Six days and counting

We leave for Oak Island, NC next Saturday. Mimi and Tim and Eleanor will join us, as will John, Sherrie and Jack who are friends for 40 years in John's case and 35 in Jack and Sherrie's cases.

I'm trying to finish a long short story (is that an oxymoron?) to leave for you when I go. I only write on my blog or get email on my desk top computer. So I won't be able to write here for a week or so.

I was thinking today about our neighbors. The men on our street are Steve, Joe, Mark, Scott, John, Robert and Jim. Not much diversity, I'd say.The women are Clair, Lisa, Linda, Sally, Marsha, Naomi and Bernadine. My wife, half Italian and half Hungarian is the closest to diversity we have on this little stretch of Cornwall. There were two adopted Korean girls, but they are grown now.

But solid white Cheshire is diversifying. More Blacks and Muslims are moving here. Not fast enough for me, but with some regularity. Very few Hispanics though. We need more.

When we moved to Cheshire, 32 years ago now, I went to city hall to register to vote. I told the woman I wanted to register and she reached for a file folder. "Democrat", I said and she stared at me and reached for a totally different folder.

"Am I the only one?" I asked.

"There are a few of you," she answered.

But now Cheshire regularly votes state-wide and nationally Democratic. Locally, it's pretty close--but Cheshire Republicans are not of the current bloodline. Fiscally conservative and moderate in social issues.

Diversity has come in 32 years, in a fashion.

So, I'll try to write a lot this week and be crazed to be cut off from this outlet for my thoughts and feelings for a week.

We'll all survive.

But I do worry about taking Brigit to the kennel, though it is the best in the land--Holiday Pet Lodge in a rural part of Wallingford. They are great, wondrous, loving people. A family business.

I just hope she doesn't think we're abandoning her. She's been abandoned before--probably more than once--so we'll take lots of her stuff to the kennel, hoping the smells will remind her of us. We also take her food, so at least meals will taste like home.

Six days and counting.