Mi Familia

I like the Tolstoy quotation overused I dare say but impossible to prove or disprove. 

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

I have no idea how to measure family similarities or how to tell if they are all alike.

My nephew Jacob with his wife Bevin and their youngest Connor who isn’t cutting his hair until there is peace throughout the world. He isn’t going to see a hairdresser for a while I think. 

His older brother Aidan traded barbs with me before finally explaining how people who like each other jab each other. “We have a good relationship, Uncle Michael.” His grandfather Bob:

Somehow Bob and his wife Geeta below, my wife’s sister, raised two boys who have kept their ties, who gather from time to time and do things together. A happy family?  I’d say so.  Alike as other happy families? I have no idea. 

Jacob’s wife Bevin looks happy:

I was able to evade the grand reunion and I thanked my wife for that.  I don’t do well in crowds. But this lot I like. They know me and my weird jokes and my curmudgeonly ways and they play along.  I’m trying not to worry about vague plans for a family cruise this winter. I fear they may harden up.  Me and a one year old and a four year old in a ship for five days? 

Younger son Jesse with his youngest, a thoughtful little tyke...and his older daughter who promises to be a heart breaker in s few years.  Caught here posing by a rather appalled great uncle:

Her mother is the ever unflappable Megan.  Her serenity in the face of domestic chaos is legendary.  

That I get to move in the edges of this small crowd amazes me and instructs me. 

I grew up in a family that never let go. This lot doesn’t store resentment. They bicker and argue and disagree and what makes me feel okay is that they acknowledge shortcomings and faults but don’t disqualify family members because of them. Perhaps it’s how all happy families are and how they are all alike. 

I dare say the families I left behind have achieved happiness but they formed in my absence, my sisters grew old while I made my life in the New World. 

I wonder how my life would have been different had my parents been suited to each other. But it is idle speculation. 

Rusty seems to spend no time at all pondering the ghastly start he got in life. If he can do that my oddball beginnings don’t amount to much. Onward. 

And upward. 

Biltmore Asheville

Dale Chihuly has organized a massive display of works at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville North Carolina. 

My sister in law is a member and got us tickets. 

It is magnificent and it runs through November. 

Avoid Highways

In an effort to enjoy some countryside not generally available to people who live in the Keys we asked our Google mapping app on our iPhones to avoid highways on our drive from Steubenville to Charleston, the capital of West Virginia. 

It seems Google took us seriously and we ended up on gravel. It was a day driving without a list of things to see. Actually the idea was to see West Virginia but I forgot to ask Google Maps to take me through the state  so we ended up seeing much more of Ohio. Which was okay. 

But the mapping did take us into the back of beyond and it was lovely. 

Better than the freeway! 

City Of Churches

Getting up at 5:30 netted me a 61 degree morning and I was close to getting goose bumps when I let Rusty out of the car at one end of the Main Street in old town Steubenville, Ohio.

This is the part of town obviously abandoned by a town that has turned to the inland valley away from the Ohio River where shopping malls car dealerships and chain restaurants represent the Steubenville of 21st century commerce. But this is the town I find fascinating because it attracts my camera the way the weeds and bricks attract Rusty’s nose.

To me these buildings represent waste and unused opportunities. I wasn’t very impressed when cities wanted shopping malls made out of styrofoam to replace their sturdy Victorian architecture and here despite neglect the place still stands. Look at these buildings and think of what a waste of a great space. 

There are too many churches to photograph in this town but I did my best to get a sample. 

There are some small businesses hanging in but there are also homeless services and a job center and the dreaded temporary worker jobs housed in a glass mausoleum. Not proper work. 

Then there is that other mark of poverty in the neighborhood. 

Ohio went for Trump, barely, but enough to get him elected and you can see why. There has been too much neglect. Now they want to knock off unions.  I live in a right to work state and it isn’t right. I hope the next generation brings back some of the greatest generation’s gains that we Baby Boomers threw away. Looking at the kids I work with I don’t think it’s likely. 

There again Trump hasn’t followed up on his extravagant promises most likely because he has no better idea than anyone else how to restore the Rust Belt. It turns out tariffs are driving manufacturers even further offshore. No one seems to have an answer.  Help yourself I guess.

It was a great hour in the cool morning air in the company of my dog.  And Rusty gave no hint he cared how this town got to be so interesting to him.