The Olympics is playing havoc with my free time these last several days, but there have been enough Americans in contention in enough different sports to keep it interesting. After the men's road race was a washout for the US squad, it was good to see Tyler Hamilton >and< Bobby Julich come through in the time trial today. They even showed three minutes of highlights this evening during the prime time coverage on NBC.



Saturday was Justin's birthday and now the little monkey is six years old and off to kindergarten in a couple of weeks. For his actual birthday on Saturday he spent the day opening presents (having already opened all the ones that had come in the mail from the Illinois relatives as they arrived), then we drove up to Burlington for dinner at his restaurant of choice, the Rainforest Cafe. Sunday was the official party, and the venue was the Build-a-Bear at the Natick Mall, a small intimate gathering followed by cake and ice cream in the food court. Short on ambience but the kids didn't care, and everybody got to take home a stuffed bear or pig or whatever. By keeping the party small he also didn't end up with an outrageous pile of presents, which is good as the house is already full. And since a Build-a-Bear person is running the party, I could duck out and go shopping for an hour, not that there was anything worth buying.



It was a cool, rainy October day around here this past Sunday, remnants of Hurricane Charlie putting a damper on things, so it was just as well the party was inside (although we plan it that way in expectation of it being too hot, but you never know). We came home in time to have pizza for dinner, and that was it. Chloe's birthday will I'm sure be a much more elaborate affair, so it's good to start off the season with a relatively low-key party as a warmup for the festivities to come.

As usual, here's Laura's summation of last week's Classics group:

This month we had a slightly smaller than usual turnout (9 or 10 people

- I forgot to count during the meeting, but that's the tally I get when

I try to remember who was there). On the other hand, some might think

that's a pretty big turnout for a discussion of a trilogy of classic

greek plays (Aeschylus' "The Orestia") and a trilogy of a modern

somewhat-retelling of the classic greek plays (O'Neill's "Mourning

Becomes Electra")! As I recall, we began by discussing how we had

approached our assignment of reading the two trilogies. Almost everyone

chose to read the Aeschylus first and then the O'Neill, but one member

took the interesting approach of reading them in a "dovetailed" fashion

- the first part of the Aeschylus, then the first part of the O'Neill,

then the second part of the Aeschylus and the second part of the

O'Neill, etc. He felt that it heightened the ability to compare and

contrast (don't you feel like you're back in school when you see that

phrase?) the two works.



We actually started out discussing the O'Neill first - not so much by

any overt decision but by the fact that we found ourselves discussing

and interpreting the O'Neill "informed" by our reading of the Aeschylus.

Opinions varied widely - some really enjoyed Mourning Becomes Electra,

others really disliked it, and the rest liked it mildly. Even those who

liked it saw it as flawed, at least in terms of O'Neill's ambitious

attempt to refashion The Orestia for modern times. There was a somewhat

more, but not complete, uniformity of positive opinion of The Orestia.

We discussed the definition of a "tragedy" and how it applied to The

Orestia and whether Mourning Becomes Electra was really a melodrama. We

compared the characters in the two books to their counterparts, both in

terms of personality and outcomes, and wondered why O'Neill chose to

omit a Cassandra counterpart and end on a much more pessimistic note

than Aeschylus did.

Count me as the member who read the plays "dovetailed" (a nice way of putting it), although it was as much to alleviate the expected boredom of reading the Oresteia straight through as anything else. Beth and I saw the Aeschylus plays at the ART about 10 years ago, all I remember is Jeremy Geidt sitting on the castle wall as the nightwatchman in the very first scene, and his first line was "Here I sit, freezing my balls off." You knew from then on that you were in for the ART version of Greek tragedy, not necessarily the real thing. Don't remember anything else about the whole trilogy, and then I read the plays again for this and I still don't remember anything. The story is familiar to me, from Strauss' Elektra primarily, the plays are long on talk and short on action, some of the key scenes happen offstage, and there's minimal stage direction, so there's not much to sink your teeth into other than the text itself. They're really plays to study rather than just read through.



O'Neill on the other hand evokes strong reactions because his characters are so over the top. Laura made a good point that the first play, "Homecoming", doesn't seem to work right because the two principle female characters both start off at such a high level, hating each other from the first page, that there's nowhere for them to go as the play goes on. Everyone comes across as a bunch of whiners. By the second and third plays things the viewer/reader has gotten kind of used to the overall tone, and there are a few effective scenes, particularly I thought the scene were Orin has had his confrontation with Lavinia and storms off and she knows he's going to kill himself and tries to carry on a conversation while waiting for the inevitable gunshot from the next room. I remember seeing these plays done on PBS when I was in high school, but didn't remember much about them. What's interesting in reading the two trilogies together is it shows their dissimilarities more than their commonalities, like O'Neill set out to retell the Oresteia in a modern setting but found that it just wouldn't work, so the Clytemnestra character kills herself rather than also being killed by her son as in the original. There wasn't enough here to sustain a long discussion (plus Jim and Evan weren't in attendance), but they were worth reading and make me interested in reading more of both authors. Not for a little while, though.

So last week we were sequestered up in Maine, avoiding the armageddon that was supposed to come hand in hand with the Democratic Convention. Not surprisingly, the DNC drove away a large percentage of the populace from greater Boston, such that those who remained were treated to speedy commutes and empty streets. I had a fleeting worry that the projected gridlock would just shift up to Maine instead, but it didn't, there were plenty of people but not an inordinate amount.



We were staying for the third time in Newcastle, at a place on Lake Damariscotta that belongs to one of Beth's friends, Gigi. It's small and in rough shape (the front door doesn't lock any more, for instance), but not too rustic, as it has indoor plumbing and hot water and so on. Chloe and Justin become real homebodies as soon as they get there, which was too bad because when we arrived Saturday it was dinnertime and we had to make our first trip, to the grocery store. On Sunday there was a special event at the Owl's Head Transportation Museum, and Chloe decided to practice being a teenager (even though there's still 4+ years to work on it) and complained the whole time that she was bored and wanted to leave. After that they settled down, though. Maybe if she'd seen an actual owl's head she would've been more interested. It's actually a huge place, in a fairly new facility, and while it's a bit remote unless you're already well on your way to Bar Harbor it has quite the collection of antique cars and planes, many of which actually work (it's adjacent to a local airport).



That museum was about the only place we went that we hadn't been to before. Another day we drove to Boothbay Harbor to see the Maine Resources Aquarium, which we've been to on every trip. It's basically one room, but has a lot of ocean life that you can pick up and look at, crabs, lobsters, starfish, clams, etc., and a central tank with several small sharks that like to be petted. The kids can spend hours doing this (Chloe wanted to go back later in the trip so she could pet the sharks some more). They also have a live demonstration about lobsters and lobstering.



On the way back from Boothbay we peeked in at the Kenniston Hill Inn , known to tourists and historians as the place where Beth and I got engaged. The b&b has changed hands since we were there, and now they claim to take kids (the fact that they didn't was of course one reason we chose it back in '88). Coming back from Owls Head the previous day we had also stopped at the Craignair Inn, another b&b from the early days which we had visited last time, but this time we were hoping to get in on dinner. Unfortunately there was too much time to kill and not enough for two cranky kids to do, so we ended up coming back to Damariscotta and eating at a place there that wasn't that good or that cheap.



There was no tv reception at our lakeside retreat, but there was a radio, and Beth found an NPR station so we could listen to Edwards and Kerry's speeches at the convention, feeling like we were living in the '50's. There was also a VCR so the kids could watch some tapes, and we even brought the tv with the built-in dvd player so we could watch a couple of movies ourselves at night. Otherwise I had a bookbag full of books to get through for the Hugo and Retro-Hugo nominations, and Beth practiced knitting, which she has recently been trying out. She spent most of her time knitting a scarf (which for awhile there was starting to look like it would come in handy), and both Chloe and Justin wanted to be shown how to do it too, making me the only non-knitting member of the family.



Friday it was starting to get downright warm, so it was a good day to hit the beach, and since there's usually a good breeze at Pemaquid it kept things from getting too hot, but wasn't so windy that you got a mouthful of sand every time you open your mouth (which has been known to happen before). We went to the Pemaquid Point lighthouse first, which is on one of the more spectacular rocky promontories that I've seen, and the kids had fun climbing on the rocks. By the time we were done with the beach it was past time for lunch, and while Chloe and Justin were lobbying for McDonalds, we decided to go to Wiscasset to stand in line for fried seafood at Red's Eats. I figured by the time we got there the lunch crowd would've gone, but there is no lunch crowd at Reds, just a crowd, and even with arriving at 1:30 we stood in line for an hour before we got our food. But it's probably the best traditional fried seafood place I've been to in Maine, and the long lines show most other people think so too (including a lot of locals, it seems). There are a couple of lobster shacks right on the Kennebec river that have sprung up practically across the street from Reds, with their own parking and more tables, and they were basically empty.



Woe to the Maine visitor who doesn't like seafood, there's definitely places to eat for them, but not nearly as many. We generally ate sandwiches at the house for lunch, and then hit a different restaurant for dinner every night, returning to several of our favorites, including Sarah's in Wiscasset (actually across from Red's, with an odd mix of Mexican food, seafood, homemade soups and huge desserts), King Eider's Pub in Damariscotta (fresh oysters from the river, mostly seafood, especially the crabcakes) and the Muscongus Bay Lobster Company in Round Pond, on the Pemaquid peninsula, for mostly outdoor dining right on the dock and nothing but lobsters and steamers ("in the rough" as they say). They have sodas, corn on the cob, and a few other things, but most people bring their own side dishes and beverages (including wine). The hard-shell lobsters may be more work but there's a lot more to eat. Before we left on Saturday we tried out Moody's Diner in Waldoboro, a roadside place right on Route 1 that's been there forever and also drew huge crowds regardless of the time of day. They have plenty of non-seafood and tons of desserts (to the point that they have to ration the pie to one slice per person max), seemed to be another place that catered to locals and tourists alike.



To help work off all this fine dining I had brought my bike along on this trip, and was able to get out for a ride four days out of seven (could've done all seven if I'd tried, since there weren't any seriously rainy days). Although I'd had my bike there last time, I didn't feel like I'd be able to negotiate the hills, but this time I was good enough shape (and inspired by three weeks of watching the Tour) to crawl to the top of some of the steeper hills (simultaneously bestowing them with mythic-sounding French names like the Col de Lutheran Church or the Col de Phil's Hill Road) in order to go upwards of 50 kilometers an hour (as Paul Sherwen would say) on the descents. If you can handle the rolling terrain, the roads around and near the lake were otherwise ideal as they were in good shape, there were few cars no matter what time of day, and virtually no side roads for traffic to suddenly appear in front of you.



I'd also brought along a soccer ball so the kids and I could play some impromptu games before dinner, inspiring them even to play on their own at other times. At one point Beth and I were inside and Chloe came rushing in to announce that the ball had gone into the lake and was stuck under the dock. She then remembered to also mention that Justin, in trying to retrieve it, had fallen into the lake head first and fully dressed. The lake is very shallow around the dock (it can't handle much more than a rowboat) so Justin was unfazed by the incident, although his sneakers took a couple of days to dry.



On the way home it only took three hours to make the trip, a full hour less then the drive up, barely enough time for a couple of movies in the backseat, leaving me an extra hour to recover before returning to the real world.

Lance wins!







I know he won nine days ago, I was off to Maine with the family so I didn't have a chance to view the final stage until we got back on Saturday. but I was there live or on tape for just about every single stage for the whole three weeks, suffering through Al and Bob in the evenings and following along with Phil & Paul on the weekend mornings (and very early one weekday morning for that long mountain stage).



As TdF's go, it wasn't nearly as exciting as last year, but only because Lance was so dominant. It was almost disappointing that he didn't have to work harder to get the record, but Jan was too slow and Tyler fell again and Levi couldn't come through in the clutch. Only Ivan Basso really pushed Armstrong's limit, but his lack of time trialing ability made it mostly a wasted effort. It makes Basso look good enough to win the Vuelta or the Giro, though (Heras has the same problem and he's won the Vuelta a couple of times). Kloden's second place was sort of out of the blue, much like Levi getting third at the Vuelta a couple of years ago, where he placed high because he was pacing his main GC guy, then ended up with a better overall time. It remains to be seen whether he could repeat that success on another team.



Some of Lance's previous wins before last year were similarly dominating, although he'd still get different guys challenging on one stage or another, primarily Pantani and Ullrich. Voeckler was the big story of this year's tour, but the fact that he held the yellow jersey through 8 or 9 flat stages and then lost 10 or 15 minutes at a time once they hit the mountains doesn't really speak well for his future hopes as a GC contender. In the end he couldn't even keep the white jersey.



So it was a good tour, didn't get much done otherwise while it was going on, it was fun to see the general level of professionalism continue to increase on OLN, even if it's at the expense of hearing much from Phil & Paul in prime time, or seeing much actual racing in the first hour. Although Al Trautwig could stand to take a more in-depth course in cycling tactics and Tour history, OLN might have a group that's worthy of keeping together for next year. They've benefited so far from having Lance to gush over, though, once he goes I think the coverage will drop off dramatically unless some other American can jump right in. They're down to a one-hour highlights show of the Vuelta, a month after the fact, so all it takes is a lack of Americans (even if there's an American team) and we'll be back to a steady diet of fishing and hunting shows in July too. Then a half hour of daily highlights hosted by Adrian Karsten will seem like a fond memory.