt for dinner, I spied a seat next to a young woman talking on her phone. I grabbed the seat, gulped the yogurt, and left the seat for ten seconds to toss the empty cup. I turned around, an old guy, probably my age, had taken my seat. None others free.

The young woman in the next seat was off her call. She noticed me, stood up and offered me her seat. I hesitated, but I was tired and hot, and accepted. As I sat, a fellow in the next seat stood and left, freeing the seat. I motioned to the woman, she smiled and sat. Her good deed was rewarded.

Conversations with strangers in airports are unusual, but we talked a bit. She was a professor of education at Clemson, returning from a conference in Kansas City. She mentioned her family roots in Morocco, her doctoral work, the conference sponsored by the Stevens Initiative on applying technology in education, her reason for attending.

We didn’t ask each other’s name. Her boarding group was called. I said, “Good Luck,” we shook hands. As I got in line, the agent approached. “We’re out of bin space, you need to check your bag. It will be on the carousel in Greenville.” He pointed to the customer service desk. I surrendered the duffel bag, which had fit neatly under the seats of all my other flights.

We landed at GSP. I trudged to the baggage carousel empty-handed. The woman from Clemson caught up with me. “I’m sorry they made you check it,” she said, smiling again. I appreciated that. I noticed she had to wait for a checked bag.

We stood watching the bags roll out. It was 11 PM and storming outside. Thunder cracked, lightening flickered. My duffel bag showed up. We both said, “Good luck” again. I trooped out into the storm. Sandy waved from the pickup line. We headed home.

August 10, 2026

The Orange County, California stretch of I-405 is as wide as the freeways ringing L.A., the rush-hour traffic nearly as heavy. For a few miles it passes near Mission Basilica San Juan Capistrano in the city of the same name. The sun blazes against deep blue, the breeze is gentle, the air is sweet. It’s southern California.

San Juan, as locals and lovers of the place call it, emerges from the lyrical but complicated story of the Spanish Franciscan missionaries in California, who founded missions and built churches throughout Spain’s colonial territory. Starting in the late 17th century, they preached hard and long to convert Native Americans, at times regardless of whether the natives wanted to be converted. Work on the San Juan Capistrano church was started in 1797, completed in 1806. An earthquake destroyed the church in 1812.

For more than a century the place lay nearly entirely in ruins, only a few walls remained. Local people tried to rebuild but eventually abandoned the work. Only a small chapel remained to be used for services. In 1981 the pastor started building a new church nearby, it was completed in ‘86. The walls are two feet thick, capable of surviving earthquakes.  In 2000 Pope John Paul II designated the church a basilica, citing unique religious, historical, and cultural significance.

As the brochures explain, the basilica is a working parish with a staff of priests, deacons, and administrative people. It’s not large as Catholic churches go. Beautiful paintings decorate the walls, but the pews are standard low-finish wood.

The visitor’s eyes are drawn past the altar to the Grand Retablo, a 42-foot-high 30-foot-wide oak structure covered in brilliant gold leaf. The structure represents the Trinity: a crucifix, God the Father as a patriarch, a dove represents the Holy Spirit. The edges display images of St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscans; St. Joseph; St. Junipero Serra, who founded the original mission; and St. Katheri Tekakwitha, who represents the Native American population.

Restoration experts still work on the remains of the original church structure, now called the Great Stone Church. But historical sites tend to expand to meet demand. The site now is part of the Mission complex: the basilica, a museum, lush gardens, and the chapel, called the Serra Chapel, the oldest standing building in California.

The Mission is the state’s second-most popular tourist spot after Disneyland, bringing in something like 300,000 visitors each year. The site has attracted new restaurants, condos, souvenir businesses, and traffic. Intersections clog in the afternoon.

Visitors are awestruck by the beauty of the gardens, the art, the Retablo. All that, in some mysterious way, summons the intensity of faith that fired the Spanish Franciscan priests who trekked through California three centuries ago. The intensity mixed piety with cruelty. Historians still debate the legacy of Father Serra, founder of the original mission. Pope Francis canonized Serra in 2015 but some human rights groups blame him and other missionaries for abuses of converts and natives who refused to convert.

A sublime sense of faith, blending devotion with humility, may touch the heart of the visitor to the Mission. It touched the hearts of my Uncle Ed and Aunt Sue McVey, who grew up in the lace-curtain Irish Catholic world of New York City’s Queens borough and Long Island. Around 1960 they emigrated to California with the massive wave of East Coasters who saw promise of a new start in the Golden State.

They moved around the state, L.A., the suburbs, the San Francisco area, then settled in San Juan 26 years ago. They raised three daughters. One of the girls worked on a restoration project at the Great Stone Church. Their youngest was married in the basilica in 2006. Five years later Sue’s funeral was held there.

Ed and Sue may have seemed an odd fit with San Juan’s Spanish-Franciscan heritage. The Rockaway Beach enclave at the southern end of the Queens borough flaunts its Irishness—the churches, schools, bars, butcher shops, and bowling alleys. The beach is a minor-league Coney Island. Decades ago a scruffy amusement park at the eastern end of the boardwalk, Playland, thrilled New York kids with its roller coaster, merry-go-round, fright house, and cotton candy.

Saint Francis DeSales parish, on Rockaway Beach Boulevard, could have been the flip side of San Juan Capistrano. The uniformed schoolkids filed in for Mass to be harangued about sin and confession, then lined up for Communion. At the bar across the street the dads and grandads sipped Pabst, Miller, Ballantine, stronger stuff. Sometimes there was a bit of excitement, the cops showed up.

In the late 1950s Uncle Ed was a teenager living with my grandmother, Marie, and his brothers and sisters, my other uncles and aunts. Every so often my folks drove my sisters and brother and me over from Jersey. Ed watched out for us. We held his funeral at the basilica this past weekend.

Five or six years ago Sandy and I stopped in Rockaway on our way out to Long Island and stepped back in time. We parked illegally, sure no one would notice or care, and walked a bit. The same ramshackle Victorians with their crazy paint jobs, many divided into cramped apartments, lined the beach streets.

We strolled across the boardwalk to the beach and looked out at the crashing surf. I thought of Ed and Sue, so long gone from that strange place. It was November, a chilly breeze blew from the water. I shivered. We drove back over the Veterans Memorial Bridge to the Belt Parkway.

Ed and Sue found each other, got married out on the Island, then landed in L.A. The years flew by. California worked on them. They found their home in the sunshine. Then they found the Mission.

The Franciscan missionary heritage and history exists in a different dimension from the deep-dyed Irishness and rich brogues of Queens and the Island. Generations of conversions and blending of diverse cultures, Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo took the Franciscan church to a gentle, accepting place that departs from the brusque no-nonsense religion of Rockaway. Ed and Sue became Californians, but never left New York. They saw the cultural clash, understood it, accepted it, and moved forward in faith and wisdom.

August 3, 2026

We were on the road, but not really, maybe on the road in quotation marks. It was the street that circumvents our suburban subdivision, about a mile. It was 5:00 AM, still pitch black.

We were wide awake at 4:00. The New York Times reported more on the war, gas prices, the relentless mendacity of government. The local weather and early traffic were mostly clear. The walk seemed the thing to do. We pulled on clothes and shoes, grabbed a flashlight and water bottles, and headed out through the garage.

The night air was warm and faintly pungent, the darkness deep and still. Nothing disturbed the silence, the neighborhood seemed at some kind of tentative peace, as if in grateful relief from the rampaging disorder of the daylight world. The dark headlines came to mind, for an instant, then retreated. We set out walking.

The night blackness summoned a mix of emotions, then an inchoate sadness that brought to mind the austere beauty of Victorian poet Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach, the “long, melancholy, withdrawing roar, retreating to the breath of the night wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world.” I wondered how Arnold, in these lines, could probe the raw bleakness of life from his long perch in England’s genteel 19th century literary world. I recalled he died at 65.

The walk was a stab at ordinariness—a jaunt around the block and down a hill, no adventurous road trip to a historic or unique place. We padded along in sneakers, footfalls muffled. The streetlamps and a few porch lights glowed. On one lawn a spotlight aimed into a tree bathed the branches in blue. Next door, white Christmas lights twinkled on a small tree, illuminating the lawn.

We’ve walked the neighborhood many times. Others pass, sometimes pushing strollers. We’d say hello, make a comment about the weather. It’s a quiet street, but we watch for passing vehicles. Drivers in these parts often wave, we’d wave back.

Ours is one of those subdivisions in which people keep to themselves or keep their circle of friends small. A couple of families up the street socialize, they have kids who play and go to school together. They shoot off fireworks in the street on the Fourth of July.

The young woman directly across from us stepped up, she has become a friend. Last winter after the snowstorm her young son, unasked, walked over and shoveled our driveway. But most others are busy at work or doing yard work, sometimes we see them coming and going. In five years we’ve not heard of any block parties.

It’s true, we haven’t put our feet forward to get to know others. We never knocked at the neighbors’ doors with cookies or a casserole. We didn’t hold a housewarming. I recall, a few months after we arrived, chatting with the woman two doors down. She introduced herself, now I can’t remember her name. We never see her or her husband, although their two girls play outside.

Starting a few doors up from our place we dodged a row of pickups parked along the street. The owners’ driveways already were occupied by other vehicles. Most looked shiny and new, Ford 150s, Toyota Tundras, Dodge Ramchargers, GM Sierras and Colorados. Some were parked directly across from others, narrowing the street to one lane and requiring drivers of vehicles approaching in opposite directions to decide who goes through first.

It was a pointless thought as we walked, but I imagined the monthly payments. We’ve read about car-payment nightmares. Do these suburbanites really need these off-road monsters? Most of them are perpetually parked.

We rounded the bend at the subdivision entrance and headed down the street running parallel to ours. It was more of the same, the streetlamps and porch lights, the silhouettes of homes behind the shrubbery. Here and there rooms were lit behind curtains and blinds, some folks were awake and stirring. It was a workday, after all. In one second-level picture window, a cat stared down at us.

The homes on our street are mix of one-level cottages, like ours, and two-level imitation Victorians. Here and there a tiger-paw Clemson banner hangs over the door. The parallel street is a bit more upscale, lined with large homes with two-car garages and a “front room over garage” called a FROG. The negative for those homeowners is the rail track that runs no more than 200 yards behind their backyards. They endure the high-speed roar a couple of times each night. Close to the track the speeding trains seem to shake the earth.

The street descended sharply into a dead end bordered by thick woods. We plodded on, our steps a bit longer down the hill, past the well-kept yards and scruffy ones, the “Congratulations, Graduate” signs left over from June high school graduations, the stacks of unopened sacks of mulch. At the bottom of the hill the road ends in a tight circle. We paused.

At the base of the hill a large home stood, a hulk against the background of woods in the early morning gray. The eaves were lined with luminous white bulbs. The unlit adjoining homes looked drab and worn.

The house was immense next to others nearby: two levels, a peaked-center roof, large windows, the curtains closed. No vehicles were parked in the driveway. We stepped onto the sidewalk and peered down the steep embankment behind the house. We could hear the rush of water of a fast-moving creek through the woods.

The sky in the east was turning pink, a faint glow edged the treetops in the distance. Homes and vehicles came into focus. The lines of white bulbs on the house seemed to shine even more brightly, casting a soft glow over the lawn and the street to create a wondrous, unearthly bath of light.

We headed up the hill, turned, and looked back. The lights of the big house at the end of the street shone powerfully as dawn crept in. The 29th line of Dover Beach returned, but instead of the darkness, I recalled Arnold’s poignant exhortation: “… Ah, love, let us be true to one another!” 

The line, along with the ghostly spectacle, cheered me. I wondered about the madly creative mind of whoever conjured up the scene, which in some mysterious way lifted our hearts, and inspired us to look beyond the corruption, to smile, to hope, to seek love and happiness, to march forward through the world in joy.  

July 27, 2026

A college classmate died two weeks ago, the news came in as we celebrated a birthday. Bob sent me a text in early June: “Hawks fly high.” A few days later he fought his way to his final college class reunion, then passed. Last week Sandy turned 73, we recruited a dozen friends and family for dinner to cheer her on to 74.

Bob and I ran into each other occasionally. He worked hard all his life, first in Connecticut, where he grew up, then later in Florida. He supported local charities and donated a building to our alma mater, St. Anselm. In 2023 he developed glioblastoma, a virulent brain cancer that almost always takes its victims in around 18 months. He battled, gave freely to others of time and personal resources. The school awarded him an honorary degree two years ago. He attended the June reunion using a walker, then entered hospice.

The funeral Mass at St. Anselm was three days ago. Our classmate, Abbot Mark Cooper, Bob’s close friend for fifty-plus years, presided.

So we knew about Bob when we did the birthday at an Italian place in downtown Greenville. Everyone else there was younger. Not all the guests knew each other, but the group mixed nicely. The occasion carried the crowd along, with the drinks, good food, gifts, the giant desserts. The grandsons and the young daughter of a friend, in their cute party clothes, picked up on the excitement. They moved easily among the young adults and the old folks, smiling and laughing.

A gent at a table nearby and his wife walked over and snapped a group photo. The wife smiled. “You have a lovely family,” she called.

“We’re from New Hampshire,” he said. “Nineteen years on the Manchester police force. That was when we were required to be clean-shaven. As soon as I left I grew out this baby.” He stroked his thick mustache. We all laughed.

Laughing came easily, eventually we straggled from the table. Outside, subdued lighting bathed the piazza, folks eased back at their tables, sipped wine and dined. A warm breeze passed among the tables. We got one more photo, and one more “Happy Birthday,” said our goodnights and drifted away.

The midsummer birthday has become a milestone of quiet joy. Seven years Sandy spent it in the ICU at Bryn Mawr Hospital in Pennsylvania recovering from a series of ministrokes or “transient ischemic attacks.” That hard week (reported here several times) now returns to us every July. The point is, seven years is a good chunk of time.

Some cancers, like glioblastoma, attack vengefully. Others becomes ghosts and haunt survivors, who either break or resolve to live willfully in peace with the threats. The medicines, the care, the usual bromides, diet and exercise, are in the mix, but the true lifeline is will to endure, if not overcome. Symptoms and fears may return as months turn into years, but fade when courage returns. So it does.

We are resuming the routine of survival, treasuring the bright times while bearing up against the chaos. The war is on again. Gas prices are up a dime from last week, back over $4.00/gallon in some places. People looking for jobs are wondering how the grocery and restaurant employees found theirs. Companies are using AI to “bank” resumes by advertising openings that don’t exist.

The birthday evening brought powerful memories. In a strange way the New Hampshire folks who joined the singing prompted thoughts of Bob, who seemed happiest on the Manchester campus. A year ago I posted OTR in Brooksville, Florida. He saw it and sent a text asking us to stop by his place in the next county. We found the address and visited with him and Susan for a while.

At that point he was doing well. We sipped coffee and talked about college, about his health. He was playing a little golf, but couldn’t walk the course. We talked about reuniting a few years earlier for the funeral of a Benedictine priest who taught at the school for decades.

He kept writing, offering comments on the posts. He stayed busy, as much as he could, with the college board of directors and local things. He traveled often back to the Manchester campus. But glioblastoma is unforgiving. Arizona Sen. John McCain lived 13 months after diagnosis; Bob endured three years.

He lived a good, virtuous life, devoted to good things. His life taught immortal lessons, endurance, perseverance, fortitude. He smiled often.

The evening reminded us that birthdays matter. We set a course for doing it again. We have a break until fall, then six out through February. Daughter Kathleen turns 40 in October. We’ll see her in September in Idaho for her wedding party. Then the grandkids turn 10 and 13. We’ll make a big deal of it.

Time is racing by, dawn is showing up later, the sun takes a few more moments. Parents of schoolkids are squeezing in vacations. Schools open mid-August. The year will ebb away.

We’re still browsing the photos from Sandy’s big day, the smiles, the girls’ pretty dresses, the five-layer chocolate cake, the heartfelt good wishes. In the morning we stepped up and shouldered the usual chores. We marked the medical appointments on the calendar. I stared at all that, then looked forward to July ’27.