Time is Short

I'm being rushed out the door. We're leaving at 8 AM for up north and it's . . . well, you see what time it is below. So, time is short for me to blog. My mind doesn't work well on short time. Mine is a long time mind. My thoughts need time to simmer and percolate before anything understandable or cogent comes out. So, if there are a lot of tipogruphicel erors in tody's blog i apologixe, because I just can't operate this way.

Kooper just ate some of the rolls we are bringing up to Meadville/Franklin for dinner tomorrow (Thanksgiving with family will be a Friday event this year). Kate doesn't know it yet. She's upstairs tea-ing. I imagine she'll come downstairs soon. He ate them while I was typing the words above. I have two choices. I could put the bag with the hole in it and the two out of eight half-eaten rolls back into the shopping bag for the trip north. Then, I wouldn't suffer the ridicule and embarrassment of having enabled Kooper's feast for six or seven more hours (and then be buffered by others being present to laugh along). Or I could just leave the bag out and look sternly at Kooper as Kate comes down the steps as if to say "That Kooper! I just don't know what we can do about that dog!" And maybe preemptively avoid any question of my acquiescence.

I'll go with the first. So if any of you are around Franklin later this afternoon, stop by my Mom's house to help me out. I would be so very thankful. Please. And have a happy Thanksgiving!

Slow Times

Orion the Hunter, the constellation, is in the western sky in the dark mornings when Kooper and I go for our wandering through the neighborhood. That's always a reminder to me that we're officially in winter. This is winding down into a slow time of year when the cold and darkness gently (or sometimes harshly!) nudge us into "hunkering-down-mode." Stay inside. Keep warm. Drink hot tea. Snuggle. Wrap up and read a book (or play World of Warcraft).

Zoe is moving back up north this weekend as we travel to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. Michael and Zoe will reunite. It's a black and white thing. Zoe misses all of the black fabric that Michael accumulates - clothes, pillows, throw rugs, blankets, towels. Zoe's white fur goes well in a contrasty sort of way with the black. She's become an indoor cat over these past four months, so her whiteness won't be needed for outdoor sleuthing and stalking in the snow. Michael lives on a busy street anyway in Meadville, so the cars searching for pet and squirrel prey along North Main Street won't have Zoe in their sights. She's put on a bit of weight in the process of staying indoors. Her main exercise has been playing with Lucky.

Lucky will miss her playmate I imagine. She's shy to begin with so I'm guessing we'll see less of Lucky once Zoe isn't here to draw her out to play. She'll hunker down, wrap up, and watch carefully as the bigger animals in the house wander about. I guess it's not a bad activity for these winter months.

House Work

Weekends are working chore times at the house. Vacuuming, watering plants, garbage and recycling (the haulers come early Monday morning). I've noticed that there is less hair around these days than in the summer when the heat must have accelerated the shedding rates. There is Zelda hair concentrated on one of the living room chairs. Lucky hair on the guest room bed cover. Zoe hair on the bedspread covering Michael's bed downstairs. And a bit of Kooper hair on the couch (Yes! He's spoiled!). There is less hair on the top floor than there used to be. That was Lady's territory. Kooper doesn't go that high. He makes it into the kitchen and dining room on the third floor but no higher.

Not only do the pets shed, but so do the plants that have come inside for the winter. They get much less light than they did on the back patio and are rebelling by turning brown at the edges and dropping leaves - large and small - all over the place. Especially the fern. Those small, brown leaves are everywhere. Most notably between the fern's perch in the guest room and the bathroom where it goes to be watered on a weekly basis. Dropping dozens of small, crunchy, brown leaves in the process.

They get vacuumed up then. Along with the pet sheddings. There is still the random Lady hair to be found among the dust bunnies and other detritus. But not so much anymore.

NSO

We saw and heard the National Symphony Orchestra last night at the Kennedy Center. We walked to the Braddock Road Metro in the wind and cold (real wind and real cold this time!). Took the Metro to Foggy Bottom. Took the Kennedy Center shuttle the few blocks to the Center. Then snuggled into our seats (109 and 110) in row CC.

The NSO came out. Played. And left. The audience sat there. Clapped. And went home. All very civil and correct. Not too real but the movement and applause and music all seemed to come at the right moments and last the right amount of time. It seemed very "going-through-the-motions" like. Like "Okay we're done. Let's move on to the next thing to do." I don't have much to compare it to except for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra at Heinz Hall. But that seemed more real. In fact (I've said this more than a few times to Kate), Pittsburghers as a whole seem very "real." Authentic. Themselves and comfortable at it. When we went to Heinz Hall last year to see the symphony and the orchestra members came on stage they would wave at and chat with the people in the audience. Audience members would walk up to the stage before the performance and during intermission and afterwards to chat with musicians leaning over the stage edge. There was a sense of community in the audience before the show too. And the audience appreciation was genuine and robust and long and standing. I guess love might be the right word. Real.

I'm always reminded of the part from the Velveteen Rabbit when I think of Pittsburgh and its people. “Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”

Let it Snow

I understand that back in northwestern Pennsylvania the first big lake-effect snowfall of the year has blanketed the area.  Six or so inches near Lake Erie and over a foot inland.  We had snow here a couple of days ago, too.  A few flakes danced around in the whirlwinds between the buildings in DC when I was.  In the District doing grant research.  All of a sudden I looked up from the computer I was sitting at and there it was.  Snow.  In mid-November!  None of it "stuck."  I'm not even sure if any of it actually made it to the ground, it was so windy.  Maybe the few, tiny flakes just were whipped into a frenzy and swept back up into the clouds.

The few flakes did get people buzzing though about the winter and the possibility of Washington shutting down.  People looked at their watches to see if they should catch the Metro home before it closed down due to slick tracks.  One person called to his suburban home to see if the "storm" had hit there.  When I got back to my office, an email had been sent to everyone reminding them of winter shut-down procedures.

Meanwhile back in real life, I noticed that the number of homeless on the streets of DC seems to be increasing.  I would say on average on each block there were about two people bundled up against the cold and wind with their possessions around them for shelter.  No office shut-down procedures for them.  No worries about catching the train before it stops running.

If senators and congress people or their staff are walking or driving from the Capital down to K Street where the lobbyists work, the homeless are there to remind them of who they represent.   Most of the lobbyists trekking up the street the opposite way to the halls of Congress don't lobby on behalf of the homeless and hungry.  Some do.  A few.  But like the DC snowflakes their words don't seem to stick.

Terrible Twos

My two-plus year old cell phone has been throwing tantrums lately.  Not holding a charge all day long.  Cutting out during crucial calls with Michael about his motherboard.  Refusing to charge in a timely manner.  So I got a new battery.  Extra life sized!  I got it very quickly and easily through an on-line store that specializes in Motorola cell phones.  Talk about a niche.  The only trouble is the extra life sized battery is extra thick and it sticks out beyond where the tiny back door to the phone would normally sit.  So, back on line I went last night.  I need a super-sized back door (or battery cover as they so cleverly call it).  It's ordered now.  Should be here Friday.  I should have known that a super-sized battery would need an XXX sized hatch.

My cell phone is Microsoft based and this computer I'm blogging on is an Apple.  The two don't speak.  They don't even try.  I guess if my phone were newer they would at least try to communicate with each other.  But two year-old phones don't know the Apple language.  They don't talk the same talk.  So my calendar on the computer is almost empty but the one on my phone (that I almost always have with me) is filled with everything I need to remember to do.  Like a brain memory expansion pack but only more reliable.  Until the battery starts to fizzle.

Now if you want to call me on my cell phone you can.  It rings (actually it vibrates because that's the best way for me to "hear" it).  It rings when it reminds me that it's almost time to do something I should remember to do.  And if I hold it gingerly the battery on steroids won't fall out.  

I figure if it lasts two more years by late 2010 maybe some new technology will surface and I won't even need a new battery again.  Or a new cell phone at all.  Maybe by then Macs and PCs will be able to speak and understand each other, and Democrats and Republicans will hug in the aisles of the Capital Building, and we all will have forgiven George Bush.

Shooting Star

It's very cold here this morning (around 30 . . . that's "cold" for here).  The fronts that have swept through over the past few days have cleared out any lingering thoughts of Indian Summer or any hints of fallishness.  They cleared out the skies, too.  Any pockets of haze or patches of fog or blankets of pollution are long gone.  Out to sea.

Kate is somewhere northwest of here.  Studying with some other ministers about the hot sociological and theological topics of the day.  It's snowing where she is.  In the mountains of Virginia/West Virginia/Maryland.  Out that way.  Yonder.

Here (hither) it was very clear last night when Kooper and I went for our late night romp through the streets of Old Town.  And brisk, too.  I tried to keep Kooper moving beyond his typical stop and sniff saunter.  Just so I could keep a bit warm.  He would have none of that.  Fur is a great insulator I guess.  Humanity's loss.  But Kooper's slow gait meant at last I lifted my head up to look at the clear sky.  And the stars. Very clear and dark and crisp.  A very starry night.  Not the kind of darkness and starriness you get in north central Pennsylvania or in the Adirondack Mountains, but plenty dark enough to see more than the usual bright constellations.

It just so happens that at one of Kooper's especially long ground snuffling spots as I was looking up I saw the briefest flare of a shooting star.  Glowing ever brighter for the fleetest of moments and then flaring out just as quickly.  On a straight path from somewhere to nowhere.  To oblivion.  Galaxy dust.

It reminds me of the words the priests say on Ash Wednesday during the Catholic ritual of marking people's foreheads with ashes made from last year's Palm Sunday palms.  "Remember that you are dust.  And unto dust you shall return."

Not a bad thing to remember once in awhile.  As Cat Stevens sang, we're "only dancing on this earth for a short while."  Objects in space.  Like a shooting star.

A Big Wind

Two windy cold fronts blew through yesterday, as promised. One in the late afternoon and one last night.  It's much colder today and feels more Fall-like than was yesterday's Summer reprise.   This morning during Kooper's and my walk through the neighborhood there were flags down and plant pots blown over and leaves bundled up into corners where they ended up when the winds finally stopped. Cowering from the blasts.  All huddled together.

Last night Kate and I walked downtown (as in Old Town Alexandria) and had fish and chips and beer (me) and shrimp and hard cider (Kate) at Murphy's Grand Irish Pub on King Street.  Good food.  Nice pub-like atmosphere (they even have pub trivia in their upstairs room each Tuesday!).  Music started about 8:30 or so but by then we were in our seats at the local theater watching the new James Bond movie.  Not one of the better James Bond movies.  I won't spoil the plot because there isn't one.  Just bouncing from one action scene to the next.  One tense confrontation to the next.  No thread to tie it all together.  But the theater was packed and I'm sure the movie will make mega-millions.

The Old Town Theater is quaint.  It's privately owned.  You queue up and buy your ticket.  You're also obligated to buy a drink with your ticket (call it a cover charge).  I got another beer.  I ordered a hot dog, too.  They bring the cooked food, of which there is a good variety, to your seat after the movie starts.  The way it works is, you find your seat and then write the seat number on the food receipt.  You give them the receipt back.  Then they cook the food and deliver it right to you during the show!  The owner comes into the theater if things are running late (like last night when people were still lined up for the show at the scheduled start time).  He announces how things are going and when the show should start and reminds us all that about now you'd be seeing advertisements and previews at the cineplex.  Not here.  Here you can talk to your friends and neighbors.  Then just the movie.

Afterwards we walked home.  Between the cold fronts.  Still warm then.  The wind picked up later as the second front went through.  We had to take down the wind chimes in the patio.  They were singing so hard in the wind.  Happy to be free and doing what they are meant to be doing I guess.   Maybe that's the definition of freedom.  Doing what you're meant to be doing.  Being who you are meant to be.  Like the wind.  Like the chimes.

From the West

We have a stack of wood out back on the patio - the "back forty" I guess you could say (forty square feet).  It's a nice and dry and somewhat smallish pile.  We have two fireplaces in the house - one in the living room and one right above the living room.  In the kitchen.  The wood wouldn't last very long in a continuous burn.   Maybe a day or two.  But it will be nice for "atmosphere" over a few evenings during the late fall or winter.  Not today though. Today it should be in the mid-60s.  In fact I was surprised how warm it was this morning when I stepped out the door onto Abingdon Drive to walk with Kooper.   Good day for football.  Although it rained last night and more is coming later today from the west.  Over the mountains.

That's where the wood came from we were told by its seller.  The mountains of Virginia.

Every night a train comes along the railroad tracks about a quarter of a mile north of the house.   The train brings something from the mountains, too - coal.  It pulls up next to a power plant located along the Potomac River.  It unloads its coal and then goes back west.  Empty.  To be refilled for the next trip on the next night.

The coal comes from the mountains of West Virginia.  Past the Virginia Blue Ridge.  There are fewer and fewer mountains in West Virginia these days.  Mountaintop mining is seeing to that.  An easy, cheap way to mine coal.  An easy, cheap way to run the computers and light the lights and heat the houses and power the bureaucracies of the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

That is what the train brings every day.  In the dark of the night.  When our lights are burning.  Its hauls in the mountain from West Virginia.  Then the mountains go up in smoke the next day. 

Some Alexandria Photos

Notes from the Bus Stop

Huntington Metro Station North Bus Circle

The man who works at the hospital kitchen had a bad day at work yesterday. People yelling. Arguments. Overcrowded and nerves on edge. His way of putting it was "the devil had a field day!" I said it could have been the full moon. We laughed.

The woman who gets off at the elementary school each morning and who always wears a slight smile on her face stopped at the bottom of the Metro escalator stairs up to the bus stop to let people more in a hurry pass. It's single width and she rides it up. No walking. Others like to walk up the escalator. Or run.

The spanish speaking woman always carries a pink plastic rosary in her left hand as she gets on the bus each day.

The guy with the Baltimore Orioles hat usually says hello or nods or grunts something nice. We spoke one morning about weather and football and baseball. But not too much since.

One woman avoids me. She doesn't talk to me or answer when I say hi. She sits in the opposite side of the bus stop shelter. Divided by plexiglass. Safe. I take the 161 bus and she the 162. Maybe that's the reason we don't relate.

Warcraft

I'm very tired this morning. It's of my own doing, though. Last night at 11:30 I drove a few miles west of here down Duke Street to the GameStop store and waited until midnight with a couple hundred other people . . . all shapes and sizes and ages . . . for the release of the newest addition to World of Warcraft. That (for the uninitiated) is an on-line massively multiplayer game where you travel around various continents and lands completing quests, fighting enemies and gathering all-the-while gold and better and better weapons and armament (so that you and your on-line friends can advance to the next (and more challenging) land.

It was important, you see, that I went last night because yesterday, after months of slogging my way through the game's worlds, I reached "Level 70" - the highest level of achievement attainable! Last night's add-on allows the exploration of new worlds and quests - and you can now go up to Level 80!

So then I came back to the house, loaded the game, and played until 3 AM or so (there were a couple of walks with Kooper sandwiched in there, too). Michael (as in one of my sons) was there too. Not here. There. In the same brave new world as I was. Helping me advance and fight and kill and plunder booty and complete quests. He gave up and went to bed before me, though. There were others in our "realm" playing though. Some with the Alliance. Some, like me, with the Horde.

So this morning I'm tired. War is hell.

Veterans Day

Veterans Day. Heavy frost last night and even now - at 8:20 AM - it's in the low thirties. I noticed over the weekend that more than half the leaves have fallen to the ground. There are still a lot on the branches but most are down. Washed out oranges and burnt browns predominate the foliage colors. Some greens still. Some yellows. Not too much red. Even the pine are shedding about half of their leaves - needles. They do that every year, too. Despite their call to being "evergreen." If you look closely you can see many yellow pine needles on the limbs and many more on the ground beneath.

A lot of veterans have fallen over the years, too. Probably not half of those who served, but plenty enough. The Fall is a good time to have placed Veterans Day. To remember the fallen. Whether the wars were wise or foolish. Whether the soldiers enlisted or were drafted. Whether the fatal fire was friendly or designed to kill. Those aren't the point. The point is . . . the reason we have a Veterans Day is . . . some friends and lovers and neighbors of ours died. And we want to remember. Counting ourselves luckily among the alive still.

Korean War Memorial in the Fall
It would be nice if no one else had to hastily rush toward death for the benefit of stoking or easing the diatribe of the day. It would be nice to enjoy Fall for the season that it is without the extra fallen to remember.

Mi Casa es Tu Casa

Inauguration Day 2009 is setting up to be very crowded down this way! Already, people are scrambling for tickets for the event. Congressional office phone lines are burning up. Hotels are being inundated with calls. Airline reservations are up over 200% for this far out from "normal" times. And police are estimating record numbers of attendees for the historic event. If things are as clogged as people are anticipating, it might be best to walk the five miles or so from our house to the Capitol Building.

Inauguration Day and the day before (Martin Luther King Jr. Day - isn't that ironic) are both Federal holidays, so that glut of people who normally flow into and out of the District and nearby lands won't. Whether they flow into the District for the inauguration is another question.

Okay. Well to the point of today's blog. If you're inclined to see history first hand let us know. We have extra bed space for four. We have couch space for one (or two closely connected). We have floor (as in sleeping bag . . . as in backpacking) space for a good half dozen or so more.

I watered the plants in the house yesterday. It was the first time they were watered since we moved them indoors from the back patio for the "Winter." I have yet to see evidence that there really is a Winter here. But I'll stop watering the plants if needed . . . if we have an overabundance of guests coming in. If space is at a premium. I'll stop watering a few so there would be some more room for visitors by January 20.

Weird

It was a bit strange last night . . . weird, in fact (I thought it was always supposed to be "'i' before 'e' except after 'c'?"). Last night when Kooper and I went for our midnight walk I was out in sandals strolling around the block. I didn't need to but I put a light jacket on. More because it was November 7 than anything else. I mean in November you should at least be wearing a jacket. But it was nearly 60 and almost balmy.

It was quiet, too. No planes take off from Reagan National at that time of night. Few cars zip down or up the George Washington Parkway. No leaf blowers. Just the rare bus still on its late night run. The random driver coming home from a night out. The other person now and then oddly out in their sandals and jacket walking their dog, too.

It's the same in the mornings when I walk the dog. Quiet. Few cars and even fewer people. The only time I ever noticed a change in that quiet pattern was last Tuesday morning. That morning it dawned on me gradually that Tuesday was going to be a special day when, as Kooper and I were respectively sniffing and stumbling our way through the neighborhood, others - a lot of "others" in fact - were out too. Walking. No dogs. Just walking. And no matter where we were in the neighborhood (Kooper and I) the people were all walking slowly and resolutely toward the same general spot - the southwest corner of Second and Powhatan Streets. The Alexandria Fire Station. One of two voting locations in the City of Alexandria. Like zombies almost but most definitely alive.

Since Tuesday night there has been an almost palpable aliveness in the country as well. At least the parts that I can see.

Weird.

Lost

I went the other way yesterday. With the flow. Downstream into Washington DC for the day. I walked to the Metro. Squeezed into an already-filled train car. Headed north. I learned how to prepare a fundraising plan.

An awful lot of people were swept into DC with me. Must have been that vacuum that I mentioned before. In fact, as the Blue Line Metro enters the tunnel under the Potomac River as it crosses into the District, you can feel the pressure change in your ears. As it pulls air along with it into the dark.

Then we ascended on the other side into Foggy Bottom - a neighborhood in DC named for the smoke that industry along the north side of the Potomac used to belch out. Now it's condos and universities and offices. Cars, busses and patrons of restaurants are the only things that belch now. But it's still Foggy Bottom.

Then it was on to K Street, where my training was. The Foundation Center. A small office squeezed in among the lobbyist's offices just a couple of blocks north of Lafayette Park and the White House. I walked there during lunch. Through the Park. To the gates of the White House.

I was vaguely aware of a woman who was walking the couple of blocks along the way with me. Not so much "with" as along. Stopped at the same lights. Walking between K and I Streets (there was no J Street) on the same sidewalk. On the same side of the street. Not quite at the same pace but the traffic and lights are the great equalizers.

As we got to I Street and crossed into Lafayette Park. I stopped and so did she. "Excuse me," she said (twice I think, because I didn't quite hear the first time), "I'm lost. Do you know where the White House is?" "Well," I answered, "I'm new to the area but I think it's right there," pointing through some trees in the Park to the north portico of the Bush house.

The North Portico
George Bush probably feels a bit lost, too, right now. It must be hard to be a lame duck. On the way out. Housesitting. Country-sitting. Especially hard to do when two-thirds of the people you wanted to lead don't think you should be there anyway.

Washington Abhors a Vacuum

Another cloudy, muted Fall morning. It seems just as much as October was bright blue and sunny, November has been grey and damp. That's good, right? It was to dry here for the first two months we moved in. Now it's not too, too wet, but certainly less crunchy. The leaves don't crunch. The twigs fallen on the ground bend but don't snap, and the worms on the sidewalks are alive and not mummified.

It's hard to believe it's Thursday already. The excitement of election day seemed to blur together Monuesednsday into one long smear. The daily cycle is settling back down now a bit as we transition into deep Fall and others transition in and out of Washington DC offices. The guessing game and the name dropping are the next chapter in the DC electoral ring cycle that repeats itself every two or four years (depending how attuned you are to political chattering).

I assume the Obama transition team has a plan and will stick to it. It's their way. I imagine there will be quite a few emptying houses and apartments in the region over the next couple of months. But the vacuum will be quickly filled.

Vox populi

Carmen died.

She sang her heart out, poor woman, but she still died anyway. I would have voted that she live had I been given a vote. We saw Carmen die in a center for the performing arts named after John F. Kennedy. In the end, he died because he wanted to become President, and because enough (just enough!) people voted for him . . . not to die, but to become President. I was 12 when Kennedy (John) died, but if I could I would vote him back if he wanted the job again. Or even Robert - especially Robert - if he could give it another shot. Maybe that's why I voted for Barack Obama.

One of the nice and interesting things about living around Washington, DC is that you don't need mass media to tell you what's happening politically. Last night after Carmen died and I was walking Kooper around the block, at about 10:50 or so, all of a sudden out of the dark and quiet Kooper and I heard a "whoop" sound coming from a townhouse on Portner, followed in quick succession by "yes!" and "Yay!" and other and growing loud cheers of victory from the apartments around the corner on Bashford. Then pots and pans were being banged. Then car horns tooted their approval . . . the voice of the people. Kooper didn't understand what all the noise meant, but it was obvious . . . in January, if all goes according to plan, we'll have a new leader. Actually, it will be the first leader we've had in awhile when you think of it.

I hope Barack Obama doesn't die for a very long time. That's my vote anyway, if I have a voice in that one.

Fun thing to do

Vote!

One More Day

One day more until the election of 2008! Kate and I will be sitting inside the Kennedy Center taking in Bizet's Carmen while the votes roll in (they start at 7 PM . . . the vote rolling and Carmen both). But we should be back to the house about the time things really start to firm up (that is . . . by about 10 or 11 at night - when we return to TV's pundits and pollsters - there should be an indication of who's winning).

For those of us who need a political fix, there is a new "widget" on the blog this morning. It's a part of the Washington Post online that I really like: Chris Cillizza's "The Fix." You sometimes see Chris on MSNBC's Countdown, too. It's very interactive in a new media kind of way and you can even video blog back in response to some of The Fix's pieces to express your opinions.

Wacky fun!

Carmen dies in the end, by-the-way . . . very sad.

All Soul's Day

The day after the Catholic feast of All Saints (November 1) is All Souls Day (November 2). That's today, and it also happens to be when I was born! This particular All Souls Day is cloudier and more Fall-like than All Saints Day was. Yesterday was just gorgeous. Today, it's dropped down into the 50s and feels more seasonable. Still nice though. "Good football weather," as "they" say.

I don't know who "they" are. Maybe one of the souls or saints we commemorate over these two days.

It's a Goal!!!!!

It's shaping up to be a wonderful Fall weekend - sunny, in the 60's during the day and clear but not too cold at night. We'll have some visitors from up north way (Pat and Jen) in later today. Should be a great end to the week. Kooper and I have already had a nice long walk just before sunrise (the sky was just slightly turning purple in the east as we reached the house).

My goal for the weekend is to have none . . . just soak it in. I'll be a sponge! I should have thought of that last night for Halloween! Kate and I walked down to South Lee Street in Alexandria last night to soak in a local tradition. The street was blocked off for about six or seven blocks and was packed (comfortably packed) from end to end and side to side with Halloween revelers of all shapes and ages and sizes . . . many disguised . . . some (like us) not. The houses (historic townhouses down in that end of town) were all open and people had their places all decorated and were handing out treats. It was quite an event! We saw politicians like Cheney, Obama and McCain, Pumkinheadman, a coffin stroller with three children aboard, banana people, dogs in various attire, pirates, colonials, all sorts of oddities! Next year we'll have to go as someone else.

Here are some of the Lee Streeters . . .