Travelogue: Thousand Islands, NY

I woke up early this morning and drove to an internet cafe – The Lyric Bistro in Clayton, NY housed in an old opera house – ostensibly to catch up on the e-mail I have been ignoring for more than a week.  I find myself reluctant to leave my vacation frame of mind, however, preferring instead to capture and share it with others.

Each year my childen and I spend a month on the East Coast with family and friends.  We are currently at a cottage on the Saint Lawrence River in the Thousand Islands region of upstate New York.  We’ve been coming here in July for the past nine or ten years; no one can quite remember which.

I’m enjoying morning walks and sunset kayak rides with my sisters, good books in the hammock, coffee and cocktails from the Adirondack chairs overlooking the river, dinner debates with my opinionated brother-in-law, and watching my daughters outgrow the beds that once seemed too big for them.  Is it any wonder I can’t get motivated to answer e-mail?

Reading is a shared family pleasure, however, and I take advantage of this time to read books instead of the front pages of newspapers and internet clips and bytes.  I am in the midst of two: Sisters by Jean H. Baker and Remaking California edited by Jeff Lustig.  I’m hoping Lustig’s book will help me understand how to “reclaim the public good,” as promised, and Baker’s biography of the women suffragists will inspire me to try.  At the moment, though, the suffragettes are coming across a tad too dour for my taste, though I recognize something of myself in Susan B. Anthony’s self-analysis, “I am not fit to deal with anyone who is not terribly in earnest.”

I did take a moment to catch up on the Davis Enterprise and wish to thank my Board of Education colleagues Sheila Allen, Gina Daleiden and Tim Taylor for their willingness to run for re-election.  In all times, but most especially in these times, I value all those who are willing to serve.  I encourage others to answer the call as well.  A healthy democracy requires robust debate.

Davis and California become increasingly more dear to me, as evidenced by this missive home, but for the moment I am enjoying the distance and the opportunity for rest and assimilation of thought it affords.  (I’m reading Austen, too, can you tell?)

I wish all of you an equally wonderful summer.