04-MAY-B-8

MOVING IN AT LAST, WITH A SUMMER HOUSEMATE ALREADY IN PLACE,

AS THE VOICE OF THE CICADA IS HEARD IN THE WOODS

AND I LAUNCH INTO A NEW DOCTORAL DEGREE PROGRAM EVEN BEFORE THE UNPACKING IS HALF STARTED IN RE-SETTLING DERWOOD

May 19-20, 2004

It is going to take weeks, and maybe even months, but I am about to make the transition to take the toothbrush out of Diane’s guest bathroom so she can get about remodeling the closet and bathrooms in her small house, and start unpacking all these boxes in my own house which may even allow me to find that which has been missing for many months. The one already at home here is Mark Naylor, a Richmond college rising junior in his summer Internship with the Congressional committee of Africa. He had also asked me to take him o a bit of a guided tour of the Montgomery County upmarket area around us here so that he could apply for a summer job after hours and on weekends, since his honorific resume’-building job on Capital Hill will not allow him to accumulate any money.

We took a tour around the Rockville Pike and the King Farm, then into Montgomery Village and Lakeside Plaza. When we got to Kentlands, he was excited as I had pointed out the O’Donnell’s and other restaurants but he had spotted Buca de Beppo—a chain of about 45 restaurants across the US where he had previously worked in Des Moines. So, he immediately filled out an application and we left it there—I even came back to it to see if he had already been hired by the supervisor with whom he spoke when the Schaefers came over to visit.

Mark has a girlfriend who is a Mary Washington College (Fredericksburg VA0 rising sophomore who works for an Ethics Association. She has a Mom who is an RN and who is interested in accompanying me to Haiti if we get the clearance to do that. Mark had gone to some effort to get all the fixings for a recipe he had read, and then all the All Clad cookware came out for its first “professional” use as he cooked dinner for Kate and me on the one occasion we have all been here together.

I have got the master bedroom nearly emptied of the file cases of slide presentations and got them downstairs to the sewing room, grunting and seating into the night. I have also tried to clear the cedar closet and get it ready while doing a bit of cleaning in the dark room. The dumpster is still here but it is full. If only it were here when I must tackle the attic! I cannot go up there and work now, however, since the summer time heat is about 130* by day, and it is quite a shocking contrast to the temperature in the climate controlled rest of the house. The coldest place—with or without the A/C being turned on—is the basement, and until I get the master bedroom ready, I have been sleeping down in the Grandkids room, unwilling to mess up the almost completed Guest Room which is looking complete. The first guests were the Schaefers, but others will be coming, and for this all the packaged sheets etc that I had bought are being taken out and it is looking good right now. Mark is in the second guest room which may double as an office; however I rather like the library from which I am typing this note now, with the bright and airy sunshine coming through the skylights and the long views of the Game Room and all the masterful arrangements of the trophies.

Dale Kramer and I have hung the remaining trophies and the plaques that I had made to label what each of them is. I had hoped to have the Derwood’s own “Phantom of the Derwood Deer Woods” as the centerpiece above the row of whitetails, but that space is blank just now. Dale and I went over to pick it up, but Charlie came out bristling flexing his muscles and saying we had a disagreement, and he was sure it would come out if I just paid him what he demanded and the head could turn up again, and he would promise not to cuss me out if I did not threaten him with lawyers. He rejected the splitting the price for the re-do (against the advice of all those who are aware) and is going for broke—meaning that the price for his slow poor quality work with an initial failure would be more than the other four deer in the group combined. But he has moved it to another site, and it is not available as Dale and I came by to pick it up, so there will have to be an official way of retrieving it. I did not “threaten” him with a lawsuit: I promised it.

The wolverine will be mounted in full mount as was the red fox, and each will be on matching pedestals. Since we did not see exactly the right one we wanted, Gina may make the pair of them. When the Phantom returns to Derwood, and the repaired turkey is refurbished after the mouse attack in storage, and the new wood duck drake is added, we will be about filled up in the Game Room. The other parts of the house will be discussed when Sandy Shelar comes over the third of June, and then we can look at the wall hangings and works of art. There is a hand-made Oriental rug sale at the Great Indoors, so we will go to look there to see if the kind of rug that would fit the fining room or living room is available, since the price is not different than what I could get by bargaining long and hard, the size is much bigger, and then the huge advantage—these Chinese made rugs are HERE, and I would not have to pack them back from abroad.

The one unusual thing about Derwood this year is that the seventeen year cycle has arrive ed—and the cicadas have field the trees and also the air with a high pitched hum from so many of them rubbing their backsides that it is hard to have a conversation-level voice heard outside in the woods. AS I finally got mow the two and a half feet tall grass after a single twenty four hour period in which it has not rained, I see the 38 caliber holes in the ground from which they had emerged to crawl up the trees and serenade after their long nap through seventeen winters awaiting this magically timed event to do their thing. I remember well this phenomenon seventeen years ago as I was sitting in my surgery office on Pennsylvania Avenue and the sound of their heavy bodies flying into my office windows would be like a hail storm. I had experienced the phenomenon here in Derwood, then six months later I found myself on the other side of the equator a similar distance at Iguaçu Falls again—and there they were—emerging in the Antipodal Summer just as they had up here six months earlier. So, this gives pause for thought—just where will I be in seventeen years and just what will I be doing as the offspring of this huge hatch of these big bugs recurs?

So, I have moved back in—if only to a cot in the basement for now, but I am back and making small advances into the huge workload every day. It is like the packing away project which took a lot more time and effort than I had expected, so reversing it should be a more hopeful and upbeat process, even if it takes as long.

At the same time, I have received special Fed Ex packages to remind me that I am about to undertake a long multi-year commitment of my own, and I hope not as long and as buried as that of the cicadas! I have got the large reading list and several expensive packages of articles Xeroxed into syllabi for the new doctoral program which means that I must start in now, doing a lot of reading and writing reports and reaction papers to a new graduate level effort toward a doctorate. I believe this is my last formal degree program, and entering this one as I had so many more before it is different thi9s time, since I can see this one taking a long time and a lot of work, but I hope to be there at the finish line!

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