Tangled Tales of An American Family

By Cecil Hoge

As the end of this year approaches I am on the cusp of a new rowing record for December. This year I have managed 12 outings as of December 23. Going rowing is easy for me since I live on the water and my dock is only a 100 from my back door. So, provided weather and tide permit, I go rowing as many as I can, no matter the season. Last December, I managed to go rowing 13 times. That was my previous record for December. But I am confident that I can eek a few more rowing sessions, bringing me to a new personal all-time rowing record for December.

That prediction is no shoe-in – at the moment a winter storm is raging. And as you can see from the picture above weather and tide are not permitting. So far it is raining with 20 to 30 mile per hour winds. And since my front lawn and the walkway to my dock are presently flooded, it is not presently practical to go rowing today.

The weather forecast for the next few days is not encouraging either since later this afternoon the rain is supposed to change to snow and the air temperature, presently in the low 50s, is supposed to go in the low teens. The prognosis for wind and temp is also not encouraging – the wind is forecast to continue blowing a 20 to 30 mph and the temperature is forecast stay below 23 degrees Fahrenheit / -5 Celsius. Besides I have some family obligations in 2 days…it seems Christmas is upon us.

Some will say rowing in December is truly crazy, but these days I treasure the opportunity to get out on the water, no matter the season.

And yes, as you may guess, it can be quite chilly on Long Island this time of year. And if the old Northwest wind happens to be blowing at 20 to 30 mph, as is its want in December, January, February and March, that can up the chill factor further. But I am never cold because I dress appropriately. I wear a Mustang Catalyst Survival Coat. It’s a beauty…made with heavy duty rip stop, waterproof nylon with foam flotation sections in the arms, the chest and the back. As such, it almost impervious to frigid winds and, best of all, the foam sections provide US Coast Guard Approved flotation. November through April, the Coast Guard requires you to wear a Coast Guard approved PFD (personal floatation device). So I is warm and legal when I go rowing.

But the flotation coat is not my only preparation for winter rowing. I wear flannel lined pants for extra leg warmth, a Filson wool hat and a pair of $9 Wild Wear gloves. I got the gloves at truck stop along the New Jersey Turnpike and with the large fluorescent yellow patches on the gloves, they stand out in a crowd and keep my digits warm and toasty.

I have other gloves that you would think are better suited to my use. Some cost $50, some cost $90, some cost over $100, they come from NRS, Duluth Trading, LL Bean, but no matter what the brand or how waterproof or how well-lined the other gloves are, none compare to my $9 Wild Wear gloves.

When I go rowing at this time of year, I get a special sense of peace and calm that comes from being out on the water. And while the air is colder in winter, it is also fresher, with the generally Northwest winds bringing fresh, clean air down from Canada. And when it is not raining or snowing, the skies can be a clear baby blue and the clouds giant puffy white cotton candy balls floating across the horizon. Everything is cleaner and fresher in the winter. The waters of our bays, which in the summer are a brown muddy color and have large globs of algae floating on the surface, clean up their act in the winter and the brown silty color disappears and you can even see the blades of your oars clearly in the water. Best of all, the great globs of algae are chilled out and migrate to the bottom of the bay for winter.

At that time of year, one can almost believe that our waterways are pure and clean, loaded with sea life, but that would be going a stretch too far. In truth, there is little sea life in these bays…be it spring, summer, fall or winter. But in the fall and winter, as the boats get hauled off of their buoys and transported off to their winter homes, the waters become calm and clear because boats are no longer motoring back and forth. In fact, in the winter I can often see the bottom of the bay as I row by.

I like rowing because it transports me to a place outside of what is considered the real world. In fact, it transports me to a place that many folks rarely get to see…the natural world. And while the natural world has been significantly altered by us humans, it is still there. I would argue that the natural world, the outside world, is in fact the true real world. Whenever I go rowing on the waters that lead from my house, I always feel I get away from the enclosed life of houses and offices and come upon a calmer, cleaner, fresher and more peaceful place.

Now in the winter, there are plenty of days that because of tide or weather or both, it is impractical to go. On those days, I either walk our quiet streets or use the elliptical up in our bedroom. And while walking or exercising on an elliptical can provide fair and good exercise, it is not nearly as fun or as peaceful or as calm as rowing. For one thing, when you row you a clear open view of the water and the land beyond and there are no obstacles directly in your way. Walking on the street with trees and houses on either side or using the elliptical in our bedroom, I feel enclosed by comparison.

Now I get the same open feeling about kayaking, but the exercise is not the same because in kayaking you are using just your upper body and arms.

Kayaking and rowing are really two different activities. Both are enjoyable and both provide true exercise. In kayaking, there is always the temptation to pause for a moment and take the view in. I call that “lallygagging”. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is downright pleasurable. In rowing, it is different and, yes, you might pause from time to time. There is no law against that, but rowing also has tendency to create “rhythm”. You get into this very repetitive, hypnotic motion of your arms and legs moving in repetitive cycles that is its own pleasure and addiction. So, with rowing, there this tendency to continue and not stop. Best of all, in winter, because you are using both your arms and legs, it is a much warmer form of exercise and your legs do not get chilly.

So, in my trips I generally row a little over 2 miles. Usually, I bring a beverage. In the summer, a seltzer or a water. In the winter, a cup of coffee or a seltzer or a water. I know that it is not a very wide selection, but it is what I drink these days.

Speaking of these days, we all have enough to worry about. With a sly Pandemic that keeps creeping back with new and different mutations, with high inflation and high gas prices, with logistic bottlenecks, with shortages of various products, with a war in Europe, our plate is full.

But when I go rowing, I forget the problems of the world, the problems of my business, the problems of everyday life. On the water, the world looks different. With a 15 to 20 mph wind blowing down from Canada, the sky is often a baby blue, the water a deeper darker azure blue and the temperature a refreshing 35 degrees Fahrenheit. That temp and wind velocity may not sound inviting, but it is. Out on the water, there is only me and the swans at this time of year. In the sky, I will see an occasional hawk or osprey or eagle circling around, checking the bay below for hapless fish ready for the plucking. On nearby docks or the shore, I will see Great White and Great Blue Herons, Canada Geese and various varieties of ducks, terns, sandpipers and seagulls. It is another world.

So when I go rowing, I am not considering the problems of China. I am out on the water getting whole body exercise, breathing in clean fresh air, basking in the sun and wind, happy that I am alive and lucky enough to be out on the water. For me, this is the real world and I like it.

I do feel sorry for Emperor Xi. He is having a tough time. China is trying to deal with new variants of the Coronavirus raging there and their “No Covid” policy has now been completely abandoned, but that nasty Coronavirus keeps giving our poor Emperor Xi more problems. They are experiencing a new surge of the dread virus and in spite of “opening up” they are still suffering from periodic shutdowns of factories and cities in China. This must be disappointing and downright embarrassing for Xi. He had a good run for over 2 years and could proclaim his “No Covid” policy a true success. But the tables have turned. Bloomberg and the The Financial Times have just reported that China has had over 250,000,000 cases of Covid in just the first 20 days of December.

I am guessing this is no exaggeration. While we do not use China for products as much as in the past, I still have 4 Chinese suppliers and they all report confusion and chaos and surprise about the “opening up” of the country. Previously, they had expressed some doubts about the “No Covid” Policy, but now that it has been abandoned, they seem even more confused. My Weihai supplier of inflatable boats is still required to test every employee every 2 days and that has been going on for the last 2 years. Imagine having a small stick with some white gauze on it, stuck up your nose every 2 days you go to work for the last two years.

My Dongguan supplier called me on Christmas Eve to wish me a Merry Christmas. I thanked him for that and wished him Happy Chinese New Year even though that does not happen until January 22nd. In talking, I asked him how things were going in China. He told me he had caught Covid 3 days earlier and 90% of his employees have gotten Covid in the last 10 days. That did not sound good to me.

But Xi is not the only guy on this planet with some problems. Vladimir Putin also has his plate full. He thought that NATO would be weakened and the invasion of Ukraine would result in a glorious victory in 3 days. Alas, the days passed and the war in Ukraine continued, like so many other wars, which once started, did not go as foreseen. And now almost 11 months into the effort, it seems victory remains out of reach for Czar Putin and Nato, instead of being weakened, has been strengthened. Another case of the best laid plans of Mice and Men.

I think something should be said about the terrible brutality of this war and terrible hardships it must impose on the Ukrainians. It is well known that Putin claims that Ukraine was always the property of Russia, but Mr. Putin does not tell the truth about that. Yes, Ukraine was many times in its history a vassal state of some larger power, but the larger powers were different in different times.

The Vikings had early go with Ukraine, Poland occupied it on various occasions, The Austrian Hungarian Empire also controlled Ukraine for some time. And let’s not forget Adolf Hitler, who armies occupied Ukraine during World War II. And of course, there is the fact that Ukraine became an independent country in 1991 and there was something called the Orange Revolution in 2004 when Russia tried sneak back into Ukraine and Ukrainians overthrew that effort.

Yes, Ukraine has had a long and sad history, but the fact is it is an independent country by the choice of the people there. And, if Putin did not figure that out before he went into Ukraine, he should know that by now. Ukraine does not want him there. The truth of the matter is that this war is a sad and tragic development effecting the peace and stability of the world. At moment, it is hard to see what Mr. Putin can do. He does not seem capable of winning, but he does not seem capable of ending the war. And so it goes on, jeopardizing the whole world.

This brings us to predicament of President Biden. The good President had wanted to save the planet when he came into office, so among his first steps was cancelling oil pipeline construction and restricting drilling of oil and gas. Joe just wanted to encourage people to use electric cars. And while all these things will no doubt be helpful in the future, it did not occur to our President that if you decide to send all sorts of arms to Ukraine, Czar Putin might get angry and try to use oil as a weapon. I would call that a blind spot.

It should be obvious that Russia produces about 30% of the world’s oil and gas and that Russia might want to use that fact to help with its Ukrainian goals. And it probably should have occurred to President Biden, his advisors and the leaders of the EU and UK that when you institute sanctions in response to the invasion of Ukraine, that Russia might not be happy about that.

And perhaps, another consideration should have dawned on the leaderships of the U.S., UK and EU. That is that they are not the only countries in this world buying gas and oil and that maybe, just maybe, Russia might have some other customers quite delighted to buy their oil and gas.

Then there might have been some review of the populations of the world to gain a bit of insight. Yes, the U.S., EU and UK are prosperous areas of the world, but in fact, altogether they only represent about 12% of the world’s population. And so, some consideration of what the other 88% of the world’s population might think about the war in Ukraine and the new conflict zone between the West and the East.

So the question arises whether the countries imposing sanctions on Russia wondered where the other 88% of the world stood? The attitude of Russia was probably pretty easy to see. And yes, there are some other countries that presently seem to be on our side. Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Australia, but it seems that no one realized that China and India might want to use this unfortunate situation as a buying opportunity to get oil and gas at a bargain. Surprise, surprise, that is exactly what they did.

So much for some of the world’s problems effecting 2022 and posing giant questions for 2023.

I have some problems of my own. This year my wife and I faced some major milestones and records. And that in itself was troubling enough.

Consider the various milestones or records that we faced this last year. The first one that occurred earlier in 2022 and that was our 50th Anniversary of being married. That is generally thought to be a good thing, but I am having a hard time digesting that single fact. Married for 50 years…yes, that is good thing…I truly love my wife and I am proud we made it this far. And yes, it was a great achievement. Not many couple can claim that.

That said, I think I would prefer to have just passed my 20th Anniversary. After all, that is pretty good record…a lot marriages these days do not last 20 months…some do not last 20 days. And if it was my 20th Anniversary, then I would be a whole lot younger and I am sure I would feel better about that. And I am pretty sure wife would also prefer we just passed her 20th anniversary.

And that brings up another milestone, or record you might say. As of September, I turned 80 years old. OMG might be a newer generation’s remark about that. I might say Holy Manure myself. Perhaps, I might augment that phrase. And yes, I am mighty happy that I am still alive. And yes, as I already mentioned, I am mighty happy to still be able to go rowing at my age at this time of year…or at any other time year. But 80 years old seems like a pretty big number to me and I am definitely not happy about that. 50 would be better.

And that is still not the only milestone or record. On January 1, 2023 our son turned 50 years old. Considering the fact that he is autistic and was not expected to live that long, turning 50 was also a mighty big milestone and record.

Now, you may say I am cheating a little bit here by including my son’s 50th birthday as a milestone or record of 2022, but I feel it is completely fair since I distinctly remember my wife going into labor before midnight, December 31st, 1972. So, the fact that it took my son a few hours to get out is not the deciding factor in my mind. The fact was he was on the way at the end of 1972 and that makes his 50th birthday a 2022 record.

I will also mention that my wife began planning his birthday party at least four months ago, so this milestone or record has been hanging over us for a long time. And if I think about the 3 events…50 years married, 80 years old and and my son’s 50th birthday, I have to say this has been a very trying year.

By the way, I do want report that I did break my old rowing record. Not by much to be sure. I chalked up 14 rowing sessions, one over my previous record. But a win is win. Now I do not count rowing in December as one of the 3 stressful events or milestones of this year. In truth, rowing is stress reliever.

Now, I can report that we are already in 2023 and, despite the stress and turmoil caused by world events and these 3 major records or milestones, we did manage to get through 2022 and celebrate all 3 events successfully. Our wedding anniversary was celebrated at North Fork restaurant with family and friends, my birthday was celebrated in September at another restaurant with some close family and friends and our son’s birthday was celebrated at home yesterday with more than 30 family and friends.

So, in spite of high inflation, a looming recession, a war in Ukraine, an endlessly determined Coronavirus, product and food shortages, predictions of gloom, doom and World War III, we got through all 3 major milestones to 2023 and while the looming problems of world have not been solved, they have not yet spun completely out of control. And certainly, I hope and wish these problems reach a peaceful and calm solution.

So, now that it is 2023, what did I do?

I went for my first row in 2023.

I launched my rowing SUP off my floating dock this morning. I noticed that the mirror at the back of my rowing frame was loaded with heavy dew drops making it impossible to see through the mirror. I did not bother to reach forward and wipe the water away. Today, I am going to row the old-fashioned way, blind to what is in front of me. Of course, after thousands of rowing trips from my house, I pretty much know my way.

The weather was favorable for rowing as you might be able see from the above picture…a flat low bank of clouds hung over the dark water of the bay, the sun was trying unsuccessfully to break through, the temperature was a comfortable 48, the wind had laid down and was almost non-existent.

I rowed out on to Little Bay, set up my little Bluetooth speaker and start streaming music from WFUV, my favorite NY station. As I rowed out around the old washed-out bridge that used to lead into Strong’s Neck, The War on Drugs started their song, “I Don’t Live Here Anymore”.

In Setauket Bay I rowed past 50 to 60 swans off to my left. I did not disturb them and they did not disturb me. Off to my right, high up in 2 tall trees, I saw 2 hawks hanging out on the Strong’s Neck side of the the bay. No doubt they were scanning the water and the land for edible fish or mammals.

I rowed further to the mouth of Port Jefferson Bay, my bluetooth speaker playing Joni Mitchel, The Rolling Stones, Gorillaz and Billy Idol along the way.

On the shore ahead of me, I hear 2 loud shotgun blasts. My view was still obscured by dew drops on my mirror, so I could not see who was shooting. I presumed it was a couple of duck hunters trying to blow away some ducks. I swung my rowing SUP around to see first hand what I could see. It did not help. I saw no duck hunters and no ducks. Those guys must be well camouflaged on the shore.

This seemed like a good opportunity to row back away from that shore and those duck hunters, wherever they were. I know buckshot cannot go too far, but I feel it was better to put some distance beteeen me and the duck hunters. I rowed back home with more music on the bluetooth, sliding quietly over the water, my blades barely making splash sounds. On the way back, the sun began to peek under clouds as I approached the old washed out bridge.

Going along, I thought about this little rowing trip of 2023 – my journey today was a little over 2 miles there and back.

That made me think of what it must have been like for Caleb Brewster, the young American spy in Colonial Days who used to row a small whaleboat from Strong’s Neck to Fairfield, Connecticutt. That’s a good 12 to 14 miles one way, depending on which secret spot he started out from and which secret spot he landed at. It was an essential job, since George Washington needed information on where the British Army and British warships were located. It was different time, but Caleb must have been pretty tired after rowing 24 to 28 miles on just one of those trips. So, my little trip was pretty puny by comparison.

I continued home. By the time I got into my cove, all of the dew drops had evaporated off of my mirror and I could see my dock perfectly as I approached it. I don’t think Caleb had a mirror when he made his spy rowing trips. It might have been very useful.

As I pulled my rowing SUP up on to my floating dock, it occurred to me that this was not a bad way for an 80 year old to start a new year.

By Cecil Hoge

March, 2022

I would have thought we have enough to trouble us with the recent Pandemic, the coming and going of Beta, Delta and Omicron, the acrimony between the left and right in this country, the disputes over basic facts and realities, the dramatic rise of inflation, the sad history of gun violence in this country, the altercations between peoples, races and countries and many other persistent and present problems afflicting our society, but it seems fate is not satisfied with these simple and recurrent problems. To all of those, we must now add the new War in the Ukraine.

And yes, in the words of Laurel and Hardy, we have gotten into another fine mess. Unfortunately, this situation is not like a Laurel and Hardy movie which you can watch as those two clowns find themselves in greater and greater trouble and laugh until tears come into our eyes and all the sadness and absurdity is replaced by uncontrolled mirth. No, this is not one of those situations. This problem is a really big mess and a truly serious situation and it is not certain how it will turn out.

So Mr. Putin began his invasion a little over four weeks ago and the progress of that invasion does not tell us where this fine mess may go. Mr. Putin chose to invade Ukraine from 4 separate directions. Presumably, he did that in order to take over the whole country. Strangely and maybe hopefully, he has not been successful so far. Before this invasion began many predicted that the Russian army would roll over Ukraine forces in a few days and that, so far, has not happened. In the north of Ukraine, around the principal city of the Ukraine, Kyiv, the Russians have so far been thwarted from entering that city. In the South of the country, Mr. Putin’s forces appear more successful, but appear stalled.

Now there are many opinions about Mr. Putin’s invasion. Some have suggested it was an act of genius, that the invasion showed great ”savvy”, some have said Mr. Putin is great statesman, a person who should be respected. Most people in this country have said that this invasion was an act of dictator who had no right to invade a nearby peaceful country. That is the view of the present U.S. administration.

Even before this invasion began, the present administration predicted it would occur and made great efforts to get the UK and the 27 countries of EU to agree to their point of view and to forge a united and concerted approach to this problem.

And it must said, whatever your earlier opinions about Russia and its relationship with the Ukraine, the Biden Administration has been successful in getting both the agreement and support of the UK and EU. That said, trying to co-ordinate 27 countries that make up the EU and other allies around the world has not been easy. And it has been even harder to get all those countries to decide what harsh steps should be taken. But harsh steps have been decided on and if they were not as strong as some wished, they were far stronger than Russia thought.

Some have said we have not acted harshly enough. Some have suggested we should have armed the Ukrainians well before the invasion. Some have said we should establish a ”No Fly Zone” in the skies over Ukraine. Some have said we should give the Ukrainians jet planes, tanks and other offensive weapons. So far, the United Stated and its allies have only provided the Ukraine with humanitarian aid and tactical weapons of defense. And so far, these weapons have helped slow the advances of the Russian army.

It is said by some that Russia has legitimate argument to invade the Ukraine and that it was the enlargement and encroachment of Nato that actually caused this situation. And certainly, if you listen to the words of Vladimir Putin, he has long said that Russia has been wronged and the West has stolen away a border country that always was under the control of Russia. And while that is historically incorrect, it is true as recently as the demise of the Soviet Union, the Ukraine was a satellite country of Russia.

It should be admitted that some leading minds have predicted this was a coming problem. George Kennan, the American diplomat who first formulated the ”containment theory” to handle the Soviet Union predicted as much. He said that Russia would always require its ”satellite countries” and certainly the Ukraine had been a key satellite country of the former Soviet Union. George Kennan went on to say, late in his life, after the U.S. and the EU had decided to enlarge NATO, that Russia would never accept that enlargement. And certainly it is true that Russia is in the process of trying to correct what they think is a wrong.

So there are valid arguments that suggest if we had not expanded the EU and NATO, the invasion of Ukraine would never have taken place. And that might be true.

There is only one problem with that argument. The EU and NATO did expand starting 1993 and countries did join the both EU and NATO and those countries seem to like the fact that they did join. In addition, it must be noted that Berlin Wall did fall in November of 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed December of 1991. Finally, it should be noted the present country of Russia is different in size and population from the former Soviet Union. It also should be noted in August of 1991 the Ukraine became an independent democratic country.

In short, that was then, this is now.

This brings up the conundrum of the Ukraine. Yes, it had been a part of the Soviet Union. Yes, it is not a member of NATO. Yes, it is not a member of the EU. And yes, the Ukraine does not want too be a part of Russia.

Enter Czar Putin – Vlad the Bad has decided this is a great wrong, a terrible sin against Mother Russia. It now seems Mother Russia wants to reclaim one of its lost children. In Czar Putin’s effort to reclaim the Ukraine, he has now invaded that country. The invasion has not gone according plan. It is taking longer than expected and the Ukrainians have chosen to fight instead of welcome the Russian Army. This has apparently angered Czar Putin and in an effort to secure the Ukraine for Russia, the Russian Army has chosen to destroy the Ukraine. At least, that appears to be the strategy of Czar Putin.

There is the Conundrum in all this. Yes, maybe this war would never have occurred if the EU and NATO had not expanded, but the EU and NATO did expand. And yes, Russia has now invaded a nearby country that is not in the EU or NATO, but it happens to border on a number countries who are in either the EU or NATO or both. And yes, it seems clear that the Ukraine does not want to be part of Russia.

In the meantime, bombing and shelling and hypersonic missiles are raining down on the Ukraine. Ukrainian men, women and children are being killed. Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are dying daily in various parts of Ukraine. The U.S., the UK, the EU have slapped layer after layer of sanctions on Russia. And the fighting and the invasion still goes on. The Russian people and Russian oligarchs are finding their economy being affected and their access to banks, yachts and houses being denied. And many in Russia are not happy about this.

So what is the right thing to do? Let the Ukraine be conquered and destroyed by the Russian Army? Help a country in trouble and provide arms and aid? Establish a ”No Fly Zone” and confront Russia directly in the skies over the Ukraine? Send in troops and expand the war throughout Europe? Start a set of actions that could lead directly to World War III and the use of nuclear weapons?

Further complicating this situation are feelings and wishes of the Ukrainian people. They did not get the memo that they are now part of Russia. They were living a perfectly peaceful and relatively war-free existence up until 4 weeks ago. Yes, there was a simmering war in the Donbas region of their country, but that has been contained and limited over the last 10 years. Then there is the fact that Ukrainians do not want to be a part of Russia. They, in fact, have pledged to fight Russia to the last man, woman and child.

If you think the complications stop there you would be wrong. There are other worries. The 27 countries that compose the EU have some memories of World War II. Other border countries, such as Finland and Sweden, also have similar memories. Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania also have long memories and all of these countries are afraid that Russia, if successful in the Ukraine, will keep going.

So the stakes are high and there is plenty of room for things to get worse. And yes, it is another fine mess.

By Cecil Hoge

It has been a busy few months. So many things to ponder. The Pandemic is still out and about, but seemingly more on the outs. The winter surge is fading and the summer surge has not yet come. Medical experts and politicians of both parties cheer the supposed end, saying the light is shining at the end of the tunnel and America is reopening. Meanwhile, new variants may lurk in the background.

Prices for all goods and services are raging and everyone on a budget who buys necessities and niceties is in a clamor over that. No worries for billionaires, multi-millionaires, reality stars, news anchors, tech entrepreneurs, trendy podcasters, social media influencers and brand ambassadors!

But for rest of us, inflation is a real concern. Yes, salaries are up, but it is a merry chase between prices and wages and somehow prices have the edge.

In the world outside of the U.S., Czar Vlad is rattling sabers and telling the Ukraine that it is our highway or obliteration. Slow Joe, our present President, says I’ve read your mail Vlad, it’s a war of choice and sanctions or you make nice nice and we might hold your hand.

Up in Canada, truckers are agitated over masks and vaccines while down here TV commentators and republicans cheer them on. I wonder if those same folks would be so enthusiastic if it was their garbage truckers not picking up their refuse.

Emperor Xi in the Middle Kingdom is trying to swat down Omicron in old Hong Kong…good luck with that. Meanwhile, the Olympics limp towards a conclusion.

There is a lot of information, misinformation and disinformation to sort through these days. Things come at us at a bewildering speed on a daily basis and it is not easy to sort out what is what. Hopefully, most of us possess come some common sense and we can discern the wheat from the chaff. Hopefully, most of us view events from different perspectives and consider different viewpoints and then make up our minds. Hopefully, we have some sense of past history to least understand the present in context of the past.

There are a lot of views about vaccines, boosters, masks, disinfectants, politics, soap, cures, inflation, stagflation and the economy. I will not try to muddy those waters here. Each person must decide for themselves how to approach the problems we face. And as we all know, many people have many different views.

A few things are certain: In 2019, a new disease started in China and spread around the world and began to infect a lot of people. This disease eventually appeared and infected people in every country in the world. In the U.S. over 900,000 deaths have been attributed to what was first called the Coronavirus. Over time, this disease also became known variously the Wuhan Virus, Covid 19, Alpha, Delta, Omicron, the China Virus and many other knicknames.

In time, it became a Pandemic affecting all parts of this world.

In this country, it is probably best known as The Pandemic. Of course, for those who have read history, this was not The Pandemic, it was only one of many Pandemics that have afflicted Mankind since history has been recorded.

The history of this new Pandemic’s arrival, spread and the different reactions to solve it are now pretty well known. First it spread in China, then it appeared in Europe. Shortly thereafter, it came to the United States, Canada, South America. It went on to spread to all of Asia, India and Africa. Within a year, The Pandemic had spread to every country in the world.

To date, almost 6,000,000 deaths worldwide have been attributed to The Pandemic.

Various solutions have been tried to decrease or eliminate The Pandemic. Many solutions have been proposed…washing hands vigorously, maintaining social distances between people, wearing masks, closing down restaurants, bars, hotels, stadiums, theaters, convention centers and other businesses. None of these measures have been sufficient to stop the spread of the Coronavirus…aka Wuhan Virus, Covid 19, The Pandemic.

Pharmaceutical companies entered into a great race to introduce vaccines which were first were thought to prevent the spread of the disease, but later came to be thought to prevent serious hospitalization and death from the disease. These vaccines were developed very quickly and started to be widely deployed about a year and half after the beginning the first virus infections.

Time and experience and the emergence of new variants of the original disease changed the perceptions of what the true benefits of the vaccines were. Nevertheless, those that had some faith in medical statistics and published medical studies could believe that at the very least the vaccines provided protection to most people against severe disease, hospitalizations and death.

This brings us to moment we now are. There now have been 5 separate variants emerging from the original Coronavirus. The latest variant, Omicron, has proven to be the most infectious. Fortunately, it has also proven to be somewhat milder. Even more fortunately, the Omicron surge now seems to be ebbing in England, Europe and the United States. Presently, experts are predicting the Omicron variant will fade with the winter chill.

What is not known is whether this variant or new variants will emerge to further pester humans. Time will tell, as they say.

At the moment if one is keeping score of the Coronavirus so far, I would give the bugs a solid 7. And if one sticks to the idea of keeping score, I would give the drugs a limpid 3, with the proviso that it is still unknown what the long term effects of having multiple injections of vaccines will be. Many may question the 3 number, whether limpid or not, choosing some other number between zero and 10.

Let’s put that judgment aside…the above scores that I have assigned to bugs and drugs are only temporary and arbitrary scores since it is not clear whether the game is coming to an end or about to go on for several more innings.

All of us have noticed that whatever the score you assign to the bugs of The Pandemic and to the drugs developed to defeat them, The Pandemic has altered the lives of many people. Again, if I were to score the effects of the Pandemic, I would give that a rousing 25. Again, that is an arbitrary score, but I think the effects of The Pandemic on people has been pretty big.

Not only did The Pandemic create affect our lives, it also altered the state of the economy. It should be admitted that when The Pandemic first arrived the American economy was on the mend and close to fully cured from previous ills of The Great Recession. Some would say the economy just before The Pandemic arrived on the scene was the best it ever has been, others would say, not quite, it was recovering from the terrible real estate and stock market collapse of 2008 & 2009 quite well, but maybe it was not completely recovered. Wherever you stand on that issue, it was very clear that the arrival of The Pandemic set us backward.

And from The Pandemic came many effects, actions and reactions. The government decided, rightly or wrongly, in beginning of The Pandemic to shut down offices, businesses, stadiums, theaters, restaurants, bars, convention centers, flights going in and out of the country.

This shutdown of businesses had the immediate effect of putting millions of people out of work. The government acted quickly to soften that blow. And those actions, sending sums of money directly to people and companies, did help many people and many businesses get by during the frightening and financially difficult times of The Pandemic.

The input of billions of dollars directly was very helpful in getting back on the road to recovery, but it was done by the simple method of the government printing money that did not exist. It was also true that the government of the United States printed money a few years earlier to get out of the earlier worldwide collapse of stock markets and financial institutions. So, it should be remembered that the government has propped up the the economy with printed money for almost 15 years.

That created quite large deficits for the government and had an inflationary effect on the economy because we debased the value of our currency to print our way out of The Great Recession and The Pandemic. It should be said that debasing the currency was probably a necessary evil in order to work our way out of these two great calamities.

With the printing of money we did not have came the inevitable and logical result: inflation.

This was further complicated by The Pandemic and some of the problems The Pandemic caused. That fact that shops and malls and restaurants were closed caused people to seek new and different purchasing solutions. Online shopping doubled in the first months of The Pandemic and what people spent money on also changed. So, instead of going to Disneyland or a movie or a restaurant, people ordered Take Out. Much of the Take Out ended up being sent in, as people had meals delivered directly to their apartments or homes. People were afraid to congregate in bars and restaurants and that was made easier by the fact that many bars and restaurants were closed.

People sought other avenues of entertainment. In home exercise equipment, streaming movies and drinking at home rose in popularity while the attendance of music festivals, trade shows, bars, restaurants and sports stadiums declined or collapsed. Air travel almost ceased and people sought activities that could done with social distancing involved. This created a new boom and appreciation home exercise, fishing, kayaking, jogging, walking, eating and drinking. So some activities were decimated while others boomed.

At the same time tens of millions of people rethought their jobs. Some got laid off, some found new occupations, some just stayed home.

All of these changes created new and odd declines and surges in demand, creating sudden shortages of toilet paper, household soaps, masks, sporting goods, groceries, cardboard, paper, warehouse workers, delivery trucks and people to work in technology companies.

And thus the economy experienced sharp declines and rises in odd and strange ways, creating huge demand for new workers, new goods and parts to make those goods. Companies were forced to pay higher wages to get people to man their businesses and that was good. At same time, because costs were rising in factories around the world and in this country, factories everywhere raised their prices and that was bad.

So inflation went from being benign at one or two percent to being a Tiger at seven and half percent. Wages rose along with prices, but it was a heady race and surely prices had the upper hand. So, I give inflation a score of 12 and wages a score of 9. Maybe that is right, maybe that is wrong.

As if that was not enough, enter Vlad the Bad! Czar Vlad had his own agenda and it just can not wait. Czar Vlad was in need of few more satellite countries and Ukraine looked mighty good to him.

Sleepy Joe, as he is known to some, our President, as he is known to others, has been trying to discourage Vlad the Bad, saying I know your game. We got satellites in the sky, we can see what you are doing…you are making a war of choice. If that is so, it’s sanctions for you. So, Sleepy Joe has been very indiscreet and rude in pointing out that Czar Putin may invade Ukraine, but he will have to pay some kind of price.

The price to be paid by Russia has been determined to be ”sanctions”, but as they say, the devil is in the details. Europe and England say they are fully on board, but Germany a little concerned about heat since most of that comes from Vlad the Bad in the form of natural gas. The thought has occurred to Germany that Vlad the Bad might be really bad and shut off the gas. So, a hot war in the Ukraine could result in cold homes in Germany.

So there we are and fine pickle it is!

By Cecil Hoge

I was an only child and that may be part of the problem. My parents gave me quite a bit of freedom to do what I wanted and that allowed me to decide what I did not want to do. I did not have sisters or brothers to take up my valuable time, to play with or to ask me to do things. And that also gave me more leeway to be lazy.

Early on I developed a lack of interest in making my bed and cleaning up my room. When going to school I quickly learned that you could work hard or you could just coast. I chose to just coast.

I will say I worked hard to develop some skills. I liked to work with clay in class, build small wooden forts, drop water bombs out of our apartment window and raise my hand to attract taxicabs. My mother taught me early on how to hail taxicabs and I have been a fan of that up until the era of Uber. I have since adapted to the use of Uber by allowing someone else to input the needed instructions on their cell phone. That has a double benefit: they do the work and they pay.

I grew up in New York City and that encouraged an early use of taxicabs and a dislike of subways and buses. That is not to say that I was an inactive boy. I liked to ride my tricycle on the sidewalks near our apartment on East 92nd Street…that is until I took my tricycle down a hill and I found myself traveling faster than a tricycle should. The result was not pretty: I hurtled over a curb at the end of block, went airborne briefly, almost ran under oncoming car and acquired seven stitches in my chin.

That experience was an important life lesson: Watch your speed!

That did not mean that I sometimes did not make great efforts to accomplish important tasks. As an example of my grit and determination, I once walked 60 blocks as a young boy, buying 12 boxes of Cracker Jacks in an effort to obtain one Captain Video Ring. Success was obtained on the 12th box. This also taught me an important life lesson: Persistence can pay off!

When I got older and went to college, my father remarried and I acquired a brother. That worked out well since my brother stayed in New York while I spent six years trying to graduate from The University of Virginia…two years to flunk out, two years to get back in, two more years to graduate. As you can see from this last sentence, I did learn the value of persistence.

And here I have to say, I also learned another important life lesson. You can coast through college, but you can’t cut two thirds of your classes, party 5 days a week and avoid flunking out. In other words, I found out that there were limits to laziness and sometimes you must apply yourself if you wish to accomplish something. Of course, that did not teach me what I might want to accomplish, but it did teach me how to finish something.

It is is true that I have worked continuously for 54 years and there are some people under the impression that I work hard. And it is true that I work hard on the things that interest me but I am only able to do that because I delete or reduce many other tasks that other people consider important.

Considering the fact that I am inherently lazy, I had to develop a system of laziness. There are many self-help books, articles, and websites devoted to telling people how to avoid gout, catch fish, make money, lose weight, grow hair, invest in stocks, be wise, have clear skin, but there are no books or literature or information online devoted to tell people how to improve and refine laziness. I thought I might correct this omission and explain my system of laziness.

I would like to point, while it may sound simple, being lazy is a kind of art. The trick is to do as little as possible and still be able to accomplish some important things, like, for example, supporting yourself and your family.

Now there are people who are very successful at being lazy, but not at supporting themselves or their family. But I say, where is the percentage in that? Being lazy is quite uncomfortable if someone is trying to take back your car, delete your cell phone service, cut off your cable service, kick you out of your home. No, laziness is of no benefit if you cannot enjoy your laziness. And that means simply that you must have some way to get by in life without being a burden on yourself, your family or your friends.

In truth that means you must either be able to financially support yourself or get enough income from a liability lawsuit or a carefully planned marriage or well-designed prenup to be comfortable. And that should include all family members – your wife, husband and/or children – because who wants a whole bunch of people complaining all the time. Laziness is something to be savored, something to be enjoyed, it should not be impaired by other more mundane difficulties.

Considering the times that I have passed through, it is not always easy to employ my system of laziness. You have to be able to twist and turn and make adjustments according the times.

I have to insert here, when I was a young man I learned something very important about manufacturing efficiency and this proved helpful in refining a system of laziness. I was working in my father’s warehouse producing something called “AutoCast Fishing Rods”. There I found the secret of avoiding ”lost motion”. That is, I discovered that you could do the same thing two different ways and one way could be far slower and harder while the other way could be far faster and easier.

This taught me to always choose the faster and easier way.

When it comes to aches and pains, they say that motion is the lotion. But when it comes to efficiency, the less motion you expend in accomplishing a task, the better. When working on the fishing rod production line, I found the more economical your motions and more direct your actions, the more fishing rods you produced. I have since applied that technique in the pursuit of laziness.

Now, recently, a new development has occurred. The Pandemic came. While the Pandemic certainly had many terrible aspects, in one way, it proved to be a blessing in disguise. It truly upped my Lazy Game. Because the Pandemic altered many aspects in the way we work and live, it also opened new vistas in how to be lazy:

1. Working from home. Oh, let me count the many ways and opportunities that little change made.
2. Now, because you do not have to get up and drive to the office, you can sleep 30 to 60 minutes more. Even better, in most cases, you do not have to brush your teeth, shave your face or take a shower, although your partner may object to that if you do not shower after several days in row. You only have to dress from the the waist up – that saves a good 10 minutes a day. Yes, if you have some important Skype, Zoom or Microsoft meetings, it may be necessary to present yourself a little better – 2 or 3 strokes with brush through your hair should do it. Wear a shirt that appears to be clean and crisp. Maybe a swipe or two with an electric razor. Remember, some stubble looks sexy these days.
3. And of course, because restaurants and bars are less well attended, all you have to do is eat and drink at home. That saves a whole lot of lost motion and keeps many a drinking person out of jail. Takeout: I have been a fan of takeout long before the Pandemic. For years, we provided significant income to some of our local eateries and delis by buying takeout. Recently, because of the Pandemic, local restaurants have added an excellent refinement. It is called ”Curbside Service”. Now, you can call in your takeout order, drive to a parking space just outside the restaurant, call the restaurant to let them know you are there and they will bring the order directly to your car door. Wow. That saves an easy 30 minutes a week. Now you may ask why not take this one step further and ask the restaurant to deliver the takeout order to your door, but here I must state there are limits to the benefits of laziness. Specifically, this invites the likelihood of the food arriving cold and clammy. I hate cold and clammy food, so I make the effort to pick it up while it is still hot and ready for consumption.
4. Starting work in the era of Pandemic has been made easy with cell phones, PCs and laptops. In my case, it is just short and quick journey from my bedroom down the thirteen steps to my living room. I have taken over my favorite lounge chair in the living room as my office. It has an excellent view through large glass picture window out to my front lawn, my dock and the bay beyond. All that is necessary is to power up on my various digital devices and flip on the VPN. Voila, I am at zee office monitoring e-mails, reviewing incoming orders. Added perks – should the tide be rolling in and the weather conditions amendable, I can be out on the water paddling or just drifting on bay soaking up sun in just minutes. Should someone need to contact me cell or Skype, I can turn down the bluetooth speaker blasting some cherished rock song, pick up my oblong and say, ”What the hell do you want?” Actually, I am far more polite than that, but the point is that I can stay in touch on land or sea.
5. There are some drawbacks to working from the comfort of my armchair… other people talking in the background can muddle an important call, my VPN, provide by our rotten cable service, has a tendency to drop out 5 or 10 times day. Here, I have to take a little blame. So far, I have not complained to the rotten cable service because I am too lazy to pick up the cell phone next to me.
6. And of course, when working from home, you can schedule your own time. That means you can eat or drink when you want, put a log on the fire, take a sun break on the porch, go to the hardware store when you want, fix that loose doorknob when you want. These days they call that multi-tasking, but in my mind it really is improving work efficiency while being as lazy as possible.
7. The Pandemic allows you to refine your diet while reducing time and effort. I would like to suggest the following 3 diet solutions for a quick and easy lunch – 1. P&J (aka, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) – open 2 jars, smear some of each on 2 pieces of bread and you got yourself real meal, 2. grilled cheese – alas, you do have to clean the frying pan, but preparation is quick and easy, 3. cereal – pull out a bowl, fill it up with cereal and pour milk, add sugar as needed. These simple lunch solutions are quick and easy, tasty and nutritious and clean up is almost simple as preparation. Plus, they not only save you time, they save you money. They are the proverbial Win, Win.
8. The above are just a few of the ways the Pandemic has upped my Lazy Game.

But one should not forget the classics, so below I mention some other important classical methods to reduce and delete unwanted work:

1. Wear a hat – Why? This avoids the necessity of combing or brushing your hair, since your hat safely hides the state of your hair. If you are not going to an office to work, you can complete many important trips to grocery stores, hardware stores, marinas and outdoor bars without ever removing your hat and revealing you are a disheveled slob.
2. Never wash your car. It is best to depend on the Good Lord to send rain and do that for you. Should your car need more than the Good Lord’s assistance, take it to the local car wash. The time spent at the car wash reading magazines may to lead to some important discoveries about miracle diets, hair loss cures and new restaurants.
3. Never mow your lawn. It is said that there is much pleasure to derive from keeping your lawn green and trim. That surely is true, but there is more pleasure in watching someone else mowing your lawn and keeping it green and trim.
4. Do things in circles – instead of getting up to do one thing and then coming back to sit down, try to remember some of the 58 things your wife asked you to do and do one or two them on your way back to the chair. After all, if you are expending some energy to do one thing, it is not terrible to do one or two things more on the return trip. A good example of this is: if you are getting to bring your empty dinner plate back to the kitchen sink, remember to pick up a spoon and a pint of ice cream on your back. It’s a Win, Win.
5. Do not do anything that may extend your efforts without added benefits. Using the example above of returning from your trip to the kitchen with a pint of ice cream, you may consider that you may not want to eat a whole pint of ice cream. If that is the case, you may ponder taking out a clean dish and a ice cream scoop to download a smaller serving of ice cream. Banish that thought. You have already acquired the tools you need to accomplish your task. Simply return to your chair, pop off the ice cream lid, dig in with your spoon and eat as little or as much of the pint as you wish. Of course, this does require a trip back to the fridge to put the remaining ice cream safely away. But as they say in exercise, ”no pain, no gain.” And remember, by following my advice, you have avoided the task of pulling out a clean dish, dirtying it up and later having to wash it. Trust me, your wife will be much happier about that.

Yes, the Pandemic has provided the lazy with many opportunities to up their game. And the fact that some activities are not always practical to do, such as dining indoors during a plague or going to Disneyland, is not as bad as it may sound. These are really just self-economizing opportunities to save gas, time, money and up your Lazy Game.

By Cecil Hoge

August 11th, 2021

We are back in Montauk for vacation in the new normal. Everyone we speak to tells us that Montauk this summer has been “crazy”. Delmack, the Jamaican lady who comes and cleans our room each day, tells us Montauk has been “crazy”.

”People do not want to go in town…it’s just too crazy…no parking, cars jutting in and out everywhere, people everywhere, no space in the shops, no tables free in the restaurants…yes, Montauk is crazy this summer.”

It was not that way last summer when many stayed away from indoor restaurants and shops. The town was still crowded, the beaches were crowded and outdoor restaurants were crowded, but then many wore masks and many were far more cautious in their vacation celebrations.

The Pandemic still about, but far more people have been vaccinated and there is a sense that things are returning to some kind of normal.

But at the WaveCrest, our Montauk vacation residence, it seems normal is already here. In the mornings, there are beautiful sunrises most days. Early in the morning, the beaches are empty except for one or two fishermen and some eager early morning walkers or joggers. During the day, the umbrellas pop up on the beach and beach chairs are laid out and families and kids come and then girls looking for boys and boys looking for girls come and then, others looking for each other come…they all sit around in little clusters and the only sound heard except that of the ocean surf is the motoring sound of the beach buggy zipping back and forth, hauling umbrellas and chairs to their appointed places. As mid-morning comes the voices of kids and adults are heard drifting across the beach with the sound of the ocean murmuring quietly or roaring loudly with waves breaking on the beach.

Today, the ocean is murmuring…making a sound more like Long Island Sound than the great Atlantic Ocean. Other days, the surf is booming. We came the day after a tropical storm and then the sea was still fierce with waves crashing in thunderous booms. But no more, the weather has turned hot, the wind has dropped to a stall, the sun blisters everything that exposes itself for more than 20 minutes. It is as hot as Montauk gets. We are at the end of Long Island and usually cool breezes sweep over these rolling hills and somewhat barren landscape and generally it never really gets that hot. But these days it is.

Big Doings are going on in the world. The present President is struggling with his new job and his recent decision to depart Afghanistan. It is not going well, two bombs went off near the airport in Kabul and over 100 people were killed, including 13 U.S. servicemen. Leaving is not easy and whether it could be done better is on the minds of many. I have decided that our exit from Afghanistan was not correctly planned, but I have no knowledge of what good withdrawal would look like. Hopefully, something less than the present chaos. That said over 100,000 people have been flown out and many thousands more are hopefully waiting to leave. Whatever, it is not a pretty or a proud exit. For those who remember, it reminds one of the last days of Saigon.

On the stock market front, all is seemingly well. Markets seem to be drifting ever higher in this strange summer. Occasionally, the market take tip, but even when they do that they remain near all time highs. The immediate market collapse that was predicted by the former President, like the reversal of recent election results and the magical disappearance and demise of the Pandemic, has not come to pass.

In fact, on the Coronavirus front, Covid 19 has again raised its ugly face. As we begin this vacation, cases are running 140,000 a day, hospitalizations are again getting very high in certain Southern States and deaths are running over 1,000 per day. In short, in spite of vaccinating almost 50% of the population, the number of cases and hospitalizations are higher than at the same time last year. Deaths are running just a little above their levels at the same time last year. We shall see how that is proceeding as one vacation in Montauk melds into another vacation in Maine.

Two vacations in the same year may sound obscene, but, hey, we are getting on in age and we have to make the most of it…so, two vacations is this year’s plan.

One thing has not changed at the WaveCrest, that is the very convenient food truck called the WaveCrave. It is parked about 50 feet from our motel room door. That is a truly great feature in this crazy busy summer season in Montauk. All that is necessary is to mosey out of our motel room door, walk the 50 feet and give Steve my order for the morning. And doing so, Steve, the proprietor of the WaveCrave truck, fills me in on the latest.

”Montauk has been Crazy this summer,” he says, echoing the very words of Delmack, our Jamaican cleaning lady. We will hear that more and more as this vacation goes on and we go on to the next vacation. The word “crazy” seems to be the new byword for this summer.

“It’s really crazy…prices of everything are going up, people want their stuff fast and I can’t get no help…I’m looking, but you can’t find people to work.”

After some preliminary chitchat on the state of the summer and Steve’s business, I place my order with Steve – a Basic Joe (2 eggs, sausage & cheese on a roll) for me and a Nancy Atlas (3 eggs, avocado and some other health ingredients in a wrap) for my wife. Steve informs me that the two orders will be ready in 8 minutes. I go off and sit down at a nearby table where I can survey the sea and consult my oblong.

Oblong is the descriptive term given to cell phones by a Japanese writer I happen to be reading. “Klara and The Sun” is the book and Kazuo Ishiguro is the author. It is the the strange tale told by an AF (artificial friend) about a sickly young lady. Oblong is the term applied to peoples’ cell phones and I think it is quite appropriate.

After scanning incoming emails, I scan the news…it is not good. Nobody is happy about the mess in Afghanistan and the Covid numbers are stubbornly high. It seems that the disease has no respect for our wishes. That is worse for the present President, since he has promised to make it go away. Well, he promised to get out of Afghanistan and indeed he did that. But what a mess. The fight against Covid seems similarly messy. The more we vaccinate, the more the virus seems to stick around. This summer the problem is being blamed on the Delta Virus, the latest mutation of that tricky Coronavirus. 

”Cecil,” Steve calls out and I slip my oblong into my pocket and meander over to Steve. All is well, I pick up my breakfast orders and head back to the hacienda 50 feet away. My wife and I set up the little table on the porch where we can observe the first stirrings of people out on the beach. My wife sits in the portable rocking chair we brought, I sit in the comfy lounge chair that came with room. We sip coffee and munch away at our breakfasts. Out in front of our porch the waves break on the sand and a hot new day has begun. My wife complains that her sandwich is too big. Considering that it is advertised to have 3 eggs, that is no surprise. Fresh air blows in from the Atlantic onto our little porch overlooking the sea, the sun is getting higher, a few people are walking along the ocean beach. Life is good.

In Montauk, I spent the days going for a swim in the ocean while my wife enjoyed the comforts of her much larger oblong (an iPad Pro) and some good books, sitting in the rocker, overlooking the beach, her morning made in the shade on our covered porch. As noon passes, each day we ponder eating choices. This year we are determined to eat in as many restaurants as will have us. 

Of course, as a matter of ritual, we go to Gossman’s, which my wife finds lacking in the swordfish she ordered while I happily munch down what appears to be quite fresh tuna. Some days chicken, some days chicken feathers. Our meals with Gossman’s have been hit or miss recently with one invariably having a much better meal than the other. There are compensations for this not so reliable food service. You sit outside in the shade or inside the main restaurant with windows wide open. Either way, there is a great view of the inlet with boats parading in and out is just a few feet away. The sea air is fine to breathe and you can feel lucky in just being there, even if your meal ain’t what it should be.

In the days that follow, we slip into a pattern of breakfasts from the WaveCrave in the morning, swimming or paddling or walking along the beach and heading out in the early afternoon for a sit down meal at one of the many local restaurants. My wife has this theory that a late lunch is better than a lunch and a dinner so that is our solution to dieting. I have admit that two squares a day sometimes don’t always make it for me and often I hit the vanilla ice cream later in the day.

Early in the trip, I discover that I have forgotten my all important paddling gloves so I meander over to Amagansett to the Beach and Bicycle store to fix this omission. Beach and Bicycle quickly informs me that the summer has been “crazy” and that they are all sold out of paddling gloves. That is unusual because they usually carry a pretty wide selection of paddling equipment, but the lady informs me that there are “logistic” problems and that they sold out of all sorts paddling stuff. I don’t commiserate with her about “logistic” problems. Otherwise, I would spend an extra half day listing a litany of my “logistic” problems.

In any case, we both agree it has been a “crazy” summer. But all is not lost. The lady remembers they also sell bike gloves, so I buy a really sexy pair of TREK gloves with all sorts nice Italian names listed on them. The lady informs me they are the last pair she has and they are very good quality for just $65. These gloves are really more like bikini gloves, but I figure in the hot weather Montauk is experiencing, they might just be the thing I need. So, I snap them up before someone can come into the store and snatch them away.

And the $65. proves to be well spent because shortly afterward I ask her about where a good paddle spot might be where I can park my car. Most places on the East End require a Easthampton parking permit. For those of you who do not know it, Easthampton is the township that covers everything on the South Fork east of Southampton to Montauk. The parking permits cost 300 bucks a pop, but the real catch 22 is that the town doesn’t really issue any…you have a better chance of winning the New York lottery for 5 billion dollars. It seems the town of Easthampton does not want evil kayakers molesting their waterways and stumbling into their restaurants and stores.

Anyway, the lady gives me a tip on a great paddling spot on the North side of Amagansett off of Landing Road. It so happens that I actually know the spot and have paddled there several times before, but last year the Town of Easthampton had put up a sign saying parking stickers were required. The lady tells me that parking permits are no longer required there and so I get the good news I can go to what is surely one the prettiest paddling spots on Long Island.

Armed with this good news and my sexy new paddling (bicycle) gloves, I return to the WaveCrest…my mission accomplished. And of course, I tell my wife the good news. She remembers the spot and is happy to hear it.

On that good note, we head out for another afternoon lunch…this time to Duryeas. Now this a place that has a long history in Montauk. In the late sixties and the early 70s, there was a New York Assemblyman named Perry Duryea. He was reputed to be a very sharp and wise politician. He was known as the Silver Fox because of his silver white hair and trim frame. His family owned a lobster business in Montauk. In doing that, they set up some picnic tables out back where you could could come and have lobsters and beers. It was a pretty unassuming place, but it had really good lobsters, good fish and good beer to top it off with.

We used to go there for many, many years. Fast forward to the era of oblongs and the Pandemic and the same place has morphed into a super sleek and artsy-crafty seafood restaurant with some really good fish and lobsters at really high prices. I am not a fan of their service system which requires you to mark down on a paper menu what seafood specialities you want and what drinks you might require. As you come into the place there is a little sign informs you that “Everybody here is famous”. Whether that is to make you feel good or to attract famous people, I am not sure.

There is a nice French lady that, once the wait for table is over, leads you to a table. They have added some pretty striped cushions to wooden bench seats in one part of the restaurant and there is nice long dock with some nice tables and seats that leads out to several go fast boats that will, if you have an invitation, take you to some billionaire’s mega yacht. Pretty young ladies parade by on that dock past the tables of famous diners and on to the impressive GoFast boats.

The place is in one way very similar to original Duryeas, but now has been Euronized so the famous are sure to come and diners cannot escape for less than $200 a couple. And indeed, there are a lot pretty people pecking at their lobster towers while sipping some nice wine or a bit of the bubbly. And back to the subject of a wait, yes, there always is. Generally, it seems to be 20 to 40 minutes, although it may be faster for the chosen famous who occasionally drop by. The place starts and, no doubt, ends crowded, each day, presuming good weather, soft summer breezes and warm temperatures prevail.

My wife and I are partial to the Branzino which they serve whole with fish head intact and some delicious veggies and peppers and sauces surrounding the display. I have had similar servings of this fish in Italy and in Asia. And if the sauces are right and fish is fresh and veggies good, I really recommend that dish. We have had it at Duryeas a couple of times and each time we nominate it as our best meal in Montauk. As mentioned, I am not a fan of their self serve system. In particular, I do not like having to get up, walk over an order booth and order another wine for my wife and another seltzer for myself. I just think if you are going to spend $200/plus for lunch with your wife, people should come to your table and take your order and bring everything you ask for. But, it is what it is and I still think they do have the best fish in Montauk.

In Montauk, we ended up having many a lunch in many a place. Some were good, some were not. Pretty much everyday, I went for a swim in the ocean and for me that was grand. Several days, my wife and I went paddling on the North side of Amagansett in Acabonic harbor and that was grand…with birds aplenty, scenic water views and some tranquil peace on the water. On other days, I went for a paddle by myself, also in Acabonic Harbor.

During our stay in Montauk stock markets kept drifting upward. Some days the markets would take a momentary dip, but most days the markets would resume their relentless upward trend. Why stocks were moving upward was not exactly clear because economic reports were mixed and often there were earning disappointments in the case of individual companies or disappointments in employment reports. But the ever wise investors paid no heed to any economic concerns and markets just kept trending upward.

As the days passed in Montauk, the numbers of Delta virus cases began to steadily increase. And with the increase of cases, shortly thereafter came an increase hospitalizations and deaths. Since my wife is not a big fan of news, whether it comes on TV, internet or otherwise, I kept up with the goings on through my oblongs – my cell or my iPad. Because I like to look at charts, I took to looking at the interactive charts the New York Times publishes, like the one below showing the up and down progress of the Coronavirus since the beginning of the Pandemic until October 10th, 2021. By that time, the Coronavirus had kindly started to once again decline.

Of course, we all know that every media company has its agenda and the New York Times is well-known for its liberal leanings. That said, the charts I was looking at were tracking actual reported numbers of Delta variant cases, hospitalizations and deaths and these same numbers were also reported by many other media companies, as well John Hopkins Hospital, which has established a special section of their website to track the rise and fall of the Coronavirus.

As mentioned before, the rebirth of the Coronavirus through the Delta variant this summer was very embarrassing to Joe Biden, the present President. It was a key promise of his in getting elected to get control of the Coronavirus. And if one thing was very clear, it was that the Coronavirus was still not under control.

It is interesting here to note the various agendas of different left and right leaning media companies. Fox News was touting at every chance what a great tragedy it was for us to get out of Afghanistan, leaving our former friends and allies at the whim of the Taliban and what a great mess the immigrant problem was at the border. Strangely, this was the same media company backing the former President who declared it was policy of his to get out of Afghanistan. So, regarding Afghanistan, it would seem that Fox News was most upset that President Biden carried out the stated policy of the previous President in a messy manner.

And as mentioned, when Fox News was not talking about the collapse and terrible defeat of our efforts in Afghanistan, it was talking about the rush of refugees coming over the Mexican border. And indeed both of those things were happening in real time, so they both were true events.

Meanwhile, in another world away, CNN and MSNBC were busy discussing the terrible events of the January 6th “insurrection” and the fact that Donald Trump was still saying the election had been stolen from him. CNN and MSNBC ran videos again and again of the Congress being overrun by protesters and clips of The Donald saying he was robbed. It is also true that both those things were happening, but it was clear, and should be clear to anyone watching all three media networks, that each media network had an agenda and none were unbiased in their approach to the news.

Our days in Montauk were blessedly free from digital distraction and/or political discussions. We would get up, have a simple breakfast, swim or walk and go to lunch in the afternoon. My wife and I would have our 2 squares…that is, breakfast and a late lunch. After lunch, either my wife and I or just me would go for a paddle in Acabonic Harbor, taking in the scenic water views and watching birds happily munching on minnows and diving for larger fish.  

Dinner most days was then omitted. We would come back to the room, watch the sun fade on the ocean, catch a little tube and retire. The omission of dinner was generally good for the diet except in my case, because almost every afternoon or evening I would run down to John’s Drive In and augment my calorie intake with vanilla ice cream. It was maybe not the best dietary schedule, but it surely was quite pleasant.

Our several weeks came and went as vacations do. The meals were good, the swimming was good, the walking, the paddling and the relaxing on the porch overlooking the ocean was all good. And as everyone said, Montauk was crazy. The restaurants had lines and in the stores you had to walk sideways just to get past clutches of customers. Each night, the sun would go down as we would watch the waves breaking from the comfort of our porch. somehow, the memory of the crowded restaurants and stores would fade with afternoon sun.

But soon, as in all things, the time passed and we headed home, back to the real world.

For next two weeks we returned to our real hacienda, which was not hard to do, since Montauk is only 60 miles from Setauket. There I re-entered the world of work and spent my time on ”logistic issues”. That consisted mainly in chasing container shipments, trying to figure out when they get on a ship, off a ship, on a truck and off a truck and finally in our warehouse. It was a merry chase. Perhaps, merry is not the correct word.

When not working on getting products to ship and sell, I am spending my time working on the two new boat models I plan to introduce in 2022. I plan to introduce a new larger pontoon boat to be named the FastCat 14.4. It will hold up to 4 people and a 20 hp motor. It will go 22 mph and I have been testing a prototype of this model at my house all this spring and much of the summer. I am also developing a new larger expedition Travel Canoe designed to take large quantities of gear for extended trips on lakes and rivers. We have already gotten two prototypes of that model and a 3rd prototype is shown above. It is not quite right, but it is getting close. The model above is to be called the Travel Canoe 17. Both the 14.4 and 17 refer to the feet lengths of the two models.

This year has been both satisfying and frustrating. Sales are up for the second year in row, but headaches about getting orders produced, shipments sent, containers into our warehouse, having stock of different models and getting orders shipped out…all these problems seemed to have been magnified by 10.

And of course, we are seeing, like virtually everyone else on planet earth, price increases on everything and delays in production, shipping in, shipping out. All of these problems cause additional problems with customers. Explaining where shipments are, when they are expected and when they will be shipped out adds a great deal of work, especially when almost every shipment coming in gets delayed. 

I have been having things made around the world for over 50 years and I have never seen things this difficult, this screwed up. We are seeing this both in our fishing lure business and in our inflatable boat business. And whether it is packaging or shipping or materials or production, whether it is in the U.S., Asia or Europe, we are seeing day to day cost increases. And of course, that means that we will have to raise our prices for the coming year and what effect that will have God only knows.

So, Phil, the auto repair guy in Montauk, is not the only businessman unhappy with the state of the world.

This year, we planned something unusual…a second vacation. My wife and I have planned to go visit a cousin in York, Maine. So, after two weeks ricocheting between instructions to suppliers on new products and chasing existing products and pushing out old and new models, off we go to the great State of Maine.

To do that, we take the very convenient Port Jefferson Ferry to Bridgeport, Connecticut and after 20 minutes of wandering down some sorry looking streets in Bridgeport we manage to get on 95. From there it is quite literally a straight shot to York, Maine.

York, Maine is only a little over 4 hours away driving on Route 95. The nice point here is that you don’t have to think too much, since 95 leads directly past York, Maine. In fact, the only difficult part was following signs from the Bridgeport Ferry terminal to 95. It should be easy since it is less than 2 miles away, but at the very last turn, the one you need to make, the authorities have omitted to place any sign referencing 95. That led to a 15 minute detour around some of Bridgeport neighborhoods, but after several lefts, rights and a circle or two, we were on track, on the great highway 95 corridor.

Thereafter, it was all a piece of cake. and strangely, 95 was not its usual ”crazy”. It seems they have actually fixed some parts of that road, which from Bridgeport to New Haven to Providence always had bumpy, unpaved sections under construction to slow you down and slow your way through. This time the ride was blissfully smooth and without incident.

About 4 and half hours later we were checking into something called DockSide Guest Quarters. That consisted of an old Captain’s house on a promontory overlooking the York River and a nice collection nearby of bungalows with small suites overlooking York Harbor. Our room is quite comfortable. I should say rooms because there is an outer living room with a kitchenette to the side that leads directly to our bedroom. In front of the living room, there is a nice porch with the view you see in the picture above. We arrived at our quarters around 4 in the afternoon and immediately plopped down on the porch and watched a continual parade of boats coming into the river and going out into the ocean. York has long been an active little port with recreational boaters, lobstermen, lobster ladies, commercial fishermen, commercial fisher ladies coming and going with boats of many styles.

I can say we were happy with the hotel setup. It was indeed a very nice place. Because we both somewhat tuckered from our drive, we called my cousin to let her know we would catch up with her and her partner the next day. Since the day was getting on, I took over the main job of lining up victuals for evening. I accomplished that by walking down from our room, past the captain’s house, past the operating boat yard to a small bar situated directly overlooking York Harbor. There I ordered, guess what, two lobster sandwiches, french fries and cole slaw. While I waited for the meals to be prepared, I had a large seltzer and struck up a conversation with a husband and wife who were enjoying evening cocktails as the sun was slowly declining and the Maine chill was ascending. I asked what the summer had been like.

“It was crazy, all of Massachusetts and much of the rest of the country came this summer. The stores, the roads were all clogged with people and cars and it was impossible go almost anywhere.”

And so the operative word for this summer still remained ”crazy”. I talked a little more with the couple about York and the weather.

The guy asked me I where we came from. Long Island I replied.

”Well the weather is pretty much same. We don’t get a lot of snow in winter here. They do get a lot of snow 5 miles inland, but here the ocean keeps the temperatures moderate and generally the winters are mild.”

I did not want to disagree, but already it seemed to me that the weather in York was a good 10 degrees cooler than Long Island and that afternoon as the sun was setting, it was getting downright nippy. But no matter. I was happy to talk to the couple and get some info on York.

The guy turned out to be a kayaker. That gave me an opportunity to ask about put-ins, take-outs and nice places to paddle. It turned out that there was a nice scenic place to paddle right around the hotel. The hotel was situated on something called Harris Island. I would not have called it an island because a road led onto the island. My preferred term would have been peninsula, but who was I to argue with the locals? Anyway, my conversation with the nice couple gave me a pretty good idea where to go for at least that paddle.

The open bar had an interesting setup in order to provide food. About 20 feet from the open bar and tables with umbrellas was a food truck that made up whatever meals and snacks customers ordered. In no time the lobster sandwiches and sides were ready. I grabbed the bag with the food, finished my seltzer and said goodbye to the nice couple.

Within minutes, my wife and I were enjoying our lobster sandwiches in our quaint room overlooking the York River. Since we had savored lobster sandwiches in Montauk, that immediately led to a family discussion of who had the best lobster sandwiches. That was hard choice, but my wife and I quickly came to the belief that it was a close choice between Steeve’s lobster sandwiches at the WaveCrave or the DockSide Bar lobster sandwiches. We gave the to edge to the DockSide Bar which had lobster slightly fresher and juicier, but trust me it was a very close call.

We spent the next several days meeting up with my cousin and her partner, Kerry, and going sometimes to their house for lunch or dinner and sometimes, here and there in York for lunch or dinner.

My cousin is a therapist, so she deals with people’s problems, be they real, imagined, physical or mental. And I gather people in York have just as many problems as they have on Long Island. Her customers, aka her patients, suffer a wide variety of physical and psychological problems. I gather that many of her patients came to her specifically because they could not get help from their regular doctors. And whether the problems were physical or psychological problems, one thing was always true – their problems were real to them.

In the last year, because of the Pandemic, my cousin tells me the way she treated her patients changed. Pre-pandemic, patients came to her office and sat down in front of her and laid out their problems two or three feet away. Since the onset of the Pandemic, she treated patients exclusively by Zoom. And apparently, business by Zoom has been a boom. No lockdown threatened her business, which apparently became busier than ever, with back to back Zoom meetings instead of face to face meetings in her office.

I asked her how that was working out.

”Great,” she said, ”I do not have to leave my house and the patients seem more at ease to tell me what is really bothering them.”

And I gather a lot is bothering her patients, dealing with deaths of a relative or a loved one, suffering from bouts of insomnia, some with deep traumas coming from sexual assault at one time or another, some dealing with incessant pain, some dealing with a barrage of other physical ailments, some with deep insecurities about their jobs, their life, some with hard economic problems, some dealing with alcohol and drug abuse, some just freaked out by the stress caused by the Pandemic or money problems, some dealing with stress caused by the patients themselves. So my cousin was monitoring a host of problems and trying to advise and help her patients with all sorts of physical and mental issues.

And from what my cousin was telling me the business of coping with psychological and physical problems was booming. The Pandemic seemed to be multiplying the problems people faced day to day. Her days were fully booked from 9 to 5 with patients from all over Maine with many problems. How to advise all her different patients seemed to me a very difficult job, but my cousin Wendy had been doing this for years and apparently is able to work her way through other people’s problems.

I asked her if she thought dealing with patients was easier before or during the Pandemic.

”It is easier for me now because all I have to do turn on the computer. It gives me certain distance between me and my patients and, in many ways, it seems easier for the patients. They seem to feel freer to tell me what their real problems are. It is as if the computer puts a plexiglass wall between us and they feel free to express the truth because I am not actually in the room. One thing is for sure. There are a lot more problems out there and many more people need help.”

I tried to think what it must be like dealing with lots of people with lots of problems. In a way, I feel that happens with some of my employees. They sometimes have problems and sometimes I have to figure out ways to help them. But the operative word is sometimes. Thinking of my cousin dealing with non-stop problems day after day, I am not sure I would not develop have deep psychological problems myself just listening to other people’s deep psychological problems. I can only admire cousin’s fortitude in dealing with an endless parade of Zoom patients.

My cousin happens to be a fairly active lady, so during our visit we go kayaking on several days. She has taken the occasion of our visit to take a few days vacation so paddling is practical. Our trips were on the York River, which turns out to have lots of intimate waterways and scenic spots. On the second day we go for a paddle around Harris Island, which indeed turns out to be quite beautiful. The weather is cool, but not cold, with bright sun and clear blue skies and just a few cumulous white clouds. The spin around the island takes about an hour and involves paddling around a small bay leading to a narrow water path and then paddling under a low bridge to the other side of the island. It is the kind of paddle that puts fresh air in your lungs and new energy in your body.

In the late afternoons or evenings in York, we would head out to a local restaurant or head over to my cousin’s for dinner. She and her partner are vegetarians, so the fare at her house is all vegetarian. That is fine for me and my wife. We have had plenty of meat and seafood dinners over this summer. A couple of meals of veggies cooked freshly and deliciously by my cousin not only are healthy interludes, they taste delicious. So it all is a win, win.

Our days at the Dockside Guest Quarters start in a very similar way to the way they started in Montauk. The Dockside offers free breakfasts, so in the morning, I walk about 75 feet the Captain’s house and pick up a tray for breakfast. It includes a hot pot of coffee for 2, warmed buns, honey, jellies and jams and sometimes eggs or pancakes or french toast. And like our mornings in Montauk, we would sit on the porch, munch on the breakfast goodies and check out the waterviews. The view of the York River and ocean beyond was a little different than the sandy beaches of Montauk and the ocean beyond, but the feel of breakfast in York is much the same.

On another day, my cousin and drive inland to Scotland Bridge Road which conveniently has a bridge going over the York River. Just before the bridge is a place to pull over and park with an easy put-in to launch a kayak. It takes only a few minutes to inflate and setup up one my inflatable kayaks. We then launch and head up river with the tide, which is about a half hour from full high tide. That fact provides us with some current to paddle up river, which we do for about 45 minutes.

Unlike our earlier paddle around Harris Island the scenery up river is quite different and so is the weather. As we proceed upriver, the waterway becomes more intimate and marsh-like. The weather on this day is also a study in contrasts…it now being hot and almost sweaty to paddle. The sun burns down on us with an intensity I had not considered possible for early October in Maine. On this section of the river, it meanders through reeds and marsh areas, looking more and more like a salt water tidal marsh and no longer like a flowing river.

After paddling for about 45 minutes, I sensed from afar that my wife becoming a little bored by the fact that we were still paddling and so I tell my cousin it is time to reverse course. Theoretically, the tide should be in our favor and should be assisting us in our downriver paddling. Such is not the case, the York River is seemingly unaware that is should retreating back to the sea. It stubbornly wants to take us back up river. That required a little extra paddling on our part, but we did make progress and the scenery was all good. Eventually, we did make it back under the Scotland Road Bridge. And true to form, as soon as I opened the air valves of our kayak at the takeout, I could see that the river had reversed course and the current was now running briskly back to the sea. If only we had come back a little later on that paddle back we would have had a true cake walk.

The vacation in York was fine and uneventful. We spent a lot of time sitting on our porch sunning ourselves and admiring the York River and Atlantic Ocean beyond. It was busy a harbor and boats came and went from just before dawn until just after sunset. In the late afternoons we would walk to the captain’s house and sit on one the benches overlooking the harbor. It was a pretty site as you can see from the picture below.

And again, as every vacation, our trip to York, Maine came to an end and we got back on the great Northeast corridor and drove down to Bridgeport where we were lucky enough to catch an early a ferry and get home before the sun set. It was all good.

Back at home for next few weeks, much was the same. I was busy chasing containers, trying to figure out new prices for next year. On that front the news was pretty grim. Not only had all of our suppliers increased prices, but the costs for 40’ containers had taken an astronomical increase. In May of this year the cost of a container was $7,500. By August it was $20,000, by September it was $25,000. Since we can only get 200 to 500 inflatable boats in a container, this meant a huge increase in shipping costs for each boat. So, it became our sad duty to calculate how much we would have to charge extra for each boat. That is a kind of art…you have to choose between what you think the market may accept and what you think you need. I never liked the process of raising prices, but I have lot of practice. All I can say is that I think a lot price increases will only start working there way into the system next year. God help us all.

In the meantime, stock markets have taken this period as a chance to go on to new all time records. Yes, the mavens and the economists and the pundits and the scalawags and the experts are all agreed. The markets can only go up. By end of this year, they predict markets will go up more. By the end of next year, markets are sure to go up way more. Happy Days are Here Again.

Thanksgiving has come and I still have not called this blog story a wrap. Many things have happened since we took our 2 vacations and I came back to work. Fall has come and winter is on the way. Most of the leaves on our trees have already fallen on our lawn. The temperatures have dropped day to day and winter winds have increased. I have switched over to rowing from paddling because that is a warmer form of exercise and two oars are more effective than one paddle in the brisk Northwest winds that are common in my little at this time of year.

This year has not been easy. My wife and son have been dealing with different health issues. The general atmosphere of the Pandemic rising and falling, rising and falling again, has not helped, the pressure and stresses of life going on, the early results of a change in government, the existence of old problems and new problems. And in spite all of the above, the strange fact that our two businesses are having their best year ever. So times is strange.

There has been much to be fearful of, much to be stressed out about and yet life has gone on reasonably well, with a strange sense worry interlaced with the surprise that there are some real world anchors that make you think not all is crazy, not all is ungrounded.

We end up having a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with about 12 family and friends coming over. It has been a hard time for some, but all of us have made it through. We feast on a 22 lb. turkey that arrived by UPS two days before Thanksgiving. The stuffing, the sweet potatoes with roasted marshmallows, the turnips, the salad, the heapings of gravy, the mashed potatoes and more stuffing are all great and everyone agrees…it has been a hard year, but we have made it through and we are thankful.

The next day, Black Friday, so named because it is the day when retail stores supposedly become profitable for the year, is somewhat concerning. A new mutation of the Coronavirus has just been discovered in South Africa. It is thought to be more contagious than even the dread Delta virus. The new virus is named Omicron and it is thought to be a ”virus of concern”. Some speculate that it may evade vaccines and re-infect people who previously had Covid.

Stock markets around the world all take a sharp dive. They are still close near all-time highs, but suddenly there is the strange and unknown fear that markets may be subject to going down. Who knew?

In a slight paraphrase of a once popular song, ”We Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”

By Cecil Hoge

None of us knows how long we shall live. I wish to take this moment to make a small summing up of what I have come across in writing this collective story of my family, myself and the times we live and lived in. I began this blog in 2011. It now 10 years since I have been posting stories about my family, myself and the times we are passing through. Perhaps in another 10 years I will write another summing up. Perhaps, in another 10 years I will be long gone.

I think of the changes in my own life and I find many of them strange. For example, when I was 16, I took a jet air airplane (a Boeing 707) across the Atlantic to Europe. It was only a few weeks after jet travel had been introduced to transatlantic flights. That flight from New York to Berlin was to meet my new family. My father had remarried and in doing so I gained a step-mother.

My mother was still alive at the time, but her life was already over.

When I flew across the Atlantic I thought about what might be the future of airplanes. At 16, I had a number of convictions: Airplanes would become far faster. Airplanes would become far more comfortable. Airplanes would become accessible to all. Of those three things only the last became true. Of course, in this time of continuing Covid, not everyone is ready to take advantage of air travel. The most surprising thing about the flight in 1958 and air travel today, such as it is, was that airplanes did not become faster. That was supremely strange to me. Then the fact that they became far less comfortable was also amazing to me. How could that be?

I will say jet airplanes have become somewhat quieter. I do remember the noise flying to Europe being quite loud, but then again, jet airplanes are still loud.

Most surprising to me was the fact that airplane seats today are far closer together than they were in 1958. And then there was the service. In 1958, stewardesses could bring things to you fast – drinks, blankets, plates, knives, forks, napkins, food…even in “coach” the service was great by comparison to today. Today stewardesses cannot bring you anything, period. And so the uneven course of progress proceeds.

I think about the different members of my family…what they did during their life…what I did during my life…what they might think of today.

Of all my family members, I would love to have conversation with my father about what he might think of today. He predicted to me and my brother in 1993 that the internet would change everything. And surely he was right, but surely he would surprised by the changes the internet has brought.

“When are you going to get on that goddamn internet?”, he would say once the first few people got on it.

“It is the new Western Union, it is the new telephone, it is the new TV”, even in the middle 90s, my father knew the internet would change all.

And so it did, but change came in many ways. I think my father would have surprised by its different mutations…perhaps, in the same way we are surprised about the many mutations of the Coronavirus.

I doubt that my father would foreseen the entire social media scene that has evolved …Facebook… Twitter… InstaGram… Left and Right Wing Websites …misinformation …disinformation … gay pride … transgender rights … new age cures … pandemic statistics … Capital riots … instant answers to new and bizarre questions … a hodge-pudge of commercial claims, goods for all, hopes for sale, fury for the furious, promises of tranquility and peace of mind for those on the elusive search for tranquility.

Indeed, he would have been surprised in many ways the internet has evolved and in the many ways governments and financial institutions and media outlets and pornography and truth and myth and everything between has spun out onto the digital universe. How much is essential to modern life, how much is worthless, how much is useful? Truly there are many sides to the internet and many questions it poses.

Thinking of what other family members might make of these new times. My uncle, Hamilton Hoge, started a company called U.S Television and I think he would also be surprised by the present times. He is in the family picture at the top of this blog story just to right of my father and mother. He was a marine who almost was sent off to storm Japan. A million men was the estimate of how many would be lost in the effort to invade Japan, but it never happened. Truman dropped the big one on Hiroshima and another big one Nagasaki and hundreds of thousand died in each city in minutes. And then the Japanese surrendered and the war was ended. My uncle got to keep his uniform, but he never had to wear it in combat.

After the war he came back and started a television company and like Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront”, he could have been a contender. But that was not be. My uncle Hamilton nevertheless had some interesting views on the future of newspapers. He thought everyone would have printer on the top of their TV and they would print out their personal newspaper whenever the desire to do so struck them. That kinda happened or at least some parts of that are in place today.

Today, we do not remember much about World War II or The Great Depression or World I or the Pandemic that came at the end of WWI. My uncles and father were born either before World War I or during World War I and they grew up in The Roaring Twenties and lived through The Great Depression and World War II. They got see and live through periods of war, peace, depression and prosperity that were interlaced with booms and busts and smaller regional wars.

My uncle Hamilton felt the Vietnam War was a war we should have finished. We should have won…it was a lack of will, he said, that we lost. My father did not agree, he felt it was a sad interlude of history. I felt it was a mistake and stain on our history.

We are presently in the process of disengaging ourselves from another regional war. The Present President has ordered the departure of all American troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. The military experts, the politicians, the pundits, the conservatives, the liberal and the biased…all are offering their instant analysis of that. Most say it is a mistake, some say it is a great deed and many offer a kaleidoscope of opinions in between.

I think of my great, great, great uncle, Andrew Shewan, who sailed in clipper ships from Scotland and England in the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s across the Atlantic, around South America, across the Pacific Ocean to Australia, India, Hong Kong, Shanghai and many other Asian ports while trading goods for tea. What were his thoughts of his world and what would his thoughts be of this world…that is a mystery that time cannot undo.

You can only imagine what thoughts might be going his head as he left Scotland at the age of 23 as 1st Mate of one the world’s greatest and fastest clipper ships in the world, the “Norman Court”. He must have been a young and vibrant man. Andrew Shewan sailed repeatedly around the world from 1840s to the 1860s. What did he think of the new worlds he saw…South America, Pacific Islands, Australia, Indonesia, India and, of course, China? And what might he think of those same worlds in this digital age?

And on those trips around the world what did he bring and what did he take away? That is a complicated question and I cannot know the answer. I do know what he brought back tea, but what did he bring? I do know he went to India often before going to China. Yes, what did he bring and what did he take away?

Andrew Shewan was moral man, a long married man, a family man. He wrote a book called “The Great Days of Sail” published in 1923, just before his death. He lived a long life. He was, I believe, happily married, for over 60 years. He had great pride about sailing clipper ships around the world and I imagine it must been one of the most exciting, most demanding jobs on the planet. Imagine sailing at 20 knots per hour across the Pacific Ocean through seas and weather conditions experienced by few humans in what was then one of the fastest ships on the planet. It must not have been too different from being an astronaut today.

But what he bring and and what did he take away? Iron nails and knives from Scotland and England, Molasses and rum from the Caribbean, and, of course, supplies of food, fruits and drink for months at a time. And why did he go to India? I have seen the logs of some of the journeys he took and yes he did go to India, but why? Could it be he traded the iron nails and knives for rum and molasses and the rum and molasses for opium? Could it be he brought the opium to China and traded the opium for silver and then traded the silver for tea? I do not know, but that was how many clipper ships conducted their trade.

Imagine my great, great, great uncle setting out as the first mate at age 23 from England with his father, the Captain of one the great clipper ships of its time, The Norman Court. Imagine his father takes ill after two days at sea and father and son realize the father is dying. Imagine father and son, talking about what to do…abandon the journey, return to port and quit the trip? Father and son talked it over. Yes, they did return to port. The father disembarked, the son remained on board. They said their goodbyes and the son sailed to China, the first mate now a captain, responsible all goods and all souls on board, 22 other men now under his command at the age of 23.

Yes, it must have been with heavy mixed emotions when father and son parted company and no doubt the crew of 22 men also had doubts and emotions about the journey that were undertaking. My great, great, great uncle completed the journey at the helm of his 192’ long by 22’ wide clipper ship. He described coming through the gales of wind, 50 to 60 miles an hour, crashing through waves 30 to 60 feet, with each wave surging across the deck and forecastle, swiping it clean of any loose belongings…sailing at 20 to 22 knots for days at a time…dark and gray gale winds howling during the day, pitch black and boiling seas and ever roaring winds during the night.

He said that each time his ship hit a wave in those conditions, the entire ship would vibrate and make a humming sound like a tuning fork.

I suppose his thoughts at such times were a strange mixture of terror, exhilaration and ecstasy. Few on the planet could relate to his experiences…then or today.

I mention the above because I feel they are related to the here and now. When my great, great, great uncle sailed to China that Empire had already faded and fallen victim to the greater powers of Europeans and Americans. Today, the wheel of history has rolled on and China has regained its Empire, but it has not forgotten what the Western World did to it. And so the tables have changed. England is no longer an Empire. Germany and France are no longer empires. America has already had its century of Manifest Destiny, Empire and world dominance. The colonies around the world that once made Western countries rich and powerful are no longer, but the memory of what happened remains.

We cannot step into the future without treading through the past. Those who are stepping ahead often forget where those before them have trod, but the past is inseparable from future. In one way or another, it is all connected.

This leads me to think of my great grandfather, Joseph Milton Cunningham, attorney general of Louisiana. He wrote the brief for the State of Louisiana defending the decision of Plessy v. Ferguson. My great grandfather’s legal brief was reviewed by the Supreme Court in 1898 and the Supreme upheld my Great Grandfather’s arguments and the earlier decision rendered by courts in Louisiana. And the result of that case and the Supreme Court Decision, was school segregation and a reversal of some of the results of the Civil War.

I am not proud of that although I am quite sure that my great grandfather felt that he did the right thing. And on his behalf, it must be said that he was considered to be a highly respected attorney who did many good things for the State of Louisiana. That is part of this country’s history and the Supreme Court ruling that agreed with my Great Grandfather’s legal brief, affected the next 90 or so years of American history. Yes, we cannot disengage ourselves from our history. We are all part of our own family’s history and every family’s past is interconnected with our country’s past, present and future.

My Grandmother, Sidney Cecile Cunningham Hoge, was daughter to Joseph Milton Cunningham. She is in the picture at the top of this blog story, in the bottom row, sitting on the right of my grandfather. She grew up on a 5,000 acre plantation that was still tilled and tended by the descendants of former slaves of my great grandfather and his father. Sidney Cecile was a very prejudiced woman, but also a very strict and strong and strangely moral person. Of course, morality is often in the eye of the beholder. Still, she had large family and many friends and she was highly respected.

And of course, Sidney Cecile was the reason that my father and I inherited our first and second names…Cecil Cunningham. She was very upset that her sons were never able to make sufficient money to support her in the way she expected to be supported in her old age.

“Life,” she said, “is so unfair.

“They found oil on the plantation next door and few years later they found oil on the plantation on the other side of our plantation, but they never, never found oil on our plantation. And we had the largest plantation. Life is just so unfair.”

Years later she told me she was disappointed in the fact that her sons never made enough money to support her in the style she expected.

“Life is so unfair,” she would say again in her slow New Orleans lilting drawl, “Why my husband, Huber, had such good prospects. And for many years we had a fine life with nice apartments in the city and fine houses to go to in the summer, but then that damned depression came and my poor husband lost everything. But I thought my boys were growing, surely they would have good prospects, surely they will find a way to support me in the manner I have always expected, but that never happened.”

It would seem unfairness is also in eye of the beholder.

Personally, I thought her sons did a pretty good job of taking care of my grandmother. Admittedly, they had to work through the damned depression and truly times were tough, but my uncle went on found a TV company, which was a contender for a while, and my father went on to restart my grandfather’s old advertising company and he passed through prosperous and not so prosperous times and still was able to send me to various boarding schools and college and help support my grandmother and various other members of our family.

And as I have written, our four families, 3 brothers and a sister, were able to collectively hold the greater family together, have apartments in city and pool funds for a collective summers in some pretty nice houses in Southampton. And my grandmother Sidney Cecile was able to reap the rewards of that lifestyle still associating with society folks and keeping up appearances, even if their wealth was not so deep and long.

I never met my mother’s mother and so I don’t know what she thought of the times she was in or would think of the times we are in. She married my other grandfather who was a very rich guy at the time. That marriage did not work out and my grandmother went off to the Riviera in search of happier life. It was not to be…she died in her thirties, a victim of dwindling funds and too many parties.

My grandfather also did not fair well. He sold Shewan Shipyards, at one time the largest shipyard in America, to Bethlehem Steel for $15,000,000. That was a lot of money in those days before taxes, but my grandfather gave away some of it to his sisters and spent the rest of it on himself, gradually selling off works of art that in earlier years he had purchased. So what comes sometimes goes.

I still have a magnificent 100 + year old desk, a marble top table from the time of Louis XIV and a quite beautiful portrait of my mother done in 1920…so all was not lost and the connection with past and present is always there.

I wonder what my great, great, great uncle, Moses Drury Hoge would have thought of these times and the recent discovery by many Americans that were people in America’s past who owned slaves and some of those people actually had statues erected to them.

Moses Hoge was the official minister to the Confederate Army. He had a church in Richmond Virginia and he preached to Jefferson Davis himself. So Moses was somewhat conflicted. He did not believe in slavery although in fact he owned 3 slaves. They came to him from his wife, so he did not actually buy the slaves. Nevertheless, Moses thought slavery was regrettable and before the war he was not for slavery, even if he was not against slavery.

But the carnage of the war, the many friends and family members that he lost, hardened his opinion and in the end, he definitely felt that the cause of the South was right and true and the principle of States Rights should be upheld. Of course, history moved in a way contrary to that and after the war he accepted the fact that the South had lost and slavery was wrong. But he could not bear not to pay tribute to some of the former leaders of the Civil War.

After the Civil War was completed and the South was vanquished, he gave a speech to 10,000 Richmond residents on behalf of Stonewall Jackson citing Stonewall’s bravery when he served the South and faced his death. In doing so, Moses was personally responsible in having a statue set up in Richmond commemorating the faithful service and bravery of Stonewall Jackson. I believe that statue has been recently torn down and so world moves on and looks at things differently.

It would be my guess that my great, great, great uncle would not be happy about that, but that is only a guess. Moses Hoge went on to live another 34 years after the Civil War. He became a quite prominent Presbyterian minister, touring Europe, talking and meeting with other high church officials. In truth, he was a prominent church minister before the Civil War, but that event temporarily diminished his career. Moses then went on to reinstate himself among church officials and become quite a prominent force in the Presbyterian Church. His life ended strangely in New York City when he crossed the path of a trolley car.

I am thinking of another relative, my great aunt Princess Olga Obolensky. In truth, she is only a relative by marriage. My true aunt, Barbara Hoge, married Ivan Obolensky, Olga’s son. Olga was a princess and she grew up in the court of Czar Nicholas, but at the age of 23 the Russian Revolution came along and her life took a drastic turn. She was able to smuggle her two sons out of Russia shortly after the beginning of the Revolution, but after that things got really tough. Her life went from luxury and privilege to poverty and prison and then to more poverty and near death.

In the end, she made her way out of Russia and then she found her way to Berlin. That was like going from the frying pan to the fire because Berlin at that time was being bombed everyday by allied forces. Strangely, she stayed 3 blocks from where my future mother in law was living. They never met in Berlin, but many years later, my mother in law met my great aunt in America. Such is the strange motions of time and history and happenstance.

It was Olga Obolensky who first suggested I should write a book about my family. Well, this is not a book, this is a blog, but it does cover some of the bases.

I met Olga Obolensky in New York City when I got to meet my new uncle, Ivan. She had a elegant and stentorian voice, loud, authoritative and lilting. She would always remind me of my mother’s elegance.

“Your mother does not enter a room,” Olga would say, “She makes an entrance and when she comes in, all heads turn.”

I think that is pretty nice thing to say about anybody. Olga was very obsessed with appearances and it was always true that she never lost the sense that she was still a princess. Surely, her view of this world could be useful at this time. I am not sure she would be impressed by our present progress or our present sense of elegance.

I am pretty sure she would think of the Pandemic as a sad time when sense of dress and decorum have been lost. But she would know about that, having spent time in prison, time trying to escape Soviet officials, time in a Communist hospital system in a brain-numbing job as a hospital director in a squalid Soviet city being bombed and invaded by Germans.

Olga Obolensky saw it all from the court and time of the Czar to the Russian Revolution to war plagued Europe to a kind of rebirth in America.

New York City had a formidable collection of Russian aristocrats, some impoverished and in-prisoned by their fate, some who cruised through this world seemingly untouched by bad luck.

One such person was Olga’s uncle, Serge Obolensky. He married in 1916 Catherine Alexandrovna Yurievskaya, the youngest daughter of Czar Alexander II. So, you can say he started out pretty high in life. He left Russia just in time to miss the Russian Revolution. In 1924, he married Alice Astor, daughter of John Jacob Astor. So, you can say he landed safely on his feet. Eventually, he came to U.S. with whole bunch of other Russians and they all settled in New York City.

Because I had a new Russian uncle, I came meet of these Russian ex aristocrats. I was very young at the time and I did not fully understand who they all were or their many varied histories. What I could understand was that some them faired far better than others. And I suppose all them would have different and conflicting views of what is happening in this time or what happened in their time. Certainly, the Russian Revolution changed their lives, just as The Depression changed my father’s and his generation’s life and, perhaps, just as The Pandemic is presently changing our lives. Of course, we know what transpired during their lives. We are yet to fully understand what will transpire during our lives.

I think of my mother often. I really do not remember all the things she told me. I remember riding around in taxi cabs with her, charging all over Manhattan. I remember her dragging me into Cartier’s to see some silverware and jewelry, into Zsa Zsa and Magda Gabor’s jewelry store to see more jewelry. I remember tagging along when she went with friends to the bar at the Carlyle, I remember going to The Stork Club with my father and mother. I always got to take away one of the miniature wooden storks with miniature glass stem vases that always held a rose.

My mother liked “creme de menthe” – a drink she first acquired a taste for in France. Her life must have been strange, coming from a background of great wealth, growing up on yachts and in 5 houses around the world. How she came to marry my father is a mystery. He was a man who was interested in making a mark in the world and he hoped to make a lot of money. I don’t think my mother was impressed. She just wanted live her life in comfort and style…ride horses, live a simple, but elegant life. Money meant nothing to her.

She was born in 1919. She married my father in 1941 and she died in 1963. Just 44 years old, a victim in the end of alcohol, cigarettes, car collisions and cancer. What she could have been no one knows. I do know she was both an Olympic Class horse woman and an Olympic class swimmer. I do remember her taking me to the Squadron A Armory on 94th and 95th between Madison and Park Avenues. There we watched horse jumping exhibitions and polo games. My mother loved horses. I never could get enthusiastic about that. It seemed dangerous to me and that was confirmed when I fell off of horses a couple of times. I guess I was a disappointment to my mother…at least in regard to horses.

What she might think of the last 15 years we have just gone through, with the Great Recession, the great recovery, the Great Pandemic and the Great Recession again and the many unknown unknowables, all that is a mystery. Surely, her time was also topsy turvy, born at the end of World War I, with her childhood in the Roaring Twenties and her twenties starting with Prohibition and the Great Depression, only to be ended by World War II. And after the war, the Cold War, the great scare about Nuclear War, Joe McCarthy and the dread Communists. Yes, there had to be a lot of confusion in the 44 years of her life.

My mother thought rock and roll was an abomination. I remember her playing old 78 records of her favorite big bands and singers from the 30s and 40s. She was convinced, like Bing Crosby, that there would return to that kind of music. Both Bing Crosby and my mother were disappointed in that hope. A new kind of music welled up out the youth of my generation and big comeback did not come back. All things pass away as Mr. Harrison says. And so it was for her.

I think there is more to tell about my strange and quirky family. Some of us have faired badly and some of us have done pretty well. It is hard to say what is a true success. If I had to name something…it would be to live happily within yourself and within your family, to love your wife, to like what you do and do what you like. I do not know whether it was Wilbur Wright or Orville Wright, but one of those two said, if you can support yourself and not be burden to your family, then you are success. I suppose that also is a good definition.

I will continue on with this blog. For those who might want more details about my family, please refer to the many stories on this blog site.