2023 Life Logs, Day 76: Happy St. Patrick’s Day
Date: Friday, March 17, 2023
Weather: Cloudy; High 49, Low 42 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I spent my morning driving around getting friends to sign Heather’s Nomination paper to run for School Committee, walking with Shadow and my friend Olga, and then heading to Monument Beach to have lunch and spend the afternoon with a friend from my days in Concord, NH, Kate Daniels. Kate was a special education teacher at Concord High School when I was the Professional Development Coordinator for the school district. We had adventures in New Orleans and New York City when we attended conferences together and we met again late last summer when she attended a Voyage of Windbird presentation I was giving in North Falmouth. She is now Dean of Student Services at St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH, and has inherited her mother’s home here on the Cape and is spending some of her sabbatical semester here. Both Heather and Justin attended St. Paul’s School, so Kate and I have all sorts of connections. She is much younger than I, but regardless of the age difference, we have always enjoyed our times together. Today we spent a wonderful afternoon with another St. Paul’s friend of Kate’s who has bought a summer home not far from me in East Falmouth.
When I drove back to Falmouth from Monument Beach, I stopped by Heather and Jed’s to drop off the Nomination paper with the signatures I had gotten today. Ollie is celebrating his eleventh birthday with friends spending an overnight. They were in full swing when I stopped by, but I didn’t stay long as I needed to get home to Shadow. Ollie’s birthday is on Tuesday, so sometime between now and then we will have a family birthday dinner to celebrate.
Tonight, I watched the film, Elvis. Elvis was the same age as my brother that was the closet in age in to me. My brother graduated from high school in 1953, the same year that I entered first grade. I have wonderful memories of driving around in my brother’s 1955 red and white Chevy Belair and having him teach me how to jitterbug. Then, in September of 1956, when I was in fourth grade, my brother was drafted into the Army and sent to Germany, and I first saw Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show performing “Hound Dog.” I begged my dad for a 45 rpm record player so that I could play that song over and over. For my birthday in March of 1957, I got the record player, and I bought the record. Watching the movie tonight brought back all of those memories, which were such fond memories of mine. I really enjoyed the movie, but it is such an incredibly tragic story. I love Tom Hanks as an actor, but in this movie, he was Colonel Parker and I hated him by the end.
