For the curious reader of science fiction (scifi) and fantasy
One final thought about our trip to Ponce. And that is to extoll the greatest invention since fire: the zap racket. Can anything be more satisfying than the snap! of a mosquito being electrocuted? Or the aroma of barbequed mosquito? I don’t think so. Even from another room, that sound brings ringing cheers, especially when it’s snap! snap!…snappity snappity snap!
Here ends the reading of The Ponce Chronicles 2022.
My chronicling got derailed by a week of relentless activity. A pair of workers started showing up at 6:45 every morning (we are not morning people!!) to do concrete and brick repair, and to rebuild a pair of custom folding doors to the laundry area. In Boston, workers bring the materials they need, because for one thing, they know what they need. Not so in Ponce, where I repeatedly found myself clutching a hand-written list (in Spanish, which I do not speak) of materials I needed to buy at Home Depot. Kudos to the helpful employees of Home Depot Ponce, who deciphered my needs and filled my cart.
Allysen, meanwhile, went shopping for art to put on the walls to liven the place up. What she came back with astounded me: most notably an assortment of gorgeous x-ray photographic images of flowers, sealed in glass, by a remarkable artist named Albert Koetsier. Here are a few, up on the walls:
Trust me when I say that my photos do not do these pictures justice. In real life, they are stunning. And where did Allysen find these pictures? At a gallery? Nope. At a classy art emporium? Nope, although you can get his prints in places like that. Where, then? Marshalls. Yes, that Marshalls. We spent many hours hanging them in the right places. (I didn’t get around to taking pictures of them until we were in the throes of packing to come home, so no nicely staged pictures of the rooms, I’m afraid.)
Meanwhile, I closed off (for the third time) the Ho Chi Dog trail. I also channeled a jack-hammer operator and drilled inch-wide holes with a hammer drill through five-inch concrete in an attempt to drain a fish-pond area that cannot be kept filled (long story). It currently serves as a mosquito-breeding area, thus my attempt to keep it drained. Guess what? Five inches down through concrete apparently just put me into bedrock. No drainage! Aughh.
We made many other repairs (and failed to make still others), with occasional respites such as enjoying wine and cheese with our friend Cheryl, who is now director of the Museo de Arte de Ponce, a world-class art museum that is still rebuilding from earthquake damage from over two years ago.
We pulled an all-nighter the night before returning home. Final repairs, cleanup, packing, etc. I am somewhat north of my 20s and do not handle all-nighters the way I once did. (Okay, I am north of my 40s, also. Somewhat. And my 50s. And, er…) We watched a gorgeous sunrise over downtown Ponce and the ocean, complete with an exquisite sliver of crescent moon that you could just barely see here if I could figure out how to make WordPress display the full-sized image.
Then we got an hour’s sleep before heading for San Juan, rental car return, JetBlue, and total collapse after being greeted joyously by dogs and daughter at home. Three days later, we’re still recovering.
Past time for a few framing shots. Here’s the kitchen/dining section, looking from slightly up the hill down toward the pool. That deck on the far side of the pool is the one that I built last July. It hasn’t fallen down yet!
Here’s the living section, with an almost invisible Allysen inside at her computer.
Here’s Allysen working on a deadline. We spent hours trying to get her reliable internet at her usual place at the dining room table, but finally had to settle for a rickety card table inside, to be closer to the router.
The place is quite lovely, looking up from the pool. That’s a cork tree in the middle.
Is there a sight more, er, stirring than the writer trying to remember what the hell he was thinking when he started this novel?
By the way, here’s a quick view of all of The Ponce Chronicles, through the years (in reverse order).
Cutting off the Ho Chi Cat Trail. That was yesterday’s project. Just me an’ my rat wire.
A frequent complaint from visitors in the last year was that stray cats would get into the kitchen and steal their food. True! There is a multitude of stray cats (and dogs) on the hill, which is sad for many reasons. They stroll through the property at times, though I tried last year to close the Ho Chi Dog Trail for good. (Unsuccessfully, as it turned out.) But the cats manage to get into the kitchen—a separate structure from the rest of the house—even when the door is locked. If you ever watched the series Leverage, they were like Parker, dropping in by wire, from who-knew-where.
Actually, we did know where. Part of the idiosyncratic construction here includes skylights over the back part of the kitchen, which were added, or replaced at various times, using whatever materials were at hand, in true local style, with odd gaps and overlaps. The supporting structure looks like something out of an M.C. Escher drawing, mostly out of steel. Sturdy, but challenging to work with, after the fact.
Enter me and the rat wire, known less colloquially as hardware cloth. (Some guys who worked on our own house many years ago referred to the stuff as rat wire. Just for fun, I entered rat wire in the search box on the Home Depot website. To my surprise, it took me straight to hardware cloth. Anyway, armed with that stuff and some aviation shears and a bag of zip ties, I attacked the problem yesterday. I think I’ve managed to close all but one of the openings for the clever kitties. I saved the hardest one for last. That’s tomorrow’s problem.
Lexi and Connor really were here. I spotted them the next morning. They prepared breakfast for us and Frances and Che, and then packed up and departed for San Juan and parts far away. Meanwhile, the early-arriving workman was unable to come due to a family emergency, so I actually spent most of the day resting. (Well, except for what felt like a week online locating and ordering a ridiculously overpriced gasket for the door of the refrigerator freezer, and like that.)
Next day. Sitting at my laptop, enjoying the sea breezes. Signal from Connor: his flight to Boston on Frontier was canceled out from under him at the last minute. (Same thing happened to him getting down here last week. Do not fly Frontier!) After much hassle, he managed to get booked on JetBlue, but not until Tuesday. Meanwhile, Lexi was in the air between here and Ecuador, but she is now safely back at her hosts’ place in Quito.
I thought I might be driving to San Juan to bring Connor back, but he opted to spend a couple of quiet nights in an Airbnb, trying to refocus on his work. Instead, Allysen and I went to a free outdoor classical concert on the Ponce Plaza—very much like the Boston Pops on the Esplanade in the olden days, though a lot smaller. It was fun.
It has begun. Our annual trip to Ponce, Puerto Rico, for maintenance and repair on Casarboles, the home Allysen’s parents built. I arrived last night, but she has been down here for a week already. As I started this (I got interrupted, so it’s no longer true), the sounds of animated conversation in Spanish filled the outdoor spaces. Allysen was hosting a reunion of her middle-school classmates from the years she lived here as a kid. Most of these women she had not seen in over 50 years! They were a great bunch, and Allysen had a wonderful time. I took part for a while, but as most of the conversation was in Spanish, I eventually drifted off to, well, start this year’s Ponce Chronicles.
Prior to my arrival, Allysen and Jayce laboriously prepared the pasillo, or hallway, for painting of the ceiling.
Then Jayce flew home to take charge of the dogs so I could come down. Meanwhile, older daughter Lexi and her husband Connor had their own reunion here, Lexi flying in from Ecuador, where she’s involved in a four-month refugee assistance and training program. They’ve been off doing Puerto Rico things, and I haven’t actually seen them.
In the last twenty-four hours, since flying into San Juan, I have:
What am I doing still up? Time enough to post this tomorrow.
I still haven’t seen Lexi and Connor, who are leaving tomorrow. Are they really here?
A few weeks ago, I paid a parking ticket online, through my town’s website. The town thoughtfully sent me an email acknowledging receipt. It began, earnestly and sincerely, “Dear GENERIC CUSTOMER…”
I feel goosebumps just remembering the warmth of the reply, enhanced as it was, by modern software design.
What’s your favorite memory of deeply personal public service?
Nosebook. It’s such a time sink.
On the wetland boardwalk near our house. Snow: It’s not just for shoveling.
My previous post notwithstanding, 2022 has gotten off to a pretty rocky start in the Carver household, due to some family members going through tough times. I’ll not go into details, for reasons of privacy. But several pieces of (professional) good news have come along to brighten the days, and I want to share those.
The first, I believe, was a lovely review of The Reefs of Time from Scribble’s Worth Book Reviews. They liked the book a lot. On their list of Pros and Cons, they gave it 9 pros and 0 Cons.
The second was my first review on TikTok, by a young man named Anthony Avina, also of The Reefs of Time. He too liked it lot.
The third was a wonderful short review of the Sunborn audiobook, on an internet radio segment called Sci-Fi Bookbuzzes with Bria Burton (scroll down to the little audio player to hear the review). That led to a subsequent on-air interview with PatZi, the host of the parent radio show, Joy on Paper. You can listen to the interview here.
Finally, and the biggest happy surprise of all, was word that I’d received the Helicon Society’s Frank Herbert Lifetime Achievement Award, which I talked about last time.
These things are extremely welcome rays of sunshine.
But I’d trade them all in a heartbeat for things to be better for the people I love.