A NEW MARYLAND HOUSEWARMING, UNPACKING,
AND OFFICE BOOKSHELF ASSEMBLY-
THIS TIME IN THE CHEERY SETTING OF CAMBRIDGE, MD
Nov. 2-4, 2001
Craig and Carol Schaefer are moved from South Carolina to Cambridge MD and have had their first -and most predictable-houseguest-me! They are on a very pretty side creek off the Choptank River leading up to the Chesapeake Bay along route 50, 30 miles closer to Derwood than they were in Salisbury. This means that they are very much back in MD after a 6-months' stay in SC, where I visited them upon settling in on Memorial Day. I brought an album of pictures from that time which seems like a decade ago already, since they have gone through rapid changes twice in half a year.
Cambridge MD and its 30,000 population of Dorchester County is an ideal venue for Craig and he will do very well here. The usual rule of thumb is that 10,000 people in any population require one surgeon, and his new partner, 43 year-old Bill Bair has been all three of those for the past seven years. There were many political shakeups of the surgeons who were once here, largely based in the efforts of Easton (Talbot County) to destabilize them, and Bill Bair-true to his genes-just kept on giving good care to patients without any unnecessary posturing or power plays, until he was the only one. Now, he is being joined by another fellow who simply takes good care of folk, and they seem very compatible, in a new era opening up. Bill has built a brand new office, which will be dedicated to his parents-the elder Dr. Bair being familiar to me from his long-term care at the Sailors and Soldiers Hospital in Wellsboro PA. Keith Bair is his nephew and is Bill's cousin, and Craig had met him at Don King's cabin when we have gone to pine Creek Canyon to go deer hunting. Craig certainly has a compatible partner now.
The hospital is right on the Choptank-everything, office to apartment to 74-bed hospital is within walking distance-and this gives them a year to see if they want to buy or build a place to their needs. They arrived for their first night in their rented waterfront apartment the night before I did. They were unpacking boxes, and I helped a bit, with such as trying to get the computer and modem and printout connected (I know, this sounds like the sort of thing for which I would be calling for help!) and then -once again, in a pattern repeated with each practice move, we got some pre-fabricated shelves, which somehow, we finally got assembled as bookshelves for Craig's moving in to his brand-new office. We puzzled over the ersatz fruitwood finished compressed trash that passes for wood these days, with Craftsman automatic screwdriver in hand until we got them assembled. Craig will put books on the shelves today and starts work tomorrow.
I liked the balmy days of fall with a warm sun and spectacular leaves still hanging on the Eastern Shore. I saw a pair of loons swimming in the creek. I got a ride in the new Mercedes they got from Gary Pusey who helped them move from SC, with 3/4ths of their things in storage in Salisbury until they find a bigger place. Meanwhile, they have a reasonable two-bedroom apartment, with what Carol describes as "better than a refrigerator" appliance in their living room---a gun safe. We went to a Country Kitchen home-cooking restaurant on Friday night, and had the first of the dinners they would be having from this point out at their dining room table. Saturday, we went out to Severna Park to watch two Rugby matches-one in which Navy beat GWU and the other was Salisbury State coached by Bob Davis (formerly by both Craig and Bob) which overwhelmed American university by 52:0 to win the Potomac Rugby Union championship and go on to Mid-Atlantic and nationals in the Spring.
We watched the Arizona Diamondbacks overwhelm the NY Yankees in game six and worked a bit further on the unpacking. After we had assembled the bookcases, we took off on a spectacular fall day to the Blackwater Refuge Wildlife Drive, and saw two pairs of bald eagles, mature, and herons and egrets as well as several thousand snow geese and Canadas with a smattering of ducks. I am eager to get a refuge permit and hunt sika deer in Blackwater. We saw a large flock of turkeys and other wildlife along the way. This is a beautiful part of the Eastern Shore, and this is a big step up for Craig into a very satisfying practice setting.
We had the "Welcome Back Homecoming to Maryland Dinner" at Portside, where we saw that not only the "Hometown Team of the Ravens (celebrated by a purple "War Wagon" dedicated to the football heroes) won, but so also did the Redskins, in triumphing over the Seattle Seahawks-home of the displaced Ravens quarterback, Dilfer.
I am back at work to find a note from my Ph.D. thesis advisor stating that he had thought I had abandoned my effort to get a thesis finished for the degree-after all that effort and rejection several times over, he may be right in the eventual outcome.